Messrs. Bentley have done wisely in adding to their now
very voluminous literature on French history, regarded on the gay as well as on the grave side, a new and singularly handsome edition in three volumes of Louis the Fourteenth and the Court of France in the Sevenenth Century, by Julia Pardee. The one thing to be expected of a book dealing with the Court, and not with the popular side of a great historical period, is that it should be readable ; and Miss Pardee's volumes are eminently readable. Nor does she provoke one with affectations, as does Lady Jackson, who has written eo many volumes on the same aspects of French life. In her pages, Condd and Tnreune, Colbert and Louvois, Anne of Austria, Monteepan and Maintenon, the poor Marie de Mancini and La Vallihre, live once more. She tells the story of the Fronde, reproduces the selfish- ness and vindictiveness of Richelieu, the greed and astuteness of Mazarin, the courage of De Retz, the heartless splendours of the halcyon days of Le Grand Monargue. She never forgets the central figure of her story. By the way, we wish she could occasion- ally have forgotten her heroine, "Mademoiselle," or at least have given her a more modern name. A striking, if not an imposing personality, it is yet true of Louis, as Miss Pardoe says, sum- marising at once her own convictions and the impressions of her readers :—" Supremely egotistical, he never hesitated in compelling the sacrifice of whatsoever opposed or impeded his personal interests, passions, or views ; recklessly inconstant, he trampled unmoved upon the affections which he had called forth, and, tediously and childishly minute in the observances and etiquette of his exalted station, he frequently frittered away the time, rendered precious by circumstances, in puerile elaborations and unmeaning detail." The illustrations in these volumes, which include portraits of most of the leading personagee of Louis's reign, and smaller but admirable views of places rendered famous by events in that reign, are really of a very high order.
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