It is some time since we had a gossip about French literature and littÉrateurs. The fact is, that, since the blessed days of February drove crestfallen monarchy from France, and began the pleasant state of things under which that country has since so notably flourished, literature has been at a complete stand-still in the land beyond the Channel. We refer especially to the light and amusing class of books it has been our habit occasionally to notice and extract from. With these the revolution has played the very mischief. Feuilletons have made way for bulletins of barricade contests, for reports of state trials, for the new dictator's edicts and proclamations. The rush at the Cabinets de Lecture has been for lists of genuine killed and wounded, not for imaginary massacres, by M. Dumas' heroes, of hosts of refractory plebeians, or for the full and particular account of the gallant defence of Bussy d'Amboise, against a quarter of a hundred hired assassins—all picked men-at-arms, and all setting on him at once, but of whom, nevertheless, he slays twenty-four, and only by the twenty-fifth is slain. And, by the bye, what pity it is that a few of our friend Alexander's redoubted swordsmen could not have been summoned from their laurel-shaded repose in PÈre la Chaise, to avert the recent catastrophe of the house of Orleans. Just a brace and a half of his king-making mousquetaires would have done the trick in a trice. Rumour certainly says that, in February last, a tall dark-complexioned gentleman, with a bran-new African Kepi on his martial brow, a foil, freshly unbuttoned, in his strong right hand, and a yell of liberty upon his massive lips, was seen to head a furious assault upon the Tuileries, at a time when that palace was undefended. Ill-natured tongues have asserted that this adventurous forlorn-hope leader was no other than the author of Monte Christo; but of this we credit not a syllable. It is notorious that M. Dumas is under the deepest obligations to the ex-king of the French, to whose kind and efficacious patronage (when Duke of Orleans) his first very sudden, very brilliant, and not altogether deserved success as a dramatist was mainly due. Equally well known is it that the popular writer was the favoured and intimate associate of two of Louis Philippe's sons—the Dukes of Orleans and Montpensier. Take, in conjunction with these facts, M. Dumas' established reputation for steady consistency, gravity, and gratitude, and of course it is impossible to believe that he ever acted so basely to his benefactors. But, even admitting republican predilections on his part, his love of liberty would assuredly prevent his constraining those well-known stanch supporters of the right divine, Messrs Athos, Artagnan, and Company, who, if set down in Paris in 1848, would have played the very deuce with the young republic. The giant Porthos would have stridden along the boulevards, kicking over the barricades as easily as he raised, single-handed, the stone which six of the degenerate inhabitants of Bellisle were unable to lift, (Vide "Le Vicomte de Bragelonne;") whilst the astute Gascon Artagnan would have packed General Cavaignac in a magnified bonbon-box, with air-holes in the lid, and Copahine-MÈge or Chocolat-Cuillier on the label; and would have conveyed him on board a fishing smack, there detaining him till he pledged his honour that the king should have his own again. And, upon the whole, and whatever budding honours and civic crowns M. Dumas may anticipate under the genial reign of republicanism, it would have been more to his present interest to have stuck to monarchy, and led his legions to its rescue. Under the new regime his occupation is gone; his literary merchandise vainly seeks a market. Paris, engrossed by domestic broils and political discussions, by its anarchy, its misery, and its hunger—no longer cares for the fabulous exploits of Gascon paladins, and of privates in the Guards, who make thrones to totter, and armies to fly, by the prowess of their single arm. But M. Dumas is not disheartened. When the drama languishes, and the feuilleton grows unproductive, he falls back upon the Premier-Paris. When readers are scarce for twelve-volume romances, and plays in ten acts and thirty tableaux cease to draw, he starts upon a fresh tack—proposes enlightening the public on politics, regenerating France through the leaders of a newspaper. We were greatly amused by his advertisement of the journal, intended to act as lantern to this shining light of the new political day. "Our task is easy"—these were its concluding words—"Dieu dicte, nous Écrivons!" Setting aside the slight profanity of this startling assertion, one cannot but admire the characteristic modesty of the self-conferred secretaryship. We are assured, however, that M. Dumas has been found far less able and attractive at the head of the column, than he was in his old place at the foot of the page.

The disjointed times being decidedly unfavourable to belles lettres, we were scarcely surprised at the first non-arrival of the monthly parcel, in which our punctual Paris agent is wont to forward us the literary novelties of the preceding thirty days. On a second and a third omission, we grew uneasy, and suspected the Red Republicans of abstracting our packages in transitu; but absolved the democrats on receipt of advice, that if the books did not arrive, it was because they were not sent; and that, if they were not sent, it was because there were none, or as good as none, to send. At last a case has reached us—half the usual size, but containing, nevertheless, the French literature of the entire summer. A poor display indeed! The pens of the novelists have shrivelled in their grasp; their plump goose-quills have dwindled into emaciated tooth-picks. Instead of the exuberant eight-volume romance, with promise of continuation, we have single volumes, meagre tales, that seem nipped in the bad, blighted by the breath of revolution. No author, not already involved in one of those tremendous series with which French writers have lately abused the public patience, now cares to exceed a volume or two. M. Sue, having got into the middle of the seven capital sins, is fain to flounder on through the ocean of iniquity; but his pen flags, evidently affected by the discouraging influence of the times. M. Dumas has brought out the final volume of "Les Quarante Cinq," a romance which we may observe, en passant, is a scandalous specimen of what the French call faire la ligne—doing the line, writing against paper, upon the Vauxhall principle of making the smallest possible substance cover the utmost possible surface. It is pity to see a man of remarkable talent, which M. Dumas really is, thus degrading himself into a mere mercantile speculator, lumbering his books with pages upon pages of useless and meaningless dialogue—if dialogue that is to be called, of which the following stuff is a specimen:—

"You are the Chevalier d'Artagnan."

"Then let me pass."

"Useless!"

"Why useless?"

"Because his Eminence is not at home."

"What! His Eminence not at home! Where is he then?"

"Gone."

"Gone?"

"Yes."

"Where?" &c., &c.

