Sainte-Beuve possessed all the qualifications required of the historian of Jansenism. He was not a believer, but he had been, or believed that he had been one. A man is seldom capable of criticising the views he holds himself, and as seldom of understanding those which he has never held; what we all understand best are the views we once shared, but share no longer. If any one doubts Sainte-Beuve's ability to understand these medieval emotions, that impulse to forsake the world, that strife of the awakened soul with nature, and its repentant, anxious recourse to grace; if any one doubts his comprehension of the real spirit inspiring these sermons and theological pamphlets, of the hearts beating under these nuns' habits, of the devotion, the hopes, and the longings, the mystical ecstasies and the sacred enthusiasm, which flourished on that little spot of holy ground, let that doubter read the first two volumes of _Port-Royal_, as far as the chapter on Pascal, who was easier of comprehension because he was a figure of more magnitude and was already better known. Let him study the masterly portraits of St. François de Sales and St. Cyran, and observe how with the help of letters, reported conversations, and a few pamphlets and sermons, Sainte-Beuve succeeds in placing before us two figures which are so true to nature, so human, that we seem to be living with them. We are frequently reminded of the fact that Sainte-Beuve was originally a novelist. The scenes among the innocent dwellers in that dovecote, the convent, for instance, have all the vividness of well-written fiction. And Sainte-Beuve employs his imagination only in describing; he never invents or misrepresents. It is a defect in the book that its first parts, though they are much the best reading, are not conceived in the historical style. We are too vividly reminded that the _feuilleton_ has hitherto been their author's vehicle of expression. In these earlier volumes Sainte-Beuve simply takes Port-Royal as his starting-point. The old monastery is not much more than his citadel, from which he makes one sortie after another; he hunts out parallels, discovers analogies, now in literature, now in real life--interesting, but often far-fetched, and leading to disquisitions not only upon such writers as Corneille, Racine, Molière, Voltaire, and Vauvenargues, but upon modern authors, such as Lamartine and George Sand. The later volumes, on the other hand, the style of which is more soberly historical, lack the attraction of these interpolations; and the subject is too much of a special subject to interest long, in spite of the loving care which has been bestowed on it.