the son Carlos Laffitte, who carries off his | character. Whether the writer is or is natural sister in order to secure for him- not a Roman Catholic, we can hardly self her fortune; her half-idiot daughter, gather from the book. If not, he treats kept in shameful servitude by Madame the Roman Catholic religion with a symChalenton; the husband who assassinates pathy and respect which are rare in a his wife because his name has appeared in the newspapers. In a society which produces so many mad and half-mad people as ours, it is a terrible thing that the lunacy laws so easily allow arbitrary sequestration. Two dishonest doctors are enough to endanger any one's liberty. The "Memoirs of Madame Hersile Rouy," who was in this way long the victim of an arbitrary sequestration, have recalled attention to this question; whilst the Parisian scandals of this winter make one eagerly desire a speedy solution of the question of divorce, and the passing of a law for dealing with questions of paternity.

I have not mentioned the long Memoir published by M. Bazaine, in justification of his conduct at Metz in 1870. They refute nothing of what was asserted and proved before the council of war. It is clear that he was influenced in the conduct of military operations by political considerations. That is enough to justify the condemnation. It is but one more instance of a man crazy with ambition the worst névrose of all. G. MONOD.

From The Spectator.
BUT YET A WOMAN.*

--

THIS is a very taking book. The author, of whom we have only heard that he is a young American mathematician, has at least produced a story which tests his imaginative insight into the genius of a country very different from his own, and satisfies us that that insight is genuine. Several of the French characters are sketched in with a firm and delicate hand, and though the plot is hardly on a level with the dialogue, and seems to be rather mechanically pinned on to the group of characters sketched, than developed out of their relations to each other, the book is one which seems to promise a future to the man who has written it. It is, too, animated by a thoroughly pure taste, and shows a wide knowledge of that higher side of French character which has recently been too little represented in the literature concerned with French life and

Protestant writer, and which show that he identifies it with what there is that is noblest in France. In this we entirely concur. There is, no doubt, a limited amount of French Protestantism, — that for instance represented by M. de Pressensé, which is doing noble service in France. But, speaking generally, the best elements of French genius are still identified with devout Catholicism, and the ignoblest with the French scepticism and materialism. Mr. Sherburne Hardy, whatever his own convictions may be, perceives this, and has given us a most beautiful sketch of two or three genuine Catholics, and a very skilful though bitter sketch of one Romanizing journalist, who, himself belonging by birth to the Legitimist party, is supposed to have done for that party all the good or all the evil service whichever you may call it that the late editor of the Univers did for the Ultramontane party in the Church. The mordant sketch of M. de Marzac is a setoff, as it were, against the admirable sketch of the good priest, Father Le Blanc, which is the best in the book. Take the following as an illustration of the skill with which the priest's character is drawn. We should premise that he is not by any means a priest only, -hardly, perhaps, principally a priest, though he is a genuine priest, and full of the faith which he preaches, and loves to preach. Still, the artist and critic in him are usually more predominant than the priest. In the following conversation the priest sketches and criticises the character of Mr. Sherburne Hardy's heroine, Madame Milevski. He is in a railway-carriage with a young doctor, and they are on their way together to spend a week with M. Michel (Madame Milevski's brother), at Beauvais:

"Ah! there is a lake? Yes, we shall enjoy ourselves," said Father Le Blanc, with evident satisfaction. "We have a charming party.'

"" "That is an

"You are an old friend of M. Michel's." "Yes, since he first came to Paris. That is saying much and little; much, because he is the most agreeable of friends; little, because he makes friends of every one.' art few possess.”. ""True. Michel it is not an art at all. That art by Only with M. which one never disputes the qualities which those about us pretend to possess, and, on the other hand, never asserts any for one's self,

* But Yet a Woman: a Novel. By Arthur Sher-like other arts, requires calculation; and M. burne Hardy. London: Macmillan and Co.

Michel has none. He fulfils its conditions

without suspecting it.". "Perhaps it is a family trait. I should think M. Michel's sister possessed the art also.".

