At the expiration of this time our youth's article again made its appearance, but, meanwhile, a production had arrived from Paris which was thought far better. The judges were rejoiced. They were no longer under the cruel necessity of giving the first honor to a Jacobin, but felt bound to present him with the second. The name of the Parisian victor was unsealed. It was that of Thiers Monsieur Tonson come again. He had been at great pains to mystify the committee (other committees of the same kind more frequently reverse affairs and mystify the public); the Ms. had been copied in a strange hand, and had been sent from Aix to Paris and from Paris to Aix. Thus our little friend obtained both the main prize and the accessit.

An anecdote somewhat similar is noted of Victor Hugo. In 1817 the Academy offered a premium for the best poem on the advantages of study. Hugo entered the lists. His piece was considered worthiest, but was rejected because a falsehood was supposed to be implied in the concluding lines, which ran thus:

Moi qui, toujours fuyant les cités et les cours,
De trois lustres à peine ai vu finir le cours.

The Academy would not believe that any one under

the age of twenty-five years of age had written so fine a poem, and, supposing a mystification designed, thought to punish the author by refusing him the prize. Informed of the facts, Hugo hastened to show the certificate of his birth to the reporter, M. Raynouard; but it was too late — the premium had been awarded. Of Laffitte many remarkable incidents are narrated, evincing the noble liberality of his disposition.

In the notice of Berryer it is said that, a letter being addressed by the Duchess of Berry to the legitimists

of Paris, to inform them of her arrival, it was accompanied by a long note in cypher, the key of which she had forgotten to give. "The penetrating mind of Berryer," says our biographer, soon discovered it.

It was this phrase substituted for the twenty-four letters of the alphabet- Le gouvernement provisoire.'

All this is very well as an anecdote; but we cannot understand the extraordinary penetration required in the matter. The phrase "Le gouvernement provisoire" is French, and the note in cypher was addressed to Frenchmen. The difficulty of decyphering may well be supposed much greater had the key been in a foreign tongue; yet any one who will take the trouble may address us a note in the same manner as here proposed, and the key-phrase may be either in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, or Greek (or in any of the dialects of these languages), and we pledge ourselves for the solution of the riddle. The experiment may afford our readers some amusement try it.

- let them

But we are rambling from our theme. The genius of Arago is finely painted, and the character of his quackery put in a true light. The straight-forward, plainly written critical comments upon this philosopher, as well as upon George Sand, and that absurd antithesishunter, Victor Hugo, please us far more than that mere cant and rhapsody in which the biographer involves himself when speaking of Chateaubriand and Lamartine. We have observed that all great authors who fall occasionally into the sins of ranting and raving, meet with critics who think the only way to elucidate is to out-rant and out-rave them. A beautiful confusion of thought of course ensues, which it is truly refreshing to contemplate.

The account of George Sand (Madame Dudevant) is full of piquancy and spirit. The writer, by dint of a little chicanery, obtained access, it seems, to her boudoir, with an opportunity of sketching her in dishabille. He found her in a gentleman's frock coat, smoking a cigar.

Speaking of the equivocal costume affected by this lady, Mr. Walsh, in a foot-note, comments upon a nice distinction made once by a soldier on duty at the Chamber of Deputies. Madame D., habited in male attire, was making her way into the gallery, when the man, presenting the musket before her, cried out, Monsieur, les dames ne passent pas par ici !"

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as a

But we regret that our space will not allow us to cull even a few of the good things with which the book abounds. The whole volume is exceedingly piquant, and replete with that racy wit which is so peculiarly French as to make us believe it a consequence of the tournure of the language itself. But if a Frenchman is invariably witty, he is not the less everlastingly bombastic; and these memoirs are decidedly French. What can we do but smile when we hear any one talk about Chateaubriand's "Essay upon English Poetry," with his "Translation of Milton," task which he alone was qualified to execute, or when we read page after page in which Lamartine is discoursed of as "a noble child, with flaxen locks,” "disporting upon the banks of the Seine," "picking up Grecian lyres dropped by the mild Chénier,' enriching them with Christian chords," and "ravishing the world with new melodies! What can we do but laugh outright at such phrases as the "sympathetic swan-like cries," and the singular lyric precocity of the crystal soul" - of such an ass as the

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author of "Bug-Jargal" ?

"

So far as mere translation goes, the volume now before us is, in some respects, not very well done. Too little care has been taken in rendering the French idioms by English equivalents; and, because a French writer, through the impulses of his vivacity, cannot avoid telling, in the present tense, a story of the past, it does not follow that such a misusage of language is consonant with the graver genius of the Saxon. Mr. Walsh is always too literal, although sufficiently correct. He should not employ, however, even in translation, such queer words as "to legitimate," meaning legitimatize," or "to fulmine," meaning "to fulminate."

"to

At page 211 the force of the compound "L'hommecalembour is not conveyed by the words " the punster,' even when we italicize the. The walking-pun, perhaps, is an analogous phrase which might be more properly employed.

There is some odd mistake at page 274, where the translator speaks of measuring the diameter of the earth by measuring its rays. We presume the word in the original is rayons; if so, we can only translate it in the Latin radii. No doubt a radius, literally, is a ray; but science has its own terms, and will employ them. We should like to see either Mr. Walsh or Monsieur Arago (or both together) trying to measure a ray of the earth.

The mechanical execution of the book is good, saving a thousand outrageous typographical errors, and that lithograph of Thiers. We have no doubt in the world that this gentleman (who ran away during the three days and hid himself in the woods of Montmorency) is a somewhat dirty, insignificant little fellow, and so be it; but we will never be brought to

believe that any individual in Christendom ever did or could look half as saucy, or as greasy, as does "Monsieur Mirabeau-mouche" in that picture.

WRITINGS OF CHARLES Sprague. Now FIRST COLLECTED. CHARLES S. FRANCIS, NEW York.

[Text: Graham's Magazine, May, 1841.]

In the publisher's preface" to this volume (which is a handsome octavo) we are told that it has been printed partly with a view of anticipating a similar design from another quarter, "one which was not likely to be accomplished in a manner satisfactory to the friends of the author, "— and also that Mr. S. has done nothing to promote" the present publication, which he has only not forbidden." About the whole

of this prolegomena there is much of unnecessary rigmarole, not to say of superfluous humbug. If the facts are as stated, and Mr. Francis has really made himself so busy as to force the gentleman into press, will I nill I, we can only say that he has been guilty of a singular piece of impertinence. But if Mr. Sprague, on the other hand, was privy and a party to the issuing of the book (as we believe he was, and as the preface intimates he was not), it may then be remarked that since the poet of the Shakespeare Ode" is not ashamed of his efforts, and has no reason to be ashamed of them, it is but a weak affectation to counterfeit a modesty which he does not feel, and to sneak forth into the light of the public eye, wrapped up in that flimsiest of all veils, the veil of a "publisher's preface."

"

The volume embraces, we believe, all the best compositions of Mr. Sprague- certainly all the best of his