scintillating flash of minutia. Such careful attention wearies and
disappoints, and sometimes, instead of photographing the scenes
indelibly upon the mental vision, there ensues only a confused mass of
armor and soldiers, plains and horses.

But the description of action and movement are incomparable, resembling
somewhat, in the rush and flow of words, the style of Victor Hugo; the
breathless rush and fire, the restrained passion and fury of a
master-hand.

Throughout the whole book this peculiarity is noticeable--there are no
dissertations, no pauses for the author to express his opinions, no
stoppages to reflect,--we are rushed onward with almost breathless
haste, and many times are fain to pause and re-read a sentence, a
paragraph, sometimes a whole page. Like the unceasing motion of a column
of artillery in battle, like the roar and fury of the Carthaginian's
elephant, so is the torrent of Flanbert's eloquence--majestic, grand,
intense, with nobility, sensuous, but never sublime, never elevating,
never delicate.

As an historian, Flanbert would have ranked high--at least in
impartiality. Not once in the whole volume does he allow his prejudices,
his opinions, his sentiments to crop out. We lose complete sight of the
author in his work. With marvellous fidelity he explains the movements,
the vices and the virtues of each party, and with Shakespearean tact, he
conceals his identity, so that we are troubled with none of that Byronic
vice of 'dipping one's pen into one's self.'

Still, for all the historian's impartiality, he is just a trifle
incorrect, here and there--the ancients mention no aqueduct in or near