Ast strea ('L'Astrée'), a famous French novel, is in five volumes. The first volume appeared in 1609, the second was works of fiction, it lives only in the limbo of the forgotten. published in 1816, the third in 1619, and René, by François Auguste Château in 1627 his posthumous notes and manuscripts were compiled into the fourth and fifth volumes, and published by his secretary Baro. Probably no other novel was ever so successful, all cultivated Europe being enthusiastic over it for many years. The period is the fourth century. Céladon, a shepherd, lover of the beautiful shepherdess Astrea, lives in the enchanted land of Foreste. While their marriage awaits parental sanction, a jealous shepherd persuades Astrea that Céladon loves Aminthe. She therefore angrily repulses him. Céladon throws himself into the river Lignon, and Astrea faints on the bank. Her parents sorrow so bitterly over her grief that both soon die. Astrea may now weep unreservedly without being suspected of mourning for Céladon. But Céladon lives. He has been succored by the Princess Galatea and her attendant nymphs, taken to court, and tenderly cared for. Thence he escapes to a gloomy cavern, where he spends his time bewailing Astrea. Meeting a friendly shepherd, he sends a letter to "the most beautiful shepherdess in the world." Astrea at once sets out to find him. Thus the story rambles on, a long, inconsequent sequence of descriptions, adventures, and moral reflections. War breaks out in Foreste. Céladon, who, disguised as a druidess, has become Astrea's friend is with her taken prisoner, but both escape. At last he reveals himself, but is repulsed. Once more he resolves to die; all the characters accompanying him to the Fountain of Truth, whose guardian lions devour hypocrites and defend, the virtuous. They spare him; and Astrea, looking into the truthrevealing water, is at last convinced of his fidelity. Everybody is a model of virtue, and the story ends with a general marriage fête. Whether L'Astrée requires a key is not important. Euric may have been Henri IV., Céladon and Astrea other names for D'Urfé and his wife Diane; but probably the story is fanciful. Its charm lies in its pastoral setting, and its loftily romantic conception of love. It is a day-dream, which solaced the soldier-author himself. The story is written in straightforward, fluent French, and is full of sentiment and ingenuity; but like so many other immortal briand, published separately in 1807. 'René' and 'Atala are the fruits of Chateaubriand's American travels, and they abound in the exquisite description of natural scenery for which he is noted. 'René,' an episode of the prose epic 'Les Natchez,' is in effect a monologue of the young European of that name, who has fled to the New World and its soli tudes; and who relates to his adopted father Chactas, and the French missionary Father Souël, his previous life and the causes of his self-exile. Seated under a great tree in the haunts of the Natchez Indians, of whose tribe Chactas is a chief, the young man tells his listeners the story of his boyhood, and his restless wanderings from land to land in search of mental peace. He has passed through ancient countries and modern, has studied humanity in its earliest monuments and in the life of his own day, and finding no satisfaction in any phase of life, has remained long in forest solitudes,—only to meet there thoughts of death. He tells further how he was rescued from this temptation by the love of his sister Amélie, who came to him and led his mind back to life, then disappeared from his sight forever in the living death of a convent, where she hid a heart oppressed by a feeling for René too strong for her peace. The tragedy of his sister's confession has driven René to these wildernesses. The episodes of René and Atala are beautiful in melody and description, but inevitably unreal in their suggestions of Indian life and character. As a kind of compromise between the forms of prose and poetry, the whole work is perhaps less thoroughly satisfactory than would be an equally fine attempt in either department of literature. rank, believes him a poor soldier of fortune. Though the action resulting from this mistake occupies the space of two days only, it is very complicated; yet the unity of the play is vividly clear, and the strongly contrasted characters stand out with great distinctness, while the dialogue is epigrammatic and full of power. Clélie, a romance in ten volumes by Mademoiselle de Scudéri. The name of her brother figured on the title-pages of the first volumes; but the secret of the authorship having been discovered, her name replaced it. It would be difficult to summarize the incidents of this once famous production. The subject is the siege of Rome after the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud. The heroine is the young Roman girl who was a hostage of Porsena, and swam across the Tiber under a shower of arrows from the