sufficient indications of that. But the ques- "Tallemant was guided but by one special tion is to know whether they did not become taste, by one speciality of character. A so after the favour of which Albert di Gondyman of wit after the fashion of our ancestors, was the object, and whether the Florentine curious to a degree that no one is curious Gondys are of that family. Quillet says nowadays, always on the scent of everything that when he asked the Chevalier di Gondi that was said or done around him, informed whether the Gondys of France were verita-with the utmost accuracy of all the incidents ble Gondis, he burst out laughing." As and all the gossip of society, he records it well he might - the Albert above alluded all; and his record is not so much one of to, who was the ancestor of the French baseness as of drolleries and gaieties." branch of the family, and who came to France with Catherine di Medici, having been a cadet of a family whose ancestors sat as patricians in the Great Council of Florence in the twelfth century! And Tallemant, it must be observed, was here speak-ment of the celebrated critic. The impresing on a subject that was especially his own, and on which he would have been sure to be well informed, if the matter in hand had been exclusively French.

The English reader, it should be observed, looking at the society photographed by Tallemant des Reaux from an English point of view, would hardly be able to accept the exceeding lenity of this last judg

sion produced on the mind of the present writer by a perusal of the "Historiettes," is that a more profoundly rotten state of society never existed than that which they describe so vividly.

On his return from his travels his marriage with his wealthy cousin was completed, "He writes what he knows," continues and his life of a man welcomed in every M. de Sainte-Beuve, "for the pleasure of society in Paris and of jackdaw authorship writing, with the salt of his style, which is began, and continued during the remainder a very good style, and adding to his narraof his life, which came to a close on the 6th tive his own judgment, which is unaffected of November, 1692, in his own house in and active. Such as he is, and so constiParis, "near the Porte de Richelieu; tuted, he is, in his own kind, invaluable that is to say, adds his latest editor, about and incomparable. If any one had told that point of the Rue de Richelieu at which Bussy Rabutin, that bel esprit and belle the Rue Neuve Saint Augustin now begins. plume of the army and the court, that he He was thus seventy-three when he died; had in his own day a rival and a master of and had been for a full half-century engaged pointed and naïve narration, in that jeering in piling together that mass of gossip which bourgeois, whom one met everywhere, and now, in the shape of nine goodly octavo vol- who was nowhere out of place, he would, umes, forms one of the most valuable store-assuredly, have been much astonished, and houses of material at the disposition of those would not have believed the fact. who would reconstruct a vivid picture of the Parisian life of the seventeenth century. It was apropos of the appearance of this the third, and by far the best edition, of the "Historiettes," that Sainte-Beuve, - the most competent critic in France upon such a subject, wrote in the "Moniteur" of the 19th of January, 1857, an article, enti-ulist.' His friends never ceased saying to tled "Tallemant et Bussy, or the bourgeois backbiter, and the backbiter of quality." It was a happy idea to bring the two men thus together; for Bussy Rabutin has also done much towards making a reproduction of that strange seventeenth-century life possible, and was himself one of the most remarkable and characteristic figures in it. And it cannot be denied that both the patrician and plebeian scribbler were backbiters.

Nevertheless, there does not seem to be any ground for thinking that Tallemant was to such a degree, or in such a sense, a backbiter, as to justify us in rejecting his testimony as to facts. Here is a portion of what Sainte-Beuve says of him:

"Tallemant went everywhere, rubbed shoulders with people of the highest rank, and was intimate with people of talent. His passion was to hear everything;-to gather up everything, and to make a good story of everything. He was born an anecdotist," as La Fontaine was born a 'fab

him: Come now, write that down!' He wrote accordingly; and we profit by it. Were it not for Tallemant and his indiscretions, many special studies of the seventeenth century would have been well-nigh impossible. Through him we are members of all the coteries in every quarter of the town; we know all the masks, and the wearers even in their robes-de-chambre. He repeats what was said; he keeps register of current gossip. He tells no lies; but he speaks evil with pleasure, and in gaiety of heart. What he tells us, however, is not to be received lightly. For he is natural and judicious, truthful and penetrating, without affectation, and without pretension. Respecting Henry IV., Sully, Richelieu,

