of the most prolific authors of the day; the sterling stamp of whose genius is attested not by the number or the beauty of her tales, their deep thought, their still deeper tenderness, or their polished and perfect style; but by that characteristic which seems to be the exclusive prerogative of the highest order of intellect, by the fact that the current of her thought has become purer, profounder, serener, as it has flowed on; that she has gradually worked herself free from all the turbid and unlicensed sensuality which disfigured her earlier productions, and that a manlier tone, a better taste, and a higher morality have grown upon her year by year. There is yet a wide gulf which separates her from what we should wish to see her, and what she might yet become; but the woman who has traversed the space which separates Consuelo,' and 'La petite Fadette,' from Leone Leoni' or Indiana,' need despair of no other progress. But the fictitious literature of the age in France is marked by another feature far more distressing than its exuberance. It is diseased to its very core. Never before was so much talent perverted to such base uses. It is not only that the tone of sexual morality which it preaches is lax and low, that it expatiates with such complacency in equivocal positions and voluptuous delineations; that its whole tendency is to deaden. the sense of duty and impair the vigour of the will; that everywhere sentiment is extolled and brought prominently forward while principle is ignored or thrust ignominiously into the background of all this we have had examples before in literature far less morbid and less dangerous. It is that it addresses itself consciously and glaringly to palled appetites and distorted imaginations; that it proceeds on the assumption (which of course it thereby helps to realise) that all relish for what is chaste, simple, and serene is extinct in the hearts of its readers; and that recognising a demand for what is unnatural, extravagant, and bad, it sets to work to provide a supply without compunction and without stint. It is a banquet consisting solely of unwholesome stimulants and more unwholesome sweets. Each writer strives to surpass himself and to eclipse his rivals in the novelty and extravagance of the incidents which he heaps together; in his daring violations of every rule of taste, art, and morals; in his delineations of whatever can most startle, horrify, and shock. No situation is too grotesque, no combination too improbable, no picture tco revolting, to be admitted. Cela émeut: cela fait éprouver une sensation,' is the language of praise by which such writers are rewarded. Now, it is some inconceivable monster of iniquity, who passes in the world's eye as a saint, and receives the prize of virtue,' as in

Atar-gull.' Now, it is some character utterly and desperately vicious, made interesting by some single virtue or some redeeming human affection, as in 'Le Roi l'amuse,' and 'Lucrecia Borgia' (which, however, are not novels, but dramas).* Now, it is some angel of purity brought up in a brothel and a cabaret, as in Les Mystères de Paris.' Now, it is some scene of prolonged and minutely pictured agony, as that of the priest hanging by the leaden spout from the turret of Notre-Dame, which slowly bends under him for many pages. And so on through a catalogue of monstrous, harrowing, unnatural conceptions, fitted for nothing, designed for nothing, but to rouse an exhausted fancy or goad a jaded sensuality.†

This deplorable malady in so important and influential a branch of literature may, we think, be traced to two specific causes of course there must have been other predisposing ones to have allowed it to attain so advanced a stage. The first is, probably, the convulsions and catastrophes in which the writers passed their youth and received their mental impressions. They came into a world which was still palpitating with the excitement of the greatest social earthquake which humanity had ever undergone. As soon as their young minds began to open to the transactions which were going on around them, the achievements of their great Emperor brought every day some new marvel to stimulate the fancy and to feed enthusiasm. The first narratives which fascinated their childhood were the thrilling and horrible but true romances of the first Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Much of their after life has been passed in the midst of perpetual alarm and startling vicissitudes. Thus from their infancy they had lived upon excitement. Their education had been conducted in and by times in which the actual events of history beggared the creations of fiction. As it was with themselves, so it was with most of those whom they addressed. The attention which had been strained and wearied by the daily occurrences of that unquiet period, would flag over romances, unless those romances could serve up to them something more strange, more horrible, more sad, than what they had been ac

* All these remarks, by the way, apply as forcibly to the modern French drama as to its romantic fictions.

