The St. Germain Legends. "For a Pin," "Mignon," "The Nightlight.'
From the French of J. T. Do Saint Germain. (Chapman and Hall.)— These stories are exceedingly well translated, and really give a tolerably adequate notion of that airy grace which is the charm of the French raconteur. In a moral point of view:they are unexceptionable, indeed everybody is so outrageously innocent, and generous, and dis- interested that one has not the courage to complain of want of reality. When Baron Wolff, the great banker and merchant, takes a penniless youth into his house because he picks up a pin, and in three or four years makes him a partner in sheer admiration of his talents, one feels that the land we tread is the land of romance, where all things are probable, as in a Christmas burlesque. So was there ever such a baronet as the English baronet in "The Nightlight," except indeed on the stage, where the practice of diaguisineyourself to make deserving young people happy is confined to uncles ? M. St. Germain has even improved on this idea, for his baronet is young, and handsome, and marries the beautiful and virtuous daughter of the painter on porcelain himself, which has more practical justice in it than making him merely contribute to the bliss of some rake of a nephew.
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