The French critic then goes on to give a rapid sketch of the authors and the books, “qui ont peu a peu formé comme notre rhétorique.” French criticism of the old characteristic kind rests ultimately upon the minute and delicate knowledge of a few Greek and Latin classics. Arnauld, Boileau, Fénélon, Rollin, Racine _fils_, Voltaire, La Harpe, Marmontel, Delille, Fontanes, and Châteaubriand in one aspect, are the typical names of this tradition, the creators and maintainers of this common literary _fonds_, this “sorte de circulation courante à l’usage des gens instruits. J’avoue ma faiblesse: nous sommes devenus bien plus forts dans la dissertation érudite, mais j’aurais un éternel regret pour cette moyenne et plus libre habitude littéraire qui laissait à l’imagination tout son espace et à l’esprit tout son jeu; qui formait une atmosphère saine et facile où le talent respirait et se mouvait à son gré: cette atmosphère-là, je ne la trouve plus, et je la regrette.”--(_Châteaubriand et son Groupe Littéraire_, vol. i. p. 311.) The following _pensée_ of La Bruyère applies to the second half of Amiel’s criticism of the French mind: “If you wish to travel in the Inferno or the Paradiso you must take other guides,” etc. “Un homme né Chrétien et François se trouve contraint dans la satyre; les grands sujets lui sont défendus, il les entame quelquefois, et se détourne ensuite sur de petites choses qu’il relève par la beauté de son génie et de son style.”--_Les Caractères_, etc., “_Des Ouvrages del’Esprit_.”]--because they have no _grasp_ of reality in its fullness, and therefore either cramp and limit me or awaken my distrust. The French lack that intuitive faculty to which the living unity of things is revealed, they have very little sense of what is sacred, very little penetration into the mysteries of being. What they excel in is the construction of special sciences; the art of writing a book, style, courtesy, grace, literary models, perfection and urbanity; the spirit of order, the art of teaching, discipline, elegance, truth of detail, power of arrangement; the desire and the gift for proselytism, the vigor necessary for practical conclusions. But if you wish to travel in the “Inferno” or the “Paradiso” you must take other guides. Their home is on the earth, in the region of the finite, the changing, the historical, and the diverse. Their logic never goes beyond the category of mechanism nor their metaphysic beyond dualism. When they undertake anything else they are doing violence to themselves.