Chapter XVIII (2)

That deliverance came even sooner than they expected, thanks to the following letter, written by Stéphanie de Choiseul, a girl of fourteen, to the First Consul:

"CITIZEN GENERAL, FIRST CONSUL:"

I hardly know how to address you, for I am writing without the knowledge of anybody, and I do not even know if you will get my letter. But every one is talking about you: every one is saying that you are so very great--that you are setting so much that has been wrong to rights--that you are doing things so very wonderful. When I hear this I feel confident you will not despise my prayers and tears. If what I am doing seems very extraordinary, pardon my boldness because I am so unhappy.

"You have no doubt heard of the naufragés de Calais, who have been tried and acquitted several times. Several times they have been on the point of being sent away from France and set at liberty, but each time the prospect has only resulted in their being more harshly treated than before. What crime have they committed? They were cast away on the French coast against their will. They were not bearing arms against their country. If you deign to read their defence you will be convinced of the justice of their cause. Alas! Citizen First Consul, my father is one of these unhappy persons. He is sick--he is dying in prison. In spite of any prejudice you may feel against him, you would take pity on him if you could know all he has suffered. He has been now nearly five years in prison, sent from dungeon to dungeon, sometimes confined with mad people, sometimes with criminals.

"After being eleven months imprisoned in the casemates of the citadel of Lille, he has been sent in chains to Ham, and cannot understand why his imprisonment has been made more strict than before. He is now alone, in solitary confinement. I have been torn from him in prison, and now I come imploring you upon my knees to let me go back to him, unless you will grant his liberty to my prayers.

"Take me, citizen general, as a hostage for my father. I will promise he shall submit to whatever conditions may be asked of him. If I may only be imprisoned in his stead, I shall be happy. I will answer for him: you may trust him wherever he may be permitted to live.

"Take pity on my grief: grant me this prayer. If you do, you will make amends to me for many sorrows, for I have lost upon the scaffold my nearest and dearest friends. I have no one left now but my father and my little brother. Take pity upon him and me. We will bless you every day if you do so. The endless gratitude of such poor children will surely do you good, and help in some way to make your life more happy. That gratitude will be always yours if you will save our father, who will die if you do not succor us.

"You are so great you will not despise our prayer. Be our deliverer, and be sure your name will never be uttered in our presence without being blessed from the very depths of our souls."

"STÉPHANIE CHOISEUL. HOURCOURT (Vosges), 4 Frimaire, an VIII."

Immediately after the First Consul had read this letter the naufragés were set at liberty; that is, they were transported beyond the limits of France. Two years later, however, they were permitted to return by the act of general amnesty. Many, however, had already made their peace with the new government. The duke de Choiseul was of that number.

Twenty years later, as we have already seen, Merlin, the savage Minister of Justice who had refused pity to these unfortunate persons, was himself, by a similar shipwreck under similar circumstances, delivered over to the mercy of their friends. He had sententiously declared, "Wherever I find an enemy I kill him!" King William of Holland silenced one of his ministers who was urging him to take revenge on Merlin by very different words: "A hurricane has thrown him back upon our coast: shall I be more pitiless than winds and storms?"

Once again during the brief remainder of his days was Merlin to learn the lesson "_noblesse oblige_" by experiencing a generosity he had never shown. In 1820 his son, General Eugène Merlin, who had served with distinction under the Empire, but had made his submission to the government of the Restoration, was arrested on a charge of being implicated in a military conspiracy. The matter came before the Court of Peers. The duke de Choiseul, high in the favor of his king, sat as one of the judges. He believed the young man innocent, and took his defence upon himself, pleading his cause so warmly that General Eugène Merlin was acquitted.

Stéphanie de Choiseul married when she grew up, and became duchesse de Marmier.

E.W.L.

REALISTIC ART.

Seldom now-a-days does an "old master" appear in the catalogues of art-sales or private galleries, the genuine article having grown too scarce and the fictitious too abundant. What the buyer looks for is a picture younger than himself, as full of the fashion of his own day as his coat or his hat. The painter must have some celebrity, and that must have at least six or eight years to grow in. Allowing for that necessary age, the newer the artist the better his work. The period has every confidence in itself, and does not care to look back for guidance and instruction in the principles of beauty and taste.

Naturally, this state of things implies realism in the selection and treatment of subjects. There is no time to idealize. The pencil must seize what is at hand, and serve it up on the spot. Landscapes and figures are flat copies of what the artist sees, and are labelled with their true names. Lorettes, contadine and odalisques are presented to us as such, and not as goddesses, heroines or saints. A ravine in Algeria, Norway or the Rocky Mountains, a sugar-camp in Maine or a wreck at Long Branch, are equally undisguised in their shape and title. The successors of Wilson and Turner no longer compose or combine. They have stopped clipping Nature into bits and sewing her together again like a patchwork quilt. The scenes we meet with on the walls are real scenes, to a tree or a ripple, and the title tells us so. Some liberties are taken with the clouds, and an artificial drapery of light and shade is thrown over the solid objects. Appropriate figures, too, are injected, by way of making up some sort of story and showing that the place is inhabited. But plain, faithful copying, as of an advanced drawing-school turned out of doors, and not pretending to be anything else, is the rule.

