You would not read of novelties in dress, and if you would, I should not waste my time in writing of them, since a book of fashions, which I can send you, will enlighten your mind much better than I could do on that important matter. Only this I must say, that I do not think that taste and fashion are going hand-in-hand at present. Perhaps you will ask, "Did they ever Well, I don't know, for one's eye becomes accustomed to the fantastical arrangements of fashion, and loses perception of the want of taste that is in them, I acknowledge; still there is a method of combining these fantastic arrangements in which a certain degree of taste is exercised-in that the French excelled— from that, I think, they are now deviating.

I cannot speak of new French books, not having had time to read any since our arrival here, but I may speak of new French newspapers. We have tried two or three, highly recommended to us by an intelligent elderly English friend long resident in Paris, who paid his devoirs at Louis Philippe's court, and now pays them at Louis Napoleon's, complimenting the latter on his first presentation as "the saviour of Europe." "I have no doubt that most of the sovereigns of Germany would agree with our friend in that compliment.

Well, we could not agree with him in his selection of newspapers for us, and whether any better were to be had we could not ascertain. These were filled with everything that was trivial, absurd, contemptible. There was no sense, no reason, no discussion of anything, but wretched stories of the effects of mesmerism. Nothing more serious than still more wretched stories of the beneficial effects of religion: as, for instance, a regiment on its march to some garrison town meets a priest carrying the Host to a dying man, instantly stops, and makes the military salute, in honour of the sacred burden borne by the holy man. Of course all this is told at great length, with what are intended to be touching details. Will you have another? A priest comes to celebrate mass for a regiment on the march; it extemporises all that is necessary for him by forming an altar of large arms piled together, surmounted by a crucifix made of bayonets bound in proper form, and there they kneel devoutly to pray. Fill up this very brief abstract you like, until you make a newspaper column of it, and then it will be complete for publication. I suppose the press is too securely gagged for aught but such rubbish to appear in the journals, or else our friend wished us to believe that the childlike mind of France had got into that state under its present nursing fatherbut I forget its nursing mother, too-that such food for babes was most acceptable to it. If it be really accepted we shall see anon. Have I no other new thing to tell you of among the novelties of Paris? Oh yes! of a very new thing to me. I have seen an

as

emperor! As he drove up the street through which we were passing, and I was told that he was coming, I placed my back against a wall, and said:

"I shall not move until I know how he is received.”

About a score of stonemasons at work near cried:

"Vive le père des ouvriers!"

It was but a feeble cry, and no one joined in it.

"Now I am satisfied," I said, as I left my post, "that the journals tell falsehoods about the enthusiastic reception he meets with from the people."

There can be no doubt, also, that when the work of demolition and reconstruction now begun in Paris is over, that the unoccupied workmen will be the first to give utterance to a very different cry from that which I heard.

Well, and what was the other new thing that I saw? An empress, madam, an empress! We were taking a drive in the Bois de Boulogne, and all at once found pedestrians turning their looks in one direction, and carriages drawing to the side and coming to a standstill. Our coachman followed the example of the rest. The carriage with the imperial pair came on slowly and passed close to us, so that we saw them very well. There were no demonstrations of any kind among the comme il faut crowd.

Now, of the looks of the pair: The lady was pale, and seemed triste; however, her chapeau, rose-tendre, was becoming, and she is decidedly handsome. Some do say that after the free-and-easy life which she led, she finds her training in court etiquette very tiresome. That is not improbable.

But the man. Are you impatient to hear anything about his looks? No, I do not believe you are. Yet note, mark, learn! He has not at all the Italian face of his uncle, his being rather of the Jewish type. He wants altogether the beauty of countenance which the painters have given us in the first Bonaparte: a beauty so entirely of the intellect, that it seems to have nothing humaneI might almost say nothing human-in it. It was, indeed, in absolute devotion to his own powers of mind, that the man-lived, and moved, and had his being. This kind of self-adulation absorbed, as it, were all passions into one-ambition. Truth, frankness, generosity, tenderness, modesty-all those finer impulses of nature, which make a man sometimes act involuntarily, leave him not master of himself for a moment-all those that make us truly human, he wanted. In the histories of this man that are written, we shall never find anything that will touch the heart like that lovely trait of the founder of American liberty, when, on being received with acclamation, he rose to speak but could not find words in his surprise and confusion. "Sit down, General Washington; your modesty is only equalled by your valour," said

one who felt truly that the personal dignity of that man could not be enhanced by crown, and sceptre, and robe imperial.

You will be angry with me for putting the name of Washington on the same page with that of the two men about whom I began, and you will be right. I return, then, to the younger of them. He appears to have the same persistent recklessness of the elder in carrying out his schemes for the establishment of his power. This quality is in him the more dangerous to France, because not having the genius of his uncle, he can only imitate the baser arts of the latter. He has obtained his present elevation by the mistakes of others, and it can only be retained by cunningly making capital for himself of the meaner passions of men-their cupidity and their fear. The dash of youth is past with him; he can never be capable of great military deeds, and their influence on the mind of the people must be supplied by great political dodges-none but that vulgar word will do. So, la belle France! how will you get this "old man of the sea" off your shoulders? Can you answer that?

Adieu-not yet au revoir!

THE LATE CHARLES DICKENS.

