Books with author Jules Michelet

'The Sea' is another of M. Michelet's dreamy volumes,—half science, half fancy, with a blending in both of sensuous suggestion. M. Michelet takes the seas of the world in his hands, manipulates them, invokes their monsters, assembles all their finny droves, gossips with the sirens, sails among the Hyperborean waters with Behemoth, and is on intimate terms with Tennyson's little shell-king, who lives in a palace with doors of diamond, and wears a rainbow frill, for the admiration of the nations that dwell in his dim, sunken wildernesses. * * * * * He discourses upon marine terrors and beauties, and tells the reader, as a sublime Peter Parley might, that the salt of all the seas, if piled upon America, would spread over the continent a solid, cliff-edged mass, 4,500 feet high. There are chapters on Sands, Cliffs and Beaches; on Waves; on the anatomy of the Sea itself, which resembles "a gigantic animal arrested in the earliest stage of its organization;" on Tempests; on the sympathy between Air and Water; on the Fecundity of the Sea, which, were it not self-devouring, would putrefy, according to M. Michelet into one solid mass of herring; on Fish of every species, and especially on Pearls. The Queens of the East, he says, dislike the gleams of the diamond. They will allow nothing to touch their skins except pearls. A necklace and two bracelets of pearls constitute the perfection of ornament. The pearls silently say to the woman, "Love us! hush!" In the North, too, dainty Countesses love their pearls,—wearing them beneath their clothes by night and by day, concealing them, caressing them, only now and then exposing them. So do the Odalisques of Asia prize the soft linen vestment that just covers their limbs, never taking it off until worn out, which says little for Oriental baths.

Ilustrated"The Insect" is one of the four remarkable works in which the late M. Michelet embodied the results of a loving and persevering study of Nature. These works are absolutely unique; the poetry of Science was never before illustrated on so large a scale, or with so much vividness of fancy, or in so eloquent a style. The aspects of Nature were never before examined with so strong an enthusiasm or so definite an individuality,—with so eager a desire to identify them with the feelings, hopes, and aspirations of humanity. Michelet approached his subject neither as philosopher nor as poet, but yet with something of the spirit of both. His philosophy and poetry, however, were both subordinate to his ardent sympathy with what he conceived to be the soul, the personality of Nature; and whether his attention was directed to the life of ocean, the bird, the insect, or the mountain-plant, he still sought for some evidence of its special and distinct existence, with thoughts and emotions, as it were, and a character of its own. It was almost as if he saw in Nature a likeness to, and a kinship with, humanity. No doubt, in expressing these views he was occasionally led into a certain extravagance, and his enthusiasm not infrequently outran or overmastered his judgment. He lacked the profound insight and sober reflection of Wordsworth, and accuracy of detail was often sacrificed for the sake of a brilliant generalization. But, after making due allowance for defects inseparable, perhaps, from a genius rather passionate and impulsive than analytic and self-composed, it must be admitted that the lover of Nature has cause to be grateful for the fine fancies, and suggestive analogies crowded into the books we speak of.

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"The Insect" is one of the four remarkable works in which the late M. Michelet embodied the results of a loving and persevering study of Nature. These works are absolutely unique; the poetry of Science was never before illustrated on so large a scale, or with so much vividness of fancy, or in so eloquent a style. The aspects of Nature were never before examined with so strong an enthusiasm or so definite an individuality,—with so eager a desire to identify them with the feelings, hopes, and aspirations of humanity. Michelet approached his subject neither as philosopher nor as poet, but yet with something of the spirit of both. His philosophy and poetry, however, were both subordinate to his ardent sympathy with what he conceived to be the soul, the personality of Nature; and whether his attention was directed to the life of ocean, the bird, the insect, or the mountain-plant, he still sought for some evidence of its special and distinct existence, with thoughts and emotions, as it were, and a character of its own. It was almost as if he saw in Nature a likeness to, and a kinship with, humanity. No doubt, in expressing these views he was occasionally led into a certain extravagance, and his enthusiasm not infrequently outran or overmastered his judgment. He lacked the profound insight and sober reflection of Wordsworth, and accuracy of detail was often sacrificed for the sake of a brilliant generalization. But, after making due allowance for defects inseparable, perhaps, from a genius rather passionate and impulsive than analytic and self-composed, it must be admitted that the lover of Nature has cause to be grateful for the fine fancies, and suggestive analogies crowded into the books we speak of.

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