This is taken at random, from the volume last published of the Vicomte de Bragelonne, in which romance the marvellous and Crichtonian musketeers, brought forward again, when hard upon threescore, show less sign of suffering from the march of years than does the narrative of their adventures from its unconscionable protraction. Much more than half the book is made up of such wearisome conferences as that above-cited, where the interlocutors carry on a sort of cut-and-thrust conversation, with an economy of words explicable by the fact that in a French feuilleton, or volume, one word of dialogue makes a line, as well as ten. With the assistance of his secretary, M. Maquet, and of his son, Alexander the Younger, M. Dumas gets through a prodigious amount of this sort of trash, at once productive to his pocket and damaging to his reputation; and then, when he finds publishers beginning to grumble, and the public detecting the device, and rejecting the windy repast, he applies himself in earnest, and produces something exceedingly good, of which he is quite capable, if once he gets the spur. It is to the necessity of thus occasionally redeeming his reputation, that we are indebted for the few really praiseworthy romances he has written—for the Chevalier d'Harmental, for the earlier portion of the Mousquetaires, and for his masterpiece, Le Comte de Monte Christo. His enemies and libellers have asserted, that the first-named of these books was written by M. Maquet, and only fathered by Dumas; but the assertion is absurd, and is belied by the book itself, replete with that vivid animation which characterises whatever Alexander writes. Moreover, the man who could write such a novel would have no need to purchase the name of M. Dumas. He would not lack a publisher, and his reputation would soon be made. We believe the fact to be, that Maquet is a sort of industrious drudge, employed by Dumas to rummage chronicles, and to collate and write down historical incidents and facts, for his employer to distort and expand into romances. For, as an historical romance writer, M. Dumas is utterly without a conscience. By him characters and events are twisted and turned as best suits his convenience. "I have twenty years' work before me," he is reported to have said, "to illustrate French history." Heaven knows what sort of an illustrator he is! We would advise no one to take their notions of French historical personages from M. Dumas' novels, or from his history either—for he writes history also, at times, and the only doubt is, which is the greatest fiction, his history or his romance. But for the titles, it were not always easy to distinguish between them. It were unfair, however, whilst quizzing his absurdities, to lose sight of his merits. These are numerous and remarkable. His spirit and vivacity of style are extraordinary; and we can call to mind no living writer superior to him for invention. Monte Christo is his masterpiece. It is indeed a very striking and amusing book. With defects that forbid our calling it a first-rate romance of its class, it is yet far more entertaining than many that claim and obtain the title. The readers of the Journal des Debats well remember the eagerness with which each successive feuilleton was looked for, during its appearance in that paper. We ourselves abominate the feuilleton system, by which one is a year or two reading a book, imbibing it by daily crumbs, like the lady who eats her pillau with a bodkin. We waited till the work was complete, and then read it off the reel,—not at a sitting, certainly, considering the length, but early and late, in bed and at board. And being somewhat fastidious in matter of novels, it is evident Monte Christo must have great attractions thus to carry us at a canter through its interminable series of volumes. Its chief fault is the usual one of its author—exaggeration. We are sure M. Dumas is one of those persons who love to dream with their eyes open—to build themselves palaces in fairyland, to arrange gardens after the fashion of that of Eden, to furnish the most preterperfect of apartments with the most fabulous of furniture, to hang diamonds on their trees, and a roc's egg in their drawing-room. His air-constructed castles find a site in the pages of his romances. The right way to read them is to forget as fast as possible the improbabilities and impossibilities. The supernatural being out of vogue, he does not give to Edmund Dantes the lamp of Aladdin, but (which is quite equivalent) a few double handfuls of precious stones, whereof the smallest specimen is caught at by a Jew for a thousand pounds; whilst one of the largest, hollowed out, forms a convenient receptacle for a score of pills, as big as peas, which it is the Count's custom to carry about with him. With the aid of this incalculable wealth, Dantes pursues his grand scheme of revenge upon the persons to whom he is indebted for fourteen years' undeserved imprisonment in the dungeons of the Chateau d'If. Gold being the universal key, all doors fly open before him: nothing is impossible to the man who scatters millions upon the path leading to the goal of his desires. Take the treasure for granted, and still there is much exaggeration to get over; but there are also many truthful touches, many finely-drawn characters. How exquisitely tender are some of the scenes between the paralytic and his granddaughter; how capital and characteristic the interview between the old Italian gambler and the young French thief, when they are paid by the Count to consider each other as father and son! In this romance there is none of the make-weight dialogue so lavishly interpolated in most of the same author's works. In style, too, and description, M. Dumas here rises above his average. His style, always lively and piquant, is usually loose, unpolished, and defaced by conventionalisms the Academy would hardly sanction. In Monte Christo he has evidently taken pains to do well, and the result is the best written book he has yet produced.

But we lose sight of our parcel, as yet but half unpacked. Here is a volume of the DÉputÉ d'Arcis, (another of the continuation family,) heavy stuff, seemingly, by Balzac; and this brings us to the end of the continuations. With these exceptions, the French writers who have not altogether left off writing, have at least kept within circumscribed limits. Here we have a volume from M. MÉry of Marseilles, a clever, careless writer, not much known in England; another by the authoress of Consuelo; two more from M. Alphonse Karr; a couple from that old sinner, Paul de Kock, who is not often so concise, having superadded, of late years, to his other transgressions the crime of long-windedness; a brief Sicilian sketch from M. Paul de Musset. We turn aside a heap of political matter, of no great merit or value; a few pamphlets, of some talent, but fugitive interest, by Girardin and others; a ream of portraits and caricatures; a few more novels whose authors' names or whose first pages condemn them; Mourir pour la Patrie, and some other revolutionary staves, bad music and worse words, and the box is empty. We sit down to peruse the little we have selected as worth perusal from the pile of printed paper. La Famille Alain, by Karr, is the first thing that comes to hand. We have read the greater part of it already, in the French periodical in which it first appeared. M. Karr is rather a favourite of ours. There are many good points about his novels, although he is, perhaps, less popular as a novelist than as the writer of a small monthly satirical pamphlet, Les GuÈpes, The Wasps, which has existed for several years, with varying, but, upon the whole, with very great success. M. Karr's wit is of a peculiar order, approaching more nearly to humour than French wit generally does. There is an odd sort of dryness and fantastic naÏvetÉ in some of his drolleries, quite distinct from what we are accustomed to in the comic writings of his countrymen. With this the German origin to be inferred from his name may have some connexion. There is also a Germanic vagueness and dreaminess in some of his books, although their scene is usually on French ground, frequently on the coast of Brittany, a country M. Karr evidently well knows and loves. One of his great recommendations is the general propriety of his writings. Of most of them, the tone and tendency are alike unexceptionable, and some are mere "simple stories," which the most fastidious papas—who deny that any good thing can proceed from a French press, and look upon the yellow paper cover with "Paris" at its foot as the ineradicable mark of the beast, the moral quarantine flag, betokening uncleanness which no amount of lazaretto can purge or purify—might with safe conscience place in the hands of their blooming artless sixteen-year-old daughters. The fact is, that people will read French novels—so long as they are not audaciously indecent, immoral, or irreligious—because the present race of French novelists are far cleverer and more amusing than their English brethren. And although some French novels are offensive and abominable, it is not fair to include all in the black list, or to deny that a great improvement has taken place since the period (the early years of the reign of the first and last King of the French) when the Paris press was clogged with indecency and infidelity. We should be very sorry to put Mrs George Sand's works into the hands of any young woman; we would insult no woman, of any age, by commending to her notice the obscene buffoonery of De Kock; but neither would we condemn the whole flock for a sprinkling of scabby sheep. There are many French writers of a very different stamp from the two just named; and M. Karr is one of the better sort. The tale now before us is a Norman story, possessing better plot and incident than many of its predecessors; for in these respects, this author—from indolence, we suspect—is often rather deficient. We need hardly tell our readers that the Norman is noted for his cunning, and for his litigious propensities, as the Gascon is for his boasting and vanity, the Lorrainer for his stolidity, &c., &c. In La Famille Alain, the characteristics of the province, and the casualties of the peasant's and fisherman's life, are cleverly illustrated. Tranquille Alain, surnamed Risquetout, from certain bold feats of his earlier years, lives by the seaside on the produce of his nets. His family consists of his wife PÉlagie, his sons and daughter, CÆsar, Onesimus, and Berenice, and of his foster-daughter PulchÉrie. With respect to these magnificent names, M. Karr thinks it necessary to offer some explanation. "I am not their inventor," he says, "and they are very common in Normandy. There is not a village that has not its Berenices, its Artemesias, its Cleopatras. I know not whence the inhabitants originally took these names. Perhaps they were given by dames of high degree, who took them from Mademoiselle de Scudery's romances, to bestow them on their rustic god-children, and they have since remained traditional in the country." The book opens with the christening of a new fishing-boat, to build which Tranquille Alain has borrowed a hundred crowns of his cousin Eloi, miller and usurer. In France, as elsewhere, and especially in Normandy, millers have a roguish reputation. The loan is to be repaid, part at the beginning and part at the end of the fishing season, with twenty crowns interest. But the season sets in stormy and unfavourable; the fish shun the coast; and at the date appointed for the first payment, the debtor is unprepared with either principal or interest. At last the wind lulls, and the angry waves subside into a long sullen swell. Risquetout and his sons put to sea.

