the cases of Pyramus and Thisbe, Hagbart and Syène (see Grammaticus Saxo, and Ehlenschlager), and Romeo and Juliet; the entire work, so far as is hitherto published, being closed with an essay on "pastoral" according to the notions of Sègrais, who, regretting the discarded variety and simplicity of ancient models, would fain have been more rustic and less galant, but who was constrained by pressure from without to hit the humor of Persons of Quality, for he lived at the court of the Great Ma'm'selle, and must write accordingly: of Ménage, grand habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and alive to this hour in the mockery of Molière :

of Madame des Houlières, of whom St. Beuve has made an interesting study in his "Portraits des Femmes;" and finally, of Lamothe, with his pseudo-pastoral pretentiousness, and Fontenelle, whose eclogues have one parlous want, the want of rural inspiration, and whose loftiest ideal of countrylife simplicity does not extend beyond a shepherd with the gait and feelings of the salons, or a peasant transported and transcribed, with very little of revision or correction, from the boards of the opera.

If M. Girardin, in his literary tastes, is of the classical party, he is also acknowledged to belong to the party of tolerance-with a liking for diversity of gifts, and the free course of talent, provided always that man's highest sentiments are left intact, and the eternal laws of morality unassailed. He is styled by Desiré Nisard the liberal par excellence in literature; and as your true liberal is also conservative in certain essential features, so is he faithful to the time-proved and timeapproved classicalism of French taste. But he is susceptible to the influence of new modes, to the impression of new qualities. He is not, says the same critic, astonished at not finding himself in another author; rather he is charmed at finding one who is not himself. Accordingly he relishes the kind of composition to which his own bears little or no affinity. "Even a melo-drama has charms for him; and see now how commendable the charity, how delicate the sense of justice, which can dispose so natural a mind to enjoy the effect produced by even a melodrama's sound and fury."

If he delights, as he says he does, in his

functions as Professor, it is mainly on account of the scope his Professorship affords him to indoctrinate others with principles of good morals and good taste conjoined-"to caution," he says, "and, if I can, preserve them from false ideas and false sentiments, to make them love what is good and beautiful in literature and in morals." The end and aim of true criticism consists, in his judgment, in showing that the end and aim of literature is the beautiful, and in combating whatever opinions and ideas are calculated to draw aside the mind from this supreme object: the aesthetically beautiful being inseparable from the ethically good. He the more insists upon this harmony, because of the modern tendency to deny or practically ig nore it. Hence his solicitude to show, from examples found in sacred records and " profane" classics, that “le beau et le bon s'accordent plus souvent qu'on ne l'a cru de nos jours." Hence his neglect of no opportunity for certifying the union which exists between "le bon goût et la bonne morale." Thus, as one of the capital conditions of dramatic emotion he requires, that it should address itself to the intelligence of man, and not to his senses: art, he contends, must speak only to the mind; to the mind only should it convey pleasurable feelings: if its object be to excite the senses, it is degraded. "This rule applies to the arts in general. Dancing itself is an art, when, by its steps and movements, it pleases the soul and awakens in the mind the divine idea of the graceful. It ceases to be an art, and becomes a trade, when its object is voluptuous, to excite sensual enjoyment." He points out how, with the Greeks, philosophy and art were of one accord to give predominance to moral over material nature-art, by their worship of beauty, which exists but in tranquility, while even physical repose proceeds from a mental source-and philosophy, by their doctrine of the superiority of the mind to the body. "This progressive ascendancy of mind over body prepared the world for Christianity, which was the triumph of moral nature over material nature; and thus, by an admirable harmony, the worship of the beautiful became the means of conducting mankind to the worship of the good." Thus, too, when he is engaged in analyzing the romance of Sir Huon of Bordeaux, he claims the palm of merit for the old conteur over the modern graces of Wieland-alike in the delineation of character, in the elucidation of "ingenuous love," and in the charm of imaginative art-that love being so much

the better portrayed in the vieux roman, as it is there of a purer and more honest sort— for the attraction that belongs to these olden pictures "is lost the moment that coquetry or voluptuousness try to mingle in the painting, to embellish or to enliven it." Hence, again, M. Girardin's promptness to censure such a psychological result as Balzac's Père Goriot, who, dying, and bewailing the ingratitude of his children, exclaims: "My daughters-ah, there was my sin! they were my mistresses!" &c.-strange language, objects of our critic, the choice of a romancewriter who, his design being the delineation of paternal love, which is, of all human loves, the purest, the most intelligent, the most moral, makes it brutal and vicious in order to make it strong.