Not yet is a representation of Ajax or Ariadne, a satyr or a nymph, labelled "Portrait of a Gentleman" or "of a Lady," as the case may be. That may come ere long, with the names, given and family, of the individuals so honored. Till then we do without the Homeric characters altogether, and get Smith and Jones, their spouses and progeny, in dresses and situations they may be readily conceived as filling.

All this implies a reign of truth. Truth is a good thing, and nowhere a better thing than in art. But literal truth is prosaic, and the Gradgrind school of art has a tendency to lower us to the hardest kind of facts. Stationary subjects are the choice of the copyist. Asses, ponds, weeds, bottles, melons, young chickens (dead), oysters and decayed trees commend themselves as capital sitters. It is disheartening to the amateur to see his gallery gradually assuming the similitude of a common or a junk-shop. However, an ultra-realistic style cannot prevail long. Human nature cannot bear it, and will insist on springing from earth into a purer, thinner and more impalpable air. A craving for the imaginative will assert itself; and when it does so art will be all the stronger for the discipline and study through which it is now passing.

ARTISTIC JENKINSISM.

Who was it that, his soul hot within him at the undue predominance of the dead languages in the English university curriculum, declared that the system of facts with which the British graduate of the present day was the most familiar was the intrigues of the heathen gods?

We think of this Thersites sometimes when our eyes light, in big double-sheeted daily or fashionable monthly, on a column or two, fresh from over the water, of exhaustive minutiæ of the daily life, walk and conversation of French artists, playwrights, actors and actresses. Matter of this sort was not wont to be so absorbingly interesting to the American reader. The time was not very long since when a very little of it went a great way with him--when the domestic troubles of Madame de Caux and the personal habits of M. Sardou would not have been considered worth as many lines as they now get paragraphs. Even such assiduously advertised affairs as the relations of De Musset and George Sand, and Rachel's patronage of her pets among the gilded youth, created no contemporary sensation comparable to that consequent upon their resuscitation. And we were none the worse for missing such topics, although they were rather less unworthy of study than the corresponding gossip of to-day. Literature, the drama, music and pictorial art on the Continent were certainly not at a lower standard fifteen or twenty years ago than now. The inner halo around their leading lights was not less attractive or less deserving of micrometric analysis. No first-class name has been added to their number in either walk, nor are the individual careers of the second-class characters who have succeeded them at all more fruitful in salient traits for instruction or entertainment.

It is a familiar theory that the creative age dies out as the critical age gains strength--that when we grow nice, finical and blasé as to the quality of our intellectual aliment, we prove thereby the enfeeblement of our intellectual appetite and digestion. At present, the circumstances point to our having gone a step farther still, and attained the _hyper_critical stage. Our attention now has degenerated into a study of the dishes wherein the aforesaid food is served--their lustre, fabric, style and "crackle," a craze in flesh-and-blood ceramics. We never get tired of holding them up to the light and minutely mapping all their flaws and beauties, with each shade of color and glaze, superficial and iridescent or struck through and solid.

There may be something in the fierce light that beats upon a literary or artistic throne beneficial alike to subject and monarch. But here there are too many thrones, and the light is too fierce. Let us have a selection of potentates to be illuminated, and let us turn down the gas a little.

E.B.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV. By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.

In this volume Mr. Parkman has made a long step toward the culminating point of his historical series, and in the preface he announces that, passing over the intervening half century, he will make the fall of the French dominion in Canada the subject of his next book. There will then be more to relate of interest to readers in general than the events and personages of the present work can afford: this, nevertheless, has a peculiar value, as showing the opening of the rivalry between the French and English colonies, and exposing the causes which from the beginning rendered defeat inevitable for the former. These causes Mr. Parkman has already stated in the _Old Régime in Canada_, though less clearly and with an apparent tendency to consider that the result, after all, really came from an incapacity of the "French Celt" for self-government. More truly he now says that, had the Huguenots been allowed to settle in Canada, its fate would probably have been different. They represented that middle class to which was in great part due the success of the English settlements; and, standing shoulder to shoulder, as was their way, they would have formed a strong wall against encroachment and invasion. But Louis XIV. wished to exercise a more immediate control over his North American possessions than he might have found practicable had the too independent Huguenots been permitted to swarm into the land. Moreover, the colony, formed originally by the missionaries, retained its religious character to the very end. In the government the priest gradually gave way to the royal officer, though not without a contest: the jarrings between temporal and spiritual authorities were frequent, and not least so in Frontenac's time. He indeed lived in a constant state of quarrel with the Jesuits, who were, nevertheless, his right hand in external troubles. Canada was peopled by an "army of bigots," to use Napoleon's expression; and the priests kept alive the spirit of warlike piety which furthered so well the purposes of king and governor.

