striking charm and intense life which are to be found in those of Loti.
I can find no other reason for this than that which I have suggested
above: the landscape, in Hugo's and in Gautier's scenes, is a background
and nothing more; while Loti makes it the predominating figure of his
drama. Our sensibilities are necessarily aroused before this apparition
of Nature, blind, inaccessible, and all-powerful as the Fates of old.



It may prove interesting to inquire how Loti contrived to sound such a
new note in art.

He boasted, on the day of his reception into the French Academy, that
he had never read. Many protested, some smiled, and a large number of
persons refused to believe the assertion. Yet the statement was actually
quite credible, for the foundation and basis of M. Loti rest on a naive
simplicity which makes him very sensitive to the things of the outside
world, and gives him a perfect comprehension of simple souls. He is not
a reader, for he is not imbued with book notions of things; his ideas
of them are direct, and everything with him is not memory, but reflected
sensation.

On the other hand, that sailor-life which had enabled him to see the
world, must have confirmed in him this mental attitude. The deck officer
who watches the vessel's course may do nothing which could distract his
attention; but while ever ready to act and always unoccupied, he thinks,
he dreams, he listens to the voices of the sea; and everything about him
is of interest to him, the shape of the clouds, the aspect of skies and
waters. He knows that a mere board's thickness is all that separates him
and defends him from death. Such is the habitual state of mind which M.