of which he was scarcely conscious was mastering him, he would travel to Ferrybank, and again plead with his mother, in the low, dark cottage which grew to seem more and more gloomy to him on each visit. Still no pleading, even of his, availed.

But, mother, if you will not come with me," supplicated Owen, "let me find you another home. You shall choose where; it shall be in this very spot, if you like; only let it be free from gloom and discomfort."

But the mother pleaded in her turn to be left where she was happiest; and, silenced once more, Owen sought to beautify the place a little by his generous gifts. But no; these made no difference in the poor dwelling. All the money that he sent his mother was put sacredly away. "When I am gone, Duddgha," she said to her daughter, 'you will find it all untouched, and you may want it then."

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II.

It was Christmas Eve, and Owen was to dine at the Schoolhouse. He entered the long, warm room just as Alice, with her hands full of flowers, came in from the greenhouse. While they lingered together arranging the flowers, she wooed him on to talk of what she felt he loved, and knowing that home would be near his heart this Christmas time, asked him of his mother and his sister.

"I never like to mention your sister's name, Mr. Vaughan," she said, "because I do not know how to pronounce it. I have seen it in a book of yours, but I never heard you say it.”

The color mounted slowly to Owen's brow, for something in Alice's gentle words sounded like a rebuke.

"We pronounce it Duthga," he said; "it is an odd name, is it not? But it looks worse than it sounds."

"I like the sound of it," Alice answered. "I think I should know your sister if I saw her, Mr. Vaughan, though I do not fancy her like you; no girl could have your kind of face. Is she as tall as I am?"

"No," answered Owen, smiling a little as he pictured the two girls- one in her plain calico gown, singing to herself as she stood ironing in the cottage kitchen, and the other as she stood beside him now in her soft velvet dress, with the delicate fern and crimson rose-bud in its bosom.

"Is she as fond of flowers as I am?" asked Alice, guessing nothing of these thoughts.

"I cannot tell," said Owen, watching the white fingers as they touched caressingly the brilliant petals, "for she has not such flowers as these within her reach."

"There are some beautiful ferns to be found at Tenby," said Alice, in quick fear lest she had hurt him. "Papa and I have found some choice ones near there. Does she know, I wonder? because because your home is not far from Tenby, you once told me."

The girl's voice grew unconsciously a little wistful as she spoke, remembering how seldom he had told her anything of his home, or of those whom she felt he loved so dearly; but just then her father called Owen into his study, and she was left to wonder. She had a misty impression, though she could not tell how gathered, that his mother did not like society, and that her daughter could not leave her; but she knew that Owen had never definitely told her even this.

"Does he think I would not care to hear, or does he not care for me enough to speak to me of those he loves? I think they must be very, very good," she sighed, letting the flowers drop from her listless hands, " and I seem shallow and flippant to him, and I vex him almost every time we talk together. Even those few words I said about the flowers pained him somehow. I wish I knew how ; I wish -I suppose women can never be deep and real and true, just quite like men. I wish I didn't care. I wish I hadn't

said it."

And suddenly and pettishly she swept the flowers away, as if the sight and scent were painful to her.

But Alice had forgotten this passing cloud before the long and cheerful dinner was over. The servants had left the room, when Owen, sitting next to Alice and listening

happily to her bright voice, felt a sudden chill creep in upon the scene. The words of one of the doctor's guests struck upon his quick, keen ear.

"Much as I want a tutor in my school before next term, I could not engage Leslie, because he cannot have been brought up a gentleman. His father, I hear, was a village tradesman. But what looks particularly bad is that he does not tell me the fact himself. In many ways he would undoubtedly suit the post. He is gentlemanlylooking, and speaks well, besides having testimonials of the highest class. Still, there is that insuperable objection." "Insuperable," muttered the doctor assentingly. "I would not entertain the idea. What do you think, Vaughan?"

"If," said Owen, taking a long time to peel an atom of walnut, and looking down upon it very intently, "if his words and acts, as well as his appearance, are those of a gentleman, I cannot see what difference is left for his birth to make. One can but look and act and speak as a gentleman, let one's birth be the noblest in the land; and if we miss none of these things in each other, what need have we to question further?

