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Sathsheba's face. "I am sorry we mistook you so! I did hink you cared for him; but I see you don't now." "Shut the door, Liddy."

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Liddy closed the door, and went on: People always ays such foolery, miss. I'll make answer hencefor❜ard, Of course a lady like Miss Everdene can't love him ;' 'll say it out in plain black and white."

Bathsheba burst out: “Oh, Liddy, are you such a simleton! Can't you read riddles ? Can't you see! Are you a woman yourself!"

Liddy's clear eyes rounded with wonderment.

"Yes, you must be a blind thing, Liddy!" she said, in reckless abandonment and grief. "Oh, I love him to very distraction and misery and agony. Don't be frightened at me, though perhaps I am enough to frighten any innocent woman. Come closer-closer." She put her arms round Liddy's neck. "I must let it out to somebody; it is wearing me away. Don't you yet know enough of me to see through that miserable denial of mine? O God, what a lie, it was! Heaven and my Love forgive me. And don't you know that a woman who loves at all thinks nothing of perjury when it is balanced against her love? There, go out of the room; I want to be quite alone." Liddy went towards the door.

"Liddy, come here. Solemnly swear to me that he's not a bad man that it is all lies they say about him!" "But, miss, how can I say he is not if

"You graceless girl! How can you have the cruel heart to repeat what they say? Unfeeling thing that you are But I'll see if you or anybody else in the village or town either, dare do such a thing!" She started off, pacing from fire-place to door, and back again.

No, miss. I don't-I know it is not true," said Liddy, frightened at Bathsheba's unwonted vehemence. "I suppose you only agree with me like that to please me. But, Liddy, he cannot be bad, as is said. Do you hear?"

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"I don't believe him to be so bad as they make out." "He is not bad at all. . . . . My poor life and heart, how weak I am!" she moaned, in a relaxed, desultory way, heedless of Liddy's presence. "Oh, how I wish I had never seen him! Loving is misery for women always. I shall never forgive my Maker for making me a woman, and dearly am I beginning to pay for the honor of owning a pretty face." She freshened and turned to Liddy suddenly. "Mind this, Lydia Smallbury, if you repeat anywhere a single word of what I have said to you inside this closed door, I'll never trust you, or love you, or have you with me a moment longer- not a moment."

"I don't want to repeat anything," said Liddy with womanly dignity of a diminutive order; "but I don't wish to stay with you. And, if you please, I'll go at the end of the harvest, or this week, or to-day I don't see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed at for nothing!" concluded the small woman, bigly.

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No, no, Liddy: you must stay!" said Bathsheba, dropping from haughtiness to entreaty with capricious inconsequence. "You must not notice my being in a taking just now. You are not as a servant — you are a companion to me. Dear, dear-I don't know what I am doing since this miserable ache o' my heart has weighted and worn upon me so. What shall I come to! I suppose I shall die quite young. Yes, I know I shall. I wonder

sometimes if I am doomed to die in the Union. I am friendless enough, God knows."

"I won't notice anything, nor will I leave you!" sobbed Liddy impulsively putting up her lips to Bathsheba's and kissing her.

Then Bathsheba kissed Liddy, and all was smooth again. "I don't often cry, do I, Lidd? but you have made tears

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"And, dear miss, you won't harry me and storm at me, will you? because you seem to swell so tall as a lion then, and it frightens me. Do you know, I fancy you would be a match for any man when you are in one o' your takings."

"Never! do you?" said Bathsheba, slightly laughing, though somewhat seriously alarmed by this Amazonian picture of herself. "I hope I am not a bold sort of maid - mannish?" she continued, with some anxiety. "Oh no, not mannish; but so almighty womanish that 'tis getting on that way sometimes. Ah! miss," she said, after having drawn her breath very sadly in and sent it very sadly out, "I wish I had half your failing that way. 'Tis a great protection to a poor maid in these days!" (To be continued.)

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY.

