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the year 1592, the pulpits groaned with maledictions against every authority which offered any impediment to the designs of those who had possession of them.

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The preachers, mortified at the ill success of their attempt to establish a sacerdotal democracy in the place of a king, turned more and more towards the king of Spain, who coveted the throne of France for one of his own family, and who paid them liberally for their support. The period which intervened between this and the calling together of the States for the election of a king, in 1593, offers only a sickening repetition of the same scenes which we have already described. The preachers feared more and more the "politics," as the expectations of the conversion of Henri IV. to the Catholic faith became more substantial, and they were proportionately intemperate in their declamations. They had now long acted the part of masters, and they were furious at the slightest prospect of losing ground which they could only retain during the absence of a power to control them; and they had compromised themselves far too much to hope for indulgence, unless from a king who should owe his crown entirely to their efforts. In fact, they feared more from the king as a Catholic, than they did while he remained a Huguenot. Pelletier publicly excommunicated all his parishioners who should speak of peace, or of "receiving the Béarnois returning to mass;" and he declared that he would refuse Christian burial to any one who should hold the least communication, even in trade, with the "politics" "whose blood," he said, "ought to stain the pavement. Feuardent told his congregation that he was sure that Henri IV. would be struck with thunder from heaven, and that they need not be uneasy about him. Boucher said that the king's successes had been procured through magic, and when Henri was slightly wounded in the battle or skirmish of Aumale, he had the assurance to tell his hearers that "his flesh, or rather his carrion, had been entered, but not deeply, on account of the charms which had been discovered upon his person." The absurdity of accusations like these, after they had been repeated so often, gradually weakened the influence of the oratical dictature they had so long exercised, and their sermons began evidently to have less effect. This was seen on many occasions. One day, Commelet, seeing three persons leave the church while he was preaching, cried out to the people to go after those "politics" and see who they were; a few months before, this would have been the signal for a massacre, whereas now the auditors laughed and remained in their places. Aubry declared that all the "politics" were irrevocably damned, yet he avowed with sorrow that he believed if any one would rip open many in his parish, they would "find a great Béarnois in their bellies." The same preacher, in his sermon on the ninth of August, 1592, declared that he abandoned the houses of all the " politics" in his parish to the mob for pillage; but the mob not only did not pillage them, but satirical answers to his threats were placarded on the walls. In the same manner, when he pointed to them the master of requests, Tronson and his family, then present at his sermon, as worthy to be all thrown into the river, they remained quietly in their places, and no one touched them. But it was impossible to say how long such forbearance might last; and personalities like these, which were now more common

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than ever, obliged people from fear to make an outward show of zeal by being regular attendants at the sermons. The time was not yet arrived when it would be safe to offer the preachers any open resistance.

As the time fixed for the meeting of the States approached, this event, which was never very palatable to the preachers, but looked upon only as a thing which could not be avoided, added new fuel to the flame. Several of them, hitherto distinguished by their violence, began to think it safest to moderate their language; but others, as their apprehensions increased, only became the more intemperate. The doctrine of royalty set up at this time and under these circumstances, by the clergy of France, is expressed in the following words of a treatise of Pigenat: "The power of reigning, in spite of all claim of succession, comes from God, who, by the clamors of the people, declares the person who it is his will shall command as king. Vox populi, vox Dei." The "clamors of the people" were at this time regulated by the voice of the preachers, who now attempted to influence the deputies by their menacing language, in the same manner that a short time before they had overawed the magistrates. Commelet, discoursing on the words of the gospel, "the boat agitated by the tempest," quoted St. Ambrose as an authority for stating that Judas was in that boat, which led him to observe, that among the deputies there was not one Judas, but twenty, nay, thirty-" you will know them by their votes!" he cried," and now, my friends, rush boldly upon them, strangle them for me, for they are all bad." The declamations against Henri IV. continued unabated. Commelet and others celebrated anew the praises of Jacques Clement the regicide, and called aloud for some one to follow his blessed" example, declaring that it was indifferent whether it should be a monk or a layman, for even one of the very scum of the people would in such a case be sure of Paradise. Not long after this, Pierre Barrière attempted to assassinate the king. Before he started on this mission, he went to consult the curé Aubry, who received him in the most friendly manner, embraced him, gave him to drink, and then, speaking to a Jesuit who was present with him, he said, "It would be a good deed, and without doubt he would gain a great glory in Paradise."

