Chapter LXXII: Knotted Strands (1)

Lady Clementina had to return to England to see her lawyers and arrange her affairs. Before she went she would gladly have gone with Malcolm over every spot where had passed any portion of his history, and at each heard its own chapter or paragraph; but Malcolm obstinately refused to begin such a narration before Clementina was mistress of the region to which it mainly belonged. After that, he said, he would, even more gladly, he believed, than she, occupy all the time that could be spared from the duties of the present in piecing together the broken reflections of the past in the pools of memory until they had lived both their lives over again together, from earliest recollection to the time when the two streams flowed into one, thenceforth to mingle more and more inwardly to endless ages.

So the Psyche was launched: Lady Clementina, Florimel and Lenorme were the passengers, and Malcolm, Blue Peter and Davy the crew. There was no room for servants, yet was there no lack of service. They had rough weather a part of the time, and neither Clementina nor Lenorme was altogether comfortable, but they made a rapid voyage, and were all well when they landed at Greenwich.

Knowing nothing of Lady Bellair's proceedings, they sent Davy to reconnoitre in Portland Place. He brought back word that there was no one in the house but an old woman. So Malcolm took Florimel there. Everything belonging to their late visitors had vanished, and nobody knew where they had gone.

Searching the drawers and cabinets, Malcolm, to his unspeakable delight, found a miniature of his mother, along with one of his father--a younger likeness than he had yet seen. Also he found a few letters of his mother--mostly mere notes in pencil--but neither these nor those of his father which Miss Horn had given him would he read. "What right has life over the secrets of death?" he said. "Or, rather, what right have we who sleep over the secrets of those who have waked from their sleep and left the fragments of their dreams behind them?" Lovingly he laid them together and burned them to dust-flakes. "My mother shall tell me what she pleases when I find her," he said. "She shall not reprove me for reading her letters to my father."

They were married at Wastbeach, both couples in the same ceremony. Immediately after the wedding the painter and his bride set out for Rome, and the marquis and marchioness went on board the Psyche. For nothing would content Clementina, troubled at the experience of her first voyage, but she must get herself accustomed to the sea, as became the wife of a fisherman: therefore in no way would she journey but on board the Psyche; and as it was the desire of each to begin their married life at home, they sailed direct for Portlossie. After a good voyage, however, they landed, in order to reach home quietly, at Duff Harbor, took horses from there, and arrived at Lossie House late in the evening.

Malcolm had written to the housekeeper to prepare for them the Wizard's Chamber, but to alter nothing on walls or in furniture. That room, he had resolved, should be the first he occupied with his bride. Mrs. Courthope was scandalized at the idea of taking an earl's daughter to sleep in the garret, not to mention that the room had for centuries had an ill name; but she had no choice, and therefore contented herself with doing all that lay in the power of woman, under such severe restrictions, to make the dingy old room cheerful.

Alone at length in their somewhat strange quarters--concerning which Malcolm had merely told her that the room was that in which he was born--what place fitter, thought Clementina, wherein to commence the long and wonderful story she hungered to hear? Malcolm would still have delayed it, but she asked question upon question till she had him fairly afloat. He had not gone far, however, before he had to make mention of the stair in the wall, which led from the place where they sat straight from the house.

"Can there be such a stair to this room?" she asked in surprise.

He rose took a candle, opened a door, then another, and showed her the first of the steps down which the midwife had carried him, and descending which, twenty years after, his father had come by his death.

"Let us go down," said Clementina.

"Are you not afraid? Look!" said Malcolm.

"Afraid, and you with me!" she exclaimed.

"But it is dark, and the steps are broken."

"If it led to Hades I would go with my fisherman. The only horror would be to be left behind."

"Come, then," said Malcolm; "only you must be very careful."

He laid a shawl on her shoulders, and down they went, Malcolm a few steps in front, holding the candle to every step for her, many being broken.

They came at length where the stair ceased in ruin. He leaped down: she stooped, put her hands on his shoulders and dropped into his arms. Then over the fallen rubbish, out by the groaning door, they went into the moonlight.

Clementina was merry as a child. All was so safe and peaceful with her fisherman! She would not hear of returning: they must have a walk in the moonlight first. So down the steps and the winding path into the valley of the burn, and up to the flower-garden, they wandered, Clementina telling him how sick the moonlight had made her feel that night she met him first on the Boar's Tail, when his words concerning her revived the conviction that he loved Florimel. At the great stone basin Malcolm set the swan spouting, but the sweet musical jargon of the falling water seemed almost coarse in the soundless diapason of the moonlight. So he stopped it again, and they strolled farther up the garden.

Clementina venturing to remind him of the sexton-like gardener's story of the lady and the hermit's cave, which, because of its Scotch, she was unable to follow, Malcolm told her now what John Jack had narrated, adding that the lady was his own mother, and that from the gardener's tale he learned that morning at length how to account for the horror which had seized him on his first entering the cave, as also for his father's peculiar carriage on that occasion: doubtless he then caught a likeness in him to his mother. He then recounted the occurrence circumstantially.