Any such exhibition of "strength," of a morbid quality, is utterly repugnant to the taste of M. Girardin. "Beautiful it is," writes Thomas Carlyle, " and a gleam from the eternal pole-star visible amid the desti-nies of men, that all talent, all intellect is in the first place moral;-what a world were this otherwise! But it is the heart always that sees, before the head can see: let us know that; and know, therefore, that the Good alone is deathless and victorious." One deeply imbued with this faith, in whom it is the heart always that sees, whose intellect is in the first place moral, revolts from what that heart intuitively pronounces an offence against its laws, from whatever that moral intellect repudiates as in proximate tendency immoral.

The "strong" writing of latter days appears to our critic to have a distorted, abused, unnatural strength. Whereas in former times the poets gave to their creations a single vice or a single passion, and then took every pains to make them in other respects virtuous, that they might be worthy of interest--it is, he complains, the wont of modern poets to give to their characters a heap of passions and vices past reckoning, with the counterpoise of some one single virtue. And this one virtue, poor solitary thing! has no mission to purify the depraved soul in which, by a sort of chance, it has found a lodgment. It assiduously respects the independence of the imperious vices, nor is it designed to challenge the interest of spectators or readers; for vice is now-a-days the proposed object of interest, thanks to a certain attribute of noble pride, made fashionable and seductive by the heroes of Byron. "It seems, in fact, that we have a taste for ruins in morals as well as in architecture,

and prefer that which is half fallen to that which stands erect and entire." He complains that the manner of delineating the four or five leading sentiments which make up the subject of dramatic art, has lost its ancient truthfulness; has become violent, exaggerated, pretentious; that grief has degenerated into melancholy, tenderness into excessive sensibility, meditation into reverie; that everywhere the substance has given place to the shadow-a shadow larger, it is true, and more supple than the body, but also more dim and empty :

Et sol crescentes decedens duplicat umbras. Whether it be Victor Hugo, ascribing to his Dona Sol (" Hernani") a capricious melancholy, wherein phantasy has more of a part to play than passion-and in his Triboulet "substituting caricature for portraiture," and animal instinct for impassioned sentiment— and in his Catarina representing the convul sions of physical excitement; or again, Dumas detailing the agonies of Monaldeschi, the terrified expectant of Christina's sure and speedy vengeance; or De Vigny giving words to the suicidal intents of Chatterton; or Delavigne making of his old pariah, Zarès, an exacting egoist; or Balzac putting extravagant rhapsodies into the mouth of dying père Goriot;-under any such provocation, TAνтη Tε KAι пAVTAXOV, M. Girardin is ready with a demur, an exception, a protest.

If his tone of objection is frequently that of a grave remonstrant, who thinks the fault. no light matter, and who therefore adopts no light manner in his strictures, he also, on occasion, just opens a vein of quiet raillery, utterly void of all bad blood. As where, having called Voltaire's "Prodigal Son" a comedy, he corrects himself, and calls it a drama: "for all Voltaire's comedies end in drama, except when they turn to ennui." Of Voltaire he elsewhere says, that "like a good many partisans of Equality, he was fond enough of it in relation to his superiors, but put it less into practice towards his equals." Again, commending Sir Walter Scott's judgment in interposing difficulties in the way of Jeanie Deans' access to royalty, he observes: "In ordinary novels, where a peasant or soldier wants to talk with a king, there is no kind of difficulty; a knock at the door seems amply sufficient; his majesty himself comes to open it; and forthwith the conversation begins between countryman and king." Similarly he comments on the custom of establishing a connection between man and

nature, between the sombre gloom of lonely forests and the crimes of man, by giving to every scélérat his cavern, his clouds, and his tempest: "no such thing as crime on a fine sunny day, or a soft moonlight night; nor must the fury of the passions reach its outburst before that of the storm is brewed and ready." We might refer, again, to his criticism of the rather maudlin tenderness of Diderot's Père de Famille, and the "very German" dialect of Goethe's Greeks (Iphigenia to wit, Orestes, &c.), and the vapid unrealities of pseudo-pastoral, and the habit novelists have of ignoring the life of woman except while at a loveable, and that a very limited age. "The life of women in a novel begins at seventeen years of age, and terminates at about thirty, although attempts have been made in the present day to prolong it to even forty. When they border on this age, either the novel puts them to death, or else the novel itself comes to a close, insomuch that a woman in years is a rarity in novels, unless where represented en mal, as an envious, malignant old creature, just because she is old."

