Chapter IV: The Prospect. 1845 (3)

"To what, may it be asked, does this statement (of Reid's) amount? Merely to this, that the mind is so formed that certain impressions produced on our organs of sense by external objects, are followed by correspondent sensations, and that these sensations (which have no more resemblance to the qualities of matter, than the words of a language have to the things they denote) are followed by a perception of the existence and qualities of the bodies by which the impressions are made; that all the steps of this progress are equally incomprehensible; and that for any thing we can prove to the contrary, the connexion between the sensation and the perception, as well as that between the impression and the sensation, may be both arbitrary; that it is therefore by no means impossible that our sensations may be merely the occasions on which the correspondent perceptions are excited; and that at any rate the consideration of these sensations, which are attributes of mind, can throw no light on the manner in which we acquire our knowledge of the existence and qualities of body. From this view of the subject, it follows that it is the external objects themselves, and not any species or images of these objects (_or, we may add, any mere agglomeration of present and remembered sensations_) that the mind perceives; and that although, by the constitution of our nature, certain sensations are rendered the constant antecedents of our perceptions, yet it is just as difficult to explain how our perceptions are obtained by their means, as it would be upon the supposition that the mind were all at once inspired with them, without any concomitant sensations whatever."--(_Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, Vol. i. p. 92.)

It is seen here that both Reid and Stewart considered perception as a simple elementary fact or phenomenon of the human mind, and refused their assent to that analysis which would resolve it into sensation, accompanied with certain acts of memory and judgment. This last, however, has been the most popular amongst modern psychologists, who have many of them expressed an extreme impatience at the apparent sluggishness of these veterans in philosophy. We remember the time when we shared the same feeling of impatience, and thought it a most useless encumbrance to maintain this _perception_ amongst the simple elements of the human mind: we now think otherwise, and see reason to acquiesce in the sound judgment, which took up the only safe, though unostentatious position, which this embarrassing subject affords.

Dr Brown, it is well known, departed from his predecessors at this point, and may here be considered as one of the ablest representatives of the _sensational_ school. He expended much ingenuity in his analysis of perception, though in our opinion with very little result. No one saw more distinctly than he, that sensation alone could never give us the idea of an external object, or of space, or any thing external to the mind. No one has more satisfactorily shown that the notion of an extended resisting body, supposed by many to be resolved into the sensations of touch, cannot be derived from this source alone, but must have some other origin than the pure sensation, which is a mere mental phenomenon or state of the consciousness. But he imagined he had overcome the difficulty by introducing to us a new sensation, the _muscular_, that which we experience when we move our limbs. What he could not derive from the old sense of touch, he thought himself able to deduce from the reasonings of the mind on this muscular sensation; but the same difficulties which he himself so lucidly set forth when treating upon touch, will be found to pursue him here also. This muscular sensation, like every other, is in itself a mere state of the consciousness, begins and ends in a mere pleasure or pain. That it terminates abruptly, and contrary to our volition, in a feeling of resistance, (as when our arm is arrested in its motion,) is saying nothing more than that one sensation gives place to another without our willing it; a statement which might be made in a thousand other cases of sensation with equal propriety. But the author shall explain his own theory.

"The infant stretches his arm for the first time, by that volition without a known object, which is either a mere instinct or very near akin to one; this motion is accompanied with a certain feeling; he repeats the volition, which moves his arm, fifty or one thousand times, and the same progress of feeling takes place during the muscular action. In this repeated progress he feels the truth of that intuitive proposition, which in the whole course of the life that awaits him is to be the source of all his expectations, and the guide of all his actions--the simple proposition that _what has been_ as an antecedent, will be followed by _what has been_ as a consequent. At length he stretches out his arm _again_, and instead of the accustomed progression, there arises, in the resistance of some object opposed to him, a feeling of a very different kind, which, if he persevere in his voluntary effort, increases gradually to severe pain, before he has half completed the usual progress. There is a difference, therefore, which we may without any absurdity suppose to astonish the little reasoner; for the expectation of similar consequents from similar antecedents, is observable even in his earliest actions, and is probably the result of an original law of mind, as universal as that which renders certain sensations of sight and sound the immediate result of certain affections of our eye or ear. To any being who is thus impressed with belief of similarities of sequence, a different _consequent_ necessarily implies a difference of the _antecedent_. In the case at present supposed, however, the infant, who as yet knows nothing but himself, is conscious of no previous difference; and the feeling of _resistance_ seems to him, therefore, something _unknown_, which has its _cause in something that is not himself_."--(Vol. i. p. 514.)

There is a certain pre-arrangement here of the circumstances to suit the convenience of explanation. The little arm of the infant being very closely fastened to its own little body, it could hardly move it fifty or a thousand times in succession, or even once, without its muscular sensation terminating in the sense of resistance, or pressure, which is but another form of the sense of touch. In short, this would be always sooner or later the consequent upon this muscular sensation. And it appears very evident that "the little reasoner," more especially if he held the same doctrine as Brown on the nature of cause and effect, would look no further than the _first_ sensation for the cause of the _second_. There would be few instances in his limited experience more marked of invariable antecedence and consequence than this,--that the muscular sensation would sooner or later be followed by a tactual one. If we could suppose it possible, that the infant logician had to make the discovery of an external world by an effort of reasoning upon its sensations, we should say that this case was the least likely of any to lead him to the discovery--the least likely to impel him to look out of the circle of sensations for a cause of them.