"I have ever since felt ashamed of the weakness," he concluded; "but at this moment I believe I could walk in with perfect coolness."

"We won't try it to-night," said Clementina, and once more turned him from the place, reverencing the shadow he had brought with him from the spirit of his mother.

They walked and sat and talked in the moonlight, for how long neither knew; and when the moon went behind the trees on the cliff, and the valley was left in darkness, but a darkness that seemed alive with the new day soon to be born, they sat yet, lost in a peaceful unveiling of hearts, till a sudden gust of wind roused Malcolm, and looking up he saw that the stars were clouded, and knew that the chill of the morning was drawing near.

He kept that chamber just as it was ever after, and often retired to it for meditation. He never restored the ruinous parts of the stair, and he kept the door at the top carefully closed. But he cleared out the rubbish that choked the place where the stair had led lower down, came upon it again in tolerable preservation a little beneath, and followed it into a passage that ran under the burn, appearing to lead in the direction of the cave behind the Baillies' Barn. Doubtless there was some foundation for the legend of Lord Gernon.

There, however, he abandoned the work, thinking of the possibility of a time when employment would be scarce and his people in want of all he could give them. And when such a time arrived, as arrive it did before they had been two years married, a far more important undertaking was found needful to employ the many who must earn or starve. Then it was that Clementina had the desire of her heart, and began to lay out the money she had been saving for the purpose in rebuilding the ancient castle of Colonsay. Its vaults were emptied of rubbish and ruin, the rock faced afresh, walls and towers and battlements raised, until at last, when the loftiest tower seemed to have reached its height, it rose yet higher and blossomed in radiance; for, top-most crown of all, there, flaming far into the northern night, shone a splendid beacon-lamp to guide the fisherman when his way was hid. Every summer for years Florimel and her husband spent weeks in the castle, and many a study the painter made there of the ever-changing face of the sea.

Malcolm, as he well might, had such a strong feeling of the power for good of every high-souled schoolmaster that nothing would serve him but Mr. Graham must be reinstated. He told the presbytery that if it were not done he would himself build a school-house for him, and the consequence, he said, needed no prediction. Finding, at the same time, that the young man they had put in his place was willing to act as his assistant, he proposed that he should keep the cottage and all other emoluments of the office, on the sole condition that when he found he could no longer conscientiously and heartily further the endeavors of Mr. Graham he should say so; whereupon the marquis would endeavor to procure him another appointment; and on these understandings the thing was arranged.

Mr. Graham thenceforward lived in the House, a spiritual father to the whole family, reverenced by all, ever greeted with gladness, ever obeyed. The spiritual dignity and simplicity, the fine sense and delicate feeling of the man, rendered him a saving presence in the place; and Clementina felt as if one of the ancient prophets, blossomed into a Christian, was the glory of their family and house. Like a perfect daughter she watched him, tried to discover preferences of which he might not himself be aware, and often waited upon him with her own hands.

There was an ancient building connected with the house, divided now for many years into barn and dairy, but evidently the chapel of the monastery: this Malcolm soon set about reconverting. It made a lovely chapel--too large for the household, but not too large for its congregation upon Wednesday evenings, when many of the fishermen and their families, and not a few of the inhabitants of the upper town, with occasionally several farm-servants from the neighborhood, assembled to listen devoutly to the fervent and loving expostulations and rousings, or the tender consolings and wise instructions, of the _master_, as every one called him. The hold he had of their hearts was firm, and his influence on their consciences far reaching.

When there was need of conference or ground for any wide expostulation the marquis would call a meeting in the chapel; but this occurred very seldom. Now and then the master, sometimes the marquis himself, would use it for a course of lectures or a succession of readings from some specially interesting book; and in what had been the sacristy they gathered a small library for the use of the neighborhood.

No meeting was held there of a Sunday, for although the clergyman was the one person to whom all his life the marquis never came any nearer, he was not the less careful to avoid everything that might rouse contention or encourage division. "I find the doing of the will of God," he would say, "leaves me no time for disputing about His plans--I do not say for thinking about them." Not, therefore, however, would he waive the exercise of the inborn right of teaching, and anybody might come to the house and see the master on Sunday evenings. As to whether people went to church or stayed away, he never troubled himself in the least; and no more did the schoolmaster.

The chapel had not been long finished when he had an organ built in it. Lady Lossie played upon it. Almost every evening, at a certain hour, she played for a while: the door was always open, and any one who pleased might sit down and listen. Gradually the feeling of the community, from the strengthening and concentrating influence of the House, began to bear upon offenders; and any whose conduct had become in the least flagrant soon felt that the general eye was upon them, and that gradually the human tide was falling from them, and leaving them prisoned in a rocky basin on a barren shore. But at the same time, all three of the powers at the House were watching to come in the moment there was a chance; and what with the marquis's warnings, his wife's encouragements and the master's expostulations there was no little hope of the final recovery of several who would otherwise most likely have sunk deeper and deeper.

