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the series of portraits by giving that of Taine. It is the most finished and the most powerful. Indeed, I know scarcely any portrait in literature in which there is more dazzling literary skill; but it is a portrait by an avowed and a bitter enemy. It is too peremptory and too consistent; above all, it is a portrait drawn by what I may call a literary absolutist—the artist who insists that human figures should follow the rigidity of a philosopher's scientific rules.

first point which Taine brings out is that this mighty despot, who ruled France as she had never been ruled before, was not even a Frenchman. Not only in blood and in birth, but in feeling he