1

not averse to giving M. Le Blanc the reins of the conversation; partly because he was inter"Madame Stépha-ested, and partly because he was curious. nie? Oh, she is quite another person.". "She is certainly very beautiful."- "Ah!" "Yet she appears to make friends easily." said the priest, holding up his hands, "and "Yes, but in a different way. And, against what beauty! I am a bit of an artist, M. what odds!" said Father Le Blanc, lifting up Lande; indeed, I was an artist before I was a his eyes with an expressive gesture of his priest. I will tell you why she is beautiful. hands. "For woman the art of pleasing is a Do you know?" "I have not studied her," kingdom for which all her sex are pretenders; said Roger. "Well, do so. It will repay and as for ours, with such a woman as Sté- you. Her beauty is not faultless; that is, it is phanie Milevski, one is not content with friend- not absolutely regular, -not the style magniship." "You have arraigned the whole worldfique, as the Greeks have it. They knew what against her," said Roger, laughing. "Yet I they were about, those Greeks, and gave such take the world only as I find it. Women make to the gods alone, and to certain of them only. friends like princes, by gaining thrones and Such beauty pleases the judgment; it is too dispensing favors. Only, more generous than correct for the heart. But of Madame Milevprinces, finally they surrender their thrones ski, my friend, the judgment must beware. also.". "And M. Milevski? I do not hear of She does not please it; she destroys it," he him.". "M. Milevski is dead. M. Michel's said, with a little shrug, "for in her beauty is father married, late in life, a second time, in that factor of weakness and incompleteness Russia. Of this marriage Stéphanie was the which touches the heart."- "She does not only child, and to M. Michel she has been appear to know all this. At least, no one much like a daughter. She was educated here would suspect her of it.". -"Nonsense," exin Paris under his supervision, after which she claimed Father Le Blanc. "There is a spirit returned to Russia, to live with her mother on which whispers in the ear of every beautiful her estates near Kief " -"And her mother is woman as she leaves Paradise. But, as you dead? -"Also. But, before dying, she say, she does not appear to. Now, I will married Stéphanie to a Russian nobleman of prove the contrary. Have you noticed her the new school, who, shortly after, became dress?"-"Hardly; except, possibly, that it compromised with the Emperor, and was ex- was simple."-"Exactly, but designedly so. iled to Siberia."- "Then madame has a It fulfils the condition of a perfect dress, which title?". "She had one, but it was forfeited is only an accessory, having little value in itself, on her husband's exile. It is said that the covering what it does not conceal, and calling estates were also confiscated, and that madame attention to that which it embellishes. But, was forbidden to reside in Russia. On receiv- without beauty, such a style would be frighting the Czar's orders, she drove alone, in the ful! What are all the eccentricities of fashion dead of winter, from Kief to St. Petersburg, but the devices to conceal and supplement nawith a single servant. Notwithstanding this ture? Madame Stéphanie flies in the face of defiance, she obtained an audience, and kept all these follies; first, because she knows she her estates. There is a story that the Czar can dare to; and second, because, like a king gave her a cross set with diamonds, as a token who has the air of one, she has the good taste of his good-will, and that she asked permis- to dispense with her decorations." At this sion to have the cross changed to a dagger, instant the train emerged from the forest, dis'lest your Majesty's clemency make me forget closing the valley of the Seine. "Ah! la belle my husband,' she said. The Count Milevski France!" cried Father Le Blanc. was already dead; he died on the journey to Siberia. But then, we cannot believe all that is said. Still," added M. Le Blanc reflectively, "I would believe many things of her. She puzzles me; and, for an old man, that is saying a good deal. The young look into women's eyes to see their own reflections; the old, to

see the woman.".