and others, who belonged to the age before | readers into a mistake and a disappointhim, and who were so much greater than be ment, if it were not added, that they will in all respects, he has but picked up the scarcely find in the " Historiettes" all that crumbs, which are still, however, crumbs charm which Sainte-Beuve found. On this that have fallen from a good table, yet side of the Channel the nine volumes of upon such subjects he can be listened to Tallemant's writings may be accepted as an only as an echo, and a picker up of reports. invaluable magazine of materials for the But respecting people whom he has seen student of social changes, and the historian and known, we have something better than who would animate his picture by informthat from him. His authority is as reliable ing it with the life, the flesh, and blood, and as that of any one. He read the physiogno- genuine pulses of the world he wishes to remies around him, and he reproduces them for produce. This the jackdaw author has beus. I am entirely of the opinion of M. P. queathed us; and as is easily understood, Paris," one of the editors of the "Histo- the special value of the bequest arises from riettes," that Tallemant's authority is the jackdaw nature which prompted him to not to be lightly esteemed, and that we pick up and hide away whatever no one must accept his testimony, failling proof to else thought worth preserving. the contrary. If you dig down at many points you will find the confirmation of things that he asserts with a mere passing word. And it is not only in painting the bourgeois world that he excels. Tallemant is still the best painter that we have of the Hôtel Rambouillet, and of all that refined society. He judges it with the true French taste of that Augustine age, as befits one who was the friend of Patru, · one who had in him much of a prose La Fontaine,

44

and of Maucroix."

After speaking of Tallemant's portrait of M. de Montausier, M. de Sainte-Beuve continues :

66

ex

But not one English reader in ten thousand will appreciate the aroma of the style of which M. de Sainte-Beuve speaks so enthusiastically. They will find themselves, moreover, in the midst of a very coarse, a very low-minded, and essentially vulgar world, the study of which is mainly valuable for the sake of the clear views which may be got from it of the normal connection between certain social antecedents and certain social consequences. It is right also to state plainly, in order to prevent mistakes, that the Historiettes "" must remain a sealed book to English ladies, cept, indeed, to the royal, noble and fashIf that is not a masterpiece of lifelike ionable patronesses of Mlle. Schneider's resemblance, where is such to be sought? cancan. Ladies who can enjoy that, will And there are plenty of such in Talemant's find nothing to startle or disgust them in pages. Open them anywhere. What you Tallemant. Others had better content will find is gay, well-told, clear, pleasant, themselves with such reproductions of the well turned out of hand, free from affecta-jackdaw author's materials as the writers of tion of style. He continues without an special "studies" of the old-world personeffort the race of the story-tellers and fable-ages may select, purify, and reproduce for writers, and has frequently a touch of the them. vein of Rabelais. His diction is admirable, exceedingly happy of phrase, full of idiom, familiar, thoroughly Parisian, and imbued with the flavour of the soil in which it grew. The world which Tallemant exhibits to us is the town, properly so called, the town as it was in the days of Mazarin, either before or after the Fronde, and after the minority of Louis XIV.,- that Paris in which a bourgeoisie, rich, bold, and free, was living a stirring life, the types of which are to be seen in Molière."

In conclusion, it may be interesting to mention in a few words the circumstances of the finding of Tallemant's long-lost manuscript.