ONE by one the lights go out. The list of those whose names have illumined our share of the century is yearly thinning. And month after month occurs the sad occasion when the chronicler of events must record of one and of another,

God's finger touched him, and he slept.

It is to be questioned whether the death of any literary man, who was literary man and nothing beside, or indeed whether the death of any man whatever, has created in this country so universal and so deep a gloom as that caused by the untimely death of Charles Dickens. When Garrick died, Dr. Johnson said, in his pompous way, that the gaiety of nations was for a time eclipsed. Of the death of Dickens, such a sentence may be used without even the appearance of exaggeration. When, on the 10th of last month, the sad intelligence was flashed to the four points of the compass, one can, without much difficulty, picture the effect. Men advanced in life, who enjoyed the "Pickwick Papers" as they made their periodical appearance, would repeat in sad whispers, "Dickens is dead!" Kindly women, whose hearts had long ago been drawn out toward the author because he had created Little Nell and Paul Dombey, received the intelligence not untearfully. And even children felt that they had lost a friend, and left their playthings

with lengthened face. The press of the country has teemed with the narrative of his life and death, with hearty appreciation of his works, with sympathy for those bereaved. And although the loss sustained is in every sense a national loss, the feeling experienced is quite different from that occasioned by losses generally so termed. Each unit of the nation feels a personal sorrow. As one of the daily papers aptly observed, "It is as though in every house throughout the land there lay a corpse."

When princes die nations mourn. But they do not mourn thus. They lament with scarf and hatband, and darkened window. Now they are afflicted with a genuine sentiment of sorrow. Than the funeral of Mr. Dickens nothing could more appropriately indicate his place in the great English heart. His body was laid in Westminster Abbey, and in that portion of it consecrated by the ashes of our greatest in intellect, but the funeral was private and unostentatious. While his fame demanded that he should be laid to rest there and not elsewhere, there was nothing in his life, or in the work of his life, which suggested the gloomy paraphernalia of woe-too often, alas! but the substitute for a sorrow not experienced.

Concerning the personal or literary history of the author whose loss is now the theme of the whole world, we have nothing to say here, because that history, both by himself and by others, has been constantly in parts or in detail made public. We will attempt the rather to approach a rough estimate of his work, and indicate, if possible, his position in that particular field of literature to the cultivation of which he dedicated his genius. Although the author, were it possible to consult his wishes, would be judged by others of his works, it is with the "Pickwick Papers" that his name will hereafter be most of all associated, and it is by that extraordinary book that he will be oftenest judged. And in that book his fame is secure. Wanting in some of the traits which are now looked upon as essential in any work from his pen-sentiment, for instance, and evidence of a reforming spirit-it is at the same time the most characteristic of his books. There is no work in the English or in any other language where exuberant fun and hearty humour hold such undivided sway through so many pages. There is no work in the English or in any other language which, without even a pretence of plot, can so hold the attention of a reader. Pickwick and Weller alone, were there no other characters of mark in the novel, would have secured an immortality for the author. Who is there that does not recal some incident in which either of these gentlemen was hero, and who is there having recalled it, that can forbear to smile? As work of fiction after work of fiction is given to the world in the shape of drama or novel, the world permits the

majority of the characters so created to slip back into the nothingness from which they have been evolved, but certain of them it catches hold of and enshrines. It says of Sir John Falstaff, of Lady Teazle, of Tom Jones, of Dominie Sampson, of Becky Sharpe, of Adam Bede, "These are are not shadows, pictures, fictions, these are real persons; here is flesh and blood, not pen and ink; these are people ever so much more real to us than Mr. and Mrs. Jones who live in the next square." And when an author has added such an individual to our long list of bookacquaintances, he has achieved the greatest task and covered himself with the highest honour. Dickens is dead; but Pickwick lives for ever.

The "Pickwick Papers," while an altogether enjoyable work of fiction, full of laughable incident and admirable sketches of character, failed to fulfil most of the requisites of a novel; and that the author, encouraged by the unprecedented success of this his first extended effort, should have at once set himself to the production of a work embodying these requisites is only natural. The novel thus and then produced has long been decided by competent. judges to be the best work of Mr. Dickens. "Nicholas Nickleby" contains his finest touches, and gave evidence of that philanthropic purpose which grew in the writer as years grew upon him, and which in many of his works is so largely predominant as seriously to affect their artistic excellence. Whether an artist is justified in going out of his way to effect some moral reformation, to stigmatise some crying evil, or to give a kindly word to some charitable scheme, it is not our intention at this moment to inquire. Especially is it not our intention, since this very strain, running like a strong undertone through every page of the novelist, is the thing, above all others, which has warmed with a kindly personal affection the whole English heart, has gained for the author a restingplace in our national temple, and has furnished hundreds of lay and reverend preachers with many a powerful, seasonable word. In these matters the artist himself is perhaps the most competent judge. And so long as morality, and religion, and philanthropy are not pretences, but realities, it is not, possibly, the part of a critic to complain that in their promulgation the work of art should be here and there bedimmed, or in this place and that disfigured as to outline.

For one other work a claim for the foremost place in the catalogue of Dickens's books is asserted. "David Copperfield," the author's own favourite, it is said, discovers his very best manner, and, taken as a whole, must be regarded as his chief effort. It is exceedingly difficult (nor indeed is it very necessary, save that, somehow or other, the question has been raised in this instance) to decide between the relative merits of books teeming with so much