beginning to the end, the fighting will be forced. There will be no patched-up truces, made only to be broken. . . . The result, expressed in a few words, would be a railroad federation under a protectorate. The united action of the great through lines is necessary to bring this about; and how to secure that action is now the problem." That there is something of the kind imminent, he does not doubt. This is but one of the shrewd remarks to be found in the book, very little of which is of a kind to give unalloyed satisfaction to any of the numerous contestants in railroad strife. Nor will the theorists who desire to put everything under the charge of a paternal government —which is to visionaries of the present day very much what nature was a century ago -get much encouragement from Mr. Adams.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.

The second volume of Sainte-Beuve's 1 Correspondence, which includes the letters of the last four years of his life, is of the same somewhat disappointing quality as the first one. There are more of the formal notes of thanks to critics who had been civil to him; business notes to his friends and others on the work that he was busy about at the time, asking for dates, the corrobo-ration of uncertain statements, etc.; and here and there a letter that it is a pleasure and a satisfaction to find printed. But the reader feels continually that Sainte-Beuve was too indefatigable a writer to spend much time in correspondence, so that his letters, for the most part, have hardly more literary interest than a business man's telegrams; and then we know that all of those more intimate remarks, those frank expressions of opinion, those revelations of the real feeling which make the charm of letters as contrasted with the printed page, have all found their place in his deadly footnotes, and his pensées, where he would concentrate his whole censure in one winged shaft of criticism devoid of compliment. Even with these serious drawbacks the book has considerable value; it is only in contrast with what every one has hoped for that it seems uninteresting.

Often we find him defending his views on religion from various forms of attack, and, at the time the incident occurred, setting right malicious false reports about the din

1 Sainte-Beuve, Correspondance. 1825-69. II. Paris Lévy. 1878.

ner on Good Friday, an event which created the most disproportionate excitement. He was by no means a believer, in the usual acceptation of the term, but he was far from making his lack of belief obnoxious to others, while he had to endure a good deal of misrepresentation from those who considered it necessary to remonstrate with him. In this volume are to be found two or three letters in which he takes pains to state his position very clearly.

These vague words of comment must suffice, and lack of space must explain our giving but one example of Sainte-Beuve's letters. It was written ten years ago to M. Émile Zola (the author, it will be remembered, of L'Assommoir), about his book, Thérèse Raquin. This novel is one of a good deal of what is called force, that is to say, no one can read it without receiving a very violent impression, and, except that it lacks the enormous amount of technical preparation which distinguishes the RougonMacquart series, it is hard to see why it is not fully equal to any of them. It certainly has to a very great degree all their faults. Here is the letter, dated June 10, 1868.

DEAR SIR: I am not so sure that I shall send you this letter, for I do not feel that I have any right to criticise privately your Thérèse Raquin. . . . Your work is remarkable, conscientious, and in some respects it may mark an epoch in the history of the contemporary novel. But yet in my opinion it exceeds the limits, it abandons the conditions, of art viewed in any light; and by reducing art to pure and simple truth, it seems to me to lack this truth.

And in the first place, you choose a motto that is not justified by anything in the novel. If vice and virtue are only products like vitriol and sugar, it must follow that a crime explained and accounted for like this one is no such miraculous and monstrous thing; and one cannot help asking why, in that case, there is all this machinery of remorse, which is but a transformation and transposition of ordinary moral remorse, of Christian remorse, and is another sort of

hell.

In the beginning, you describe the Passage du Pont Neuf.... Well, this description is not true: it is fantastic; it is like Balzac's Rue Soli. The Passage is flat, dull, ugly, and very narrow, but it has none of the blackness and of the Rembrandt-like tints that you ascribe to it. That is another way of being inaccurate.

