they retire to their chambers, the padding is loosened, the rouge is washed off, and the valet sees his master in all his naked littleness and wrinkles. In truth, every true man is a hero to his valet; not only to the visible and paid valet who does his toilet for him, but to those attending spirits who are said to watch over each of us, and may be called the valets of our spiritual existence. It is only the hypocrite and the pretender who exposes to his valet a second and inferior nature in the familiarity of the dishabille.

We know well, for instance, that the great Napoleon, with his many wickednesses and frailties, was a hero to his valets one and all. At least old Count Marchaud, who died recently in Paris, would have told us that the emperor was a man to be regarded as heroic, whether he stood in imperial regalia above his cohorts on the Champ de Mars, or whether he wandered, with his broad-brimmed hat and loose, homely sack, through the solitary valley of St. Helena. Old Count Marchaud had seen Napoleon in both guises; had, indeed, aided him to assume his robes of velvet and ermine, and had also assisted him to put on the plain garments of his island prison. Marchaud was the last survivor of those who were engaged familiarly about the ex-emperor's person, and probably the last who saw that stormy spirit pass from the world amid whirlwind, thunder, and lightning. He succeeded Constant as Napoleon's valet-Constant, whose name seems a standing satire on his historic inconstancy. For Constant was faithful to Napoleon just so long as Napoleon was powerful; and deserted him, and went over to be petted, then neglected, and left to die, by his enemies, after Waterloo.

It was Marchaud's boast that in Napoleon's humiliation and helplessness he clung to him the closer. No one could have known the "Corsican ogre" more familiarly; for he pulled off his boots, buckled his cravat, gartered his hose, lathered his face for shaving, kept his own Marseilles waistcoat full of snuff wherewith to help Napoleon when he needed that stimulant, held his coat for him to put on, and handed to him his sword and hat. Had Marchaud only affected a little of the man of letters, had he been a humbler Boswell, and jotted down what he heard Napoleon say and saw him do, what an interesting chronicle, more minute and more vivid than O'Meara's or Las Cases's, it would have been !

We like to dwell on such a character as old Marchaud; he represents an almost extinct era of devoted and selfsacrificing servitors of greatness. So entire, indeed, was his devotedness, that Napoleon speaks of him in his will as his "friend," and shows that he means it by leaving the worthy valet the goodly sum of eighty thousand dollars. There was no more pleasant gentleman to talk with living in Paris in our days than Count Marchaud. Happily he had no crutch to shoulder; he was a hale, hearty, happy old man; but he loved to fight over again the battles between Napoleon and Sir Hudson Lowe, and to describe with simple eloquence the grand qualities of "le maître." Napoleon told Marchaud to marry a widow or daughter of a soldier of the Old Guard; and

the faithful fellow hurried to France to obey the injunction as eagerly as if the unknown bride were already his dearest love. The title of count Marchaud got from Louis Philippe, who had a generous way of treating Napoleon's memory, which was an example for later French politicians to follow. Indeed, there are few characters of the Napoleonic times better worth honoring than this good old servant, whose title was a tribute to a sort of humble chivalry that is going out of fashion, and who so stoutly stood by the heroism of the man to whom he was valet.

CAN it be possible, as is very lugubriously alleged by an English paper, that people are getting weary of the "old masters ?" Is Raphael, after a fame of four centuries, doomed to lapse into obscurity, outshone by the gorgeous canvases of the half-crazy Turner? Is Ruskin bringing the artistic world around to the belief that Michael Angelo was only "a professor of gymnastics? Is the cynic who speaks of Murillo's cherubs as "podgy," of Rubens's nymphs as "red and portly," of Raphael's female saints as having "cricks in their necks," who contemptuously alludes to Poussin's "Silenuses" on their "eternal donkeys," and sneers at the red hair of Titian's beauties, to be enthroned as an authority? It would certainly seem to be the case in England, at least if we may judge from the results of some of the recent London picture-sales. Verily the spirit of skepticism is waxing alarmingly, if all the mediæval heroes of the canvas are to be thrown from their pedestals !

