SOME MODERN FRENCH BOOKS.
[COMMUNICATED.] OwrNo no doubt to universal military service, the publics, tion of books, except of those connected with the war, practically ceased in Paris during the past autumn and winter. Even the appearance of so important a war history as M. Hanotaux's Histoire 111ustree de la Guerre, to be printed in more than fifty parts (Gounouilhou, lfr. each part), which began early in the autumn of last year, has not when I write extended to more than a quarter of that number. It is, I need hardly say, a publication of great interest and value. The name of M. Hanotaux is guarantee enough for strength of style and clearness of view. The history promises to be most thorough and complete, beginning with a full descrip- tion and recent political chronicle of each of the European nations engaged in the war, and thus leading up in strong, swift sequence to the story of the war itself. The illustrations, of which each number has several, both full-page and in the text, are striking and appropriate. Owing to their foreign origin, they are different in subject and character from most of those to be met with in English papers and other periodicals. The four volumes which M. Hanotaux's work is expected to make will be a real addition to our libraries after the war.
Sous les Obus et dans lea Caves : Notes d'une Bombarclee de Reims (Beauchesne, 75c.) is a title which speaks for itself. Mlle. Alice Martin's pamphlet is a record of personal experience worth many worked-up descriptions of the suffer- ings of the city and the ruin of the Cathedral. One would like to quote her account of her first view of the burning Cathedral, " flambant comme une torche geante." She could then still rejoice that the thirteenth-century vaulting had resisted the German shells. I fear that comfort is denied her now.
Turning to other literature, I shall mention a few books most of which appeared immediately before the war, their sales being affected by it more or less, and the difficulty and delay of procuring any French books in England much increased.
One always turns back with joy and relief to Mme. de Sevigue. And, by the by, it is to be remembered that during all that great literary time of the seventeenth century France was at war: the writers who had their large share in making modern France wrote and lived, though under conditions
very different from ours, while first Richelieu, then Louis XIV., were fighting Europe. Mine. do Sevigne and her friends and relations lost many a loved young hero on the field of glory. Here, as in so many other ways, they were in sympathy with us. Of all the books that have grown out of her letters, this by lime. Mary Duclaux, Madame de Scrvigne : Textes Choisis et Comment& (Plon- Nourrit, lfr. 50c.), is one of the most attractive. It is divided into ten parts, large extracts from the letters being included in each part, illustrating the periods of Mme. de Sevigne's life and the chief interests of each; her youth, marriage, friendships, her daughter and son, country life at her beloved Les Rochers, town life at the Hotel Carnavalet, family affairs, old age and last days at Grignan. No words of mine are needed to prove that Mme. Duclaux has treated this most fascinating of subjects with her accustomed grace and charm.
A new and enlarged edition of M. Funck-Brentano'a famous book, Legendes et Archives de la Bastille, with an interesting preface by M. Siudon (Hachette, 3fr. 50c.), will be welcomed by lovers of truthful history. Here we have the real Bastille described without fear or favour ; and if the social laws of those days entailed the unjust captivity of some harmless persons, their life in the old fortress, as a rule, was preferable to that of innocent aliens now imprisoned in Germany.
M. Maurice Donnay's biographical and critical study, Alfred de Musset (Hachette, 3fr. 50c.), has the clearness and brilliancy to be expected from a distinguished Academician. He studies Musset both in his poetry and his prose ; of the latter he has a specially high opinion. He dwells on the graceful wit and fancy, the originality and sincerity, the wonderful quality of art, which explain the writer's " incomparable charm " and place him among the classics.
Two very pleasant and interesting books of European travel gain importance from the fact that such journeys could not be made now and will never be made again as far as some of their objects are concerned. Mme. Bulteau, " Fcemina," published last year under her pseudonym of "Jacque Vontade" the lively story of a tour including Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Italy. Her descriptions, with their touches of history and biography, are particularly charming, and make Un Voyage (Grasset, 3fr. 50c.) decidedly a book to be read. In La Valise Bouclee (Fasquelle, 3fr. 50c.) AL Alexandre Hepp carries us from Algeria to Russia, then to Constantinople, touching at St. Helena by the way, then from Strasburg into Bulgaria, and so to Frohsdorff and Vienna, ending his journeys for the present at Nancy—" ce boulevard de la Petrie qu'on appelle la Frontiere."
M. de Tinsean's novels never fail to be amusing, though one may miss the brilliancy of such early ones as Le Secret- taire de la Duchesse. Of late years he has transported us more than once across the Atlantic, and Otto de Wangel, the hero of La Deuxame Page (Calmama-L6vy, 3fr. 50c.), brings home from this journey an attractive young wife. Their story is a pretty idyll of cloud and sunshine. Both the chivalrous Frenchman and the ardent American girl deserve its happy ending. Among the French women novelists of to-day there are few more distinguished, in her own delicate style, than Mme. Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. She is also a poet; and this fact shows itself evidently in Un Cancre (Fasquelle, 3fr. 50c.), the story of a young man of noble birth whose widowed mother sells the lonely old Norman chittean and marries a Parisian avocat. Her boy, given up as a dunce by family and masters both, is sent back to Normandy, and works like a peasant on the farm that had belonged to his ancestors. How refining influences reached him there, and how the real genius of the despised "cancre" worked its way to the light, is told in an interesting and touching story. The picture of provincial town life drawn by M. Louis Noel in Autour d'une Fortune (Grasset, Sir. 50c.) is by no means an attractive one. At the same time it is clever and amusing. The retired grocer Pedone, elected a Deputy in opposition to the Radical doctor, is a good portrait of a decent bourgeois. Money-grubbing as he is, a reader takes his part and his wife's against their supremely sordid neighbours and relations. It is to be hoped that this kind of civic life may be reformed and purified by the new spirit abroad. in France now. In De la Terreur au Consulaf
3fr. 50c.) M. Ernest Daudet gives us more of his vivid inter-Revolutionary sketches. It would be difficult to find a more striking picture of peaceful lives ending in undeserved tragedy than " La Religieuse Errante," the longest story in this volume.
M. Henry Bordeaux has never done anything more delightful than La Nouvelle Croisade des Enfants (Flammarion, 3fr. 50c.). Written for his own children, this little religious romance should be enjoyed by many others, and perhaps still more by grown-up people. It is based, of course, on the sad old story of the Children's Crusade in the thirteenth century ; but it is in itself neither sad nor of old time. In it a band of quite modern children set off from a village in Savoy on a pilgrimage to Rome. All but two fall out by the way. Annette and Philibert actually succeed in joining the organized pilgrimage of French children received by Pius X., and in Rome they are found by their distracted father and mother, the cure of their village, and the sceptical sclilsol- master, whose teaching of history inspired the romantic plan. The style of the book is even more fascinating than its
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