Balzac, it is plain, differs widely from our English authors, who generally slightly despise their own art, and think that, in providing amusement for our idle hours, they are rather derogating from their dignity. Instead of claiming our attention as a right, they try to entice us into interest by every possible artifice: they give us exciting glimpses of horrors to come; they are restlessly anxious to get their stories well under way. Balzac is far more confident in his position. He never doubts that we shall be willing to study his works with the seriousness due to a scientific treatise. And occasionally, when he is seized by a sudden and most deplorable fit of morality, he becomes as dull as a sermon. The gravity with which he sets before us all the benevolent schemes of the _médecin de campagne_, and describes the whole charitable machinery of the district, makes his performance as dismal as a gigantic religious tract. But when, in his happier and wickeder moods, he turns this amazing capacity of graphic description to its true account, the power of his method makes itself manifest. Every bit of elaborate geographical and financial information has its meaning, and tells with accumulated force on the final result. I may instance, for example, the descriptions of Paris, which form the indispensable background to the majority of his stories, and contribute in no inconsiderable share to their tragic effect. Balzac had to deal with the Paris of the Restoration, full of strange tortuous streets and picturesque corners, of swinging lanterns and defective drainage; the Paris which inevitably suggested barricades and street massacres, and was impregnated to the core with old historical associations. It had not yet lowered itself to the comprehension of New Yorkers, and still offered such scenery as Gustave Doré has caught in his wonderful illustrations of the 'Contes Drolatiques.' Its mysterious and not over-cleanly charm lives in the pages of Balzac, and harmonises with the strange society which he has created to people its streets. Thus, in one of his most audacious stories, where the horribly grotesque trembles on the verge of the ridiculous, he strikes the key-note by an elegant apostrophe to Paris. There are, he tells us, a few connoisseurs who enjoy the Parisian flavour like the bouquet of some delicate wine. To all Paris is a marvel; to them it is a living creature; every man, every fragment of a house, is 'part of the cellular tissue of this great courtesan, whose head, heart, and fantastic manners are thoroughly known to them.' They are lovers of Paris; to them it is a costly luxury to travel in Paris. They are incessantly arrested before the dramas, the disasters, the picturesque accidents, which assail one in the midst of this moving queen of cities. They start in the morning to go to its extremities, and find themselves still unable to leave its centre at dinner-time. It is a marvellous spectacle at all times; but, he exclaims, 'O Paris! qui n'a pas admiré tes sombres paysages, tes échappées de lumière, tes culs-de-sac profonds et silencieux; qui n'a pas entendu tes murmures entre minuit et deux heures du matin, ne connait encore rien de ta vraie poésie, ni de tes bizarres et larges contrastes.'