“... The leaven of the idealists, a pupil of the celebrated Fichte.... The first principle of this school is to reject all expressions which incline in the slightest degree to substantiality.... Matter is his great enemy. My dear sir, observe how exquisitely Nature revenges herself on these capricious and fantastic children. Methinks that the best answer to the idealism of M. Fichte is to see his pupil devouring _kalte schale_.” In _Lothair_ few will forget the hero’s musings after the opera attendant’s “Thank you, my lord” had attested the “overpowering honorarium.” “‘He knows me,’ thought Lothair; but it was not so. When the British nation is at once grateful and enthusiastic, they always call you ‘my lord.’” And in the same novel occurs the admirable humour of the scene at Muriel Towers, where the new French dance which is remembered and at last arranged by the impromptu good humour and cleverness of “Theodora,” is muddled by “Lord Carisbrook,” who sums up his knowledge by “Newest thing in Paris,” yet, notwithstanding, grins afterwards, quite self-satisfied, with his “I am glad I remembered it.” There remains this light thrust at London architecture-- “Shall we find refuge in a committee of taste, escape from the mediocrity of one to the mediocrity of many?... One suggestion might be made. No profession in England has done its best until it has furnished its victim. The pure administration of justice dates from the deposition of Macclesfield.... Even our boasted navy never achieved a victory until we shot an admiral. _Suppose an architect were hanged!_” And, finally, how admirable is the mock epic of the _chef’s_ dilemma at the opening of _Tancred_: “It is worthy of Boileau.” “... ‘What you learned from me,’ says Papa Prevost, ‘came at least from a good school. It is something to have served under Napoleon,’ he added, with the grand air of the imperial kitchen. ‘Had it not been for Waterloo, I should have had the cross. _But the Bourbons and the Cooks of the Empire never could understand each other._ They brought over an emigrant _chef_ who did not comprehend the taste of the age. He wished to bring everything back to the time of the “_œil-de-bœuf_.” _When Monsieur passed my soup of Austerlitz untasted, I knew the old family was doomed._.’... ‘We must muster all our forces,’ says the great Leander. ‘There is a want not only of genius but of men in our art. The Cooks are like the civil engineers: since the middle class have taken to giving dinners, the demand exceeds the supply.’ ‘There is Andrien,’ said Papa Prevost; ‘you had some hopes of him.’ ‘He is too young. I took him to Hellingsley, and he lost his head on the third day. I entrusted the _soufflés_ to him, and but for the most desperate personal exertions, all would have been lost. _It was an affair of the Bridge of Arcola._’...” How Lilliput and Brobdingnag here combine! I prefer this epic-fantasy to the lyric-fantasy of Thackeray’s “Mirobolant.”