must strike us is one of extraordinary wealth. France, it is true, has
given to the world no genius of the colossal stature and universal power
of Shakespeare. But, then, where is the equal of Shakespeare to be
found? Not even in the glorious literature of Greece herself. Putting
out of account such an immeasurable magnitude, the number of writers of
the first rank produced by France can be paralleled in only one other
modern literature--that of England. The record is, indeed, a splendid
one which contains, in poetry and drama, the names of Villon, Ronsard,
Corneille, Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, Chénier, Lamartine, Hugo,
Vigny, Gautier, Baudelaire, Verlaine; and in prose those of Froissart,
Rabelais, Montaigne, Pascal, Bossuet, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère,
Montesquieu, Saint-Simon, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Chateaubriand,
Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant. And, besides this great richness and
variety, another consideration gives a peculiar value to the literature
of France. More than that of any other nation in Europe, it is
distinctive and individual; if it had never existed, the literature of
the world would have been bereft of certain qualities of the highest
worth which France alone has been able to produce. Where else could we
find the realism which would replace that of Stendhal and Balzac,
Flaubert and Maupassant? Where else should we look for the brilliant
lucidity and consummate point which Voltaire has given us? Or the force
and the precision that glow in Pascal? Or the passionate purity that
blazes in Racine?

Finally, if we would seek for the essential spirit of French literature,
where shall we discover it? In its devotion to truth? In its love of
rhetoric? In its clarity? In its generalizing power? All these qualities
are peculiarly its own, but, beyond and above them, there is another
which controls and animates the rest. The one high principle which,
through so many generations, has guided like a star the writers of