The venality of the preachers became more apparent as the end of their reign approached. All their chiefs received pensions from Spain, and some of them had even the effrontery to boast of it in the pulpit; but they often turned and varied, as the chances of success leaned towards this pretender or the other. M. Labitte justly observes, that "the language of the preachers responded to the vehemence and violence of ambitions. The abrupt turnings about of parties, opinions relinquished and then suddenly taken up again, the inextricable complications of intrigues, translate themselves in the pulpit. How are we to explain the useless violence of many of these paid orators? To understand the diversity of their words, would require to know the diversity of their little interests of every day. We might imagine ourselves in the clubs of 1793; we find here already the same grossness of language. When one party gains the chances, when its influence increases, it is absolved. Glory to the faction which can triumph, shame to it if it is vanquished. It is a melancholy page in the history of the French clergy,

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a melancholy spectacle in the history of human for a violent uproar, the congregation thrust the morality." At the very time the States were aim- preacher out of the church, and he was only saved ing at peace, the more violent preachers still con- from worse treatment by the promise of one of the tinued to urge the people to take up arms. Aubry magistrates to commit him to prison. It was shouted vehemently from his pulpit, "La paix! clear that a reaction in favor of the royalists was hé! pauvre peuple, pensez-y; ne l'endurons point, beginning to show itself. mes amis ! plustot meurir. Prenons les armes ce As they saw the chances that Henri of Navarre sont armes de Dieu. * Un bon Ligueur (et would succeed to the crown become greater, the je vous déclare que je le suis et que je y marcherai preachers began anew to talk of murder and le premier) vaincra toujours trois et quatres poli- slaughter, as the only means by which the Holy tiques. Qui frappe le premier a Union could be effectively supported, and as things l'advantage." Such fanatical exhortations as this perfectly justifiable when approved by the church. still kept the populace in the interests of the cler- Their notions of justice were indeed sufficiently gy. On the 12th of May, 1593, the anniversary pliable, when questions arose between them and of the Barricades, when Henri III. was driven out those who were not of their party. A cutler, of Paris, Boucher, preaching on the occasion, named Gaillardin, a fanatical liguer, struck a poor praised that day's work as La plus belle qui fut cobbler with his dagger, and wounded him severejamais au monde, and speaking of Henri IV. he ly, because he had uttered some words which said, "ce n'est pas à tel boueux, bon à jeter au savored of royalism. The Jesuit Commelet, as tombereau, que le trône appartient, quoi qu'en well as the curé Garin, preached in favor of the puissent dire les larrons, paillards, et boulgres." assailant, and declared that the only thing to be These expressions were aimed at the deputies of regretted was, that his victim had escaped alive. the States at the whole body of the hated and When the assassin received encouragement like feared "politics." Aubry, on another occasion, this, the injured man, as a matter of course, resaid in his sermon, "if our princes agree to a ceived no kind of satisfaction. The Duke of peace, let them take care of themselves. They Mayenne, who was fat and somewhat indolent, are but men. There are still some good friars in disgusted with the conduct of the clergy, had comParis who will fight against it, and all the good plained to the pope's legate of the unbearable liCatholics would die rather than endure it. I would cense of the preachers; so far from their being let them drag me to the river and throw me in a effectually checked, Commelin in his next sermon sack into the water before I would ever consent to marked him out as an object for the knife, exclaimit. If they come to that, there will be plenty of ing, "There wants an Aod for the pig, for the blood shed;" he added, "we must poignard the effeminate man with the great belly (you under'politics' * if I had as much force as I have stand whom I mean!") The doctrine of canonicourage, I would kill them myself *I offer cal murder had truly made strange progress. Aumyself to be your standard-bearer The pope's legate has promised to die with us." Such was the language of the preachers amid the deliberations of the States, and the intrigues of the parties who hoped to influence them.

