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ject). The author has provided, too, that his over-idealizing tendencies shall be sufficiently balanced by the stout practical common sense of Vittore, a true German model of feminine excellence, of which a healthy buxom maid-servant appears to be the type. Jean Paul is almost the only novel writer who rises above this not very refined ideal; but his women are mere creatures of the element, without their due proportion of flesh and blood.

From the conversations of the Count, Stephanie, and the schoolmaster, we might select some good sayings; but on such subjects as morals, education, and religion there has been of late too much of desultory talk. In the present stage of the business, those who have no definite convictions would perhaps do well to hold their peace; for there is a kind of intellectual dissipation already too common, which is encouraged by these endless discussions leading to no result. The simplest truth distinctly enunciated becomes fruitful, but in vague talk we do but sow the wind, and we all know in that case what harvest we have to expect.

ART. XII.-CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE OF FRANCE'.

THE

HE produce of the last quarter has been insignificant compared with that of the preceding quarter; no work of philosophy or science has appeared to call forth a remark, no striking fiction, little but pamphlets, mostly dictated by an ignoble flattery of Louis Napoleon and his infamies. France, whose vain-glorious writers incessantly proclaim her the "brain of the world," who claims to rule Europe with the Sword and the Pen, makes but a sorry figure in the world's eyes under her new dictator, who has proved of what honourable material her army is composed, and who has done his utmost to break the Pen in the hands of all those writers that keep aloof from the Tuileries!

Among the few noticeable publications, we must menHistory. tion the continuations of Louis Blanc's "Histoire de la Révolution," vol. iii.; Barante's "Histoire de la Convention," vol. iii.; and Lamartine's "Histoire de la Restauration," vols. iii., iv., and v.; three important works which claim attention. Louis Blanc's third volume is undobtedly the finest he has yet

1 The works named in the course of this article have been furnished us by Mr. Jeffs, of the Burlington Arcade.

written. Exile has concentrated his thoughts and studies. The vast collection of our British Museum Library has helped him to an immense mass of novel details. Only those who have written on the subject of the French Revolution, and had recourse to our Museum, can form an adequate idea of its superiority both in materials and arrangement to that of the Paris collection; and a merely casual turning over the leaves of this third volume will suffice to make the reader aware of how much Louis Blanc has been indebted to the collection. His volume abounds in novelties-some of them startling, as, for example, his shifting the burden of the conspiracy so long borne by Philippe Egalité to the back of the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII.; some of them throwing a new light upon a whole series of events, as in his admirable narrative of what Carlyle calls the "Insurrection of Menads," the 5th and 6th of October. While rendering a proper tribute to the patient and sagacious industry with which Louis Blanc has compiled this volume, let us not forget the animation and rhetorical splendour with which he has written it. A severe taste will, indeed, condemn the uniformity of that style, and regret its sustained sonorous pomp; but if one has to regret its rhetorical exaggeration and fondness for phrases more energetic than appropriate, its admirable clearness must also be remembered. To a French taste its very defects will probably have a charm. To those who, like Keats, "look on fine phrases as a lover," we recommend every page. It is written with passion, with the vigour of hate and the enthusiasm of love; its animus is undisguised; and therefore, though one cannot call it an impartial work, (is there such a thing as an impartial history?) yet the reader is fairly on his guard.

It opens with an excellent chapter, "La Propriété devant la Révolution," which vividly paints the "situation" of the celebrated 4th of August, when the nobles, by an enthusiastic impulse, abolished feudalism for ever; to that succeeds a picture of "L'Evangile devant la Révolution," and a graphic sketch of the Constituent Assembly and its first labours. The chapter on the Fourth Estate-Journalism-is full of interesting detail, and concludes with an elaborate kitcat sketch of Marat. To paint that hideous figure, Louis Blanc has borrowed the energetic brush of a Caravaggio; but while appreciating its effets du style, we cannot but note a certain predominance of the painter over the judge, in the uncritical manner in which the " persecution" and "oppression" of Marat are assumed as the causes and almost as the justifications of his atrocious career. It is very likely that Marat was despised by the Academicians of his day; it is more than probable that the savans whom he at

tacked, and whom he outraged by his insolence, refused to acknowledge him, refused even to mention his name. What then? Has not the world of savans always been so? Are not similar persecutions for ever enacted among the mediocrities and constituted authorities, and shall we accept such persecution as a justification of l'ami du peuple? No; Louis Blanc himself accepts no such excuse; he sees the moral deformity of Marat, and he finishes his portrait with this comment :après cela qu'on foule aux pieds Marat, si on l'ose; et si on l'ose, qu'on l'admire!" For ourselves, we regard it as one of the most unhappy consequences of l'esprit de parti that men should feel themselves bound to excuse and to admire such men as Marat, because Marat espoused the cause they hold sacred. It is well that our convictions should be a religion; but it is not well when our religion makes idols of monsters as hideous as those which savages blindly worship.

The sixth chapter of Louis Blanc's volume is devoted to "La Faction du Comte de Provence," and will raise endless discussion among those learned in such matters. We have no space here to open the discussion; nor, indeed, to touch upon the many topics handled in this volume. Enough for our present purpose if we indicate that the history is brought down to the death of Favras, and the new organization of the kingdom. The reign of blood has commenced!

