THE STONES OF PARIS.• THIS is a charming book. The

expression is strong and seldom exact ; but we use it deliberately and after reflection.

The charm of these wanderings in old Paris is real, owing to their variety, their romance, and the liveliness and interest of their telling. This charm covers certain faults in the book

which are worrying, all the more because mostly unnecessary, and apparently owing to haste on the writers' part. The spelling is eccentric at times, and not always explained by Americanism. The dates are now and then wild ; it was certainly not in 1798 that Danton witnessed the first repre- sentation of Joseph Chdnier's Charles IX. at the Comedic

Francaise. And the guillotine was certainly removed to the Place Louis Qninze long before May, 1793. These may be

misprints, of course, but they are a pity. And did English soldiers wear uniform when the Duke of Bedford occupied Paris in the reign of Charles VII. ? But the oddest confusion —it can hardly be a mistake—occurs on p. 157 of Vol. I. We are with Racine and his contemporaries :- " Nor was it only his rivals and enemies who decried him. Racine et is café passeront,' was La Harpe's contemptuous coupling of the playwright with the new and dubious drink, just then on its trial in Paris. His mot has been mothered on Madame de Sevigne, for she, too, took neither to Racine nor to coffee. And a century later it pleased Madame de StaA to prove, to her own gratification, that his tragedies had already gone into the limbo of outworn things."

Now would not this convey to the ignorant that La Harpe was a man of the seventeenth, not the eighteenth, century, and a contemporary of the introduction of coffee, as well as of Racine ? But as the writers, with their knowledge of France, must know when La Harpe lived, it is merely a case of confused expression.

The arrangement of the book is not altogether satisfactory. At first sight it is rather too much like a collection of maga- zine articles, thrown together without any special connecting thread. Then the connection becomes more evident, but there is a good deal of inconsistency. Sometimes the interest hangs on buildings and places, sometimes on men. And yet we feel it is wrong to complain, and we give ourselves up to jldner and to saunter through old Paris with these guides who know her so well, and we soon forget everything else in pure enjoyment. By the by, though the illustrations are excellent, a map would make the intelligent study of the book much easier.

Some idea of the variety of interest may be gathered from the fact that all through the life of Paris, from Philippe Auguste to Victor Hugo, few names of any note are left unmentioned, and we learn to know the men better by literally following their footsteps, tracing the old streets and houses where they lived. It is astonishing how much of ancient

interest is left in the modernised city. Many old landmarks have disappeared, of course, but many are only hidden, to be

discovered again by eager seekers. It is quite easy and delightful to realise where Racine, La Fontaine, Boileau, lived, and many readers will still more enjoy tracing the homes of Balza.c, Dumas, Victor Hugo ; while the historical and most charming chapters on the Marais, bringing in the old Place Royale, now Place des Vosges, and the abodes of Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Maintenon, Marguerite of Navarre, Ninon de l'Enclos, and many others, show the writers at their best and most brilliant.

We are happiest when we can go along with them in full sympathy ; still, a little difference adds life to our saunter- The Stones of Paris in History and Letters. By Benjamin Ellie Martin and Charlotte M. Martin. In 2 vols. Illustrated. London : Smith, Elder, and CiSs.]

ings, and their enthusiasms are not always ours. Neither do we find them always fair or philosophical. That the priest and the soldier are "twin foes of light and life in all times and in all lands," is a very decided instance of this defect. It is not true, either, that the poorer people of the Middle Ages were " sheep let graze by the priest, to be sheared for the Church and to be burned at the stake." After these glimpses of opinion one is not surprised that few of the great lights of religion and charity who have illumined Paris in all ages are so much as mentioned in this book. The Abbe de l'Epee is one of the rare exceptions. St. Vincent de Paul had better not be here at all, than be described as "bountiful to the poor with the crowns he adroitly wheedled from the rich." The Abbayc aux Bois, whose tall roofs still rise in the midst of the busy Rue de Sevres, and which has so many interesting social and religions memories of the seventeenth century, appears here only as the home of Madame Recamier and Madame Mohl.

Some of the literary judgments are cnrions. It is a new view of the position of Bernardin de St. Pierre, that his work was of ro greater consequence than that of Rollin. And as to the relative influence of Renan and Taine, we are of those who believe in the historical philosopher rather than in the quasi-religious sentimentalist, amiable, generous, poetical as he was; and we fancy that in the end truth will prevail over personality.

The writers have a really delightful power of making familiar figures live and move in their own old surroundings. From fresh sidelights, seldom to be had in regular, dignified biography, they succeed in giving new impressions of famous men. Moliere appears in his manly unselfishness; La Fon- taine in the unmanly dependence which seems to have had something to do with his charm ; Boileau, the stiff critic, as the kindest and most helpful of friends. We know the sensitive Racine better than ever, as a kind husband and father in the Rue. Visconti, and realise that Madame de Maintenon behaved with her usual politic heartlessness to the author of Esther. It is satisfactory to be reminded that Voltaire in his young days was beaten by the lackeys of the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, though he now grins so com- placently in the foyer of the Com6die Francaise.

The best chapter in the book, except those on the Marais, is that on " The Paris of Balzac." The details of Balzac's life and work are intensely interesting and not very familiar. With him, with Dumas, and with Victor Hugo, additional research has made it possible to give us the scenes of their novels, almost as real indeed as those of their own lives, and even more fascinating.

The book represents a large amount of work, the careful study of documents, much reading, much walking, and much inquiry. All this might have resulted in a superior kind of " Guide to Paris," but the book is far better than that. It is the record of the study of Paris by two very well-informed enthusiasts, excellently fitted for their task, except in a certain lack of philosophy which makes them rather too apt to judge the fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth—or twentieth.