"You make a very agree

That is a skilful passage, as it manages to give us a pretty clear glimpse of four of the principal characters of the story,

M. Michel, his niece Rénée, Madame and a Milevski, and Father Le Blanc, hint or two as to a fifth, the young doctor, able definition of age," said Roger. "Most who is Father Le Blanc's companion. men, in that classification, die young."- Fa- Nor do any of them, except, perhaps, ther Le Blanc laughed, which he did with his the heroine, fail to satisfy the reader shoulders and trunk. As a laugh it was not as their characters are more fully devel infectious, but conveyed a sense of satisfac-oped by events. In the sketch of M. tion. As Rénée said, "When Father Le Blanc Michel, the kindly and absent-minded laughs, I feel happy myself.". "Yes, she student and scholar, who is so amiable to puzzles me," he resumed. 'Now, with Mademoiselle Rénée it is different. She is like the everybody that he has no room left for brook at its source; one sees the bottom. But any special or personal attachment to anyStéphanie!" and he shook his head, "it is body, Mr. Sherburne Hardy has painted the river; one sees the reflection of everything, a very pleasant picture of a somewhat but of what is beneath the surface, nothingpallid, though genial character. Father except that there is something." Roger was Le Blanc, the humorous old priest, who

this age has produced, and moreover, not one after the manner of this age. And wherever we meet with M. de Marzac, we meet with some little additional touch which increases the effect of this sketch. On the other hand, the story of which M. de Marzac is the hero is so entirely supplementary to the chief interest of this tale, and it is so difficult to make out the reason why Madame Milevski, who never felt the smallest regard for him, should have asked him to wait a year before she finally refused his suit, that we can hardly help smiling at the very inartificial connecting link between the little bit of melodrama with which Mr. Sherburne Hardy embellishes his tale, and the characters with whom chiefly we are concerned.

has so much of the artist left in him still, and who betrays, nevertheless, the kindly coarseness of a confessor to whom the evil and the good of the world have become so familiar that he has lost a good deal of the delicacy of his naturally fine insight, is a more powerful study still. The picture of the simpler heroine, Rénée, with her eager desire for something of the infinite in her life, and her subdued impatience of the calm affection of her uncle, is a very engaging one, and, on the whole, more successful, we think, though it aims at less, than the picture of the heroine for whom the title of the book is meant, Madame Milevski, who, interesting as she is made, is not made very clear to us, and has, indeed, too much of complexity, restlessness, and ambition in her for the small space of canvas which Mr. Sherburne Hardy has devoted to her. To the hero, again, the young doctor, Mr. Sher-in a single novel, of which the chief plot burne Hardy has given hardly any care. We rather agree with M. Michel, when he passes judgment at the close, that Rénée was much too good for him. In truth, however, we hardly learn enough of him to find out whether she was too good for him, or not.

The remaining interest in the book is in the very severe but very profound analysis of the character of the self-seeking Legitimist journalist, M. de Marzac. We have not read a keener analysis of the self-deceptions of a thoroughly selfish character for many years back. How subtle, for instance, is the following!

The ceremonies terminated with a ball, at which M. de Marzac was, of course, present. As he drives away from the fête in his carriage, a conscience long since subdued, the very clank of whose fetters has become applause, sets his mind at peace with all the world. Once thoroughly mastered, there is no better slave; for none knows better the rough places that need smoothing and the sore spots that need balm. It was a pleasure in which he often indulged, to go on the witness-stand before this conscience, to play the criminal in order to be acquitted; and, on his way home, he amused himself with this game of solitaire.

In the subjugation of conscience, M. de Marzac wore gloves and avoided brutality. His was the instinct of perversion, not of murder. Instead of slaying that inward monitor outright, he confronted it with expediency, and taught it to doubt its own dictates. He thus managed to preserve the fountain of fine emotions and noble sentiments, although the waters were soon contaminated and polluted.

"A conscience long since subdued, the very clank of whose fetters has become applause," is as fine an epigram as any

What we have in this book is a series of

delicate vignettes, clumsily bound together

passes outside the sphere of most of these characters, though it touches one or two of them here and there. What we really care about is the love of Roger and Rénée, the self-devotion of Stéphanie, and the intellectual malignity of M. de Marzac, the mild benignity of M. Michel, and the moral humor of Father Le Blanc. Yet the story turns on the early life of M. de Marzac, when he was nearly as selfconfessed a villain as he is throughout the story a reputable villain. His assassination at the close cuts no knot, and forwards no interest. It is simply the retri. bution of a secret sin of his youth, and makes no difference to the fate of any one of the persons of the story except his own. Mr. Sherburne Hardy, however, is a writer of much promise, and we shall hope that his next story will be one as good in its plot as this is in its dialogue, and also not less excellent than this in dialogue.

