These

vegetables as parsley, kidney-beans, shalots, and pot-herbs. houses have been some months completed, and thirty families are now installed in them, under circumstances that ensure a continuance of the comfort and the cleanliness they enjoy, notwithstanding the number of the inhabitants. M. Dupont always says that he has, unlike landlords generally who let rooms to operatives and their families, nothing to complain of; and attributes the happy results, of which he is so justly proud, to the fact that all the tenants belong to the same establishment, and have a direct interest in making everything go on as smoothly as possible; each being a bond fide partner in it, and as such a sharer in its profits. To doubt the word of a person enjoying such a reputation as the founder of this very successful scheme, would be to surpass in scepticism the Parisians themselves. But for the benefit of those who do not know him either personally or by reputation, it may be added that he is so perfectly satisfied with the practical working of his organisation ouvrière, and so earnest in completing it, that he has ordered plans to be drawn for seventy other workmen's houses, containing lodgings for two families, and having two gardens attached to them. Men, women, and children are all included, and have each an interest in the industrial programme which M. Dupont has so happily inaugurated and carried out. He is furthermore of opinion that numerous trades will admit of such an organisation as he has planned and executed; but none better than printing. He also answers the objections made against the printing trade being thrown open to women on sanitary grounds, and the injury their delicate frames would suffer were they employed about printing premises, by appealing as usual to some very striking fact. From 500 to 600 people are employed in the Imprimerie Dupont at Clichy, 104 of whom are women, and not one of the latter have hitherto complained of increased physical weakness, or the atmosphere in which they work. As yet, females have not been hired there as compositors; but M. Dupont has decided upon making an alteration in this respect in his ateliers. No sensible diminution of wages has in consequence of the introduction of women taken place in this model establishment; which, however, is so organised, that were they to receive less wages for their work than the men employed beside them, it would be made up to them in the form of dividends.

A M. Guirandet, a master printer at Neuilly, followed M. Paul Dupont, and answered not only M. Armand Lévy, but the objections put forward by the society of typographers against women being admitted as members of the "trade." In the first place, they said, it would be impossible to regulate new tariffs of wages, were female printers to become generally employed, as they would not admit female delegates, or men elected by women, to join in their deliberations. Secondly, that when female compositors would have served sufficient apprenticeship, those now enjoying a monopoly of the printing trade would be dismissed, because women would, on account of the

great competition they would create, accept cheaper wages, and do the work as well as it is necessary to be done.

From M. Guirandet's letter, it appears that the Victoria Press was not the first which gave employment chiefly to women. The Imprimerie Guirandet has been forty years in existence, and its late director, the father of the present, was greatly esteemed as a business man and a philanthropist. In the year 1857, he saw a starving woman in the streets; and fearing to admit her into his house in the quality of a servant, but finding that she had, when employed as a paper folder, picked up some knowledge of the arrangement of type, he determined upon relieving her distress, and rescuing her from destruction, by hiring her as a compositor at the same wages as he ordinarily gave. A strike was the result, and the typographic society protested against the innovation; but M. Guirandet said that when everybody talked so much about liberty as was then the fashion, he was at liberty to hire an outcast woman at the same wages as a workman, if he chose to do so. But the tradesmen who struck were inexorable, and M. Guirandet was just as obstinate. He would not accept their ultimatum, and instead of compromising, sent to the provinces for robust country girls to do the heavy work, and hired nimble fingered and intelligent Parisiennes to do all that required dexterous manipulation, and anything approaching literary business. M. Guirandet says naïvely, "Since that period I had the misfortune to lose my father, but I have followed his wanderings, and retained in my ateliers his improved printing staff, to whom I give, as he did, the same wages I would give to men for the work they do. I find that everything goes on better in my establishment than in the majority of others of the same nature; and that in following the example set me by my father, I am neither preparing for a diminution of wages, nor for 'a misery that will be common to man and woman.'

XI.-NOTICES OF BOOKS.