ECLIPSES, Comets, and extraordinarily high tides can be predicted with accuracy; there even seems to be a probability that in time the weather will also strike its flag to science, and that means will be found of disentangling the conflicting influences which send an aneroid up and down. But in the art of foretelling the probable current of public enthusiasm there is no sign of progress. The keenest observer of human nature can no more guess whether the career of any particular suitor, warrior, explorer, or criminal will simply appear in the newspapers and excite no more attention, or will be generally taken up as a matter of national importance, than the merest tyro can. It was more than a million to one that Robert Jeffrey's wrongs would remain unnoticed, or raise but a feeble and passing interest. He became a popular idol, however, -a representative victim of the press-gang system, and the tyrannical customs which naturally grew out of it, and so a very curious story has been handed down to us.

In 1807 a privateer named the Lord Nelson was fitted at Polperro in Cornwall, a place famous for its hardy race of smugglers, the entire population being brought up to look upon coast-guardsmen as natural enemies, who might be killed with as good a conscience as though they were Frenchmen. The profits of privateering were often greater even than those of smuggling, and the Lord Nelson had no difficulty in gathering together a first-rate crew. Amongst them was a man who had been brought up as a blacksmith, but had found both excitement and profit in an occasional sea-trip, and indeed was as good at the tiller as at the forge, perhaps a trifle better. The name of this amphibious Cornishman was Robert Jeffrey, and his career as a privateersman was a short one; for the Lord Nelson, at the very commencement of her cruise, was forced to put into Falmouth, where she was boarded by a press-gang. It was a perfectly illegal proceeding; the press-gang had (no more right to take a man out of the Lord Nelson, than you or I have to break into a house and take the platebasket. But at the commencement of this century private

rights were very little respected where the public service was concerned, unless the person whom it was proposed to injure had plenty of money or political influence. Robert Jeffrey had neither, and he was carried on board H. M. S. Recruit, and converted into a man-of-war's-man quite against his will, and in defiance of his clear and undoubted protection.

The commander of the Recruit was a young officer at that time well known in the navy as a reckless, self-willed, passionate man, the foibles of whose nature were forced and exasperated by despotic powers and drinking habits. As if his normal thirst were not enough, he was now sent to cruise in the Caribbean Sea, where the heat of the sun whetted it to such an extent that he was seldom or ever sober, the mildest potation that he used to quench it being spruce-beer, of which he kept a cask always on tap in his private cabin.

Before he had been on board many days, Jeffrey's proficiency as a smith was discovered, and he was made armorer's mate. So that there was a fair chance of his making his enforced trip pretty comfortably, and returning after a few months to his native place with a pocketful of prize-money after all. But an unfortunate group of circumstances got in the way. The captain was not the only thirsty man in the ship; his armorer's mate, for example, occasionally had a drought upon him, which was considerably aggravated by the extremely hot weather and the small allowance of water served out daily, for the ship was running short of that treasure which we never prize while we have it. During this state of affairs, Jeffrey was sent to execute some job in the captain's cabin, and being left alone with the barrel of spruce-beer, he began to ogle it. There was a drinking-cup, which had been used, lying very handy; the captain was on deck; no one could see him; he was very thirsty! He snatched up the cup, and desisted from his work a moment to draw off half a pint and toss it down. Very good it was, and very refreshing: if stolen waters are sweet, what must purloined spruce-beer be? Presently another drink was taken, with equal sucA third, however, was spoiled by the thick and wrathful voice of his captain, who had come below unheard, unnoticed, in time to witness this outrageous act of daring presumption. It would burn a hole in the paper to write down Captain Lake's remarks upon the occasion. Seventy years ago, all gentlemen swore a little; naval officers swore very much, increasing in vehemence as they rose in rank; men in liquor swore, as at the present day, hardest of all. You may imagine, then, what the language of a drunken sea-captain must have been, when he saw his beloved spruce-beer flowing down the throat of a common armorer's mate! That audacious wretch was clapped in irons presently, while his infuriated commander, having refreshed himself, returned to the deck, which he paced with unsteady steps, revolving in his mind what punishment would be sufficient for a crime so heinous. It ought to be something unusual, startling, appalling as the act which it avenged. Suddenly his eyes caught sight of a small isl and, now turned into a jewel by the rays of the sun, which was sinking in the west, and the inspiration came. Lieutenant!" he cried. "Sir?"

cess.

