From The North American Review of Current American Literature, August, 1887: In Things Seen we have some rapid sketches, dated from 1838 to 1875, beginning with a wonderful portrait of Talleyrand and ending with Thiers and Rochefort. It would be strange, indeed, if the personality of a writer who came to earth with that strange miracle, the French Revolution, could ever lose its fascination. These sketches have the power of simplicity. Hugo attempts in them none of those vast and Dore-like effects which in his more important works became eventually a blemish.