haps unconscious that your voices may be as tempting unto evi. as that of the first seducer of our parents. Eritis sicut Deus.

The fatal influence of such a low standard of morality may be best exemplified by the works of Victor Hugo, His "Cromwell" and "Hernani," dramas of considerable merit, deserve to be excepted from the Littérature Extravagante, but not so his drama of Marion Delorme, and all his subsequent compositions. Victor Hugo, a poet, is at the same time a theorist, and he has made up a particular system for himself, which, not relying on the sagacity of his readers to discover, he has developed in the prefaces to his dramatic works. He says plainly that the surest way of producing dramatic effect consists in mixing up with physical or moral deformity, no matter how great, abominable and vile, some pure and sublime sentiment, and the result of this contrast will be the making such physical or moral deformity appear interesting, touching, nay almost lovely. In accordance with this theory Marion Delorme, a degraded woman, appears on the stage purified by a bit of love; "the author," these are his own words, "will not bring Marion Delorme upon the stage without purifying the courtesan with a little love."*

The horrid dwarf Triboulet, a court jester and the minister to the king's profligacy, is the model of a good father. The abominable Lucretia Borgia is the affectionate mother of a son born of incest. His three dramas, Marion Delorme, Le Roi s'amuse, and Lucrece Borgia, were composed expressly to develope this theory, of which to speak in the most moderate terms, it can only be said that it is the theory of a quack rather than of a poet. He degrades all the sentiments which ought to remain for ever sacred, and violates all sympathies both of nature and reason. He strives to beautify what is deformed, and seeks out with the utmost industry the least appropriate and the least expected means of deceiving the public into making common cause with crime, and this is, in fact, the cardinal sin of the extravagant school.

Whilst Victor Hugo was endeavouring to discover some new secret of art, which only ended in bringing forth a monster, a powerful rival to him arose in the person of A. Dumas. The latter also, like V. Hugo, began his career better than he has continued it, as if the French atmosphere at present were poisonous to talent, rendering dizzy every brain. His first drama, Henri III., is full of truth and beauty, for which it is vain to look in his subsequent compositions. "La Tour de Nesle" is full of exag

* "L'auteur ne mettra pas Marion Delorme sur la scène sans purifier la courtisanne avec un peu d'amour."

gerated horrors; and in his pieces, Antony, Angela, Thereza, and Richard D'Arlington, rape, incest, and murder, are the every-day occupations of the crowds that frequent the boulevards of Paris and the saloons. Had these two men, with their superior talents, followed a right course, they might have ruled the spirit of their age. But they chose rather to become its slaves. Their servility is conspicuous in all their works. When, for instance, V. Hugo declares to an applauding audience," that the Countess of Shrewsbury" has the honour to marry a workman, not because he is an honest man, or a skilful mechanic, but merely because he is a workman, it must be confessed that no courtier ever more unblushingly flattered his master. Their sole aim seems to be to invent continually new modes of flattering the public; it is with the view of pleasing the public that they blacken all the former history of their nation, at the same time that they represent this same public and the whole present generation as inflamed with some mad fury and shameless cynicism, and tormented as with so many ulcers in its social organization-by perjury in marriage, adultery, incest, desertion of children, &c. Can there be, in fact, any natural sympathy between society in a certain state and deformity and crime? For the honour of man we would rather think that this is but the aberration of these two misguided minds. Whilst V. Hugo and Dumas drag upon the stage all the turpitude they can rake up from the ancient history of France, Paul Lacroix, under the pseudo name of Bibliophile Jacob, does the same in his historical novels, as La Danse Macabre, La Loi des Ribaud, &c. Like his predecessors forty years ago, Bibliophile during this reign of literary terrorism may be said to guillotine all the history of ancient France. He tears from the grave the misfortunes, the prejudices, the ignorance, every loathsome detail of the life of a wretched people; all the deformities of kings and princes, and triumphantly sets them before the eyes of the public, as by way of apology for the past having been repudiated and covered with ignominy. It would seem that of the various departments of political radicalism, which the French authors have seized upon, Bibliophile had appropriated that of calumniating to the people the ancient institutions of his country, affecting to paint them with all the accuracy and minuteness of an antiquarian; whilst at the same time no pictures can be more at variance with historical truth than are his.

Amongst the French novelists there is one class who especially affect nautical subjects. The boundless ocean and not the evertrodden land is with them the theatre of new and unheard-of horrors and of tragic incidents. Eugene Sue holds the trident of Littérature Extravagante, and one example will suffice to show the

measure of his talent. In his novel, entitled "La Salamandre," he has conceived a strange character in the person of M. de Schaffie. This hero is a kind of Satan whose mission seems to be that of tormenting all that come within his reach, and for this purpose is happily gifted with an iron will for whatever is evil. Neither pain nor misfortunes can make any impression upon him; neither innocence nor virtue have power to influence him. When La Salamandre has been wrecked, and the unhappy victims of hunger devour each other, M. de Schaffie, acting upon a systematic desire of wreaking his vengeance on the human race, looks coolly on amid the terrors of a stormy sea, whilst a son feeds on the limbs of his father, a sailor murders his comrade in order to eat his flesh, until at length they sink in the boiling abyss; although at the very time he is possessed of the means whereby to satisfy their cravings for food. Thus has M. E. Sue outdone both the shipwreck of Byron and Dante's celebrated death of Ugolino. The Littérature Extravagante can also boast of its Quintilian in the person of M. Jules Janin, the judge, from whose sentence there is no appeal, of many thousand dramas, folies and novels. As a consistent system of any kind is not à l'ordre du jour in French literature, Jules Janin, himself the author of some curious tales, as, for instance," A Donkey killed and a Woman guillotined," "Sold Retail," &c., occasionally appears as the censurer of the extravagant school, though he powerfully contributes to support it by his criticisms of its products. Thus not long since, he passed an enthusiastic eulogium on a tale by a young author, which describes the ennui and regrets of a man imprisoned by Napoleon, and who discovers through the grating of his dungeon a flower growing in the midst of a paved court-yard. Having no object wherewith to occupy his heart, he is smitten with a violent passion for the flower; curses the winter which withers it; calls on the spring to revive it; in short, faute de mieux, he becomes its empassioned and devoted lover. In giving an account of this phenomenon of sentimentality, M. Jules Janin congratulates himself that the madness of literary terrorism is passing away, and that young authors are returning to true sentiment and to the pourtraying of what is real. This avowal deserves attention, for it proves better than any thing else, how far the judgment of the critic must have been distorted by the horrors of the Littérature Extravagante for him to consider such sickening sentimentality as a true and moral sentiment.