"Towards the close of day, as the boats reappeared on the horizon, Eloi Alain came down from Beuzeval, and waited their arrival upon the beach. They had taken a few whitings. Onesimus was proud, because almost all the fish had been caught on his line.

"Risquetout, who had started that morning rather prematurely, without waiting till the fine weather had thoroughly set in, had a feeling of fear and embarrassment at sight of the miller.

"'Have you caught any thing?' said Eloi.

"'A few whitings. Will you come, and eat some with us?'

"Eloi made no answer; but when the lines and fish had been taken out of the boat, and the boat had been washed and hauled up upon the shore, he followed the three fishers to their home. PÉlagie also felt uneasy at sight of Eloi; she asked him, as Tranquille had done, if he would eat a whiting, to which he replied,—

"'Not to refuse you.'

"Then, as they changed the fish from one basket to another, he took up two, and kept them a long time in his hands, repeating, 'Fine whitings these, very fine whitings!' until PÉlagie said:—

"'You shall take them home with you, cousin.'

"Eloi answered nothing; they sat down to dinner; he found the cider not very good, which did not prevent his drinking a great deal of it.

"'Well, Tranquille,' said he, at last, 'it is to-day you are to pay me the hundred and twenty crowns I lent you.'

"Neither the intrepid Risquetout, nor any of his family, dared to observe that the loan was not of one hundred and twenty crowns, but only of one hundred crowns, for which a hundred and twenty were to be paid back.

"'True,' said Tranquille Alain, 'true; but the same reason which prevented my paying you the other day, prevents me to-day; to-day only have we been able to put to sea.

"'I am sadly inconvenienced for these hundred and twenty crowns I lent you, cousin. I had reckoned on them to employ in an affair—I had taken them from a sum I had in reserve—and here I am, distressed for want of them.'

"'I am sorrier for it than you are, cousin, but a little patience and all will go well.'

"Tranquille did not dare say that Eloi could not be distressed for the hundred and twenty crowns, their agreement having been, that he should repay only a portion at the beginning of the season, and the remainder at its conclusion.

"'And when will you pay me?'

"'Well, cousin, at the end of the season.'

"'The two halves shall be paid together,' added PÉlagie, bolder than her husband.

"'It is to-day the money would be useful to me; I miss an affair on which I should gain fifty crowns! It is very hard to have obliged people, and to find one's-self in difficulty in consequence. I am so much in want of money, Risquetout, that if you give me two hundred francs, I will return you these two bills of sixty crowns each.'

"'You know very well I have no money, Eloi.'

"'Never mind, it shows you what sacrifices I would make to-day, to receive what you owe me.'

"Again no one dared tell the miller that he was not very sincere when he offered to sacrifice a hundred and sixty francs to obtain payment of a sum which would enable him, he said, to gain a hundred and fifty.

"'What is to be done?' said he.

"'I wish I had the money, Eloi.'

"'You say then that you cannot pay, till Michaelmas, the hundred and twenty crowns you should have paid to-day?'

"'That is to say, cousin,' cried PÉlagie, always bolder or less patient than her husband, 'that we should have given you half of it.'

"'Yes; but that half was due a fortnight ago; and, besides, I am in such want of that half, that—See here, now, I offered just now to give you back your bills for two hundred francs; well, pay me one, and I return you both. There is nothing stingy or greedy in that offer, I hope; I lent you a hundred and twenty crowns, and I cry quits for sixty.'

"'Cousin, I repeat that I have no money, and besides, if I had sixty crowns, I would give them you, which would not prevent my giving you the sixty others later.'

"'It is sixty crowns that I lose on the affair I miss for want of money.'

"'PÉlagie longed to remind Eloi that the profit sacrificed had been but fifty crowns a few minutes before, but she held her tongue.

"'I am no Turk,' continued the miller; 'I will renew your bills. Draw one of a hundred and fifty crowns payable at Michaelmas.'

"The husband and wife exchanged a look. PÉlagie spoke.

"'What, cousin! a hundred and fifty crowns! That makes, then, thirty crowns interest from now till Michaelmas, and that on sixty crowns, or rather on fifty, since only half the sum is due; and out of the sixty crowns ten are for interest.'

"'I don't deny it. You think thirty crowns interest too much; well, I offer sixty for the same time. Give me sixty crowns, and I return the two bills, and thank you into the bargain, and you will have done me famous service.'

"'Ah! cousin, I wish I had never borrowed this money of you!'

"'I am sure I wish you had not; I should not be pinched for it to-day. And why am I? Because I won't get you into difficulties, for I might give your two bills in payment for the affair I speak of, and then you would be made to pay, or your boats would be sold; but I prefer being the loser myself, for after all, cousin, we are brothers' sons, and we must help one another in this world.'

"'Nevertheless, cousin, thirty crowns are a very high figure.'

"'Yes; and I should be quite content if you would give me sixty for the hundred and twenty I lent you; but, Lord bless me! add nothing to the bill, if you like—let me lose every thing.'

"'It is fair to add something, Eloi.'

"'Well, since you find thirty crowns too much, when I should be too happy to give sixty, add nothing, or add thirty crowns.'

"Tranquille and his wife looked at each other.

"'I will do as you wish,' said Risquetout.

"'Observe,' said the miller, 'that it is not I who wish it. What I wish, on the contrary, is to see my hundred and twenty crowns which went out of my pocket, and to receive them without addition; what I would gladly agree to is, to receive sixty, and make you a present of the rest.'

"'Write out the bill; I will make my mark.'

"Eloi wrote; but, when about to set down the sum upon the stamp he had brought with him, he checked himself.