The marchioness took Lizzy for her personal attendant, and had her boy much about her; so that by the time she had children of her own she had some genuine and worthy notion of what a child was, and what could and ought to be done for the development of the divine germ that lay in the human egg, and had found that the best she could do for any child, or indeed anybody, was to be good herself.

Rose married a young fisherman, and made a brave wife and mother. To the end of her days she regarded the marquis almost as a being higher than human, an angel that had found and saved her.

Kelpie had a foal, and, apparently in consequence, grew so much more gentle that at length Malcolm consented that Clementina, who was an excellent horsewoman, should mount her. After a few attempts to unseat her, not of the most determined kind, however, Kelpie, on her part, consented to carry her, and ever after seemed proud of having a mistress that could ride. Her foal turned out a magnificent horse. Malcolm did not allow him to do anything that could be called work before he was eight years old, and had the return at the other end, for when Goblin was thirty he rode him still, and, to judge by appearances, might but for an accident have ridden him ten years more.

It was not long ere people began to remark that no one now ever heard the piper utter the name _Campbell_. An ill-bred youth once--it was well for him that Malcolm was not near--dared the evil word in his presence: a cloud swept across the old man's face, but he held his peace, and to the day of his death, which arrived in his ninety-first year, it never crossed his lips. He died with the Lossie pipes on his bed, Malcolm on one side of him and Clementina on the other.

Some of my readers may care to know that Phemy and Davy were married, and made the quaintest, oldest-fashioned little couple, with hearts which king and beggar might equally have trusted.

Malcolm's relations with the fisher-folk, founded as they were in truth and open uprightness, were not in the least injured by his change of position. He made it a point to be always at home during the herring-fishing. Whatever might be going on in London, the marquis and marchioness, their family and household, were sure to leave in time for the commencement of that. Those who admired Malcolm--of whom there were not a few even in Vanity Fair--called him the fisher-king: the wags called him the kingfisher, and laughed at the oddity of his taste in preferring what he called his duty to the pleasures of the season. But the marquis found even the hen-pecked Partan a nobler and more elevating presence than any strutting platitude of Bond street. And when he was at home he was always about amongst the people. Almost every day he would look in at some door in the Seaton, and call out a salutation to the busy house-wife--perhaps go in and sit down for a minute. Now he would be walking with this one, now talking with that--oftenest with Blue Peter; and sometimes both their wives would be with them upon the shore or in the grounds. Nor was there a family meal to which any one or all together of the six men whom he had set over the Seaton and Scaurnose would not have been welcomed by the marquis and his Clemency. The House was head and heart of the whole district.

A conventional visitor was certain to feel very shruggish at first sight of the terms on which the marquis was with "persons of that sort;" but often such a one came to allow that it was no great matter: the persons did not seem to presume unpleasantly, and, notwithstanding his atrocious training, the marquis was after all a very good sort of fellow--considering.

In the third year he launched a strange vessel. Her tonnage was two hundred, but she was built like a fishing-boat. She had great stowage forward and below: if there was a large take, boat after boat could empty its load into her, and go back and draw its nets again. But this was not the original design in her. The after half of her deck was parted off with a light rope-rail, was kept as white as holy-stone could make it, and had a brass-railed bulwark. She was steered with a wheel, for more room; the top of the binnacle was made sloping, to serve as a lectern; there were seats all round the bulwarks; and she was called the Clemency.

For more than two years he had provided training for the fittest youths he could find amongst the fishers, and now he had a pretty good band playing on wind-instruments, able to give back to God a shadow of His own music. The same formed the Clemency's crew. And every Sunday evening the great fishing-boat, with the marquis and almost always the marchioness on board, and the latter never without a child or children, led out from the harbor such of the boats as were going to spend the night on the water.

When they reached the ground all the other boats gathered about the great boat, and the chief men came on board, and Malcolm stood up betwixt the wheel and the binnacle, and read--always from the gospel, and generally words of Jesus, and talked to them, striving earnestly to get the truth alive into their hearts. Then he would pray aloud to the living God, as One so living that they could not see Him, so One with them that they could not behold Him. When they rose from their knees man after man dropped into his boat, and the fleet scattered wide over the waters to search them for their treasure.

Then the little ones were put to bed, and Malcolm and Clementina would sit on the deck, reading and talking, till the night fell, when they too went below and slept in peace. But if ever a boat wanted help or the slightest danger arose, the first thing was to call the marquis, and he was on deck in a moment.

In the morning, when a few of the boats had gathered, they would make for the harbor again, but now with full blast of praising trumpets and horns, the waves seeming to dance to the well-ordered noise divine. Or if the wind was contrary or no wind blew, the lightest-laden of the boats would take the Clemency in tow, and with frequent change of rowers draw her softly back to the harbor.

