ent predilection for the models of
antiquity. When a comparison is instituted between the ancients and the
moderns, we feel pretty certain of the result before the writer has
proceeded very far. Not that we ever find a systematic idolizing of all
that is classic merely. Far from it. Modern writers are not neglected.
In this particular a genuine service is done to critical literature. It
often seems as if literary lecturers and historians were attacked by an
aesthetic presbyopy. For them the present age never produces anything
worth even a passing remark. The masterpieces they notice must be old
and time-honored. Not so in the present studies on the passions. Ponsard
finds his place side by side with older names. After an appreciative
notice of the Lucretia of Livy, we find a comment on the Lucretia which
may have been played the week before at the Theatre Francais. Nor is
it a slight service done to contemporary letters, when a master-critic
turns his thoughts to works which, if they do not hold the first rank,
yet, by the talent of their authors and the nature of their subjects,
have attracted all eyes for a time. Such are the writings of Madame
George Sand. Of these, "Andre," "La Mare au Diable," and "La Petite
Fadette" are reviewed with praise in the work under consideration, while
the force of criticism is expended on "Indiana," "Lelia," and "Jacques."

* * * * *

Whatever claims the academician Victor de Laprade may have to poetic
talent, he certainly sinks below mediocrity when he attempts to
discuss the principles of the art he practises. Since it has been his
good-fortune to be numbered among the illustrious Forty he has several
times attempted literary criticism, but never so extensively as in
his last work, "Questions d'Art et de Morale."[I] This is a series of
discursive essays, a few upon art in general, the greater part, however,
restricted to letters; the whole written in a poetic prose not without a
certain charm, but wearisome for continuous reading.

[Footnote I: _Questions d'Art et de Morale._ Par Victor de Laprade, de
l'Academie Francaise. Paris: Didier et Cie. 8vo.]

The object of M. de Laprade is to defend what he calls "Spiritualism in
Art." He wages an unrelenting war against the modern school of Realism.
It is not the representation of visible Nature that the artist must
seek; his aim must be "the representation of the invisible." He grows
eloquent when he develo