THE MAGIC SKIN.

Among Balzac's works these books, "The Magic Skin," "Louis Lambert," and "Seraphita," constitute a triad in which is found the definite and striking continuity illustrative of his philosophical science or "general system." In George Frederick Parson's introduction to the first work, he thus defines Balzac's intention: "He proposed to analyse society as the great philosophical anatomist had analysed the zoological kingdom, and to explain the difference between classes of men and women demonstrating the influence of environment in modifying a common humanity . . . He did not regard himself as a writer of romances, but as a social historian . . . After having accumulated the material for a real history of society in the nineteenth century, "Ought I not," he says of himself, "to study the reasons of these social effects, and, if possible, surprise the hidden meaning in this immense assemblage of figures, passions and events? Finally after having sought, I do not say found, this social motor, is it not necessary to mediate the principles of nature, and ascertain in what society departs from, or approaches to, the eternal law of Truth and Beauty?'"