Chapter IV: Part 4

The homely tastes of George III., his love of farming, and habit of amusing himself with a turning-lathe, were great themes for scurrilous attacks upon the royal person, both in print and caricature. "Mr King the button-maker" was held up to ridicule in every low publication on the Opposition side of the question. The _Oxford Magazine_ frequently returned to the charge, sometimes with almost as much humour as impertinence. This was rather earlier than the American war, which gave rise to still more offensive inuendoes against the sovereign. Thus, when an outcry was got up against the employment of Indians in conjunction with the British troops in North America, and when all manner of horrible stories of cannibalism and so forth were set afloat, we are shown a caricature of the king squatted on the ground, cheek by jowl with a befeathered savage. The Indian handles a tomahawk, the king holds a skull, and "the Allies" (this is the title of the disgusting print) gnaw each at his own end of a large human bone. The brutality of the conception renders such a caricature as this far more unpleasant than the coarse, but generally good-humoured, quizzes subsequently executed by Gillray on royal foibles and economy. Some of our older readers may remember these. They were published towards the end of the last century. Half-a-dozen are excellently well copied on pages 205 to 211 of Mr Wright's second volume. There is "The Introduction"--George III and Queen Charlotte receiving their daughter-in-law the Princess of Prussia, and bewildered with delight at the golden dowery she brings. Then we have the King toasting his muffins, and the Queen frying her sprats; and again, (the best of them,) the royal pair out for a walk, and majesty overwhelming an unlucky pig-feeder by a volley of interrogative iterations. But few caricatures bear description, and least of all Gillray's, where the design is often of the simplest, and the humour of the execution every thing.

Gillray's first attempts at caricature were on the occasion of Lord Rodney's victory over De Grasse. It will be remembered that, when the North Administration went out in 1782, one of the first acts of their Liberal successors was to recall Rodney, a stanch Tory, on pretext of his not having done all he ought to have done with the West Indian fleet. England was badgered by her numerous enemies, and her affairs looked altogether discouraging, when sudden news arrived of the triumph which established her sovereignty of the seas. Ministers found themselves in an awkward predicament. It was neither gracious nor graceful to persist in the victor's recall, and yet, what else could be done? His successor, Admiral Pigot, had already sailed. Too late, an express was sent to stop him. "A cold vote of thanks was given by both Houses to the victorious Rodney, and he was raised to the peerage, but only as a baron, and was voted a pension of but £2000 a-year." Such shabby reward for an achievement of immense importance was, of course, not suffered to pass unnoticed by the late ministry, now the Opposition. A fleet of caricatures was launched, and amongst them were two by the then unknown Gillray. In one of them, "King George runs towards the admiral with the reward of a baron's coronet, and exclaims, (in allusion to Rodney's recall and elevation to the peerage,) 'Hold, my dear Rodney, you have done enough! I will now make a lord of you, and you shall have the happiness of never being heard of again!'" Probably these maiden efforts attracted little notice, for some time still elapsed before Gillray made much use of his pencil for the public amusement. In this same year of 1782, however, he brought out a clever caricature of Fox, who had just resigned his foreign secretaryship on Lord Shelburne's coming to be prime minister, _vice_ Rockingham, deceased. In this print Charles James is represented, as a sort of parody on Milton's Satan, gazing with envious eye at Shelburne and Pitt, as they count their money on the treasury table.

"Aside he turned
For envy, yet with jealous leer malign
Eyed them askance."

The expression of Fox's face is excellent, and the likeness good, but yet it wants something of the raciness of Gillray's later works. Fox and Burke were the great butts of the satirists at this particular moment, and also in the following year, on the occasion of their coalition with Lord North. James Sayer, then in full force as a caricaturist, and anxious to curry favour with his patron Pitt, to whom he was subsequently indebted for more than one lucrative place, was very severe upon them; and the power of caricature at that time must have been very great, if it be true that Fox admitted the severest blow received by his India Bill to have been from a drawing of Sayer's. It was a cry of the day that Fox aimed at a sort of Indian dictatorship for himself, and the satirists gave him the nickname of Carlo Khan. In the caricature in question, entitled "Carlo Khan's Triumphant Entry into Leadenhall Street," "Fox, in his new character, is conducted to the door of the India House on the back of an elephant, which exhibits the full face of Lord North, and he is led by Burke as his imperial trumpeter; for he had been the loudest supporter of the bill in the House of Commons. A bird of ill-omen croaks from above the would-be monarch's doom." On the other side of the question, several good caricatures also appeared, levelled chiefly at William Pitt, then on the eve of his prime ministership, and amongst these were three, published anonymously, which Mr Wright is probably not mistaken in attributing to the pencil of Rowlandson.