Simultaneously with this commendation of genuine sentiment M. Jules Janin gave to the world his celebrated novel "Un Cœur pour deux Amours." We shall cite some of its contents because it is desirable that our readers should know to what a pitch of ex

cellence in composition the first critic of France has been able to elevate himself; he who asserts that he has thoroughly learned all the mysteries of his art. The story is as follows: During the time that the Siamese twins were exhibited in Paris, the author went frequently to see that extraordinary phenomenou, the caprice or fortuitous mistake of nature. Amongst the numerous visitors was a young man of sad and pensive demeanour, and of handsome face and figure, whom the terrible condition of the two brothers thus grown together seemed to fill with painful sensations; and who whilst predicting to them an early death, sought to console them with the sweet hope of being united to two sisters in the same predicament who had gone before to heaven. The melancholy of the young man, and the bitter recollections by which he seemed to be oppressed, made a strong impression on our author; he contrived to become acquainted with him, and the narration of the latter constitutes the whole of Jules Janin's strange tale.

Don Martinez Juan Rodriguez Scribbler, a Spanish grandee of the first class (this was the name of the young man), inquired of our author the cause of his impertinent curiosity and desire to hear a tale full of strong and horrible facts. "Ah if you knew," replies the author, "what horrible events we constantly hear of, what strange improbabilities are told to us for truth, what descriptions are sent to us of women branded on the forehead, or immured alive by their jealous husbands, in short what monstrous imaginings we now see and read; you would perhaps not refuse to gratify me with an authentic tale, however extraordinary or dreadful." Then after mentioning some of the leading characters and incidents in the novels of Balzac, M. Jules Janin pronounces an anathema against them, as improbable and untrue: let us now see how he has avoided in his tale the faults which he proscribes. The Spaniard proceeds to relate, that in a certain provincial town in France, he happened to be present at the sale of some fine and rare wild beasts, such as hyenas, lions, tigers, &c. When the sale of the beasts was concluded, the seller brought forward

two young girls between twelve and fifteen years of age, poor and sickly, and in rags that scarcely covered them. These two unhappy beings were bargained for as if they had been tigers or hyenas, when the irritated Spaniard run up the price and bought them. He then first became aware that these two creatures were united and made up only one person. Having restored them to health, he had them baptized, giving them the names of Anna and Louisa, the same which had been borne by his mother. He acted as a father to them, and the poor children repaid him with affection and true piety. Owing to some mysterious cause these two beings always felt alike; both suffered grief or partook of

joy together. In course of time they accidentally came in contact with their former owner, and this circumstance recalling to their minds their past misery, powerfully affected them. In order to remove them from the vicinity of a man whose presence awakened in them such painful recollections, and to change the scene altogether, the Spaniard carried them to Italy.

There Anna and Louisa devoted themselves with renewed eagerness to study, and their progress was astonishing. Although so closely united in body, their faces were dissimilar; the expression of their countenances were at variance; the outline of their features wholly different. Anna was fair, Louisa had raven hair. Their moral dispositions were no less diverse: Anna liked calmness and sentiment, and took delight in verses of a sweet and tender character; whilst Louisa admired the stormy days of revolution, the striking features of the new school of literature, and was charmed by enterprises marked by enthusiasm and audacity. When they read Don Quixote, Anna laughed whilst Louisa pitied the knight of the rueful countenance. In their religious opinions, Anna believed with the resignation of a Christian, Louisa was sceptical. Their studies went on rapidly in a short time they rendered themselves thoroughly acquainted with history, literature, the fine arts, and philosophy in all its branches. In short, whatever they applied themselves to, their minds seemed at once to absorb: they knew it from beginning to end; they exhausted it to its very source. What philosophical discourses does not our author put into the mouth of these unhappy creatures! What pseudo-profound inquiries à la Jules Janin, full of sarcastic smiles of light scorn, of ingenious comparisons, are they not made to exhibit!

During this narration, the author indulges himself in his known garrulity; he describes the Divina Comedia of Dante, discourses of Italy, is enchanted with the odes of Horace, and puts them in the lips of the helpless Anna and Louisa.

The two poor sisters having read and learned everything, begin to feel an intolerable satiety and ennui. The Spaniard wished to check them in their career of acquirement, which whilst it seemed to have no distinct object, was destroying their peculiar organization. But Louisa, la femme forte, wondering how that which they knew, could be called learning, replied to him; "These miserable rags of opinion, which we gather as children pick up the pieces of a broken toy, do you call these learning?"

One day seeing Louisa amusing herself with a flower and Anna wrapt in the contemplation of the heavens, he asked the former what she was doing with that flower? "I contemplate the constitution of the heavens," said Louisa; "And I," replied