M. Edmond de Goncourt, the survivor of two distinguished brothers
who were anxious to be thought the realists of French literature, died last week, and was buried on Tuesday at Auteuil. M. Zola delivered one of those orations at the grave which seem intended to throw into relief that vanity of vanities, the craving for literary fame. M. Zola actually con- cluded his doge by saying," One day in his [M. de Goncourt's] Journal, that document so ill-understood and of so poignant an interest, he uttered the sublime cry of all his life devoted to letters, the cry of distress that the earth will one day crumble, and that his works will no longer be read." We can imagine no cry less sublime. Literature, even of the highest kind, is at best but a poor image of the beat parts of human life, and a good deal of it is bat a poor image of the worst parts, and if the earth is to crumble, and man to disappear, it adds nothing to the horror of the catastrophe that the reflected image in the mirror would disappear with him.
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