:

pronounced the fatal sentence which doomed to a violent and premature death the beautiful and youthful Archduchess, there was a universal cry of dismay and lamentation. A litter was prepared, and the noble and illustrious patient was laid upon it, and carried back to the ancestral palace in Bruges, which she had left a few short hours before, the gayest of the gay!

As the mournful cavalcade returned sorrowing and heart-broken, already resembling a funeral procession, Guillaume von Hedel, who was among the escort, sat his horse silently musing on the eventualities of the day. Suddenly he felt himself touched on the shoulder, and a voice murmured in his ear

"What did I tell you, messire? You will understand now that St. Eleutherius is not to be disturbed from his shrine with impunity."

Guillaume turned round and saw beside him the Abbot Regnier, who was on his way back from Tournay, whither he had gone to replace the miraculous relic.

Two days after, Mary of Burgundy was no more.

Hett Byrne

A GREAT FRENCH CRITIC.

RITICISM in England is admitted to be in a somewhat deplorable condition. It possesses neither the independence which it obtains in America, nor the vivacity and system

which distinguish it in France. With us it is too frequently lodged in irresponsible hands-hands guided by an intellect devoid of originality, and open to all those influences to which the judgment should be strenuously closed. Nearly all the avenues of intellectual effort are guarded by ranks of incompetent critics, whose dicta would excite our laughter if they did not first earn our wholesome contempt. These views may appear to be strongly expressed, but they are only the utterance in brief of a feeling which has been gathering volume and strength in the public mind for some years back. With the exception of Mr. Carlyle and a few other independent thinkers, there are no English critics who dare to speak the thing which absolutely moves them, without that varnish which society, influence, or some other extraneous force demands for its enshrinement.

France exhibits a decided contrast to us in this respect. Across the Channel criticism may be said to have attained the dignity of a science. Notwithstanding the lightness and effeminacy of the French intellect, its taste is more eclectic and severe than our own.' In esthetic matters they are still, what they have been for two centuries past, the leaders of all the continental nations. This is a remarkable phenomenon when we consider the volatile character of the race, and its fondness for mental sleights of hand as distinguished from logical acumen and correctness. French philosophy, for instance, has always been brilliant and attractive as opposed to the broad and solid schools of Germany and England; while French authors and composers have almost swept from the English stage the drama of Betterton and Garrick, and substituted in its place the sparkling-yet unsatisfying-opera-bouffe of Offenbach and Lecocq. Deny it as we may, England is unquestionably at the present moment largely under the Gallic sway in many of those things which move the masses-pleasures and amusements by which it is to be feared

a nation rarely achieves greatness, but frequently commences an era of decadence.

It is, however, singular that notwithstanding the mercurial disposition which is supposed to be fatal to high intellectual achievement, and which is peculiarly distinctive to the national character, France has produced the greatest critics of the past fifty years. The reason for this has never been explained, and, in truth, it is one which it would be difficult to discover. It seems to be contrary to all our preconceived notions, and to contradict our expectations. It is true that we do not witness the breadth of view which is so characteristic of many of our English writers, but where shall we find so keen an analysis of character as amongst French critics, that power which answers to the prick of the polished steel, whereby an adversary is transfixed before he is even aware that he is wounded?

Of all the critics of recent years, whether in France or England, Sainte-Beuve confessedly stands pre-eminent for most of the qualities which should pertain to his race. Yet he is comparatively unknown to the mass of Englishmen, and it is with the view of in some measure recapitulating his life and the principles upon which he worked, that we have chosen him as a not unprofitable subject for consideration.

The French classic, for so he may really be styled, though he has not long "joined the majority," was born at Boulogne-on-the-Sea, in December, 1804. His father was Commissioner of Taxes during the first Revolution, and he married the daughter of an Englishwoman whose husband was a French sailor. Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve, therefore, was in some sense of English blood. His father dying suddenly in the year of his birth, Madame Sainte-Beuve was left ill provided for, but she nevertheless devoted herself to the education and advancement of her son. At fourteen he went to Paris to complete his studies, and of his life in the "gay city" we learn many interesting details from Mr. W. F. Rae's excellent Memoir, which has been compiled from authentic sources. At the age of nineteen he devoted himself to the study of medicine, and attended the lectures on physiology given by Majendie and other distinguished surgeons. Some writers have attributed Sainte-Beuve's dissecting power as a critic to his training in the dissecting-room, or at least have endeavoured to prove the influence of one upon the other, but this is more an effert of the imagination than a speculation of any value, for it is difficult to see the analogy between the amputation of a limb and the impalement of an unfortunate author. At the early age of twenty-two, Sainte-Beuve earned considerable distinction by his review of Alfred de Vigny's novel "Cinq Mars,"