"'Tranquille,' said he, 'the stamp is five sous; it is not fair I should pay it. Give me five sous.'

"'There is not a sou in the house,' said PÉlagie.

"'Then we will add it to the amount of the bill. Thus: At Michaelmas I promise to pay to my cousin, Eloi Alain, the sum of four hundred and fifty-one francs (one cannot put four hundred and fifty francs and five sous, it would look so paltry,) which he has been so obliging as to lend me in hard cash. Signed, Tranquille Alain. There, put your mark, and you, PÉlagie, put yours also.'

"The signatures given, Eloi returned the old bills with the air of a benefactor conferring an immense favour.

"'This time, cousin,' said he, 'be punctual. I shall pay away your bill to a miller at Cherbourg; and if you are not prepared to take it up when due, he may not be so accommodating as I am; for, after all, these four hundred and fifty-one francs would be very useful to me, if I had them in my pocket instead of having lent them to you. Four hundred and fifty-one francs are not to be picked up under every hedge; it is not every day one finds a cousin willing to lend him four hundred and fifty-one francs.'

"No one made any observation on this pretended loan of four hundred and fifty-one francs.

"'Well, I must be off. I perhaps lost my temper a little, cousin, but I am really in want of the money. You understand—when one has reckoned on four hundred and fifty-one francs that one has lent—and then not to receive a single copper, it is rather vexatious; but, however, I will manage as I can. I am hasty at the moment, but I bear no malice. It is all forgotten.'

"He then took up the two whitings which had been laid aside for him. At the same time he took a third out of the basket, and placed it beside one of his, comparing the two.

"'I think this is a finer one!' he said. And he weighed them, one in each hand.

"'There is not much difference,' he observed.

"He changed them into the opposite hands, weighed them again, and appeared sadly embarrassed, until his kinsman said to him:

"'Don't mind, cousin, take the three.'

"'Here, Onesimus,' said he, 'run a piece of string through their gills.'

"Onesimus strung them on the end of a strong line. He was about to cut the piece off, when Eloi checked him.

"'Bless me!' said the miller, 'how wasteful children are! He would cut that capital new cord.'

"And he carried away the entire cord, with the three whitings at the end of it, after having several times repeated his advice to Risquetout to be punctual in the payment of his bill, and after kissing Berenice, and saying,—

"'Good-bye, my dear children; I am delighted to have been of service to you.'

"'Our cousin is a very hard and a very griping man,' said PÉlagie.

"'God does not pay his labourers every night,' replied Tranquille, lifting his woollen cap, 'but sooner or later he never forgets to pay. Each man shall be recompensed according to his work.'"

This is by no means the sort of thing generally met with in French romances of the present day. It is neither the back-slum and bloody-murder style, nor the self-styled historical, nor the social-subversive. It is just simple, natural, pleasant reading, free from anything indecent or objectionable. We have taken this chapter because it bears extraction well, not as the best in the book, still less as the only good one. La Famille Alain has a well-contrived plot and well-managed incidents, contains some droll and quiet caricature, and many touching and delicately-handled passages. The correspondence between the young lady at the Paris boarding-school, and the fisherman's daughter at Dive, and the sketches of the company at the watering-place, are each excellent in their way. The introduction of Madame du Mortal and her daughter, and of the Viscount de Morgenstein, is rather foreign to the story, but affords M. Karr opportunity of sketching characters by no means uncommon in France, although little known in England. At this sort of delineation he is the Gavarni of the pen.

"The truth is, that Madame du Mortal's existence had been tolerably agitated. Eight years previously she had quitted M. du Mortal for the society of an officer, who soon, touched by remorse, had left her at full liberty to repair their mutual fault by returning to edify the conjugal mansion by her repentance, and by the exercise of those domestic virtues she had somewhat neglected. Madame du Mortal did nothing of the sort; she knew how to create resources for herself. Formerly, deceived and discouraged people fled to a convent, now they fly to the feuilleton. When a woman finds herself, by misconduct and scandal, excluded from society, she does not weep over her fault and expiate it in a cloister; before long you see her name at the bottom of a newspaper feuilleton, in which she demands the enfranchisement of her sex. No great effort of invention was requisite for Madame du Mortal to devise this resource. Her husband, M. du Mortal, a tall, corpulent man, with a severe countenance and formidable mustaches, had long furnished the article MODES to a widely-circulated newspaper; and under the name of the Marchioness of M——, discoursed weekly upon tucks and flounces, upon the length of gowns and the size of bonnets, according to the instructions of milliners and dressmakers, who paid him to give their names and addresses. Madame du Mortal devoted herself to the same branch of literature, and succeeded in seducing some of her husband's customers."

"The Viscount de Morgenstein was one of those illustrious pianists whose talent has much less connexion with music than with sleight of hand. M. de Morgenstein achieved only three notes a minute less than M. Henry Herz; as he was young and worked hard, it was thought he would overtake, and perhaps surpass that master. He had long curling hair, affected a melancholy and despairing countenance, and was considered to have something fatal in his gait. His mere aspect betrayed the man overwhelmed by the burden of genius and by the divine malediction."

The character of an old country gentleman, who has ruined himself to marry his niece to a spendthrift count, is very well hit off. Eloi Alain, who has a grudge against the poor old fellow, persecutes him in every possible way; his aristocratic and ungrateful nephew refuses him the pension agreed upon, and, to maintain appearances, Monsieur Malais de Beuzeval is reduced to shifts worthy of Caleb Balderstone. Although a parvenu, with vanity for the stimulus of his stratagems, one cannot help feeling sorry for the weak but kind-hearted old man, who shuffles on a livery coat, and puts a patch over his eye, to inform visitors, through the wicket, that he himself is not at home—his own servants having left him; who paints a blaze, each alternate day, upon the face of his sole remaining horse, that neighbours may credit the duplicity of his stud; and who illuminates his drawing-room and jingles his piano in melancholy solitude, to make the world believe M. de Beuzeval is receiving his friends. His manoeuvres to procure a supply of forage, and his ingenuity in dissipating the astonishment of its vender, who cannot comprehend that the master of broad pastures should purchase a load of hay, are capitally drawn. Like every thing else, however, the hay comes to an end, and, at the same time with the horse, the master runs short of provender. Only the four-legged animal has resources the biped does not possess.

"M. de Malais was again compelled to lead out his horse Pyramus during the night, to graze the neighbours' lucerne. One morning the inhabitants of the village of Beuzeval heard the castle-bell announce, as usual, the breakfast. M. de Beuzeval walked into the breakfast room, but found nothing to eat. He nibbled a stale crust and set out for Caen, whence he always brought back a little money, his journeys thither being for the purpose of disposing of some relic of his departed splendour. But when he had ridden a league he remembered it was Sunday; the man he had to see would not be at his shop, and he must wait till the next day. He returned to Beuzeval, and thence rode down to Dive. Berenice, who was lace-making at her door, made him a grateful curtsey, and he stopped to exchange a few words with her. PÉlagie, who was preparing dinner, inquired after PulchÉrie.

