then regrets the time of the preachings and of the processions, and would fain follow them once more instead of shouldering his musket. He also finds out the advantage of extensive frontiers, for Phalsbourg has become a frontier town of diminished France, whereas during the reign of Napoleon it was situated almost in the heart of the Empire.

Joseph has become less fond of fighting than ever, but still he does his duty. Here are his impressions just before the battle of Leipzig:

'The Emperor had lost the confidence of everybody. His old soldiers were the only men who felt real attachment for him; they wished to conquer or to die. With these ideas, one may be sure that one or other of one's wishes will come to pass; all is clear and simple. But a great many people had not the same ideas, and I, for one, loved Catherine much better than the Emperor.'

The campaign of 1815 affords ample field for those graphic descriptions of war in which MM. Erckmann-Chatrian excel; but if we had to point out the best pages of their book, we would select those in which the return of the disbanded troops after Waterloo is related. Their miserable condition, the pangs of defeat, the recklessness with which accusations of treachery were bandied about to explain the triumph of the enemy, the insults of a versatile populace, the weary marches, the hopes, the fears, the long-deferred meetings, and the sense of humiliation and oppression which survived many a long year in the old soldier's breast, are all depicted with consummate power the power of simplicity and truthfulness. In a word, Waterloo-and we could scarcely bestow greater praise-is a worthy companion of Le Conscrit de 1813.'

We might part better friends with MM. Erckmann-Chatrian if we took leave of them here, but we must say a few words of their last work, and we confess to have felt no little disappointment after reading L Homme du Peuple.' There are, in our opinion, one or two great literary faults in this book, and some faults which are rather more serious than mere literary mistakes. We will begin by the more venial offences. In 'Le 'Conscrit' and Waterloo' the authors have hung their story upon a very slender peg indeed, but still, thanks to the great events which gave it support, the interest was sustained; in the present case there is no story at all. Jean-Pierre Clavel, an orphan boy, is adopted by a compassionate market-woman of Saverne in Alsace, taught to read and write, and apprenticed to a carpenter. When he is about twenty he has a little disappointment in love, which is merely indicated; goes to

Paris to work, is initiated by his comrades into the science of politics, and fights on the barricades in 1848, on which occasion he is neither wounded nor killed. This is literally all. The fact of the story, such as it is, being old in the first person, gives it too great a resemblance to the two preceding works of the same authors, and conveys an impression of monotony to the reader. Then Jean-Pierre, as is natural from his origin, speaks exactly like Joseph Bertha. The authors would do well to vary their tone on a future occasion. Another defect in the book is, that it is divided into two parts, one of which is a picture of quiet country life--almost an idyll— and the other, a series of political discussions from the workman's point of view, unrelieved by the slightest romance. MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, on the strength of their reputation, will find plenty of readers, but we fear they will be divided into two sets, each of which will read only one-half of their book.

The first part is a bright, truthful picture, painted with all the art the authors possess, but the undercurrent of deep emotion which ennobled the familiar scenes in Le Conscrit is wanting, and we are sometimes tempted to ask whether it was worth while to depict all this so minutely merely because it seems true? The simplicity of the dialogue often lapses into childishness; in a word, the peculiar charm of the authors' style is often exaggerated into a fault. Thus it is that grace gradually becomes manner; dimples, with time, deepen into wrinkles, and fixed smiles become grimaces. But we would not quarrel with MM. Erckmann-Chatrian on this head. Amateurs who stand in admiration before A Girl peeling Carrots,' may well be satisfied with their Man planing Boards.' No Dutch picture was ever better executed.

With the second part of the volume we are disposed to find more serious fault. The intention of the authors has been evidently to describe politics as they have described war, from the popular point of view. In one respect they have been successful, and Jean-Pierre Clavel is as truly a workman as Joseph Bertha is a soldier. But we had hoped for something more. We fancied that they purposed to show the horrors of civil war in the same manner as they had exposed those of foreign war in Le Conscrit' and Waterloo'; and in this we have been disappointed. The sensible man of the book, the head-workman Perrignon, a firm anti-communist, goes to the barricades, because he wishes for an extension of the suffrage on the most moderate scale-the famous adjonction des capacités. It may be, however, that at a future day Perrignon is

destined to repent of his appeal to arms, for MM. ErckmannChatrian promise to give us a sequel of this story, in which the Insurrection of June will be related. In the meantime, civil war is evidently represented as a grand thing, even when carried on by those who know not what they are fighting for. At any rate, it is not openly blamed, and we fear that the ridicule with which popular politicians are treated in this book is too delicate to be felt by those whom it might benefit. That there is a strong satirical meaning there can be no doubt; we need no other proof of it than the questions which Jean-Pierre, who has just entered the Tuileries as a victor, addresses to himself:

"Do we wish for a Constituent Assembly? Do we want a Directory? Or will we have Consuls? Or do we want something new? If we want something new, we must know what. JeanPierre, what dost thou want?"

