"Democracy," add to it the incidental discussion of the subject in the essay on "Emerson," and then compare the stimulus to thought that he receives from it with the stimulus that he finds in Lowell's "Democracy" or in Arnold's "Democracy," and he will feel for himself, I believe, the decisive superiority of Mr. Brownell's treatment. How little "academic" this chapter is, or indeed for that matter, how little "academic" is the spirit of the entire book—how steadily and with a central sweep of its wisdom it drives at practice, I can best suggest, perhaps, by a final quotation:
"There are no questions," said Gambetta, superbly, "but social questions." The apothegm formulates the spiritual instinct of France since the days of the national beginnings. It formulates also, I think, the instinct of the future. That is why France is so inexhaustibly interesting—because in one way or another she, far more than any other nation, has always represented the aspirations of civilization, because she has always sought development in common, and because in this respect the ideal she has always followed is the ideal of the future. It is, at any rate, inseparable from the visions which a material age permits to the few idealists of to-day.
Mr. Brownell's second book, French Art, 1892, may be regarded, like French Traits, as establishing a new and difficult standard for the American critic. Its significance for us may perhaps be in-