"'Madame la Comtesse de Morville is well,' he replied; 'I heard from her the other day. My nephew, Count de Morville, has promised to bring the countess to see me this summer.'

"Onesimus and his father were close to shore. PÉlagie begged M. de Beuzeval's permission to look to their dinner, as they were obliged to put to sea again as soon as they had eaten it. M. Malais got off his horse and entered the house.

"'Your soup smells deliciously,' said he; 'it is cabbage soup.'

"'A soup you seldom see, M. de Beuzeval.'

"'Not for want of asking for it. I am passionately fond of cabbage soup, but they never will make it at my house.'

"'I daresay not. It is not a soup for gentlefolk.'

"'Yours smells excellent, PÉlagie; but you were always a good cook.'

"'Ah, sir! there is one thing that helps me to make good dinners for our men!'

"'What is that, PÉlagie?'

"'A good appetite. They put to sea last night, and here they come, tired, wet, dying of hunger: all that is spice for a plain meal.'

"The fishermen entered.

"'Come along!' cried M. Malais, 'you have a famous soup waiting for you. Upon my word, it smells too good; I must taste it. PÉlagie, give me a plate; I will eat a few spoonsful with you. Certainly, it is but a short time since I took my breakfast—what people call a good breakfast—but without appetite, without pleasure.'

"'Indeed! M. Malais, you will do us the honour of tasting our soup?'

"And PÉlagie hastened to put a clean cloth upon the table. Berenice fetched a pot of cider. Onesimus moored the horse in the shade; then they all sat down, taking care to give the best place to M. Malais, who eagerly devoured a plateful of soup."

We refer to the book itself those who would know how the poor old gentleman made a second fierce assault on the tureen, and an equally determined one on the bacon and greens; to what expedients he was subsequently reduced; how it fared with the Countess PulchÉrie and her scapegrace husband, and what were the struggles, sufferings, and ultimate rewards, of the courageous and simple-hearted Alains. The book may safely be recommended to all readers. This is more than we can say for the next that comes to hand—Un Mariage de Paris by MÉry. This we should pitch into the rubbish-basket after reading the first two chapters, did it not serve to illustrate what we have often noted—the profound and barbarous ignorance of French literary men on the subject of England and the English. Were this confined to the smaller fry, the inferior herd of Trans-canalic scribblers, one would not be surprised. It is nothing wonderful that such gentlemen as M. Paul Feval and poor blind Jacques Arago, should take le gin and le boxe to be the Alpha and Omega of English propensities and manners, and should proceed upon that presumption in romances of such distinguished merit as Les MystÈres de Londres and Zambala l'Indien. But M. MÉry is a man of letters esteemed amongst his fellows—a hasty and slovenly writer, certainly, but possessing wit, and tact, and style, when he chooses to employ them; and having, moreover, he himself assures us, in the pages of the singular production now under dissection, been all through England—although this we apprehend he effected by means of express trains, without stop or stay, from Folkestone to Berwick-upon-Tweed and back again. Even this much acquaintance with the British Isles is denied to many of his contemporaries, who evidently derive their notions of English habits and customs from the frequenters of the English taverns about the Places Favart and Madeleine at Paris. M. MÉry is above this. He draws entirely upon his imagination for the manners, morals, and topography of the country in which his scene is laid. He has got a few names of places, which he jumbles together in the most diverting manner. His hero, Cyprian de Mayran, a Paris exquisite of the first water, saddened by a domestic calamity, comes to London in quest of dissipation and oblivion. He has some acquaintances there, dating from a previous visit, and amongst them is the popular singer Sidora W——, a lady, we are told, "whose talent would have been very contestable at Paris, but was venerated in London, the city of universal toleration. When, in Norma, or Fidelio, she kept only tolerably near to the intentions of the composers, changing their notes into false coin, a phalanx of admirers rose like one man, and a triple round of applause rent thirty pair of yellow gloves. The name of Sidora W—— had great attraction, (the italics are M. MÉry's,) and when displayed on gigantic placards, before Mansion-house, or Post-office, as well as on the modest gray circulars of the grocers, at night whole squadrons of noble equipages were seen manoeuvring between Long Acre and the peristyle of Covent Garden, and the theatre of Drury Lane was invaded." The nightingale who thus, in 1845, filled to suffocation the walls of Drury, (a fact Mr Bunn may have difficulty to remember,) had a rural retreat at Highgate, where she received a motley company. "The garden of reception was like a vast flower-basket inhabited by a woman, and surrounded by a dark fringe of mute adorers. There were all the faces of the English universe: retired Calcutta nabobs; ex-governors of unknown Archipelagos; colonels whose defunct wives were Malabar widows, snatched from the funeral pile of their Indian spouses; admirals bronzed by twenty cruises under the equator; nephews of Tippoo Saib; disgraced ministers from Lahore; ex-criminals from Botany Bay, who, having grown rich, were voted virtuous; princes of Madagascar and Borneo; citizens of New Holland, (naturalised Englishmen, notwithstanding their close affinity to orang-outangs,)—in short all the human or inhuman types that Sem, Cham, and Japhet invented on their escape from the Ark, to amuse themselves a little after a year's diluvian captivity on the summit of Mount Ararat. It is only in London such collections are to be met with; and the foreign naturalist has the gratuitous enjoyment of them. The capital of England is sometimes generous and disinterested in its zoological exhibitions."