For such Monday mornings the marquis wrote a little song, and his Clemency made an air to it and harmonized it for the band. Here is the last stanza of it:

Like the fish that brought the coin,
We in ministry will join--
Bring what pleases Thee the best--
Help from each to all the rest.

OUR BLACKBIRDS.

I have in mind the delta of a river whose shores are so level that it is a constant struggle whether land or water shall prevail. The river finds its way to the broad harbor through a dozen or more channels, between which are low islands overgrown with great trees burdened and festooned with grapevines and moss, and tangled with thickets and rank fernbrakes, or growths of wild rice and luxuriant water-weeds so dense and tall as to be impenetrable to even a canoe. Here blooms the magnificent lotus (_Nelumbium luteum_), with its corolla as large as your hat and its leaf half a boat-length broad--great banks of it, which give out a sweet, faint, intoxicating odor.

Curious sounds reach you as you thread the mazes of the swamp. The water boils up from the oozy bottom, and the bubbles break at the surface with a faint lisping sound: the reeds softly rattle against one another like the rustle of heavy silks, and you can hear the lily-pads and deeply-anchored stems of the water-weeds rubbing against one another. More articulate noises strike your ear--the sharp-clucking lectures on propriety of the mud-hen to its young; the _brek-kek-kek, coaz-coaz_ of the frog; the splash of a tumbling turtle; the rushing of a flock of startled ducks rising on swift wings; the sprightly contagious laughter of those little elves the marsh-wrens, teetering on the elastic leaves of the cat-tails.

No birds are more characteristic of such a reedy tract than the blackbirds, of which there are several more or less common species in different parts of the country. The most striking of all, in the eastern half of the Union, is

THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD.

The red-wing's favorite resort is the vicinity of water where the rushes grow densely, among which he places his nest; but the little swales in the meadows, where tufts of rank grass flourish upon islands formed by the roots of previous years' growth, and a few stunted alders and cranberry-bushes shade the black water, are nearly always sure to be the home of a few pairs. Such extensive marshes as I have just described are, however, the great centres of blackbird population, where they breed, where they collect in great hordes of young and old as the end of the season approaches, and whence they repair to the neighboring fields of Indian corn to tear open the husks and pick the succulent kernels. In September I have seen them literally in tens of thousands wheeling about the inundated wild-rice fields bounding the western end of Lake Erie, their black backs and gay red epaulets glistening in the sun "like an army with banners." The Canadian _voyageurs_ call them "officer-birds," and the impression of an army before him is always strong upon the beholder as he gazes at these prodigious flocks in autumn; and it is extremely interesting to watch the swift evolutions of the crowded ranks, and observe the regularity and concert of action which governs the movements of the splendidly uniformed birds.

The red-wings are among the earliest of our spring visitors, and south of the Ohio River and Washington may be found all through the winter. Their loud and rollicking spring note is familiar to every one in the country. _Conk-quiree! conk-quiree!_ sings out the male, as though he knew a good story if only he had a mind to tell it; and then adds _Chuck!_ as though he thought it of no use to try to interest you in it, and that he had been indiscreet in betraying an enthusiasm beneath his dignity over a matter beyond your appreciation. His plain brown mate immediately says _Chuck!_ too, quite agreeing with her lord and master that it is not best to waste their confidence upon _you_.

The centre of all their interest is the compact, tight basket woven of wet grass-blades and split rush-leaves which is supported among the reeds or rests on a tussock of wire-grass surrounded by water. It is a model nest, and they understand so well the labor it cost that they are mightily jealous of harm coming to it. The eggs are five in number, of a faded blue tint, marbled, streaked and spotted with leather-color and black, in shape rather elongated and pointed. The fledglings are abroad about the first of June, when the parents proceed to the production of another blood.

These blackbirds have the bump of domesticity largely developed, and if their household is disturbed they make a terrible fuss, calling upon all Nature to witness their sorrow and execrate the wretch that is violating their privacy.

During all the spring season, and particularly while the young are being provided for, the red-wings subsist almost exclusively on worms, grubs, caterpillars and a great variety of such sluggish insects and their voracious larvae as do great damage to the roots and early sprouts of whatever the farmer plants, nor do they abandon this diet until the ripening of the wild rice and maize in the fall. "For these vermin," says Wilson, "the starlings search with great diligence in the ground at the roots of plants in orchards and meadows, as well as among buds, leaves and blossoms; and from their known voracity the multitudes of these insects which they destroy must be immense. Let me illustrate this fact by a short computation: If we suppose each bird on an average to devour fifty of these larvae in a day (a very moderate allowance), a single pair in four months, the usual time such food is sought after, will devour upward of 12,000. It is believed that not less than a million pair of these birds are distributed over the whole extent of the United States in summer, whose food, being nearly the same, would swell the amount of vermin destroyed to 12,000,000,000. But the number of young birds may be fairly estimated at double that of their parents; and as these are constantly fed on larvae for three weeks, making only the same allowance for them as for the older ones, their share would amount to 42,000,000,000, making a grand total of 54,000,000,000 of noxious insects destroyed in the space of four months by this single species! The combined ravages of such a hideous host of vermin would be sufficient to spread famine and desolation over a wide extent of the richest, best-cultivated country on the earth."

