. But
Balzac has nowhere excelled in finesse and success of analysis, the
double disillusion which introduces itself at once between Madame de
Bargeton and Lucien, and which makes any _redintegratio amoris_ of a
valid kind impossible, because each cannot but be aware that the other
has anticipated the rupture. It will not, perhaps, be a matter of such
general agreement whether he has or has not exceeded the fair license
of the novelist in attributing to Lucien those charms of body and
gifts of mind which make him, till his moral weakness and
worthlessness are exposed, irresistible, and enable him for a time to
repair his faults by a sort of fairy good-luck. The sonnets of _Les
Marguerites_, which were given to the author by poetical friends
--Gautier, it is said, supplied the "Tulip"--are undoubtedly good and
sufficient. But Lucien's first article, which is (according to a
practice the rashness of which cannot be too much deprecated) given
likewise, is certainly not very wonderful; and the Paris press must
have been rather at a low ebb if it made any sensation. As we are not
favored with any actual portrait of Lucien, detection is less possible
here, but the novelist has perhaps a very little abused the privilege
of making a hero, "Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave," or
rather "Like Paris handsome, and like Phoebus clever." There is no
doubt, however, that the interest of the book lies partly in the vivid
and severe picture of journalism given in it, and partly in the way in
which the character of Lucien is adjusted to show up that of the
abstract journalist still farther.

How far is the picture true? It must be said, in fairness to Balzac,
that a good many persons of some competence in France have pronounced
for its truth there; and if that be so, all one can say is, "So much
the worse for French journalists." It is also certain that a lesser,
but still not inconsiderable number of persons in England--generally
persons who, not perhaps with Balzac's genius, have like Balzac
published books, and are not satisfied with their reception by the
press--agree more or less as to England. For myself, I can only say
that I do not believe things have ever been quite so bad in England,
and that I am quite sure there never has been any need for them to be.
There are, no doubt, spiteful, unprincipled, incompetent practitioners
of journalism as of everything else; and it is of course obvious that
while advertisements, the