Labourers probably may be induced to keep poultry. The wealthy will perhaps find it advisable to abstain from lamb and veal, or at any rate the price of both will confine young meats to the consumption of that class. Furthermore, the entire produce of the land, as far as may be, will be spent in rearing and fattening stock.

sons.

This visitation has already taught us some wholesome lesWe are even now willing-nay, anxious-to abolish the cowhouse system of towns for one more consonant with physiological experience. The miserable barrier which has been set up to protect the consumer from the cupidity of cattledealers and butchers no longer satisfies us; and when this is undergoing systematic revolution, the private slaughter-houses will probably not escape the besom. The regulations affecting the imported supply of cattle must undergo marked improvement. Finally, the change to a more pastoral economy, though momentarily retarded, will proceed with redoubled celerity when this plague has abated. If these be the results of the cattle plague of 1865, we may have reason hereafter to look with more satisfaction on the quarterly returns of the Registrar-General and the agricultural statistics of the kingdom.

ART. IX.-1. L'Invasion, ou le fou Yégof. Par ERCKMANNCHATRIAN. Paris: 1862.

2. Confidences d'un Joueur de Clarinette. Par ERCKMANNCHATRIAN. Paris: 1863.

3. Madame Thérèse. Par ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. Paris: 1863.

4. Le Conscrit de 1813. Par ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. Paris: 1864.

5. Waterloo (suite du Conscrit). Par ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. Paris: 1865.

6. L'homme du Peuple. Par ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. Paris:

1865.

IT

T is a significant, and certainly not a very gratifying fact, that while French novels are extensively read in this country, especially by women, they are very rarely openly discussed or reviewed. The reading of modern French romances seems to be generally considered among us as a venial sin, which may be indulged in without great danger but which can scarcely be

VOL. CXXIII. NO. CCLI.

Q

spoken of with propriety. We are not disposed, on the present occasion, to discuss the soundness of this theory. The first proposition, we think, is sufficiently refuted by its companion. It is rarely a salutary practice, for body or for mind, to do that which we do not care to avow openly or to recommend to others. Nor need the explanation of the fact arrest us long. It lies on the surface. There is a vast amount of misused power of invention, clever writing, and good sense scattered about in many of the worst French novels-qualities which a conscientious literary judge is bound to recognise ; but the general tendency of these productions is so mischievous that no conscientious literary judge can desire to bestow even qualified praise which would extend the number of readers of such books in this country. French novelists need seek no other reason for that unwilling silence of English reviewers of which they so often complain.

To speak frankly, the literature of fiction in France presents about as surprising an amount of adulterated and deleterious intellectual food as was ever offered to the public appetite in any country or at any time, especially if we take into consideration the superior refinement or at any rate the superior fastidiousness of the atmosphere which surrounds modern novelists as compared to that in which their apparently coarser predecessors lived. The so-called realistic school, which is at present completely dominant on the other side of the Channel, exhibits a peculiarly offensive mixture of life-like commonplace and unimpassioned vice. Its pictures possess, so to speak, that almost tangible immorality which belongs to a certain class of tableaux vivants. There are two lines in M. Victor Hugo's recent work entitled Chansons des Rues et des Bois' which embody in characteristic form the idea we would wish to convey. In one of the pieces which compose that most wonderful collection of lyrical absurdities and vulgarities, the author, after asserting that poetry may be found in all places and in all subjects-and so far we are inclined to agree with him-seeks to prove that the doubtful nymphs of Paris and its suburban places of recreation may offer the same charms to a good-tempered poet or philosopher as the dryads and sylvan haunts of ancient Greece. He exclaims:

'Ça, que le bourgeois fraternise

Avec les satyres cornus!'

If we may be allowed to say so, it is this odious fraternisation of the bourgeois and the horned satyr,' constantly going on in French novels of the realistic school, which

renders them so unfit for public discussion. In Truth resides supreme power, but within the domains of Art even Truth must be content to rule constitutionally and to reign with limitations. This is not the opinion of French realism, and as M. Hugo is one of its most approved masters, we are tempted to borrow from him once more. It will be seen by his recurring pertinaciously to the image we have already quoted, that he considers it, like ourselves, a very appropriate and striking one. He says, in another poem, entitled Réalité,'

'La vérité n'a pas de bornes.

Grâce au grand Pan, dieu bestial,
Fils, le réel montre ses cornes

Sur le front bleu de l'idéal.'

There is little to be seen of the azure brow of the Ideal' when it is overshadowed by those terrible realistic horns, though they be those of a god-un dieu bestial, it is true.

