t, the outlook, the ideals of his author; he examined his
biography, the society in which he lived, the influences of his age;
and with the apparatus thus patiently formed he proceeded to act as the
interpreter between the author and the public. His _Causeries du
Lundi_--short critical papers originally contributed to a periodical
magazine and subsequently published in a long series of
volumes--together with his _Port Royal_--an elaborate account of the
movements in letters and philosophy during the earlier years of Louis
XIV's reign--contain a mass of material of unequalled value concerning
the whole of French literature. His analytical and sympathetic mind is
reflected in the quiet wit and easy charm of his writing. Undoubtedly
the lover of French literature will find in Sainte-Beuve's _Lundis_ at
once the most useful and the most agreeable review of the subject in all
its branches; and the more his knowledge increases, the more eagerly
will he return for further guidance and illumination to those delightful
books.

But the greatest prose-writer of the age devoted himself neither to
history nor to criticism--though his works are impregnated with the
spirit of both--but to Fiction. In his novels, FLAUBERT finally
accomplished what Balzac had spasmodically begun--the separation of the
art of fiction from the unreality, the exaggeration, and the rhetoric of
the Romantic School. Before he began to write, the movement towards a
greater restraint, a more deliberate art, had shown itself in a few
short novels by GEORGE SAND--the first of the long and admirable series
of her mature works--where, especially in such delicate masterpieces as
_La Mare au Diable, La Petite Fadette_, and _Francois le Champi_, her
earlier lyricism and incoherence were replaced by an idyllic sentiment
strengthened and purified by an exquisite sense of truth. Flaubert's
genius moved in a very different and a far wider orbit: but it was no
less guided by the dictates of deliberate art. In his realism, his love
of detail, and his penetrating observation of facts, Flaubert was the
true heir of Balzac; while in the scrupulosity of his style and the
patient, laborious, and sober treatment of his material he presented a
complete contrast to his great predecessor. These latter qualities make
Flaubert the pre-eminent representative of his age. The critical sense
possessed him more absolutely and with more striking results than all
the rest of his contemporari