bry sustained that the king's conversion was of no avail, for the pope himself could not absolve him. Cueilly declared that the pope had sworn he would never receive into the church "that goat of a Béarnois," and he asserted that there was an army The sudden and unaccountable falling off of of 30,000 men ready to come to the assistance of Bishop Rose from the interests of the King of the Union. The prior of the Carmelites, Simon Spain did much towards ruining the projects of Fillieul, assured his audience that if the Béarnois, that monarch, and joined with the other differences" had drunk all the blessed water of our lady" (!) of opinion which arose in the assembly, caused it there would still be room to doubt the sincerity of to be dissolved without coming to an election. his conversion: he compared him to Judas betraySeveral of the preachers, among whom was the ing his Lord with a kiss; and said it was to be too celebrated Guincestre, deserted their party, and hoped that some good lady Judith would shortly went over to Henri IV. The public announcement save France by a coup du ciel. This was the exof Henri's conversion to the Catholic faith gave the pressión which had before been applied by the final blow to the Ligue. But the preachers held preachers to the murder of Henri III. by Jacques out to the last; and the pulpits of Paris became Clement; the allusion, on the present occasion, more than ever the arena of political strife. was to attempts made by some of the more unBoucher preached a series of sermons on the sim- scrupulous of their party to persuade Henri's misulée conversion of the king, which were afterwards tress, Gabrielle d'Estrées, to murder her lover. printed and spread abroad, and were admirably At the end of August, 1598, a Jesuit in one of well calculated to sustain the drooping hopes of the pulpits of Paris, exclaimed, "It is a blasphehis party. They consist chiefly of a mass of ca- my to think that the pope will absolve the Béarlumnious declamations against the king and his nois; if an angel should descend from heaven and friends, and their aim is to prove not only his un- say to me, receive him, I should look upon the worthiness of the throne, but the nullity of his message with suspicion." Five months after, a conversion. Another intemperate priest, named monk proclaimed "that people should sharpen Porthaise, preached against the simulée conversion their poignards, for there was need of a circumin the church of Poitiers, and he imitated Boucher cision." Indeed, they all began to be convinced in committing his sermon to print. In other parts that a murder only could keep Henri IV. from the of the country, as at Amiens, at Lyons, at Dijon, throne; and in the chance that some one, excited similar doctrines were preached, and with equal by their clamors, would commit this murder, they violence. At the latter place, on the 20th of placed their last hopes. March, 1594, a Jesuit named Christophe having The monk Garin was now the most violent and wearied his audience with his "atrocious" cal- the most indefatigable of the preachers. He was umnies against the king, a peasant called out to the boldest apologist of the tyrannical anarchy of him, that he would be better employed in preach- the old council, which had governed in the more ing the gospel. This interruption was the signal flourishing days of the Ligue, and in his fury

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to put the royalists on their guard. The Governor Brissac, who had ever figured among the most intemperate of his party, had many sins to pardon, and he was consulting his own interests, and providing for his own safety, by treating secretly with the king for the delivery of Paris. The preachers had some intimation or suspicion of what was going on, and they denounced him from the pulpit; which rendered it still more necessary for his safety, that he should lose no time in completing his treason. Garin again encouraged his friends to hope that some one might be induced to deliver them by a murder. On the 13th of March, he declared in a sermon, that they ought to ennoble the family of Jacques Clement, and, in alluding to the king, he made one last despairing exclamation that " they must make away with this man also; it would be a very holy, heroic, and praiseworthy deed, which would assure Paradise to the perpetrator, and would merit for him the place nearest to the person of

