in its action one-sided; and even in such its presence must be
felt. In whatever reaches general human interests, whether as
practical act or imaginative creation, good sense must be, for their
prosperity, a primary ingredient. "The Tempest" and "Don Quixote"
shoot up into shining, imperishable beauty because their roots draw
their first nourishment from this hearty, inexhaustible substratum.
And let us say, that in M. Sainte-Beuve himself good sense is the
foundation of his eminent critical ability. He has been led, we
conceive, to attribute more of it to Napoleon than is his due by the
blinding splendor of Napoleon's military genius, through which, with
such swiftness and cumulative effect, he adapted means to ends on the
purely material plane.

When Murray applied to Lord Byron to write a book about the
life and manners of the upper class in Italy, Byron declined the
proposal from personal regards, and then added, that were he to write
such a book it would be misjudged in England; for, said he, "their
moral is not your moral." Such international misinterpretations and
exaggerations are instinctive and involuntary. A nation from its being
a nation, has a certain one-sidedness. To the Italian (even to one who
carries a stiletto) the English practice of boxing is a sheer
brutality; while to an Englishman (himself perhaps not a Joseph) the
_cavaliere servente_ is looked upon with reprobation tempered by
scorn. To this misjudgment from the foreign side and over-estimation
on the domestic, books, too, are liable; but to books as being more
abstract than usages, more ideal than manners, an absolute moral
standard can with less difficulty be applied. Applying it to Gil Blas,
is not M. Sainte-Beuve subject to arraignment when he speaks of this
and the other writings of Le Sage as being "the mirror of the world?"
Moliere, too, is a satirist, and from his breadth a great one; and
surely the world he holds a mirror before is a much purer world than
that of Le Sage; and what of the Shakespearean world? The world of Le
Sage is a nether world. "Of Gil Blas it has been well said that the
book is moral like experience." The experience one may get in brothels
and "hells," in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of
virtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for
these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot
read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the
experience