their tongue; and he told the story of the man who, on being reproached for remaining dry-eyed during a sermon that made everybody else in church weep, replied dryly, Ah! I don't belong to the parish.' Some books, Doudan goes on to say, do however contrive to move all readers, in all parishes.' His own letters deserve that tribute, for from them the element of strangeness is altogether absent. It is true that one reads, in the most exquisite French, of French politics and about many French people and books; but the man himself is so human, so tender, so droll, and so wise, that one instinctively adopts him as a friend. Neither were foreign minds without charms for him. Few writers occupied him more than Dr. Channing, Dr. Chalmers, Sir Walter Scott, and through the salons of the Duc de Broglie there passed foreigners with whom he had much in common. Over this salon the death of the Duchesse, in 1838, threw a sudden gloom. The daughter of Madame de Stael left many mourners; but she had been so perfect as a wife and mother that even intimate friends felt afraid to touch the home-wounds that must be so cruel and so deep. M. Guizot wrote to the chef de cabinet to enquire for the health of the widower.

'Paris, Oct. 20, 1838.

'MONSIEUR, M. de Broglie is well, as far as his health goes. I have delayed a little in writing to you about him because I am aware that he meant to write to you on his own account. He makes an effort to go out regularly for a walk, and, towards twelve, generally goes round the long empty allées of the Champ de Mars. He has in some small measure got back his sleep; but we never regain life, and there is no reason to regret that this is the case. When such a soul as Madame de Broglie's goes out, everything around looks very sombre. By degrees, and as the days go on, one sees better, one feels more what is a-missing, and what we must miss for evermore.

The horror of the first moments after a death is not as hard to bear as is this irremediable conviction, as it settles down on all sides upon us, that everything is over: that no person, and no thing, and no force in the world, can now do anything to alter it.

'Albert has gone back to college. He is under M. Garnier for his philosophical course. I am reading over again M. G.'s book, to see along what lines Albert is to be led this year. The book seems sensible, and the work of a fair mind, but as among the many ideas now in circulation there are even many sensible ones, it does not of necessity say a very great deal for an author if one chances to find a good many such in his book. In these days there is a stock of readymade extravagances, and of ready-made pieces of good sense, as well as ready-painted fancies, among all of which one can work about at will, without positively drawing on one's own capital; but they say (M. Cousin says) that M. Garnier is an excellent professor and a clever

man; and Albert already likes his teaching, which is clear, and easy to follow. Albert's mother would have been interested in these studies of his; she rejoiced when he acquired ideas that she could talk over with him. All the habits of past years get resumed, the forms remain the same, even when everything else is fled. Madame d'Haussonville is growing a little calmer, but the poor young mind can make no exertion; the least effort to reawaken it causes the most painful impressions. She knows only too well what she has lost.

'Adieu, Monsieur. I should like to tell you what is being thought or done in Paris, but I know it not. I shall be very happy to know that you are soon to be here, and near M. de Broglie.'

In a very different vein, and written before this sorrow fell on the family, is this note to the young Albert de Broglie, then a boy. We transcribe it rather than translate it, as its charm of perfect grace and kindly temper must not be allowed to evaporate.

'Albert de Broglie, tu me fais de la peine de m'écrire si peu que pas. Je n'aime guère à disputer; n'en parlons plus. Je pars en poste pour aller te faire des reproches. Te voilà bien content d'avoir François (Guizot). Est-il arrivé avec son arsenal, fusil, pistolets, poignards, plomb, poudre, balles? Avait-il un fourgon derrière lui?

Aussitôt la présente reçue, tu voudras bien te rendre sur le perron du château pour m'attendre. Tu battras des mains quand tu apercevras la voiture. Tu accourras l'air joyeux, et empressé, et poussant quelques cris. Que lis-tu? Lis la vie de Cicéron de Middleton. Cela t'intéressera: et puis, cela t'orientera dans la lecture de Cicéron. Lis Middleton, je te dis, et que les quatre volumes soient sur ta table quand j'arriverai. Ils sont dans la galerie à gauche, en regardant le poële. Prends garde de tomber en montant le petit escalier. Es-tu en haut? Adieu, vilain.'

