Shakespeare, of Michel Angelo, or of Handel, the force of the objection will be somewhat taken off when we find that the eminent fault-finder proposes to exalt in their stead as preferable objects of worship the works of Racine, of Guido, or of Rossini; and in like manner we are constrained to think less of the objections taken to Hugo by the Jupiter of Weimar and the Aristophanes of Germany, when we find that Goethe offers us as a substitute for his Titanic sculptures the exquisite jewellery and faultless carvings of Prosper Mérimée; as though one should offer to supplant the statuary "in that small shaped of the dim St. Laurence," not by that of the Panathenaic series, but by the white marble shrine of Orcagna in which the whole legend of the life of Mary is so tenderly and wonderfully wrought in little; while Heine would give us, for the sun of that most active and passionate genius, its solar strength and heat, its lightning and its light, the intermittent twinkle of a planet now fiery as a shooting star, now watery as a waning moon—sweet indeed and bright for the space of its hour, and anon fallen as an exhalation in some barren and quaking bog; would leave to France, in lieu of the divine and human harmony and glory of Hugo's mighty line, the fantastic tenderness and ardent languor, the vacuous monotonous desire and discontent, the fitful and febrile beauty of Alfred de Musset.

But whether or not there be reason in the objection that even such great works as "Marion de Lorme" and "Ruy Blas" are comparatively discoloured by this moral earnestness and strenuous preference of good to evil, or that besides this alleged distortion and diversion of art