"Man the gig, and send for that fellow I have had confined."

It was done, and then, to the lieutenant's horror, his superior officer ordered him to take the prisoner, land him on the barren rock, and leave him. "I'll have no thieves on board my ship," he said.

The captain was evidently the worse for drink, and his lieutenant hesitated.

"Do you hear me, sir?" thundered the astonished commander; and discipline prevailed. Deeply as he loathed the act, the lieutenant had no option but to obey; the crew, though they murmured, did not mutiny, and Robert Jeffrey was put ashore without food or drink. He had his knife, and one sailor gave him a handkerchief, and another a long stick which he had thought to throw into the boat as they shoved off, for the deserted man to signal with.

By this time the sun had sunk, and when the boat returned to the ship it left the poor fellow behind, alone, in the dark. He fully believed that the captain only meant to frighten him, and bore up pretty well through the night with that idea. But when the morning dawned the Recruit was a mere speck in the distance, which slowly but surely passed away beyond the horizon. Then the unhappy man realized that he was a castaway.

The Recruit, indeed, had caught a favoring breeze, which carried her quickly to Barbadoes, where she joined the squadron under Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. Here officers and crew, mingling with those of other ships, spoke freely of the affair, which presently reached the admiral's ears, who sent for the captain, questioned him, and finding the story true, severely reprimanded him for his brutality, and ordered him back to rescue the man.

The island upon which Jeffrey had been so barbarously left was one of the Leeward group, a desolate rock called Sombrero, and the Recruit got back to it just a fortnight after the event. A careful search was instituted, but all that was found was a pair of trousers, not Jeffrey's and a tomahawk handle, no trace of the missing man being discoverable.

This result being reported on the ship's return to Barbadoes, Sir Alexander Cochrane felt satisfied that the man had been rescued by some passing vessel, and let the matter rest for the time. But a good many formed a different opinion, and suspected that Jeffrey had come to some violent end; and when the squadron returned to England the affair was taken up by people at home, and made so much noise that, after two years had elapsed, the captain was brought to a court-martial, condemned, and dismissed the service. This, however, instead of appeasing the public excitement, only inflamed it the more, by the authentic details which were brought to light in the course of the court-martial. The illegality of the man's having been pressed at all the veniality of his offence, especially considering the circumstances of thirst caused by short allow ance of water in so hot a climate, and the ready temptation to appease it placed directly in his way, combined with the inhuman cruelty of his abandonment to stir the public indignation. Meetings were held, articles written, petitions signed, urging the propriety of endeavoring by all means to discover what had become of the missing man; and Sir Francis Burdett lost no opportunity of keeping the question before Government, in the House of Commons.

Illegal pressings, keel-haulings, floggings to death were not so very uncommon in the navy at that time as to account for the usually indifferent public's espousing Robert Jeffrey's cause so warmly; but it did so, and made a representative man of him.

The first authentic news came from George Hassel, mariner, who deposed on oath before the Mayor of Liverpool that he had just returned from Beverly, a town in Massachusetts, and that a man was living there who was nicknamed the Governor of Sombrero, whose real name was Jeffrey. Whereupon this Jeffrey was communicated with, and in due time a letter in reply purporting to come from him was received, giving a full account of his adven

ture.

When the Recruit had quite disappeared, he remained for some time overwhelmed with despair, but after a while he grew calm, and felt very hungry, so he explored his isl and to see if there was anything to eat upon it, but could find nothing except birds, which flew away, as birds will, when he tried to catch them. At last he discovered an egg, but, alas! it was an election egga very good missile, but not edible. Soon, however, the pangs of hunger gave place to the severer sufferings of thirst, which he tried to appease by swallowing the sea water, and that of course made matters worse. But Heaven, more merciful than man, sent him a shower of rain, which lodged in the crevices of the rocks, and inflicted the punishment of Tantalus upon him until he thought of cutting the quills, of which there were plenty strewn about, and sucking up the puddles as we moderns do sherry cobblers.