Elizabeth Rambouillet, the wife of our author, survived him, and became sole heiress of the family property. In 1701, she was present at the marriage of her greatniece, Renée Magdaleine de Rambouillet de la Sablière, with M. Trudaine, grandson of Charles Trudaine, who died in 1721, Counsellor of State and Provost of the This is the judgment of certainly the most Merchants. All the Tallemant property competent critic that France has known in came to him by this marriage; and the the course of this century. And assuredly manuscript of the "Historiettes," together it does not become an English writer to with all the other lumber in the old family dispute the entire accuracy of every por-residence. The Trudaines possessed a tion of it, as looked at from a French point chateau called Montigny Lencoup, in the of view, and as addressed to Frenchmen of department of Seine-et-Marne, at a short the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, distance from Montereau; and when at the there would be risk of leading English death of the last of the Trudaines the libra

--

The "Historiettes " had not, however, remained wholly unknown to the literary world during the intervening years. M. le Baron Walckener had made some use of them for his admirable and well-known

ry, - which had during many generations of them belonged to the chateau, - was sold, the late Marquis de Chateaugiron, Consul-General of France, first at Bucharest, and afterwards at Nice, where he died, bought a lot entitled, "Collection of pieces" Life of La Fontaine," and M. Tascheveau interesting for the history of France under Henry IV. and Louis XIII.; MS. in folio, bound in vellum, containing 798 pages, and filled with curious and little-known facts." M. de Chateaugiron had no competitor for the prize, and it was knocked down to him for twenty francs!

had availed himself of them for his excellent and highly curious "Life of Molière." A second edition was published in ten duodecimo volumes by the publisher Delloye, equally under the editorial care of M. Monmerqué. But by far the most perfect in all respects is the third, edited by MM. Monmerqué and P. Paris, and published in nine vols. octavo by Techner, in 1850-60.

M. de Chateaugiron had the MS. fairly copied; but many years passed before anything more was heard of it. In 1820 he The value of the book had by this time founded, in conjunction with M. Mon- become extensively recognized. The usual merqué, the subsequent editor of the "His- suspicions of fraud and fabrication had been toriettes," and others, a Société des Bi- brought forward and abundantly refuted; bliophiles Français, under the auspices of and the old jackdaw writer has been rewhich Tallemant's work was at last pub-ceived nem. con. as a French classic by virlished for the first time, in the years 1834 tue of the value which time has given to - 35. his hoards.

THE LAST OF HIS TRIBE.

HE Crouches and buries his face on his knees,
And hides in the dark of his hair;

For he cannot look up to the storm-smitten trees,

Or think of the loneliness there: Of the loss and the loneliness there.

The wallaroos grope through the tufts of the

grass,

And turn to their covers for fear;
But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass

Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear:
With the nullah, the sling, and spear.

Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks
On the tops of the rocks' with the rain,
And the wind which drives up with the salt of
the lakes,

Have made him a hunter again :

A hunter and fisher again.

For his eyes have been full with a smouldering thought;

But he dreams of the hunts of yore,

And of foes that he sought, and of fights that he
fought,

With those who will battle no more:
Who will go to the battle no more.

It is that the water which tumbles and fills
Goes moaning and moaning along,

For an echo rolls out from the sides of the hills,
And he starts at a wonderful song:
At the sounds of a wonderful song.

And he sees, through the rents of the scattering
fogs,

The corrobboree warlike and grim,
And the lubra who sat by the fire on the logs,
To watch, like a mourner, for him;

Like a mother and mourner for him.

Will he go in his sleep from these desolate lands,
Like a chief, to the rest of his race,
With the honey-voiced woman who beckons, and
stands,

And gleams like a dream in his face:
Like a marvellous dream in his face?
Leaves from Australian Forests.
By Henry Kimball.

GIRL AND WOMAN.

EYES like blue violets, gleaming gold hair,
Parted red lips and wondering air,
Fresh rounded cheeks and innocent brow
Of a child to whom grief is a stranger now.

Sad faded eyes and silvering hair,
Brow marked with many a cross and a care,
Thin hands whose labour is nearly done,
Calm smile of happiness lost and won.

Closely they sit as the twilight grows,
The opening blossom, the withered rose.
O, say, for which shall I pity find —
Her life all to come, or hers left behind?
Tinsley's Magazine.

CLEMENCE D'ORVILLE; or, From the Palace to the Steppe. A Novel of Russian High Life. And CLELIA, from Family Papers. Translated for, and first published in America in, THE LIVING AGE. One vol., price 38 cents.

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