not because these dreams ever disturbed his faith for a single waking moment. Indeed, he described himself as puzzled and humiliated that such phantasies could invade his mind by any avenue or in any shape. The torment was endured no longer than the dream lasted, or till he had shaken off the horror he woke in. It was not surprising to hear, however, that the repetition of these visions during a space of two or three years became increasingly distressing, and the more so because their only difference was in scene and circumstance. There was a casual meeting, now on a country road, now on a seaside parade, now at a garden party; but whatever the place of meeting the same thing happened on all occasions. With a defiant gayety, and with a Now do you suppose?" or, Why, dear me, yes;" or, Are you so stupid as to imagine?" she scattered confessions as lightly as if she was flinging roses. The lady died; and when she was dead the leaves of a sealed book opened (how need not be told), revealing what no one expected to read in it, and all in accordance with her lover's dreams. Not that there were any signs of the pagan audacity that were so amazing in them; but, on the contrary, tokens of violent passions of remorse, frequently recurrent.

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Not much help from superstition is needed to impress one with a story like this. R.'s persistent dreams were not accounted for by doubt, or anything observed or heard of that could sow the seed of suspicion. They were dreams of intimation from without, if any such dreamis there be. And yet it is difficult to explain them by the "wave of communication" hypothesis, because it is certain that the unhappy woman could never have been eager to present herself to her lover's mind as she did appear to him in sleep. To be sure, the psychologist or the poet might make something of it. We know that remorse will sometimes drive a sensitive nature to extravagant lengths of selfcondemnation and self-punishment and if the poet chose he might make a pretty picture of the poor lady overcome at times with violent shame at her deceit, her mind straining with a wish that he might know and be defrauded of his confidence no longer, and going forth to him in an excess of remorse and extravagant self-revelation. For some men and women self

accusation of the most merciless kind answers to an act of atonement; it is confession and penance at the same time. This is the explanation of a great deal in Carlyle's little book, written after his wife's death.

Whether, putting aside all question of warning, or revealing, or prophetic sleepvisions, dreams are of service to the dreamer, has often been discussed, though the general disposition of the shrewd is to regard them as valueless in that respect. But the experience from which opinion is drawn differs widely; and this is a matter in which most men are resolutely suspicious of the experience of others as rcmembered and related. Nearly all dreamers, however, can be brought into one theory-namely, that since in dreams we pass through a great variety of experiences, none of which are ever likely to befall us in real life, we are put to tests of character which we should never endure otherwise; and therefore that we ought to come to a better acquaintance with ourselves. Thus, if I have never been placed in a situation of extreine danger, as by attack of armed thieves, or in a burning house (together with others more helpless perhaps), how am I to know what my feelings and conduct would really be under such circumstances? Think of himself what he may, no candid man can give a confident answer to that question. It is a common experience to discover in one's self a surprising coolness and resource, or a totally unsuspected and crushing cowardice, under a sudden severe test. To some such test, it has been surmised, we are frequently exposed in dreams; passing through emotions strong enough to affect our physical senses no less than if the danger were real as broken knuckles and quaking limbs testify when we awake-and therefore all the more to be trusted as like to those which we should actually experience if the dream were reality.

If this supposition held good there could be no doubt about the use of dreams. We should have to consider them of immense importance in extending self-knowledge and self-discipline, while at the same time a sympathetic understanding of our fellow-creatures would be widened. This last advantage would be heightened by the fact that we sometimes dream of passing into conditions of temptation and guilt

such as it is hardly possible we shall ever experience, though we see that that is the lot of others. For example, many years ago I dreamed of having killed a man by throwing him from the verge of a quay. The murder itself did not come into the dream, which began (according to my waking remembrance) just after I had turned from the scene. The dream was of guilt alone; and whenever I recall that vision of myself walking away through the narrow old streets that bordered the quay (it was early morning), the whole mind of me an abyss of listening silence, my very footsteps seeming to have become noiseless, and a wide environment of distance standing between me and every passer-by, I believe I really do know the awful solitude a murderer feels, or know it far beyond mere imagining.

