In clarity Anatole France is the equal of Renan and John Henry Newman, and, while at one time clarity was a conventional quality of French prose, it is rarer to-day. Symbolism has supervened, if not to darken counsel, certainly to trouble verbal values. Never syncopated, moving at a moderate tempo, in transitions smooth, replete with sensitive rejections, crystalline in diction, a lover and a master of large, luminous words, the very marrow of the man, Anatole France is in his style. And what a model he should be for those wilful young writers who boast that lumpy, graceless paragraphs are better suited to their subjects than swift, clear, concise prose. It was not so long ago that one scribe positively glorified in his own dull style; he asserted that it was a truthful reflection of his drab themes. There is, indeed, such a thing as an apposite garbing, a verbal orchestration. The pellucid sentences of Mr. Howells, so free from the overblown, are happily wedded to his admirable character etching. Flaubert, master of ornate, or “numerous” prose, as well as cool, rhythmic prose, wrote Salammbô in a purple, splendid key, and Madame Bovary in the greyer tonalities of the province; yet nothing could be further removed from the style of either novel than Sentimental Education, which is urban and suffused with sober daylight. It was a favorite contention of de Gourmont that at his sovereign best Flaubert is to be found in Bouvard et Pécuchet, the style of which is sinewy, pregnant, powerful. The principal mistake of beginners is to believe that ornament is good style. In Anatole France matter and manner are perfectly welded.