It is a vile term--that of Anglo-American--a pedantic term--and rather surprising from the pen of Chasles. For, professor as he is, he despises pedantry as the plague. There is nothing doctoral in his literary costume; and if he has any pretension, it resembles in no particular the grave assumptions of the cathedrants of the university. It would be a mortification to him to belong to the school of the Sorbonne. He is a member of the free family of the College of France, where individual genius has triumphed more than once over the sterile routine of tradition. Before filling the chair of professor, the author of _Etudes_ had written much in journals and reviews. He writes still, and is always welcome to the public. For, it may be remarked without malice, he has always had a larger audience of readers than of listeners. And that it is so is rather complimentary than otherwise. How is it, indeed, that the intellectual humorist succeeds better as an author than as a teacher? What does he need to insure, if he wishes it, the enthusiastic admiration of the young public whom he instructs? Has he not at command those vivid flashings of the imagination which, by an electric sympathy, might bring down about him thunders of applause? Is he fearful that his gesture and his voice would not become his thought? Does he disdain to have recourse, hap-hazard, to the little artifices of eloquence? It is very easy to gain popularity by a juggle, when it cannot be done by the force of true oratory. Be enthusiastic of your merits. Mingle with the swellings of poetry a certain dogmatism of opinion--call to your aid assurance, impudence, and all the insipidities of the _style printanier_--fire, as it were, pistol-shots into the audience, and continue the fire by a brilliant musketry of little fulminating phrases--the victory is yours, unless you are essentially an ass. For youth--verdant youth--will always be carried away by the expression, true or false, of feeling. M. Philarète Chasles is said to want in some degree that great constituent of humanity--passion. He is one of those refined and delicate writers who employ all their genius to ridicule the mind, and all their reason to drive to shipwreck upon the beautiful waters of poesie the most charming flotillas of the imagination. He belongs to the breed of sharp raillers, whose skepticism points an epigram. In a word, there is no reverse side for his admiration on any question--a habit of judging quite common among many writers, genuine and charlatan.