Dr. Franck told me a story of which I had never heard before. Voltaire had for some reason or other taken a grudge against the prophet Habakkuk, and affected to find in him things he never wrote. Somebody took the Bible and began to demonstrate to him that he was mistaken. ‘_C’est égal_,’ he said impatiently, ‘_Habakkuk était capable de tout_!’ _Oct._ 30, 1853. I am not in love with the _Richtung_ (tendency) of our modern novelists. There is abundance of talent; but writing a pretty, graceful, touching, yet pleasing story is the last thing our writers nowadays think of. Their novels are party pamphlets on political or social questions, like _Sybil_, or _Alton Locke_, or _Mary Barton_, or _Uncle Tom_; or they are the most minute and painful dissections of the least agreeable and beautiful parts of our nature, like those of Miss Brontë—_Jane Eyre_ and _Villette_; or they are a kind of martyrology, like Mrs. Marsh’s _Emilia Wyndham_, which makes you almost doubt whether any torments the heroine would have earned by being naughty could exceed those she incurred by her virtue. Where, oh! where is the charming, humane, gentle spirit that dictated the _Vicar of Wakefield_—the spirit which Goethe so justly calls _versöhnend_ (reconciling), with all the weaknesses and woes of humanity? . . . Have you read Thackeray’s _Esmond_? It is a curious and very successful attempt to imitate the style of our old novelists. . . . Which of Mrs. Gore’s novels are translated? They are very clever, lively, worldly, bitter, disagreeable, and entertaining. . . . Miss Austen’s—are they translated? They are not new, and are Dutch paintings of every-day people—very clever, very true, very _unæsthetic_, but amusing. I have not seen _Ruth_, by Mrs. Gaskell. I hear it much admired—and blamed. It is one of the many proofs of the desire women now have to _friser_ questionable topics, and to _poser_ insoluble moral problems. George Sand has turned their heads in that direction. I think a few _broad_ scenes or hearty jokes _à la_ Fielding were very harmless in comparison. They _confounded_ nothing. . . . The _Heir of Redcliffe_ I have not read. . . . I am not worthy of superhuman flights of virtue—in a novel. I want to see how people act and suffer who are as good-for-nothing as I am myself. Then I have the sinful pretension to be amused, whereas all our novelists want to reform us, and to show us what a hideous place this world is: _Ma foi_, _je ne le sais que trop_, without their help.