of goodness, a
wise aspiration, that shall give us strength to assimilate this
unwholesome food to better substance, or to cast off its
contaminations."

In view of the translation and republication of these works, Margaret
remarks that it would be desirable for our people to know something of
the position which the writers occupy in their own country. She says,
moreover, what we would fain hope may be true to-day, that "our
imitation of Europe does not yet go so far that the American milliner
can be depended on to copy anything from the Parisian grisette, except
her cap."

Margaret speaks at some length of Balzac's novel "Le Pere Goriot," which
she had just read. "The author," she says, "reminds one of the Spanish
romancers in the fearlessness with which he takes mud into his hands,
and dips his foot in slime. We cannot endure this when done, as by most
Frenchmen, with an air of recklessness and gayety; but Balzac does it
with the stern manliness of a Spaniard."

The conception of this novel appears to her "so sublime," that she
compares its perusal to a walk through the catacombs, which the reader
would not willingly have missed; "though the light of day seems stained
afterwards with the mould of horror and dismay."

She infers from much of its tenor that Balzac was "familiar with that
which makes the agony of poverty--its vulgarity. Dirt, confusion, shabby
expedients, living to live,--these are what make poverty terrible and
odious; and in these Balzac would seem to have been steeped to the very
lips." The skill with which he illustrates both the connection and the
contrast between the depth of poverty and the height of luxury
co-existing in Parisian life, is much dwelt upon by Margaret, as well as
the praise-worthy fact that he depicts with equal faithfulness the vices
developed by these opposite conditions. His insight and mastery appear
to her "admirable throughout," the characters "excellently drawn,"
especially that of the Pere Goriot, the father of two heartless women,
for whom he has sacrificed everything, and who in turn sacrifice him
without mercy to their own pleasures and ambitions. Admirable, too, she
finds him "in his description of look, tone, gesture. He has a keen
sense of whatever is peculiar to the individual." With this acute
appreciation of the great novelist's merits, Margaret unites an equally
comprehensive perception of his fatal defects of character. His
scepticism regarding virtue she ca