French Women of Letters. By Julia Kavanagh, Author of "Natalie," "Adele," &c. Hurst and Blackett. London.

MISS KAVANAGH, in these biographical sketches, and her clever analyses of the novels of these French authoresses, has produced a book with the charm of a romance and the deeper interest of reality. The amount of reading she must have gone through is something startling, when we consider that Mademoiselle de Scudéry's romances alone were in "ten volumes apiece, and fifteen hundred pages a volume;" and that these have been so read and studied, as to put us in possession not only of their plots and subjects, the stories and their bearings, but to present us with graphic sketches of the characters themselves, their influence upon each

other, with much of the fine gradations of feeling and passion which were the great charm of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's writings. As the skilful painter or sculptor will reduce a picture or statue, giving all the poetry, passion, or beauty of the original, so Miss Kavanagh reproduces, in petto, in these sketches of French Women of Letters and their works, all that made them what they were; and as we find room in our modern houses for statuette copies of the world's wonders in art, so will many among us be thankful to give place on our bookshelves to these two volumes, which present a faithful epitome of more than two centuries of literary life and labor, already fast fading from knowledge and remembrance.

"No French novelists," says Miss Kavanagh, "were more eminent or popular in their day than Mademoiselle de Scudéry and Madame de Staël, though two centuries divided them." Miss Kavanagh's book commences with the one and ends with the other, embracing in its course Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Tencin, Madame Riccoboni, Madame de Genlis, Madame de Charrière, Madame de Krüdener, and Madame Cottin, most of them well-known by name to English readers, though we imagine very few are either perfectly or imperfectly read in the majority of their works. Nor is it reasonable to expect they should be, for if, as Miss Kavanagh says, and Madame Dudevant said before her, even more emphatically, "novels have become the teachers for good or for evil of many," the lessons they convey, though generalized in proportion to the genius of the writer, must, for the most part, be specially applicable to the age in which they are written. The most successful novels of the present day are undeniably those which bear upon some one or more of the peculiar phases of civilization through which we are at present passing; and we suspect Mademoiselle de Scudéry recognised this element of success when she chose for her great work, "The Grand Cyrus," a "remote age, historical characters of classical fame, and some known events; and out of these fashioned a romance on which she grafted the feelings, manners, and language of her own times," —a mode of proceeding which Miss Kavanagh, from an art point of view, considers as "offensive to modern taste."

"The historical characters, places, and events, are made to fit the men and women, the localities, the incidents, and the feelings of Louis the Fourteenth's court, reign, and kingdom. If anything recommended the Great Cyrus' to its cotemporaries, it was this want of classic truth, for which Mademoiselle de Scudéry substituted French reality. But strange to say, neither the author nor her friends were aware of her deficiencies in this respect." Is Miss Kavanagh quite sure of this? for it does not follow, because Mademoiselle de Scudéry "knew on what principles a good historical romance should be framed," that she was, as Miss Kavanagh argues, "unconscious of having violated the laws she laid down." Well-known laws of literature and art, then as now, we fear, are

apt to be overlaid or violated in compliance with the subtle and more arbitrary law of public taste and requirement, upon which success or failure depend, and which is certainly not amenable to high art.

We give extracts from the beginning and end of the biographical sketch of this lady, as evidence of the taste and feeling with which Miss Kavanagh has achieved her task.

MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDÉRY.