Lord Malmesbury is known as a connoisseur of great skill and large experience. His authority, which is not beyond question in politics, is certainly considerable in the world of art. No one could doubt that, when Lord Malmesbury vouched for the genuineness of an old master, it might safely be accepted as such. Yet at the sale of Lord Malmesbury's own collection, gathered by him with diligence and without regard to expense, through many years, the old masters were incontinently discredited by the prices which were offered and taken for them. We are told that Titian's "Danaë," a picture well known to persons learned in historic art, which once belonged, moreover, to no less a judge than Count d'Orsay, was actually knocked down for a matter of seventy-six dollars and twelve cents! One of Murillo's " 'podgy" heads fetched a little over a hundred. Worse yet, Titian's picture of "Tarquin and Lucrece," once the property of Charles I., regarded as in the great master's best style, and the genuineness of which does not seem open to question, only brought its noble owner a little over two hundred dollars! On the other hand, works of masters far inferior, certainly, to Titian or Murillo, commanded prices far more gratifying to the owner's pocket, if not so agreeable to his æsthetic taste. A Giorgione, for example, was readily purchased for over eighteen hundred dollars, while a Hobbema-to how many of our connoisseurs is this name familiar?-brought a round fifty-five hundred. The pictures annually marked "for sale" in the Royal Exhibition, many by artists whose names and

fame are just budding, for the most part bring better prices than did the Titians and Murillos which Lord Malmesbury offered an incredulous and unsympathetic public; and there is no doubt that a fair Turner would have called out four or five times as much on the first bid. Has Mr. Ruskin really talked the English lovers of art out of their veneration for the old masters? Or have they only temporarily gone out of fashion amid the pro

fusion of artistic products which is now being lavished on the English? Or is it that so many well-executed frauds have lately been exposed? We prefer either of the latter two suppositions to the suspicion that the old masters are actually going out of date, and are destined ere long to be relegated to the darkest corners and worst lights of the fashionable London galleries, while the latter schools take their places and filch their admiration.

with one of George Eliot's novels in a brief paragraph or two. Whatever their merits or defects, they utterly refuse to yield their characteristics to the easy definitions and commonplace phrases which ordinary novels almost inevitably call to mind. Even in a long article the critic usually finds himself unable to do more than survey her work on different sides, and develop some few of its infinitely varied suggestions; and when his task is finished he will almost certainly find himself in doubt whether the points of view selected are most favorable to an accurate view, or the ideas insisted upon those which most thoroughly elucidate the author's purpose. The truth is, that George Eliot's survey of human life is at once broader and deeper than that of any other writer who has chosen the novel as a medium of expression. Ostensibly she aims at the same objects and uses the same machinery as fiction-writers in general; but the range of her vision is never confined to the group of individuals who "play their antics in the wide arena of her imagination "—extending beyond these to the larger life of the race, the destiny of mankind, the complex interactions of the social forces, the philosophy of mind, of religion, of the arts, and of scientific tendency. The reader finds himself confronted around the whole circle of his knowledge, however comprehensive it may be, and oftentimes he would experience a difficulty in deciding in what department of the philosophy of life the studies through which she leads him are most fruitful.

This is especially the case with "Daniel Deronda."1 It is the best constructed of George Eliot's novels-being a work of art in comparison with the discursive inconsequence and cumbrous machinery of Middlemarch;" but, while it concentrates the attention upon persons not unmanageable in numbers, and having a genuine dramatic relation to each other, it is also more comprehensive in intellectual scope, and more searching and subtile in its psychological analyses, departs more widely from the lines of a mere story, than any other of her works. The author-and this has always been a vice of George Eliot's art-maintains herself more constantly and prominently on the stage of events than ever before, making no pretense of disguising the fact that she is the deus ex machina; and her somewhat awful personality completely overshadows her characters-dwarfing even Gwendolen and Deronda to something like insignificance before her serene conviction of the comparative pettiness of all human creatures, her own creations included. This aggressive self-assertion on the part of the author is per