Etruscan army. Lucretia, Horatius, Mucius Scævola, Brutus, and all the heroes of the young republic, are actors in the drama; and all are desperately in love, and spend most of their time in asking questions and solving riddles that have a serious connection with love, and especially with a very mysterious species of gallantry, according to the taste of the time in which it was written. They draw maps of love on the noted country of Tendre. We see the river of Inclination, on its right bank the villages of Jolis-Vers and Epitres Galantes, and on its left those of Complaisance, PetitsSoins, and Assiduities. Further on are the hamlets of Abandon and Perfidie. By following the natural twists and turns of the river, the lover will have a pretty fair chance of arriving at the city of Tendre sur-Estime; and should he be successful, it will then be his own fault if he do not reach the city of Tendre-sur-Inclination. The French critics of the present century do not accept Boileau's sweeping condemnation of Clélie; they consider that the work which excited the admiration of Madame de Sévigné and Madame de La Fayette has merits that fully justify their admiration. The manners and language assigned the Roman characters in the romance are utterly ridiculous and grotesque; but if we consider the Romans as masks behind which the great lords and ladies of the time simper and babble, its pictures of life are as true to Odd Number, The, an English trans lation by Jonathan Sturgis, of thirteen stories by Guy de Maupassant, appeared in 1889. Each tale is an admirable example of the literary art which made Maupassant the acknowledged master of the short story. All show an acute realization of the irony of life, and are written in a pessimistic strain. The unerring choice of words, the exquisite precision of the descriptive touches, carry home the sensation which Maupassant wished to convey. Many kinds of life are revealed. In The Piece of String,' we have the petty shrewdness, thrift, and obstinacy, of the Norman peasant. Mâitre Hanchecorne, on his way to the market-place, is seen to pick up something from the ground and thrust it into his pocket. Thereupon he is accused of stealing a missing purse. His find was only a bit of string; but neither his guilt nor innocence can be proved, and he rests under the imputation all his days. In time he himself is almost persuaded of his guilt. 'La Mère Sauvage' is a study of the primitive passions of an old peasant woman, who, learning that her son has been killed by the Prussians in battle, avenges him by burning to death the four kindly young Prussians who have been quartered upon her. "The Necklace' is a picture of bourgeois life. Monsieur Loisel, a petty official, and his pretty young wife, are honored with an invitation to an official reception. On their return, Madame Loisel loses the diamond necklace which she has borrowed from her rich friend, Madame Forestier. Without mentioning the loss, they make it good, thus incurring a debt which burdens the rest of their lives. It takes ten years to pay it; and they become inured to work and poverty, and prematurely old. Meeting Madame Forestier one day, Madame Loisel tells her the whole 312 this and other dramatic pieces by Maeterlinck has been made by Richard Hovey. En 'n Route, a novel, by J. K. Huysman, is translated by Kegan Paul. The author, whose literary career began in 1875, has devoted himself largely to what may be termed a kind of brutal mysticism. His works Marthe,› ‹Les Sœurs Vatard,' and 'En Ménage,' deal largely with themes that are sordid and scarred with hatred and ugliness, as if his mission were mainly to portray "la bêtise de l'humanite.» A morbid delight in what is corrupt leads to a corrupt mysticism. What is known as Satanism finds its extreme expression in his novel 'La-Bas.' It is a "surfeit of supernaturalism producing a mental nausea.» (En Route' depicts the "religious» conversion of a young debauché of Paris, Dartal by name,- -a character who first appears in La-Bas. He is blasé, empty of motives of capacity for pleasure or endeavor. He takes to vis is Robert de Bethune, the "Lion of Flanders"; whose father, Guy de Dampierre, had incurred the enmity of his French suzerain by siding with the English king. The story opens with a stirring picture of the turbulence and fury of the Flemings on learning of the ap-iting the churches; feels a certain spell proach of the French army. Conscience shows in this novel that he was a close student of Sir Walter Scott. He has a thorough knowledge of the manners as well as of the history of the period in which its scenes are laid, and he has been entirely successful in giving a faithful and lifelike conception of Flanders in the thirteenth century. Blind, The (Les Aveugles'), by Mau rice Maeterlinck, the young Belgian poet-dramatist, is a play of symbolism, which, like the earlier The Intruder,' is one of the writer's best-known and most striking works. It is an eerie