In addition to hunger and thirst, he endured the agony of hope deferred, for ships were constantly passing, but failed to see his signals till the ninth day, when some one on board the Adams, an American schooner, noticed him waving the stick to which his handkerchief was tied. The master, John Dennis, sent a boat, and brought him off in an apparently dying state, so exhausted as to be unable to speak. With care and kindness, however, he recovered, and was carried to Marblehead, in Massachusetts, where he supported himself by his trade as a blacksmith.

This circumstantial account satisfied people at first, but when the letter was shown to Robert Jeffrey's mother she pointed out that not only was it written in a strange hand, but that it was not even signed by her son, who could write well enough, and was very unlikely to make his mark, as the man who vouched for the genuineness of this epistle had done. This objection naturally carried weight, and many people suspected that the evidence of George Hassel and of the letter had been got up by the captain, who was anxious to prove the man to be alive, and so escape from the odium which attached to him.

Finally a ship was sent to bring this professing Robert Jeffrey to England, where he arrived in due course, and proved to be the right man safe enough, a certain shyness and diffidence which he felt in the presence of the gentlemen who had drawn up his report being the cause of his making a cross instead of signing it. He landed at Ports mouth in the October of 1810, three years after the event which had caused him to become a public character. The Admiralty forwarded him under the charge of a naval officer to Polperro, where the entire population recognized him, and his arrival was made the occasion of great public rejoicing.

But before settling down in his native place he accepted an offer from the manager of a London theatre to exhibit himself for a certain number of nights, and as it became the rage to go and see " Jeffrey the Sailor," he made rather a good thing of it. These profits were presently swelled by a sum of six hundred pounds, which was paid him by the family of the captain in acquittal of all claims he might have against that officer, who was still liable to a eivil action, and in the excited state of public opinion was likely to be cast in heavy damages.

After the lapse of a few months, when he ceased to "draw," Jeffrey returned to Cornwall with money enough to purchase a coasting schooner; married, and, if this were fiction, would have lived happily forever afterwards. But the story being a perfectly true one, Robert Jeffrey was subject to all those ills which afflict ordinary mortals who have never been the subjects of popular sympathy or curi

osity.

He failed to make his schooner pay, and he died early of consumption, leaving his wife and daughter in great poverty.

THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.

I.

SOME time has gone by since M. Michel Lévy issued, under the auspices of M. Taine a posthumous work which threw unusual light on the career and peculiar temperament of one of the most remarkable personalities of this century. In France, wearied by intestine and foreign warfare, the sickened mind of the intellectual public has, for three long years, given unmistakable tokens of transient sterility; the living appear momentarily incapable of healthy productions. Authors themselves are full of the national cares, political fever swamps that moral repose which is needed for meditation, and readers are fain to be content with the literary treasures of the past, whence a recent influx of posthumous works, of more or less interest, in the shape of private correspondences. The Parisians have had before them letters of Lamartine, letters of SainteBeuve, and of others, all of which afforded a valuable insight

into the real character of their writers. None, however, deserved more study than those of the late Prosper Mérimée, and critics of both countries have paid a deserving homage to these confidences of a complex genius. The Revue des Deux Mondes and the Quarterly Review have in turns given exhaustive treatments of the subject. Nor should we venture on reopening a field of speculation that has called forth such universal notice, but that, in our own opinion, there is further room for interesting remarks, mainly owing to the scope within which the reviewers of the "Lettres à une Inconnue "have seen fit to remain. Far from us be the presumptuous thought of analyzing better what others have analyzed so ably; our meaning is, that the work has been considered rather in regard to its intrinsic merits as a literary production than used as ft ought to be, namely, as a key to a curious psychological study. Some have deprecated the laxity of morals the writer betrays in more than one instance; others have taken seriatim divers remarks on men and things, apparently forgetting that many hidden thoughts that have crossed the minds of most men are consigned to intimate correspondence thoughts the author would have been loth to affirm in public; and, to the best of our knowledge, none have allotted to Mérimée the place to which he has a right. Our purpose would be to repair this omission. The readers of Mérimée's critics may still ask in vain: "Who was he? A vulgar sceptic, or a typical incarnation of a time; a man of genius, or a distinguished lettre? What was his influence on his contemporaries, and how will posterity estimate him? And how is it that Mérimée attained celebrity of a peculiar kind which far surpasses that of geniuses superior to his?" The following observations may be useful towards a satisfactory answer.