From The Month.

BOTANICAL TRANSGRESSORS.

IMPERSONIFICATION is a comparatively innocuous offence. Graver charges may be brought against the seemingly peaceful denizens of our fields and hedgerows. It is often noticed that special varieties of plants grow in special districts, and the guide-books which find their way into the hands of autumn wanderers generally contain some account of such local varieties. These variations are often ascribed to differences of soil and climate, and

certainly both have a good deal to do with | have been overpowered and crushed out the well-being and the perpetuation of of existence by their floral rivals. Warspecially varied forms. But many facts fare among plants is carried on in various show that the potency of soil and climate ways. In park lands it is often noticed is by no means so great as it is popularly that no flowers bloom under the shade of supposed to be. Cultivated plants, for the trees, although outside the shaded instance, plants which are under the care circle the grass is studded with gaily of man, grow equally well and produce colored dots and patches. The ground equally abundant fruit in very varying beneath a fir-tree or a yew is not only soils and climates. Wheat ripens in Si-devoid of flowers, but as a rule the toughberia and in Egypt, in southern Russia est grasses, tenacious of life as they are, as well as in north-west Canada. The have been choked and throttled out of soil and the climate of Europe is suffi- existence by the layers of fallen leaves ciently like to that of temperate North which cover the ground and shut out light America to lead us to suppose that the and air. It is not the soil, but the abflora of both would be the same, but in sence of sunlight which is fatal. The fact it is not. We might suppose that leaves of the tree, by intercepting the plants would flourish best in their native light, deprive the germinating seeds of soil and in their native climate, and here one of the main sources of their wellagain facts falsify many of our supposi- being. Many large-leaved plants war in tions. English watercress (Nasturtium this way upon their less favored fellows; officinale) was unknown in New Zealand, but to equalize the conditions of the combut when introduced there it took so bat a little, many plants are especially kindly to its new home that it is not unfre- equipped to fight with large-leaved foes. quently found with stems twelve feet in Some, like the convolvulus, are enabled length. This prodigality of growth was to obtain a sufficient quantity of air and not only found inconveniently large for light by climbing; others, like the Potenthe breakfast table, but it made watercress tilla reptans, which have not learned how a formidable impediment to river naviga- to climb and are in danger of being left tion, it blocks up river courses, and costs too much in the shade, send out long, the New Zealand government some hun- trailing stems which throw out roots at dreds of pounds yearly to keep it from every node or joint, and find compensaaltogether choking up the water-way. tion in this way. Annuals, plants which Similarly the American water weed or die down each autumn and are grown ditch-moss (Anacharis canadensis), al- from seed, fight at a great disadvantage though harmless enough in America, has when they have to contend with perennispread with such rapidity in this country als. Perennials, when once they have since its introduction about 1840, that their roots embedded in the soil, are prethere are few rowing men whose sweet pared at each successive approach of serenity of temper has not been occasion- spring to push up their fresh shoots ally ruffled by it. The fact seems to be through the moistened ground, and they that plants depend not only on the soil supply their nurslings with nourishment and climate, but also, to an extent hardly from already existing stores. But annuas yet sufficiently appreciated, upon the als have to begin at the beginning. Supgood-will and forbearance of other plants. posing the seed to have fallen by good Plants grow, it has been epigrammatically chance on suitable soil, it has still many observed, not where they like so much as dangers to run when it begins to push its where other plants will let them. No rootlet downwards and to expand its first idea seems more fittingly associated with pair of little leaves to sun and air. Taller the quiet beauty of foliage and of flower plants may overshadow it, shutting out than that of tranquillity and peace, and light and warmth; quick-growing grasses yet this seeming peacefulness only veils may draw away from its immediate neighto the passer-by an internecine war which borhood the moisture which it needs, and is ever going on. It almost seems a mere its story is soon told. It dies in early rhetorical flourish to assert that war, bit- infancy, and by a death which may be ter and unsparing and to the very death, termed violent. Although the plants is carried on by the silent beauties of our which are falling into the sere and yellow fields and meadows. But war there is. leaf cannot be said exactly to watch over Many species have faded away and have the rising generation, there are many spebecome quite extinct in certain localities, cies which show some kind of parental not because the soil was unsuitable or forethought for the welfare of the seeds the climate too rigorous, but because they they bring to maturity. They are not

content with allowing the seeds when ripe | leaves over six feet high. The vegetable

