ARTICLE II.-VICTOR HUGO AND " LES MISERABLES."

"LITERATURE is the expression of society," said M. de Bonald, in the good old times of conservatism. If this be true, we trust that the present expression of society in France is not its best, and that in all its better moments it bears a more sober aspect than that which the romantic school of the day is pleased to give it. The XIXth century, eager to anticipate time in its slower achievements, accepted without restriction all possible innovations, and gave full scope to all sorts of doctrines and theories; but conservatism opposed a vigorous resistance to the new invasion and wrestled bravely with the intruders. It was a struggle between the past and the present. The monarchical and religious school, which numbered among its chiefs Chateaubriand, Bonald, de Maistre, Lamennais, etc., adhered steadfastly to the rigorous laws of the classic, whilst the new school, headed by Madame de Staël, rebelled against the narrow limits prescribed to genius, and boldly declared itself independent. The foreign literatures of Spain, Germany, and especially England, were called in aid to affranchise the French taste from academical conventions, and a new

dawned upon the world of letters. It was a grand and noble move on the part of the progressionists to endeavor to liberate literature from its centennial fetters, and in their earlier efforts they gained considerable ground over their superannuated antagonist. But, as in all revolutions, literary or political, there are fiery partisans that carry things too far, the younger disciples of the new republic, also, like the athletes of ancient Greece, who threw their javelins beyond the mark, overstepped all limits, and defeated the object of the first founders. Madame de Staël, though the first to unfurl the banner of liberty in the domain of art, still respected its former etiquette and subscribed to its laws; but her followers, young and ardent enthusiasts, declared themselves independent of Greece

and Rome, and founded a code of their own. It was in the midst of this fever of innovation that Victor Marie Hugo enter. ed first the arena of letters. Born at Besançon, in France, on the 26th of February, 1802, and raised amidst the various influences of climate, manners, and ideas of the three inspiring countries, France, Italy, and Spain, his mind, naturally quick and active, acquired a vastness of information and a richness of ideas rarely to be met with in the same person.

From his mother, who was a royalist and had shared the dangers of the Vendeean insurrection, he inherited the strong royalistic proclivities of which he has given such ample proofs in a number of his works, and from his father, who was one of the first volunteers of the French republic, those democratic aspirations which led him to embrace so fervently the new idea of freedom, as it had been conceived by the young apostles of the romantic.

Veni, vidi, vici! His first steps amidst the revolutionary party were those of a conqueror. He appeared amongst them with all the dazzling pomp of an eastern wealth of imagery, with the quaint and curious forms of ancient lore, and with that commanding attitude that secures instinctive submission. Skilled in the archaic, he brought forth from the dusty past all its stunning epithets and quaint figures, and boldly inoculated them into the modern phrase. Never had language been handled with so much daring, and been made to produce such effective results. It seemed, under his magic pen, a palette charged with luminous colors, with which he delighted to glorify the idea. Verse had never flown with so much force and melody, prose had never been so impressive. The new school hailed him as its leader. A small circle was formed under the mystic name of Cénacle, and its members devoted themselves with fervor to the promulgation of their new code. Then followed a period of wild lawlessness in which these ultra reformers laid hands upon the most sacred remnants of the past. The classic goddess, the Beautiful, was dethroned, and in her stead they raised a disheveled bacchante, which they termed the characteresque, and which usurped all the rights of the former. Gross realism succeeded the ideal; local colors,

and costumers more or less historical, or more or less singular, were deemed sufficient in the production of any work of art. It was the reign of the Ugly, and the middle age, with all its deformities, became the leading subject. The disgusting and horrible were substituted for pathos, instinct for sentiment, fancy for common sense. The charnel houses and slaughter houses even were explored to fill the new want, and the executioner became a hero. Literary liberty had thus its revolutionary era-its 93. Once proclaimed, the press was invaded by all sorts of styles, manners, and forms; the melancholy, the terrible, the burlesque, showed themselves in the most fanciful garbs, and the public underwent all possible emotions. But too often the pathos of the modern novel failed entirely to draw from the reader the sympathetic tear; its victims had never lived; nor did many of its railleries call forth a hearty laugh; the experienced reader would too often recognize in them pickings from Molière, done so over and over again that they had lost all flavor; he would be tickled, amused, more often shocked, but never convinced. The new school had spread vast tables well decked with fine linen, porcelains, and crystals, and silver, and vases-but the roast, the substantial roast, proved too often wanting. Thus, when the new poet appeared with his "Orientales," and "Feuilles d'Automne," which works reveal in particular the exuberant picturesqueness of his lyrical genius, the discomfited reader turned his hopes upon him and asked of him to fulfill the many promises which the new school had made, and had so sadly failed to realize.

