icence of any kind; and inasmuch as every man loves himself, the
Ancien Regime loved "Gil Blas," and said, "The problem of humanity is
solved at last." But, ye long-suffering powers of heaven, what a
solution! It is beside the matter to call the book ungodly, immoral,
base. Le Sage would have answered: "Of course it is; for so is the world
of which it is a picture." No; the most notable thing about the book is
its intense stupidity; its dreariness, barrenness, shallowness, ignorance
of the human heart, want of any human interest. If it be an epos, the
actors in it are not men and women, but ferrets--with here and there, of
course, a stray rabbit, on whose brains they may feed. It is the inhuman
mirror of an inhuman age, in which the healthy human heart can find no
more interest than in a pathological museum.

That last, indeed, "Gil Blas" is; a collection of diseased specimens. No
man or woman in the book, lay or clerical, gentle or simple, as far as I
can remember, do their duty in any wise, even if they recollect that they
have any duty to do. Greed, chicane, hypocrisy, uselessness are the
ruling laws of human society. A new book of Ecclesiastes, crying,
"Vanity of vanity, all is vanity;" the "conclusion of the whole matter"
being left out, and the new Ecclesiastes rendered thereby diabolic,
instead of like that old one, divine. For, instead of "Fear God and keep
his commandments, for that is the whole duty of main," Le Sage sends
forth the new conclusion, "Take care of thyself, and feed on thy
neighbours, for that is the whole duty of man." And very faithfully was
his advice (easy enough to obey at all times) obeyed for nearly a century
after "Gil Blas" appeared.

About the same time there appeared, by a remarkable coincidence, another
work, like it the child of the Ancien Regime, and yet as opposite to it
as light to darkness. If Le Sage drew men as they were, Fenelon tried at
least to draw them as they might have been and still might be, were they
governed by sages and by saints, according to the laws of God.
"Telemaque" is an ideal--imperfect, doubtless, as all ideals must be in a
world in which God's ways and thoughts are for ever higher than man's;
but an ideal nevertheless. If its construction is less complete than
that of "Gil Blas," it is because its aim is infinitely higher; because
the form has to be subordinated, here and there, to the matter. If its
political economy be imperfect, often chim