Cross in hand, they led their Indian converts to battle; nor do they seem to have softened the asperities of Indian warfare, doubtless looking on fire and steel as the best discipline for their heretical foes. Children taken in war they were accustomed to keep and bring up as Catholics; and this desire to save souls, which was communicated by the fathers to the whole population, helps to explain why captives among the Canadians, as among the Indians, so often forgot their homes and were unwilling to return to them. Both French and savages received their prisoners into their families, and treated them as they did those of their own blood--the latter to make good their losses in war by the adoption of new members into the tribe, the former as well from natural kindliness as moved by eagerness for the spiritual welfare of the benighted. The English, like the Plains Indians of the present day, had no such motives; and those living in captivity among them, however kindly treated, remained aliens, and seized gladly any opportunity of regaining their freedom.

Mr. Parkman, while doing full justice to the ability, valor and self-sacrifice of the priests, condemns of course their acceptance, and even approval, of such barbarous customs as torture and the killing of non-combatants; and this blame extends itself to the French generally, with whose adoption of savage practices he compares the self-restraint and mercifulness of the New Englanders, even when, as at the time of the capture of Port Royal, exasperated by the recent massacre of their countrymen. The causes of this difference of conduct are not far to seek, though Mr. Parkman does not explain them, being perhaps inclined to refer it to national character. The war-parties that left Quebec and Montreal consisted of soldiers, trained to the manner of war which in the first half of that century turned much of Germany into a desert, or of Indians and trappers, red and white savages, who inflicted cruelty on others with all the indifference which they displayed in bearing it. The forces of New England, on the other hand, were composed of fishermen and farmers, men with families and engaged in peaceful occupations, to which war came as an unwelcome interruption. Murder had not been taught them as a duty, but forbidden as a crime; and, more gentle by habit, it was not to be expected but that they would display far more moderation in bloodshedding.

The military character of Canada is strikingly shown by the moral influence exercised over the people by the character of the governor. As in an army the officers are known by the conduct of their troops, so his vigor or inability gave tone to the whole colony. Under Frontenac all was energy and confidence, while under the blustering La Barre and the pious Denonville, who ruled between the count's two terms of office, the _habitans_ shut themselves up in forts, leaving their fields to the ravages of the Mohawks. At the age of seventy Frontenac returned to uphold the failing colony, sent by the king as the only man capable of performing the task. He was sagacious in council, prompt and tireless in action, and, what was a chief recommendation to his post, he well understood the character of the Indians, his dealings with whom were marked by equal address and firmness. "In their eyes," says Mr. Parkman, "Frontenac was by far the greatest of the 'Onontios' or governors of Canada." Common sense and a knowledge of men probably enabled him to make himself feared and esteemed even by the fierce, astute Iroquois, quick at noting weaknesses, but recognizing a man when they saw him. The count, on his side, was attracted by these foes, so difficult to fight, whose shrewd diplomacy and unflinching courage he appreciated no less than their childish simplicity; while their cruelties did not shock the old campaigner against the Turks, who could be cruel enough himself on an occasion where policy seemed to demand it, though he was wont to display much courtesy and generosity toward his English prisoners, many of whom he ransomed from the Indians. In fine, he deserves all the good that Mr. Parkman has to say of him, if not entitled to the unlimited laudations bestowed on him by Father Goyer. The discourse which this priest--one of the Récollet order--held over the count's grave is, as annotated by a hostile critic, a most amusing document, and gives a good idea of Frontenac's real character. He left more friends than enemies behind him, and the mourning of the whole colony for his loss may be set against the bitterness with which his Jesuit adversaries pursued him even after his death.

Nimport. (Wayside Series.) Boston: Lockwood, Brooks & Co.

_Nimport_ certainly deserves to be set high among the new American novels that are appearing in such unaccustomed profusion. If, as it would seem, it is a first venture of some unknown writer, it indicates considerable promise, not perhaps of the highest talent, but of that agreeable union of humor and intelligence of which the richest fruit is to be seen in the stories of Mrs. Oliphant among contemporary authors. The book has decided faults: it is too long; the different chapters are incoherently put together; characters are lugged in and turned out again without any reference to the needs of the plot; what is most interesting is cut up by frequent interruptions; there are too many threads in the story; and yet, in spite of these glaring faults, there is so much cleverness of a certain sort in the parts that are good that the reader is disposed to be very clement toward this well-meant though mistaken profusion of material.

