Still, the rank of the book was fully recognized, and the first article
especially contained some remarkable criticisms, to which we shall find
occasion to recur. "In these two volumes of _pensees_," said M. Renan,
"without any sacrifice of truth to artistic effect, we have both the
perfect mirror of a modern mind of the best type, matured by the best
modern culture, and also a striking picture of the sufferings which
beset the sterility of genius. These two volumes may certainly be
reckoned among the most interesting philosophical writings which have
appeared of late years."

M. Caro's article on the first volume of the Journal, in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ for February, 1883, may perhaps count as the first
introduction of the book to the general cultivated public. He gave a
careful analysis of the first half of the Journal--resumed eighteen
months later in the same periodical on the appearance of the second
volume--and, while protesting against what he conceived to be the
general tendency and effect of Amiel's mental story, he showed himself
fully conscious of the rare and delicate qualities of the new writer.
"_La reverie a reussi a notre auteur_," he says, a little
reluctantly--for M. Caro has his doubts as to the legitimacy of
_reverie_; "_Il en aufait une oeuvure qui restera_." The same final
judgment, accompanied by a very different series of comments, was
pronounced on the Journal a year later by M. Paul Bourget, a young and
rising writer, whose article is perhaps chiefly interesting as showing
the kind of effect produced by Amiel's thought on minds of a type
essentially alien from his own. There is a leaven of something positive
and austere, of something which, for want of a better name, one calls
Puritanism, in Amiel, which escapes the author of "Une Cruelle Enigme."
But whether he has understood Amiel or no, M. Bourget is fully alive to
the mark which the Journal is likely to make among modern records of