He has no idea how the critics will greet this drama and these thoughts, summarily set forth, stripped of their corollaries and ramifications, put together _currente calamo_, and in haste to have done with them.

Doubtless they will appear to "the disciples of La Harpe" most impudent and strange.

But if perchance, naked and undeveloped as they are, they should have the power to start upon the road of truth this public whose education is so far advanced, and whose minds so many notable writings, of criticism or of original thought, books or newspapers, have already matured for art, let the public follow that impulsion, caring naught whether it comes from a man unknown, from a voice with no authority, from a work of little merit.

It is a copper bell which summons the people to the true temple and the true God.
There is to-day the old literary regime as well as the old political regime.

The last century still weighs upon the present one at almost every point.