CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Outbreak of the Great French Revolution, related by a Peasant of Lorraine. By MM. Erckmann-Chatrain. Translated by Mrs. Cashel Rosy. (Bentley.)—We have not compared this version with the French original, and cannot vouch therefore for its accuracy ; but we can for its spirit and verve and lucidity of style, qualities which are so perfect that no trace of the stiff movement of a translation is perceptible from the first page to the last. There is not much of the character of a tale in this work of the two great Alsatians, though such elements of fiction as there are, are as usual of the most vivid and lifelike kind. But for what it professes to be, a one-sided view of this great revolution from the point of view of an emancipated peasant brought up in the first fervour of revolutionary enthusiasm, nothing could be more instructive or interesting. There is just that predominance of a one-sided self- interest, a proprietary self-interest, tincturing the whole, which we might expect from the point of view. The opponents of the revelation are all treated either as knaves or fools ; but the latter alternative is not infrequently adopted, and the character of the Royalist blacksmith apprentice, who believes in the king and nobility, and in caste generally, as the divinest institution of Providence, is not ungenerously drawn. The picture is one which it is at once easy and agreeable to study in this classic translation, and full of instruction for the students of the great and perplexing events even now going on in France.
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