“La soirée passa comme un songe. Un seul orage faillit la troubler. _Je soutenais que la langue anglaise était rude, complètement dépourvue d’harmonie._ ‘Elle est rude pour vous, qui ne savez pas la prononcer,’ ripostait l’insulaire avec véhémence.” Here we have first the impression of the uneducated French ear, then the truth about the matter from the Englishman. Another Frenchman (whose name is not worth mentioning in connection with that of M. Jurien de la Gravière) says that the English language is scarcely intelligible when spoken, even for the English themselves, and that is why they are so taciturn. Another calls English “_cet idiome sourd_.” How are these Frenchmen to appreciate the “mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies”?--how are their ears to hear the “God-gifted organ-voice of England”? [Sidenote: French Opinion on different English Writers.] [Sidenote: The Philosophers.] What really happens is this. English authors are known in France by translations, and as neither the music of verse nor the style of prose can be reproduced in a translation, the author is judged by a criterion outside of his literary workmanship. His reputation is constructed over again, without reference to his mastery of language, on the grounds of thought or invention only. Herbert Spencer has a great reputation in France as a thinker, Dickens as an inventor. Thackeray is very little appreciated, because the French can never know how superior he was in style to Dickens. Of English writers on art, Sir Joshua Reynolds is appreciated in France because his doctrine contained nothing particularly English, and his style was simple and clear; Ruskin has no French readers because his views on art are English and his style complex, elaborate, ornate. The name of Byron is known to every educated Frenchman, that of Tennyson is known to students of English literature only. All the chief English and Scotch philosophers are familiar to French students of philosophy, and in fact accepted by them as their great teachers and guides, but they are utterly unknown to the French public. [Sidenote: Russian Novels in France.] [Sidenote: More Nature.] [Sidenote: Demand and Supply.]