Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 29, August, 1873

That the agitation thus evoked should have produced many grotesque, many frightful results, cannot seem strange. Long before the lower strata had been reached the surface was in a state of ebullition. Polite society was delightfully thrilled with a feeling of its own depravity, and found in the novel sensation the zest that had been wanting to its jaded powers of enjoyment. Nor was it awakened from its illusions by the first eruption from below. In a transport of delirium it threw away, as if they had been idle gems, of use only when cast into the public treasury, the privileges and prerogatives that had formed the basis of the monarchy. Thenceforth the only effort was to secure a tabula rasa on which to rear that new and perfect state of which the model was at hand, if only the proper materials could be found and the foundations be laid. Of the men who acquired a temporary mastery, three only, by the massive force of practical genius, were able to free themselves from the fascination of the common ideal. But Mirabeau and Danton were overborne by the full tide, and Napoleon, when he arrested it in its languor, turned it into depths from which it emerged the other day to sweep away his column in the Place Vendôme.

In thus glancing at the vast proportions of the subject, we have wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within these limits it exhibits ample knowledge and skill, combined with a searching but tolerant judgment. Without labored discussion or passionate apology, it clears away entangling prejudices and current misconceptions, to assume a position from which undistorted views may be obtained. At times, indeed, Mr. Morley carries his impartiality to the verge of indifference. His certificate of Grimm's "integrity" rests on very slender grounds, and the Memoirs of Madame d'épinay are subjected to no such scrutiny as the circumstances of their composition and preservation call for, before their statements can be accepted as authority. But whatever minor defects may be found in the book, the general spirit and execution are admirable. It is full of interest and suggestiveness both for readers to whom the subject may not be unfamiliar, and for those who may hitherto have neglected to explore it. Above all, it is valuable as marking the line to which English criticism has advanced, its capacity for treating complicated and delicate questions with clearness, frankness and entire fairness.

Pascarel: Only a Story. By "Ouida," author of "Tricotrin," "Folle-Farine," "Under Two Flags," etc. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The genius of "Ouida" is sui generis, and must in part create the standards by which it is to be judged. Her works are so different from the common type of modern novels that they demand to be looked at from a different point of view. The present standard of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but is manifestly not the test by which to gauge the recent works of "Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are. Her characters are idealizations: her later books are prose-poems, not only in the affluence and rhythm of their style, but in the allegoric form and purpose which, pervade them. This characteristic is plain enough in Tricotrin and Folle-Farine, but finds its most marked expression in Pascarel. "Only an Allegory" would be a more expressive sub-title for the book than "Only a Story," for the story is the mere thread which sustains and binds together a series of parables and crystallized truths. Most of these, indeed, she has embodied in former works, but nowhere as in Pascarel is the author's design to teach them made so manifest.

The book is almost wholly free from that extravagance of expression and recklessness of all established codes of taste which have diverted attention from her purpose, and led to a false estimate of the character and tendency of her writings. It has none of the hindrances, for instance, which prevent many from seeing the magnificence of the conception in Folle-Farine. Its object is to enforce the lesson that the only true greatness is that which loses sight of self—that Love, and Love alone, is, both in its insight and its purpose, divine. "Love sees as God sees, and with infinite wisdom has infinite pardon." "Laughter and love are all that are really worth having in the world," but to gain them "one must seek them first for others, with a wish pure from the greed of self." "The world owes nothing to so personal a passion as ambition." "The first fruits of a man's genius are always pure of greed." What makes a great artist is the "vital, absolute absorption of personality in his love of art." The experience of the donzella (which constitutes what there is of the story), a nobler, and, we think, a truer, type of womanhood than Viva, yet with a like over-estimate of the advantages of wealth and position, brings her to the conviction that Pascarel is right. These truths, however, find their most effective illustration in the wealth of Italian tradition and history with which the pages abound. "Here is the secret of Florence, sublime aspiration—the aspiration which gave her citizens force to live in poverty and clothe themselves in simplicity, so as to give up their millions of florins to bequeath miracles in stone and metal and color to the future." "In her throes of agony she kept always within her that love of the ideal, impersonal, consecrate, void of greed, which is the purification of the individual life and the regeneration of the body politic." "Her great men drew their inspiration from the very air they breathed, and the men who knew they were not great had the patience and unselfishness to do their minor work for her zealously and perfectly." The workmen who chiseled the stones and the boys who ground the colors "did their part mightily and with reverence." The unrivaled works of art which are the true greatness of Italy owe their existence to the self-forgetfulness of their makers. So the love of Italy is in its essence a love for that which is best and noblest in human nature—"the consecration of self to an object higher than self." This love, however, to be true, must be more than perception or sentiment—it must bear fruit in likeness to that which it admires. "Each gift which men receive imposes a corresponding duty." "We are Italians," says Pascarel after recounting the glories of Italian achievement: "great as the heritage is, so great the duty likewise." As a companion-book of Italian travel, Pascarel has a special value, suffused as it is throughout with the blended charm of picturesque beauty and magical associations that belongs to the country and the people.