"You speak warmly, Vaughan. In my place you evidently would engage this son of a village shopkeeper to help to educate noblemen and gentlemen's sons."

"We men do not often ques ion each other on our birth and early life," said Owen, "and do not often volunteer to talk of it unquestioned. Then will it never be that we may judge men by what we find them-respect or despise them, not according to the rank they bear, but according to the part they act?

"Better in theory than in practice, Vaughan," said Dr. Hope lightly. "Still, my objection is the want of truthfulness at starting."

Many of our highest families," said Alice, "have been founded by one man who has risen from the people, and they are proud to trace back to such an one. Why, because we are his contemporaries, should we scorn him for it?"

"Suppose," said Owen, glancing rapidly into Alice's face, while his heart beat gratefully for her words "suppose, Dr. Hope, that one of your own masters had come to live among you, of lower birth even than this candidate you speak of, and had told you nothing of his antecedents, feeling that if he were suitable for the post, that was all, and that if he were not, you would soon discover it; suppose you had liked him and associated freely with him, giving him a welcome always in your house, and had then discovered his history should you blame him for his silence?"

"Blame him!" echoed the doctor hotly. "I should turn my back upon him prompt.y, I assure you, were he the finest scholar in England."

Slowly and darkly the color rose in Owen's face. "That is the general opinion, I suppose," he said; and Alice was not the only one who noticed the tone of pain in his voice.

"What should you do yourself, Mr. Vaughan?" asked Mrs. Hope merrily. "Come, next to the doctor himself, you are the one most likely to be placed in such a position."

"I think," said Owen quietly, "that I should merely care what the man himself might be. It would signify as little to me what his father had been as what his son would be years and years afterwards.”

"Wait until some one imposes upon you," returned the doctor. "He would not like it, would he, Alice?" he added, laughing up at her as she rose to follow her mother. Eagerly Owen waited for her answer.

"I do not think a really low-born man could succeed in such an imposture, papa," she carelessly said, "even if he

tried."

The Christmas mirth had all died out of Owen's eyes when he joined Alice again, and her shy, kind words could not bring it back; neither did their memory bring a tender smile to his lips when he recalled them afterwards.

"I will not go again. I will live my life apart from

theirs," he said, as he walked wearily through the silent streets to meet the midnight train. "A friendship with deceit for its foundation cannot last. It is better it should grow no deeper than it is. Heaven knows it clings too closely about my heart to-night."

In love and quietness that Christmas Day was spent by Owen in his mother's cottage on the shore, but never had the want of comfort in his old home struck him with such a weight of suffering. "Yet," he said, "it would have been better to have known no life but this, rather than be living two, so far apart."

Once more he urged his old entreaty; once more, and never so ardently as now; but still she gave the one answer which he could not neglect. No; she was happier So. And, with a kiss, she bade him leave her there because it was better for her.

"But, mother, take my gifts," he cried, the words wrung from him in his deep heart-loneliness, and in his longing for the consciousness that his life-work was not utterly useless, and benefited no one. "Take my gifts, mother, and let me feel that I am not working and living in vain." "Dear, there are plenty of other uses for your money," she answered, her voice a little broken now to see his bitter earnestness.

"But none so sweet to me, none so pleasant to me," he said in eager dissent.

"There soon will be, dear lad," she whispered, "even if it is not so already."

Then the mother, all unlearned though she was, could read the face she loved, and seeing there a trouble which she vaguely understood, she took the tired head within her arms, and wept and whispered over it, as if those far-back days had come again when the mother's arms were all the heaven he knew. That was the last time Owen urged his old request, that was the last time the grave eyes found that sweet relief of tears upon a mother's breast.

III.

Well and bravely Owen had kept his resolution; while Alice, from the sombre rooms of the old Schoolhouse, listened in vain for the familiar step upon the pavement, waited in vain for the old clasp of the slight, firm fingers, hungered in vain for the old pleasure his coming ever gave. And he? He performed his old tasks just as he had performed then always.

As the spring came on, she drooped and pined so sadly that they said she needed the sea-air, and they begged her to accept the invitation of an old school-friend who had lately married and gone from her home in Scotland to stay with her husband's relations on the Welsh coast.