kind of allegory. On an island, in a mystic norland wood, under the night stars, sit a company of blind folk, men and women, under the guidance of an old priest returned from the dead. They grope about in a maze and query as to their location and destiny,—a strange, striking effect being produced by the grewsome setting of the scene and the implication of the words, through which the reader gathers that this is a symbolic picture of life, in which mankind wanders without faith or sight in the forest of ignorance and unfaith, depending upon a priestcraft that is defunct, and knowing naught of the hereafter. The poetry and humanity of this picture-play are very strong. A good English translation of produced by the ritual and music; and at length, drawn into the monastic retreat of La Trappe, he becomes a convert to religion, and dwells with delight and much fine analysis on his experience of a kind of ecstasy of restraints, a "frenzy of chastity." The story is autobiographic: "the history of a soul.» It abounds in passages of great brilliancy and beauty; and in some of the meditations on the inner meaning of the ritual, and the effect of the music of the church, his interpretations will meet with a very sympathetic response from many readers. His description of the Breviary is a splendid piece of writing. The book may be called a faithful aecount of the "ritualistic disease," as it affects the French mind. "It was not so much himself advancing into the unknown, as the unknown surrounding, penetrating, possessing him little by little." He closes suddenly with his entering into the "night obscure» of the mystics. "It is inexpressible. Nothing can reveal the anguish necessary to pass through to enter this mystic knowledge.» The soul of the writer seems to think aloud in the pages of his book; he frankly portrays his condition: "too much writer to become a monk; too much monk to remain a writer.» The reader remains in doubt, after all, as to whither the hero of the book is en route. Gh hosts, a powerful play by Henrik Ibsen (1881), gives dramatic embodiment to the modern realization of heredity. Ibsen, treating this subject on its tragic side, considers the case of the darker passions as they are handed down from father to son. The fatalistic atmosphere of 'Ghosts' resembles that of a Greek drama. It is a Greek tragedy translated into the littleness and barrenness of modern life. Oswald Alving, the son of a dissipated, worthless father, has been brought up by his mother in ignorance of his dead parent's shame. Yet he has within him the seeds of a transmitted disease, the evil sown by a previous generation. He has gone into the world to make a name for himself, but he is forced to return to his mother's home. He drinks to excess, and he exhibits tendencies to other more dangerous vices. His wretched mother sees in him the ghost of his father; she sees the old hateful life clothed in the form of the boy she has reared so carefully. He himself feels the poison working in his veins. The play closes upon the first sign of his incipient madness. In this drama, the mother, Mrs. Alving, is the type of the new woman in revolt against the hideous lies of society, because she has suffered through them. She is learning to think for herself; to weigh social morality in the balances. Her adviser, Pastor Manders, has been called "the consummate flower of conventional morality." He is a type of the world's cautiousness and policy in matters ethical; of that world's disposition to cover up or refuse to see the sins of society. He is of those who make of marriage a talisman to juggle away vice. 'Ghosts' is perhaps the most remarkable of Ibsen's dramas in its searching judgment, its recognition of terrible fact, its logical following of the merciless logic of nature. head of the so-called school of naturalism, has carried his theories farther than any of his disciples. In 1869 he began his task,- a study in hereditary influence, with a complete genealogical tree, and a plan for twenty novels,- from which very little variation is seen when the series is completed twenty-two years after. Beginning with the Coup d'État in 1852, he ends his series with the downfall of Napoleon III., adding 'Doctor Pascal, which is a résumé of the series. With the ancestors whom the author chooses for his characters we should perhaps expect that animal passion would be the motive of most of these novels; but one must charge M. Zola with poor judgment or a departure from the scientific spirit, when he places a character, which by his own deductions seems to show no trace of the family lesion,» «< in La Terre,' the coarsest one of the series—for Macquart is the most decent of the entire community. Whatever may have been the author's intention, the general public does not read his books as a study in heredity. Each one is complete in itself; and while in 1896 the first novel of the series had reached a sale of only 31,000 copies, there had been sold 113,000 copies of La Terre,' 176,000 of 'Nana,' and 187,000 of 'La Débâcle. The first to appear was 'La Fortune des Rougons (The Rougon Family: 1871). Adelaide Fouqué, whose father was insane, was married in 1786 to Rougon, a dull, easy-going gardener. After her husband's death she had two illegitimate children, Antoine and Ursule, by Macquart, a drunkard and a smuggler. The offspring of the marriage was Pierre Rougon. By chicanery, Rougon obtains possession of the property, sells it, and through marriage with a daughter of a merchant, enters into an old business firm. Ursule is married to an honest workman named Mouret; and Antoine, who inherits his father's appetite for drink, marries a market-woman, also intemperate. 