Were the surly critics to be trusted, we should not be leaving the domain of fiction in turning to the new volume M. Renan has devoted to the history of the sources of Christianity, entitled "L'Eglise Chrétienne" (Lévy). It deals with the definitive constitution of the Church, at the moment when dogma forms itself by contact with, and in opposition to, the various heresies, and the organization of the hierarchy takes place. It is true that M. Renan could, if he so wished, be a wonderful writer of fiction. With what art he brings on his personages, how admirably he infuses life into the thousand dry and scattered fragments collected by erudition, and forms them into a co-ordinate and complete whole! With what psychological penetration he enters into the minds of his personages, and makes us familiarly acquainted with the Roman Cæsars or the Church Fathers! What wealth of imagination! what witchery of style! At times he is, no doubt, led away by his imagination; too often the desire to invest old facts with life and reality leads him to compare, or even assimilate, the present with the past, and, in his exposition of ancient ideas, to mix them up with his own, ideas so peculiar to our time and to M. Renan himself, that the intermixture produces a false impression. It is daring to ascribe the Fourth Gospel to Cerinthus, and still more so to regard the letter of the Lyons Church on the martyrdom of Pothin and his companions as a proof of the Lyonnese being false-minded, and to connect the fact with the Socialist tendencies of modern Lyons. From his comparing Hadrian in some respects to Nero, we gather that M. Renan has yielded to the indulgence he had already testified towards Nero in his volume on "L'Antechrist," an indulgence grounded on the artistic tastes, or rather pretensions, of the royal stage-player. But these blemishes, and occasional breaches of historical truth or good taste, ought not to blind us to the historical value of a work which, if it be the work of a great artist, is likewise that of a scholar of the first order. Numbers of men can pore over texts and critics, but to revive the past, and introduce into the domain of history, and make the general public familiar with subjects reserved hitherto to theologians and critics by profession, is the work of a genius only. Scholars find much to censure in Michelet's "Histoire de Franceau moyen Age;" but whatever its inexactitudes, he is the only man who has succeeded in restoring to life the France of bygone days. And is not life one of the most important elements of reality? Even an imperfect acquaintance with a living man enables one to form a truer notion of the man than the most minute autopsy of a dead body. Moreover, as regards the past we have not the whole body, but only scattered fragments; the breath of genius must pass over these dry bones--restore to them flesh, blood, colour, movement, and voice.