"It is to Llanvriar I am going, Mr. Vaughan," said Alice, a little wearily, as she told Owen of her approaching departure, while he stood steadily before her, looking into her pale face. "Papa says he thinks I shall be close to your home. May I take anything for you? Is there anything I can do?"

No; there was nothing, he told her, speaking with cold, tight lips, while his heart grew hot and wild with rebellion as he thought how, if his home had been different, Alice would have brightened it now for his sake. And so they parted, with a simple hand-shake.

While Alice was at Llanvriar there was a concert given by the patrons of the Ferrybank school. One of the singers, a pretty, grave-looking girl of about twenty, struck Alice particularly.

"It almost seems to me as if I had seen her before," she said to Mr. Gwynne, her host, "and yet I know I have not. I have not even seen any one very like her, and yet something in her eyes, I think, seems familiar to me. Who is she?"

"She is supposed to be rather a peculiar girl," was the answer; "yet no one knows why, unless to be good and helpful to one's mother is peculiar; perhaps they think so in Ferrybank, for it isn't a very common failing there. She has a brother, though, who is peculiar really; a specimen of that rare wild-plant Genius, a specimen no one would

expect to find drifted into a wretched fisher-cabin on our shore. He was one of my uncle's protégés. I wish Sir Bulkley were at home now that you might ask about him. I believe he My uncle is so proud to rehearse his career.

is doing excellently now, in England, and I suppose he deserves it, for he studied like any old don you like to mention, Miss Hope."

"Did he?" asked Alice, but little interested. tell me what is this girl's name."

"Please

"Duddgha Vaughan. Her mother is a washerwoman, and lives in one of those desolate cabins on the shore, in the very midst of the fish odors; a lasting disgrace, I think, to the son, - though I dare not say so to Sir Bulkley,

who lives in abundance himself and leaves his mother and sister to earn their own livelihood in such a hole. You can see the cottage from our windows. I will show it you; such a poor place it is."

"What?

The word came from Alice in a whisper, and seeing she was anxious to hear, Mr. Gwynne told her his version of Owen's story; while the words crept into her icy heart, and the music to which she had come to listen died unheard.

That Owen should have been her truest friend for two years - her nearest and first friend, she repeated to herself, the flush of anger and mortification rushing into her face at the thought only to give her this pain at last!

Day after day at that window of the house upon the wooded bank which overlooked the fishing hamlet, and from which Alice could see the thatched cottage standing alone upon the beach, the girl would sit in a listless, dreamy pain. Could it be true? Could it all be true? Could that he Owen's home? Then she would drop her work or book, and rise and gaze upon the cottage, in a wondering, anxious doubt which yet could not prevent the longing tenderness shining in her eyes, so proud and yet so true. Could that be Owen's home? Could Owen's mother labor there, while he was living in ease and luxury far away? Could it be true? So the thoughts hotly ran, while yet though Alice did not know it the very truth of her fear was plain in her eyes while she gazed and gazed down upon Owen's home.

"I think I will go over just once and see his mother," she said to herself over and over again during her stay at Llanvriar; but a strange, new feeling of shame, which she blushed to recognize, prevented her.

Alice had been back at home a week or more, when Owen Vaughan came voluntarily once more to the Schoolhouse. Dr. and Mrs. Hope were both out, and Alice sat alone. The familiar step, for which she had so often listened, was close behind her now, yet she never turned. How could she turn while that light-half of anger, but half of passionate affection - burned in her eyes? He sat beside her, grave and gentle as of old, but there was a new tone in his voice when he told her the story of his life, a new longing in his face when he told her how he loved her. In a few simple words he told her, but these words she saw were uttered from his heart, and their truth and earnestness were like the truth and earnestness of prayer.

"I have determined many times that I would never utter these words to you, Alice," he said. "I have struggled long and hard against temptation, but it has mastered me at last. Before you went away, looking so frail, I almost broke my resolution. But when you came back, still looking weak and ill, and when I found you cold and strange to me, I said, 'I will listen to nothing now but my own heart. I will tell her the story of my early life, and then how fervently I have loved her and must love her always. I will tell her both these things, and leave my fate in her hands.' Alice, I read my answer in your face. You disdain this love of mine. You send me from you, and it will be hard to trust or hope in any one again. Wait; do not say it yet. I thought I had prepared myself, but the darkness falls so suddenly."