The story deals with the fortunes of a family who have been left almost penniless at the death of their parents, and it is narrated by one of their number, a somewhat wan and spectral figure, an artist, whose adventures are thrust in amid the far more interesting letters of a sister who recounts her experience as governess in a rich but underbred family. Her pen is very sharp, and she puts down what she sees and hears with a great deal of cleverness. Had the story consisted of her career alone, it would have been much completer than the present motley record, but some amusing episodes would have been sacrificed which the reader could ill spare. The best of these is the account of Aunt Bangs, the stately and unattractive relation who swoops down upon the fragment of the family left at home, perching like a raven over their heads, and bullying them to within an inch of their lives. Everything that is said about her is full of unexaggerating humor. There is no grinning through a horse-collar in these scenes, and no reckless abuse of old age, but simply accurate drawing of a disagreeable character. This is certainly much more the author's strong point than the delineation of high tragedy. A murder is as much out of place in this simple narration as it would be in a quiet, decent parlor. It is not thrilling: it is simply out of taste, in the way of being unnatural and offensive, rather than a legitimate conclusion to carefully-drawn horrors. The introduction does not lead up to such black crime: the book is on surer ground in quiet domestic incidents. Once for all, it may be said that Phil's death, the part about Miss Quilty, and possibly even what is said about Dan, might have been omitted to advantage. What would have been left has been only injured by this extraneous matter; and the directness of the impression the better parts would have made has been weakened by this distracting complexity.

The good parts are really good: they lack the morbidness which undermines so many otherwise clever stories of New England life. Too frequently in these the element of passion is left out, and in its place we have a good deal of more or less entertaining writing about love-making, with the love left out. But in this book this mistake is not made. The love-story is simple enough and obvious enough. It will never make the book a formidable rival to _Jane Eyre_, but so far as it goes it is true to every-day life. What is best in the book is the intelligent observation to which it bears witness: its humor is kindly and unaffected. The story is clumsy and ill-constructed, but it has decided merit, and the faults are only such as could have been best cured by the judicious application of a pair of scissors. Too often it happens that the reader of novels feels that the author's only chance is to be born again, but _Nimport_ inspires the hope that the writer will try again.

Briefe aus Philadelphia (1876) an eine Freundin (Letters from Philadelphia to a Friend). Von Catherine Migerka. Wien.

As long as a concern--or at least curiosity--to see ourselves as others see us shall move American breasts, so long will such books as the above have interest for us. In the present case it will depend entirely upon the interest we take in what relates to ourselves, for a more vapid yet didactic little volume--or rather pamphlet--than Frau Migerka's letters we have never seen; which we say with a distinct recollection of various books by our own country-folk upon foreign lands. The author is not observant of characteristic details, nor has she the faculty of drawing inferences or coming to general conclusions correctly from what she sees and hears. She has collected some statistics, picked up some facts, noted some prominent features of the national physiognomy, which she has mixed and muddled with apostrophes to Nature, Liberty, the soul of man, the German people, the American people, and poetical reflections a little in the manner of Primula Veris, the literary lady in one of Spielhagen's novels. It is unusual for German women to travel: many of them in easy circumstances and a respectable position live and die without going more than a few miles from home. From Dresden to Pilnitz, from Berlin to Potsdam, from Vienna to Glocknitz, from Munich to the Staremberg See, is by many of the inhabitants considered not an excursion, but a journey. Frau Migerka is a Viennese, and appears to have studied men and manners exclusively in her own country, as her standards and comparisons are drawn thence alone. She came to this country with her husband, who was one of the Austrian commissioners to the International Exposition, and Philadelphia was the only American city which she saw, except fleeting glimpses of New York, Boston and Cleveland. She was exceedingly struck by New York Bay, and indeed the scenery of the country wherever she went elicited real raptures, although she invariably declines the attempt to describe it as beyond her powers: the only natural beauties on which she expatiates are sunrises, sunsets and moonlights. These not being phenomena peculiar to our heavens, it is fair to suppose that she was unaccustomed to behold them in so much beauty and splendor; but it does not seem to have occurred to her that they were due to the extraordinary clearness and brilliancy of our sky and atmosphere compared with those of most European countries. New York itself disappointed her by looking "so new and modern, with nothing to recall the past;" and she sadly contrasts Broadway with the streets of Vienna, on which stand the haughty palaces of the Schwarzenbergs, Lichtensteins and Esterhazys. One must be a soulful German to come to a new country and lament over its cities for not being old. Her remarks about Boston are calculated to irritate the feelings of sister-cities without gratifying the Bostonians: she says that the moral qualities of that community have obtained for it the prominence and leadership in the politics and religion of the country and an intellectual supremacy in public opinion, but that the city is not handsome, and that the bad taste of the edifices, within and without, is barbarous. Cleveland is the town which pleases her most, and she ascribes its beauty and charm to German influence. With Philadelphia she had some opportunity of making acquaintance, and her impressions of us will be amusing to those who are not too thin-skinned.

