He notes, with an unaccustomed sense of humour in a critical barometer, the tendency of youthful poets, prose penmen, and others to form schools, to create cénacles, to begin fighting before they have any defined ideal. It leads to a lot of noisy, explosive manifestoes, declarations, and challenges, most of them rather in the air; though it cannot be denied that these ebullitions of gusty temperaments do clear that same air, murky with theories and traversed by an occasional flash of genius. After paying his respects to the daily Parisian press, which he belabours as venal, cynical, and impure, our critic evokes a picture of the condition of literary men; not a reassuring one. Indeed, we wonder how young people can dream of embracing such a profession, with its heartaches, disappointments, inevitable poverty. Unless these aspiring chaps have a private income, how do they contrive to live? The answer is, they don't live, unless they write twaddle for the Grand Old Public, which must be tickled with fluff and flattery. You say to yourself, after all Paris is not vastly different in this respect from benighted New York. Detective stories, melodrama, the glorification of the stale triangle in fiction and drama, the apotheosis of the Apache--what are all these but slight variants of the artistic pabulum furnished by our native merchants in mediocrity? Consoled, because your mental and emotional climate is not as inartistic as it is painted, you return to Florian-Parmentier and his divagations. He has much to say. Some of it is not as tender as tripe, but none is salted with absurdity. Then you make a discovery. There is in France a distinct class, the Intellectuals, who control artistic opinion because of its superior claims; a class to which there is no analogy either in England or in America. (The French Academy is not particularly referred to just now.) Poets, journalists, wealthy amateurs, bohemians, and professors--all may belong to it if they have the necessary credentials: brains, talent, enthusiasm. It is the latter quality that floats out on the sea of speculation many adventuring barks. Each sports a tiny pennant proclaiming its ideals. Each is steered by some dreamer of proud, impossible dreams. But they float, do these frail boats, laden with visions and captained by noble ambitions. Or, another image; a long, narrow street, on either side houses of manifold styles--fantastic or sensible, castellated or commonplace, baroque, stately, turreted, spired, and lofty, these eclectic architectures reflect the souls of the dwellers within. The ivory tower is not missing, though a half-century ago it was more in evidence; the church is there, though sadly dwarfed--France is still spiritually crippled and flying on one wing (this means previous to 1914); and a host of other strange and familiar houses that Jack the poet built.