Mere sensation of any kind, reason on it how we will, cannot account for the perception of external objects, which is another and separate fact. We are reduced to admit that it is by a simple primary law of our constitution that the organs of sense (which may with equal propriety be called the organs of perception) convey to us a knowledge of the external world. We touch, and a tangible extended body is made known to us; we open our eyes, and a visible body is before us.

Dr Brown, adopting and refining upon Berkeley's theory of vision, attributes originally nothing more than the mere sensation of colour to the eye, which sensation, by association with that of touch, becomes extended, so to speak, over an external surface, and defined into limited figures. We are not disposed to lay any greater stress than Dr Brown himself upon the _image_ said to be traced upon the retina; but we say that the eye, as well as the touch, immediately informs us of external surface and definite figure.

There is, it is true, a _sensation_ of colour apart from the _perception_. This may be separated, in our reflection, from all external surface. It is a _pleasure_ which colour gives, and which enters largely into the complex sentiments of beauty. But our notion of colour itself we cannot dissociate from external surface: we cannot think of colour but as something outward. And if it comes to us originally under the condition of external surface, it must also present itself originally under certain forms and figures; for only where the whole field of vision is occupied by one unvaried colour, as when the eye is fixed upon a cloudless sky, could there be the perception of surface without some figure, more or less defined on it.

And why is it, that on a subject of this nature the manifest facts witnessed in the whole animal creation are to be overlooked? If other animals evidently, on the first opening of their eyes, see form, and movement, and the whole world before them; does not this sufficiently intimate the instantaneous knowledge which it is the nature of vision to bestow? The human infant arrives, indeed, more slowly at the perfect use of its senses. It arrives, also, more slowly at the perfect use of its limbs. But we never conclude because it does not rise and skip about the fields like a dropped lamb, that there is any essential difference between its muscular powers and those of other animals of creation. Why should we suppose that its vision is regulated by different laws merely because it obtains the perfect use of its eyesight somewhat later?

Let us now turn from the imperfect analysis which the _sensational_ school presents, to the speculations of the _idealist_. It will be seen that the hasty conclusions of the first gave a sort of basis for the strange results to which the second would conduct us.

Kant looked in vain for the idea of extension, or of space, where the philosophers had been seeking it, in the phenomena of sensation. He pronounced, therefore, that it was not derivable from experience, did not come to us from without, through any direct communication from the senses. Not finding this idea of space where the analytical psychologist had been searching for it, he drew it at once from the mind itself. He described it as a product of the _subject_ man, a _form of the sensibility_ with which he invests his own sensations.

We must first remark, that to this description of what perception really is, there lies the same objection that may be urged against the account of the sensationalist. A sensation clothed in space!--is this intelligible? is it by any means an account of the matter? To invest sensation with space, is it not as if we spoke of a _pleasure_ that was _square_, or of a _circular pain_?

So far, however, as this internal origin of the idea of space is concerned, the statement of Kant, though expressed in unusual terms, is not opposed to the general belief of mankind, or to our irresistible convictions. It may merely convey this meaning, that the mind has an immediate knowledge (drawn from the laws of its own cogitation) of space, or extension. But then, according to the universal and unalterable convictions of mankind, this idea of space, though it may be derived from the innate resources of the mind, is in fact the knowledge of an external reality--of an _objective_ truth. Kant decided otherwise. He pronounced this _form of the sensibility_ to be merely and only a mode of thought--that space had, in fact, no other existence, was solely a _subjective_ truth.

This one decision has been the cause of, or at least has served as the starting-point for a series of the wildest speculations that perhaps philosophy has to record. And this decision, how arbitrary!--how dogmatic!

It must be manifest, we think, to every intelligent person, that, granting we cannot demonstrate the _objective truth_ of the existence of space, it is equally impossible to prove its _subjective_ nature. We cannot conceive of space but as existing really around us. The metaphysician says we may be deceived. This universal and irresistible conviction--this fundamental law of human belief, may not be correspondent with absolute truth, may not be trustworthy. Granted that we _may_ be deceived, that there is footing here for his _scepticism_, he cannot proceed a step further, and show that we _are_ deceived. When, in his turn, he would assert, or dogmatise, he at all events is as open to our scepticism as we were to his. If a fundamental belief of this kind is not to be trusted, so neither can it be convicted of falsehood. We cannot launch ourselves out of our own nature; we _cannot test_ our own faculties of cognition. This could only be done by some superior intelligence who could survey apart the object and the percipient subject.

We _may be_ deceived in believing that we ourselves exist--that there is any permanent being we call ourselves--but there is no demonstrating that we _are_ so deceived. The two cases are strictly analogous. We have just the same proof of the existence of the external object as of the thinking and percipient subject. The very first sensation or perception we experience brings with it instantaneously the two correlates, object and subject; they are made known in the same act or feeling; they are made known the one by means of the other--for unless through the means of the antagonist idea of object we should not have that of subject, nor _vice versa_. In our judgment, therefore, there is as little philosophy in denying the external existence of matter as the internal existence of mind. The two ideas, as we have said, rise instantaneously, synchronously, and are in such manner correlates that it is only by the presence of the one that the other reveals itself.[6]

When Kant advanced from doubting of the _objective_ truth of our knowledge of space, to deciding against it--to asserting that it was purely _subjective_--he was exceeding the limits of the human faculties, and offering a mere dogmatism which can never be brought to any test whatever. He was asking us to judge of the trustworthiness of our faculties of cognition--by what?--by our faculties of cognition. He was elevating what is at best a strange suspicion, a mere _guess_, into a doctrine.

