chances and changes of life, by the intimacies incidental upon foreign travel in each other's company, by the promotion to the Archbishopric of Westminster, when the future Archbishop writes: "My dearest Aubrey, . you were one of the first I thought of when this thing came on me, and I wish I could see you.”—and ten years later from Rome in the year of the Council, "I wish you were here with me," and so on through the last years of his life; though in the sphere of action, if not of thought, no two people could have been farther apart than the poet in his seclusion and the busy ecclesiastic in the thronging life of the great city. The chapters devoted to these two great men are full of interest, and emphasize our complaint that we do not find some others whose names we looked for in these pages. We regret it all the more since the portraits he has given us, though often mere sketches, are touched with such a true and delicate hand as to give us a more real impression of the person than many a more finished and elaborate drawing. Let us take a few at random. O'Connell, whom he first met on board the steamer at Kingstown, where he observed a large strong man, whose face I at once “recognized, though I had never seen it before. There it was, the eye potent, but crafty too, the large mouth, full at once of humor and good humor, a broad strong forehead, well adapted for thinking purposes, but better still apparently for butting against opponents, or pushing his way through them. His bearing had a singular confidence about it; and he wore, slightly on one side, an arrogant little sailor's cap with a good deal of gold lace about it. It was O'Connell: I was certain of this when he spoke." Then we have specimens of O'Connell's humor, his familiar banter with the steward, his subsequent kindness to two little girls in the railway carriage when he told them stories and repeated poems by Moore and Byron until there were tears not only in their eyes but in his own; and here we have a picture of the great agitator's life taken somewhat from a new point of view. Take again his recollections of that poor vagrant genius, Hartley Coleridge "a white-haired apparition-wearing in all other re

spects the semblance of youth—with the most delicately grained and tinted skin and vividly bright eyes. He could hardly be said to have walked, for he seemed with difficulty to keep his feet on the ground, as he wavered about near us with arms extended like wings. There seemed to be no gravitating principle in him. One might have thought he needed stones in his pockets to prevent his being blown away. Touchingly reverent when referring to religious subjects," and in reading, when he came to the name of God, it seemed as if he could hardly pronounce it." Such a singular combination of high ideals and disastrous frailties, with a vein of humor intersecting moods of profoundest melancholy, was certain to be touched by Mr. de Vere with a tender and sympathetic hand, and one cannot but be glad to hear that that wrecked and wasted life never forfeited the affection of those who knew him best, and was now and again lightened by the exuberant gayety of a child. Mr. de Vere tells us how, on one occasion, being asked to meet an Irish enthusiast who went about the country enlightening people's minds on the subject of popish errors, Hartley after dinner asked to be presented to a man so remarkable, and taking his arm whilst a few guests gathered around addressed him with solemnity: Sir, there are two great evils in Ireland." "There are indeed, sir," replied the Irish guest, "but please to name them." "The first," resumed Hartley, "is popery!" "It is," said the other; but how wonderful that you should have discovered that! Now tell me what is the second great evil!" "Protestantism!" was Hartley's reply in a voice of thunder as he ran away screaming with laughter.

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All the eminent inhabitants of the Lake district were well known to Aubrey de Vere. He was a familiar guest at Rydal Mount, and he gives many interesting accounts of his long walks and talks with Wordsworth, for whom his reverence was that of a son and a disciple. One can well believe that it was in the open air, amongst the scenes to which he owed so much of his poetic inspiration, that the old poet most naturally revealed himself. "In the presence of Na

ture he seemed to be always either conversing with her as a friend, and watching her changeful moods, or sometimes wrapped like a prophet in mystic attention to her oracles."

With the Lake country, and especially with Derwentwater, are associated Mr. de Vere's recollections of Sara Coleridge, of whom he quotes the saying that "her father had looked into her eyes and left in them the light of his own." "Her great characteristic," he adds, "was the radiant spirituality of her intellectual and imaginative being. She moved with the lightest step when she ranged over the highest ground. Her feet were beautiful on the mountains of ideal thought."