It was not without reason that the author of the "Life of Jesus" recently described Prosper Mérimée as the Petronius of his epoch. He was not merely an eminent man of letters of the ordinary calibre, a novelist, a savant; he was something more, a type of the modern race of Frenchmen, a man whose adamantine nature was the receptacle of all doubts and disbeliefs. Together with these two illustrious sceptics, Sainte-Beuve and Stendhal, he made up a trio which might well have passed for the treble incarnation of haughty and resigned despair. Sainte-Beuve possessed a store of amiability which daubed his scepticism with a pleasant glaze of varnish. Stendhal was, like all those who have scrutinized the vices of human nature with a magnifying glass, of a dark and desponding mood, corrected by considerable tenderness of heart; but he, Prosper Mérimée, stood an image of perfection in character, a strong, invulnerable sceptic, whose acquired toughness was proof alike against love and hatred a human Mephistopheles, not of the capacity of Goethe's, but rather like the evil spirit such as he has been personified by a famous singer-polished, refined, elegant; stabbing with daggers of the finest steel and richest work, darting a murderous epigram in the choicest language, working the same havoc as the bitter spirit of German creation, but killing, tearing, and wounding with the exquisite politeness of a perfect gentleman. Having so far guarded himself against the invasion of banality and shown the teeth to most men, he tried his hand at everything, attained perfection in most things, threw them up in disgust after becoming their master, and one day awoke one of the most forlorn of human creatures. And still Prosper Mérimée was not born what he was hereafter. Such sentiments as he possessed and prided on do not issue from the cradle. A man gifted with the choicest faculties, as Mérimée, must have the embryo of high qualities of heart; and if his judge will take the trouble to follow the incidents of the first years of his life, he will soon find singular instances in support of this. More than any other, a youthful creature owning to an unusual degree the faculty of observation should be attended to by his educators, for, if we judge by the present instance, the slightest lesson wrongly given and erroneously understood will turn a precocious child into a dire path of thought. M. Taine tells us, in his interesting preface, that when he was nine years old Mérimée was scolded by his parents for some trifling breach of manners, and dismissed from the drawing-room

in an agony of shame. While still in tears at the door, he heard his friends laughing and saying: "Poor child! he thinks we are very angry. Even at that tender age he was revolted at the idea of being made a fool of and deceived, and henceforth he pledged himself to repress his sensibility, to be constantly on guard against enthusiasm and effusion, and to speak and write as if in the presence of a harsh and bitter hearer.

To this petty occurrence, which would have left but little impression on other children, may, on Mérimée's own admission, be traced the origin of the programme he set to himself to fight his way through life. Hence he studied a part, and applied his rich gifts of intellect to a manufacture of an artificial self. He curbed his passions, tastes, and desires under a strong hand; he had a sensitive heart; he repressed his sensitiveness so that it did not seem to exist; later on the artificial process got the better of him, and it was really suppressed altogether. His disposition naturally tended to affection; this he concealed in the same way not that he was yet irreclaimable, but, to quote Taine's happy metaphor, certain race-horses are so well bred by their masters that when they are in hand they dare not indulge in the slightest gambol. So that he entered the lists clad in an inward cuirass which the contact of society was to harden more and more, and bent on regarding the world much as one contemplates a forest full of murderous robbers. He looked about him, and bitterly disposed as he was he applied himself more to the observation of what is contemptible in human nature than to an appreciation of its nobler sides. His remarks justified preconceived ideas, and from the first, as he said himself, quoting Hamlet, man pleased him not, nor woman neither. Let us say, however, that his contempt for his fellow-creatures came not from a personal and disparaging comparison with himself, for his letters to the unknown lady in whom he confided, show that the shortcomings he despised in others he equally derided in himself. One of his subjects of ironical commentary was that throughout his life he was credited for qualities not his own, while he was blamed for defects which he had not. With such thoughts there was nothing surprising that he should adopt as a first fundamental maxim the paradox that speech is given to man to conceal his yearnings, and, as a second principle, Talleyrand's recommendation to guard one's self against generous movements because they are usually the best.