L'excès' (says M. de Mazade) 'devient le refuge du talent de peu de foi; l'observation émoussée et inhabile à ressaisir les vraies nuances de l'âme humaine, la gradation naturelle des sentimens, se jette à la poursuite d'un autre élément de succès, ramasse tout ce qui s'offre à elle de voluptés grossières à peindre, d'entrainemens effrénés à réproduire: elle contraste le goût des impurités et de souillures.' (De la Démocratie en Littérature.)

customed to see with their own eyes, and to hear with their own ears. Fancy had to vie with fact, and to beat it out of the field; and those versed in the French annals of the last sixty years can imagine the seducing and demoralising character of such a desperate competition.

The other cause we believe to have been the feuilleton. Writers addressing a public who read them day by day, a chapter at a time, were obliged to sacrifice every other consideration to effect. They could not trust to the impression which would be left by the entire work; they could not wait for their meed of applause till the perusal was completed. Each morning's repast must have its own attractive dish. The reader would not forgive a dull chapter to-day, in the hopes of an exciting one to-morrow; nor would he, reading 'piecemeal and in a café, be satisfied with those simple, modest, real merits which might have attracted and pleased him in a complete volume and at his own fireside. Hence novels thus issued required not only to be crowded with incidents and scenes, but to have those incidents and scenes of a particularly stimulating character. Now a great proportion of the novels and romances of our day in France appeared in the first instance in the columns of a daily newspaper.

We can conceive no system of publication so fatal to artistic perfection; and we regret deeply to have seen the introduction of something analogous in this country. Dickens and Thackeray have, in our judgment, much to answer for, both to the public and to their own fame, for having imported the custom of periodic fiction. We can understand the temptation to poor men or obscure men of a plan so pecuniarily advantageous. But we do not understand that men of unquestioned genius and established celebrity should be willing to expose either to the temptations and the dangers of so mischievous a habit. Already the injurious effects of it are traceable in both these admirable but faulty writers. It has made their best works inconsistent, incomplete, and disjointed. The defects to which it almost inevitably leads are especially observable in Mr. Dickens. There is scarcely one of his novels which is not spoiled by it in a way and to an extent which no artist of true and lofty ambition could endure. It has ruined his plots, it has con

Even Bulwer, whose arrangement of his plots used to be so careful and admirable, has fallen a victim to this abominable importation. In My Novel,' which appeared month by month in Black'wood's Magazine,' the plot is singularly unartistic, clumsy, damaging to, and inconsistent with, the character of the production as a whole.

fused his characters, it has fatally aggravated his already excessive tendency to caricature. Its operation in him is peculiarly observable in this-that his dramatis persona often turn out quite differently from what was intended on their first introduction, and foreboded by their first words and actions. His stories are begun upon a plan which is speedily abandoned as something more tempting or promising turns up. He often seems to write at random; his first chapters read like an uncertain prelude; and it is only when he chances to strike some rich or happy vein that the future tendency and conduct of the fiction is determined. There are few of his works in which the first half volume would not require to be rewritten to bring it into harmony with the master idea and key-note of the rest.

