With like originality, it substitutes for the somewhat commonplace Lernaean hydra all the local dragons of our national legends--the gargoyle of Rouen, the _gra-ouilli_ of Metz, the _chair sallee_ of Troyes, the _dree_ of Montlhery, the _tarasque_ of Tarascon--monsters of forms so diverse, whose outlandish names are an additional attribute.

All these creations draw from their own nature that energetic and significant expression before which antiquity seems sometimes to have recoiled.
Certain it is that the Greek Eumenides are much less horrible, and consequently less _true_, than the witches in _Macbeth_.

Pluto is not the devil.
In our opinion a most novel book might be written upon the employment of the grotesque in the arts.

One might point out the powerful effects the moderns have obtained from that fruitful type, upon which narrow-minded criticism continues to wage war even in our own day.
It may be that we shall be led by our subject to call attention in passing to some features of this vast picture.

We will simply say here that, as a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer art.