A

A natural consequence of this moral perversion was that he affected, in the process of writing, theories of a totally different cast from those of others. First of all he examined with a critical eye the manner then predominant among the finest writers France has produced in this age. The Romantique renovation was in full efflorescence; Mérimée set at work over dishes of the same taste. story is told of an original who stopped to look at one of the hottest street fights of the Revolution of July 1830; a National guard was obstinately firing on the Royal Suisses without the slightest effect, and the stranger was looking on in apparent disgust. Presently he walked up to the unsuccessful marksman, took the rifle from his hands, and volunteered to show how the work should be done; he fired and one of the Suisses fell dead. As he attempted to return the rifle to its owner, and as the other urged him to keep the weapon he could use so well, the stranger gravely replied: "No, thank you; I am a royalist; it isn't my opinion." Likewise Prosper Mérimée joined the Romantiques; he wrote Spanish sword and cloak comedies, which be gave as translations from the text of an unknown genius, thereby mystifying the public and proving that it was in his power to effect the tone and style of the new school as successfully as the best, although "it was not his opinion." He tried the trick once more with the same felicitous result in La Guzla. And then he gave up romanticism, and took to writing according to his own ideas. after contemptuously observing that such masterpieces as he had achieved only demanded the knowledge of a word or two of a foreign language, a sketch-book of a foreign country, and a tolerable style. Nothing could be more withering for himself and others.

Prosper Mérimée seems throughout his existence to have been filled with that restlessness which according to Mr. Forster affected Charles Dickens, although his studious care was to conceal any sign of such a disposition, and to appear a man of marble. He did certainly devote enormous study to French literature, and especially to contem poraneous productions, but marvellously keen at detecting the strings which set the machine in motion, ever intent on scanning the details, he ignored their real beauty of ensemble, lost sight of the pregnant sides of a work, and soon wearied of the best. It had been the same with Art: a painter of no little ability, he had become convinced of the sterility of the brush, because the purely mechanica. side of art had no secret for him. It was the same reason which induced him to sift the delicacies of six languages, and ransack their literature: occasionally he brought forth a gem and set it in French, adding the perfection of his style to some pregnant novelette of Ivan Turgénieff's; but eventually he wearied of polyglotism too, and deeming nothing among the living worthy of notice, he turned his eyes to the past, and turned the final leaf of his literary existence, that of a man who could never apply his talent to the services of a definite idea, who had every natural element to be happy and illustrious, and who failed in being the one and but just attained the other. Mérimée henceforward wasted priceless faculties in artistic attempts which could only be entitled to the place of curiosities of literature. He doted on imparting life to things of the past; he liked to transfer himself, like Théophile Gautier, into the midst of dead civilizations, constructing an admirable story on the sight of an inscription, a ruin, using his acuteness of observation in the framing of types to people the archaic visions he indulged in. He even went so far as to observe his surroundings merely with the purpose of guessing by means of induction the gait and ideas of their predecessors. In this ungrateful labor he has shown well enough what he was capable of doing if he had applied himself to the serious analysis of contemporary characters. Without possessing the intensity of observation of a Balzac, his intellectual condition might have entitled him to a place but just below this great master. And it is strange and painful to follow him as he sedulously narrows his own scope in art.

