e effects of these upon society
and politics as well as upon the general tastes and moral being of a
generation. Methods of writing are now discussed rather than put in
practice. We are in a transition age more than politically. Creative
genius seems to be resting for more marked and permanent channels to be
formed; so that, though every year gives birth to numberless works in
every branch of art, original production is rarer than the activity, the
restlessness of the time might lead us to expect.

In no country has literary criticism more life than in France. It
engages the attention of the best minds. No writer, whatever be his
speciality, thinks it derogatory to give long and elaborate notices
in the daily press of new books or new editions of old books. Thus,
Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarete
Chasles, Prevost-Paradol in the "Journal des Debats," not to mention the
numerous writers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," the "Europeenne," and
the "Nationale," vie with each other in extracting from all that appears
what is most acceptable to the general reader.

M. Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a type of the avowedly professional
critic. Whatever he may accomplish as the historian of Port-Royal, it is
to his weekly articles, informal and disconnected as they are, that he
owes his high rank among French authors. These "Causeries du Lundi" have
now reached the fourteenth volume.[A] In the last we find the same easy
admiration, facility of approbation, and suppleness that enable him to
praise the "Fanny" of Feydeau, calling it a poem, and on the next page
to do justice to the last volume of Thiers's "Consulate and Empire,"
or to the recent publication of the Correspondence of Buffon. The most
important articles in the volume are those on Vauvenargues, on the Abbe
de Marolles, and on Bonstetten.

[Footnote A: _Causeries du Lundi_. Par C.A. Sainte-Beuve, de l'Academie
Francaise. Tome Quatorzieme. Paris: Garnier Freres. 12mo. pp. 480.]

Of quite a different school is M. Armand de Pontmartin, who, under the
titles of "Causeries du Samedi," "Causeries Litteraires," etc., has
now issued over a dozen volumes touching on all points of contemporary
letters, often very severe in their strictures. The last, "Les Semaines
Litteraires,"[B] contains notices of late works by Cousin, About,
Quinet, Laprade, and others, and concludes with an article on Scribe.
Pontmarlin represents the Catholic sentiment i