The yellow-headed blackbird belongs properly north-west of Lake Superior, but frequently gets into Michigan and Illinois. The bright yellow head and neck make it very noticeable if seen. Its habits are essentially those of the red-wing.

We have another set of blackbirds of greater size, commonly known as "crow" blackbirds, but which in the books are called grakles. There are several species, but none are greatly different from that too-common pest of our cornfields,

THE PURPLE GRAKLE.

The real home of the grakles is along the edges of the swamps--not among the reeds where the red-wing and bobolink sit and swing, but rather in the bushes and trees skirting the muddy shores. They build their nests in a variety of positions, but usually a convenient fork in an alder-bush is chosen, twenty or thirty pairs often nesting within a radius of a hundred feet. The nest is a rude, strong affair of sticks and coarse grass-stalks lined with finer grass, and looks very bulky and rough beside the neat structure of the red-wing; which illustrates how much better a result can be produced by an artistic use of the same material. In the case of both these birds, however, the female does not wear the jetty, iridescent coat which adorns the head of the family and reflects the sunlight in a thousand prismatic tints, but hides herself and the home she cares for by affecting a dull, brown-black, streaked suit, assimilating her closely with the surrounding objects. This protective coloration of plumage is possessed by the females of many species of birds, which would be very conspicuous, and of course greatly liable to danger while incubating their eggs, if they wore the bright tints of the males. The tanager and indigo-bird afford prominent examples. Sometimes the crow blackbirds make their homes at a distance from the water, and occasionally they choose odd places, such as the tops of tall pine trees, the spires of churches, martin-boxes in gardens and holes in trees. The latter situation is one which the bronzed blackbird of the Mississippi Valley (var. _AEneus_) especially makes use of.

Grakles' eggs are among the first on every boy's string, and until he gains experience the young collector supposes he has almost as many different species represented as he has specimens, so much do they differ, even in the same nestful, in respect to color, shape and size. Their length averages about 1.25 by .90 of an inch, but some are long, slender and pointed, while others are round, fat, and blunt at both ends. The ground color may be any shade of dirty white, light blue, greenish or olive brown; the markings consist of sharply-defined spots and confused blotches, scratches and straggling lines of obscure colors, from blue-black to lilac and rusty brown--sometimes scantily and prettily marbled upon the surface of the egg, and sometimes painted on so thick as to wholly conceal the ground color.

The crow blackbirds are in the advance-guard of the returning hosts of spring, making their appearance in small scattering flocks, and announcing their presence by loud smacks frequently repeated. They obtain most of their food from the ground, and walk about with great liveliness, scratching up the leaves, turning over chips and poking about the pastures for insects and seeds softened by the spring rains. Their destruction of insects--especially during May, when their young are in the nest--is enormous; yet their forays upon the cornfields, I fear, overbalance the good done the farmer by putting an end to grubs noxious to his crops.

"The depredations committed by these birds are almost wholly on Indian corn at different stages. As soon as its blades appear above the ground after it has been planted, the grakles descend upon the fields, pull up the tender plant and devour the seeds, scattering the green blades around. It is of little use to attempt to drive them away with a gun: they only fly from one part of the field to another. And again, as soon as the tender corn has formed, these flocks, now replenished by the growing of the year, once more swarm in the cornfields, tear off the husks and devour the tender grains. Wilson has seen fields of corn in which more than half the corn was thus ruined.

"These birds winter in immense numbers in the lower parts of Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia, sometimes forming one congregated multitude of several hundred thousand. On one occasion Wilson met, on the banks of the Roanoke, on the 20th of January, one of these prodigious armies of crow blackbirds. They arose, he states, from the surrounding fields with a noise like thunder, and descending on the length of the road before him, they covered it and the fences completely with black: when they again rose, and after a few evolutions descended on the skirts of the high-timbered woods, they produced a most singular and striking effect. Whole trees, for a considerable extent, from the top to the lowest branches, seemed as if hung with mourning. Their notes and screaming, he adds, seemed all the while like the distant sounds of a great cataract, but in a musical cadence."

ERNEST INGERSOLL.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE MODERN FRENCH NOVELISTS.