As a specimen of his graver and more critical vein take the following on the death of Cousin :—

Paris, 9 Février, 1867. 'N'êtes-vous pas triste de la mort de M. Cousin, chère Madame? Madame de Sévigné dit quelque part de la mort de son jardinier: "Le "jardin en est tout triste." Cette vie si puissante de M. Cousin, en s'éteignant, rend le jardin tout triste. Il avait, sans doute, l'esprit bien mobile, mais il n'a jamais souffert qu'on lui offrît le prix de ses changements d'opinions ou de sentiments. Il avait porté dans l'esprit de la philosophie, dans l'enchaînement des vérités morales, quelquechose du génie de Corneille. Il avait donné comme une âme romaine aux abstractions. Il avait réuni l'émotion à la rigueur des démonstrations. Avant lui, et depuis Platon, la philosophie avait toujours eu l'air d'un glacier dans l'ombre. M. Cousin avait éclairé tous les sommets de la métaphysique de cette lumière que vous avez vue de Divonne, vers l'heure du coucher du soleil, sur toutes les hauteurs des Alpes.

'Vous avez dit une chose profonde, comme vous en dites souvent avec négligence: on pense toujours à quelqu'un à propos de quelque

chose. Ces liens des idées générales et des sentiments particuliers seraient bien curieux à étudier. Par exemple, quand on remonte jusqu'à son enfance, ou à sa première jeunesse, on trouve que les sentiments moraux sont indissolublement unis à l'image d'une personne ou quelquefois d'un paysage. L'homme est fait avec un artifice singulier.'

M. Doudan is very happy in his word-painting, and what he hits off are not elaborate mental photographs of a locality, but sketches which suggest even more than they say, and which might serve as a background to a group of historical or dramatical personages. Take, as an example of what may be called his landscape style, this souvenir of Italy:

'La villa Adriani est ravissante. L'été, quand l'aria cattiva s'y promène nonchalamment sur des fleurs, que l'on entend les oiseaux qui chantent sur les voûtes défoncées de la grande bibliothèque grecque, que la couleur à demi effacée des plafonds se mêle à la couleur des fleurs, ce doit être une image très vive de la vieille Rome. Nous avons rencontré là pour cicérone une pauvre petite fille de huit à neuf ans qui habite une grande masure au milieu des jardins avec une mégère qui a l'air de sa grand'mère. La pauvre fille a une charmante figure d'enfant et l'air d'une femme de ménage que prennent vite les enfants des pauvres. Elle nous conduisait à grands pas à travers les ruines, prononçant d'une voix fatiguée et indifférente ces noms de piscine, naumachie, camp du prétoire, tout cela comme on fait un ménage ailleurs. Elle a déjà le teint de la fièvre, mais elle marche vite et parle haut, parce qu'il faut bien gagner le demi-paul qu'on lui donne pour ses explications.'

It would be difficult to find even in the works of George Sand a more vivid sketch of a Roman villa in ruins and decay. Why, it will be asked, did a man, master of such a style, gifted with an infallible memory, and placed in an atmosphere so fitted to develope his talents-why did he leave so little behind him? A few essays, such as the one on the authority of Scripture, and an admirable paper on Penal Law, attest the powers of his understanding, as these letters prove his wit and his taste; but he was too fastidious to hazard himself in any long historical or critical work. His mind was a mould into which he poured knowledge of all kinds; but except for the use of a friend or pupil, he rarely drew upon his vast stores. The subtlety of his mind, and the elegant ingenuity of his illustrations, have never been surpassed. Son esprit 'se glisse, pour ainsi dire,' to use one of his own metaphors, 'dans les nœuds les plus serrés d'une question.' Sainte-Beuve and Villemain, both admitted masters of French prose, bowed to his verdicts, and Villemain would often bring his work for correction to this keen and kindly critic, who, though

capable of conceiving almost anything, lacked the patience or the energy to execute a great literary work. He would not pass over the smallest error in taste. 'Ah, here for example is a very poor phrase !-do you by chance set great store by it?' he asked one day of a friend whose proofs he was revising. Why, yes, of course, I set store by it.'' Ah, well, in that case there is fortunately always a way to improve on it, and to make it still more ridiculous,' replied the critic; and the author had to abandon his favourite blunder with feelings which can only be appreciated by those who have had to go through such a harrowing experience.

