cepted by the public, and he has
founded a school which does honor to France.

How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that
the English literature of the present century, superior to that of
France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of
criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal,
but--taking quantity as well as quality into the account--in any degree
similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds
and chief productions of the day--on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on
Carlyle--which is worth preserving or remembering? Is it that criticism
has been almost abandoned to a class of writers who have no sense of
their responsibilities, no enlightened interest in their art, no
liberality of views,--who make their position and the influence attached
to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend,
gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched
yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and
affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the
decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to
understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate
his faults; it is your duty,--he himself will have reason to thank you.
But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do
not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance
with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a
dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of
_judging_, vitiate your faculty of _tasting_. Recognize the importance,
the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued
yourselves on despising,--that _sympathy_ which is the sum of
experience, the condition of insight, the root of tolerance, the seal of
culture!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] At the moment when we are sending this sketch to press a specimen of
the sort of criticism to which we have alluded comes to us in the form
of an article in the Quarterly Review for January,--the subject, M.
Sainte-Beuve himself. One wonders how it is that the writer, who, if
really familiar with the productions he criticises, must have been
indebted to them for many hours of enjoyment, much curious information,
and a multitude of suggestions and stimulants to reflection, should have
had no feeling of kindliness or gratitude for the author. But then the