uestion
arise, than an answer presented itself in the form of an offer from one
whose coadjutor he had become on a previous and similar occasion. M. le
docteur Veron, now the proprietor of the _Constitutionnel_, and as
sagacious as ever in catering for the public taste, proposed to him to
furnish every Monday an article on some literary topic. The notion of
writing for the masses, of adapting his style to the requirements of a
newspaper, gave him a momentary shock. Hitherto he had addressed only
the most select audiences. But, after all, he was conscious of an almost
boundless versatility, and no plan could better satisfy the desire which
he had long felt of becoming "a critic in the full sense of the word,
with the advantages of ripeness and perhaps of boldness." Such a change
would be suited also to the new aspect of society. In literature it was
no longer the time for training, tending, and watering, but the season
of gathering the fruit, selecting the good and rejecting the unsound.
Romanticism as a school had done its work and was now extinct. Every one
went his separate way. Questions of form were no longer mooted; the
public tolerated everything. Whoever had an idea on any subject wrote
about it, and whoever chose to write was a _litterateur_. "With such a
noise in the streets it was necessary to raise one's voice in order to
be heard. Accordingly," says M. Sainte-Beuve, "I set to work for the
first time on that kind of criticism, frank and outspoken, which belongs
to the open country and the broad day."

With the old manner he laid aside the old title. The term _Portraits_,
which in its literary signification recalled the times of the
Rochefoucaulds and the Sevignes, was exchanged for the more modern one
of Conversations,--_Causeries de Lundis_. Begun in the _Constitutionnel_
on the 1st of October, 1849, they were continued three years later in
the _Moniteur_, and in 1861 again resumed, under the title of _Nouveaux
Lundis_, in the first-named journal, where they are still in progress.
More than once the author has intimated his intention to bring them to a
close. But neither his own powers nor the appetite of his readers having
suffered any abatement, one series has followed upon another, until, in
their reprinted form, they now fill nineteen volumes, while more are
eagerly expected.

The transformation of style which was visible at the very outset is one
of the miracles of literary art. Simplicity, swiftness,