enthusiasm. He is an artist. As
an artist he awakens emotion. The quality of his art remains, as an
inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but the proceedings of his
thought compel our intellectual admiration.

In this volume the trifle called "The Military Manoeuvres at Montil,"
apart from its far-reaching irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit
of automobilism. Somehow or other, how you cannot tell, the flight over
the country in a motor-car, its sensations, its fatigue, its vast
topographical range, its incidents down to the bursting of a tyre, are
brought home to you with all the force of high imaginative perception. It
would be out of place to analyse here the means by which the true
impression is conveyed so that the absurd rushing about of General
Decuir, in a 30-horse-power car, in search of his cavalry brigade,
becomes to you a more real experience than any day-and-night run you may
ever have taken yourself. Suffice it to say that M. Anatole France had
thought the thing worth doing and that it becomes, in virtue of his art,
a distinct achievement. And there are other sketches in this book, more
or less slight, but all worthy of regard--the childhood's recollections
of Professor Bergeret and his sister Zoe; the dialogue of the two upright
judges and the conversation of their horses; the dream of M. Jean
Marteau, aimless, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams one
ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike. The vision of M. Anatole
France, the Prince of Prose, ranges over all the extent of his realm,
indulgent and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding treasures
of truth and beauty concealed from less gifted magicians. Contemplating
the exactness of his images and the justice of his judgment, the freedom
of his fancy and the fidelity of his purpose, one becomes aware of the
futility of literary watchwords and the vanity of all the schools of
fiction. Not that M. Anatole France is a wild and untrammelled genius.
He is not that. Issued legitimately from the past, he is mindful of his
high descent. He has a critical temperament joined to creative power. He
surveys his vast domain in a spirit of princely moderation that knows
nothing of excesses but much of restraint.

II.--"L'ILE DES PINGOUINS"

M. Anatole France, historian and adventurer, has given us many profitable
histories of saints and sinners, of Roman procurators and of officials of
the Third Republic, of _grand