a start, and took
his place on the first line of his class, in virtue of a few
masterpieces, scanty diamonds glittering in a cinder-heap.
Over-production, the crying vice of the literature of the day, and an
over-weening conceit, prevented Honore de Balzac from maintaining the
position he might and ought to have occupied. Such gems as the "Pere
Goriot" and "Eugenie Grandet" were buried and lost sight of under
mountains of rubbish. True that he now denied a number of books
published under supposititious names, and which had been universally
attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to
tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the
reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long
as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is
unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published
under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comedie Humaine,"
he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers,
proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature in every
variety of its moral physiognomy.

Less prolific, more unassuming, and far less universally known than the
three authors at whose character and writings we have thus briefly
glanced, Charles de Bernard need fear comparison with none of them. That
he is faultless we do not assert; that he in great measure eschews the
errors of his contemporaries, will be patent to all who peruse his
pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to
be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose
follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more
often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French
men and women. If those are to be delineated at all--and, with a view to
their amendment, surely they may--the task could hardly be executed with
a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality--it
would be unjust to say that he encourages it. He neither deals in
highly-coloured and meretricious scenes _a la_ Sue and Dumas; nor
supports, with the diabolical talent and ingenuity of a Sand, the most
subversive and anti-social doctrines. His works are not befouled with
filth and obscenity, such as that impure old reprobate Paul de Kock
delights and wallows in--or disgraced by the irreligion, and contempt of
things holy, found in the writings of scores of French a