The imitation of French fashions and manners, and even of French profligacy, already noticed as gaining ground in English society about the middle of the eighteenth century, had reached the highest pitch towards its close. Nothing could be more absurd than the dresses of 1785, the enormous hats and prodigious _buffonts_ and buckram monstrosities of the women, except perhaps the rush into the opposite extreme which took place at the commencement of the French Revolution. One of the caricatures of 1787, under the title of "Mademoiselle Parapluie," shows us a young lady serving as an umbrella, sheltering a whole family from a shower beneath the tremendous brim of her hat, (a regular fore-and-after), and under the protecting shadow of a protuberance, concerning whose composition (crinoline not having then been invented) future ages must remain in deplorable darkness. Then, every thing was sacrificed to breadth in costume. Pass we over six or seven years, and the lady of fashion who, at their commencement, could hardly get through a moderate-sized doorway, might almost glide head-foremost through the keyhole. A thin scanty robe, clinging close to the form, a turban and a single lofty plume, a waist close up under the arms, a watch the size of a Swedish turnip, with a profusion of seals and pendants, compose the fashionable female attire of that day. The dress of the men is equally ridiculous, both in cut and material, the great rage then being for striped stuffs, known as Zebras, and employed for coats as well as for the absurd pantaloons, puffed out round the hips and buttoned tight on the leg, in vogue amongst the beaux of the period. The modes that succeeded these were equally exaggerated and ugly. And the frivolity and extravagance of the time kept pace with the follies of dress. There was a rage for strange sights and extraordinary exhibitions; and the Londoners, especially, carried this passion to an extent that rendered them easy dupes of charlatans and impostors. "It stands recorded in the newspapers of the time, on the 9th of September 1785,--'Handbills were distributed this morning that a bold adventurer meant to walk upon the Thames from Riley's Tea Gardens.' We are further informed that, at the hour appointed, thousands of people had crowded to the spot, and the river was so thickly covered with boats, that it was no easy matter to find enough water uncovered to walk upon." Of course the thing was a mere trick, and the Cockneys had their disappointment for their pains. Then balloons were the crotchet of the hour, and they also came from France, where they had been brought to a certain degree of perfection, but where it was soon found they were more positively dangerous than probably useful; for in May 1784, "a royal _ordonnance_ forbade the construction or sending up of 'any aërostatic machine,' without an express permission from the king, on account of the various dangers attendant upon them; intimating, however, that this precaution was not intended to let the 'sublime discovery' fall into neglect, but only to confine the experiments to the direction of intelligent persons." In England, the fancy for them increased, and was the subject of various caricatures and pamphlets, until the death of a couple of Frenchmen, thrown to the earth from an immense height, cooled the soaring courage of the aëronauts. A more destructive and permanent folly was the passion for gambling, which, in spite of the attacks of the press, of grave censure and cutting satire, pervaded all ranks of society. There was a perfect fury for faro; and ladies of high fashion, and of aristocratic name, thought it not beneath them to convert their houses into hells. Three of these sporting dames, who had made themselves a name as keepers of banks, to which they enticed young men of fortune, were popularly known as "Faro's daughters." Lord Kenyon, when deciding on a gambling case, pledged himself, in a moment of virtuous indignation, to sentence _the first ladies in the land_ to the pillory, should they be brought before him for a similar offence. Not long afterwards, several titled gamblers were actually arraigned at his tribunal, but he forgot his threat, and let them off with a fine. The hint, however, was enough for Gillray, then in his glory, and for his brothers of the comic brush, and the moral exposure and castigation which 'Faro's daughters' endured at the hands of the caricaturists, can have been hardly less stinging and annoying than actual exposure to the hooting and pelting of the mob. General demoralisation, the natural consequence of gambling, characterised this period. Men and women, ruined at the board of green cloth, recruited their finances as best they might; and when no other resource remained, the latter bartered their reputation, and the former took to the road. Those were the palmy days of highway robbery. "We are in a state of war at home that is shocking," writes Horace Walpole in 1782. "I mean from the enormous profusion of housebreakers, highwaymen, and footpads; and, what is worse, from the savage barbarities of the two latter, who commit the most wanton cruelties. The grievance is so crying, that one dares not stir out after dinner but well armed. If one goes abroad to dinner, you would think he was going to the relief of Gibraltar." Sixty-two years ago, in January 1786, "the mail was stopped in Pall Mall, close to the palace, and deliberately pillaged, at so early an hour as a quarter past eight in the evening."