Frau Migerka's first letter is devoted to the women of America, whom she acknowledges to be pretty even beyond their reputation and her expectation, wider awake and better educated than the men, and beautifully dressed, although her sober taste is shocked by the display of jewelry and trinkets in public conveyances and places of amusement. She censures the rage for adornment of the women of the working-classes, and the unfitness of a woman who is maid-of-all-work, whether in her own house or that of an employer, appearing in the street arrayed with pretensions to style and elegance which belong to people of very different means and scale of living. Frau Migerka had heard of the extravagance, love of luxury and idleness of our women in all classes, but inclines to disbelieve the last charge, and to give them credit for working much harder than they themselves admit. She suspects them of being ashamed of household occupations, and shows us first the American woman, who, after drudging the whole week, sallies forth on Sunday peacockwise, "looking like a real lady" (as used to be said before "ladies" took to advertising their desire for a cook's or chambermaid's situation), and then the good German housewife, who, after "cooking and cleaning all day long, stirring with spoons and clattering with plates, patching the children's clothes and darning the goodman's hose, has no ambition beyond relating her achievements to her next-door neighbors over a friendly gossip-cup of coffee." It is a lifelike picture of the two types: no right-minded person will deny the folly and vanity of the American city woman, who does not lack mentors and censors in her own country; but whether the German housewife, after her day of multifarious scrubbing, scouring and sewing, might not find something better to talk about in the evening, Frau Migerka could learn from some of our Yankee farmers' wives. She considers American wives very inferior to German ones; and there, again, she is right, as far as industry and self-forgetfulness are concerned; but she also considers American husbands as in a condition of subservience and degradation, of which flagrant instances are their not daring to smoke in their wives' rooms, and going to market carrying the basket. How wrong and inverted is such a position! No, no: if there must be slaves, Nature has settled of which sex they shall be by appointing that the weak shall serve the strong. Therefore she accounts for the respect which the unworthy fair sex receives in America, like several other things which she cannot otherwise explain, as being a matter of tradition, the habit of a reverence which our foremothers rightly received from men for whom they had sacrificed everything but principle.

Frau Migerka betrays her curious lack of the inductive faculty by accusing us of want of domestic taste and love of home, after remarking on the inaptitude of our houses for social purposes: while delighted with their cleanliness and convenience, she is struck by the absence of suitable rooms for the assembling of guests, and the consequent inconvenient crowd at an ordinary American party. Now, home-keeping is a good fault, but a fault it is in the extent to which we carry it: moreover, we and the English are the most domestic, the only truly domestic, people, for we are the only civilized people who have houses and homes of our own, and do not live in flats and apartments and go out for our meals, repairing to beer-halls and tea-gardens in the evening. Because Frau Migerka did not see the family circle, from the grandmother down, abroad, knitting, chatting, drinking coffee and listening to music with one ear--and a very cheerful sight it is--she inferred that there is no family circle in this country, although, putting that and the snug sitting-rooms, inconvenient for large companies, together, a sharper woman would have come to an opposite conclusion. However, it is not for their acumen that we quote any of her remarks, although, as has been shown, they are sometimes sensible and just. There is much of both sense and justice in her strictures on our mode of keeping Sunday--"the compulsory Sabbath," as she terms it--which in her ignorance she supposes to be a purely American custom. She is full of sympathy for the breakers of the Sunday liquor-law, especially for the poor publicans. But while speaking of the universal strict observance of the day, she represents it as a sore tax and burden to a great number, who resent it as an infringement of their personal liberty. She reconciles the apparent contradiction in such a situation by referring to a vice which gives her a ready key to many inconsistencies of our national character and conduct--hypocrisy. One is forced to suppose that this seems a natural explanation, since the hypocrite, whether an American type or not, figures prominently in most pictures of German society drawn by German hands.

Quakerism, our public-school system and our charities are the things which please Frau Migerka best, and impress her most favorably among our institutions. The skein of poetry which is so queerly entangled with the homespun yarn of the German nature is drawn out by the Floral Mission, the Children's Free Excursions and the Midnight Association: she declares that American women are truly admirable in their beneficence, and that the way in which the poor are cared for by private kindness and liberality, independent of the state, is one of the brightest sides of our social life. But does it come from a warmer benevolence, a deeper sense of brotherhood, than in other nations? She thinks not. Besides the great affluence of the country as a whole, there are three causes for American charity--vanity and the emulation of rival sects, the feeling of universal equality, which makes almsgiving in every form appear more as a duty than a benefit, and the afore-mentioned tendency to hypocrisy.

