eeling; but no, the controversy extends to
every thing, and, worse than all, is carried on with more bitterness
of spirit, than depth of information. The reviewer "par excellence" of
our own country makes a yearly incursion into French literature, as an
Indian would do into his hunting-ground. Resolved to carry death and
carnage on every side, he arms himself for the chase, and whets his
appetite for slaughter by the last "_bonne bouche_" of the day. We
then have some half introductory pages of eloquent exordium on the
evil tendency of French literature, and the contamination of those
unsettled opinions in politics, religion, and morals, so copiously
spread through the pages of every French writer. The revolution of
1797 is adduced for the hundredth time as the origin of these evils;
and all the crime and bloodshed of that frightful period is denounced
as but the first step of the iniquity which has reached its pinnacle,
in the novels of Paul de Kock. To believe the reviewer, French
literature consists in the productions of this writer, the works of
George Sand, Balzac, Frederic Soulie, and a few others of equal note
and mark. According to him, intrigue, seduction, and adultery, are the
staple of French romance: the whole interest of every novel turning on
the undiscovered turpitude of domestic life; and the great rivalry
between writers, being, to try which can invent a new future of
depravity and a new fashion of sin. Were this true, it were indeed a
sad picture of national degradation; was it the fact that such books,
and such there are in abundance, composed the light literature of the
day--were to be found in every drawing-room--to be seen in every
hand--to be read with interest and discussed with eagerness--to have
that wide-spread circulation which must ever carry with it a strong
influence upon the habits of those who read. Were all this so, I say
it would be, indeed, a deplorable evidence of the low standard of
civilisation among the French. What is the fact, however? Simply that
these books have but a limited circulation, and that, only among an
inferior class of readers. The _modiste_ and the _grisette_ are,
doubtless, well read in the mysteries of Paul de Kock and Madame du
Deffant; but in the cultivated classes of the capital, such books have
no more currency than the scandalous memoirs of our own country have
in the drawing-rooms of Grosvenor-square or St. James's. Balzac has,
it is true, a wide-spread repu