the waters of laughter to make the wells, should show at a disadvantage,
I hold for a proof, instructive to us, that the discipline of the comic
spirit is needful to their growth. We see what they can reach to in that
great figure of modern manhood, Goethe. They are a growing people; they
are conversable as well; and when their men, as in France, and at
intervals at Berlin tea-tables, consent to talk on equal terms with their
women, and to listen to them, their growth will be accelerated and be
shapelier. Comedy, or in any form the Comic spirit, will then come to
them to cut some figures out of the block, show them the mirror, enliven
and irradiate the social intelligence.

Modern French comedy is commendable for the directness of the study of
actual life, as far as that, which is but the early step in such a
scholarship, can be of service in composing and colouring the picture. A
consequence of this crude, though well-meant, realism is the collision of
the writers in their scenes and incidents, and in their characters. The
Muse of most of them is an _Aventuriere_. She is clever, and a certain
diversion exists in the united scheme for confounding her. The object of
this person is to reinstate herself in the decorous world; and either,
having accomplished this purpose through deceit, she has a _nostalgie de
la boue_, that eventually casts her back into it, or she is exposed in
her course of deception when she is about to gain her end. A very good,
innocent young man is her victim, or a very astute, goodish young man
obstructs her path. This latter is enabled to be the champion of the
decorous world by knowing the indecorous well. He has assisted in the
progress of Aventurieres downward; he will not help them to ascend. The
world is with him; and certainly it is not much of an ascension they
aspire to; but what sort of a figure is he? The triumph of a candid
realism is to show him no hero. You are to admire him (for it must be
supposed that realism pretends to waken some admiration) as a credibly