In this series of stories we find the author engaged in analyzing the
manners, motives and external life of the French man and woman in all
grades of society. When we open these volumes, we enter a gallery of
striking and varied pictures, which glow with all the color,
chiaroscuro and life-like detail of a Dutch panel. The power of Balzac
is unique as a descriptive writer; his knowledge of the female heart
is more profound, and covers a far wider range than anything exhibited
by a provincial author, such as Richardson. But he has also the
marvelous faculty of suggesting spiritual facts in the life and
consciousness of his characters, by the picturesque touches with which
he brings before us their external surroundings--the towns, streets
and houses in which they dwell; the furniture, ornaments and
arrangement of their rooms, and the clothes they wear. He depends upon
these details for throwing into relief such a portrait as that of Pons
or Madame Hulot. He himself was individualized by his knobbed cane
abroad, and his Benedictine habit and statuette of Napoleon at home;
but every single one of his creations seems to have in some shape or
other a cane, a robe or a decorative attribute, which distinguishes
each individual, as if by a badge, from every other member of the
company in the Comedy of Life.

The art of characterization exhibited by the author fascinates us; we
gaze and examine as if we were face to face with real personages,
whose passions are laid bare, whose life is traced, whose countenance
is portrayed with miraculousness, distinctness and verisimilitude. All
the phenomena of life in the camp, the court, the boudoir, the low
faubourg, or the country chateau are ranged in order, and catalogued.
This is done with relentless audacity, often with a touch of grotesque
exaggeration, but always with almost wearying minuteness. Sometimes
this great writer finds that a description of actuality fails to give