Amidst these dingy exotics, Cyprian, "with his Parisian elegance, his fresh complexion, his hair of a vivid auburn, waving like that of the Apollo Belvedere," appeared like a swan amongst gray geese; and, seating himself between "two equinoctial beings not classed by Buffon," he soon engrossed all the attention of the fascinating Sidora, to the suppressed but violent indignation of Prince Rajab-Nandy, and her other copper-coloured admirers. One of these waylays the handsome Frenchman on his return home. Whilst passing over Highgate Bridge, Cyprian's horse starts violently, and an "equinoctial gentleman, with nothing white about his whole person, except a pair of yellow gloves, (a Gallo-Irishism,) springs from amongst the brushwood, and plants himself in the middle of the bridge, like a satyr in the poem of Ramaiana." A duel is arranged, to take place at Cricklewood Cottage, and Cyprian gallops into London by Tottenham-Road. Having no male acquaintances in London, except two sobersided bankers, he is at a loss for seconds. Finally he prevails on two of the opera chorus, in consideration of a new coat and a sovereign, to accompany him to the field of danger; and, after duly gloving and dressing them in Saint-Martin-Court, he packs them in a hackney-coach and starts for Cricklewood, which we now learn is on the summit of the mountain of Hamstead. "There, in a pavilion decorated Chinese-fashion, three men of tropical physiognomy awaited De Mayran...." Opposite the cottage there stretched out, to an immense distance, over hill and over valley, a gloomy forest, which served as dueling ground in the quarrelsome days of the Roundheads and Cavaliers. In a level glade, bare of trees, the Anglo-Indians paused. It was a wild and solitary place; nevertheless, here and there, on the fir trees, were seen enormous electioneering placards, bearing the words, "Vote for Parker!" This is rich, particularly if we bear in mind that the author is perfectly serious, and devoutly believes he is giving a very curious insight into the local usages and characteristics of semi-civilised England. M. MÉry's hero has other adventures, equally true to life,—makes new acquaintances on board a river-steamer; dines with them at Sceptre and Crown at Greenwich, and at Star and Garter at Richmond; and falls violently in love with Madame Katrina Lewing, a beautiful Englishwoman. M. MÉry makes merry on the river Thames, which he affects to believe rises in the immediate vicinity of Richmond, and concerning whose origin and exiguity he is very facetious. He also displays his acquaintance with English literature by quoting "the great poet Pope's famous drinking song in honour of the Thames, 'I you like, little stream!'" Then Cyprian prevails on Katrina to elope with him to Port Natal, (of all places in the world!) and realises his fortune as a preparatory measure; but Katrina proves a mere decoy-duck, and the amorous Frenchman is stripped of his bank-notes, and left in the dead of night in the middle of a field. In vain, at daybreak, does he seek a shepherd to question, because, as M. MÉry testifies, English peasants do not inhabit the fields; shepherds are scarcely known in the country; and the only one he, the aforesaid MÉry, ever beheld, during his extensive rambles in England, was a well-dressed young gentleman, with gloves on, reading the Morning Chronicle under a tree. Then we have a thieves' orgie, where the liquors in demand are claret and absinthe, nothing less—M. MÉry not condescending to the gin, so much abused by his contemporaries. And, finally, a murder having been committed, its circumstances are investigated on the spot, by a Queen's proctor, assisted by two policemen, a barmaid, and a physician. We might multiply these literary curiosities; but we have given enough to prove their author's intimate acquaintance with the country about which he so agreeably writes. It is related of M. MÉry's friend Dumas, that he once resolved on a visit to London, posted to Boulogne, steamed to London bridge, and reached St Paul's, but there turned back, anathematising fog and sea-coal, and never stopped till he found himself in the ChaussÉe d'Antin. Without vouching for the truth of this tale, we must admit its probability when told of the eccentric Alexander. Mr MÉry's knowledge of this country is just what he might have obtained by an hour's conversation with his friend, upon the return of the latter from his journey to St Paul's. But it is a crying sin of French writers, when they get upon foreign ground, that, in their anxiety to give to their books a tinge characteristic of the country, (couleur locale they call it,) they outstrip the limits assigned to them by their real knowledge of the land and its inhabitants, and, meaning to be effective, become simply ridiculous. And England is the country, of all others, whose ways they apparently have most difficulty in rightly comprehending. On a more southern soil they are less apt to run into absurdities, but sin chiefly on the side of overcolouring. This may be alleged, although to no violent extent, of a pleasant little romance by Paul de Musset, La ChÈvre Jaune—The Yellow Goat—intended as an illustration of Sicilian life, particularly amongst the lower orders. The hero of the tale is a precocious peasant boy, dwelling in the mountains with his mother—a fierce old lady who owns a rifle, and detests the Neapolitans. This boy, who herds goats, pets one of them, and trains her to dance; by which means, and by his own good mien, he gains the affections of a notary's daughter, whose papa, disapproving of the attachment, has the peasant taken up on a false accusation of theft. The boy escapes, turns bandit, and is accompanied in his forays and ambuscades by his goat, who dances tarantellas on the mountain-tops, and plays so many queer antics that she finally is held uncanny, and becomes an object of fear and veneration to the ignorant Sicilians. The story is prettily and pleasingly told, and is just the sort of reading for a lazy man on a hot day. But, like most of the same author's works, it wants vigour and originality. Paul de Musset is a careful and a polished writer, and whatever he executes conveys the idea of his having done his best; but his best is by no means first-rate, and he labours under the great disadvantage of having a younger brother a far cleverer fellow than himself. Nevertheless, he is not to be spoken of disrespectfully. Slight as most of his productions are, they are often graceful, and sometimes witty. One of his recent bluettes, Fleuranges, although a thrice-told tale, is distinguished by its charming vivacity and lightness.

We turn to FranÇois le Champi, by George Sand. We need hardly say that Madame Dudevant is any thing but a favourite of ours. Whilst admitting her genius and great literary talent, we deplore the evil application of such rare powers,—the perversion of intellect so high to purposes so mischievous. And we cannot agree with M. de Lomenie, who, in his sketch of her life, asserts the pernicious influence of her books to be greatly exaggerated, maintaining that "the catastrophe of almost all of them contains a sort of morality of misfortune which, to a certain extent, replaces any other." This is a specious, but a very hollow argument. How many of those who read George Sand's books have ability or inclination to strike this nice balance between virtue and vice, and do not rather yield themselves captives to the seductive eloquence with which the poetess depicts and palliates the immorality of her characters! Her earlier works gave her a fair claim to the title of the Muse of Adultery, which some uncivil critic conferred on her. The personages were invariably husband, wife, and lover, and the former was by no means the best treated of the three. After a while she deviated from this formula—employed other types, and produced occasionally books of a less objectionable character; but, upon the whole, they are ill to choose amongst. In the one before us there is no great harm, but neither is there much to admire. As a literary production, it is below the average of its predecessors. It is a story of peasant life in western France. George Sand is taking a country walk one evening, when her companion accuses her of making her rustics speak the language of cities. She admits the charge, but urges, in extenuation, that if she makes the dweller in the fields speak as he really speaks, she must subjoin a translation for the civilised reader. Her friend still insists on the possibility of elevating the peasant dialect, without depriving it of its simplicity; of writing a book in language that a peasant might employ, and which a Parisian would understand without a single explanatory note. To professors and amateurs of literary art, the discussion is of interest. Madame Sand agrees to attempt the task; and takes for her subject a tale she has heard related the previous evening, at a neighbouring farm-house. She calls it FranÇois le Champi, but her critic cavils at the very title. Champi, he says, is not French. George Sand quotes Montaigne, to prove the contrary, although the dictionary declares the word out of date. A champi is a foundling, or child abandoned in the fields, the derivation being from champ. And having thus justified her hero's cognomen, she at once introduces him, at the tender age of six years, boarded by the parish with Zabella, an old woman who dwells in a hovel, and lives on the produce of a few goats and fowls that find subsistence on the common. Madeleine Blanchet, the pretty and very young wife of the miller of Cornouer, takes compassion on the poor infant, and finds means to supply him, unknown to her brutal husband and cross mother-in-law, with food and raiment. The child grows into a comely lad, gentle, intelligent, and right-hearted, and devotedly attached to Madeleine. He enters the service of the miller, a rough dissipated fellow, given up to the fascinations of a loose widow, Madame SÉvÈre, a sort of rural Delilah, who tries to seduce the handsome Champi, and, failing of success, instils jealousy into the ear of the miller, who drives FranÇois from his house. The young man finds occupation in a distant village, and returns to the mill of Cornouer only when its master is dead and Madeleine on a bed of sickness, to rescue his benefactress from grasping creditors, by means of a sum of money his unknown father has transmitted to him. George Sand makes every woman in the book fall in love with the Champi; but he repulses all, save one, and that one never dreams of loving him otherwise than as a mother. At last one of the fair ones who would fain have gained his heart, generously reveals to him, what he himself has difficulty in believing, that he is in love with Madeleine Blanchet; and, further, compassionating his timidity, undertakes to break the ice to the pretty widow. It requires a talent like that of George Sand to give an air of probability to all this. There are at most but a dozen years' difference between Madeleine and the Champi, but the reader has been so much accustomed to look upon them in the light of mother and son, that he is somewhat startled on finding the boy of nineteen enamoured of the woman of thirty. The love-passages, however, are managed with Madame Sand's usual skill. As a picture of peasant life, the book yields internal evidence of fidelity. The granddaughter of the farmer-general of Berri has called up the memories of her youthful days, passed in happy liberty upon the sunny banks of Indre, and of the years of connubial discontent that went heavily by in her husband's Aquitanian castle, when country rides and the study of Nature's book were her chief resources. It was from this castle of Nohant that the Baroness Dudevant fled, now nearly twenty years ago, to commence the exceptional existence she since has led. We may venture to take a page from her Lettres d'un Voyageur—a page replete with that peculiar fascination which renders her pen so powerful for good or evil.