'I could not say, and I thought to myself, "If Perrignon were here he would give me an idea."'

There is more than one humorous passage of this kind; but, on the whole, the book seems to flatter openly certain popular prejudices while it covertly derides them. There appears to be a meaning for the vulgar and one for the initiated. Perhaps we are wronging the authors, but we are inclined to think that the irony has been purposely made so very fine in order that it may not be too easily detected by the bulk of readers. The object of the book, to say the least, is doubtful, and even as we write we scarcely know whether we have understood it rightly. Of one thing we are certain: the latter part the political part of the work is wearisome. Politics are a more complicated subject than war, and cannot be treated so simply. MM. Erckmann-Chatrian have, we think, made a mistake in the choice of their last theme, and they would do well to adjourn the sequel of L'Homme du Peuple' to some distant day. Should they, however, persevere in their intention, we trust they will openly reprobate all appeals to force, save under extreme pressure. The advice would be even more useful to their countrymen than anything they have written against foreign war.

In teaching this lesson MM. Erckmann-Chatrian might risk their popularity, but they could scarcely risk it in a better cause.

ART. X.-Brewer's Calendar of State Papers. Published under the direction of the Right Hon. the Master of the Rolls. London: 1862-4.

IT

T is difficult to understand how future historical writers will be able to deal with the superabundant supply of materials now forthcoming, not only from the researches of private individuals, but from the publication by various Governments of an immense amount of evidence and correspondence heretofore jealously concealed in their respective archives. Our own series of Calendars of the State Papers, published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, has now reached to no less than twenty-six portly volumes, extending from the year 1509 to 1665, and we must say that a more useful and important literary work has never been accomplished at the public expense. Every document contained in the voluminous records of the realm is here at least described. The more interesting are deciphered and quoted; and although these records must obviously be regarded as the materials of history rather than as history itself, the authenticity of contemporary evidence and the lifelike personal character they give to the study of a departed age, have peculiar charms for the reader. We have already on a former occasion shown to what an extent these papers illustrate the singular history of the first marriage of Queen Katharine of Arragon; and we now propose to borrow from the Calendar of Mr. Brewer some account of another Princess whose matrimonial adventures were equally strange, though far less tragical than those of the divorced Queen of Henry VIII.

Mr. Brewer's Calendar embraces the correspondence of the early years of the reign of Henry VIII., from 1509 to 1518, and it will be remembered that Mr. Froude, though he has prefaced his work by a general introduction of considerable interest in itself, takes as his point of departure the end of Wolsey's career. Mr. Brewer serves as a guide to a correspondence which gives a very full picture of the important events which preceded that period; we gather our own conceptions of the characters who figured on the stage; and we discover to what an extent England was taking a part in European affairs before the date selected by Mr. Froude as his starting-point. The introductory essay on the earlier portion of the reign of Henry VIII., prefixed to this volume, is a masterly production, which exhibits at a glance the person and the court of the youthful English monarch, the administrative

genius of Wolsey, and the ascendancy which England rapidly acquired, upon the accession of Henry VIII., in the affairs of Europe.

Nothing, indeed, can be more graphic, and we may almost say dramatic, than the impression which the reader receives from works like that of Mr. Brewer, which give more or less in extenso the very words and writings of the leading personages. And when it is remembered that amongst these are included Henry VIII., Louis XII., Maximilian and his daughter Margaret of Savoy, Francis I., Ferdinand of Arragon, Leo X., Wolsey, Tunstal, Fox, Sir T. More, besides the statesmen who exercised a leading influence in the councils of the respective Sovereigns, it is hardly too much to say with the editor of these papers that they present a mass of materials, not only for the reign of Henry VIII., but of Europe generally, to which, in interest and completeness, no parallel can be found in this or any other country.

Mr. Brewer has, in our opinion, met with unmerited reproach for incorporating in his work résumés of the despatches of Giustiniani first published by Mr. Rawdon Brown; but he informs us that the plan of his work did not confine him to a bare catalogue of the Public Records preserved in the State Paper Office, and in these volumes he has included all other original documents which could be found to illustrate his history of the period. By so doing he has given a continuous character to much which would otherwise have been fragmentary. For the same reason, though scarcely to the same degree, we think he has done well to include portions of the correspondence of Erasmus, affording an insight into the studious life of that age, which was not then to the same extent as in modern times separated by a broad line of distinction from the more active life of the council-chamber or camp. It is agreeable to turn at times from the intricacies of political combinations, and from the wearisome correspondence of political agents, to the letters of literary men, and to find the silver thread of study and contemplation running through the tangled web of public affairs. We can hear Erasmus as he talks of the progress of his New Testament, and learn the early impressions produced by the publication of More's Utopia'; and if at the same time we are reminded not only of the wit, but also of some of the more questionable characteristics of the Epistolæ 'obscurorum Virorum,' the picture of the times is rendered more interesting and complete.

We have alluded, however, only to the names of the leading men concerned, but these Calendars are full of particulars