No doubt a mere literary _succès d’estime_ would not have satisfied one who had been an Under-Secretary of State; and great literary reputations were being made in France at the time this resolution was taken. But De Rémusat goes on to say that he “tenait à expier en quelque sorte une composition d’un genre moins sévère,” and frankly stating that the drama was “une de ces œuvres enfin qui n’ont qu’une excuse possible, celle du talent,” he, with sincere humility, put it back in his drawer. Was he right? Having read his Philosophical Drama, I am of opinion that he was wrong. It exhibits literary faculty of a high order, and it is deficient in none of those penetrating qualities of intelligence which serve to render the imagination at once free and efficient when engaged in dramatic work. We do not say that it reaches the heaven of invention; and, indeed, its author was inspired by no such soaring ambition. He writes in prose, and prose which, though always classical and often eloquent, never seeks to pass the boundary between prose and poetry invariably respected by the judicious. But he had saturated himself with the atmosphere of the time in which the action of his drama is laid; and he had represented to himself in clear and well-defined outlines the character of his central figure. To do all this is surely to write a work of no little difficulty with no little success. Shortly after quitting Nantes by the post-road that conducts to Poitiers, the traveller passes, before reaching Clisson, a village consisting of one long street, which, if he thinks it worth while to inquire, he will be told is called Le Pallet. No one, however, will concern himself to add that behind the unpretending but venerable church which stands on a slight elevation to the left, above the last cottages in the place, are to be seen some all but submerged walls, and here and there the choked vestiges of an ancient moat. These are all that remain of the castle of Le Pallet, which was levelled with the ground more than four centuries and a half ago, in the course of the wars that succeeded the attack directed by Marguerite de Clisson against John V., Duke of Brittany. Hard by is an insignificant stream, known as the Sanguèze, and which evidently owes its name, like the Italian Sanguinetto that flows into the Lake of Thrasymene, to the blood of battle that is recorded to have once dyed its waters.