Your characters, too, if it was on purpose that you made them dull and vulgar (excepting the young woman who is something like an Algerian), are life-like, well drawn, conscientiously analyzed, and honestly copied. To tell the truth, little as I am of an idealist, I cannot help asking if the pencil or the pen must necessarily choose vulgar subjects, void of all charm (I asked the same thing about Germinie Lacerteux, by my friends the Goncourts). I am convinced that a touch of something agreeable, of something pathetic, is not wholly useless, even if only on one or two points, -even in a picture that one wishes to make perfectly gloomy and dark. But I will say nothing more about that. There is one place in which I find a good deal of talent in the way of invention: it is in the boldness of the rendezvous. The page about the cat, about what it might say, is charming, and does not fall into pure and simple copying. I find, too, great analytic skill and vraisemblance (the kind of novel being accepted) in the scenes before and after the drowning.

...

But there I stop, and the novel seems to me to go astray. I maintain that here observation, or divination, fails you. It is done with the head, and not from nature. And, in fact, passion is ferocious. Once unchained, it continues so long as it is not gratified. So I do not understand your lovers with their remorse, and their sudden cooling before they had accomplished their ends. As to what might have happened later I say nothing. When the main passion is satisfied reflection commences, the inconveniences are seen, and remorse begins.

You see my objections, my dear sir. But they do not blind me to the technical merit in the execution of many pages. I can only wish that the word vautrer was used less frequently, and that that other word, brutal, which continually appears, did not come to enforce the dominant note, which has no need of this reminder to escape being forgotten.

You have done a bold thing: you have in this book defied the public and the critics. Do not be surprised at considerable wrath; the fight is begun; your name is connected with it; such contests end, when an author of talents wishes it, by another book, equally bold but somewhat more moderate, in which the public and the critics imagine that they see a concession such as they wanted, and it all ends with one of those

treaties of peace which establish our reputation more.

When one recalls the amount of criticism that Zola's books have provoked, these words, which hit the very faults that have since made this author famous, are well worth consideration.

-Comte de Gobineau's La Renaissance 1 is a book that will be pretty sure not to tempt the reader who opens it and merely turns over the pages. A series of dramatic sketches demands pretty constant attention to be appreciated properly, and this form of writing has, in the course of time, gone very much out of fashion. The reader prefers being told something to finding it out for himself, and he has become distrustful of the necessary inaccuracy, or at least the formal inaccuracy, of even the cleverest attempts at dramatic writing. But Gobineau nowhere comes near a theatrical representation in what he has here written. He has rather told a series of slightly connected stories about the period of the Renaissance by means of a number of scenes, written with more resemblance to the manner of the stage than is to be found in Landor's Imaginary Conversations, for instance, but hardly so much as we see in Alfred de Musset's Lorenzaccio, which surely could never be acted without a good deal of clipping and filling-out. It is easy to see that a book of this sort is not likely to attract every one, but Gobineau has already shown himself so distinctly one of the most cultivated and thoughtful of contemporary authors that this is not exaggerated praise those who know will doubtless be willing to affirm that a new book of his cannot fail to attract attention.

What

The scenes he has chosen for illustration in this volume are most interesting. one sees in looking at a great period like the Renaissance is apt to be what one looks for, and Gobineau has pictured here specimens of both the artistic and the political life of that time. The first division consists of Savonarola's career, which may be said to belong to the political life, and contains an account, put, of course, in dramatic form, of the career of that celebrated reformer. It sets him in no very favorable light, and brings out his fanaticism much more than any other of his qualities. But that is a small part of the author's performance; by a number of well-contrived scenes he brings 1 La Renaissance. Scènes Historiques. Par LE COMTE DE GOBINEAU. Paris: E. Plon & Cie. 1877.

before us the busy life of Florence and its relations with other cities, the whirl of political strife, the feelings of the artists, and all the complicated civilization of that day. And this is the way Gobineau has treated the whole history that he has chosen to illustrate. The headings of the different divisions are of only slight importance; they are the merest pegs on which hangs a sympathetic and tolerably thorough exposition of the Renaissance. The Popes Julius II. and Leo X.; Raphael, Titian, Leonardo, and Michael Angelo; Machiavelli, Cæsar Borgia, Aretino, and Bembo, are but a few of the many figures that appear in the pages, and in their talk, which is based on the author's careful research and inspired by his keen sympathy, they live again, as it were, the main incidents of that stirring epoch.