All the reasons we have adduced above fatally drove him into the rankest egotism which was ever the bane of a writer. His historical works no one, not excluding himself probably, took a very great interest in; they are cold and stately comparable for the matter, if the metaphor be permitted to us, to water contained in the finest Bohemian glass. As to his essays in fiction it is vastly different. When he has deigned to remain in his own time, and to pick out his personages and action from modern society, his productions have always been admirable both in matter and form. His process was much like Stendhal's. As he wrote for the select (if indeed he ever wrote for the edification of any one) he disdained the imbroglio of commonplace sentiments, the banalities of ordinary conversation; he obviously aimed at concentration and abridg ment, at probing the acts of man by certain telling features of human nature, and, in fact, at leaving much for the reader to guess by suppressing what vulgarities are wearisome to the "profound few." This kind of work offers equal dangers and advantages; it excludes two thirds of the general readers who may be wanting in the quick sagacity requisite for the proper comprehension of the author's process, although in the main they may be qualified to appreciate the essence of his work; further, it cir cumscribes the repute of a writer in a narrow circle, and, moreover, such style always tends to fall into obscurity and enigma. On the other hand, the omission of a great many strictly useless details preserves a work from the caprices of fashion and change of customs, and "Carmen" and "Colomba," free as they are from descriptions of transient and superficial interest, and consisting solely of the condensed description of passions and impulses that are eternal, will be eternally useful, just as Shakespeare and Milton are. These masterpieces are but few in number, and they serve

rather to show what their conceiver might have done than what he has done.

We have now done with Mérimée until we find the new and characteristic "Lettres à une Inconnue." Their literary merits are of secondary consideration; suffice it to say, in departing from the subject once for all, that their form, wit, and ingeniosity are paramount. As to the "Inconnue," there is no need to inquire atter her. What is thoroughly engrossing is the perusal between the lines of the desolate story of unhappiness the great sceptic relates. There are expressions for every disgust, words eloquent in their brevity expressive of deceptions, weariness, ennui; bitter estimations of men, impeachments of what he calls human imbecility, contemptuous allusions to his best friends, and topping all, a clear disbelief in goodness, and those noble commonplaces, honor, love, chivalry, abnegation. It is worthy of special note, that Mérimée is withal open to superstition, several instances of this being manifested in different letters; so strong is the yearning of every one towards a faith, whatever it may be. We have found but one good note 1 in the two volumes of this correspondence; as to the harsh ones, they abound; on Frenchmen especially his satire never tarries: "The greatest nation in the world is made up of a set of scapegraces, inconsistent, anti-artistic, illogical, bigoted, and not even possessing the religion that comes from the heart." He was a senator of the Empire, not out of any particular liking for a dynasty or a principle, but because, as he said, "tyrants had over Republicans the advantage of washing their hands;" in his official capacity he was once called upon to make a speech in the Senate, and as it was his first public address he felt rather timorous. "I gained courage," he writes to the "Inconnue," "when I bethought myself that I was speaking to two hundred fools."

On another occasion he relates to the same person how, answering a toast to European Literature at a dinner of the Literary Association, presided over by Lord Palmerston, he gravely spoke nonsense in English for a quarter of an hour, which seemed to be highly appreciated by the so-called learned men who listened. Further on, he writes: “You cannot imagine my disgust for our present society; it seems as if it tried, by its stupid combinations, to augment the mass of annoyances and troubles which are necessary to the order of the world." Speaking of Englishmen, he says that individually they are stupid, but as a whole admirable. Few things, in fact, find grace in his eyes. On marriage, he says that nothing is more repulsive: "The Turks, who bargain for a wife as for a fat sheep, are more honest than we Europeans who daub over this vile transaction with a varnish of hypocrisy but too transparent." It may be seen at this stage how the scepticism of the first days has begot a cynic. He might have sought happiness in union with a lovely and amiable woman (for he was a great favorite with the sex); but he discarded marriage and women by principle. Much of this insensibility is revealed in the following lines: "The other day I went out boating on the Seine. There was a quantity of small sailing-boats filled with all kinds of people about the river. Another large one was freighted by a number of women (of those of the bad tone). All these boats had gone to the shore, and from the largest emerged a man about forty years old, who had a drum, and who drummed away for his own amusement. While I was admiring this lubber's musical dispositions, a woman of about twenty-three comes up to him, calls him a monster, says that she followed him from Paris, and that it would fare

