with criticisms of foreign literature, ended by introducing the freedom of foreign literature into their own. What might have been the result it is impossible now to say: for the Events of 1830 blighted the harvest, and flung the quiet student, as well as the bustling intriguer, into the coarse arena of politics. They put a stop to all the labour of the study or the cabinet, and converted France into a forum, where nothing but public affairs and interests were listened to. The poet, the philosopher, the historian, the Lamartines, the Cousins, and the Thierses, were put in political harness, and made to drag the State: and all classes of Letters were melted up together into that compound, of which mere journalists are made.

The effect of the Revolution of 1830, on that highest class of intellectual researches which concerns mind itself, was singular. It silenced the rational and learned professor; but it gave birth to a crowd of empirics and enthusiasts, who believed that the world was on the point of regeneration, and that they were called especially to aid in the great work. The St. Simonians undertook to found a new religion: a new social, and of course a new political, system. They purchased the Globe, and converted it to these mystic and absurd preachings. From St. Simonism, or by the side of it, sprung a host of philosophico-social schools; which flourished while their system was in nubibus, but no sooner was it applied or realized, than its absurdity became too manifest even to the eyes of the interested neophytes. One philosopher indeed wisely determined to keep always on the wing, and never to advance from fancy to reality. He, like Hegel, could never be refuted, seeing that he never asserted any thing. Thanks to this prudent precaution, and to a certain mystic eloquence, Ballanche has not only earned and kept a reputation, but has even forced his way into the Academy.

One should have hoped that the Revolution, which interrupted literary studies, would at least have given birth to excellence in positive and practical science. But no. When that noblest of all professional chairs, the professorship of Comparative Legislation, was founded by the Duc de Broglie, he was obliged to fill it by a demi-St.-Simonian, a madman of talent, fitter to touch on any subject than that of legislation. And when the chair of political economy was to be filled, the French were obliged to apply to Geneva, invite Count Rossi, vote him to be a Frenchman, and make him a Peer.

However inimical to professorial chairs and historical studies, the Revolution did but give increased activity to the caterers for the stage and the circulating library. It is singular that in times

French Criticism of English Writers.

which offered such ample materials for history, historical studies should be interrupted, and people become too absorbed in the chronicle of the present to give attention to the chronicles of the past. Yet it was not leisure that was wanting: there soon having arisen an increased demand for the imaginative and the light. Novelists came forth in scores; the legion of vaudevillists was, if possible, augmented; and a new class of readers seemed to spring up, eager for the daily fare of literature. Previous to 1830 common readers required a seasoning of politics in every thing. They required to have their palate tickled by hidden allusions to the glories of the empire, the old-womanishness of the Bourbons, the hypocrisy of priests, and the tyranny of prefects. Berenger, with his pointed yet covered satire on all these things, was the concentration of national feeling, and of course his popularity was beyond bounds. The sentiment that ran through a novel was generally but the essence of Berenger, diffused in the washy medium of three volumes. The year of 1830 did away with this mass of sentiment obligé, and put an end in France, at least, to the empire of Paul de Kock, and Pigault-Lebrun. It is not our purpose to enter here into the merits, as novelists, of Balzac, Sand, Hugo, and Dumas: although the peculiar taste which created them, or which they modified, would be worthy of something better in the way of analysis, than that with which they judge our works of light literature.

The great difference between the lighter literature of the French and our own, is that French efforts of this kind derive their source and spirit from the drama: the education and inspiration of all French novelists being theatrical. The theatre is the temple of their literature, and the parterre its tribunal: no one daring to appeal to any other more select. No French writer has sate down in the solitude of rural life, and given loose reins to his imagination to narrate simply, as for the amusement of a few idle and intellectual friends. His solitude is not more remote than a grenier of the Rue Richelieu; and his recueillement or reflection is no more than a brief morning's space.

Were Christopher North in his old ill-humour, as we hope he still is in his pristine vigour, he might stigmatize the whole body of French writers as cockney. They are at home in the puddle and the pavement, and even George Sand describes the country with the peculiar relish of a cit. Town and theatre are words and things, that go together; and dramatic criticism, in converse as in print, is with the Parisian a matter of the very first importance. With the French writer it is the same. He looks to have his volumes criticised as a play, and he aims at giving

it as much of what he considers the good qualities of a play as possible.

When the present race of French novelists started up to cater for the public, they had the world before them. No such thing as true pictures of life, its daily habits, sentiments, vicissitudes, either past or present, had ever been represented in French novels. And The Natural was a mine that one would think they might have explored. But the drama was not in the natural mood for the then present. Scribe had exhausted the natural and the simple, as far as these in actual life presented traits and characters sufficiently striking for the stage. And a melodramatic taste had arisen, with a craving for strong emotions. Hugo came to dose the public with imaginative cayenne. His horrors told upon the stage: and, telling on the stage, were of course made to tell in the volume. Hans of Iceland, and Bug Jargal, electrified French readers, who had been slumbering over the fadaises of D'Arlincourt, the novelist of the Restoration. It was not till after Talma's death, however, that the Théâtre Français was invaded by the romantics. As long as he lived, his great popularity as well as his great genius enabled the manager to dispense with any concession to the new taste. But soon after his death the romantics had the best tragic actor and actress. And they, with their dramatists, carried the Théâtre Français, and of course the Parisian public, by storm.