It is very much the fashion nowadays to write about the Renaissance, and every one who has a grudge against the present time avenges himself by praising that period at the expense of these degenerate days; and there is a good deal of misplaced subtlety in the investigation of its literary and artistic excellence. The new crop of English æsthetic writers, who hold in scorn the old saying about the Italianized Englishman, outdo one another in decorative writing in the interpretation of old paintings and poems. By the side of these authors Gobineau seems simple and manly. He does not give way to "tall" writing, but sets forth his notion of a few of the main peculiarities that marked that era. These historical scenes will well repay those who will overcome their repugnance to the form in which they are written, and will take them up. The translation of a single detached scene would not give the reader a satisfactory notion of the merit of the book, or we should give some proof of our words; as it is, the reader can only be urged to examine the way the history of the Renais sance strikes a man like Gobineau, and he will be pretty sure to be interested, even if it is hard to discriminate between interest in the events themselves and interest in the author's way of writing about them.

- Although philology is in the main a German science, and all the workers in it have to go back to that country for precise and definite information, France, even if at a long distance, may be said to hold the second place. England shines mainly with a borrowed light; Italy contains but few 1 Mélanges de Mythologie et de Linguistique. Par MICHEL BRÉAL, Membre de l'Institut, Profes

students, of whom only one has a wide reputation; while Bréal, it is not too much to say, is a real ornament to French erudition. His masterly translation of Bopp's comparative grammar, which really has the value of a carefully revised and much-enlarged edition of the original work, has given him a very high position. His scattered essays and monographs have always found admiring readers, so that the publication of his various papers in a single volume 1 gives an excellent opportunity to form some sort of conclusion about his merit.

Doubtless the most important of the essays in this volume is the one upon the myth of Hercules and Cacus; it appeared some fifteen years ago in separate form, and although it did not actually lay open an unknown path to investigators, it was at the time recognized as a most remarkable unfolding of a very difficult matter. The study of myths had not then proceeded very far, and Bréal's investigation, of one widespread and obscure myth has always been a model of the way in which such work should be done. Without making invidious comparisons between the two nations, it is notorious that while German work is often graceless, French research produces flawless results, as complete as the multiplication table, which excite the suspicions of the cautious. But Bréal is a thorough scholar, while at the same time he is a delightful writer, - a rare and fascinating combination. This is not the place for an abbreviation of his excellent work, which, moreover, is no longer new, but it may be allowable to call attention to the way in which the fable of Hercules and Cacus is shown in the various modifications it underwent among different peoples, and the solution that explains all the incidents of the story. Every one who has paid any attention to the study of myths will at once recall the foundation underlying this, as so many other similar once incomprehensible legends. The clouds, with their coming and going, which so deeply impressed our early Aryan forefathers, inspired the origi nal form which has cropped up in various literatures, notably in the Æneid. Nothing could be neater than Bréal's careful exposition, and those who are dabbling in some of the most interesting of modern stories cannot fail to be fascinated by this specimen of good workmanship. The essays on linguistics are also very instructive. seur de Grammaire Comparée au Collège de France. Paris: Hachette. 1878.

II.

THE next day (Tuesday) we were all up at an early hour, ready to set off, but as the weather was still lowering we waited till nine o'clock, and then, there being a promise of good weather, we ordered our carriages. But now came a new difficulty. The rains had so swollen the stream that it was unfordable. We could not go to Atina. Nothing was left but to go to San Germano, where there was a good road with a bridge. The vetturino was again called up, and after a long discussion we canceled our former contract, and agreed to pay him four and a half piasters to take us in a single covered carriage to San Germano; for we were now determined, rain or shine, to get away from Sora, having come to the conclusion that it always rained there.

