188 LITERAKY VALUES 



the excursionists, the flower-gatherers of literature 

 do not produce lasting works. The seriousness of 

 Hawthorne was much more than a literary serious- 

 ness ; the emotion of Whittier at his hest is funda- 

 mental and human. 



There is a passage in Amiel's "Journal" that well 

 expresses the distinction I am aiming at. " I have 

 been thinking a great deal of Victor Cherhuliez," 

 he says, under date of December 4, 1876. " Perhaps 

 his novels make up the most disputable part of his 

 work, — they are so much wanting in simplicity, 

 feeling, reality. And yet what knowledge, style, 

 wit, and subtlety , — how much thought everywhere, 

 and what mastery of language ! He astonishes one ; 

 I cannot but admire him. Cherbuliez's mind is of 

 immense range, clear-sighted, keen, full of resources ; 

 he is an Alexandrian exquisite, substituting for the 

 feeling which makes men earnest the irony which 

 leaves them free. Pascal would say of him, ' He 

 has never risen from the order of thought to the 

 order of charity.' But we must not be ungrateful. 

 A Lucian is not worth an Augustine, but still he is 

 a Lucian. . . . The positive element in Victor 

 Cherbuliez's work is beauty, not goodness, nor moral 

 or religious life." 



The positive element in the enduring works is 

 always something more than the beautiful ; it is the 

 true, the vital, the real, as well. The beautiful is 

 there, but the not-beautiful is there also. The world 

 is held together, life is nourished and made strong, 

 and power begotten, by the neutral or negatively 