This sketch of the revolutions of French taste with regard to their own writers, will aid us to understand their judgments on our writers. To these the public is more favourable and indulgent than the critic; and translations are greedily swallowed, long before the critic interferes to tell the why for or against it. The great objection of the foreign critic to the English is, that they are more lyric than dramatic on the stage, and more sentimental than stirring in the page of the novel. The French and even the Italians are very matter-of-fact people, when they come to enjoy a theatrical representation. They have no objection indeed to any number of words, provided these words have no meaning. But to any burst of poetry or digression of sentiment, they are inexorably severe. In a novel they are blind to all details of the same kind. The kind, warm, noble, gentlemanly vein of feeling, that runs in the most trivial dialogues of Scott, and through those parts of his narrative where the current of story flags, is com pletely lost on the French. It is only the dramatic part of the fiction which strikes them. And hence, in France, Cooper ranks almost as high as Sir Walter. English wit is quite lost on them: but the reverse is the case with English humour. They will laugh

French Criticism of English Writers.

9

heartily at what they understand of Smollett, and see less to understand, and nothing to laugh at, in Fielding, Marryat's novels have always been favourites with them. And the adventures of Mr. Pickwick please them more than the character in Nickleby, the pathetic beauty in the Old Curiosity Shop, or the tragic sufferings of Oliver Twist. The secondhand Scott school is little relished in France. And on this they have often remarked with a just severity. The great original has given them so much of the historian, that they have need of extending their indulgence to his imitators in and out of France. Their own delicious Memoirs render them passably fastidious in historic fiction; and with the exception of a couple of volumes of De Vigny (Cinq Mars), and one of Merimee (Les Chroniques de Charles Neuf), the French have passed condemnation upon all historical novels of their own.

But when we speak of French criticism of the present day, we speak rather of something oral than of any thing written. Society in France is its own critic. Volumes of criticism there are none. There is but one review, and that, in its tone and frequency of publication, more of a paper than what we call a review. And as to the beaux esprits, the light wits, the literary insects, that brilliant and ephemeral race flutter and shine exclusively in what is called the feuilleton of the newspaper: that is, a small print which is placed as if it were a running commentary on th elarge type of politics. The feuilleton was exiled there in disgrace: but it has converted its post of exile into one of triumph, and few French readers now peruse any part of a journal, save the feuilleton. In these scraps Jules Janin made his reputation, and what a reputation! as he himself would say. If you seek able criticisms on art, you must look to the feuilleton of Delecluze, or Berlioz. Philosophy itself tries to get notice in the small print, in hopes that it may pass for being amusing. Even the romance-writers of longue haleine have forsaken the volume for the feuilleton. Eugene Sué published in this form his Mathilde. And he is now writing two novels at the same time, which appear simultaneously in the Presse and the Débats. One is Louis Lambert, the other the Mystères de Paris. The latter is the adventures of a German prince in Paris. He had been bred in England, and begins his new life by haunting the lowest dregs of the Parisian population. This leads to many cut-throat and slang but powerful scenes. The Parisians are shocked, but they read on: the reverse of the laudatur et alget!

One of the feuilletonists of the Débats is the gentleman, whose name heads our article. M. Philarète Chasles has made English lite

rature his speciality. And he stands alone in his speciality. From him the Parisians learn periodically, either in the Débats or the Revue des Deux Mondes, what has been passing in English literature. M. Chasles does not flatter us. He makes few exceptions, whilst he condemns our present race of writers to something more than oblivion. Carlyle and Bulwer are, however, great favourites of his: an agreement that shows at least some comprehensiveness of taste: nor is he blind to the brilliancy of our female writers. But alas! M. Chasles, much as we are disposed to accede to some of his judgments, is essentially a feuilletonist: very shallow, very superficial; agreeable certainly, but quite without depth; notwithstanding the philosophic tint his speculations are so fond of assuming. He is less a critic than a cicerone; ready to point out what is worth noticing, without deciding the exact degree of the worth.

But let us give a fair specimen of what M. Chasles thinks of the prospects of English literature in particular just now, and of the fate of European letters in general. It is not flattering, it must be admitted: the reader will judge of its claims to depth or profundity. We quote it to show the kind of humour in which he invariably pursues his business of criticism; the temper which colours it all. And as we do not happen to share in his sanguine hopes about Russia, while as to America we shall probably have a few harder words to say before our present number closes, it would be unjust, out of false delicacy to the unhappy and unpromising quarters of Europe here under sentence, to withhold from the other great countries the great expectations of M. Philarète Chasles.

"It is in vain that a feeling of confidence and hope seeks to repulse the fatal truth: the decline of literature, arising from the decline of intellect, cannot be denied. All with one common accord see, that we Europeans are retrograding into a half-Chinese nullity, an universal and inevitable weakness, which the author of these observations has been predicting these fifteen years, and against which he sees no remedy. This descent into the abyss, this obscure path which leads to the levelling of intellects, the destruction of genius, operates in divers ways according as the race of man is more or less sunk in the scale of civilization. The Southerns are first in the list: they first received the light and they have been the first to fall into darkness. The Northerns will follow close after: the vigour and sap of the world had taken refuge in them. The Italians, though a noble race, are quite in the background: tranquil and happy in their climate, their Polichinelle, their Bellini: happy in all, alas! and devoured by that felicity of indifference which is the greatest misfortune of nations. The Spaniards, the second children of modern civilization, are pursuing the