"It grieves me not to grow old, it would grieve me much to grow old alone; but I have not yet met the being with whom I would fain have lived and died; or, if I have met him, I have not known how to keep him. Hearken to a tale, and weep. There was a good artist, called Watelet, who engraved in aquafortis better than any man of his time. He loved Margaret Lecomte, and taught her to engrave as well as himself. She left her husband, her wealth, and her country, to live with Watelet. The world cursed them; then, as they were poor and humble, it forgot them. Forty years afterwards there were discovered, in the neighbourhood of Paris, in a little house called Moulin-Joli, an old man who engraved in aquafortis, with an old woman whom he called his MeuniÈre, who also engraved at the same table. The last plate they executed represented Moulin-Joli, Margaret's house, with this device,—Cur valle permutem Sabin divitias operosiores! It hangs in my room, above a portrait whose original no one here has seen. During one year, he who gave me that portrait seated himself every night with me at a little table, and lived on the same labour as myself. At daybreak we consulted each other on our work, and we supped at the same table, talking of art, of sentiment, and of the future. The future has broken its word to us. Pray for me, O Margaret Lecomte!"

It is no secret that Madame Dudevant's Watelet was Jules Sandeau, a French novelist of some ability, whose name still makes frequent apparitions in the windows of circulating libraries, and at the foot of newspaper feuilletons. Let us see what M. de Lomenie says of this period of her life, and of her first appearance in the lists of literature, in his brief but amusing memoir of this remarkable woman.

"Some time after the July revolution, there appeared a book entitled, Rose et Blanche, or the Actress and the Nun. This book, which at first passed unnoticed, fell by chance into a publisher's hands; he read it, and, struck by the richness of certain descriptive passages, and by the novelty of the situations, he inquired the author's address. He was referred to a humble lodging-house, and, upon applying there, was conducted to a small attic. There he saw a young man writing at a little table, and a young woman painting flowers by his side. These were Watelet and Margaret Lecomte. The publisher spoke of the book, and it appeared that Margaret, who could write books as well as Watelet, and even better, had written a good part, and the best part, of this one; only, as books sold badly, or not at all, she combined with her literary occupations the more lucrative labour of a colourist. Encouraged by the publisher's approval, she took from a drawer a manuscript written entirely by herself; the publisher examined it, bought it, doubtless very cheap, and might have paid a much higher price without making a bad speculation, for it was the manuscript of Indiana. Soon after that, Margaret Lecomte left Watelet, took half his name, called herself George Sand, and of that half name has made herself one which shines to-day amongst the greatest and most glorious."

Somebody has hazarded the sweeping assertion that the lover is the King of George Sand's novels. George Sand herself is the queen of the class of femmes incomprises, the victim of a mariage de convenance. The death of her grandmother left her, at the very moment she quitted the convent where she had been educated, alone and almost friendless. Ignorant of the world, she allowed herself to be married to a rough old soldier, who led a prosaic existence in a lonely country-house, had no notion of romance, sentiment, or reverie, and made little allowance for them in others. The days that ought to rank amongst the brightest memories of a woman's heart, the early years of marriage, were a blank, or worse, to Aurora Dudevant, and the bitterness thus amassed not unfrequently breaks forth in her writings. It has been urged by her partisans, in extenuation of her conjugal faux pas, that her husband was ignorant and brutal. On the other hand, the idle have invented many of the delinquencies imputed to her since her separation, just as they have told absurd stories about her fantastical habits; and have made her out a sort of literary Lola Montes, swaggering and smoking in man's attire, and brandishing pistol and horsewhip with virile energy and effect. The atmosphere of Paris is famous for its magnifying powers. Seen through it, a grain of sand becomes a mountain, an eccentricity is often distended into a vice. We lay this down as a rule, which none who know and understand the French metropolis will dispute; but we do not, at the same time, in any way take up the gloves in defence of George Sand, with whom we have not the honour of a personal acquaintance, and whose writings would certainly incline us to somewhat ready credence of her irregularities and masculine addictions. Now that she has attained the ripe age of forty-four, we may suppose her sobered down a little. Before the February revolution upset society, and drove the majority of the wealthy from Paris, we happen to know she was a welcome guest in some of the most fashionable and aristocratic drawing-rooms of the Faubourg St Germain, where she was sought and cultivated for the charm of her conversation. Since the revolution, there have been reports of her presiding, or at least assisting, at democratic orgies; but these rumours, as the newspapers say, "require confirmation." Since we have, somehow or other, got led into this long gossip about the lady, we will make another extract from the writer already quoted, who tells an amusing story of his first introduction, obtained by means of a misdelivered note, intended by the authoress of Lelia for a man who cured smoky chimnies. A resemblance of name brought the missive (a summons to a sick funnel) into the hands of the biographer, who, puzzled at first, finally resolved to take advantage of the mistake, to ascertain whether George Sand really did wear boots and spurs, and smoke Virginian in a short pipe. He expected something masculine and alarming, but in this respect was agreeably disappointed.

"I saw before me a woman of short stature, of comfortable plumpness, and of an aspect not at all Dantesque. She wore a dressing gown, in form by no means unlike the wrapper which I, a commonplace mortal, habitually wear; her fine hair, still perfectly black, whatever evil tongues may say, was separated on a brow broad and smooth as a mirror, and fell freely adown her cheeks, in the manner of Raphael; a silk handkerchief was fastened loosely round her throat; her eyes, to which some painters persist in imparting an exaggerated power of expression, were remarkable, on the contrary, for their melancholy softness; her voice was sweet, and not very strong; her mouth, especially, was singularly graceful; and in her whole attitude there was a striking character of simplicity, nobility, and calm. In the ample temples and rich development of brow, Gall would have discerned genius; in the frankness of her glance, in the outline of her countenance, and in the features, correct but worn, Lavater would have read, it seems to me, past suffering, a time-present somewhat barren, an extreme propensity to enthusiasm, and consequently to discouragement. Lavater might have read many other things, but he certainly could have discovered neither insincerity, nor bitterness, nor hatred, for there was not a trace of these on that sad but serene physiognomy. The Lelia of my imagination vanished before the reality; and it was simply a good, gentle, melancholy, intelligent, and handsome face that I had before my eyes.

