ch fiction: Daudet's "Risler Aine et Froment
Jeune" and Zola's "L'Argent," to name but two. Such a story sums
up the practical, material side of a reign or an epoch.

Nor should it be forgotten that this close student of human
nature, whose work appears so often severely mundane, and most
strong when its roots go down into the earth, sometimes seeming
to prefer the rankness and slime of human growths,--can on
occasion soar into the empyrean, into the mystic region of
dreams and ideals and all manner of subtle imaginings. Witness
such fiction as "The Magic Skin," "Seraphita," and "The Quest of
the Absolute." It is hard to believe that the author of such
creations is he of "Pere Goriot" or "Cousine Bette." But it is
Balzac's wisdom to see that such pictures are quite as truly
part of the Human Comedy: because they represent man giving play
to his soul--exercising his highest faculties. Nor does the
realistic novelist in such efforts have the air of one who has
left his true business in order to disport himself for once in
an alien element. On the contrary, he seems absolutely at home:
for the time, this is his only affair, his natural interest.

And so with illustrations practically inexhaustible, which the
long list prodigally offers. But the scope and variety have been
already suggested; the best rule with Balzac is, each one to his
taste, always remembering that in a writer so catholic, there is
a peculiar advantage in an extended study. Nor can from twenty
to twenty-five of his best books be read without a growing
conviction that here is a man of genius who has done a unique
thing.

It is usual to refer to Balzac as the first great realist of the
French, indeed, of modern fiction. Strictly, he is not the first
in France, as we have seen, since Beyle preceded him; nor in
modern fiction, for Jane Austen, so admirably an artist of
verity, came a generation before. But, as always when a
compelling literary force appears, Balzac without any question
dominates in the first half of the nineteenth century: more than
this, he sets the mold of the type which marks the second half.
In fact, the modern Novel means Balzac's recipe. English
fiction, along with that of Europe, shares this influence. We
shall see in dealing with Dickens how definitely the English
writer adopted the Balzac method as suited to the era and
sympathetic to Dickens' own nature.

As to the accuracy with which he gave a representation of
contemporary