e handles his wires so cleverly, and is really so
immensely superior to the fictitious individuals whom he places before us,
that it is no great wonder if we prefer Alexander Dumas or Jules Janin to
their heroes. The Germans, relying on their own powers of belief, have
taxed their readers' credulity to a pitch which sober Protestants find it
very difficult to attain. Old Tieck or Hoffman introduces you to ghouls
and ghosts, and they look on them, themselves, with such awestruck eyes,
and treat them in every way with such demonstrations of perfect credence
in their being really ghouls and ghosts, that it is not to be denied that
strange feelings creep over one in reading their stories at the witching
hour, when the fire is nearly out, and the candle-wicks are an inch and a
half long. The Frenchman seldom introduces a ghost--never a ghoul; but he
makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would
probably make the ghoul feel ashamed to associate with them. The utmost
extent of human profligacy is depicted, but still the profligacy is human;
it is only an amplification--very clever and very horrid--of a real
character; but never borrows any additional horrors from the other world.
A French author knows very well that the wickedness of this world is quite
enough to set one's hair on end--for we suspect that the _Life in Paris_
would supply any amount of iniquity--and professors of the shocking, like
Frederick Soulie or Eugene Sue, can afford very well to dispense with
vampires and gentlemen who have sold their shadows to the devil. The
German, in fact, takes a short cut to the horrible and sublime, by
bringing a live demon into his story, and clothing him with human
attributes; the Frenchman takes the more difficult way, and succeeds in it,
by introducing a real man, and endowing him with the sentiments of a fiend.
The fault of the one is exaggeration; of the other, miscreation: redeemed
in the first by extraordinary cleverness; in the other, by wonderful
belief. What a contrast between La Motte Fouque and Balzac! how national
and characteristic both! No one can read a chapter of the _Magic Ring_
without seeing that the Baron believes in all the wonders of his tale; a
page of the other suffices to show that there are few things on the face
of the earth in which he believes at all. Dim, mystic, childish, with
open mouth and staring eyes, the German sees the whole phantasmagoria of
the nether world pass befor