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66 philosopher and friend. Gautier, possibly, claimed no such office; but, at any rate, he spoke with authority; and the splendid, unmeasured flattery which he pours out on the young painter gives us something of the discomfort with which we should see an old man plying a young lad with strong wine. Regnault, fortunately, had a strong head; but the attitude, in Gautier, is none the less immoral. He repaints the young man's pictures, verbally, with almost superior power, and consecrates their more ominous eccentricities by his glowing rhetoric. To assure a youth of genius, by sound of trumpet, that his genius is infallible, is, doubtless, good comradeship, but, from a high point of view, it is poor æsthetics.

The first half of Gautier's theatrical feuilletons have been gathered into six volumes, under the ambitious title—a device, evidently, of the publishers rather than the author—of "L'Histoire de l'Art Dramatique en France." In the theatre, as at the Salon, he is the most good-natured of critics, and enjoys far less picking a feeble drama to pieces than sketching fine scenery and good acting. The book, however, is an excellent one; its tone is so easy, its judgments so happy and unpedantic, its good taste so pervasive, its spirit so wholesomely artistic. But we confess that what has most struck us, in turning it over, has