' Daniel Deronda. By George Eliot. In Two Volumes. Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers.

rarefied that, aware that she cannot maintain her characters in it without at the same time sundering the strongest chords of human interest, she paints them with a certain fine scorn, all the more penetrative because it is not only unconscious but resisted with continuous and watchful care. Few intellects, without the stimulus of keen sympathy, could devote themselves to constructing in such wonderful detail the mental processes which furnish the main currents of the story-delineating with such tireless precision the chemistry of causes and the complex reaction of effects; yet behind the panorama in which we are shown the revenges which the whirligig of time brought upon Gwendolen, the inspiring combination of lofty ideals and noble deeds in Deronda, and the exalted enthusiasm of Mordecai, we are conscious of a presence contemplating the scene from the point of view of one who has thoroughly realized that we-the wisest and best of mankind, as well as the most ignoble

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are such stuff as dreams are made of, And our little lives are rounded with a sleep."

It is a curious illustration of the author's preference for psychological analysis over dramatic characterization, and of her tendency to estimate the importance of her characters by the opportunity which they afford her for exercising this faculty, that she has given the book the name which it bears. Whatever the permanent place which Daniel Deronda " may secure for itself in literature, it is certain that the greater part of its enduring fame and nearly all its present attractiveness will depend upon the character of Gwendolen Harleth. The most loyal reader finds it hard to detach his mind from her person and fortunes sufficiently to share his suffrages in equal degree with either Deronda, or Mirah, or Mordecai, and probably no one has escaped the feeling that the episodes in which the latter exclusively appear are a clog upon the real interest of the story; yet the author is evidently sincere in her conviction that Gwendolen is on the whole a subordinate figure, and that Deronda, in whose person converge the two parallel movements of the drama, is the one upon whom the attention is naturally and inevitably concentrated. Not only so, but it is clear that she also regards the obverse of the side which Deronda presents to Gwendolen as properly his most interesting side; and it must be confessed that if supremely powerful writing could suffice, the chapters which she devotes to the so-called Jewish episodes would easily compel our allegiance.

Writing as we do without having had the opportunity of reading the latter portion of the story, it would be premature to say more about the plot of "Daniel Deronda "

subordinate to the main purpose of the story, which is rather to depict the conflict of a soul with itself than to describe objectively events and circumstances which are interesting on their own account. The story is substantially that of a young girl who, at an age when she knew neither her own mind nor the nature of the relation into which she was entering, married a man much older than herself, and for whom she felt that sort of respectful admiration which, in the absence of a warmer feeling, is so often mistaken for love. Accompanying him to India, where he was speedily absorbed in official duties, the character of which she could not comprehend, and the responsibilities of which she could not share, she soon discovered that a mere desire to please was no adequate substitute for love; and, just when she was most deeply discouraged by the result of her efforts to "make things go right," she was thrown into the society of her cousin, a young ensign in the army, whom she had met when a girl in England, and who had then paid her marked attention. Circumstances seemed to compel their intimate association, and at last, almost unconsciously to herself, she finds that she has been betrayed into the most trying position in which a good woman can be placed. At once to save her self-respect and to escape temptation, she confesses all to her husband, and they agree that it is best for them to separate, at least for a time. She has a severe attack of illness, which nearly puts an end to her life, and while she is convalescing her husband is badly wounded in a frontier skirmish. Suffering reunites them on the basis of mutual need, and Arthur Craven's noble and forbearing love receives at length its due and well-deserved reward. It cannot be denied that Mrs. Cadell oftentimes approaches the perilous edge of subjects and motives which polite society has agreed to ignore; but no disposition is manifested to obscure the broad distinctions between right and wrong, and the general effect of the story is in a moral sense tonic and bracing. The fine character of Arthur Craven is excellent as a study and faithful as a portrait, and the benefits of his companionship are not confined to Ida alone.

