Der liebe Gott said to him, "You are very badly
lodged there; why don't you build yourself a house?" "Before I take
the trouble," said Anselm, "I should like to know how long I have to
live." "About thirty years," said Der liebe Gott. "Oh, for so short
a time," replied he, "it's not worth while," and turned himself round
among the thistles.'

Dr. Franck told me a story of which I had never heard before. Voltaire
had for some reason or other taken a grudge against the prophet
Habakkuk, and affected to find in him things he never wrote. Somebody
took the Bible and began to demonstrate to him that he was mistaken.
'C'est egal,' he said, impatiently, 'Habakkuk etait capable de tout!'

Oct. 30, 1853.

I am not in love with the Richtung (tendency) of our modern novelists.
There is abundance of talent; but writing a pretty, graceful,
touching, yet pleasing story is the last thing our writers nowadays
think of. Their novels are party pamphlets on political or social
questions, like Sybil, or Alton Locke, or Mary Barton, or Uncle Tom;
or they are the most minute and painful dissections of the least
agreeable and beautiful parts of our nature, like those of Miss
Bronte--Jane Eyre and Villette; or they are a kind of martyrology,
like Mrs. Marsh's Emilia Wyndham, which makes you almost doubt whether
any torments the heroine would have earned by being naughty could
exceed those she incurred by her virtue.

Where, oh! where is the charming, humane, gentle spirit that dictated
the Vicar of Wakefield--the spirit which Goethe so justly calls
versohnend (reconciling), with all the weaknesses and woes of
humanity? . . . Have you read Thackeray's Esmond? It is a curious
and very successful attempt to imitate the style of our old novelists.
. . . Which of Mrs. Gore's novels are translated? They are very
clever, lively, worldly, bitter, disagreeable, and entertaining. . . .
Miss Austen's--are they translated? They are not new, and are Dutch
paintings of every-day people--very clever, very true, very
_unaesthetic_, but amusing. I have not seen Ruth, by Mrs. Gaskell. I
hear it much admired--and blamed. It is one of the many proofs of the
desire women now have to friser questionable topics, and to poser
insoluble moral problems. George Sand has turned their heads in that
direction. I think a few _broad_ scenes or hearty jokes a la Fielding
were very harmless in comparison. They _confounded_ nothing. . . .

The Heir of Redcliffe I have not read. . . . I am not worthy of
superhuman flights of virtue--in a novel. I want to see how people
act and suffer who are as good-for-nothing as I am myself. Then I
have the sinful pretension to be amused, whereas all our novelists
want to reform us, and to show us what a hideous place this world is:
Ma foi, je ne le sais que trap, without their help.

The Head of the Family has some merits . . . But there is too much
affliction and misery and frenzy.