honneur.'"

What a contemptible science this is, then, about which quartos are
written, and sixty-volumed Biographies Universelles, and Lardner's
Cabinet Cyclopaedias, and the like! the facts are nothing in it, the
names everything and a gentleman might as well improve his mind by
learning Walker's "Gazetteer," or getting by heart a fifty-years-old
edition of the "Court Guide."

Having thus disposed of the historians, let us come to the point in
question--the novelists.

On the title-page of these volumes the reader has, doubtless, remarked,
that among the pieces introduced, some are announced as "copies" and
"compositions." Many of the histories have, accordingly, been neatly
stolen from the collections of French authors (and mutilated, according
to the old saying, so that their owners should not know them) and, for
compositions, we intend to favor the public with some studies of French
modern works, that have not as yet, we believe, attracted the notice of
the English public.

Of such works there appear many hundreds yearly, as may be seen by
the French catalogues; but the writer has not so much to do with works
political, philosophical, historical, metaphysical, scientifical,
theological, as with those for which he has been putting forward a
plea--novels, namely; on which he has expended a great deal of time
and study. And passing from novels in general to French novels, let
us confess, with much humiliation, that we borrow from these stories a
great deal more knowledge of French society than from our own personal
observation we ever can hope to gain: for, let a gentleman who has
dwelt two, four, or ten years in Paris (and has not gone thither for
the purpose of making a book, when three weeks are sufficient)--let an
English gentleman say, at the end of any given period, how much he knows
of French society, how many French houses he has entered, and how many
French friends he has made?--He has enjoyed, at the end of the year,
say--

At the English Ambassador's, so many soirees.
At houses to which he has brought letters, so many tea-parties.
At Cafes, so many dinners.
At French private houses, say three dinners, and very lucky too.

He has, we say, seen an immense number of wax candles, cups of tea,
glasses of orgeat, and French people, in best clothes, enjoying the
same; but intimacy there is none; we see but the outsides of the people.
Year by year we live in France, and grow gray, and see no