In 1843-44 again we have the record of his travels with his friend and brother poet, Henry Taylor, of whom, after an intimacy extending much over forty years, he writes: "His most marked characteristic was magnanimity. He lived in a large world built up by justice and truth, and in him there was no small world; unlike another great man of whom it was said, 'inside that great man there lives a little man."" And then, after a description of which every word breathes of the affectionate friendship and no less sincere appreciation of a lifetime: "I could have wished to have written more at large of a character so rich in noble qualities, but this is needless, as the true greatness of a character depends less upon the number of its great qualities than on the genuine greatness of those few qualities which suffice for true greatness."

We have many slighter sketches of less well-known people. Augustus Stafford O'Brien, so eloquent in Parliament and so much sought for in society, with a singular beauty of face and person, and of extraordinary brilliancy, versatility, and charm; who in the Crimea ministered so assiduously to the cholera-stricken crews upon the French ships, that in return they gratefully named him "le cher Monsieur Damne me," their name for an Englishman. Then we have Sir Edward O'Brien, the direct descendant of Brian, the great king of all Ireland; authoritative, good-natured, acute, with a simple respect for religion joined to a dislike

for controversy, and a fine determination to do things in his own way, but according to the traditions of his fathers, curiously illustrated by the following anecdote connected with Sir Aubrey de Vere: "One day as we sat after dinner over the wine and walnuts he remarked: 'I have just been thinking that this is the year I have to die in.' 'Nothing of the kind, Sir Edward. I never saw you better; you will probably live another dozen years.' Sir Edward was highly provoked. Do not say that, Sir Aubrey; the head of our family always dies at the age I have now reached. It is our way, and I don't want to change.' Curiously enough he had his way (even with death), and died that year as he predicted.

But space does not allow of more extracts, and we must reluctantly close the volume. In compiling it Mr. de Vere has unlocked for us one of those drawers into which the young look with eager curiosity, and their elders with a tender interest not untouched by melancholy. Here are the letters of a bygone age, with their yellow paper carefully docketed and tied up with faded ribbon; here are the unconsidered trifles which once perhaps made or marred a life, signs and symbols of dead hopes and fears; here are the ghosts of old loves and of friendships and aspirations faithfully treasured to live once again in these records of the past. Here are many fragrant memories laid up as it were in lavender, that they may be to us in a lesser degree, as to Mr. de Vere, for "thoughts and for remembrance." ELEANOR A. TOWLE.

THE NOVELS OF MARIVAUX.

THE originality, wit, and probity of Marivaux, his place in the French Academy, and a literary activity stretching from almost the beginning of the eighteenth century till his death, in 1763, at the age of seventy-five, made him a marked figure in his day, and has attracted the attention of such talented essayists and biographers that it is quite superfluous to glean in a field so thoroughly harvested, first by his contemporary Alembert, then by Faguet, Brunetière, Larroumet, Gossot, and possibly best of all in the recent volume by Gaston Deschamps, in the "Great French Writers." But the fame of his dramas has tended to divert attention from his novels, and it is still worth while to show that, however important he may have been in the development of French comedy, he was simply epoch-making in the evolution of fiction. Brunetière has somewhere observed that the novel did not assert an equal place among the genres of literature until the middle of the eighteenth century, and that it conquered it at all was, as I hope to show, because of the final impetus given by the genius of Marivaux to the movement so favorably inaugurated by the author of "Gil Blas."

Born in 1688 and living till 1763, Marivaux was a generation later than Le Sage. Thus he had the good and the ill chance to live in an age devoted to that ingenious display of wit that the French call esprit, and he so abounded in the spirit of his time as to give to the language a word by which he has come to be judged more than by his works themselves. Comparatively few read Marivaux, but every French scholar knows that marivaudage is French for "mannerism, affected style, sentimentalism, excessive refinement," or, as the dictionary continues," writing in the style of Marivaux," which is again described by the witty and jealous Voltaire as "weighing fly's eggs in balances of spider web."

How far this may apply to the plays of