But Alice did say it. She told him she disdained the love he offered; and told him so in cold and scornful words which were to come back to her afterwards with the crush

ing weight with which they fell upon his heart. And he watched the young, fresh lips from which the cruel words were falling, as if he were struggling to awake from some desolate dream.

"You tell me this story of your childhood, Mr. Vaughan," she ended, with chilling slowness, "because you rightly guess that I heard it before I returned. It is as unnecessary to tell it to me at all now, as it is unnecessary to tell me of the imagined love that was built upon deceit." The shadows, darkening his eyes as he turned them slowly from hers, frightened her, and she dared not glance at him as he sat in that deathly silence, his chest heaving

with violent emotion.

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If you were capable of such love as you speak of," she went on with cutting emphasis, in his long silence, "would your own mother and sister be toiling in poverty, while you are living among us as a gentleman?"

"Hush!" he said slowly, as he rose, with a suppressed passion in his steadfast eyes. "You have said enough to kill my hope; more than you will care to recall in the years to come. Only in rare, sweet moments have I ever dreamed that you would accept my love when you knew all, whatever you may have been to me before; but I never dreamed that from your lips could come such words of cruel contempt. I will say nothing of their truth or falsehood. It is enough for me that you can believe them."

The spring sunshine still streamed through the old window, but it touched the white, brave face no longer. The slow step died below upon the pavement, and as each echo fell heavily on Alice's heart, she longed to cry aloud.

"If I had been prepared," she sighed wearily, "or if I had really been what he has thought me, I should have — have said it differently."

"I think, mother," she whispered that evening, when her mother wondered at her wan face, "it would do me good to go back to Llanvriar for a little time. I promised to do so if I could. Will you let me go at once?" So the next morning Alice went.

IV.

A little of the old color had come back to Alice's cheek, and a little of the old lightness to her step, before she had been many days at Llanvriar. But she knew it was not the sea-air only which had brought them back. Sir Bulkley Gwynne was at home now, and on the very first evening of her arrival she had heard Owen's story from him. Thinking over this story as the generous old Squire had told it, Alice felt a great change had come over all her thoughts of Owen.

"When I go home again," she mused in silent happiness, "I shall see him and speak to him once more. And then, perhaps " The words died here; but it was plain that Alice, though she had longed to come, was looking forward already to this going home. And more than ever now she stood beside the window overlooking Ferrybank, and gazed with anxious, loving eyes on Owen's home.

"It strikes me, Miss Hope," remarked Mr. Gwynne, coming up to her at this window one day, "that you are not to leave Llanvriar without seeing a storm at sea. You say you have never seen one in your life."

"Never," answered Alice, shuddering unconsciously. "Well, I think my uncle's prognostic of this evening is likely to be verified; he always dreads this southwest wind. I am going across to Ferrybank to see how things are looking, for the gale increases fast and threatens to be violent."

"Is there a life-boat on the coast?" asked Alice, late that night, when she and Mrs. Gwynne sat listening to the wind as it rumbled through the trees, and moaned of its own dark deeds upon the sea.

"Yes; it was one of Sir Bulkley's generous gifts to Ferrybank, and many a life has been saved already. We have one of the ablest crews in Britain, so we always say, ready to go out at a minute's notice. Don't look so frightened, dear. Shall we go to bed?"

"Oh no!" pleaded Alice; "let us wait for Mr. Gwynne. It is too terrible a night for sleep or rest."