In "Ellen Story" Mr. Edgar Fawcett attempts to show that life at our large watering-places is not altogether deficient in the elements of romance; but, to the inherent difficulties of his subject, the author has added others of his own by constructing a superfluously awkward plot, and fastening upon it incidents of gratuitous improbability. The idea of the bet in which the story takes its origin, and to a great extent its tone, is objectionable as a matter of taste, and the reader finds it hard to forgive it when he discovers that it is not only unnecessary but wholly foreign to the remainder of the story. In fact, the author, it seems to us, is at fault in all the sensational episodes with which he tries to lift the story above its natural level of commonplaceness; it is clearly apparent throughout that it was not requisite for horses to run away, for Archie to act as coachman to Miss Story's drunken escort, or for Miss Story's ruffianly brother to be shot by a constable before her eyes, in order for the love-making to reach its due conclusion. The best thing in the book is the character of Ellen Story, which is well conceived and not unskillfully drawn ; and in these days, when novelists are content to repeat the conventional types, this is sufficient to render it worth reading.

1 Ellen Story. A Novel. By Edgar Fawcett. New York: E. J. Hale & Son.

What Björnson has done for the Norse peasantry and Boyesen for the middle and upper classes, Jonas Lie bids fair to do for the sturdy fisher-folk of the Norwegian and Lapland coast-namely, to make them familiar to the imaginations of all lovers of good literature. Lie, though he has published but three books, has already become famous wherever the Scandinavian tongue is read, and "The Pilot and his Wife," notwithstanding that it is marred by unskillful translation, shows that his admirers have not exaggerated his merits. The story is of the simplest kind, and is told in a singularly direct and unpretentious manner; moreover, it is painful almost from beginning to end; yet it fascinates the attention and moves the feelings with a strange power, and when the book is finished it is easy to realize that we have been under the spell of a master. Nor is it difficult to say what are the sources of the author's power. He has no sense of humor, and exhibits but little of the poetic insight and refinement of method that characterize the work of Björnson and Boyesen ; but he has a firm hold upon the springs of tragedy and pathos, and his style is curiously realistic and intense, while at the same time entirely free from any conscious straining after effect. Few writers have exhibited greater skill in impressing a scene or situation upon our minds with a few apparently casual touches; and the story of Salve Kristiansen, sketch though it be, might truly be called the natural history of a soul. As we have already intimated, the translation of the book is very bad, Mrs. Bull being apparently but imperfectly acquainted with the niceties of either of the languages with which she undertakes to deal.

The difficulties of writing an historical novel are not removed by selecting the theme from our own annals— the bearing of which observation, as Mr. Bunsby would say, lies in its application to Marian Douglas's "Peter and Polly, or Home-Life in New England a Hundred Years Ago." Miss Douglas's object was evidently to vivify the materials which recent researches into the social condition of our Revolutionary forefathers have brought to light by using them as the background for a story of those times; and in the fact that the disproportionate pains bestowed upon the elaboration of this background has resulted in dwarfing the characters of the story she has only encountered the fate of many abler writers who have essayed the field of historical fiction. "Peter and Polly" deserves praise for the number and fidelity of the details which it brings to the illustration of habits, customs, and domestic life in New England a hundred years ago, and it is written in a pleasing and graceful style; but as a story it is deficient in movement and animation, and the persons to whom it professes to introduce us are too palpably lay-figures, set up for a given purpose, to inspire us with any real interest. The book, in short, is dull, notwithstanding the apparent accuracy and undoubted painstaking with which it depicts the manners and modes of life of a period which is peculiarly interesting at this time. The author has industry, literary skill, a refined and graceful fancy, and a poet's susceptibility to the beauties of Nature; but she lacks that creative imagination which could alone breathe life into the dry bones of the past.