the Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy are apociy phal.

The best French critics have condemned them without doubt as one of the many supercheries litteraires ; and among clever fabrications they certainly take a high place. On their first publication in seven volumes in 1834, it would seem that England was quicker than France to point out the deception. Croker's angry article in the Quarterly Review treated the book as a tissue of fraud and lies ; and he was probably right on the whole, though his violence strikes us now as too great

* The French Noblesse of the Eighteenth Century. Translated by Mrs. Col- quhomi Grant from Les Souvenirs de la Mar guise de Orem, /831. London : John Murray. [12e. net.]

for the occasion ; it was using a bludgeon to kill an insect. The French public, apparently, began by accepting the book with good humour. Memoirs were all the fashion ; any memoirs were welcome, especially such as dealt with that world on which the society of 1830, most uninteresting of periods, looked back with a certain regret, feeling perhaps with Talleyrand " Qui n'a pas vecu avant 1789, ne connalt pas la douceur de vivre."

People enjoyed the vivid pictures and amusing stories of which the book was full. If they accepted without serious question the supposed writer of the Souvenirs, her dates and her recollections, it is only one more evidence of the extra- ordinary upheaval in French society caused by the Revolution, and the ignorance of family history consequent on it. There was an Anne Lefevre d'Auxy, Marquise de Crequy, who died, a very old woman, in 1803, and who was known for her wit and agreeable charm. Her letters were afterwards edited by Sainte-Beuve, but nobody seriously thought of attributing the Memoirs to her. The Madame de Crequy who was repre- sented as their author probably died much earlier. It seems possible that she (Renee Victoire Charlotte de Froulay, who married the Marquis de Crequy de Canaples) left some writings, some reminiscences of her early days, which were made use of and worked up into a kind of continuous memoit by some clever author, perhaps the Comte de Courchamps, ot the early nineteenth century. But French critics are hardly inclined to allow even this amount of authenticity to the Souvenirs. It took but a short time for them to become unanimous in treating them as an invention contrived to attract the great memoir-loving public.

As time went on, and the value of scientific truthfulness was more and more widely acknowledged, the critics attacked not only the authenticity and historical truth of the Memoirs, but even their accuracy as a picture of the times and manners they describe. It was said that they were full of mistakes which never could have been made by a person of that time living in society. The Comte de Soyecourt pointed this out very unsparingly in Notions Claires et Prgcises sur l'Ancienne Noblesse de France, on Refutation des Pretendus Mernoires de la Marquise de Crequy (Paris, 1855). The study of these criticisms would be curious and amusing enough if we had space to go into it ; but as it is, we need only remark that the title Mrs. Colquhoun Grant has given to her volume of trans- lations from the Souvenirs, as well as her observations on the general faithfulness of the picture, would hardly have met with critical approval in France when the book was a subject of interest to literary people. Those days are over now. As Mrs. Grant herself says, the book is nearly forgotten. To hold any real fascination for students, a work of this kind must be authentic ; otherwise, it finds its place on the shelf with other curiosities of a bygone century.

But we must not be misunderstood. Whoever wrote Les Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy, and whether its picture of French society be true or not, it is a delightful collection of stories which will always be enjoyed by the uncritical, and Mrs. Colquhoun Grant's clever and agreeable translation makes a most entertaining book. If we must give up Madame de Crequy as anything more than a lay figure round which to hang a mixed collection of traditions and reminiscences, she still holds her own as a picturesque heroine for this story of a hundred years. In spite of all criticism, she stands before readers of the book as a type of the eighteenth-century great lady : proud, plain-spoken, witty, charitable, loyal to Church and King, severe in her judgments, but kind and generous in her actions. If not always correct in detail, the picture of the old French world is probably true in the main ; the outlines of life may safely be learnt from it. Mademoiselle de Froulay is brought up at the great Bene- dictine Abbey of Montivilliers, under the care of the Abbess, her aunt. When still young, sbe is sent to her father in Paris—she had never seen him before—and placed by him under the care of her great-aunt, the Baronne de Breteuil, one of whose daughters was the famous Emilie, afterwards Marquise du Chitelet and friend of Voltaire. Victoire de Froulay is taken to visit Madame de Maintenon at Saint-Cyr, and again on a later day at Versailles, where she has the honour of being presented to Louis XIV., who receives her very graciously and kisses her hand. This was not long before the King's death in 1715. She marries the Marquis de Crequy, has the grief of losing both him and her son, and

even survives the grandson for whom she writes these Memoirs. At the end of a long life, which covers almost the whole eighteenth century, and during which she has some- thing to tell of almost every known personage throughout the reigns of Louis XV. and XVI., she undergoes the horrors of a Revolutionary prison. Her last picturesque interview is with Napoleon, First Consul, who behaves rather well to the old Marquise, though some of his downright questions offend her pride. He restores to her the lands and forests she had lost in the Revolution, and kisses her witbered fingers before she leaves him. Lovers of France may regret the tradition which thus, between the youth and the old age of one woman, unites Louis XIV. and Napoleon. " Ces deux noms font

vibrer l'orgueil national." The compiler of the Souvenirs knew how to touch his countrymen.

It would be hard to choose the best among the lifelike portraits, witty sayings, racy and amusing stories, for which Victoire de Froulay, Marquise de Crequy, is supposed to be responsible. She was a good hater, as well as a faithful lover. All the schools of the philosophers, for instance, earned her unmitigated scorn and dislike. Perhaps one is not far wrong in finding some Restoration violence, some reactionary unfairness, in her vivid pictures of the unfortunate Voltaire. Without being among his admirers, we find it difficult to swallow every detail of Madame de Crequy's caricature. More enjoyable is the description of Madame du Deffand, on her way to drink from the miraculous spring

of St. Genevieve at Nanterre in the hope of curing her blindness. She and her companion, M. de Pont-de-Vesle, another encyclopediste enrage, would not have cared for this story of their doings to be spread in Paris, but it is one of Madame de Crequy's anecdotes which seems credible enough. Unbelief and superstition went hand-in-hand then, as they

-do to this day,-at least, in French society. Madame de Pompadour as a beauty comes off rather ill at the hands of our Marquise :-

" I never could understand why people thought her beautiful," she says. " She was small and delicate, with inexpres- sive blue eyes, yellow hair, and skin about the same colour.

• Her eyelashes were scanty, and her eyebrows consisted of two red marks. As to her teeth, they were as good as any one -who has the courage to take out the originals and money to replace them with new ones may easily possess She had, moreover, a very anxious expression of countenance, and seemed ill at ease with every one, from the Queen down to her Majesty's tirewoman, Mlle. Sublet."

Later on, Madame Necker is ill-treated by the Marquise's sharp pen. She "looked like the whole town of Geneva

walking in a red silk pelisse." On the other hand, there is nothing too high and good to be said in praise of Turgot, who was a connection of her family, and we are reminded in a note of Louis XVI.'s words : "I only know two men-M. Turgot and myself-who really love the people of France."

From Cartouche, the famous robber, to Robespierre ; from Madame, mother of the Regent Orleans, to the ladies of the Directoire, the book is a series of brilliant descriptions and quaint stories. We have said enough to show that time spent in reading it will be by no means wasted, if also, as our duty is, to warn readers against taking it either as trustworthy personal memoirs or serious history.