Goliath had to succumb to the floral David, and the little clover is actually driving the big flax out of existence. This struggle for life among plants shows that the farmer's antipathy to "weeds" is ex

case of varieties cultivated by man; when his protecting hand is withdrawn it is found that they are in great danger of being swept away by their many competi tors for a livelihood. One result to which this botanical warfare largely contributes is that the flora of a district changes. Some species die out, and "colonists come to take their place. Any one looking through an English flora will find that the number of plants marked "a colonist," "an alien," or "native?" is not inconsiderable. And this is true not only of shrubs and small plants, but also of forest trees. The remains of the Hyrcinian forest, which in the time of Cæsar

to fall down and grow up beside them, but they send them away to seek their fortunes in far-off fields and lanes and roadsides. Some seeds are provided with an apparatus not unlike an open umbrella, an umbrella with many ribs and no cover-tremely well founded. Especially in the ing. The round, feathered heads of the dandelion are examples of this, and children who blow them to pieces to see the individual seeds sail away steadily on the still summer air have no idea of the start they are giving these seeds in their struggle for life. All seeds do not start life so quietly. There is a little bitter-cress (Cardamine impatiens) which grows in north Wales, whose erect, linear-shaped seed pods as they dry up contract une qually, and by this unequal contraction cause the shells to burst and curl up gracefully above the summit of the pod. This violent bursting of the pod causes the seeds to fly out to a distance of three or four feet. An American species was composed of trees which annually of witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) shed their leaves, is now mainly made up shoots out its seeds to a distance of ten of pines and firs. But with respect to feet and more but when anything done forests, there seems to be a rotation of here is also done in America, it is natu- various kinds of trees, the kind of tree rally done on a larger scale. The yellow which grows up to take the place of those balsam (Impatiens noli-me-tangere), now decaying, depending upon the light and rather rare as a wild plant in England, air and other conditions which are affordgets its botanical name from its propen-ed to the young saplings by the kind of sity to fire off its seeds when touched or tree already existing.

shaken by the wind. This scattering of the seeds gives them fairer chance of finding unoccupied soil than they would otherwise have, and it is not so usual to find these species growing so close together as we find daisies, for instance. In spite of its mild and placid appearance the daisy is a great warrior, its close, low-lying leaves shut out light and air from any unhappy seeds that chance to be underneath them, and field botanists soon get to know that there is little chance of finding many varieties where daisies grow plentifully. Grass and mosses hold their own against most antagonists, but grass is not so very successful in its batiles with the daisy, as those who try to preserve the unbroken green of a favorite lawn often experience. Curiously enough it is not always the seemingly strongest plants, plants with the toughest fibre and hardest texture of leaf, which win these floral contests. The small white or Dutch clover (Trifolium repens), with a weakly, creeping stem, usually not much more than a foot in length, when introduced into New Zealand attacked and defeated an indigenous species of flax, an exceedingly tough, robust plant with strong

From The Spectator.

THE DESTRUCTION OF NIAGARA.

DURING the past few months, occasional allusions have been made in the English newspapers to an agitation which is going on at present in America concerning the condition and prospects of the Falls of Niagara; if the minds of our readers had not been thus prepared for the idea suggested by the above title, it would doubtless strike them as ridiculous. That Niagara, probably the most gigantic natural phenomenon in the world, apparently so immutable that it has become the favorite symbol of eternity, whose very name is said to have passed unchanged into every language spoken by civilized mankind, that Niagara, of all things under the sun, can be in any danger of destruction at the hands of man, seems simply incredible. It is true, however, and although the allusions mentioned above are like so many English statements about America — inaccurate in many respects, they are most unfortunately so in convey.