The grand old race of French story-tellers has wellnigh departed. One by one the great names in this department of modern French literature become erased from the lists of the living. Nor is this all. Many of the most brilliant of the novelists of the day have relinquished the pen of the romance-writer for that of the politician. About, for instance, expends in the leading articles of the _XIXe. Siecle_ the wit, the sparkle, the energy that charmed us long years ago in the pages of his novels. The younger Dumas--always less a novelist than a dramatist and (we must coin a word to do justice to the position) an _im_moralist--confines his efforts now to the production of unclean plays and uncleaner prefaces, that glow with unwholesome lustre like the phosphorescent flames that are bred of corruption and quiver over graves. Pitiless and cold, with a scalpel in one hand and a magnifying-glass in the other, he is at once the closest observer and the most eloquent denunciator of the moral maladies of French society. But he is not a novelist, strictly speaking. His gifts have another direction, his mind another bent. Nor is he altogether a dramatist, as is Sardou. His comedies are less remarkable on the stage than they are in the library. An invincible passion for preaching mars the development of the action. His characters say more than they do, and his plays charm less by any actual theatrical qualifications than by the extreme finish and brilliancy of their style. He will bring two men on the stage, and will let them talk together for half an hour without moving a muscle. They say wonderfully wise and witty things, it is true. But such dramatic writing is not exactly in the manner of Shakespeare. M. Dumas evidently dreams that his mission is to regenerate French society, but, apparently, he has as yet found the task beyond his powers. Nor are the means he suggested--in _L'Etrangere_, for instance--exactly those that would most strongly commend themselves to the Anglo-Saxon mind.

Among the most daring and successful of the novel-writers of the day we must undoubtedly number M. Emile Zola, whose recent works have created a deep and widespread sensation in literary circles in France. He is the chief of the so-called Realistic school, and is already recognized as a power in the land. To describe the characteristics of his works it is necessary to speak in superlatives. They are immensely strong, immensely realistic, and, it must also be added, immensely repulsive. Vice stands before us stripped of all her plumes and tinsel--naked, hideous and unclean. In _Therese Roquin_, for instance, he tells a tale of adulterous passion, of murder and of remorse. It is precisely the theme that used to arouse the genius of George Sand to its loftiest and most impassioned flights. But instead of poets and high-born ladies, moonlit nights and Italian landscapes, poetry, romance, art and music, Zola descends to the lower classes of society: he takes his characters from the shop and the factory, and shows us evil in all its abominations, remorse in all its horrors. In _L'Assommoir_, his latest and, in some respects, his most remarkable work, he has given us so atrocious and so powerful a delineation of the vices of the French working-classes that the mind recoils, sickened and terrified, from the contemplation of the tremendous picture. To find its parallel even in another form of art we must turn to some of the most repulsive of the pictures of Hogarth, the representation of Gin Lane or the dissection-scene in the "Successive Stages of Cruelty." Yet the foremost figures in this terrible delineation, his hero and heroine, are not wicked: they are simply weak. The _assommoir_--otherwise the drinking-shop--is the spider that poisons and ensnares their humble natures. The first pages of the book, the wedding and installation of Gervaise and Coupeau, the birth of their child, her anxieties, her cares, her longing for a clock, her pride in her modest home, are all told with a touch of tenderness, which, however, speedily disappears amid an accumulation of unclean horrors. The book is hideous, terrific, disgusting, but it is _not_ immoral. It is scarcely fit for any decent woman to read, but it is no more demoralizing than is the interior of a dissecting-room.

In the _History of the Rougon Macquart Family_, a series of six separate works united by the slightest of links, M. Zola attempted to trace the career of a family during the period of the Second Empire, or rather he tried, in imitation of Victor Hugo, to make an epoch, and not a human being, the hero of the work. In this he has but partially succeeded. The _Rougon Macquart Family_ is less a novel or series of novels than it is a dissertation on the Second Empire from a hostile point of view. As a gallery of historical pictures, painted by an able and contemporaneous hand, it is a work of considerable value, but this value is in spite of, not on account of, the story. Victor Hugo could indeed embody in his _Quatre-Vingt Treize_ the mighty image of the first Revolution, but M. Zola is not Victor Hugo, and such a task is beyond his powers.

One of the peculiarities of this tremendous and iconoclastic realist is the care with which he writes and the indefatigable polish he bestows upon his style. He writes and re-writes, corrects and copies, weighs every phrase, and is never content till the written words exactly reproduce the image of his thought. Another is his extreme reticence and self-possession. There are no traces of a fine frenzy about the most vigorous of his works. He paints vice from the standpoint of a street-corner. To others he leaves the roses and the raptures: for him are the mud and the stones. He has no illusions respecting the lower orders, as had Dickens and Eugene Sue. He reminds one of a certain picture by Courbet, who, disgusted with the elegant studies of the nude in the annual exhibition, painted a group of real every-day bathers, some half a dozen washerwomen at Asnieres. The picture was revolting, but it was great, because there was truth in the subject and power in the execution. And notwithstanding the tempest of adverse criticism which his later works, and especially his _Assommoir_, have called forth, he holds a high and recognized place amid the writers of the day.

To turn from Zola to Alphonse Daudet is to leave the back slums of a city for a flower-decked forest-path: it is to exchange the hideous facts of police records and city statistics for the fresh and tender poesy of the woods and fields. M. Daudet is yet so young that he may possibly surpass in the future even the great success of his earlier career--namely, _Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine_. His _Nabob_, now in course of publication as a feuilleton in one of the Parisian newspapers, is a work of far different style and scope from his first great success.

