Harry Fielding added the unsophisticated Parson Adams, Amelia, Squire Western, and Joseph Andrews to the picture-gallery of literature, and poured out in his novels wit enough, and power enough to stock a score of modern ones of the common type.

Clarissa Harlowe and Sir Charles Grandison stalked statelily through Richardson's novels, and roused an interest which they can never again awaken.

Laurence Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," and "Tristram Shandy," are whimsical, indescribable books, with their irregular chapters, some only three or four lines long, and some beginning or ending in the middle of a sentence. A good deal of his sentiment is lackadaisical, especially when one knows that he was a bad, hard-hearted man.

Sly little Fanny Burney hid in a corner and wrote a novel which blocked up with ducal coaches the streets that led to the circulating library, made such men as Burke and Reynolds sit up all night to read the adventures of "Evelina," and was the forerunner of the more natural and purer novels of our own time.

Horace Walpole, the aristocratic tenant of Strawberry Hill, wrote "The Castle of Otranto," an Italian romance, more pretentious than his sharp, malicious, witty, gossiping, blasé Letters, but not half so readable. Mrs. Radcliffe terrified the nervous with impossible horrors, Hannah

More sent out "Colebs in Search of a Wife," and the Eighteenth Century was gathered to its fathers, and the Nineteenth reigned in its stead.

Now, if you knew all this before, you will read it with great delight; if you did not know it, it may perhaps serve your turn in lack of a better guide.

XXVI.

A COUNTERCHARM.

AT

I

T has been said that the very best time to offer your love to a woman is directly after her own love has been trifled with by a third person. When a graceless fellow, who had possessed himself of the gem which he had not the soul to appreciate, who had esteemed carelessly, and worn lightly, what you would give your life to win, has at length tossed it away, or suffered it to fall from him, then, say the philosophers, is your time. The tendrils of a heart, rudely rent from the strength which they had clasped, will close with blind, instinctive clinging around the first support that offers.

In a matter like this, there is a great deal to be said on both sides; but I rather think it is so. Here is our Columbia, this fair young land, whose name is breathed first in our morning and evening prayer; who is entwined now with all that is high and holy in life; whose very dust is dear to us; whom in prosperity we berated soundly, but over

whom now, in an agony so fearful that in the morning we say, Would God it were even! and at even, Would God it were morning! we bend with a sacred furor of tenderness; - this lovely and beloved daughter of the nations has been scorned and spurned by England. And turning away in the passion of our disappointment, we behold over against her France, la belle France, sunny land of apple-orchards and olive-groves and vineclad hills; land of Trouveur and Troubadour; of sweet Provence song and wild minstrel music; of rivers whose names are a tinkling waterfall ; of valleys all a-quiver with golden-throated birds; -unhappy France, that rose up maddened from her humiliation, unfurling her silken banners but to trail them in the dust, flashing aloft her golden lilies too quickly fouled with crimson stains, wild for revenge and drunk with blood, whelming in a common ruin the monuments of her degradation, the castles of her despair, the altars of her faith, and the pillar of her hopes;—suffering, sad-eyed France, to whom Liberty came, a Nemesis, with flaming eyes and fierce, fixed lips, driving her chariot of fire over the writhing limbs and throbbing hearts of her own worshippers; - faithful France, wooing an idea through seventy years of fruitless endeavor, loving not wisely but too well, now putting forth all her strength in one frantic effort, then sinking into the torpor of utter weariness and despair;-wayward and graceful France;

blind and beautiful France, that now in a strong, unrelaxing grasp lies panting and prostrate, yet with an awful vitality which no chains can confine, no threats intimidate, no blood subdue, biding her time.

Now I do not know whether it would be quite safe to throw ourselves unhesitatingly into the arms of France; but surely, if she has many more such men as Tocqueville and Gasparin, it would be no leap in the dark. Is there another nation on the earth that has produced a single mind with the sagacity to discern, and the ability to expound, the spirit of our institutions as these two men have done? Long may Gasparin's memoir remain unwritten. Tocqueville has already "gone over to the majority," and a loving hand has penned a brief and beautiful record of his pure, noble life. I do not design to give even a synopsis of his book, "Democracy in America," or his Memoir, but only to call attention to a few striking points in them, because both seem eminently fit for the times on which we have fallen.

We

It is little to know that Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris, July 29, 1805, or that his father was Prefect of Metz, and Peer of France. are more interested to read that he set out early in search of truth. Disheartened in his boyhood by the impotence of human reason, he writes sadly "If I were desired to classify human miseries, I should do it in this order: -1. Sick