against the Duke of Mayenne, for suppressing that body, and overthrowing Boucher's project of a chambre ardente and its attendant proscriptions, he vomited against the general of the Ligue every description of abuse and imprecation, going so far as to say that "A spindle would be more suitable to this fat pig than a sword." Garin attacked with equal license of language the parliament and the magistrates; and there was no power now in Paris to restrain or punish him. Once, addressing the judges, he said, "He who would give you your due, would cause you all to be hanged; there is not one among you who does not well deserve it. * * You shall have the rope one of these days, and shall all be dragged to Montfaucon." When people first talked of the king's conversion, Garin made his congregation recite a prayer to God begging that he would not permit the pope to give absolution to the Béarnois. When this conversion was made public, he cried out from his pulpit, "We must not be down-hearted * *God." Bishop Rose also acted his part to the perhaps there will soon be found some honest man to kill the Béarnois. We have already been delivered once by the hand of un pauvre petit innocent." The sermons of Garin sometimes lasted three hours and a half. Few, comparatively, of his auditors were present at them by free choice, but they were intimidated by his tone and language, and did not yet dare to keep away.

last. On the 20th of March, he announced from the pulpit of the Church of St. André-des-Arcs, that he was going to preach a whole week "to complete the process of the Béarnois." On the morrow, the 21st of March, he began this series of sermons, in presence of the Cardinal of Plaisance, and promised to prove, in his sermon the next day, "that the Prince of Navarre was a bastard, and unworthy to succeed to the crown of France." This sermon was not preached, for in the morning (the 22d of March, 1594) Henri IV. was in possession of Paris.

It was evident now that Paris could not long remain in its present condition. The better classes of society, throughout the kingdom, were becoming royalists, and the clergy and the mob were left to support one another. The Duke of Nemours, It is hardly necessary for us to follow M. Lagovernor of the city, left his post and retired into bitte, in tracing the subsequent history of the varithe Lyonnais, where he fell into the power of the ous preachers who cut so melancholy a figure in royalists. Mayenne himself hurried to Soissons, to the extraordinary events we have been very briefly join the Spanish army, which was to assemble narrating. When the king entered Paris, the inthere; but before his departure, perceiving well habitants showed clearly by their joy, that latterly that no legitimate and reasonable authority could their submission to their masters had been only the at present be sustained in the capital, and that a effect of fear, and that the popularity of the turburevolutionary organization alone could there hold lent clergy was at an end. The preachers were in up the cause of the Ligue, he restored the old coun- general terror-struck; but some of the more fanatcil of clergy and bourgeois, and Brissac, the wil- ical retired in arms to the quartier Latin, the disling slave of the preachers in all their deeds of vio-trict of the university, and there joining with the lence, was appointed commander of the garrison of Paris. This was, in fact, leaving the preachers to take care of themselves; and when Mayenne quitted the city, on the 6th of March, 1594, they again assumed their old characters, and, finding themselves masters, appointed Boucher president of their council, who at once declared that the pope had not the power to absolve the Béarnois, and revived the courage and appetite of his brethren, by his extensive dreams of proscriptions. In Paris, the church was now literally militant. The curés Hamilton and Pelletier, not only carried large quantities of arms and munitions into their own houses, but they also placed large stores in the convent of the Cordeliers. Hamilton never went out of his house without being accompanied by a troop of rabble, who brandished their pikes and arquebusses as they went along the streets; he performed the service of the mass armed in a cuirass, and he even baptized a child in full congregation, without troubling himself to take off his armor. Garin also armed his convent, and he boasted to the populace, that he had 2000 monks under his orders. On the 10th of March, he recommended from the pulpit, that the gates of the city should be closed, and that the populace should run to their arms and slay all the " politics.' The effect of this avowed project of a new St. Barthélemy was