And the whole superstructure of the systems of idealism which his German followers have reared, rests upon this guess!

Kant left nothing of the material world but an indescribable _noumenon_, which did not even exist in space. Of course the categories of Aristotle, classifying as they did those relations which constitute our knowledge of this world, were converted by him into mere forms of the _understanding_, moulding the given products of the _sensibility_. Certain other regulative modes of thought predominating, in their turn, over the products of the _understanding_, he called ideas of the _pure reason_.

His successor, Fichte, it will be seen, advanced but little further when he pronounced for a system of _idealism_. The subjective nature of our knowledge had been laid down; there was nothing left of the real world but this _noumenon_ which had been ejected from the realm of space; he acted, therefore, a consistent and charitable part, in taking this forlorn and banished entity into the region, at least, of thought. All the external world is now but a projection from the individual mind--the _non-ego_ is but another development of the _ego_--the _object_ is nothing but a sort of limitation or contrast which the subject throws out, to make a life for itself; the web it spins in the blank infinitude. Of the whole material world we have for ever got rid.

Here it might be supposed that speculation in this direction had reached its extreme point; and as idealism is a system in which the mind cannot long rest, contradicting, as it does, its ineradicable convictions, that here would commence a philosophical revolution, and a return to a more sober and accurate method of investigation. But the German mind has put forth at this point an astonishing fertility. It has played with this idealism, refined upon it, varied it, produced new phases of it; reviving the strangest paradoxes of the Alexandrian school; and teaching--in this, the nineteenth century--with the gravest confidence in the world--with all the assurance of an ancient Scald chanting forth his mythological fables, a whole system of idealistic cosmogony!

Schelling, in his idealism, in some measure reinstated the _object_; not by reviving the vulgar notion of its reality, but declaring it to be in its essence identical with the _subject_, and pronouncing both to have an equally real or equally ideal existence. He thus got rid of the embarrassment which encounters us in the ordinary systems of idealism, of the subjective _Ego_ producing the objective _Ego_. _Thought_ and _thing_ are identical. But this identity is to be recognised only in the mind of God, in the absolute--which develops what in itself is unity in the form of a duality. As if (to use a rude illustration) the same image should be shot from the interior of a magic lantern through two diverging tubes, making that twofold which was itself identical.

As it is hard for common apprehension to conceive this _absolute_, and seize upon this identity of thought and thing, Schelling invented a faculty of mind expressly for the comprehension of such profound doctrines of philosophy. He called it _intellectual intuition_. Those who possess it not--and it is by no means general--must be content to live without philosophy. Nor can those on whom nature has failed to bestow this intellectual intuition, acquire it by any study or industry of their own. _Philosophus nascitur, non fit_.

Viewed from one aspect, Schelling's philosophy is not without a certain charm. "Spirit is invisible nature, nature is visible spirit." In this view of things, if mind loses its pre-eminence, nature, or the visible world, is exalted and spiritualised. It is a system likely to fascinate the poet and the artist, and we believe it has had a recognised influence on the cultivation of the fine arts in Germany. It awakens our enthusiasm for nature. More than ever is mind, is deity, seen in the visible world. Nature is, in fact, deified, whatever other sacrifices are made.

But if there was something for enthusiasm to lay hold of in the system of Schelling, there was much wanting, it seems, to satisfy the rigid demands of philosophy. _His_ cosmogony, his manner of tracing, _a priori_, the development of all things from the absolute, was considered, by those who understand such profundities, to be deficient in accuracy. Hegel next trod

"with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss."

And we are told gravely, by grave expositors, how, beginning with _nothing_, he showed, with logical precision, how every thing had regularly proceeded from it!

In the system of Hegel, object and subject are both lost sight of: nothing exists but the relation between them. As the thing and the thought of it are identical, and as the essence of a thought is the relation between two terms, it follows very logically that this relation is all, and that nothing really exists but relations. We should have supposed this to be a fair _reductio ad absurdum_, proving (if the matter could need of proof) that the _thing_ and the _thought_ were not identical. But the march of ideal philosophy was not to be so easily arrested.

We have now reached what is distinguished as _absolute idealism_.

"They (the three idealisms) may be thus illustrated," (writes Mr Lewes in his _History of Philosophy_.) "I see a tree. Fichte tells me that it is I alone who exist; the tree is a modification of my mind. This is _subjective_ idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and my _ego_ are existences equally real, or ideal, but they are nothing less than manifestations of the absolute. This is _objective_ idealism. But Hegel tells me, that all these explanations are false. The only thing really existing is the idea--the relation. The ego and the tree are but two terms of the relation, and owe their reality to it. This is _absolute_ idealism."[7]

If Martinus Scriblerus were alive, he also might be tempted to give an illustration of these three forms of idealism.

