It is in one of the insulated passages of which we speak, that M. Michelet bitterly and very sensibly complains of the exclusive regard which modern romance writers have shown for the prisons and kennels, the monsters and thieves of civilized societies; of the disposition every where exhibited to descend rather than ascend for the choice of a subject, or the selection of a hero. We have felt the inconvenience of the same sickly taste in this country, and can understand the complainings over productions similar to that of _The Mysteries of Paris_, whilst we remember our own inferior and not less baneful _Dick Turpins_ and _Jack Sheppards_. Hurtful to the morals of a nation, these productions are equally unjust to the national character. We have drawn our estimate of the present literature of France from what we have seen and heard of her least healthy writers. As well might the novels of Mr Ainsworth, or the miserable burlesques of Mr Albert Smith, be accepted as the representatives of the Romance and Drama of the modern English school. It is not one of the least crimes of which these unwholesome writers are guilty, that they present to their own countrymen, and to the world at large, only foul exceptions, hideously exaggerated, which they would have us believe are faithful pictures of the mass; and in their eager endeavours to interest and excite the unthinking many, rouse the disgust and alarm of all well-constituted and thoughtful minds. The perilous consequences of popular literature in France are finely pointed out by M. Michelet. The timid take fright, when the people are represented as monsters in the books which are greedily devoured, and intensely applauded by the majority of their readers. "What!" cry the citizens, "are the people so constituted? Then, let us increase our police, arm ourselves, shut our doors, and bolt them." And all the alarm has been occasioned by a conceited, and it may be clever, coxcomb, who, descending from his drawing-room, has asked the first passenger in the street where-abouts the People lived. He met with a fool, who directed him to the galleys, the prisons, and the stews.
"One day," writes M. Michelet, "there came a man to the famous Themistocles, and proposed to him an art of memory. He answered bitterly, 'Give me rather the art of forgetfulness.' May God give me this art, to forget from this moment all your monsters, your fantastic creations, those shocking exceptions with which you perplex my subject! You go about, spyglass in hand; you hunt in the gutters, and find there some dirty filthy object, and bring it to us, exclaiming--'Triumph! we have found the people!'