in which he detected numerous errors, notwithstanding its great and undoubted merits. As in the case of many illustrious writers, the young ́author fancied himself in possession of the poetic afflatus, but only to find his claims unrecognised by the world generally. The infatuation of literary men for some pursuit for which they are not qualified is matter of notoriety, and Sainte-Beuve's firm belief in his own genius as a poet causes us no surprise. It is only another chapter to be added to the "curiosities of authors." One of the earliest friendships the critic made was with Victor Hugo, whose poems he praised with enthusiasm, though not with that discrimination which marked his subsequent efforts. Later in life the two were estranged, from the fact that Sainte-Beuve, whose faculty for keen analysis had become more perfectly developed, dealt severely with Hugo-perhaps more severely and with a stronger vision for defects than the novelist and poet warranted. At any rate, the friend became merged in the critic. Giving up the profession of medicine in 1827, Sainte-Beuve entered upon the precarious pursuits of journalism; but all accounts combine in stating that he never forgot or ignored his indebtedness to his old occupation. When the Faculty of Medicine was subsequently the object of animadversion, he said-" To it I owe the philosophical spirit, the love of exactitude, and of physiological reality, the trifling amount of good method which may have entered into my writings, even those which are literary. The very least I can do is to give my testimony in favour of that Faculty, and to defend it now." The language of exaggerated sentiment may be perceptible here, but the tribute was at any rate prompted by a generous feeling.

It would be tedious to follow Sainte-Beuve through his whole literary course, yet it is necessary briefly to indicate what were his leading works. His first important volume, published at the age of twentyfour, was one on the "French Poetry of the Sixteenth Century," being a series of articles he had contributed to The Globe. In this work he distinctly showed that he had the elements of the critic, curbing his enthusiasm and showing a capacity for holding the scales of literary justice with a firm and unprejudiced hand. Afterwards appeared his "Joseph Delorme," a kind of semi-biographical work, exhibiting remarkable psychological power, but leaving the impression that the author was either going to sink into oblivion after it, or follow it up with another conception of transcendent genius. People admired while they were puzzled by it. It was a book which never met with fair treatment. while some of its author's friends were in complete raptures over it, Guizot styled its hero "a Werther turned Jacobin and Sawbones."

VOL. I.

5

Different labours followed-this time in the political vein, and SainteBeuve, as we learn, claimed credit for converting Victor Hugo to Republicanism. Politics led to duelling-for we suppose it must be taken for granted that a Frenchman must fight at least one sham or real duel in the course of his life. Sainte-Beuve fought one, and on going to the encounter with an umbrella, remarked with his usual sang froid "that he cared less about being killed than about being wet." It is stated that four shots were exchanged, and that everybody, including the spectators, escaped scot-free; from which we may infer that the physical weapons of this great writer were not so deadly as his critical.

Sainte-Beuve was once charged with joining the sect of the Saint Simonians, but he has distinctly denied the statement. In 1831 he wrote for the first number of the celebrated Revue des Deux Mondes, and up to his death he was one of the chief supports of that periodical. Yet during the production of his articles he was not idle in other directions, for he wrote a novel entitled "Volupté," and another volume of poems, "Thoughts in August," which latter appeared in 1837. In seven yearsviz., from 1832 to 1839-he had also given to the world five volumes of his miscellaneous contributions to reviews. In the year 1845 he enjoyed the enviable distinction of being received into the French Academy. We cannot follow him through the many vicissitudes it was his lot to encounter, but pass on to remark that he excited a great deal of ill-feeling in literary circles in Paris by his examination of Chateaubriand and his writings, in which his powers of perception and analysis were given full play. But what led to the ultimate and complete recognition of Sainte-Beuve's talent were his series of articles under the title of "Causeries du Lundi," which appeared in The Constitutionnel. Perhaps no class of ephemeral articles attracted the attention which these commanded from the very first. It appears almost strange that the ripest fruits of a man's genius should be put forth to the world through the columns of a daily newspaper, and yet we have the parallel to Sainte-Beuve's case in England, Charles Dickens having first given us his inimitable "Sketches by Boz" through the medium of the Morning Chronicle. Pecuniarily, our author never received his deserts, yet as Mr. Rae says, "it is easy to understand from this why Prévost-Paradol should have said that he did not know what it was to be handsomely recompensed for his writings till after he had become a correspondent for The Times." Sainte-Beuve became a senator of the Second Empire in 1865, but those who had bought his services could not buy his opinions, and he, consequently, rapidly got into hot water with the Government. The critic had always been haunted with ideas for the social improve