y worst taken, from everywhere. And these faults do not affect
the beauty of the instrument, nor its marvellous aptitude for training
the mind to precision of expression. The logical bent of the French
mind, its love of rule, the elaborateness of its conventions in
literature, its ceremonial observances dating from by-gone times, the
custom of giving account of everything, of letting no nuance pass
unchallenged or uncommented, have given it a power of expression and
definiteness which holds together as a complete code of written and
unwritten laws, and makes a perfect instrument of its kind. But the very
completeness of it has seemed to some writers a fetter, and when they
revolt against and break through it, their extravagance passes beyond
all ordinary bounds. French represents the two extremes, unheard-of
goodness, unequalled perfection, or indescribable badness and
unrestraint. Unfortunately the unrestraint is making its way, and as
with ourselves in England, the magazine literature in France grows more
and more undesirable.

Yet there is unlimited room for reading, and for Catholics a great
choice of what is excellent. The modern manner of writing the lives of
the Saints has been very successfully cultivated of late years in
France, making them living human beings "interesting as fiction," to use
an accepted standard of measurement, more appealingly credible and more
imitable than those older works in which they walked remote from the
life of to-day, angelic rather than human. There are studies in
criticism, too, and essays in practical psychology and social science,
which bring within the scope of ordinary readers a great deal which with
us can only be reached over rough roads and by-ways. No doubt each
method has its advantages; the laboriously acquired knowledge becomes
more completely a part of ourselves, but along the metalled way it is
obvious that we cover more ground.

The comparison of these values leads to the practical question of
translations. The Italian saying which identifies the translator with
the traitor ought to give way to a more grateful and hopeful modern
recognition of the services done by conscientious translations. We have
undoubtedly suffered in England in the past by well-meaning but
incompetent translators, especially of spiritual books, who have given
us such impressions as to mislead us about the minds of the writers or
even turned us against them altogether, to our own great loss. Bu