These letters abound in admirable hints to workers. Take, for example, one addressed to M. Guizot on the subject of his Méditations.' This letter applies in truth more to the matter than the manner of a writer who differs much from the common run of such orthodox thinkers as rely on rash affirmations for silencing their opponents.

'Almost all the apologies for Christianity have been conceived upon more or less narrow lines. Chalmers himself was sensible to the peculiar prejudices of a sect. One feels in your book the full light of the boldest good sense, and of the most exalted metaphysics. I wish to restrict myself to the chapter which you have entitled "Christian "Ignorance." I have long been convinced that the man who had no ideas except clear ones was assuredly a fool. The most precious notions which the human intelligence contains all lie in the background, and in twilight, and it is round these half-perceived ideas, of which the connexion is not patent to us, that clear ideas revolve, by raising, extending, and developing themselves. But were the background taken from us, there would be nothing left in the world but geometricians and intelligent animals, and even the exact sciences would lose something of the grandeur which they also derive from their secret relations with other and higher truths, those which we suspect and believe for moments that we behold. The unknown is the richest part of the patrimony of mankind, and I think with Plato that, whether well understood or ill apprehended, everything here below is an image, a weak image, of a superior order of things. It seems to me that all the effect of the beautiful which we do see is to make us think of a something more beautiful that we have not seen, and that the magic of the great poets lies perhaps less in the pictures that they draw than in the distant echoes which they awaken, and which come to us from a world by us as yet unseen.'

Although these letters are not wanting in playfulness, and the general tone of them is that of graceful persiflage, they bear marks of deep thought, and some of them are obviously prepared with great care. This was the writer's method of thinking out a subject. When a problem, or the solution of a problem, arose in his mind, he seized it as it were, and put it on

paper, sure that whatever amount of modification or fitting it might afterwards receive, its original conception is of such special value that no later effort can recapture that first fine free rapture of creation.

'When I by chance have anything difficult to write, I begin by writing it straight on, and without erasures, meaning, of course, to take this only as a first draught. But in going over this next morning, I am astonished at the way which my mind has made since its first attempt. This rough canvas has served to fix the points to be weighed, and prevented my mind from wandering. If one attempts in a long piece of writing to arrive all at once at a definitive elaboration, one does not keep the whole before one's eyes; and while one is putting things into one corner of the trunk the other side bulges up, and the lid will not shut.'

His advice is always to make a beginning, and to attempt that cold plunge into construction from which the boldest of us often recoil, meditating for days before we can take it.

'One ought not to attach too much importance to important things, or they will never be done. To be a good architect, one must not have all the subtle refinements of a Benvenuto Cellini. At that rate one turns out only half-a-dozen dagger handles and life is gone. And what is more, let us give ourselves all the trouble that we like, the faults which we do efface from our works are never those which the public finds out.... I am like M. de Lamartine, I have several opinions, and am of two minds on this subject. Until one has succeeded in faithfully rendering the image that one saw in one's own mind, it is hardly worth while to give one's work to the world; but on the other hand, he who waits till then will wait for ever and a day. . . . Happily there is a solution for the difficulty. The public, which, as Lemierre says, is a fool, and often drunk, does not look closely into things. When he is in a good humour he takes people up, and that engages him to praise them for the future; for the public does not like the trouble of judging the same person twice.'

Many authors are aware of the tides, of the ebbs and flows of their own minds. A friend of M. Doudan's complained to him of a lengthened period of non-production and of apparently lifeless days. The critic was too wise not to know that between our hours for striking many silent minutes and seconds must elapse, since a clock that did nothing but strike would be but a mad piece of chronometry. His answer is so full of tender insight and experience that we extract it.

'These moments of intellectual dryness are the moments in which our wings are growing in silence. Continued activity degrades far more than do these great silences of the mind, when it lies by to recover strength. Look at the people who are always fussing and always doing. They presently become dry and superficial.

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