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These exhortations were seconded by less sedentary habits, by excursions to Coppet, where Sismondi often staid several days; by journeys to the glaciers; lastly by the lively and animating conversation of Madame de Staël, and by the chosen society that she attracted around her.

His frequent visits to Coppet did not prevent Charles from working assiduously at his history, of which the progress may be followed in the letters of his mother, and the advice inspired by the different aspects of the work. With what admirable justness of mind does she resist that disposition in her son to absolute opinions, to prose. lytism, even of doubts, the inherent malady of youth and inexperience.

“You must not thus throw about fire and flame,” she wrote to him; “reflect on it, you who require love so much. It is not merely enemies of a day that are made by this decided tone; they are exasperated, and for life. It is not, indeed, very surprising that those who uselessly attack opinions on which men have founded all their happiness, should be hated by them. They may be erroneous, but long received errors are more respectable than those we would substitute for them: for it is not truth which is found, when the system of religion generally received has been pulled down, since this truth, if it is not repeated, is hidden beneath the impenetrable darkness of the human mind. Leave the Trinity, the Virgin, and the Saints in peace; to the greater part of those who are attached to these doctrines, they are the columns which support all the edifice: if you shake them it will crumble away. And what will become of the souls that you will have deprived of all consolation, and of all hope? Piety is one of the sweetest affections of the soul, and the most necessary to its repose; it must exist in every religion, except in that which, by lopping off the branches to which our senses cling, by too much spiritualizing, makes us fall into abstract ideas, into a desolating vague state of mind. Promise me, at least, before you publish, to consult some clever person, not of the court of Madame de Staël. She can bear hatred, she has so many adorers; but you, you would be irritated, would suffer, would become dry, and I cannot bear the thoughts of it.”