Nothing but a brave attempt to dissemble in laughter the most oppressing mental agonies. If so, it is all the more pitiable, because the mind which seeks relief in mirth for its intense tortures, is like he who in sleeping to get away from the thoughts of an unhappy life suffers from a terrible nightmere. But it is so difficult to discriminate! He was nor a hypocritical man, but a profound one; his feelings and thoughts were not masked, but hidden, and how his powerful mind worked, how his weak spirit fought, we cannot imagine, who are not endowed with the same mental capacities and inconsiderable character.

Yet great praise does he deserve, scant praise does he get. The cloyed mind of modern novel-readers, acustomed at length to the scurried productions of a void generation, cannot appreciate fully the psychological matter that is readable in his glittering paragraphs. The modern man has done away with all spiritual connections, he has broken away from the soul and left us nothing but a mere fleshly hulk; he has torn divinity from his heart, and, by doing this, shown us how weak and foolish a man can seem when he has to lean on nothing, as if he had attempted to lean on the unsubstantial air.