M. Hugo commenced his literary career with the composition of a few odes, and lyrical pieces which he called ballads, and in which he endeavored to reproduce the superstitious legends of the Middle Ages, and with two novels, Han d'Islande and Bug Jargal. In these early writings, M. Hugo exhibits already his tendency for antithesis and violent contrasts. Han d'Islande is a kind of ogre that drinks sea-water and men's blood. Habibrah, his counterpart, is a hideous dwarf; both seemed created for the sake of strong contrast, and only to bring out the more ideal conceptions of

Ethel, Ordemer, and Marie. But the struggle between the innovators and the adherents to classic forms being the fiercest on the stage, M. Hugo hastened to join his party there and brought it a drama, of seven thousand verses, entitled Cromwell. This drama, however, like many subsequent ones, failed to secure to the Cénacle the expected triumph. The dramatic is not M. Hugo's forte; his genius is too lyrical to fall within the exigencies of that branch of literature; it is there that the defects of his manner are most apparent; his personages, although they are called Didier, Gomez, Marion, Friboulet, etc., are ever and again, I, M. Hugo. They say, often, very fine things-dramatic digressions full of lyrical beauties--but one hears constantly the author prompting them. Thus, through odes, ballads, dramas, and romances, M. Hugo, faithful to his preconceived notions of excellence, imposed his system upon the public. But the public, who, since the Restauration, had strongly imbibed republicanism, forgave willingly all extravaganzas of style and plot, in favor of democratic principles, and greatly interested at that time in the new doctrine of humanitarianism, such as Saint Simonism disengaged from its theoretic apparel had laid open, it received the "Burgraves," "Claude Gueux," "Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné," as the introduction to a work that would prove a crowning piece, a synopsis, as it were, of the author's doctrines, and in which he would fully define and develop his republican views, and bring them into the service of the cause he had embraced. Thus, when midst the fifes and drums of the press, his new work, "Les Miserables," was announced, the public received it with unanimous applause. Heralded as it was by some of the best critics of the day, partisans of the Hugo school and members of the mystic Cénacle, who launched it into the world midst the most sounding praises, it is not to be wondered that its first appearance created so great a sensation. The giant's vast proportions appalled the multitude. It was left for the subsequent observer to consider whether his power was commensurate with his dimensions; whether the Hercules was a factitious or a real god?

In his Preface to his work, M. Hugo gives us in a few lines an idea of its character and the noble mission it is to perform. "As long," says he, "as there will exist, in consequence of established laws and manners, a social damnation, creating in open civilization an artificial hell, and complicating destiny which is divine with a human fatality; as long as the three problems of the age-the degradation of man by proletariat, the fall of the woman by hunger, the atrophy of the child by night, will not be solved; as long as in certain regions a social asphyxia is possible; in other terms, and in a still wider sense, as long as there shall be ignorance and misery, books of this nature will not be useless." From this we may judge what sorts of pictures the author intends to present to us.

The spiritual club of the god is raised against the dragon society. Its vices, crimes, misery, shall be revealed, their causes and ravages explained, their victims defended! M. Hugo, as poet and novelist, has ever been the protector of the suffering masses; he pities the laborer that dies of hunger for want of work, as profoundly as the criminal that expiates his misdeed in prison; but whether such pity is just, is another question. A sentiment may be generous and yet very false. Society cannot be made wholly responsible for all the ill-sorted marriages, the crimes perpetrated for want of work, the untimely deaths of children sickening in factories. The assassin must needs be imprisoned, or otherwise restrained. However, the work before us is intended to point out moral reforms. What these moral reforms are, and whether they can be made practically applicable, we will endeavor to find out.

We have, then, before us, five books, Fantine, Cosette, Marius, l'Idylle rue Plumet, Jean Valjean, forming a long series of essays enshrined as it were in different novels, each distinct, and yet connected like the acts of a drama. The first book-Fantine, although the title is hardly appropriate-the character after whom it is named playing in it but a subordinate part,—has been the most read, and deservedly so. As a work of art, it is superior to the others. It presents us in three large pictures, whose subjects are the Bishop, the Convict, the Grisette, three fine studies, carefully drawn, with bold