Whatever Frau Migerka finds good in America which is not hypocrisy or a relic of the past she ascribes to German influence. We are undoubtedly indebted to Germans for many excellent and pleasant usages, as well as for the rapid decay of that superstitious deference to women of which she complains. Our increasing love of music she rightly claims is due to her countrymen, but its primitive manifestations are all our own, and her sufferings from them form one of the few lively passages in the narrative. The piano in the steamboat saloon; the boarding-school girl--"dear Carry, who has got on so splendidly with her music in such a short time;" the Canadian rustic dandy, who only knows his notes; the long-haired travelling virtuoso with his violin (in all probability her own countryman, however); the head-waiter and his harp; the young bride in her smart clothes, with her thin voice and endless ballads; the exulting bridegroom, who accompanies her on a three-stopped tin trumpet,--form a Bedlamite procession through which our sympathies follow her; but in setting down this experience as _American_, although it occurred on a voyage up the Saguenay, she overlooks the proud fact that German influence must be spreading to Canada.

Frau Migerka's letters are not to be treated seriously, nor are they merely to be made fun of. They would not deserve more than a paragraph's notice but for their local interest, which will probably make them more entertaining to Philadelphians than they could have been to the female friend in Vienna. They are not written in an unfriendly spirit; yet nothing the lady met with wins cordial, hearty sympathy or approbation, her commendation of our charities being, as we have seen, qualified by the motives for them which she supposes. The one thing in America which she felt she should regret is Niagara, which is unlucky for her, as there are few things for which she could not more easily find a substitute. Of her reflections and aspirations--

_Á la mode_ Germanorum,
With her sentimentalibus lachrymæ roar 'em,
And bathos and pathos delightful to see--

the following specimen will suffice: "Here flows the Wissahickon, silent, dark and motionless, as if dreaming of a bygone world and unable to awaken to the bustling present. Many an Indian maiden has beheld her brown visage and sparkling eyes mirrored in its crystals. Yet let no one trust the quiet of that river: a short space farther and the tranquil stream becomes a rushing mountain-torrent, the friendly vale grows wildly romantic, full of gloomy, mysterious beauty. How like is this water to many a human soul, which lives as serene and shut within itself as if it scarce knew what it is to feel, until passion sweeps over it and the whole being is changed and uplifts its voice loud and tumultuous!"

Jack. From the French of Alphonse Daudet, author of "Sidonie," "Robert Helmont," etc., by Mary Neal Sherwood, translator of "Sidonie." Boston: Estes & Lauriat.

Daudet's _Sidonie_ in its English form certainly received in this country all the praise it deserved. It has now been followed by the same author's _Jack_, which has the additional advantage of its predecessor's success, and shares with it the benefit of careful translation. The story is an exceedingly pathetic one: it describes the career of the son of a frivolous woman, of not even doubtful reputation, from the time of his entering school until his death. This mother is a silly creature with an affectionate heart, who is really fond of her son and tries in her feeble way to do all she can for him. Being rebuffed in her attempt to place him in one school, she thrusts him into another, and leaves him to be first petted and then bullied by a French translation of Squeers and a crowd of his satellites. With one of the teachers, D'Argenton, the mother falls wildly in love, and they are married. Jack runs away from school to their home, and finds himself pursued by the malignity of his step-father, who finally sends him off to work in a machine-shop. The people he sees here are kind to him, but the work is much too hard for his delicate health, and, to make matters worse, he is offered, and accepts in his ignorance, a place as stoker in a large steamship. This is almost his death, but he manages to escape penniless from the wreck of the ship, and returns to Paris. He finds near by, in the suburb where he had formerly lived, the old doctor who had been kind to him, and his granddaughter, with whom he is soon in love. At this point it will be well to stop abridging the story, so that the reader may find out for himself the poor young fellow's subsequent misery. There are occasional slight relapses into the happiness he has at rare intervals already known in his life, and at the last he dies in the arms of the woman he loves; but the general impression is that of great wretchedness.