The crowd of spectators at a fair, he might say, if they see a man dancing upon the tight-rope, strained between two posts--have no doubt in the world that the rope, and the man on it, are equally supported by the same two posts, which, moreover, they presume to stand up there in veritable substantiality before them. Were our three sages at the fair, they would reason otherwise. Fichte would say--these people think there are two posts! There is but one. That left-hand post is but the shadow of the other. It is the right-hand _subjective_ post which has projected it forth.

Schelling, gravely looking on, observes they are _both shadows_: nay, they are identical. If you were to stand in the centre of the rope, in the _point of indifference_ between them, and to turn round till the intellectual intuition were sufficiently excited, you would find the right-hand and the left-hand post blended together--undistinguishable--you would perceive their absolute identity.

Shadows! identical! Very true, says Hegel, slowly stepping forward, but what a mistake have both philosophers and the vulgar been making all this time! They have presumed that these posts support the rope! It is the rope which upholds the posts; which are indeed but its opposite ends. You may see that, separately, each post is good for nothing; it is the relation between them that is every thing; the rope is all. This alone can be said to exist. Every thing about us is plainly at one end or the other end of this, or some other rope. There runs, he would add, a vulgar tradition that man made the rope. I will demonstrate that the rope made the man and every thing else in the whole fair.

* * * * *

But it is not our object at present to enter further into the labyrinth of German metaphysics; at a future time, if our readers should endure the subject, we will endeavour to act as guide and interpreter through some of its more curious passages; we are here concerned only with the points of view taken of the material world. Have we not said enough to support our thesis? to prove what strange results may be arrived at if philosopher, following after philosopher, bases his speculations on what is current in the school-room, instead of recurring to honest and simple-minded observations of nature--and to show that on this subject of _perception_ our veterans Reid and Stewart have taken up the only safe position our present knowledge admits of?

FOOTNOTES:

[6] "Relatives are known only together: the science of contraries is one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only in correlation and contrast, and in the same common act: which knowledge is at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, and may be indifferently defined an antithetic synthesis and a synthetic antithesis of the terms. Every conception of _self_ necessarily implies a conception of _not self_; every perception of what is different from me, implies a recognition of the percipient subject in contradistinction from the object perceived. In one object of knowledge, indeed, the object is the prominent element, in another the subject; but there is none in which either is known out of relation to the other. The immediate knowledge which Reid allows of things different from the mind, and the immediate knowledge of mind itself, cannot, therefore, be split into two distinct acts. In perception, as in other faculties, the same indivisible consciousness is conversant about both terms of the relation of knowledge."--_Edinburgh Review_, No. 103, p. 165.--A very able and elaborate paper, attributed to Sir William Hamilton.

[7] _Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy._ Vol. iv., p. 209. In every way a remarkable work. Written with great vivacity and clearness, comprising a world of matter in the briefest possible space,--and, O reader, and O author, forgive the anticlimax!--at the least possible cost. In fact it forms part of the Series known as "_Knight's Weekly Volume_." To find a strictly original work of so much ability given to the world in this form, proves that the publisher and the man of letters are, in this mercantile age, second to none in the activity and enterprise with which they render _their_ service to the public.

CHARLES DE BERNARD.

The position of French novels and novelists in the appreciation of the English public, has undergone, within the last few years, a notable change. We need revert to no distant period to recall the day when the word "Paris" on the title-page of a book of fiction, was, to the work so inscribed, virtual sentence of exclusion from respectable library and decent drawing-room this side the Channel. It was the foul-bill of health, the signal of a moral quarantine, interminable and hopeless of pratique. French novels came to England and were read; but the arrivals were comparatively rare, the readers scarce more numerous; whilst by the masses they were condemned as contraband and dangerous merchandise, and eschewed as religiously as Lyons silks by the humane, when Spitalfields are starving. The wilful and wicked minority who took pleasure in their pungent pages, did so clandestinely, and with precaution. In carefully-locked desk, or on topmost shelf of bookcase, lurking behind an honourable front-rank of history and essay, the disreputable literature was bestowed. Nor was its reception more openly hospitable when arrayed in English garb. Translators there were, who strove to render into the manly, wholesome Anglo-Saxon tongue, the produce--witty, frivolous, prurient, and amusing--of Gallic imagination. But either the translations shared the interdict incurred by the objectionable originals, or the plan adopted to obtain their partial acceptance, destroyed pith and point. Letters from plague-ridden shores are fitted for the perusal of the uninfected by fumigation and other mysterious processes. They reach us reeking with aromatics and defaced by perforations, intended doubtless to favour the escape of the demon of pestilence bodily imprisoned within their folds. But their written contents are uninjured by the salutary operation; the words of affection, the combinations of commerce, the politician's plans, are still to be read upon their stained and punctured surface. Not so with the French novels that underwent fumigation and curtailment at the hands of decorous translators. The knife that extirpated the gangrene, unavoidably trenched upon the healthy flesh: in rooting up the abundant tares, the scanty grain was shaken out, and chaff and straw alone remained.

