characters, and the rarest and most precious faculty of animating
his heroes with intense, personal life, which, though it is only an
illusionary life, appears less deceitful than the real life.

In that field of novels Sienkiewicz differs greatly from Balzac, for
instance, who forced himself to paint the man in his perversity or in
his stupidity. According to his views life is the racing after riches.
The whole of Balzac's philosophy can be resumed in the deification of
the force. All his heroes are "strong men" who disdain humanity and
take advantage of it. Sienkiewicz's psychological novels are not
lacking in the ideal in his conception of life; they are active
powers, forming human souls. The reader finds there, in a
well-balanced proportion, good and bad ideas of life, and he
represents this life as a good thing, worthy of living.

He differs also from Paul Bourget, who as a German savant counts how
many microbes are in a drop of spoiled blood, who is pleased with any
ferment, who does not care for healthy souls, as a doctor does not
care for healthy people--and who is fond of corruption. Sienkiewicz's
analysis of life is not exclusively pathological, and we find in his
novels healthy as well as sick people as in the real life. He takes
colors from twilight and aurora to paint with, and by doing so he
strengthens our energy, he stimulates our ability for thinking about
those eternal problems, difficult to be decided, but which existed and
will exist as long as humanity will exist.

He prefers green fields, the perfume of flowers, health, virtue, to
Zola's liking for crime, sickness, cadaverous putridness, and manure.
He prefers _l'ame humaine_ to _la bete humaine_.

He is never vulgar even when his heroes do not wear any gloves, and he
has these common points with Shakespeare and Moliere, that he does not
paint only certain types of humanity, taken from one certain part of
the country, as it is with the majority of French writers who do not
go out of their dear Paris; in Sienkiewicz's novels one can find every
kind of people, beginning with humble peasants and modest noblemen
created by God, and ending with proud lords made by the kings.

In the novel "Without Dogma," there are many keen and sharp
observations, said masterly and briefly; there are many states of the
soul, if not always very deep, at least written with art. And his
merit in that respect is greater than of any other writers, if we
take in cons