his Memoir abounds, are pure, delightful, and elevating. With such hearts and homes in France, surely her redemption draweth nigh.

The letters, whose publication a death so recent would admit, with some extracts from Mr. Senior's journal relating Tocqueville's "Table Talk,” make up the whole of the second, and a part of the first volume, and are extremely interesting and valuable. The "Tour in Sicily," " A Fortnight in the Wilderness," "Visit to Lake Oneida," "France before the Revolution," and "The Consulate,' are appended to the Memoir. There is throughout the book, alike in the writings of the subject and of the author of the Memoir, an indescribable nobleness, an atmosphere of refined and lofty purity, of delicate generosity, of something beyond and above the materialism of commonplace, selfish life, such as men might have breathed in the Golden Age.

XXVII.

THE NEW SCHOOL OF BIOGRAPHY.

OOR Rachel, passing slowly away from the world that had so applauded her hollow but brilliant career, tasted the bitterness of death in reflecting that she should so soon be given over to the worms and the biographers. Fortunate Rachel, resting in serene confidence that the two would be fellowlaborers! It is the unhappy fate of her survivors to have reached a day in which biographers have grown impatient of the decorous delay which their lowly coadjutors demand. They can no longer wait for the lingering soul to yield up its titledeeds before they enter in and take possession; but, fired with an evil energy, they outstrip the worms and torment us before the time.

Curiosity is undoubtedly one of the heavenappointed passions of the human animal. Dear to the heart of man has ever been his neighbor's business. Precious in the eyes of woman is the linen-closet of that neighbor's wife. During its

tender, teething infancy, the world's sobs could always be soothed into smiles by an open bureau, with large liberty to upheave its contents. As the infant world ascended from cambric and dimity to broadcloth and crinoline, its propensity for investigation grew stronger. It loved not bureaus less, but a great many other things more. What sad consequences might have ensued, had this passion been left to forage for itself, no one can tell. But, by the wonderful principle of adaptation which obtains throughout the universe, the love of receiving information is met and mastered by the love of imparting information. As much pleasure as it gives Angelina to learn how many towels and table-cloths go into Seraphina's wedding-outfit, so much, yea, more, swells in Cherubella's bosom at being able to present to her friend this apple from the tree of knowledge. The worthy Muggins finds no small consolation for the loss of his overcoat and umbrella from the front entry in the exhilaration he experiences while relating to each member of his ever-revolving circle of friends the details of his loss, the suspicion, the search, the certainty, the conjectures, suggestions, and emotions of himself and his family.

Hence these tears which we are about to shed. For, betwixt the love of hearing on the one side, and the love of telling on the other, small space remains on which one may adventure to set the sole of his foot and feel safe from the spoiler.

There is of course a legitimate gratification for every legitimate desire, the desire to know our neighbor's affairs among others. But there is a limit to this gratification, and it is hinted at by legal enactments. The law justly enough bounds a man's power over his possessions. For twentyone years after his generation has passed away, his dead hand may rule the wealth which its living skill amassed. Then it dies another death, sinks into a deeper grave, and has henceforth no more power than any sister-clod. But, except as a penalty for crime, the law awards to a man the right to his own possessions through life; and the personal facts and circumstances of his life have usually been considered among his closest, most inalienable possessions.

Alas that the times are changed, and we be all dead men so far as concerns immunity from publication! There is no manner of advantage in being alive. The sole safety is to lie flat on the earth along with one's generation. The moment an audacious head is lifted one inch above the general level, pop! goes the unerring rifle of some biographical sharp-shooter, and it is all over with the unhappy owner. A respectable and wellmeaning man, suffering under the accumulated pains of Presidentship, has the additional and entirely undeserved ignominy of being hawked about the country as the "Pioneer Boy." A statesman whose reputation for integrity has been worth mil

lions to the land, and whose patriotism should have won him a better fate, is stigmatized in duodecimo. as the "Ferry Boy." An innocent and popular Governor is fastened in the pillory under the thin disguise of the "Bobbin Boy." Every victorious advance of our grand army is followed by a long procession of biographical statistics. A brave man leading his troops to victory may escape the bullets and bayonets of the foe, but he is sure to be transfixed to the sides of a newspaper with the pen of some cannibal entomologist. We are thrilled to-day with the telegram announcing the brilliant. and successful charge made by General Smith's command; and according to that inevitable law of succession by which the sun his daily round of duty runs, we shall be thrilled to-morrow with the startling announcement that "General Smith was born in etc., etc., etc.

Unquestionably, there is somewhere in the land a regularly organized biographical bureau, by which every man, President or private, has his lot apportioned him, one mulcted in a folio, the other in a paragraph. If we examine somewhat closely the features of this peculiar institution, we shall learn that a distinguishing characteristic of the new school of biography is the astonishing familiarity shown by the narrator with the circumstances, the conversations, and the very thoughts of remarkable men in their early life. The incidents of childhood are usually forgotten before the