Now no man can be the worse, he must be benefited in every sense, by such experiences. They are expansion, enlightenment, discipline; and some of us have had many such. Nevertheless, this kind of dream cannot be at all depended on for revealing to us ourselves. In many cases we do and say in them what we certainly should not say or do in waking life and actual circumstance. But what is true of most cases is not true of all; and if we are to come to a better understanding of the phenomena of sleep, we should begin by discarding the notion that all dreams are due to the same causes. To do this, it is not necessary to import ideas of the supernatural or the operation of impalpable influences from without. But it is necessary, or at any rate it will be found convenient, to suspend the conclusion that dreams are always occasioned by senses and sensibilities in a condition of disorder. Some are, no doubt, and by far the most. But others, and those which alone seem worth noting, may be explained by a condition of mind so different as to be the opposite of disorder. Condorcet's famous

Maury, who has treated of this subject at considerable length, and with great care, believes entirely in mental disorder as the explanation of dreams; yet he is compelled to say in one place: "Mais ce qui est plus étrange c'est que l'intelligence peut accomplir de prime abord, sans l'intervention de la volonté, un acte qui dénote le concours de toutes les autres facultés." No doubt. And in our waking hours how much is accom. plished by the concurrence of our other faculties, without the conscious exertion, or even

dream is an example of this sort. No doubt there have been many others equally remarkable that found no record; but even one is enough to show what the possibilities are. The capture of half a dozen sea-serpents would prove no more than the stranding of a single specimen on Yarmouth beach.

We may close these discursive pages with the remark that dreams would not cease to be a worthy subject of study though the usual explanation of their origin were ascertained to be correct. No sooner does it appear that a dream was occasioned by the firing of a gun, a shouting in the street, or some other external suggestion, than all interest in it is allowed to drop. However remarkable the dream really was in itself, the first feeling of mystery is instantly swamped by something like derision. This habit is probably accounted for by the all but universal disposition of mankind to seek for supernatural influences in dreams. If no such influence can be suspected, away goes all interest in the matter. When it comes out that a long, long dream, full of strange coherent incident, was started by the slamming of a door, a laugh is raised as if at a ridiculous imposture, and the dream is thought of no more. But it may deserve a good deal of attention however it was started. For example, the firing of a gun, the beating of rain upon the windowpane, do not account for the enormous rapidity with which a long succession of images will pass before the mind in the dream that ensues upon the sound. There is nothing in these noises to explain how it is that in our waking hours the mind is incapable of reviewing such scenes as they originate in a hundredth part of the time; neither do they explain the fact that those scenes are presented to the "mind's eye" with a vividness far in excess of all that our waking imagination can achieve when put to the utmost strain. They do not account for the invention which it would puzzle us to emulate with the aid of all our waking wits; nor do they forbid us to speculate upon the limitation on the one hand, the potentialities on the other, which the difference of mental scope and

the conscious supervision of the will? Many of the tasks which we set ourselves are begun, not by a determination of will to begin them, but by the stir and solicitude of the faculties necessary to their accomplishment.

activity seems to disclose. As to the confusion in dreams, the rapid inconsequence of them, the swift transitions, the sudden changings and mergings of scene and circumstance which so often make them seem merely ridiculous, two things have to be considered. In the first place, the whole transaction of a dream proceeds at a prodigious pace, and therefore it is not remarkable that the transitions should seem monstrously abrupt to our waking senses. In the next place, very few of us note at the end of the day how many hours of it have been spent in a loose medley of imaginings as excursive as those that occupy our minds in sleep, and like them in this very particular of breaking off into sudden transition; like them,

too, in being soon forgotten. Here again, however, the greater activity, force, and impressiveness of imagination in sleep becomes apparent. For the day-dreams in which, unnoticed by ourselves, so many hours of our waking life are spent, are not only paler than these others while they last, but are hardly ever remembered for five minutes. None are remembered as vividly as many a dream of the night, though such dreams have become proverbs of passing things; and-unless they are something more than day-dreains-never do they influence thought, feeling, conduct in any degree at all which is not true of dreams of the night.—Contemporary Review.

