I, therefore, had begun, as it were, to read Balzac backwards; instead of beginning with the plain, simple, earthly tragedy of the Pere Goriot, I first knelt in a beautiful but distant coigne of the great world of his genius—­Seraphita.  Certain nuances of soul are characteristic of certain latitudes, and what subtle instinct led him to Norway in quest of this fervent soul?  The instincts of genius are unfathomable; but he who has known the white northern women with their pure spiritual eyes, will aver that instinct led him aright.  I have known one, one whom I used to call Seraphita; Coppee knew her too, and that exquisite volume, “L’Exile,” so Seraphita-like in the keen blond passion of its verse, was written to her, and each poem was sent to her as it was written.  Where is she now, that flower of northern snow, once seen for a season in Paris?  Has she returned to her native northern solitudes, great gulfs of sea water, mountain rock, and pine?

Balzac’s genius is in his titles as heaven is in its stars:  “Melmoth Reconcilie,” “Jesus-Christ en Flandres,” “Le Revers d’un Grand Homme,” “La Cousine Bette.”  I read somewhere not very long ago, that Balzac was the greatest thinker that had appeared in France since Pascal.  Of Pascal’s claim to be a great thinker I confess I cannot judge.  No man is greater than the age he lives in, and, therefore, to talk to us, the legitimate children of the nineteenth century, of logical proofs of the existence of God strikes us in just the same light as the logical proof of the existence of Jupiter Ammon.  “Les Pensees” could appear to me only as infinitely childish; the form is no doubt superb, but tiresome and sterile to one of such modern and exotic taste as myself.  Still, I accept thankfully, in its sense of two hundred years, the compliment paid to Balzac; but I would add that personally he seems to me to have shown greater wings of mind than any artist that ever lived.  I am aware that this last statement will make many cry “fool” and hiss “Shakespeare!” But I am not putting forward these criticisms axiomatically, but only as the expressions of an individual taste, and interesting so far as they reveal to the reader the different developments and the progress of my mind.  It might prove a little tiresome, but it would no doubt “look well,” in the sense that going to church “looks well,” if I were to write in here ten pages of praise of our national bard.  I must, however, resist the temptation to “look well;” a confession is interesting in proportion to the amount of truth it contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the great plays.  The beauty of the verse!  Yes; he who loved Shelley so well as I could not fail to hear the melody of—­

    “Music to hear, why hearest thou music sadly
    Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.”