"To interest us in them, they show them to us forcing doors and picking locks. To these picturesque descriptions they add those profound theories, by which the People, if we listen to them, justify themselves in their own eyes for this crusade against property. Truly, it is a great misery, in addition to so many others, for them to have these imprudent friends. These theories and these acts are by no means of the people. The mass is, doubtless, neither pure nor irreproachable; but still, if you want to characterise it by the idea which prevails in the immense majority, you will find it occupied in founding by toil, economy, and the most respectable means, the immense work which constitutes the strength of this country, the participation of all classes in property." We believe it sincerely and heartily. The great writers of all ages have believed it. Your low-minded scribblers have never doubted it; but it is far easier to depict the limited class, with its violence and felony, its startling incidents and painful murders--far less difficult to give picturesque effect to its nauseous jargon and offensive situations, than it is to work the simple portraiture of a whole community, who have nothing to offer to the artist but the delicate and unobtrusive material, such as Goldsmith could weave into a fabric whose colour and texture shall endure and enchant for all time. "I feel," continues M. Michelet, with great tenderness--"I feel I am alone, and I should be sad indeed if I had not with me my faith and hope. I see myself weak, both by nature and my previous works, in presence of this mighty subject, as at the foot of a gigantic monument, that I must move all alone. Alas! how disfigured it is to-day; how loaded with foreign accumulations, moss, and mouldiness; spoilt by the rain and mud, and by the injuries it has received from passengers! The painter, the man of _art for art_, comes and looks at it; what pleases him is precisely that moss. But I would pluck it off. Painter, now passing by! This is not a plaything of art--this is our altar!"