life. Constantly living with their parents, in a country where nurseries and school-rooms are well-nigh unknown, at this season their importance comes more than ever prominently forward. The shoals of little ones who suddenly swarm on the boulevards and round every toy-shop is amazing to all not previously prepared for such a sight. And most cruel it would be to bring them thither if they were not to be regaled with some of the attractions.' But on this head no one need fear, for the amount of playthings they now receive far surpasses that of other lands. The Magasins du Louvre alone opened thirty rooms full of nothing but jouets d'enfants during Christmas week, and through every street and faubourg, even to the Communist Belleville, they might be seen in millions. One small family of our acquaintance had a Christmas-tree for a few young friends with no less than one hundred and fifty playthings. But, again, let us examine the sort and kind, and we shall discover, alas! that if our thoughtful Frenchman' had cause to lament the loss of 'simplicity' in the bonbon-étrenne, he has had far more grounds for dismay in beholding the teaching his neighbours' children receive from their innocent, youngest years. The boys, from their nature, are exempt from much injury. Hobbyhorses made on the perambulator principle, omnibuses, tramways-in short, all that they see in the streets, 'made to perfection '-trains with real steam-engines,' besides telephones, phonographs, and even telegraphic machines, varied with large-sized cannons, full rigged men-of-war, and ironclads, are, no matter how exquisitely finished, more beneficial than injurious to the rising generation. But let us look to the little girls. French dolls at all times have been constructed on different principles from ours; they have been more of affected young women than innocent, waxen-faced children; the blue eyes and flaxen locks of our British 'babies' being turned into 'smirking misses' when they became Parisian bébés. Still, never till the Exhibition year did they attain such heights of affectation. The resemblance to real life in the faces certainly shows progress in art,' and the hair is so like the wigs worn by their living prototypes as to make them all appear more or less portraits: the toilettes, too, might have come from Wörth's, fit to be sent abroad-as they often are-to serve as models for foreign dressmakers. On the other hand, is this what a child should be taught to admire? Look at this group: a man and his wife meeting friends in the street. Can anything be more affected and prim? But here is a dinner-party. The table is laid as in any ducal house-the name of each guest on each napkin; the company have just sat down, the ladies and gentlemen properly distributed, while the lady of the house is glancing round to make sure all is right. Every one is in evening dress, each coiffure different, the gloves of the now exaggerated 12-button-length, the fan, jewels, and the like quite correct, while footmen in state liveries are beginning to serve the soup and wine. In the next window is the 'reception,'

ladies' trains sweeping the ground, one being kicked out' behind and its owner turning affectedly to make sure she has performed the feat gracefully, while two sit on the sofa in the most absurdly manièré attitudes and another at the piano surrounded by male admirers. But description only conveys a faint idea; for the marvellously improved mechanism by which every limb can be moved and position now-adays changed at will, admits of an imitation of nature surpassing all in previous times. And then the doll's trousseau ! framed on the same model. Nothing is here left to chance; everything is found ready. If it be for winter, her cloaks and fur predominate; if for summer, light garden-hats and parasols take their place. Here are morning, evening, and ball-dresses, mixed with embroidered peignoirs; dozens of stockings and pocket-handkerchiefs, tied up with blue or pink ribbon, as one sees them in the lingerie shop-windows; collars of every sort, and embroidered linen trimmed with lace-all of the finest kind. On the other side is a bride just finishing her bridal toilette, standing before her long cheval-glass. On her dressing-table are her presents: jewellery of varied sort, with fans innumerable, and lace in quantity. Her brushes are ivory-backed, and her glove- and ring-boxes stand close by.