We speak of times past, although still recent; glance we at the present, and, Heaven help us! what a change is here! Tempora mutantur et _libri_--or it were perhaps more proper to say, _et lectores_. With headlong velocity, one extreme has been abandoned for its opposite. The denounced of yesterday is the favoured of to-day; the scouted is now the cherished; the rejected stone has a lofty place in the literary edifice. French novels, translated, if not original, are as commonly seen in the "best regulated families" as comfits at the confectioner's or poison on potter-carriers' shelves. The ban is removed, the anathema revoked; either the Upas has been discovered to be less baneful than was imagined, or the disease lurking at the core has been forgotten in the bright colours and pleasant flavour of the appetible fruit. We take up the newspaper. What heads the column? Half a score advertisements of the "Mysteries of Paris"--a new edition of the "Wandering Jew," "illustrated by the first artists"--"Memoirs of a Physician," in twopenny numbers and shilling volumes; French novels, in short, at all prices and in every form. We step into the club; the produce of Paris and Brussels presses strews the table, and an elderly gentleman, with a solemn face and quakerish coat, searches amongst them for the nine-and-twentieth volume of "Monte Christo," or of some other French romance of longitude equally sea-serpentine. We call upon our friend Tom Sterling, a worthy fellow, much respected on 'Change. Miss Sterling is deep in a natty duodecimo, whose Flemish aspect speaks volumes in favour of international copyright. Our natural clearsightedness enables us to read, even from the door, "Societe Belge de Librairie" upon its buff paper cover. Is the book hastily smuggled under sofa-cushions, or stealthily dropped into the neglected work-basket? By no means. The fair student deliberately marks her place, and engages us in a controversy as to the merits, faults, and beauties of a score of French romancists, in whose lucubrations she assuredly is far better read than ourselves. In short, English aversion for French modern literature has disappeared, and been replaced by partiality--not to say affection. Dumas is a staple commodity; Sue is voted delightful; English authors of talent and standing translate or "edite"--to use the genteel word now adopted--the works of French ones; even George Sand finds lady-translators, and, we fear, lady readers; French books are reprinted in London, and the Palais Royal is transported to the arcade of Burlington. We shall not take upon ourselves to blame or applaud this change in public taste, to decide how far such large importation and extensive patronage of foreign wares are advantageous or deplorable--to tax with laxity those who write, or with levity those who read, the lively and palatable productions of the present French school. Without encouraging, we will venture to direct, the prevailing appetite, by pointing the attention of Maga's readers--whose name is Legion--to the writings of an author not the best known, but certainly one of the most accomplished, of his class. In France, his reputation stands very high; and if in England it is not yet equally well-established, it must be attributed to his having written little, and to the absence of that charlatanry and egotism which has brought other cultivators of the Belles Lettres into such universal notice here and on the Continent. M. Dumas, for instance, even had his writings, and those of the numerous staff of literary aid-de-camps to whose bairns he stands godfather, been less diverting, would still have commanded readers in every country where French is understood, and which the post from Paris reaches. The man is his own advertisement; his eccentricities are worth, at a moderate estimate, a dozen advertising vans, a daily paragraph in a score of newspapers, and a cartload of posters. He is a practical puff, an incarnate stimulant to popular curiosity. Let the public appetite for his weekly volumes flag ever so little, and forthwith he puts in practice, for the renewal of his vogue, devices so ingenious, that proceeding from any but the privileged monarch of romance-writers, they would be looked upon as the tricks of a lunatic. One day in a court of assizes, the next at that of a king, on the morrow before a civil tribunal, the illustrious inheritor of the marquisate of La Pailleterie parades his graces, jogs the world's memory as to the fact of his existence, and bids it read his books and bow before his footstool. To-day he is on the Corso, to-morrow on the sunny banks of Rhine; the next day he peeps into Etna's crater, or gasps beneath the brazen sky of shadeless Syria. Now we hear of him in Spanish palaces, figuring at royal weddings, and adding one more to the countless ribbon-ends that already grace his button-hole; and scarcely has our admiration subsided, when a Mediterranean breeze murmurs sweet tidings of his presence on African shores, taking his coffee with Beys, commanding war-steamers, riving the captive's fetters, and rivetting his claims on his country's gratitude. Wherever he goes, he stands, a modern Gulliver, pre-eminent in moral giantship, amidst surrounding pigmies, who

"Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find themselves
dishonourable graves."