So they waited in the cheerful light and warmth, very silent and subdued, and sitting close together, except when Alice, in her great fear, rose and opened the shutters to look out through the splashed panes into the blackness of the tempestuous night. A night, indeed, it was, on which the bounds of heaven and earth were lost." As she stood so, there flashed before her a sudden, rapid light, darting upward for an instant and then gone. Alice knew it came from a vessel in distress, and with a cry of fear she threw open the window, bending her head against the wind, while the foam rushed up into her eyes. The solemn roar of the waters on the beach was heard beyond the thunder and the wind and rain, and the lightning, flashing swiftly over the angry sea, showed her for one moment the high and heavy line of surf. With a prayer upon her lips for those tossed helplessly upon the sea to-night, she closed the window and the shutters. Then the two friends sat quite still together, waiting and longing for the morning. Down upon the shore at Ferrybank a breathless, eager crowd had gathered, leaning hard against the wind, and blinded by the spray which dashed in showers to the wild shore. Gazing, gazing out into the darkness which hid the hungry sea, they waited while the wide doors of the life-boat house were unlocked and the great boat wheeled down to brave the storm. Amid all the mightier sounds Sir Bulkley Gwynne's voice rose clear and sharp, as, watching the trained crew take down their lifebelts, he counted them rapidly.

"One is missing-Hughes! Where is Hughes?"

No one had seen Hughes, but half a hundred voices called his name now.

"His place must be supplied," the Squire shouted, sharply and distinctly. "We dare not delay one second."

A young man, who had been active and prompt in his help, came into the light of the lamp which Sir Bulkley held. "I am ready, Sir Bulkley; let me go. You know that an oar is no new toy to me. If you refuse me I shall take out my father's boat. Listen! Could I stay upon the shore here while the drowning plead for help? In the rocket's light I saw the life-boat from the brig put out, and I know it could not pull through such a sea as this. me go, Sir Bulkley."

Let

As he spoke, the baronet, raising the lamp which he was placing in the boat, saw in his face the steady bravery which was so plain in his low, quick tones.

"Vaughan! I did not know you were here. I trust you in this as I have trusted you before. Go, if you think it

well."

"Thank God!" said Owen softly, as the Squire wrung his hand.

Amid the cries and prayers of the excited crowd, the strong, swift boat put out upon the dangerous surf, and all eyes followed its light, as it rose and fell upon the waves, and slowly neared that other faint white light which glowed on the masthead of the struggling vessel.

Only five miles from shore the brig would be, and now and then distinctly seen in the sudden blazing of the rockets; yet how the lights reeled and tossed and would

not meet!

"Sir Bulkley, I've been ill for weeks, sir," - the one member of the crew, who had been absent when the lifeboat started, came panting breathlessly upon the scene, "but I saw the rockets, and I couldn't lie upon my bed and leave my place here empty."

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"The boat is out on its duty, Hughes," the baronet answered, a little sternness in his voice, though he marked pityingly the man's pained breathing. Your place is filled by one who will do his duty even to death." "It shouldn't have been Owen Vaughan though," said Hughes, when the bystanders had told him of the launch. "His arms haven't been in lately for that sort of work, and they say that, two or three years ago, he was forbidden to use an oar. What could induce him to go when he knew that? Ah, there! see how she rides that heavy sea God bless her!”

-

V.

The waves sobbed gently and softly, tired of the passionate unrest of their long night; and, gazing upon them with wide and tearless eyes, as if their mellow plash bewildered her, Alice stood again at that window from which she could see Owen's cottage home.

It was quite late in the morning when Mr. Gwynne returned to tell of the scene upon the sea-shore last night. "After all, I'm thankful to tell you only one accident occurred," he said, wondering at the depth and sadness of Alice's sympathy, "but it was a painful one indeed. That young Vaughan, of whom my uncle told you so much, Miss Hope, happened to be at his mother's cottage. came only yesterday or the day before- and he volunteered to take one place in the life-boat, begged for it, indeed. Splendidly he handled his oar, so all the crew say, and was untiring in all he could do for the rescued. Strong and brave and ready, they said; and if you knew them you would understand what that means. Whether it was only that he worked too hard, or whether he hurt himself in some way, is not known, but when he tried to land he fell upon the beach. I helped to carry the poor fellow into his mother's cottage, and I shall not soon forget her face as it met his. The doctors talk of paralysis of the heart, and they say he must have known that such a task as he undertook last night would probably kill him. He had been warned in Germany, it seems. I'm glad to say they have not told the mother this, for they had before told her how he entreated my uncle to send him; and how could she reconcile the two facts?"

Every word entered deeply into Alice's sore heart, and when all had been told, one thought and longing held her. Alone and unobserved she slipped away and hurried to the river. The old ferry-man was busy enough this morning; the boat had been ceaselessly plying its way to and fro since daybreak. Eagerly Alice listened to the voices around her as she was pulled across, for all were talking of the storm, and all sĮ oke Owen's name.