Further on is a stately bedroom, furnished in the costliest woods and damask silk-the bed, however, hung with muslin curtains, lined with pink; the toilet table not unlike the last, except that here powder puffs and cosmetics find their place, and everything is arranged 'on artistic'-nay, æsthetic-principles. Nor must it be supposed that these things are intended only for the very rich, for they are made in every size and material, and the very shops of the Faubourg S. Denis advertise such trousseaux and ménages from four and five francs upwards. The good old 'dollies' of thirty or forty years ago have vanished from the shops. If they are anywhere to be found, it is only in the common stalls erected at this season for the poorer classes, but where no one above that rank would think of buying such things. No! truly! The boasted simplicity of olden, though monarchical, days, has completely fled from France, and though the worst effects of such a change are not yet seen, it is hard to suppose they will not injuriously appear at a not far distant period. Moreover, in the case of the children, this elaborate setting before them of their elders' habits is a grave error, for not only does it teach them as they grow up to set value on these superfluities of wealth, but in reality does not afford them half the pleasure of less elaborate toys. Can we not all remember how treasured was the simple doll of our baby-days, which we clothed with our own handiwork, and for whom we invented 'children's parties' and the amusements of our own age? A great national mistake it is therefore to have introduced such a system, and, inferior as English toy-shops may be as exhibitions of art, we cannot but earnestly hope that in this they may never be tempted to copy our more ambitious neighbours. W. M. WYSE.

FRENCH LITERATURE IN THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF THE 'ATELIER DU LYS,' 'FAIR ELSE,' ETC. FRENCH literature since the Restoration may be divided into two periods, the first contained between 1814-1830, and the second from the Revolution of 1830 to the present day. The same current of ideas, indeed, runs through both, and began in fact to set in its actual direction at the First Revolution, although much in modern French literature may seem novel; and in order to understand what has moulded it to its present form, we must cast a glance backward on its history under the Reign of Terror, the Consulate, and the Empire. The true interest of literature consists in its close connection with morals and institutions ; it is both affected by and affects them. Even if we study only one or two branches, such as fiction and poetry, we find ourselves unable to understand the spirit of a work, or the causes of its success or non-success, unless we know something of the times in which it was written. For instance, a work which produced a prodigious effect when it appeared, Le Génie du Christianisme, leaves us now cold and unimpressed, but we begin to comprehend its spell when we realise that it appeared when France was utterly weary of the godless philosophy of the eighteenth century. Countless aching hearts were longing to be shown where to find peace and divine order; and moreover this book appeared at a time when Christianity was still tolerated, rather than encouraged, in France, and came as the first challenge from any eminent pen to unbelief.

During the Reign of Terror literature had been paralysed. It could scarcely even say, with a distinguished statesman who was asked what he had done during that time, I kept alive.' For a while, indeed, the theatre flourished, and the pieces then written, though of little merit, strikingly reflect the changing politics of the hour; but a time came when the Comédie Française betrayed a leaning to the moderate side, and soon all its members were in prison, and would have been among the victims of the guillotine but for the heroic devotion of an ex-actor, who, to shelter himself under the ægis of the terrible Comité du Salut Public, had taken a post in its department, and risked his life by destroying the death-warrant. The execution was thus delayed, and a sudden turn in affairs released Talma and his comrades. But it was long before the Comédie recovered the ruin brought upon it, and for many years no plays worth naming were written. After André Chénier's death no poet attempted to sing under that stormy sky. Science, history, and fiction were all silenced. Newspapers, full of violent party spirit, abounded under the Directory, but these, too, gradually disappeared when the First

Consul took the helm of the state. There was almost equal stagnation under the Empire. Any breath of free discussion was felt by the master to threaten the stability of his throne. He watched the press with unceasing vigilance, detesting idéalogues, as he termed metaphysicians, and only tolerating men who battled with the materialistic teaching of Condillac and his school, and upheld Christianity just so far as their teaching seemed to him likely to quiet men's minds and serve his own ends. Thinkers who were too independent, like Madame de Staël, he banished; those who spoke or wrote without lauding him and his measures, he threatened and reprimanded. So perilous were honesty and courage, that when Sieyes was asked, 'Que pensez-vous ? ' his sarcastic reply was, 'Je ne pense pas !' and Lafayette considered that he had fully answered the scornful question of what he had done for his opinions under the Empire, since he could say 'Je suis resté debout !' No doubt thought has a continuous history as much as politics, but there are times when it seems almost at a standstill. The Empire was one of these. Men were contented to accept the opinions of the eighteenth century, and put off any new efforts. Such great events occupied the public mind that no one had leisure for literature. Who could care for books when all eyes were fixed on the spectacle of a single man standing alone and defying all Europe? As Chateaubriand said, 'All France had become a soldier.' 'A single man,' adds Victor Hugo, who has done more than any one else to idealise Napoleon and gloss over his crimes, 'was alive in all Europe; all other human beings had to fill their lungs with the air which he had already breathed.' Moreover, war had isolated France; foreign ideas were necessarily shut out; and even such as might have crept in were viewed with the utmost jealousy by the Emperor. It is noteworthy that among the reasons given by the infamous minister of police, Fouché, for the second banishment of Madame de Staël, was that 'France was not reduced to seek models amid the people whom she admired; her last work was un-French.'