'La Curée (Rush for the Spoil: 1872) is a study of the financial world of Paris at the time Haussmann laid out the boulevards. Aristide, son of Pierre, who has changed his name to Saccard, becomes immensely wealthy by political intrigue, acting as straw-man for the government in the purchase of the property needed to lay out the new boule 314 vards. He is helped by his elder brother Eugène, who has entered political life. 'La Conquête de Plassans' (The Conquest of Plassans: 1874). The struggle for the control of a village in which the Abbé Faujas obtains complete ascendency over Marthe Rougon, who is married to François Mouret. The latter, accused of insanity, is placed in an asylum, and finally becomes insane. Escaping, he sets fire to his house, destroying himself and the abbé therein. 'Le Ventre de Paris' (The Markets of Paris; or, Fat and Thin: 1875). Lisa Macquart is the member of the family who, as a market-woman, furnishes opportunity for a detailed study of the markets. Zola looks upon this work as a sort of modern Iliad, the song of the eternal battle between the lean of this world and the fat. Of this book a prominent critic said that he had been able to read it only by holding his nose. 'La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret (The Abbé's Temptation: 1875). A study of the clergy, religious life, and mysticism, in which Serge Mouret is the leading character. It is almost needless to say that the abbé does not resist temptation; but by repentance he is able later to perform, with little perturbation, the burial service over the woman he had loved. (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon' (His Excellency Eugène Rougon: 1876). A story of political life, in which are realistic descriptions of the Imperial Court, of the functions of Prime Minister (Rougon) and his cabinet, and a careful pen picture of Napoleon III., his manners and customs. 'L'Assommoir (Drink: 1877). A story of life among the workmen of Paris, and of the killing effect which the cheap drinking-shop has on them. Gervaise, the daughter of Antoine, is the character around whom the scenes revolve. It was this work which brought Zola his reputation and fortune. 'Une Page d'Amour' (A Love Episode: 1878). A physical and psychological study of the various phases of a woman's passion. The struggle is between her love for her child and her passion for a doctor who has saved the child's life. The night on which she cedes herself to the doctor, the child, looking from an open window for her return, contracts a sickness from which it dies. Hélène, the daughter of Ursule, is the family representative. There are fine descriptions of Paris seen from a height, varying with the spiritual phases of the characters. 'Nana' (1880). A study of the life of a courtesan and actress. Nana is the daughter of Gervaise and the drunkard Coupeau. She grows up in the streets and disreputable haunts until she comes under the notice of a theatre manager. Her great physical beauty attracts men of all classes, and none resist her. The grandest names are soiled; and those who do not leave with her their fortunes, leave their honor or their life. The greatest fortunes are dissipated by her, and yet at her door is heard the continual ring of the creditor. She contracts the black smallpox, and dies deserted and wretched. The description of her appearance after death is a shocking contrast to the pictures of voluptuousness in the other scenes. 'Pot-Bouille (Piping Hot: 1882). A study of the life of the bourgeoisie. Octave, the son of François Mouret, comes to Paris determined to make his fortune through women's love for him. A study of life in the tenement flats, where the skeletons of the different family closets are made to dance for our amusement, to the music of the servants' quarrels ascending from the kitchens. 'Au Bonheur des Dames' (The Ladies' Paradise: 1883). A study of the mammoth department stores. Octave, by his marriage with the widow Hedouin, and her subsequent death, becomes proprietor of the shop. A description is given of the growth of the business, of the struggle for existence by the smaller stores and of their being swallowed up by the giant, and of the entire routine of a great |