And the seeming ubiquity of the famous quadroon[8] is not more marvellous than the multiplicity of characters he assumes. "Dumas at Home and Abroad" offers an inexhaustible theme and a boundless field for pen and pencil caricaturists. Alternately dramatist, novelist, tourist, ambassador, the companion of princes, the manager of theatres, an authority in courts of justice, a challenger of deputies, and shining with equal lustre in these and fifty other capacities equally diverse, what wonder that the slightest work flowing from the pen of so remarkable a genius, though it be but a forgotten "trifle of twelve thousand lines," is received with intense gratitude, and caught at like manna by a famished multitude? Eugene Sue is another writer who has taken the world by storm, but in quite a different fashion. The ex-lieutenant of marine does not obtrude his personality upon public notice, and relies more upon the powerful calibre of his guns than upon their number. Two books, lengthy ones certainly, established his reputation. He had been many years a cultivator of literature, and had produced sundry romances of little more than average merit, when he suddenly burst upon the public, in the widely spread _feuilleton_ of the _Debats_, with a work which, however objectionable in some respects, is unquestionably of extraordinary power and interest. Like the Pickwick Papers, the "Mysteres de Paris" at once established their author in popular estimation, not only in the land in whose language they were written, but in all the reading countries of Europe. It was the opening of a new vein in the literary mine, and though the metal might have been purer, it had all the glitter that captivates the multitude. The "Juif Errant," inferior to its predecessor, was scarcely less successful. Its bitter attacks on the Jesuits, and the consequent anathemas fulminated against it, with more zeal than wisdom, by certain of the French clergy, doubtless contributed to its vogue. After Sue and Dumas, Balzac is (with the exception, perhaps, of Madame Dudevant,) the best known, and most read, out of France, of all the living French novelists. We hold him much over-rated, but his great fertility, and the real excellence of a few of his books, have made him a widely-spread reputation. His early efforts were less successful than those of Sue; and his first thirty volumes scarcely attained mediocrity. At last he made a start, and took his place on the first line of his class, in virtue of a few masterpieces, scanty diamonds glittering in a cinder-heap. Over-production, the crying vice of the literature of the day, and an over-weening conceit, prevented Honore de Balzac from maintaining the position he might and ought to have occupied. Such gems as the "Pere Goriot" and "Eugenie Grandet" were buried and lost sight of under mountains of rubbish. True that he now denied a number of books published under supposititious names, and which had been universally attributed to him; but enough remained, which he could not deny, to tarnish, if not to cancel his fame. To these he has since, with the reckless and inconsiderate greed that cares not for the public, so long as it finds a publisher, considerably added. His self-sufficiency is unparalleled; and in the preface to an edition of his works published under the comprehensive and presumptuous title of "La Comedie Humaine," he puts himself on a level with the first of poets and philosophers, proposing himself the modest aim of portraying human nature in every variety of its moral physiognomy.

Less prolific, more unassuming, and far less universally known than the three authors at whose character and writings we have thus briefly glanced, Charles de Bernard need fear comparison with none of them. That he is faultless we do not assert; that he in great measure eschews the errors of his contemporaries, will be patent to all who peruse his pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French men and women. If those are to be delineated at all--and, with a view to their amendment, surely they may--the task could hardly be executed with a chaster and less offensive pencil. De Bernard paints immorality--it would be unjust to say that he encourages it. He neither deals in highly-coloured and meretricious scenes _a la_ Sue and Dumas; nor supports, with the diabolical talent and ingenuity of a Sand, the most subversive and anti-social doctrines. His works are not befouled with filth and obscenity, such as that impure old reprobate Paul de Kock delights and wallows in--or disgraced by the irreligion, and contempt of things holy, found in the writings of scores of French authors whom we could name, were they worth the naming. It is undeniable that the ingenious plots of his very entertaining books turn, for the most part, on matters difficult to touch upon with propriety, and which English writers usually avoid; frequently, for instance, on illicit passion and conjugal infidelity. And therefore many Englishmen, with whatever interest and amusement they themselves might read his volumes, would hesitate to recommend them to their sisters and daughters. Some few of his tales, especially of the shorter ones, are in all respects unexceptionable. We instance "La Peau du Lion," translated as "The Cossack's Grave;" and "L'Anneau d'Argent," which has also appeared in English. Gerfaut, one of this author's earliest works, and unquestionably his masterpiece, has little that can justly offend, although its translation met, we believe, a cold reception. The plot turns on an attachment between a married woman and the hero of the story. But if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy, matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory peccadilloes--and he could hardly have attained his present popularity in France had he assumed the prude--he does not disdain or neglect to point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must not be treated like a sick horse, whose groom crams a ball down his throat, and holds his jaws together, and his head back, to prevent its rejection. The dose must be artfully disguised, wrapped in a sweetmeat, and the invalid will take it kindly, and sooner or later feel the benefit. We would fain discern, in some of M. de Bernard's books, under a perfumed envelope of palatable trifle, a tendency worthy of applause; a design to combat, by quiet and implied ridicule, the moral maladies of his country. It is not his wont, as with many of his competitors, to make the vicious interesting and the virtuous fools. His husbands are not invariably good-natured, helpless noodles, with whom, even in their direst calamities, the most right-thinking have difficulty to sympathise: the Lovelaces who pursue married women with their insidious and dangerous attentions, are not by him for ever exalted into heroes, redeeming their pleasant vices by a host of high and chivalrous qualities. On the contrary, the apparently easy-going husband often proves a smart fellow, and thorough Tartar--the brilliant lover an emancipated bagman, or contemptible _chevalier d'industrie_. Of this we have an example in "Le Gendre," in some respects one of the most objectionable of De Bernard's novels, certainly not well suited for a birth-day present to misses in their teens. A seemingly tame, insipid clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris _roue_; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand, and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of our most complaisant spectacles, to discover in his writings, his gentlemanly tone is undeniable, his pictures of French life, especially in Paris, are beyond praise. In the most natural and graphic style imaginable, he dashes off a portrait typifying a class, and in a page gives the value of a volume of the much-vaunted "Physiologies." And this he does, like all he does, in a sparkling, well-bred, impertinent style, peculiar to himself, and peculiarly attractive.