"Continuing my examination, I remarked with pleasure that the grande dÉsolÉe had not yet completely renounced human vanities; for, beneath the floating sleeves of her gown, at the junction of the wrist with the white and delicate hand, I saw the glitter of two little gold bracelets of exquisite workmanship. These feminine trinkets, which became her much, greatly reassured me touching the sombre tint, and the politico-philosophic exaltation, of certain of George Sand's recent writings. One of the hands that thus caught my attention concealed a cigarito, and concealed it badly, for a treacherous little column of smoke ascended behind the back of the prophetess."

Whether or no the interview thus described really took place, Madame Dudevant should feel obliged to her biographer for his gentle treatment and abstinence from exaggeration. On the strength of the puff of smoke and the epicene dressing gown, many writers would have sketched her hussar fashion, and hardly have let her off the mustaches.

We are nearly at the end of our parcel, at least of such portion of it as appears worthy a few words. Here are a brace of volumes by M. de Kock, over which we are not likely long to linger. An esteemed contributor to Maga expressed, a few years ago, his and our opinion concerning this ancient dealer in dirt—namely, that he has no deliberate intention to corrupt the morals or alarm the delicacy of his readers, for that morals and delicacy are words of whose meaning he has not the slightest conception. Paul, every Frenchman tells you, is not read in France, save by milliners' girls and shopboys, or by literary porters, who solace the leisure of their lodge by a laugh over his pages, contraband amongst gens comme il faut. No man is a prophet in his own land; and yet we have certain reasons for believing that, even in France, Paul has more readers, avowed or secret, than his countrymen admit. But at any rate, we can offer the old gentleman (for M. Kock must be waxing venerable, and his son has for some years been before the public as an author,) the consolatory assurance, that in England he has numerous admirers, to judge from the thumbed condition of a set of his works, which caught our eye last summer on the shelves of a London circulating library. To these amateurs of "Kockneyisms," whether genuine cockneys, or naturalised cooks and barbers from Gaul, Taquinet le Bossu will be welcome. The hunchback, everybody knows, is a great type in France. Who is not acquainted with the glorious Mayeux, the swearing, fighting, love-making hero of a host of popular songs, anecdotes, and caricatures, and of more than one romance—especially of a four-volume one by Ricard, a deceased rival of De Kock? Well, Paul—who, we must admit, is quite original, and disdains imitation—has never meddled with the hackneyed veteran Mayeux, but now creates a hunchback of his own. Taquinet is the dwarf clerk of a notary, luxuriating in a wage of fifty pounds a-year, and a hunch of the first magnitude. Pert as a magpie, mischievous and confiding, devoted to the fair sex, and especially to its taller specimens, he is a fine subject for Monsieur de Kock, who gets him into all manner of queer scrapes, some not of the most refined description. The French hunchback, we must observe, is a genus apart—quite different from high-shouldered people of other countries. Far from being susceptible on the score of his dorsal protuberance, he views it in the light of an excellent joke, a benefaction of nature, placed upon his spine for the diversion of himself and his fellow-men. The words bosse and bossu (hunch and hunchback) have various idiomatic and proverbial applications in France. To laugh like a bossu, implies the ne plus ultra of risibility: se donner une bosse—literally, to give one's-self a hunch—is synonymous with sharing in a jovial repast where much is eaten and more drunk. An excellent caricature in the Charivari, some years ago, represented a group of half-starved soldiers sitting round a fire of sticks at the foot of Atlas, and picking a dromedary's scull—"Pas moyen de se donner une bosse!" exclaims one of the dissatisfied conscripts. On twelve hundred francs per annum, poor Taquinet often makes the same complaint; and, in hopes of bettering his fortune, wanders into Germany on a matrimonial venture, there to be jilted by Fraulein Carottsmann, for a strolling player with one coat and three sets of buttons, who styles himself Marquis, because he has been occasionally hissed in the line of characters designated in France by that aristocratic denomination. Then there is a general of Napoleon's army who cannot write his name; and a buxom sutler and a handsome aide-de-camp, sundry grisettes, and the other dramatis personÆ habitually to be met with in the pages of Paul—the whole set forth in indifferent French, and garnished with buffoonery and impropriety, after the usual fashion of this zany of Parisian novelists.

Is it true that M. HonorÉ de Balzac is married to a female millionnaire, who fell in love with him through his books and his reputation? If so, let him take our advice and abjure scribbling—at least till he is in the vein to turn out something better than his recent productions—better, at least, than the first volume of the DÉputÉ d'Arcis, now lying before us. What heavy, vulgar trash, to flow from the pen of a man of his abilities! After beginning his literary career with a series of worthless books, published under various pseudonymes, and whose authorship he has since in vain endeavoured to disclaim, he rose into fame by his ScÈnes de la Vie de Province, by his Peau de Chagrin, his PÈre Goriot, and other striking and popular works. The hour of his decline then struck, and he has since been rolling down the hill at a faster rate than he ascended it. His affectation of originality is wearisome and nauseous in the extreme. He reminds us of a nurseryman we once knew, who, despairing of equalling the splendour of a neighbour's flowers, applied himself to the production of all manner of floral monstrosities, mistaking distortion for beauty, and eccentricity for grace. He strains for new conceptions and ideas till he writes nonsense, or something very little better. And his mania for introducing the same personages in twenty different books, renders it necessary to read all in order to understand one. The question becomes, whether it is worth while going through so much to obtain so little. Our reply is a decided negative. If the system, however, be annoying to the reader, for the author it has its advantages. It is, in fact, a new species of puffery, of considerable ingenuity. Backwards and forwards, M. de Balzac refers his public; his books are a system of mutual accommodation and advertisement. Thus, in the DÉputÉ &c., apropos of a lawsuit, we find in brackets and in large capitals,—"See Une Tenebreuse Affaire." A little farther on, an allusion being made to the town of Provins, we are requested to "See Pierrette." Similar admonitions are of constant recurrence in the same author's writings. The plan is really clever, and proves Paris a step or two ahead of London in the art of advertising. We have not yet heard of Moses and Doudney stamping on a waistcoat back an injunction to "Try our trousers," or embroidering on a new surtout a hint as to the merits of a 'poplin overcoat.' "Buy our bear's grease!" cries Mr Ross the perfumer. "Prenez mon ours!" chimes in M. Balzac, the author. O Paris! Paris! romantic and republican, political and poetical, of all the cities of the plain thou art the queen, and humbug is the chief jewel in thy diadem!