It must not be supposed, however, that no attempt has been made to stem the current. On the contrary, most praiseworthy efforts have recently been made to please the public taste of France by nobler means, but they have not been attended with much success. Some well-meaning novelists have been wanting in talent-a common fault, alas! among well-meaning persons; others have attempted too much, and, from fear of over excitement, have fallen into hopeless nambypamby. They have injudiciously applied the total abstinence principle to the confirmed dram-drinkers of sensation novels, and seen their milk-and-water dilutions disdainfully rejected. Others, again, have thrown themselves too violently into reaction, and have run counter to the realist tendencies of the age even in those points in which they were best justified. In a word, among French writers of fiction in the present day, the two authors whose joint name heads our article stand almost alone as having at once steadfastly resisted the corrupt taste of the French novel-reading public, evinced great literary talent, and obtained wide-spread popularity. This enviable distinction justifies us amply in devoting a few pages to an investigation of the means by which they have deserved and achieved success.

For a long while the signature Erckmann-Chatrian was supposed by the general public to be that of a single writer; and it was only about four years ago that the authors, M. Emile Erckmann and M. Alexandre Chatrian, informed their readers that the numerous books of fiction that had been already published under the joint name were the fruits of their friendly

6

collaboration. That collaboration, as they have themselves described it to one of their French critics, is of a very peculiar kind. It would appear that the labour of authorship is equally shared by the two writers, but that there is, properly speaking, no division of labour. We hold the pen by turns,' they say, ' and we should be sorely puzzled, as regards many pages of our works, to say by which of us they were written.' Certain is it that the most careful observer can detect no unevenness or variety of style which would betray a change of authorship. We believe this to be a very rare instance of collaboration among novelists. In dramatic compositions, partnerships of this kind are far more common, and more easy to understand. It must be said, however, that the two writers were born in the same place, and were, consequently, surrounded by the same early associations, that they have in general depicted only what they have seen or learnt by oral tradition in their native province, and that their style is so simple and natural that, to preserve unity, it would only be necessary for both writers to forswear all affectation and pretension. Still, with all these allowances, the case is curious, and will seem inexplicable to many writers.

MM. Erckmann-Chatrian-for we must give them the joint appellation by which they are pleased to be known in honour of their literary union and long-tried friendship—have been some years before the public. Their first work, L'illustre Docteur Matthéus,' > * was published in 1859; and since then they have written at least a dozen volumes of novels or tales. Their early works attracted comparatively little notice; but the circle of readers has gradually and steadily widened, and at the present day few names are better known than theirs to the literary world of Paris. Never, it must be added, did popularity keep pace more evenly with merit; and improvement on the part of the authors has exactly coincided with increasing favour on the part of the public. Le Conscrit de 1813' and Waterloo,' published in 1864 and 1865, are undoubtedly the gems of their collection. L'homme du Peuple,'

French works of fiction are generally published, in the first instance, in the feuilleton of a newspaper or in the pages of a review-or, as we should say here, of a magazine. It may be encouraging to some aspirants to literary fame to know that we have it, on undoubted authority, that the first work of two of the most popular authors of the present day was rejected by all the newspapers of Paris, and by sixty-three provincial journals! It was ultimately published in the Revue de Paris.'

of which the first part has just appeared, is far from coming up to the same mark. Still there has been no such falling off as to forbid the hope that the authors of Le Conscrit may afford us again, on a future occasion, as much pleasure as we have derived from that incomparable little volume.

Our intention is not to deal minutely with all MM. Erckmann-Chatrian's works, but to call attention more especially to those that may be termed their national novels, in which their object appears to have been to set before their countrymen, under the most striking because the most truthful and simple colours, the miseries of war. No more useful lesson could be read to the France of the Second Empire-to the country which has shown so marked a disposition to revive many of the Napoleonic traditions. No lesson, we may add, was ever given in a form more attractive or more acceptable to national susceptibilities. But before striking this fruitful vein which they have worked so prosperously, our authors had given to the public, as we have said, several volumes; and one of the commendations we would bestow on their writings applies equally to them all from first to last. They have painted no scenes and no characters with which they were not well acquainted. It would seem at first sight as though this were common praise—at least it should be so-but, in reality, it is praise rarely deserved by novelists. Most writers of fiction, it is true, recognise as a rule that the principal traits of their story and the characters of their heroes should offer some appearance of probability, or we will be indulgent and say possibility; but, as regards minor incidents, scenery, and secondary personages, they allow themselves all latitude, and seem to consider that the word fiction should be interpreted as meaning that which is completely invented, and on which truth, observation, and memory have no claims. Clergymen's daughters, writing under the shadow of the paternal parsonage, revel in scenes of Parisian dissipation and luxury; young barristers defy the dangers of the most fearful shipwrecks; and quiet authoresses, who have never seen a deed or entered a court of law, hang the interest of their stories on the most intricate will cases-more hopelessly intricate, indeed, than the writer can well imagine. MM. Erckmann-Chatrian have fallen in no such error; and they have been well rewarded-as all novelists ever have been and ever will be-for standing resolutely on their native, wellknown ground.

.The two writers were born in one of those eastern departments of France which formed part of the old duchy of Lorraine, and they have faithfully depicted the manners of the simple, hardy,