"The name of Mademoiselle de Scudéry has remained on record as a striking and memorable instance of the vicissitudes inherent to literary fame. What was she not in her own day? What is she now in ours? Her fifty volumes of poetry and prose were the delight of the most exquisitely polished society France has yet known, for elegant pleasures and refined conversations were its great occupation. They were translated into every European language, and found their way, it is asserted, into Eastern tongues. Her discourse on Glory won the first prize of eloquence bestowed by the French Academy, and she replaced Helen Cornaro amongst the Ricovrati of Padua. None of the women who have written during the last two centuries received more honours, more flattering distinctions, and more substantial rewards, than fell to the lot of Madeleine de Scudéry. Madame de Staël alone has been more influential since then, but she has not been more famous. Her fame, indeed, instead of decreasing with time, has assumed that calm power which promises that it shall be enduring; but her influence and much of her celebrity sprang from two sources, which poverty and universal love closed on Mademoiselle de Scudéry. One was born poor, wrote for her daily bread, and kept aloof from the political contests of her day. The other, the daughter of a wealthy and popular minister, the personal enemy of Napoleon, reared in stirring times, full of ardour and passion in her opinions, waged no contemptible war against the mightiest of sovereigns; and to her prominent position, and that long enmity, more than to her fine genius, she owed her world-known celebrity. But little has it availed Mademoiselle de Scudéry that she once delighted fine minds and delicate wits; two hundred years have scarcely passed since she wrote that famous 'Clelia,' which, with its map of the kingdom of Tenderness, has proved so fatal to her name. 'Clelia,' celebrated by the sarcasms of Boileau and Molière, two pitiless enemies, and powerful as they were pitiless, and which the world knows now by their anathemas, for what they spared it has forgotten. And yet, when it appeared at the sign of the 'Palm,' in the Mercer's Gallery of the old Palais de Justice, the great publishing world of the day, it got as cordial a welcome as Corinne or Cecilia ever excited in the last age. Princesses received with transport every one of its ten volumes-for it took years to appear; fine ladies and fastidious gentlemen, aye, even Boileau himself, then a

young man, lingered with delight over these seven thousand pages of lively or tender controversy. And now, strange and pitiable contrast! it would take years, a lifetime perhaps, to collect a complete edition of Mademoiselle de Scudéry's works in that city where her fame reached its fulness; saddest of all, her name has remained as a byword with a posterity that has never cared to read her, and a few sins of taste have condemned irretrievably one of the most ingenious, delicate, and refined minds that ever were reflected in fiction.

"The sorrows inseparable from a long life beset Mademoiselle de Scudéry's old age: she survived almost all her friends, and paid the inevitable penalty of reaching ninety-four. But all that could soften so prolonged an existence was granted to her. To the last, she received distinctions, honors, and munificent proofs of the value set on her person and her writings. Even whilst she was with her brother, presents from anonymous friends often dropped in of a morning; and when she was alone, pensions from crowned heads were one of the substantial acknowledgments her merit received; Christina of Sweden gave her a pension and her portrait; Cardinal Mazarin left her an annuity by his testament; Chancellor Boucherat granted her another, which his successor confirmed; and, finally, Louis XIV., on the solicitation of Madame de Maintenon, gave her, in 1683, a pension of two thousand livres, which she enjoyed eighteen years.

"She had long been ailing when she took cold in the spring of 1701. Severe injudicious religious austerities in which she persisted, spite her advanced years, helped the complaint. She rose as usual on the morning of the second of June, but was soon seized with faintness. She felt that her hour was come, and with great firmness said, 'Il faut mourir.' She asked for her crucifix, embraced it, and gazed at it long, uniting herself to the sufferings and the passion of Christ. Her confessor was sent for, but she was too deaf to heed or hear him; he put the crucifix in her hands, as the most eloquent of all exhortations in that last hour. It was heavy, and one of the persons present attempted to take it from her, but her dying hands clasped it firmly; she pressed it to her bosom and gently expired, whilst the priest was in the act of giving her absolution.

"There is something in that calm, resigned, and religious death, which crowns nobly and fitly a life, long, pure, and honorably spent. Mademoiselle de Scudéry's works have long ceased to be read, and may have deserved their fate; but, if she unfortunately helped to pervert the literary taste of her age, or rather, if she had not power, genius, and originality enough to reform it, she conferred incalculable benefits on the moral tone of literature. She put into books what Madame de Rambouillet and the 'Précieuses' had introduced into society-modesty, and with