When she reached the opposite shore, she walked on rapidly among the spars of the lost vessel and over the dismal line of drifted sea-weed, to that cottage on the beach, in which she knew that Owen lay. For a moment she felt she must be mistaken, because no crowd had gathered here, but one glance around showed her a group of people whispering together at a short distance, and unconsciously thanking them in her heart for the silent respect thus shown, she knocked softly at the half-closed door.

"I am an old friend of Mr. Vaughan's," said Alice very softly, as she looked appealingly into the face of Owen's sister. "May I see him?"

Duddgha's eyes, swollen and tired with weeping, fixed themselves for a moment wonderingly upon the lady who said this a lady with a beautiful pale face and eyes as tired as her own, quietly and simply dressed, yet elegant as few visitors at the gloomy cottage had ever looked to the girl before. Without answering, she led Alice into the kitchen, and then stood in hesitation beside the window, where a bunch of primroses and wild white violets drooped as if they felt the sorrow of the house.

"My brother is very, very ill," she whispered; every word uttered in keenest pain. "Do you think you had

better see him?"

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'Yes, oh yes, if I may," replied Alice, her voice most earnest and entreating.

Without another word, Duddgha walked on noiselessly to an inner room; gently drew her weeping mother from the bedside, and stood aside for Alice to pass in.

The end was very, very near. Alice saw that, even in her first yearning gaze.

"Owen!" she cried. But she could say no other word, and only fell upon her knees beside the bed, and looked at him with all her heart surging in her eyes.

"Alice, once more together," he whispered, and the look upon his face was one of perfect peace, no agony and no regret. Together at the end. The distance that lay between us, dear, is all travelled now."

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Kneeling there in the presence of the great Leveller, and looking back upon her life and his, Alice felt how slight had been this distance of which he spoke, yet how impossible to pass it now. The barrier which had stood between them when she felt herself above him had been raised by her own hand, she owned, with a sobbing pain at her heart. Now, with that wonderful glory on his face, he stood immeasurably above her; and this barrier was from the hand of God.

And still she could not speak to him one word; only her eyes, so full of love and pain and penitence, told all.

His two kind friends were with him at the end. Old Dr. Hope, who had only the day before received the short, sad letter in which Owen told his story and resigned his appointment in the grammar-school, was in time to tell him, with dim eyes, how he had come himself on purpose to tempt him back to the place he had filled so well; and Sir Bulkley Gwynne was there too, walking quietly in the outer room, and muttering that the sunshine on the water dazzled him.

The eyes upon the pillow, bright with unutterable happiness, read the yearning love upon those faces gathered in the silent room, and read it in that highest light which made all clear.

Softly, through the open doorway, came the soothing murmur of the sea. Away in the wide blue above the open windows, a lark's song faltered towards the unreached heaven. The only shadow on the bright spring noon was the hushed shadow of the outspread wings.

VICTOR HUGO'S "'93." 1

We

ONE must be cold to be critical in reading Hugo, and that is the difficulty with so powerful a genius. He is the only writer of his time who can venture upon something of an epical narrative, and trust to an abounding energy of imaginative forces to keep his reader credulous and breathless upon a theme that is a morality painted in unrelieved black and white. The taste of the age is for studies in realism, which have no broad scope. should bear in mind that the subjective writer dares more and risks more than the analysis of human nature unravelling intricate pectoral complexities. Victor Hugo does not stand in need of pleading on his behalf. He has obtained the widest popularity in Europe. He is, however, open to a multitude of charges brought against him for the most part without consideration of the large aim of his work and what it accomplishes. He has been called the poet of humanity; and inasmuch as he is a master of the primitive emotions, and is possessed of a beneficent spirit, some such title may be granted him. It is possible, of course, to be gigantesque and not a giant, and at a reperusal of him, his mannerisms, the way he caps himself with particular words, and his aptitude for swelling to huge size upon all occasions, have a whimsical effect on us, perhaps approximating to that produced by his famous képi on the French Legitimist faction. But he is never below the mark of a great occasion. His poetic sense of tenderness, beauty, strangeness, and sublimity is supreme, and in expression he is at the present day unrivalled. He perpetually seeks to indicate an infinite beyond the visible sky, a depth lower than the grasping roots of his narrative. He conceives a story to develop an idea, and the idea is the climax of the story. He is the urgent dramatist of a sermon. Shakespeare was not; Walter Scott had no doctrines to impart. But it is not obligatory that one preeminent poet should be governed by the example of his peers. The point is whether he has fire in him so to animate his sermon as to enchain attention. Whether the idea it contains is worth meditating upon at the close, is a subsidiary point. It is a pity if we think the poet all wrong; still, so long as his characters are full of it, and naturally moved by it, and they buoy up the superincumbent idea without his intervention, and human nature is 1 Qualrevingt-treize. Par Victor Hugo. Paris: Lévy Freres. 1874.

