ng what is merely formal. There is not
one of the systems which have been presented, however contrasted they
may appear, but has left its impress upon society,--not one but has left
its impress on the mind and opinions of M. Sainte-Beuve.

In one particular--the most essential, in reality, of all--his constancy
has been remarkable. He has remained true to his vocation. At the moment
when his literary brethren, availing themselves of the opening we have
noticed, were rushing into public life,--scholars and professors
becoming ambassadors and ministers of state, poets and novelists
mounting the tribune and the hustings, historians descending into the
arena of political journalism,--M. Sainte-Beuve settled himself more
firmly in the chair of criticism, concentrating his powers on the
specialty to which they were so peculiarly adapted. His opportunities
for doing this more effectively were themselves among the results of the
events already mentioned. A greater freedom and activity of discussion
demanded new and ampler organs. Cliques had been broken up; co-workers,
brought together by sympathy, separated by the clash of opinions and
ambitions, had dispersed; both in literature and in politics a wider,
more inquisitive, more sympathetic public was to be addressed. Already
in 1829, Veron, one of those shrewd and speculative--we hardly know
whether to call them men of business or adventurers, who foresee such
occasions, had set up the _Revue de Paris_, on a more extended plan than
that of any previous French journal of the kind. The opening article of
the first number was from the pen of M. Sainte-Beuve. But this
undertaking was subsequently merged in that of the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, which, after one or two abortive beginnings, was fairly started
in January, 1831, and soon assumed the position it has ever since
retained, at the head of the publications of its class. It enlisted
among its contributors nearly all the leading writers of the day, none
of whom was so regular and permanent, none of whom did so much to build
up its reputation and confer upon it the stamp of authority, as M.
Sainte-Beuve. His connection with it extended over seventeen years, the
period between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have
averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been
previously inserted in the _Revue de Paris_, a series of _Portraits_,
now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into
_