Among the rising writers of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ the name of Andre Theuriet is rapidly becoming prominent. As chaste, as tender, as sincere as Daudet, if less gifted and poetical, he depicts provincial life and manners with scarcely less skill than does his brilliant contemporary the factory and the salons of the Marais. He is, above all, an adorer of the woods--not such wild virgin forests as may still be met with in our own land, but the decorous and well-trained woods of France, where the very trees seem to have learned politeness and keep to their own places, not one of them daring to tower to an undue height or to spread its roots or branches over an unaccustomed breadth of space. Born at Marly-le-Roi, his youth was spent at Bar-le-Duc, and in his mature manhood he was transferred to Auberive--three points where his love of forests could be indulged in to any extent. Something of the freshness, the summer sweetness, the natural charm of his favorite haunts seems to pervade the atmosphere of his graceful and delicate tales. He is one of the few French novelists one can imagine writing in English. _Gerard's Marriage_, _Angele's Fortune_, _An Undine_, are all imbued with that peculiar quality which the French call _honnetete_--an expression for which our language furnishes no equivalent. Neither striking in incident nor complicated in plot, his stories charm by their delicate delineations of character, their refinement of tone and sincerity of sentiment, and their truthfulness of description. His stories remind one of what Miss Mulock's novels used to be when she wrote her best, while Daudet might be characterized as a Parisian mingling of Hawthorne and Bret Harte, and Zola as a brutal Thackeray.

M. Jules Claretie has written many novels. But he has also written plays, histories, biographies, leading articles: he is the most indefatigable of writers, as he is one of the most intelligent and clear-headed. He has, however, the defect of being a literary Don Juan, wasting his smiles amid the _mille e tre_ instead of consecrating his pen in legitimate wedlock to a single Muse. The immense facility with which he writes is fatal to the enduring success of his novels. They abound in powerful episodes and strong bits of description, and here and there some single scene, original in conception and forcible in treatment, starts out from the mass like the scarlet draperies in a faded piece of Gobelin tapestry. His gifts are those of an historian or of a critic, not those of a novel-writer. When in his historical novels, such as _Les Muscadins_ or _Le Beau Solignac_, he trenches on the firm ground of the Real, his true force displays itself. In these works he has attempted to revive the lengthy chronicles of the elder Dumas, but without that irrepressible verve, that headlong vehemence of animal spirits, which, like the rush of a locomotive, bore the reader, breathless and interested, over rough places and smooth alike. The draught M. Claretie brews for our drinking bears no affinity to that intoxicating and sparkling champagne. The Dumas brand is exhausted, and all imitations are but as flat cider in comparison. In the _Renegade_, which is a specimen of a style of fiction largely in vogue at present in France--one that might be called the contemporaneous historical novel--M. Claretie found himself once more on firm and familiar ground. The hero of the _Renegade_ is a Republican politician who turns Bonapartist, and who finally commits suicide something after the fashion of M. Prevost-Paradol, whose career, it is indeed said, suggested the book.

But M. Claretie is seen at his best when he lays down the pen of a novel-writer and takes up that of a critic or that of a chronicler of passing events. His plays possess the same defects as his novels, being diffuse, devoid of incident and overloaded with unnecessary details. But the clearness and vigor of the style, the strong sense and daylight intelligence that reign in all his writings, prevent his poorest works from being commonplace or uninteresting.

Arsene Houssaye, like his almost un-namable contemporary Belot, is the Laureate of Vice. His imagination is as unclean as a street-gutter, only it is a gutter that runs rose-water. He deals exclusively with the "roses-and-raptures" side of the question. He always lays the scene of his romances in dainty boudoirs, beneath the soft light of real wax candles (gas would be far too vulgar). He revels in annals of the nobility. His heroes seldom or never are without a "handle to their names." His heroines are usually selected from a set whose name he has chosen as the title of one of his novels--_Les Courtisanes du Grand Monde_. His books would be injurious if they were not so very stupid. They are improbable in incident, immoral in tone, exaggerated in style and lamentably dragged out in length. The trail of the class among which M. Houssaye spends his days is visible in every page. M. Houssaye is possessed with a passionate desire to become a member of the French Academy. Well, why should he not sit where Taine does not and where Sardou does? His _History of the Forty-first Fauteuil_, one of the brightest and wittiest of his works, will probably avail, not to open the doors to him, but to bar them against him.

L. H. H.

FRANCOIS BULOZ.

The man whose fortunes were to be during nearly half a century connected with the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was born in 1804 at Vulbens, a village in French Savoy. Without becoming anything of a savant, M. Buloz received the fair education then obtainable at the College Louis le Grand. After leaving school he was forced to take a situation at some chemical works in Sologne, but soon returned disgusted and without means to Paris. There we find him passing his days in a printing-office, and his evenings--and often, too, his nights--in miscellaneous reading. In all that he did he displayed that indomitable energy which characterized his entire subsequent career.