The Cours de Littérature Dramatique is M. Girardin's magnum opus, by which he is (in a double sense) best known. But the Essais de Littérature et de Morale also contain much that, having engaged, will repay an attentive reading. Some of these essays were written when he was hardly out of his teens-that on Le Sage, for instance, which is nevertheless distinguished by much penetration and precision. The notices of Washington and Lafayette are just noticeable, and little else; that of Bossuet is not unworthy of its high argument; that of Beaumarchais is a lively résumé of a strange career-the career of the bourgeois adventurer, who burst the strait laces of social caste, figured at court, united in one rôle trader and courtier, sent arms to revolted America, agitated the length and breadth of France about a trial for fifteen louis, all but overthrew a magistracy instituted by royal authority, and by the mouth of Figaro proclaimed the rights and asserted the prerogatives of the third estate, as vigorously as Sièyes himself in his memorable pamphlet. The étude on St. Augustine compares his Confessions with those of "Saint" Jean Jaques, and insists on a

closer resemblance between them than that of title only. The Homilies of St. Chrysostom on the Book of Genesis afford scope for some orthodox suggestions on the assumed feud between Scripture and Science, Moses and the Geologists. There is a genial review of Silvio Pellico, earnest homage being paid to his religious feeling; others in Louise Bertin, on the poetry of young France, on Lucretelle, &c.; historical papers on Napoleon, on the war in Spain of 1823, on the fall of the Abbassides; and miscellanies on themes ancient and modern-on newspapers among the old Romans, on Greek tragedy, on Persius, on Corsica, Florence, Charles Edward the Pretender, Paul Louis Courier, on the ethics of Marriage, on the Literary Profession, on the Unity of Europe, and on the historical past and speculative future of the United States. And in tracing the development of M. Girardin's mind, from its almost boyish earnests ('appaßwva) to its matured results, we see much to fulfil what has been said to distinguish the genuine critic-namely, that in accordance with Coleridge's definition of genius, he carries forward the freshness. and geniality of youth into the powers of manhood, like those trees in Arcadia, where blossoms and full-grown fruit are found together.

The name of St. Marc Girardin, M. Nisard confidently predicts, is sure of a place among those that will endure. For, argues the critic, unless future generations of Frenchmen differ in their whole nature from their forefathers, they will demand in the books of today what the readers of to-day demand in the books of yesterday-the human heart, French esprit, and style. Of these three conditions he hails the conjoint presence in St. Marc Girardin's writings: the human heart -illustrated by a thousand traits; the national esprit-nowhere in contemporary authorship more signally displayed, in point of practical sense, neatness, unaffectedness, and lively elegance of movement;-and a style

resembling that of the best times, while it is marked by an individuality and by certain material novelties, which distinguish it from a mere imitation. And as for this side the Channel, there are few authors in modern France whom we should more gladly see naturalized among ourselves.

"It is but a thatched roof and an earthen floor," said Franz, as he looked round, "but the light of the poor man's life-his own pretty wife-brightens the walls, and we are happy as princes-are we not, Gretchen ?"

In the vast border country lying between Switzerland and Wirtemberg, stretching down from the mighty Alps, whose summits are capped with eternal snows, there is a great inland sea, towards whose shores the blue mountains come shadowing down in long, long misty lines, vague and undefined as the everlasting heavens above. The placid waters of that great lake, called the Bogen-See, ripple on low, undulating shores, darkened by immense forests of pine, which fringe the deep cliffs and ravines in the nearlying hills, and are visible from afar, like a sombre, sullen mantle cast over the distant | mountains, lending a lonely, mysterious character, suggestive of all wild, unreal, and fantastic fancies, to the melancholy beauty lingering around the shores of that boundless lake. In the creeks and bays breaking the water's edge, little villages and hamlets peep out, each with its tall spire and picturesque wooden houses, whose galleried fronts project over the blue waters, or nestle under the overspreading trees, planted in walks and avenues round each friendly little spot. Close under the shadow of the sombre pine forest, in a place where the dark trees almost dipped in the lake, stands the little village of Bogenhafen, its clustered houses enveloped and surrounded by the deep woods, in which the spirits, and the Kobolds, and the lovely, soulless Undines dwell, who, in calm summer nights, when the moon is on the wane, love to sport and mirror themselves in the cool waters, and comb their long tangled locks of emerald green by the pale light falling on the lake.

In the village of Bogenhafen of which I spoke dwelt a poor laborer, whose name was Franz, an excellent, industrious man, simple and pious withal as a young child. He was married to Gretchen, the poorest and the prettiest girl in the village, and although their house was bare, and they lived but by the labor of their hands, they were thankful and happy.

VOL. XXXVI.-NO. IV.

Heaven blessed their union, and after a time a child was born under the low roofa wonderfully beautiful child was their boy, at least so thought Franz, as he donned his Sunday coat, and went out into the village to tell the news, and ask the miller with whom he worked to be godfather.

