It might be the subject of a very plausible doubt whether French novels of a high order ought to be translated into English, since those who are really capable of understanding and enjoying them will be certain to understand French, and since, moreover, the finest qualities of the writing must disappear in the process of translation. Then, with regard to French novels of a much lower class, they are not worth the trouble of turning into English; are more likely in themselves to do harm than good; and their reproduction in our language cannot tend to encourage “native talent.” We have before us, from Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, The Cat and Battledore, and other Tales, by Honoré de Balzac, translated into English by Philip Kent, B.A. (3 vols.) Perhaps it was not a bad idea to give the merely English reader some chance of appreciating the extraordinary qualities of the author of “Le Père Goriot,” “Le Peau de Chagrin,” and “La Recherche de l’Absolu” (neither of which is, the general reader may be told, in this collection): but Balzac is not a writer with a soul in him, and the experiment need not be carried any further. Those who know nothing of Balzac, and who read novels simply for excitement, will be glad of these three volumes, and the glimpse they give of an unique writer; but to studious readers Balzac’s novels have an interest which is mainly psychological. The preface (here translated) to the “Comédie Humaine” is a strange presumptuous medley, which raises, like all the author’s most characteristic works, the question of perfect sanity—a question which Mr. Leslie Stephen once opened very acutely, and dismissed too curtly. To have read through a story of Balzac’s is to have passed through one of those wonderfully vivid dreams which leave you puzzled and lost at the moment of awaking. It seems to be generally admitted that his writings do not tend to make his readers “immoral” in the usual sense of the adjective, but there is something ineffably droll in his patronage of “Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity,” and that defence of his own writings which the reader may amuse himself by studying in the preface. He is not only conservative, he is monarchical, and objects to representative Government, if it “hands us over to the rule of the masses.” But what chiefly concerns those who buy novels, or send for them to the libraries, is the quality of the stories, and they may depend upon getting a full measure of excitement, with some instruction, out of “La Maison du Chat qui pelote” and the companion stories.