We have already remarked, that M. de Bernard has written little. The assertion was comparative; we meant that he has produced, since the commencement of his literary career--not yet very remote--an average of only three or four volumes per year. This rate, in days when French scribes carry on five romances at a time, in the daily feuilletons of five newspapers, and when certain English authors, emulous of Gallic fecundity, annually conceive and elaborate their dozen or two of octavos--says little for his industry, or much for his judicious forbearance. Latterly, however, we regret to observe in him a disposition to increase the length of his books, and abandon the pleasant one, two, and three volume tales with which he began. In this he is wrong; books of so very light a description as his will not bear great prolongation. Things agreeable enough in small quantities, pall and cloy if the ration be overmuch augmented. However fragrant and well-spiced, syllabub is not to be drunk by the bucketful; neither would it be satisfactory to dine off a _souffle au marasquin_, though compounded by the philanthropical Regenerator himself. In England, custom has decided that three volumes are the proper length for a novel, and they have become, as a maximum, a rule rarely departed from. We are content that it should be so, and, indeed, heartily rejoice at it, when we see works of fiction spun out by indefatigable French manufacturers into interminable series, through which, at twelve hours a-day, the most insatiable devourer of the romantic needs a month to toil. Following the fashion of the times, and encouraged by the example of his successfully diffuse brethren, M. de Bernard, weary of launching trim corvettes and dashing frigates, has taken to build line-of-battle ships. He had better have kept to the small craft, which he found to float so well. Two of his recent works, "Le Beaupere," and "Le Gentilhomme Campagnard," have lost in merit what they have gained in length. The subject of the former is most unpleasant: its catastrophe unnecessarily painful. And the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," just now concluded, although containing, as do all his books, much spirited dialogue, many well-drawn characters, and well-contrived incidents, is weakened by being spun out, and at times, by its tediousness of detail, reminds us of De Balzac. And here we will remark, that there is a certain general resemblance between the styles of De Bernard and De Balzac; so much so, that when the former first wrote, some persons conjectured his name to be a pseudonyme adopted by the latter, to the detriment of publishers, to whom, it was said, he had contracted to deliver all he should produce. And the malignant hinted, that the author of "Eugenie Grandet" was sufficiently unscrupulous and hungry of gain to render such a stratagem on his part any thing but improbable. Whether Charles de Bernard be an assumed name or not, it has long since been evident, that the books published under it proceed from a more guarded and uniformly sprightly pen, than that of M. de Balzac.

The plot of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," is based on the dissensions of two villages, or more properly speaking, of a hamlet and a very small town, situated within a mile of each other, and which had once constituted two separate parishes, but had been amalgamated at the revolution of '89, greatly to the detriment and indignation of the weaker party. It is in 1836 that M. de Bernard takes up the imaginary history of their jealousy and squabbles, as a canvass on which to embroider the flowers of his invention. The hamlet, Chateaugiron-le-Vieil, is inhabited, and virtually governed, by the Gentilhomme Campagnard, the Baron de Vaudrey--a retired colonel of cuirassiers, whose services under the empire do not prevent his stanch adherence, under the citizen monarchy of July, to the legitimate and exiled sovereigns of France. His nephew, the Marquis of Chateaugiron, less addicted to the fallen Bourbons, arrives, at the opening of the tale, at his family mansion in Chateaugiron-le-Bourg, with certain electioneering projects, highly displeasing to the baron, who resolves vigorously to oppose them, and accordingly gives the whole weight of his influence to a neighbouring iron-master, M. Grandperrin, also a candidate. The iron-master has married a second wife, a heartless vindictive woman, and former mistress of the marquis. She plays an important part in the clever plot, which, although complicated, is perfectly clear. To sketch at any length even the principal of the numerous characters in the amusing comedy, would lead us much too far; we can barely afford to glance at a few of them. On the foremost line--after the Gentilhomme Campagnard himself, a fine, generous-hearted veteran, an excellent compound of the soldier and the nobleman, possessed of great good sense and shrewdness, and altogether one of those personages of whom, whether real or imaginary, one reads with pleasure--stands Madame Bonvalot, or _de_ Bonvalot, as she best loves to be styled, the _parvenue_ widow of a Bordeaux wine merchant. Her beautiful and amiable daughter, an excellent model of a virtuous French lady, gracefully and delicately drawn, is married to the Marquis of Chateaugiron. The mother, an affected, frivolous, rouged, bejewelled dowager of fifty, who, through ambition to figure at the Tuileries, has extorted from her noble son-in-law a promise that he will adhere to the new order of things, is followed from Paris by one Pichot, ex-clerk to a notary, also a former lover of Madame Grandperrin, and self-styled Viscount de Langerac. This fortune-hunter has managed to worm himself into the intimacy of the marquis, and to kindle, in the too-susceptible breast of Madame Bouvalot, a tender flame, which he diligently fans. Then we have a young country-lawyer, Froidevaux, an honest, independent fellow, and desperate sportsman, who gives advice gratis, thinks more of partridges than parchments, prefers a day's shooting to a profitable lawsuit, and is consequently as poor as he is popular, and, to all appearance, has very little chance of obtaining the hand of Mademoiselle Victorine, the iron-master's only daughter and heiress, a plump little beauty, who views Froidevaux with special favour and affection, and with whom he is deeply in love. Amongst the personages of a lower class, the most prominent is Toussaint Gilles, landlord of the Cheval Patriote, and son of one of the revolutionary butchers of the Reign of Terror; a furious republican, who wears a _carmagnole_ and a red cap, inherits his father's hatred of the vile aristocrats, and prides himself on his principles, and on a truculent and immeasurable mustache. Amoudru, a pusillanimous mayor; Bobilier, a fiery old justice of the peace, and devoted vassal of the house of Chateaugiron; and Rabusson, once a sergeant in M. de Vaudrey's regiment, now his game-keeper, must not be forgotten. A festival got up by Bobilier to celebrate the marquis's arrival at the castle of his ancestors, stirs the bile of Toussaint Gilles, who sees in it a base adulation of the _ci-devants_. As president of the republican club of Chateaugiron-le-Bourg, he, on the following day, incites a few discontented spirits to a popular demonstration, to consist in burning down the triumphal arch erected by the servile justice of peace, and in hoisting a brand-new tricolored flag on the tree of liberty--a poplar planted, during the glorious days of July, close to the gate of the marquis's chateau, but which had long since withered into a dry and unsightly maypole. A number of bad characters mingle in the crowd, and the demonstration assumes a more turbulent and criminal aspect than its original promoters had contemplated. The outer gate of the chateau is forced, and stones are thrown, one of which grazes the cheek of the Viscount de Langerac, who receives the wound, so he affirms, whilst heroically interposing his person between Madame de Bonvalot and the shower of missiles. At last the marquis arms his servants, and repels the rioters, already frightened at their own deeds; the justice of peace menaces them with the assizes, Froidevaux exerts his influence, and the disturbance is nearly at an end, when the flames communicate from the triumphal arch to the tree of liberty. Toussaint Gilles, as captain of the firemen, hurries to extinguish the conflagration that menaces the flag-staff, on whose summit Picardet the blacksmith, another zealous member of the democratic club, is busy fastening the tricolored symbol of freedom. The following scene, one of the most detachable in the book, will give a notion of M. de Bernard's lively and pointed style.