not harshly manipulated in working it out, we ought to be satisfied. The task is immense, but Hugo loves and challenges tasks of that kind. He is more at home with them than if he were writing a common tale to tickle the ears and the senses.

He could not have chosen a subject better suited to his genius and his style than the war between the Republic of 93 and the Breton Royalists. We have wondered why he did not take a framework from the French Revolution. Here, at last, we have an episode of the Revolution, and some sketches of the men that made the thunder; from which it is evident that he has read diligently for matter. The struggle of La Vendée belongs to him hereditarily. "Cette guerre mon père l'a faite, et j'en puis parler." The tremendous contrasts demanded by his genius were ready for him. He had but to invent a stern aristocratic chief, Marquis de Lantenac, "prince Breton;" a young Republican leader, grand-nephew to the marquis, Vicomte Gauvain; an inveterate Democratic ex-curé, formerly tutor to Gauvain in the château La Tourgue, a delegate of the Committee of the Convention, appointed to watch Gauvain to restrain his one fault in the eyes of the triumvirate, Robespierre, Danton, and Marat, - and the story was in motion. Lantenac has the craftiness of an old general, Gauvain the boldness of a young captain, says Robespierre. But he has a fault, says Marat - clemency. "C'est ferme au combat et mou après. Ca donne dans l'indulgence ça pardonne, ça fait grâce, ça protége les religieuses et les nonnes, ça sauve les femmes et les filles des aristocrates, ça relâche les prisonniers, ça met en liberté les prêtres.' 'Grave faute,' murmura Cimourdain. 'Crime,' dit Marat. Quelquefois,' dit Danton. vent,' dit Robespierre. Presque toujours,' reprit Marat. 'Quand on a affaire aux ennemis de la patrie, toujours,' dit Cimourdain." It is seen that Cimourdain can surpass Marat in his inexorable severity, and thus, in spite of his passionate love for his old pupil, we have a warning of the catastrophe. Gauvain's clemency is the key of the story. He is the magnanimous Republican. In Hugo's "Quatrevingt-treize there is no magnanimous Royalist. Lantenac knows not mercy. It would have been as well to be just. If we are to put faith in the historical records of the war, General Bonchamps saved the lives of his Republican prisoners at St. Florent, amounting to thousands; and Henri de la Rochejacquelein liberated an army at Saumur upon their simple parole. The war of La Vendée was foolish, fruitless, and sanguinary, and Hugo's epigrams against it are not ill placed; but on the part of some of the Breton chiefs it was often chivalrously waged. Marceau and Hoche were of a nature to have vied with them, no doubt, if the Convention had permitted. The Convention was fighting for life, and meant extermination to its enemies. The Convention was under the dominion of an idea; and so is Hugo. Consequently we cannot expect pure justice; an idea can be a blinding light. The story, the sermon, and the moral would have lost nothing by the introduction of a Royalist contrast to Lantenac.