A terrible reign, indeed! One wearies at the frightful monotony of crime, as Tacitus eloquently complains of the lugubrious uniformity of his " Annals;" no sooner is the narrative of one murder closed, than that of another opens; high and low, the brave and the despised, the descendants of Scipio and the profligates of the court, all perish; and it is from a genuine weariness that the historian speaks, not from a mere rhetorical artifice. But the "Annals" of Tacitus are less sombre, less terrible, than the Annals of the French Revolution from the establishment of the National Convention to the ninth Thermidor. M. de Barante has undertaken the History of the Convention. We noticed on a former occasion his two first volumes; the third is now before us. It relates the story of the Girondins, and brings the narrative down to 1793, with Carrier at Nantes. On the general merits and defects of this work, we have already spoken; the third volume has not altered our opinion. The analysis of the séances of the Assembly are brief and effective, the portraits well drawn, and the tone elevated, though pragmatical.

Lamartine's brilliant and somewhat tawdry improvisation, the "Histoire de la Restauration," continues its rapid pace. Three

volumes have appeared since our last notice. They open with the departure of Napoleon for Elba, and close with the execution of Labédoyère. Possessing the same faults as the two first volumes, they possess an interest considerably greater. As a composition, this history has every sin-except dullness-a history can have; but dull it never is. The reader is carried over the ground at a spanking pace. No time is left him for scrutiny, none for reflection; he is dazzled, amused, excited, hurried away. The volume is opened and the volume is closed; but if by chance it be reopened, the reader becomes painfully conscious of the theatrical tawdriness of the style, and the patchwork nature of the composition. The incessant recurrence, too, of those very French words, jactance, audace, affecta, soldatesque, betrays the sterile fecundity of improvisation, the mere prodigality of sounding words. But amidst the defects, what splendid passages! amidst the rhetoric, what bursts of eloquence! amidst the light improvisation, what clear and solid substance! There is a chapter devoted to Murat, which is the finest biography of the great cavalry officer ever written, and a very interesting chapter it is. There was much that was Gascon and theatrical in Murat, but more that was truly chivalrous. The battle-field was his passion; a charge of cavalry his intensest form of life. But he loved a battle for its excitement, not for its carnage; the rolling musketry, the clanking sabres, the thunder of a charge, the noise, the smoke, the furor of a melêe intoxicated him, yet he never killed a single man! He charged at the head of his magnificent troops with an impetuousness nothing could withstand, reckless of life, insatiable in his thirst for glory, but even in the furor of combat he used his sword to animate his followers, never to strike at the enemy. His consolation was, that never had he seen a human being fall before him by a blow from his hand. It was probable that, in the charges that he made, men may have fallen beneath his horse; "but," said he, "if I had slain a man with my own hand, his image would have been ever after present to my mind, and would have pursued me to the grave." Lamartine has wonderfully depicted the mixture of heroism, tenderness, moral cowardice, and ostentation of Murat's character. In the fourth volume Lamartine tells the story of the battle of Waterloo. He tells it like a Frenchman. In other words, he delights us as much by the absurdity of his blunders, as by the animation and picturesqueness of the narrative. Everything is done for effect, and the effect is attained. To turn a period, he does not hesitate to say that Wellington had seven horses shot under him; and to flatter the foolish weakness of his countrymen, he

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insists that, although Napoleon lost the day, the French army gained the victory: the fault is laid upon the Emperor-the glory all on the French soldiers!

To show how little care Lamartine has bestowed upon the important principle of all composition-proportion, we need simply mention that in a work which professes to recount the "History of the Restoration" in eight volumes, five are consumed by the introduction! At the close of the fifth the Bourbons are finally restored, and their history begins!

Something of the same rapid book-making, but in a more shameless form, is seen in "Les Mémoires d'Alexandre Dumas," five volumes of which are already published. But then Dumas is the great book-spinner of the day: brilliant, audacious, lively, extravagant, marvellous! He does things at which soberer mortals only stare. No one thinks of his practice as an excuse for any literary exploit. We suppose a more impudent specimen of book-making can scarcely be named than these Memoirs. They are the pretext for dragging in all sorts of anecdotes, pointless and pointed; for sketching the characters of all sorts of people, interesting and stupid. With imperturbable coolness he fills chapter after chapter by narratives of the French Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon; and he cannot mention a writing-master without digressing for two or three chapters to tell us all about him. There is very little biography here. Let us catch one glimpse.

In the little town of Villers-Côterèts, in the Departement de l'Aisne, the name of which lingers in the memory of most French novel readers, Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, son of General Thomas Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie, and of Marie Louise Elizabeth Labouret, his wife, was born on the 24th of July, 1802. We emphasize the words his wife, because Dumas' enemies have not only contested his right to the name of Davy de la Pailleterie, and the title of marquis thereunto belonging, but have so authoritatively stated that he was an illegitimate son, that the notion is now pretty generally accredited. "Had I been a bastard," he gaily says, "I should have quietly accepted the bar on my escutchon, as other more celebrated bastards have done, and like them I should have gallantly laboured to give my name its personal value. But, gentlemen, you see it can't be helped, and you must do as I do, be resigned to my legitimacy." His father-of whom he is justly proud, and whose memoirs occupy by far the greater portion of the first two volumes-was the son of the Marquis de la Pailleterie, and was born in St. Domingo: hence the Creole blood so noticeable in the appearance and in the nature of our brilliant novelist. The reason of his dropping name and