vivacity from the author's genial unpretentiousness, his almost vainglorious triviality. A "high standard" is an excellent thing; but we sometimes fancy it takes away more than it gives, and that an untamed natural faculty of enjoying at a venture is a better conductor of æsthetic light and heat. Gautier's superbly appreciative temperament makes him, at the least, as solid an observer as the representative German doctor in spectacles, bristling with critical premises. It is signally suggestive to compare his lusty tribute to San Moise at Venice, in his "Italia," with Ruskin's stern dismissal of it in his "Stones of Venice"—Ruskin so painfully unable to see the "joke" of it and Gautier, possibly, so unable to see anything but the joke. We may, in strictness, agree with Ruskin, but we envy Gautier. It was to be expected of such a genius that he should enjoy the East; and Gautier professed a peculiar devotion to it. He was fond of pretending that he was really an Oriental come astray into our Western world. He has described Eastern scenery and manners, Eastern effects of all kinds, with incomparable gusto; and, on reading the libretti to the three or four ballets included in the volume we have named, we wonder whether his natural attitude was not to recline in the perfumed dusk of a Turkish divan, puffing a chibouque and fore-