There is this relief to the somewhat monotonous gloom--that Jack's character is refined and strengthened by what he goes through; and there is very touching pathos in his treatment of his mother at all times, and especially when she puts an end to his hopes of saving enough money to marry on by returning to live with him. Yet it is a question whether there is not a wanton and wilful accumulation of wretchedness about the poor fellow's head, which, of course, does its allotted work in depressing the reader, and so makes the book effective, but also, it may be felt, offensive as regards literary art. A cool inventory of Jack's causes for happiness and sorrow might leave the reader undecided about the nature of the book, and its mournfulness might be matched by that of many another novel which is considered to be only allowably pathetic; but this one is written with such virulence, so to speak, or at least with such manifest design to accumulate miseries, that the reader's soul revolts within him at being put on the rack in this violent way. What makes it more noticeable is, that this is a French novel which is thus marked by what are more distinctly the qualities of an English novel. In French novels we expect to find a more temperate method of writing and the absence of such heat as Daudet shows, which is of common occurrence in those English novels where no pains are spared to show the good man's virtues and the bad man's faults. Mr. Carker, in _Dombey and Son_, may serve as an example of the way this is sometimes done. Daudet is quite as energetic in pointing obvious morals. The way he impales D'Argenton on the point of his pen and spares no pains in holding him up to ridicule is an instance of this, while a much clearer one, and one wholly unredeemed by such permissible satire as at times redeems the portrait of D'Argenton, is the account of the school to which Jack is sent. There is no air of reality in the account of the little king of Dahomey who is Jack's sole friend in that wretched place. Then, too, the poor silly mother can never appear but the author, besides making her talk and act like the foolish creature she is, must be for ever whispering in the reader's ear that she is a great fool and a frivolous creature. This over-violent method defeats its own object, and surprises and pains the reader instead of gratifying him. Nothing is taken for granted; we are not left to perceive anything by our own unaided vision; everything is made as plain for us as if it were written in words of one syllable. But that way of writing palls at length, and calls forth a feeling of disappointment with what is in some respects a very able novel.

X. Doudan, Mélanges et Lettres. Avec une introduction par M. le comte d'Haussonville, et des notices par MM. de Sacy et Cuvillier-Fleury. Tome III. Paris: Calmann Lévy.

Only a year ago two volumes of M. Doudan's correspondence were given to the public--they received notice in these pages,[10] it will be remembered--with a conditional promise of more in case the first should be duly appreciated. Fortunately, these letters were widely read and heartily admired, so that now we have this third volume, with further selections up to the year 1860, and the promise of the speedy appearance of a fourth, to contain letters after that date and Doudan's essay on the "Revolutions of Taste." There need be no fear in any one's mind that all the best letters were taken for the first publication, and that the editor has been obliged to swell the pages of this volume with Doudan's hasty, uninteresting notes. Far from it: everything that Doudan wrote had, as some one has well said, the flavor of perfection: he never wrote letters as one writes prize essays, cramming into some of them all his wit and wisdom, leaving his less fortunate correspondents to content themselves with the meagre statement of facts. All the qualities that were to be noticed in the volumes that first appeared are to be found here; and they are qualities of the rarest sort. His method of expressing himself is simply delightful, his French is most charming, and his wit and humor must fascinate those who are capable of appreciating anything outside of mathematical exactness of statement. Critics have been by no means unanimous in his praise: some have complained that he wrote his letters with the direct intention of pleasing--not so much those to whom the letters were avowedly sent as deceived posterity. The only reason for this ill-natured supposition would seem to be that the letters were too good for private correspondence; which is a strong argument in favor of reading them. Others--and they are French critics--despise him because he was a friend of the duc de Broglie, but in the course of time this will doubtless be forgiven him. Some, too, object to his humor. M.G. Monod, for instance, who is a very intelligent man, says in the _Academy_ that Doudan "makes fun of everything, even when fun is quite out of place. Even in the most tragic occurrences he finds occasion for wit." But, after all, it is a way humorists have: the only remedy for such levity would seem to be decapitation or solitary confinement in prison without pen, ink and paper. Some are so captious that they say Doudan was too delicate and refined a critic for the crude world he lived in. But what is the use of a critic who praises what is worthless, and has no word of encouragement for what is good and deserving of praise? The value of a man like Doudan is that he rises above the common herd by the exactest discrimination: he never follows the multitude in adoring false gods, but is true to his own delicate taste. If common sense is the power of applying the judgment to trifles as well as to important matters, good taste in literature is the habit of applying the judgment to slight as well as to serious questions. Doudan's taste is most refined; that is to say, he is not influenced by general rumor, but he examines everything on its own merits, overlooking nothing, and appreciating even slight matters without placing them above things of real importance.

[Footnote 10: See number for October, 1876.]

Here is a bit of his criticism: "You were quite right to be irritated with this _Fanny_. I had to see what success _Madame Bovary_ had with all the clever people of society to believe in the success of _Fanny_. His emphatic and declamatory style has helped the author in putting into his book more shocking and absurd things than there were in the vile anecdotes about Madame Bovary. If a young buffalo in the Pontine Marshes were to write his memoirs, with a detailed account of his loves, his jealousy, his excesses and his despair, he would doubtless give expression to the same sentiment of moral good and evil among buffaloes, but he would not exaggerate the fashion of description in such a ridiculous way. The genuineness of his feelings would prevent his seeing a number of things which do not concern his passions. He would not describe, while sharpening his horns for the fight, the little field-flowers, which he could not notice, nor the village curé's wig, which does not concern him at all; but this small and numerous school of self-styled realists has, in my opinion, so little keen feeling and true passion that it is like the mathematician who wrote from his mother's deathbed, 'I lost my mother this day at twenty-two and one-half minutes after eight [mean time].' The passions are not so accurate, and do not see so many things."

