Gradually, however, this matter settles round the great personalities, as clouds settle round great mountains, and in like manner as clouds dissolve into springs of living waters, spreading over plains, satisfying bodily thirst, so does this cosmic element resolve itself into poetry, hymns, songs and tragedies which satisfy the thirst of the soul. The inference to be drawn from the foregoing analogy is, that human genius creates and individual genius applies. Thus, when a critic happened to accuse Shakespeare of having taken a scene or phrase or idea from a contemporary writer, he said: "I have but rescued a child from evil company to put it among better companions." Again, Molière answered, even more naively still, when people made the same reproach with regard to him: "I take my treasure wherever I find it!" Now, Shakespeare and Molière were right: the man of genius--need I point out that I mean the great masters, not myself? (I am well aware that I shall not be of any importance until after my death!)--the man of genius, I repeat, does not steal, he conquers: he makes a colony, as it were, of the province he takes; he imposes his own laws upon it and peoples it with his own subjects; he extends his golden sceptre over it, and not a soul, seeing his fine kingdom, dares to say to him (except, of course, the jealous, who are subject to no one and will not recognise even genius as supreme ruler), "This portion of territory does not belong to your patrimony." It is an absurd notion that this arbitrary spirit should accord its protection to letters: it means that it prohibits foreign literature and discourages contemporary literature. In a country like France, which is the brain of Europe, and whose language is spoken throughout the whole world, owing to the equipoise of consonants and vowels, which disconcert neither northern nor southern nations, there ought to be a universal literature besides its national one. Everything of beauty that has been produced in the whole world, from Æschylus down to Alfieri, from _Sakountala_ to _Roméo_, from the romancero of the _Cid_ down to Schiller's _Brigands_,--all ought to belong to France, if not by right of inheritance, at least by right of conquest. Nothing that an entire people has admired can be without value, and everything that has a value ought to find its place in that vast casket entitled French intelligence. It is on account of this false system that there is a Conservatoire and an École at Rome. We have already, in connection with the _mise-en-scène_ of Soulié's _Juliette_, said a few words about this Conservatoire, which has the unique object of teaching young men to scan Molière and to recite Racine's _Corneille._ We will now complete the sketch begun. As a result of the invariable programme, adopted by the government, every pupil of the Conservatoire, after three years' study, leaves the rue Bergère incapable of appreciating any modern