The passage we allude to has been quoted by the Quarterly Review as very cynical. The opinion we hold being somewhat different, the passage should be given: "I went to a ball given by some young men of my ac quaintance to which all the figurantes of the Opera were invited. These women are mostly stupid; but I have remarked how superior they are in moral delicacy to the men of their class. There is only a single vice which separates them from other women-poverty." The Quarterly goes on to remark that a man must be far gone in cynicism to hazard such a paradox, and that the "Unknown" must have been singularly destitute in feminine dignity and self-respect could she have endured to be told that she was only separated from such a class of women by poverty. We hope the "Unknown did endure it and approve of it, for unless the Quarterly has entirely misunderstood Mérimée's meaning, no worse construction could be put on a very sensible remark.

ill with him unless he admitted her to his party. All this was going on ashore, our own boat being twenty yards away. The man with the drum was drumming away while the woman was remonstrating, and he at last told her with much coolness that he would have nothing of the kind. Upon this, she ran to the boat furthest from the shore and jumped into the water, thereby splashing us abominably. Although she had extinguished my cigar, indignation did not prevent me, nor my friends, from saving her before she had swallowed a glassful. The handsome object of her despair had n't stirred, and he muttered between his teeth, Why take her out if she wanted to drown herself?'

The question to which this incident gives rise in my mind is, why are the most indifferent men the most beloved? That is what I should like you to tell me, if you can."

Such was his opinion on feminine love. Believing as he did that a man is no longer cherished from the moment he shows any affection for the woman he distinguishes from others, Mérimée probably deemed that the best way of avoiding misery and pain was not to love at all. Perhaps the unknown might have replied to his query that she used precisely the means alluded to to win her illustrious correspondent's heart; but in any case it may be affirmed that she did not succeed.

II.

It is within the present writer's recollection to have met Prosper Mérimée at one of those Parisian cafés which form the resort of the pith of the literary world. The place was generally well attended by famous men, but it was never more crowded than when Mérimée happened to be there. His brilliancy of conversation, the effective manner in which he poured out the overflowing of his wit, made of him one of the most desirable men of Paris. On this occasion a young sculptor of talent was holding forth on artistic theories, and he came to speak of glory with the fervency of an adept. "La gloire! " said Mérimée, with a caustic smile. "Do you then believe in glory, young man?"

This exclamation remained in our memory as the dejected profession of faith of a wasted life. Such, indeed, was Prosper Mérimée's; and it can be safely affirmed that this unfortunate result was provoked by counteraction against nature, and the valuable information afforded by his correspondence goes to support this view. Throughout the emptiness of his life prevails. To sum up, he sifted languages, literatures, and characters; he studied his species in all parts of the globe; and, as a just retribution for spurning all subjects of study after devoting his attention to each, instead of drawing consequences from the synthesis of things, he sickened, and looked about him for something to love or to like. Failing in his endeavors, he led the brilliant and sterile life of a delicate désœuvré, and listlessly wandered through the drama of life, obviously without object, and certainly without desire. What was the use for him to apply his energy to some great work; to labor for a definite enterprise? He was a sceptic, and much of a cynic too; his soul was as well closed to narrow egotism as to a noble faith in the perfectibility of human attempts. Vanity he had none; he cared not a whit for glory. If he achieved a few masterpieces it was for his amusement, not for others- he despised others too much for that; and in his sometimes heroic contempt, the trace he would leave of his passage in this world troubled him but slightly. As most men who look upon the details of life too critically, he had lost sight of the good features of human nature only to give paramount importance to its vices. He commenced life on the defensive: suspicion bred bitterness; bitterness bred scepticism; scepticism bred the cynic. It is clear that such negative sentiments were not primarily in his heart, and that they derived their origin from mistaken notions. It is also clear that this singular man's heart never thrilled with love, and that a fatal distrust, on which we have commented, deprived him of a solace which might have made of him a far differ

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