No sooner were we off than the rain held up, and after a few miles the sun began to struggle through the clouds. Looking back, we saw, however, that it still rained at Sora, a great gray cloud having, as it were, fastened itself to the overhanging cliff, with the intention to rain itself out there to its heart's content. The valley through which our road lay was exquisite, and the mountains behind us towered grandly into the air. After skirting along the Liris for

three miles we approached Isola, where there are extensive manufactories of paper, cotton, and woolen. The influence of this industry was at once visible. Everything had a thrifty, spruce, neat look. Scattered about were nice, pretentious little case di Campagna, and houses for the operatives, and gardens; and on the summit of a hill, where once would have been a feudal castle, rose the Carteria del Fibreno, a large paper manufactory owned by Monsieur Lefebvre. The country all around is very charming; its broad slopes are covered with vineyards; grand mountains hem in the valley, and at their cloven base the Liris, sweeping down the shelving rocks, flings itself in foam over a precipitous cliff. The river was now greatly swollen by the rains, and its turbid yellow rapids roared and flung up their spray, as they plunged along between masses of green overhanging foliage, and tumbled into the gorge below.

About a mile beyond may be seen the old monastery and church of St. Dominico Abate, which are curious to the artist for their combination of various orders of architecture, reverend to Catholics as being the scene of the saint's death, and interesting to scholars particularly as occupying the site of Cicero's Arpinum Villa. Into the walls of the monastery and church are built many

fragments of bassi-relievi triglyphs and Doric ornaments which once belonged to the villa, as well as several columns of granite and marble which were used in building the church. These are all that now remain of that beautiful villa where Cicero composed his orations for Plaucus and Scaurus, and held his dialogues with Atticus. There is nowhere in this country a vestige of the great Roman orator which does not show his perfect and fastidious taste, but nothing more plainly proves that he inherited it than the fact that his ancestors (for so he himself tells us) selected this place as the site of their villa. He might fairly call the little islands that the two rivers here embrace the μακάρων νῆσοι, the islands of the blessed.

In the second conversation De Legibus he says that whenever he can absent himself from Rome for a few days he delights to come to this villa, because of its amenity and healthiness. There is, however, he adds, another reason which brings to him a pleasure which it cannot bring to Atticus; and when Atticus asks "what that may be," he replies: "Because, to speak the truth, this is the native country of myself and my brother. Here we were born from a very ancient line of ancestors. Here are our sacred relics, here our family, here, the traces of our forefathers. This villa by the care of our father was enlarged and put into its present condition, and here, when he was infirm in health, his age was passed in study. In this very place, while my grandfather still lived and the villa was small and in its original state, like the Villa Curiana in the Sabine hills, I was born. There is some secret influence, I know not what, affecting my very soul and sense which gives this spot a special charm to me, so that I am like that wisest of men who is reported to have said that he would forego immortality so that he again could behold Ithaca."

To this Atticus says: "These, in my judgment, are very good reasons why you should like this place and find pleasure in coming here; and I myself, to speak the truth, also find the villa more delightful for this very reason, that you

were here born and brought up. For we are moved, I know not how, by places themselves, in which are the imprints of those whom we love and admire. Thus our Athens itself affects me with delight, not so much on account of its magnificent works and the exquisite art of the ancients, as because the reminiscences of its great men are associated with the places in which they used to live, and to sit, and to discourse. Nay, even their tombs I contemplate with deep interest. And so, in like manner, I love this place the more because it is your birthplace."

And Cicero adds: "I am glad to say I can even show my swaddling-clothes here." Over eighteen centuries have passed by since this conversation was written, and we still find the same charm in this place, because Cicero was here born and lived and wrote and conversed with his friends. The wasting tide of time, which has obliterated so many landmarks, has, as it were, only polished and refined the antique memorials of this remarkable man, and his spirit still haunts the spot like a permanent presence and inspiration. We seem to walk in his footsteps, and almost to hear his voice, as we pace the paths he used to tread. Nature has changed but little since he passed away. Still, as of old, the Fibrenus sweeps along, opening its arms to embrace the whole island, and then, again, uniting them, flings its chill waters with a murmur into the Liris. The very sounds that Cicero and Atticus heard we still may hear, so many a year after their voices have passed away, and Quintus's description of it reads as if it were written yesterday:

"We have now come," he says, "to the island, and nothing truly could be more delightful. Here as with a prow it divides the Fibrenus into two equal streams, that, after sweeping along its banks, again unite in one and inclose a space sufficiently large for an ordinary palastra. This accomplished, as if its true office and duty were to afford us a place for our discourse, it precipitates itself into the Liris, and here, as if it had entered into a patrician family, it loses