MEMOIRS OF . - RT A 1 - A YOFF " Memoirs of
"Malakoff." Edited by R. M. Johnston. 2 vole. (Hutchinson and Co. 24e. net.)—" Malakoff" was the nom de plume which Mr. W. E. Johnston used as Paris correspondent for the New York Times. He was a native of Chi°, took a mediae/ degree in New York—he seems to have worked in a printing house to make out his livelihood in his student days—and after helping his father awhile, went to Paris in 1852, reaching that city a few months before the establishment of the Empire. In Paris he remained for the rest of his life. But he gave up the employment of journalism in 1866, when he devoted himself to the practice of medicine. He died in 1886, in his sixty-fourth year. These two volumes are therefore a history of the Second Empire in the days of its prosperity down to the beginning of its decline. It would be difficult to find anything quite like them. Dr. Johnston was not blinded by the glitter of the Napoleon regime; but he was not a bigoted enemy. Though the Emperor did not fascinate him, he could appreciate his merits. It the same time, he saw—probably he had unusual opportunities of seeing—the signs of the turning tide. There is no great quantity of what are commonly called "good stories" in the book, but there is much that is note- worthy, and not a little which the historian may profitably observe. One of the most striking narratives is that of the Orsini plot. The Emperor and the Empress had just reached the Opera House when the explosion took place. It was the benefit night of a veteran singer, M. Massol, and Madame Rietori was playing her great part of Mary Stuart. She played that night to a careless audience. There is also a moving story of the execution of Orsini and his accomplice Mari. Dr. Johnston had taken a room from which he could see it, but the police would not allow the houses within view to be occupied by any but their usual inhabitants, and he had to mix with the crowd,—a perfectly civil crowd, and perfectly sober and orderly, but "a mob nevertheless which had a. terrible physiognomy, and one which belongs only to the canaille of Paris." Orsini had something noble about him. He played the part of Marcus Curtins in nineteenth-century fashion.
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