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captain of the parish of St. Jacques, an obstinate liguer, resolved to hold out to the last. Hamilton, with a pertuisane in his hand, went to assist them, but it was too late. Forty of the more violent curés, among whom was Boucher, saved themselves by accompanying the soldiers of the Spanish garrison in their retreat. Garin also attempted to make his escape with the garrison, in the disguise of a Spaniard, but not succeeding, he was found a day or two afterwards concealed in the garret of a house in the Rue St. Denis; he threw himself at the feet of the men who discovered him, begged them in the most suppliant manner not to kill him, and swore, that if need were, he was ready to preach the eulogy of the king. Henri IV. had pity on his cowardice, and merely banished him from Paris, and his name does not ap pear again in history. Aubry and Cueilly showed more courage, and had the audacity to preach against the king a day or two after he was master of his capital; yet the royal clemency was extended even to them, and they, with Hamilton, Rose, Pelletier, the prior of the Carmelites-Simon Fillieul, and a considerable number of others, were banished from Paris. Of most of them we hear no more-they appear to have passed their days in obscurity, perhaps in poverty. A few devoted the remainder of their lives to literary pursuits. Fil

lieul, after a short absence, received his pardon, | certain periods, to understand our own history, it and returned to Paris. Pelletier showed his grati- is necessary that we should have something more tude for the leniency he had experienced, by a than a superficial knowledge of that of the surfarewell sermon to his parishioners, in which he rounding nations.

praised with warmth the clemency and generosity

of their king. Boucher, and some of those who

THREE THOUSAND PIECES.

AN intense commotion has been excited among

the Scottish community, by the publicity given to the fact that the Deputation from the Free Church, which went over to America to promote the cause of the voluntaries and their secession, has not scrupled to solicit and receive contributions in aid

of its funds from the slave-holders of America.

the reception of offerings from such a source was, in the first instance, thoughtless and barely pardonable-but, with a vehemence which will never

escaped with the Spaniards, retired to Flanders, THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND AND THE and there continued to publish incendiary writings against Henri IV. Boucher was subsequently made Canon of Tournay; besides a host of other pamphlets, he published, in 1595, a treatise in justification of the new attempt at regicide by Jean Châtel; he declaimed bitterly against the edict of Nantes; and continued to publish opinions long after Henri of Navarre had quitted the scene, for he died at a very advanced age, so late as 1646, fifty- Virtuous men of plain common sense insist that five years after the entry of Henri into Paris. Rose fled from Paris to the abbey of Val de Beaumont sur Oise; but, although the king extended his generosity to him so far as to allow him to retain his bishopric of Senlis, he was perpetually involved in one seditious practice or another, and remained all his life an object of suspicion to the government. The general agitation, however, gradually subsided, and the sermons of the clergy lost their political character. But Henri never secured the attachment of the church; his moderation was not agreeable to the taste of the Catholics and buyers-and sellers and scourgers-and of that age, whose vengeance was persevering and implacable; after escaping from the murderous arm of Jean Châtel, and being exposed to several other attempts, the king fell at last, in 1611, by that of the Jesuit Ravaillac. The fanaticism of the Ligue lived only after the Ligue itself was extinct.

Such is the melancholy picture of a country conquered by its clergy; and it is no more than may at any time happen with a priesthood which lays claim to infallibility and political superiority over the laity, like that of the church of Rome. It is a history worthy of serious contemplation even in our own times. But let us not forget, above all, that our forefathers were watching with painful anxiety every phase of this, to them, fearfully tragic story. Their faith and peace were equally at stake. Spanish money was as actively employed against Elizabeth, as against Henri III. or Henri IV. The knife of the assassin had doubtless been more

abate, till the polluted tribute be disgorged, they insist, that the retention of it, after expostulation, and opportunity to weigh well the principles and consequences involved in such a procedure, is an unmitigated abomination. They are right-the 30 pieces of Judas Iscariot were not more polluted in their origin than the 3,000l. of the slave-holders

executioners of America. Just let Drs. Candlish and Cunningham read the account of the appalling murder, done upon the slave Pauline, for the crime of ill-treating-only ill-treating-her mistress!— or, of the ripping open (further south) of the victims in the Brazilian mines, to ascertain if they had swallowed any of the diamonds, and then let them, if they can, persist in their detestable casuistry and special pleadings, with which they are fain to defend the retention of the 3,000 picces of money, coined from the blood and groans of the miserable slave-their brother and fellow man!--(From Hood's Magazine, July, 1846.)