Here is an extract from a letter written in the perturbed days of 1848: "In the country, whence I write, there is no news. The vervain, the heliotropes, are in flower, as they are every year, and the squirrels run up and down the trees without asking what is going on in Paris. Not one has subscribed to the most insignificant newspaper. By the way, do you suppose there are social disturbances among the beasts of the air, or of the fields, or of the waters? That is not impossible, and I should be very sorry if it were the case: it pleases my imagination more to think that the squirrels are living to-day just as they lived in the garden of Eden; but I have already told you that at a not very remote period a race of rats, stronger than those who dwelt here, came by chance on a merchant vessel from the East Indies, and drove out all the former population of rats that had lived under our old kings. The ancient race of rats is to be found only in isolated farms. We have no longer the rats that gnawed the cloaks of the knights of the Middle Ages. Ask some professor of the Jardin des Plantes what he thinks of it.

"When I say that everything is quiet here, I am wrong, for the men at least were very uneasy regarding what might take place on the 14th of July. It was whispered that there was confusion in the capital, and when the diligence passed by a great many small land-owners were on their doorsteps waiting for their newspaper, while their cows were feeding quietly in the meadow, not suspecting that there was a Ledru-Rollin or a Louis Blanc in the world who wanted to begin the world over again on a better model. This eagerness to know what is going on in Paris is a customary sign of disturbance. At present one is naturally anxious to know whether the little field one has planted with handsome trees will by to-morrow's sunrise belong to some obscure soldier of the obscure Sobrier. Formerly they were the veterans of Sylla or of Cæsar, at least, who took the house of Virgil, but now-a-days they are the veterans of Sobrier who threaten the house of Victor Hugo. The times are deteriorating in every direction."

Further extracts might be made in abundance to show the humor that played over not the surface of things, but their inmost depths, and threw such a clear light on all sorts of topics; but the reader would do best to add this volume to the other two, and judge for himself how great is the merit of these letters, how rare the intelligence they show, how fine the appreciation of literature and of men which breathes through them all. They are books for all time.

* * * * *

_Books Received_.

The Wings of Courage: Stories for American Boys and Girls. From the French, by Mary E. Field. With Illustrations. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Lotus Land, and Other Poems. By G.S. Ladson. Cincinnati: Peter G. Thomson.

The Young Magdalen, and Other Poems. By Francis S. Smith. With Portrait of the Author. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Imaginary Conversations. By Walter Savage Landor. Fifth Series--Miscellaneous Dialogues (concluded). Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Biology, with Preludes on Current Events. By Joseph Cook. (Boston Monday Lectures.) Boston: James R. Osgood & Co.

The Sanitary Condition of City and Country Dwelling-houses. By George E. Waring, Jr. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Meister Karl's Sketch-Book. By Charles G. Leland (Hans Breitmann). Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Beautiful Snow, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Illustrated. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

Dick's Recitations and Readings. No. 5. Edited by William B. Dick. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald.

Nicholas Minturn: A Study in a Story. By J.G. Holland. New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

Cooking Receipts from _Harper's Bazaar_. (Half-Hour Series.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

Devil-Puzzlers, and Other Studies. By Frederick B. Perkins. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Outcast, and Other Poems. By J.W. Watson. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

The Publishers' Trade-List Annual, 1877. New York: Office of Publishers' Weekly.

Egypt as it Is. By J.C. McCoan. With Map. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

The New School-Ma'am; or, A Summer in North Sparta. Boston: Loring.

Hetty's Strange History. (No-Name Series.) Boston: Roberts Brothers.

East Lynne. By Mrs. Henry Wood. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald.

Tangled: A Novel. By Rachel Carew. Chicago: S.C. Griggs & Co.

Selections from Epictetus. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

_New Music._

Sweet and Low: Cradle Song. Words by Tennyson; Music by Mrs. R.H. Alexander. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Beneath the Stars: Serenade. Words and Music by Charles T. Dazey. Louisville, Ky.: D.P. Faulds. "C" Co.: Ne Plus Ultra March. By Frank Green. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Buttercup Polka. By Eastburn. Philadelphia: W.H. Boner & Co.

Transcriber's Notes:

Table of Contents and List of Illustrations added by Transcriber.

Page 538 "Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins" should
be Fräuleins.

Page 548 "she answered dreamily." Changed closing punctuation with
period not comma as original text printed.

Pages 580-581 end-of-page hyphenation "break-fast-tray" changed to
breakfast tray.

Page 601 "The Fräulien colored slightly" changed to Fräulein colored
slightly. Fräulein misspelled.

Page 633 "diadem, This" comma should be period, changed to period.

Page 648 "Harper's Bazar" changed to Harper's Bazaar.