are not so well arranged in life as all that comes to. Some
of the digressions, also, seem out of place, and do nothing
but interrupt and irritate. But when all is said, the book
remains of masterly conception and of masterly development,
full of pathos, full of truth, full of a high eloquence.

Superstition and social exigency having been thus dealt with
in the first two members of the series, it remained for LES
TRAVAILLEURS DE LA MER to show man hand to hand with the
elements, the last form of external force that is brought
against him. And here once more the artistic effect and the
moral lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one.
Gilliat, alone upon the reef at his herculean task, offers a
type of human industry in the midst of the vague "diffusion
of forces into the illimitable," and the visionary
development of "wasted labour" in the sea, and the winds, and
the clouds. No character was ever thrown into such strange
relief as Gilliat. The great circle of sea-birds that come
wanderingly around him on the night of his arrival, strikes
at once the note of his pre-eminence and isolation. He fills
the whole reef with his indefatigable toil; this solitary
spot in the ocean rings with the clamour of his anvil; we see
him as he comes and goes, thrown out sharply against the
clear background of the sea. And yet his isolation is not to
be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for
example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to
set side by side than LES TRAVAILLEURS and this other of the
old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what
lies outside of human will. Crusoe was one sole centre of
interest in the midst of a nature utterly dead and utterly