A

VIEWS AND REVIEWS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE, HISTORY AND FICTION. By the anthor of "The Yemassee."-A collection of miscellanies contributed to the American reviews and magazines, by a popular author. Though repelled from time to than once prepared for her. Hundreds of cunning time, by a certain aridity of style, there is a fairTesuits and wily preachers, educated expressly for ness of tone in the better critical literature of the purpose, were sent into this country in dis-America which we have always recognized as exguise, and were busily engaged in sowing, in pri- cellent;-and it characterizes these papers. vate, the same seditious principles. A Ligue was prepared for England, if it had succeeded in France. Let us not, then, judge too rashly the statesmen, who, in condemning Mary of Scotland, thought that the death of an ambitious woman, a Guise by her mother's blood, a ready instrument in the hands of her family, was necessary for the safety of their country. The designs in which she partook were those of the Spaniard, the pope, and the house of Lorraine; and when she manifested her zeal for

large portion of them, too, attracts us by its nationAmerican in their literature-not copyists at secality. Mr. Simms seeks to make his countrymen ond-hand of the fashions of England, the follies of France, the philosophies of Germany, or the enthusiasms of Italy. In his page, they appear a grave, self-respecting people; who own a past, and a picturesque, and a poetry of their own; and have around them a life rich in character and adventure. In these days, when reverence and revival are unhonors of invention-efforts like those made by Mr. naturally confounded, and imitation assumes the Simms are too healthy, too manly, too sensible, and too poetical, (in the largest sense of the word,) not to merit praise-even though the execution fall *It is somewhat singular that the Ambassador of Scot-short of the intention.-Athenæum. land-without doubt, Mary's old ambassador, the Bishop of Glasgow-appears as an active liguer. We learn

the establishment of the Catholic church and the

overthrow of heretics, it was to be done by means such as those employed on the continent by Spain, and the pope, and the Guises. It is thus that, at

from Lestoile that at the beginning of the siege, in 1590, voir, le Legat, l'Ambassadeur d'Espagne, celui d'Ecosse, he was in Paris, and he is mentioned among the seign-le Cardinal de Gondi, l'Archevêque de Lyon, et plusieurs eurs of the Ligue. "Le Mercredy douzieme de May, les du corps du Parlement, délibererent de donner volontaireseigneurs se rendirent chez M. le Duc de Nemours, sça- ment de l'argent pour payer les soldats et autres."

From the Foreign Quarterly Review.
THE CADET OF COLOBRIERES.

dry bones of the story, in the way of an epitome, we think it better to give them a specimen of its general tone in one long unbroken extract. Fortunately we find one exactly suited to our purpose in the very beginning of the tale, which contains not only the germ of all the rest, but likewise an episode complete within itself, and of singular beauty :

"A short league from the French frontier, on the high-road to Italy, and near the point where the Var divides Provence from the county of Nice, are seen the ruins of an old castle, surrounded by a landscape of stern and rugged aspect. The façade is yet standing, and seems as if backed against the deep blue sky that shines through its large windows. A massive tower, of more ancient architecture than the rest of the building, rises above the other remains; and from its embattled summit, which time has but slightly breached, protrudes a blackish point, not unlike an ordinary lightning conductor; this is the iron socket of the flag-staff that formerly sustained the seignorial banner. The hill, crowned by these ruins, is scantily clad with an aromatic vegetation that would gladden the heart of a botanist; for the rare species of plants, whose drowsy odors the wind often spreads over the whole country-side and for many leagues out to sea, thrive well on the rocky soil that would not nurture a grain of wheat.