The _Revue des Deux Mondes_ had been started in 1829. It was a sickly bantling, and had to change its name the following year to the _Journal des Voyages_. The new name, however, brought no fresh subscribers, and the _Journal_ was dragging on a dreary existence when M. Auffray, the printer, bought it, and engaged his former schoolfellow, Francois Buloz, as editor of the new series of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. His yearly salary was twelve hundred francs, and two francs for every subscriber. There were then but three hundred and fifty of these, but in 1834 the three hundred and fifty had become one thousand; in 1838 five hundred more had been added; in 1843 there were two thousand; in 1846, two thousand five hundred; and in 1851, five thousand. Long before this the _Revue_ had become a power. Buloz remained as a partner, but M. Auffray had long since given up his interest in it: he had been succeeded by Alexander Bixio, and the latter by Messrs. Florestan and Felix Bonnaire, the owners of the _Revue de Paris_. Messrs. Bonnaire in 1845 proposed to buy out Buloz for a sum exceeding one hundred thousand francs. After consulting with Merimee, Sainte-Beuve and others, Buloz declined the proposal, and with the aid of his friends bought out the brothers Bonnaire for a sum just double that which they had offered him. It was then, in 1846, that the new company was constituted, with Buloz as managing director, and M. Mole, M. d'Haussonville, M. de Saint Priest, Count Roger, the duc de Broglie, M. de Rothschild, M. Baude and others as stockholders. A number of writers too were interested in the concern, and were to pay for their stock in the shape of contributions. A year or two before, the _Revue_ had been most violently attacked by persons ill disposed to bear with M. Buloz's firm determination to admit nothing into the _Revue_ but what he considered up to the standard requisite to maintain its reputation. Alexandre Dumas led the coalition, which was in part made up of men who had been criticised by the _Revue_. As was natural, their enmity only advertised the periodical and increased its circulation. Still, his enemies managed in more ways than one to make him feel their power. Ever since 1838, M. Buloz, under the title of "commissaire du roi," had been manager of the Theatre Francais, but after the revolution of 1848 he was abruptly dismissed. Thenceforth he gave his attention exclusively to his literary enterprise, and the _Revue_ gained thereby.

From the very first, Buloz had secured the rising literary talent of the day for the _Revue_. Alfred de Vigny contributed to it successively _Stello_, _Laurette_ and _Le Capitaine Renaud_; Alexandre Dumas, whose jealousy was only aroused later on, published therein his _Impressions de Voyage_; Balzac wrote for it, as did also Nodier, Victor Hugo, Barbier, Brizeux, Merimee, Lerminier, George Sand, Jouffry, Alfred de Musset, Sainte-Beuve, Gustave Planche and Augustin Thierry, whose _Nouvelles lettres sur l'Histoire de France_ first appeared in the _Revue_.

In 1840, M. Thiers, while president of the council, wrote an article for the _Revue_. Buloz, who greatly admired the statesman-historian, pressed him strongly the following year to write upon the Eastern Question. M. Thiers, then at Lille, was about to go to Germany in order to examine the battle-fields of Napoleon for his great work. We find him writing to Buloz a letter which is not less interesting at the present time than it was thirty-six years ago: "I often think of writing for you an article on the Eastern Question, but it is somewhat difficult for me to leave my work. However, I am preparing to put pen to paper in order to carry out my promise. I must tell you that with an ever-increasing taste for _la grande politique_, I daily care less and less for _la petite politique_, which consists in simply providing each day for the requirements of the hour. This daily bread upon which men live at Paris is repugnant to my tastes. I am a strong partisan of our institutions, for I know of none other possible, but they convert the government of the country into an association for the merest chit-chat.... It is therefore for me a real sacrifice to return to the narrow sphere of affairs of the present day, and to speak or write thereon. I am happy where I am, and in doing what I am now about.... Still, I will make an effort to write for you before leaving for Germany. I see nothing very important except the Eastern Question, which is not a _question du moment_, and which will outlive us."

It is truly wonderful how many men eminent in various departments Buloz managed to enrol among the contributors to the _Revue_. Of course, his strict adherence to the rule he had laid down of rigidly exercising his prerogative as director led many who had written a few articles for the _Revue_ to abandon it in disgust. Still, many even of these returned after years of separation to their old love. Buloz maintained his even course undaunted by storms of criticism. He was to be found early and late at work, constantly reading, correcting proofs, busying himself as to the punctuation, the type, even the appearance of the title-pages. He himself was wont to define his position thus: "I am the public: all I ask is to be instructed or interested. If a work neither instructs nor interests me, the chances are that it will produce no better effect on the real public for whom it is written." He was always fearing that something would intervene to prevent the publication appearing by the 1st or the 15th of each month, and became almost feverishly agitated as the calendar pointed to the near approach of the day of publication.