LES BRAVES DENS.
Les Braves Gene. Par Paul et Victor Margueritte. (Plop, Nourrit, et Cie., Paris.)—Few books published in France of late years have been so widely talked of as " Le Ddsastre," by the sons of General Margueritte, admirable writers and novelists, who have taken up the task of commemorating the terrible period of 1870-71, in which their father was a glorious figure. Les Braves Gens, their latest book, is a series of episodes, some long, some short, dealing with various phases of the war : the rout of MacMahon, the siege of Paris, and so on. Difficult reading they are, many of them, to the reader who has not a minute knowledge of the geography and a good acquaintance with the historical facts. They are, indeed, history related from a certain point of view,—perhaps not consistently, since the point of view is that of an individual or group of individuals lost in the fog of war : and between moment and moment in the narrative is interspaced an explanation from the historian's proper standpoint. At the end, however, are some charming episodes; nothing could be more suggestive than the tale of a. carrier pigeon's flight back to Paris, whence he had been carried in a balloon. These men write of war as if they had seen it ; they write a tale of innumerable use- less heroisms, lost in a swamp of demoralisation and disorder. No book could make it plainer how common among civilised men is self-sacrificing courage—the common element of nobility in manhood—and how rare is competence. Students of French style will mark with interest the evolution of a Tacitean manner in this daughter of the Latin.
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