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UNDER the unassuming title of "An Englishman in Paris," a book has been published within the last few weeks, which throws a flood of light on the inner life of the French capital during the greater part of the reign of Louis Philippe and the whole of the period from his abdication to the end of the Commune in May 1871. The work is both anonymous and posthumous, but no mistake can be made in ascribing the authorship of it to the late Sir Richard Wallace, who, it is an open secret, was an illegitimate son of that notorious person the third Marquis of Hertford-Thackeray's Marquis of Steyne -and the half-brother of the fourth Marquis and Lord Henry Seymour, both of who spent most of their lives in the French capital. Throughout the book the identity of the author discloses itself repeatedly. He lives with, travels with, visits with, his near relative," Lord Hertford. It was in virtue of that relationship that the highest circles were open to him, that he was a guest at Compiègne, the Tuileries, and the Château d'Eu, with the entrée to every great function and the fullest opportunity-as there was with him the keenest zest-for obtaining the best information in regard to every subject of

* An Englishman in Paris (Notes and Recollections). 2 vols. Chapman & Hall, Lim.

1892.

interest or importance. He reveals himself as having for a near relative" an officer on the staff of General Vinoy, whose aide-de-camp I knew as a young Capitaine Edmond Richard Wallace," the son of the then Mr. Richard Wallace. Writing of events on the eve of the war, he alludes to a connection of mine by marriage" who was a general officer à la suite of the Emperor. One of the few officers who accompanied Napoleon the Third when he came out of Sedan on the morning after the great defeat was pointed out to me as General Castelnau and further described as "the brother in-law of Richard Wallace ;" and Lady Wallace, who still survives to lament the loss of husband and son, is stated in the baronetage to have been a Castelnau. Such evidence as this is conclusive; and Sir Richard, indeed, has disguised his identity so thinly that he might as well have allowed his name to go on the title-page of his book.

No Frenchman could know his Paris better than this Englishman who was in essentials at least half a Frenchman, and who describes himself on the eve of the Franco-German war as "probably the only foreigner whom Parisians had agreed not to consider an enemy in disguise." Through his pages, in which all moods vibrate from cynicism to sympathy, there defiles a long train of persons of distinc

tion in every sphere-princes, statesmen, grandes dames and famous members of the demi-monde, poets, painters, soldiers, sculptors, authors, officials, boulevardiers, lawyers, detectives; all of whom he knew with greater or less intimacy, all of whom in one sense or other were worth knowing, and of all of whom he has something to tell that is new, bright, engaging, and to use the formula "to the best of deponent's knowledge and belief," true. He had a legitimate and worthy curiosity to learn what the Americans call the "true inwardness' of the incidents and events occurring around him, and the evidence of his pages is fairly strong that he rarely failed to know most things that were to be known.

Perhaps the most prominent figure of his second volume, which concerns itself with the period of the Empire, is the Empress. An intimate of the Emperor, a frequent visitor to Compiègne, bienvenu in all the ramifications of imperialistic and official circles and coteries, nobody could have better opportunities of judging of the character of Eugénie, and of the nature and weight of her influence on affairs, social and national alike. It is clear that the author considers the Empress to have exercised the most important individual impression on the destinies of the Empire. I do not propose to formulate for him the conclusions to which his comments directly point, preferring in part to quote, in part to summarize, those comments, and so leave the reader to form therefrom his opinion to what extent the responsibility for the ignoble collapse of the Second Empire rests on her whom the malcontent Parisians were wont to style "the Spanish woman. It is seemly, for obvious reasons, to treat of a bereaved and desolate lady solely in her province as Empress, as the social ruler of France, and as the strong consort of a pliable and listless husband; and it is to be regretted that the author has occasionally permitted himself in this respect to transgress boundaries which he might have been expected to recognize. Apart from this his honesty and candor are conspicuous, and of this an illustration may be given. The Emperor was fond of ceremonious display, and had set his heart upon his bride having a brilliant escort of fair and illustrious women on her marriage-day. There was no hope of such an escort from the old