In one most important and significant respect the tone of French literature in the present century has undergone even a greater modification than its form and direction-in all, we mean, that relates to the religious sentiment. The prevalent spirit of the last age was that not of simple scepticism, but of hard, cold, aggressive infidelity. The unbelief of the men of that time was something more than a negation: it may be said to have amounted not only to a positive creed, but to an inspiring faith. Now, all this is changed; and without any close analysis of the difference, no one can pass from the study of Voltaire, Raynal, Diderot, Helvetius, and their collaborateurs, to the perusal of Madame de Staël, Chateaubriand, Guizot, Lamartine, or even of George Sand, and not be conscious that they are breathing an altogether different atmosphere. It is not that scepticism has become extinct or unfashionable. It is not that these writers or their imitators are believers, in our sense of the word; scarcely one of them belongs to any sect, or would be owned by any church: but though a creed may be wanting, the religious sentiment is there. The poet felt it stirring in his soul; his muse was arid and cold without it;the historian read indications of its undying vitality in every page of the world's annals; -the thinker, now that strife and passion had passed away, discerned how shallow, barren, and incomplete was the philosophy which sought to banish or deny it. But with the great majority of these writers, even those whose tone is reverential and devout, religion scarcely reaches a more definite form, or a firmer foundation, than a vague instinct, or a strong emotion; it is poetical, not theological; it is the result of impression, not of reflection or research. J'ai pleuré, ' et j'ai cru,' says Chateaubriand. J'aime : il faut que j'espère,' says Lamartine. The religion of this last great poet is a sort of type of that which pervades the better portion of the literary

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life of France. It is an emotion of the heart-not the guide of life.

'L'élément moral' (says M. Vinet with great justice) 'qui tient si peu de place dans sa dogmatique, est le seul qui, transformant un fluide vague en un corps solide, puisse opérer, pour ainsi dire, le cristallisation du sentiment religieux. Toute religion où la conscience ne joue pas la rôle principal, n'est qu'une poésie on un philosophème, et ne tarde pas à se perdre dans un panthéisme ouvert ou désavoué. C'est la qu'en definitive aboutit et s'abîme le Christianisme de Lamartine, parceque, dès le principe, sa religion n'est guère que de l'éblouissement et de l'extase. Il est bien moins le serviteur que l'admirateur et le courtisan de Dieu. . Catholique dans les

vieux temples, panthéiste dans les vieilles forêts, abondant tour à tour dans le sens des rationalistes et dans le sens des orthodoxes, Chrétien "parceque sa mère était Chrétienne," philosophe parceque son siècle est le dix-neuvième, acceptant les prophéties et renversant les miracles, sans prendre garde que les prophéties sont aussi des miracles; mais toujours, il faut l'avouer, ému de la beauté de Dieu, retentissant comme une lyre vivante au contact des merveilles de la création, repandant son cœur avec la simplicité de l'enfance et du génie devant l'Etre invisible dont la pensée tout à la fois l'oppresse et le ravit, M. de Lamartine. . . . ne nous donne que "le sentiment "moral et religieux pris à cette région où tout ce qui s'élève à Dieu se "rencontre et se réunit, et non à celle où les specialités, les systèmes "et les controverses divisent les cœurs et les intelligences." . . . Ne demandez donc pas les articles de son symbole; ramassez tout ce que vous pourrez de ces magnifiques images du néant de la vie, de la poésie des ruines, de l'éternelle jeunesse de la Nature, des mille voix de la Création, du concert des sphères, de l'immensité de Dieu, de la réunion promise dans son sein à ceux qui s'aimèrent ici-bas, ajoutez-y quelques allusions bibliques fort touchantes, et vous avez la religion de Jocelyn et de Lamartine. Riens de moins, mais aussi rien de plus; car en vain vous y chercherez l'élément vital, je ne dis pas du Christianisme, mais de toute religion née ailleurs que dans le cerveau de poëte, l'élément générateur de toute religion qui a exercé quelque empire sur les individus et sur les peuples; je veux dire l'élément de la Conscience, l'idée de la loi, de la responsibilité, du péché, de la satisfaction. Tout ce qui rende une religion sainte, tout ce qui l'élève au-dessus de la poésie, tout ce qui en fait autre chose qu'une manière de courtiser la divinité, tout ce qui lui donne un corps, un substance, une réalité, tout cela manque dans la religion désossée de Jocelyn.'

And, we may add, in the religion of Frenchmen of letters in the nineteenth century.' Still the improvement, as compared with the last age, is unquestionable. The feelings and convictions of rational devotion are not outraged as before at every turn if there is not much more to satisfy, there is infinitely less to shock; and the gain that has been made good may be a step to further progress.