Now the miller lived in a fine white house, overshadowed with willow-trees, beside a running stream, which turned his mill-wheels, that day and night keep up a perpetual whirr, to remind him what a wealthy and great man he was, with fields, and woods, and acres upon the mountain sides. The miller, too, was stingy as well as rich, so when Franz, beaming with happiness, made his request, he answered that he thanked him for the compliment, but that it cost money, and that he never spent a thaler he could help. So," said he, "you must look elsewhere."

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Franz turned sorrowfully away, no longer joyous.

"What!" said he to himself, "is it possible this rich man cares more about a miserable thaler than my beautiful boy, to whom he might have been a benefactor here and hereafter ?"

Quite sad and crestfallen, he then betook himself to the landlord of the village inn, and earnestly begged him to undertake the office. But "mine host," a proud, redfaced man, only puffed his pipe in Franz's face, who stood before him as he lolled outside his door under the great linden-tree, where travellers sat round a table and ate in the warm summer-time. For some time he did not vouchsafe to answer. At last he spoke :

"What can possibly induce you to ask such a favor of a man like me? You, the lowest in the village, and I next to the

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guadiger graf himself, whom I have the honor to serve! You never come and sit round my fire in winter-time and spend gold: you neither spend nor drink, miserable devil that you are. Begone, and henceforth learn to ask favors from your equals." Franz turned away. "And so," said he to himself, "this hard-hearted, proud man will not accept a pious office, and honorable to a Christian, because he is vain, and worldly, and ambitious."

guard the grave of the newly-risen Saviour, as it is written in the blessed Gospel. Franz trembled. But the angel spoke with a soft loving voice: "Fear not; come hither. I will bear thy child at the holy baptism; but gold or presents have I none." Then Franz, bowing low, replied: "Ah, blessed angel, I am not worthy that thou shouldst leave the bright heavens to be godfather to my child. As to the gold, surely I do not think of it. Be thou then the guardian angel of my

And he threw himself on his horse, and galloped so quickly away his last words were lost in the wind. Franz, nearly brokenhearted with the disappointments he had experienced, looked sorrowfully after him.

"All men seem alike to-day," groaned he, "and even my comrade, so good-natured and kind hitherto, cares for a fair and a jug of Bavarian beer more than my child."

Now Franz, after these three refusals, knew not where to go; he dared not return home without finding a godfather to his anxious wife, who would cry her eyes out when she heard how all had fallen out; so he went into a field near at hand, and, sitting down under a hedge, wept bitterly. "Blessed saints!" cried he, wringing his hands, "men have no feeling for me; they all drive me away; but ye turn from none who call on you in trouble. Oh! help and assist me, sweet Madonna, for the love of heaven." He rose, and made his way towards a little chapel, where he had often prayed. The walls were blackened by age, and overgrown with grey moss; it was a lone and solitary spot, opening towards the pine forest, which spread all around. Beside the door waved some magnificent linden-trees, overshadowing the whole building. As Franz put his foot on the door-sill, he started back at beholding a heavenly, beautiful angel standing on the steps of the altar. His wings shone like pure gold, his long robes were white as the driven snow, and a glory surrounded him more dazzling than lightning. He looked like the holy angel spirit that came down to

under the shadow of thy wings, that is more blessed than gold or christening gifts." The angel smiled, and said: "God will point out to thee some other way. Go in peace." And then, shaking from his dazzling wings thousands of stars, he vanished into a golden mist, and the dim lamp burning before the blessed Virgin Mother on the altar was all the light remaining in the now gloomy chapel, before radiant as the courts of heaven.

Now Franz, overjoyed at the vision, desired to reach home by a shorter path than he had come, to tell the good news to his beautywife, who lay, with the little babe pressed to her bosom, anxiously awaiting his return. He plunged into a dark track leading through the thickest mazes of the fir woods, so gloomy, dark, and solemn in the deepening night, that, well as he knew the path, he dared scarcely to look around him for fear. As hurrying along, he was passing through the darkest portion of the wood, a hunter suddenly appeared in his path, emerging from the shadows of the trees, dressed in a dark suit of green, with a high-pointed hat and waving feathers. There was a mocking, grinning look in the hunter's face-strange and suspicious, as Franz thought, especially when he remarked that under the dark green robes a cloven foot peeped out. "Gracious Heavens!" thought Franz, "this is--yes, it must be the devil himself." The hunter, seeing him start back in affright, offered him his hand, drawing back, however, the sharp claws growing on the fingers, as a cunning cat before she seizes on her prey. "Give me your hand, good Franz," said he. "I will be your godfather. I have a heavy sack by me full of gold and silver, and it shall be thine. See how the gold pieces sparkle in the light, and how merrily they chink. The rich to whom you went have rejected you, what can you expect from the poor? Instead of a copper gift to the bright boy at home, I will give you all this treasure. Let us be friends. Come on."