degradation.
Herein was _simplisme_ most bitterly condemned. Delsarte, ever studying
relations between coincidences in art and the revelations of nature,
arranged a typical demonstration, as ingenious as logical, of the
action and play of opposing faculties. By most wonderful pantomime he
showed a man tempted to sin; then, touched by pity for the victim of his
desire, at last transformed by the intervention of the moral sense, he
came by slow gradations to most elevated sentiments. One saw clearly the
courage of resistance and triumph in the sacrifice. Then, taking an
inverse progression, he slid from this height to the opposite extreme of
culpable resolutions.

Delsarte was the author of this mute scene which contains the elements
of a drama. The contemplation of this wonderful effect leads to the
conviction of the great value to literature of the fundamental law,
which may be applied to any and all literature, as a permanent criterion
by which productions may be classified and judged, in their departure
from the _simpliste_ form and approach to a conception in which the
constituent modalities of being act in harmonious accord. Here, again,
we have a fresh distinction between scientific and ethical literature,
and that which may be termed the _literature of art_. To this latter
class belong romances, dramatic productions and poems--works made up of
shades of meaning and just proportions, which should be based on clear
and sound philosophy, prudently disguised but indisputable and
imperishable. Here is place for the grace of an agreeable wit and the
elegant flexibility of a fruitful pen. More imperative than in any other
class of writing is the demand for individual touch and that harmony of
construction depending upon the proportionate relations of those
elements of aesthetics,--_the True, the Good_, and _the Beautiful_. Thus,
through aesthetics, it is elevated.

To this literature of art belong the sonnet of Arvers, and "The Soul,"
by Sully-Prudhomme. Musset, in his grace or pathos, is not inferior to
Victor Hugo. There are, even in his faults, certain effective boldnesses
to which the author of "Notre Dame de Paris" cannot aspire. Whence,
then, comes the immense distance between these poets? It lies in the
fact that Victor Hugo, while he is a finished artist, shows himself also
a thinker, philosopher, man of science and erudition. Endowed with a
profound humanitarian feeling, he is preoccupied with the evils of
so