s by objecting to the processes
of art. According to them, literature is to be strictly 'scientific,' to
confine itself to anatomy, and, it would appear, to morbid anatomy only.
The Romantic treatment, that is to say, the presentation of natural
facts in an artistic setting, is rigidly proscribed. Everything must be
set down on the principle of a newspaper report, or, to go to another
art for an illustration, as if by a photographic camera, not by an
artist's pencil. Now it will be obvious to any impartial critic that the
pursuance of this method is in itself fatal to the interest of a book.
The reader, unless of the very lowest order of intellect, does not want
in a novel a mere reproduction of the facts of life, still less a mere
scientific reference of them to causes. Accordingly, the naturalist
method inevitably produces an extreme dulness. In their search for a
remedy, its practitioners have observed that there are certain divisions
of human action, usually classed as vice and crime, in which, for their
own sake, and independently of pleasure in artistic appreciation of the
manner in which they are presented, a morbid interest is felt by a large
number of persons. They therefore, with businesslike shrewdness,
invariably, or almost invariably, select their subjects from these
privileged classes. The ambition of the naturalist, briefly described
without epigram or flippancy, but as he would himself say
scientifically, is to mention the unmentionable with as much fulness of
detail as possible. In this business M. Emile Zola has not hitherto been
surpassed, though many of his pupils have run him hard. Unfortunately,
for those who are proof against the attraction of disgusting subjects
merely because they are disgusting, M. Zola is one of the dullest of
writers. His style is also very bad, possessing for its sole merits a
certain vulgar vigour which is occasionally not ineffective, and a
capacity for vivid description. He is deeply learned in _argot_, or
slang, the use of which is one of the naturalist instruments, and his
works are therefore not useless as repertories of expressions to be
avoided. M. Zola's criticisms are more interesting than his novels,
consisting chiefly of vigorous denunciations of all the good writers of
his own day.

M. Victor Cherbuliez, besides political and miscellaneous work of
inferior relative power, has produced a series of novels (_Le Comte
Kostia_, _Le Roman d'une Honnete Femme_, _Meta H