noblesse; and the honor was declined even by the nobility who owed titles and fortunes to the First Napoleon. There were, it was true, plenty of men and women ready to accept honors and titles in the suite of the brand-new régime, "and to deck out their besmirched though very authentic scutcheons with them; but of these the Empress, at any rate, would have none. "Knowing what I do," continues the writer, "of Napoleon's private character, he would willingly have dispensed with the rigidly virtuous woman at the Tuileries, then and afterward. But at that moment he was perforce obliged" (at the instance of the lady whom he was about to espouse) to make advances to her, and the rebuffs received in consequence were taken with a sangfroid which made those who administered them wince more than once. At each renewed refusal he was ready with an epigram: Encore une dame qui n'est pas assez sure de son passé pour braver l'opinion publique ;" Celle-là, c'est la femme de César, hors de tout soupçon, comme il y a des criminels qui sont hors la loi ;"' "Madame de ; il n'y a pas de faux pas dans sa vie, il n'y a qu'un faux papa, le père de ses enfants.

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The author dilates freely on the imperious temper of the parvenue Empress. The slightest divergence of opinion was construed into an offence, and all who offended her suffered inexorable ostracism. The result was that in a few years the socalled counsellors around the Emperor were simply her abject creatures and puppets, moving solely at her will. Bold men who dared to differ from her and think for themselves were removed or were driven into fierce and bitter opposition, or else voluntarily withdrew from the court

sooner than submit to a tyranny, not based, like that of Catherine the Second or Elizabeth, upon great intellectual gifts, but upon the wayward impulses of a woman in no way distinguished mentally from the rest of her sex, except by an overweening ambition and an equally overweening conceit." Of this tyrannical intolerance he gives several remarkable illustrations. One evening at court a charade was being played, in the course of which some of the amateur performers, of both sexes, threw all decorum to the winds in their improvised dialogue. In her Majesty's hearing an officer high in favor with

her and the Emperor gave expression to his disgust at such license of language in presence of the sovereigns. The Empress turned upon him with terms of unrefined contempt for his prudishness. Vous n'êts pas content, colonel; hé bien ! je me'em fiche, refiche et contrefiche" (words which the editor translates, with the remark that his translation inadequately represents the vulgarity of the original, "You don't like it, colonel; well, I don't care a snap, nor two snaps, nor a thousand snaps'). The Emperor, with a laugh, applauded his consort; the colonel recognized the situation, and presented himself no more at court. One of the ablest soldiers in the army, he served in Mexico without promotion, and he was still a colonel when, after Gravelotte, he impressed on Bazaine the wisdom of leaving a garrison in Metz and breaking out with the army of the Rhine. I think I am not mistaken in identifying this officer as Colonel Lewal, who subsequently under the Republic attained high and deserved promotion. Had the Empire lasted, he would probably have remained a colonel to the day of his death.

Boitelle, an honest shrewd man of the bourgeois type, was a prefect of police in Paris under the Empire. Eugénie, actuated whether by philanthropy or whim, took it into her head to pay a visit to Saint-Lazare, an institution combining the attributes of a hospital and a bridewell for women of the town of the lowest type. Boitelle was requisitioned as cicerone. The Empress took exception to the dinner of the inmates, since no dessert crowned the meal. Boitelle's sense of the fitness of things had already been strained, and the plain man blurted out, "Really, madame, you allow kindness to run away your with your good sense. If they are to have a dessert, what are we to give to honest women?" Next day Boitelle was kicked upstairs into the sinecure of a senatorship; his services, which were valuable, were lost to his department; and to the end of the Empire her Majesty's resentment against him never relented. Her wrath also deprived the bureau of secret police of its upright and conscientious chief, M. Hyrvoix. It was his wont to report daily to the Einperor, who gave him his cue by the question, "What do the people say?" The incident narrated by the author-which shall be given