A new era began with 1815, though the first years of the Restoration were hardly more favourable to literature than had been those of the Revolution and the Empire. All that conflict of old and new, of interests, prejudices, hatreds, which made Fox say that a restoration was the worst of revolutions, were reflected in literature. The extreme licence of the drama equalled that of the play-writers in Charles II.'s time, while at the same time the aristocratic party assumed a prudish sanctimony, and considered it a badge of their party to profess la haute dévotion. All that was old came into fashion-Gothic architecture, ancient furniture, and the Middle Ages. As Sainte Beuve tells us, a clique formed itself which dreamed of 'a sweet pretty medieval time of châtelaines, pages, and godmothers,' and cultivated a sentimental religion, scarcely skin-deep. The boy holds his mother's views, the man will hold his father's,' said the elder Hugo, after listening to a

tirade from his son on royalty, right divine, and submission to the Church. It was a prophecy which came to pass concerning several of these devotees. Scott's romances naturally were in high favour with this party; his Conservative opinions suited them, and he gave them an idealised chivalry. 'We love to find in him,' wrote Victor Hugo, when little more than a boy, 'our ancestors, with their prejudices, often so noble and wholesome, belonging to them like their fair plumes and good coats of mail!' The influence of Scott was, however, by no means confined to a party. To hearts weary of the excitement of the present he offered brilliant pictures of the past, which interested and refreshed them by the absence of all which could recall the present. His manly honesty and chivalrous tone braced minds sick of chimeras and theories. Scott's influence was all for good. 'Read Walter Scott,' wrote M. Doudan to his brother in 1827, in one of his delightful letters; * you will be carried into a world quite new, yet quite real. It is not at all romance, it is truth-truth which is by no means trivial. To go to bed with Scott under one's pillow, to follow the Antiquary in his family worries, to look on at the terrible scene of the storm beating on the Scotch rocks, at that fine scene of the young fisherman's death which consoled Madame de Staël on her death-bedwoe, indeed, to him who could not feel all these beauties!' of these most charming of his letters praises Ivanhoe.

Another

Very different was the influence of Byron, who founded a school of French poetry which still survives, and who has left more lasting traces on French literature than on that of his own country. Both Lamartine and Alfred de Musset were strongly influenced by him; his stormy emotions struck a chord which vibrated in numerous hearts at a time when men looked far and wide over ruins, and the deep foundations of faith seemed upheaved. His own loss of faith, and keen perception of the loss, his revolt against law and society, and his very egotism, strongly attracted many minds, for the same reason that Schiller affected French literature more than did Goethe, through the greater personal element in his writings, for, as has been justly observed, The French do not willingly forget themselves in their works; they usually mark their writings with the stamp of their own personality.' Shakespeare too began to influence French literature, not only through the versions of Ducis, but in his original form.

It is impossible to pass by Ducis without some word on the worthy Savoyard, whose name is apt to provoke a smile, scarcely deserved, after all, for, extraordinary as his version of Shakespeare is, it had begun to make the English dramatist known in the height of the Revolution, and prepared the way for the romantic school of fiction. If under any circumstances it is a daring attempt to translate Shakespeare into French, to what height does not the audacity rise Mélanges et Lettres, x. Doudan, v. 1.

+ Demogeot, Hist. de la Littérature Française.