In the five successive numbers of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," beginning on the 15th of November last, there appeared, under the title of "Le Cadet de Colobrières," the first of a promised series of tales about the old convents of Paris, from the pen of Madame Charles Reybaud. Though we are diligent, and generally prompt readers of our clever Parisian contemporary, yet it was not until a considerable time after all the five livraisons, containing this story, had been in our possession, that we sat down unwillingly and despondently to its perusal. Much unpleasant experience had taught us, in fact, to look with aversion on all French fictions published bit by bit in periodicals-a prejudice which those who are best acquainted with feuilleton literature will perhaps excuse, as one to which they would themselves have been apt to yield on a like occasion. If any of our readers have done so with regard to "Le Cadet de Colobrières," and passed unheeded that beautiful creation of a woman's genius, we entreat them to correct their mistake without delay; for an egregious mistake it certainly is to put Madame Reybaud in the same category with the very best of the feuilletonists. Judging her from the work before us, she is as much superior to the cleverest of them all, Dumas, as Miss Austin's novels are "It is now some three quarters of a century to Mrs. Gore's, or in other words, as the truth and since this castle and the lands around it belonged simplicity of genius are to the most ingenious arti- to a worthy nobleman, the Baron de Colobrières, fices of mere talent. Of all modern French writers descended on the female side from an old Italian Mérimée appears to us the one with whom Madame house that reckoned in its genealogy twenty cardiReybaud may be best compared. Both of them nals and one pope. His paternal ancestry was not are distinguished for admirable skill in the choice less illustrious, and went back to what might be and coordination of their materials, and for that called the fabulous ages of Provençal aristocracy. consummate graphic art which produces the most Notwithstanding this high descent, Baron Mathieu distinct and life-like effects within the narrowest de Colobrières was anything but an opulent lord. canvass; we rest with complete satisfaction on His armorial bearings were a thistle, vert, springtheir delineations; we feel that they are adequate ing from a tower, fenestrate and masoned, sablesand true, free from all false glare and distortion, a truly expressive cognizance, for the sterility of and that there is in them not one superfluous line, the baronial lands was proverbial, and it was a not one touch but is fitly subservient to the general common saying in the country, Colobrières' huseffect of the picture. In the use of dialogue, bandry, sheaves of thistles and fields of stones.' Madame Reybaud is scarcely equal to Mérimée, The baron's ancestors having, by little and little, who, indeed, surpasses most writers of the age in bartered away all their seignorial rights, there rethe dramatic ex position of character, besides which mained to their descendant nothing but the manor his style in general is recognized by French critics and the adjacent lands, which yielded an exceedas a model of purity and grace. Madame Rey-ingly slender revenue. There was not one among

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baud, on the other hand, has an immense advan- the clowns, who doffed their hats as they passed tage over him in the depth and tenderness of her the lordly escutcheon carved above the castlewomanly feelings. The brilliant author of gate, who would have consented to farm the "Colomba," "Charles IX.," and "Carmen," barony. seems to us to put forth his keen powers of observation simply for the pleasure of the exercise. His critical dissection of human impulses is exquisitely subtle and exact, yet there is something in the coolness of the operator, with which in secret we are not quite content. Such masterly knowledge of his subject, combined with so much apparent indifference to it, except as a matter of curiosity, affects us with a disagreeable sense of irony; and while we admire, our hearts do not warm towards the shrewd, cold observer of the passions, frailties, follies, and sufferings of his fellow-men. An impression directly the reverse of this results from the perusal of the "Cadet of Colobrières," a work which in every line bears token that it is the offspring of a spirit as quick and genial in its sympathies, as in judgment it is calm, large, and discerning.

Instead of laying before our readers the mere

"The poor lord of Colobrières had espoused a young lady as noble, and still poorer than himself, who brought him for her whole fortune some hundred crowns' worth of jewels and trinkets. Heaven superabundantly blessed their union. Fourteen children issued from it, and waxed in stature and comeliness almost by the bounty of the sky alone, like the wild plants of their rocky domain. The revenues of the fief of Colobrières barely provided the family's daily bread; for everything else they had to make up by dint of industry and frugality. The baroness had never had any newer gown than her bridal robe, but dressed herself and her children in garments made out of the antique bed-furniture of the castle. The hereditary tapestries were converted to the young gentlemen's use; and the young ladies wore, in the shape of petticoats and bodices, the curtains embroidered by ancestral hands.

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