In no country has literary criticism more life than in France. It engages the attention of the best minds. No writer, whatever be his speciality, thinks it derogatory to give long and elaborate notices in the daily press of new books or new editions of old books. Thus, Sainte-Beuve in the "Moniteur," De Sacy, Saint-Marc Girardin, Philarète Chasles, Prévost-Paradol in the "Journal des Débats," not to mention the numerous writers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," the "Européenne," and the "Nationale," vie with each other in extracting from all that appears what is most acceptable to the general reader. M. Sainte-Beuve may be taken as a type of the avowedly professional critic. Whatever he may accomplish as the historian of Port-Royal, it is to his weekly articles, informal and disconnected as they are, that he owes his high rank among French authors. These "Causeries du Lundi" have now reached the fourteenth volume.[A] In the last we find the same easy admiration, facility of approbation, and suppleness that enable him to praise the "Fanny" of Feydeau, calling it a poem, and on the next page to do justice to the last volume of Thiers's "Consulate and Empire," or to the recent publication of the Correspondence of Buffon. The most important articles in the volume are those on Vauvenargues, on the Abbé de Marolles, and on Bonstetten. [Footnote A: _Causeries du Lundi_. Par C.A. Sainte-Beuve, de l'Académie Française. Tome Quatorziéme. Paris: Garnier Frères. 12mo. pp. 480.] Of quite a different school is M. Armand de Pontmartin, who, under the titles of "Causeries du Samedi," "Causeries Littéraires," etc., has now issued over a dozen volumes touching on all points of contemporary letters, often very severe in their strictures. The last, "Les Semaines Littéraires,"[B] contains notices of late works by Cousin, About, Quinet, Laprade, and others, and concludes with an article on Scribe. Pontmarlin represents the Catholic sentiment in literature. He measures everything as it agrees or disagrees with Legitimacy and Ultramontanism. His works are a continual defence of the Bourbons and the Pope. Modern democracy he cannot pardon. Without seeking to deny the excesses and shortcomings of his own party, he finds an explanation for all in the levelling tendencies of the age. He cannot be too severe on the first French Revolution and its results. "In letters," he tells us, "it has led to materialism and anarchy, while the Bourbons personify for France peace, glory," etc. [Footnote B: _Les Semaines Littéraires_. Troisième Série des Causeries Littéraires. Par Armand de Pontmartin. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères. 12mo. pp. 364.] Pontmartin is an able representative of the side he has taken. He believes in and ably defends those heroes of literature so well characterized as "Prophets of the Past," Chateaubriand, De Bonald, and J. de Maistre. His special objects of antipathy are writers like Michelet and Quinet, pamphleteers like About, and critics like Sainte-Beuve.