After having for some years drawn their principal themes for satire from the social follies and political dissensions of their countrymen, the English caricaturists and song-writers found "fresh fields and pastures new" in foreign menaces and threatened invasion. In their usual presumptuous tone, French newspapers and proclamations spoke of the conquest of England by the conqueror of Italy, as of a project whose realisation admitted not the smallest doubt. This country had not then that confidence of invincibility which she gathered from subsequent victories in the field; and the positive assertions of France, that she had but to throw an army on the English coast to secure prompt and powerful co-operation from the Jacobin party, caused considerable alarm in the country. To kindle true patriotism, and raise the courage of the nation, recourse was had to loyal songs, and anti-French caricatures. The anti-Jacobin lent efficient aid, and Gillray put his shoulder to the wheel. The periodical and the artist were a host in themselves. Clever verses, and pointed caricatures, followed each other in quick succession. Soon Buonaparte betook himself to Egypt, the victory of the Nile spread rejoicing through the land, and caricatures caught the exultation of the hour. John Bull was represented at dinner, forking French frigates down his capacious gullet, and supplied with the provender, as fast as he could devour it, by Nelson and other nautical cooks. Buonaparte, stripped to the waist, with all enormous cocked-hat on his head, and the claret flowing freely from his nose, receives fistic punishment at the hands of Jack Tar. The suppression of the Irish rebellion of '98, and the death of General Hoche, who had replaced Buonaparte as the threatened invader of the British Isles, confirmed the feeling of security our naval triumphs had inspired. The Peace of Amiens set the wags of the pencil on a new tack, and Monsieur François was represented as imprinting "The first Kiss these Ten Years" on the lips of burly, blushing Britannia, who, whilst accepting the salute, hints a doubt of her admirer's sincerity. The doubt was justified by the rupture that speedily followed. The camp of Boulogne was formed; the French army were reminded of the pleasant pastime, in the shape of rape and robbery, that awaited them in the island famed for wealth and beauty. On this side the Channel nothing was left undone that might increase English contempt and hatred for the blustering bullies upon the other. Individuals and associations printed and disseminated "loyal tracts," as they were called. "Every kind of wit and humour was brought into play to enliven these sallies of patriotism; sometimes they came forth in the shape of national playbills, sometimes they were coarse and laughable dialogues between the Corsican and John Bull." Libels on Buonaparte, burlesques on his acts, parodies of his bulletins, accounts of the atrocities of his armies, were daily put forth, mingled with countless songs and tracts of encouragement and defiance. Some of these were spirited, but generally the substance and intention were better than the form--at least so they now appear to us, who read them without the additional savour imparted by the appropriateness of their time of production. Gillray keeps better, and one still must smile at his John Bull, standing in mid-Channel with trousers tucked up to his thighs, offering a fair fight to his meagre enemy, who contemplates him with a visage of grim dismay from above the triple batteries of the French coast. It is said that Buonaparte was much annoyed by personalities levelled at himself and his family, in some of the caricatures of 1803. They were often very coarse, and conveyed unhandsome imputations on the conduct of his female relatives; some of whom--rather flighty dames, if all tales be true--gave by their conduct plausible grounds for such attacks. Napoleon himself was represented in every odious and contemptible shape that could be devised,--as a butcher, a pigmy, an ogre, and even as a _fiddle_, transformed by an abominable pun into a _base villain_, upon which John Bull, a complacent smile upon his honest face, plays with sword instead of bow. This was after Maida, when the British army had begun to share the high esteem in which repeated victories had long caused our fleets to be held. A droll caricature, by Woodward, represents Napoleon abusing his master-shipwright for not keeping him better supplied with ships; whilst the unfortunate constructor, with hair on end, and a shrug to his ears, excuses himself upon the ground that, as fast as he builds, the English capture. It is to be remarked that hardly any of the caricatures of Napoleon attempt a likeness of him. They usually represent him as a lantern-jawed, disconsolate-looking wretch, with a prodigious cocked-hat and plume of feathers--that is to say, quite the contrary, both in head and head-dress, of what he really was. Both Gillray and his successors seem to have preferred sketching him as the received personification of a Frenchman, to giving a burlesque portrait or real caricature of the man. We trace this peculiarity, in many instances, up to the year 1814, when George Cruikshank, in depicting a Cossack "snuffing out Boney," (an allusion to French disasters in Russia), still represents the then plump Emperor as a lean, long-chinned scarecrow, with sash and feathers. Rowlandson does nearly the same thing, in his vulgar print of Napoleon's reception in the Island of Elba; and the only caricature reproduced by Mr Fairholt, in which is preserved the general character of the Emperor's head, is an anonymous one, where the head is placed on a dog's shoulders, and "Blucher the Brave," by a rough grasp on the nape of the quadruped's neck, extracts "the groan of abdication from the Corsican Bloodhound." Probably the classic regularity of Napoleon's countenance discouraged the caricaturists from attempting his likeness. They were deterred by the difficulty of burlesquing a face whose grave expression and perfect proportion gave no hold to ridicule, and made it pretty certain that the general resemblance would be sacrificed to the exaggeration of even a single feature.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] _England under the House of Hanover; its History and Condition during the reigns of the three Georges, illustrated from the Caricatures and Satires of the day._ By THOMAS WRIGHT, Esq., M.A.F.S.A. &c. With numerous illustrations, executed by F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A. In two volumes. London: 1848.

A PARCEL FROM PARIS.

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.