"The by-standers, whether firemen or not, hurried after the captain to a shed adjoining the Town-hall. Some of them harnessed themselves to the engine, and dragged it at full speed to the scene of the fire; others seized the buckets, and hastened to fill them; soon a line was formed from the well to the burning tree. Quickly as this was done, the progress of the flames was still more rapid, and Picardet soon found his post untenable. On first perceiving the fire, the smith had climbed, like a frightened cat, to the very top of the poplar, at risk of breaking the tapering stem by the weight of his body; but the refuge was a very precarious one, for the fire followed him, and he required wings to rise higher than the place he had attained. Three expedients offered themselves to him; all equally unpleasant. To leap from the poplar--he would inevitably break his neck; to slide down the blazing trunk--he would reach the ground roasted; to wait till assistance reached him--would it arrive in time? If not immediate, the tree would be on fire from bottom to top.

"Under such circumstances, the most intrepid might well hesitate, and Picardet, although naturally brave, remained for a moment undecided; but when he saw the flag catch fire close to his feet, he understood that delay was mortal, and heroically made up his mind. Relaxing his hold, he glided with lightning velocity from top to bottom of the tree.

"At the very moment that the smith, blinded and suffocated by the smoke, his hair blazing like the tail of a comet, his hands bleeding, and his clothes torn, rolled upon the ground, roaring with pain, a stream of water, issuing from the engine, and directed by Toussaint Gilles, inundated him from head to foot, time enough to save a part of his singed locks.

"'Now that Picardet is put out,' cried the captain of the firemen, 'save the tree of liberty! Come, men! Steady, and with a will!'

"As he spoke, Toussaint Gilles levelled the flexible hose at the poplar, and his assistants pumped vigorously; but before a single drop of water had reached its destination, the firemen saw, with surprise and alarm, the engine rise under their hands, and fall heavily on one side, deluging their legs with the whole of its contents. All eyes fixed themselves in astonishment on M. de Vaudrey, who had fallen amongst them like a bomb, and whose herculean strength had just performed this feat. The country gentleman was perfectly calm, but his complexion was high, and his brow moist with perspiration, as if he had walked very fast. A few paces in his rear stood the faithful Rabusson, motionless and in a martial attitude; in one hand he grasped a knotted stick, more like a mace than a walking-cane; with the other he led Sultan, the baron's enormous watch-dog.

"The stupified silence that ensued was at last broken by Toussaint Gilles.

"'What means this?' he demanded, his voice trembling with rage.

"'It is easy to understand,' coolly replied M. de Vaudrey.

"'Why have you upset our pump?'

"'To prevent your pumping.'

"'And why do you prevent our pumping?'

"'Because those who lighted the fire shall not put it out. It pleased you to see yonder wooden columns burn, it pleases me to see the poplar blaze.'

"'Raise the pump,' said the captain to his men, with an imperious air. 'We will see who dares upset it again.'

"'And we will see who dares raise it, when I forbid!' retorted the baron, calmly folding his muscular arms across his vast chest.

"A murmur was heard; but nobody stirred.

"'Cowards!' cried Toussaint Gilles, with a furious glance at his friends; 'are you all afraid of one man?'

"'In the first place, there are two of them,' said the prudent Laverdun to his neighbour, 'and two who are worth ten; to say nothing of their monster of a dog, who demolishes a wolf with a single bite.'

"'M. Toussaint Gilles,' said the baron, smiling ironically, 'when an officer gives an order, and is not obeyed, do you know what he should do?'

"'I want none of your advice,' cried the captain of firemen, in a brutal tone.

"'He should execute his order himself,' said M. de Vaudrey with immovable calmness.