native gift of expression was extremely rich, and he cultivated and polished it with a diligence that may serve to give the needed balance of gravity to his literary character. He enriched his picturesque vocabulary from the most recondite sources; it has a most robust comprehensiveness. His favourite reading, we have somewhere seen, was the dictionary; he loved words for themselves—for their look, their aroma, their colour, their fantastic intimations. He kept a supply of the choicest constantly at hand and introduced them at effective points. In this respect he was a sort of immeasurably lighter-handed Rabelais, whom, indeed, he resembled in that sensuous exuberance of temperament which his countrymen are fond of calling peculiarly "Gaulois." He had an almost Rabelaisian relish for enumerations, lists, and catalogues—a sort of grotesque delight in quantity. We need hardly remind the reader that these are not the tokens of a man of thought, and Gautier was none. In the line of moral expression his phrase would have halted sadly; and when occasionally he emits a reflection he is a very Philistine of Philistines. In his various records of travel, we remember, he never takes his seat in a railway train without making a neat little speech on the marvels of steam and the diffusion of civilization. If it were not in a Parisian