'Sou

Lantenac is the incarnation of the ancient Breton nobility, heroical in aspect, devoted to his King, and the honor of his house and name, to whatsoever has a claim on him as far as he is capable of understanding it, relentless, careless of blood, a great figure. But in two instances we find him singularly dwarfed. He accepted the higher duty in leaving the ship to gain the coast when the Claymore was going into action without a chance of a favorable issue. Yet, after landing, he does nothing to justify the expectations of his commandership formed from his behavior on board the vessel and in the boat with Halmalo the seaman. He begins by shooting women, and we see him in a series of flights dragging about with him as hostages three little infants of a peasant mother whom he has committed to death. These children two boys, and a girl of eighteen months have been found with their mother starving in the wood of La Saudraie by the celebrated Parisian battalion of the Bonnets Rouges, and adopted. The business of the story, and of the sermon and the moral, requires that these three little ones of a

peasant mother shall be shut up in Lantenac's château La Tourgue, whither ultimately he flies with them, under pressure of no strategical necessity that we can see, but because the novelist must have it so. The children are destined to elevate Lantenac to a superhuman height of heroism; they are to be observed by the unshot remnant of the battalion of the Bonnets Rouges and by the resuscitated mother in the burning library of the château, and they are to furnish an opportunity for some of Hugo's loveliest and forcefullest writing a picture in black and white more effective than any that even he has yet given us. But an aristocratic Lantenac retaining these peasant children as hostages for a rainy day is much degraded, and our fatal second reading shows a flaw in the conception of a story that hangs upon such an adjustment of circumstances. In the next instance, Lantenac being in the grip of Cimourdain, the novelist has decreed his escape. That he should accept Gauvain's sacrifice of himself is not in disaccord with his character and with the opinion he entertains of his high value to the Royalist cause, though nothing has been shown us of that value except his name as a rallying cry and a snare for the peasantry. The manner of the acceptation is what we object to. That Gauvain may shine forth brilliantly white, Lantenac is exhibited really too black. Gauvain, without any argumentation on the subject, has quietly listened to the old noble's contemptuous raillery, then on a sudden thrown his cloak and hood over the prisoner, and pushed him out of a dungeon he did not expect to leave but to march to the guillotine next morning. Concealed by the mantle of the commander in-chief of the Republican force, in the dim light of a horn lantern, Lantenac passes the corps de garde, and, "non sans s'y heurter la tête plus d'une fois" (he was careful in his going out), traverses the breach made by the besiegers in his castle:

La sentinelle, croyant voir Gauvain, lui présenta les armes. Quand il fut dehors, ayant sous ses pieds l'herbe des champs, à deux cent pas la forêt, et devant lui l'espace, la nuit, la liberté, la vie, il s'arrêta et demeura un moment immobile comme un homme qui s'est laissé faire, qui a cédé à la surprise, et qui, ayant profité d'une porte ouverte, cherche s'il a bien ou mal agi, hésite avant d'aller plus loin, et donne audience à une dernière pensée. Après quelques secondes de rêverie attentive, il leva sa main droite, fit claquer son médius contre son pouce, et dit, Ma foi!" Et il s'en alla.

So good-by to the ancienne noblesse! Lantenac had time to reflect that Gauvain's generosity would be an unpardonable offence to his masters, but a fillip of the fingers is the sum of his thoughts. The cynical indifference in him seems malignant in Hugo; for the extreme contrast of Republican and Royalist must be intended to have a political significance. Thus did the nobles, thus the sons of the Revolution! Gauvain undergoes the agony of another tempête sous un crâne before he can decide how to act. Lantenac is not in the slightest degree disturbed. We do not say that an old-fashioned French noble must needs be sympathetic with the magnanimity of an adversary in the ranks of a despised and detested party. We protest that it is politically a violent and unfair contraposition; and our literary judgment objects to a Marquis de Lantenac, so finely sketched in the opening chapters, scouring the country with three dear infants (as Hugo paints them), but in reality-looking on them with the eyes of a French Royalist noble - particularly insignificant little tatterdemalions, as hostages, expressly that he may redeem himself in the estimation of the reader by rescuing them from the extremity of fire at the risk of his life. The contrivance is poor and bad.

The descriptions are marvellous for beauty and for splendor. The wild career of the 24-pounder carronade on the main deck of the Claymore will class among the unparalleled passages of Hugo. It is here that this grand imagination plays its first fantaisie : —

Cette masse court sur ses roues, a des mouvements de bille de billiard, penche avec le roulis, plonge avec le tantage, va, vient, s'arrête, parait méditer (seems to bethink itself), reprend sa