But it is childish to waste our time in censorious judgment on the individual who does no worse than represent a ruling type.

We can only note the difference and pass on.
A characteristic trait in this rural life is Diderot's passion for high winds.

They gave him a transport, and to hear the storm at night, tossing the trees, drenching the ground with rain, and filling the air with the bass of its hoarse ground-tones, was one of his keenest delights.[203] Yet Diderot was not of those in whom the feeling for the great effects of nature has something of savagery.

He was above all things human, and the human lot was the central source of his innermost meditations.

In the midst of gossip is constantly interpolated some passage of fine reflection on life--reflection as sincere, as real, coming as spontaneously from the writer's inmost mood and genuine sentiment, as little tainted either by affectation or by commonness, as ever passed through the mind of a man.