n--religious, theological, ecclesiastical, and what
not--is left blank. I do not remember so much as a _cure_ figuring
personally, though there may be one. And it is worth noting that Paul
was born in 1794, and therefore passed his earliest childhood in the
time when the Republic had actually gagged, if not stifled, religion in
France--when children grew up, in some cases at any rate, without ever
hearing the name of God, except perhaps in phrases like _pardieu_ or
_parbleu_. It is not my business or my intention to make reflections or
draw inferences; I merely indicate the fact.

Another fact--perhaps so obvious already that it hardly needs
stating--is that Paul de Kock is not exactly the person to "take a
course of," unless under such conditions as those under which Mr.
Carlyle took a course of a far superior writer, Marryat, and was (one
regrets to remember) very ungrateful for the good it did him. He is
(what some of his too critical countrymen have so falsely called Dumas)
a mere _amuseur_, and his amusement is somewhat lacking in variety.
Nevertheless, few critical readers[59] of the present history will, I
think, consider the space given to him here as wasted. He was a really
powerful schoolmaster to bring the popular novel into still further
popularity; and he made a distinct advance upon such persons as
Pigault-Lebrun and Ducray-Duminil--upon the former in comparative
decency, if not of subject, of expression; upon the latter in getting
close to actual life; and upon both in what may be called the
_furniture_ of his novels--the scene-painting, property-arranging, and
general staging. This has been most unfairly assigned to Balzac as
originator, not merely in France, but generally, whereas, not to mention
our own men, Paul began to write nearly a decade before the beginning of
those curious efforts, half-prenatal, of Balzac's, which we shall deal
with later, and nearly two decades before _Les Chouans_. And, horrifying
as the statement may be to some, I venture to say that his mere _mise en
scene_ is sometimes, if not always, better than Balzac's own, though he
may be to that younger contemporary of his as a China orange to Lombard
Street in respect of plot, character, thought, conversation, and all the
higher elements, as they are commonly taken to be, of the novel.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The minors before 1830.]

It has been said that the filling-up of this chapter, as to the r