[560] The better part even of M. Ohnet is a sort of vulgarised Sandeau.
[561] La Tentation, like others of the very greatest novels, is independent of its time, save in mere unimportant "colour."
[562] How little this change was one back to classicism—as some would have it—we may see presently.
[563] The greatest of all—the direction and maintenance of the revolution under the inspiration of what is called Romance—must be again postponed for a little while.
[564] Of course the convulsions of '48 were ominous enough, but they seemed to be everywhere repressed or placated for a considerable time; and if there had been a single statesman of genius besides Herr von Bismarck (I anticipate but decline the suggestion of Cavour) in the Europe of the next two decades, they might not have broken out again for a much longer time than was actually the case.
[565] Nearly—but fortunately for literature—not quite. The jobbery and the tyranny which are inseparable from democracy in politics find room with difficulty in our "Republic."
[566] I am prepared for blame on account of some of the absences of mention. Perhaps the most provoking, to some readers, will be those affecting two industrious members of the aristocracy: Mme. la Comtesse Dash—more beautifully and properly though less exaltedly, Gabrelli Anna Cisterne de Courtiras, Vicomtesse de Saint-Mars—and M. le Comte Xavier de Montépin. They overlapped each other in pouring forth, from the 'forties to the 'nineties, torrents of mostly sensational fiction. But I had rather read them than write about them.
[567] In the same place another novelist, M. Amédée de Bast, of whom I again acknowledge ignorance, advertises no less than four novels of four volumes each, as being actually all at press, pour paraître à diverses époques. Dryden says somewhere "in epoches mistakes." Let us hope there were none here.