more or less recent controversies between MM. Anatole France
and Jules Lemaitre as representatives of the first, and M.
Brunetiere as the chief exponent of the second. They have
planted their standards; and we see that they stand for
tendencies in the critical activity of every nation. The
ideal of the impressionist is to bring a new piece of
literature into being in some exquisitely happy characterization,--
to create a lyric of criticism out of the unique pleasure of
an aesthetic hour. The stronghold of the scientist, on the
other hand, is the doctrine of literary evolution, and his
aim is to show the history of literature as the history of
a process, and the work of literature as a product; to explain
it from its preceding causes, and to detect thereby the general
laws of literary metamorphosis.

Such are the two great lines of modern criticism; their purposes
and ideals stand diametrically opposed. Of late, however, there
have not been wanting signs of a spirit of reconciliation, and
of a tendency to concede the value, each in its own sphere, of
different but complementary activities. Now and again the
lion and the lamb have lain down together; one might almost say,
on reading a delightful paper of Mr. Lewis E. Gates on
Impressionism and Appreciation,<1> that the lamb had assimilated
the lion. For the heir of all literary studies, according to
Professor Gates, is the appreciative critic; and he it is who
shall fulfill the true function of criticism. He is to
consider the work of art in its historical setting and its
psychological origin, "as a characteristic moment in the
development of human spirit, and as a delicately transparent
illustration of aesthetic law." But, "in regarding the work