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It is certainly true that for some time there lias prevailed among their writers an unbounded striving towards such naturalness ; they have even torn the garments of conventionalism from their limbs, and show themselves in hideous naked- ness. Yet ever some rag of fashion which clings to them betrays the old unnaturalness, and awakens in the German looker on an ironic smile. These writers put me in mind of the copperplate engrav- ings in certain novels where the indecent amours of the eighteenth century are imitated, and where, in spite of the Eden costume of nature of gentle- men and ladies, the former keep their queued periwigs, and the latter their towering frisked head-dresses. It is not by direct criticism, but indirectly in dramatic compositions which are more or less imitations of Shakespeare, that the French attain to some knowledge of the great poet. As a mediator in this manner Victor Hugo deserves great praise, not that I regard him, however, as a mere imitator of the Briton. Victor Hugo is a genius of the highest order, and his powers of flight and of creation are wonderful ; he has the form and the word, he is the greatest poet of France, but his Pegasus has a morbid fear of the roaring torrents of the present, and goes most unwillingly to water where the light of day is mirrored in fresh floods he loves far better to