ficiality, and is at once classical and modern.' These formulæ serve fairly well to express the essence of Alphonse Daudet's work and to record the residual impression left by many years of acquaintance with his varied books of fiction.

VICTOR CHERBULIEZ.

THERE are readers not a few to whom the death of Victor Cherbuliez proved a loss altogether out of proportion to his importance as a figure in French literature. I could have better spared a better man' was the feeling, if not the utterance, of the many thousands to whom the long series of his novels had been an unfailing source of entertainment and delight. The appearance of a new book by this talented writer never brought with it the thrill of a prospective sensation, and never led, as far as we are aware, to any excited public discussion, ranging its friends and its enemies in two opposing camps. But the promise of each new novel (after the first few had given evidence of the writer's quality) aroused in the novelist's ever-widening audience a sense of quiet anticipatory satisfaction that was, perhaps, as fine a tribute to his merit as the loud outcries which heralded the books of the more conspicuous among his contemporaries.

No less than twenty-two novels came from

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the pen of this industrious writer during the thirty-five years of his literary activity. Most of them made their first appearance in La Revue des Deux Mondes,' for which periodical Cherbuliez became as much of a stand-by as George Sand had been during the preceding quartercentury or more. The list of the novels is as follows: Le Comte Kostia,' Prosper Randoce,' Paule Méré,' Le Roman d'une Honnête Femme,'' Le Grand-Œuvre,' 'L'Aventure de Ladislas Bolski,' La Revanche de Joseph Noirel,' Méta Holdenis,' 'Miss Rovel,' 'Le Fiancé de Mlle. Saint-Maur,' Samuel Brohl et Cie.,' 'L'Idée de Jean Têterol,'Amours Fragiles,' Noirs et Rouges,' 'La Ferme du Choquard,' Olivier Maugant,' 'La Bête,' La Vocation du Comte Ghislain,' Une Gageure,' 'Le Secret du Précepteur,' Après Fortune Faite,' and 'Jacquine Vanesse.' A number of these novels have been translated into English, but the majority, we should say, have not thus been made accessible to those who do not read the original. And, in our opinion, an enterprising publisher in England or the United States

would find his account in a complete uniform edition of this series of books.

In attempting to characterize the work of Cherbuliez, it will be best to begin with a few negative statements. We have already said that his novels are not sensational; this statement may be amplified by noting that they offer no devotion to the goddess of lubricity, that they are neither erotic nor neurotic, and that they are concerned with problems only as the novelist finds problems useful for the illustration of character. Their delineative power is, moreover, not remarkable; it betrays the hand of the mastercraftsman rather than that of the creative artist, and the entire gallery of figures includes few that remain living in the memory. When we compare the most studied of the types offered us by Cherbuliez with even the minor types of the 'Comédie Humaine,' this distinction becomes so obvious that it needs no argument. It may also be said that the novels of Cherbuliez have little or no atmosphere; they have instead a great deal of careful local coloring, and over them all is shed the dry light of the philosophical intelligence.

Essaying now a more positive sort of criticism, we must emphasize once more the unfailing interest of these books. The characters are galvanized into just enough of vitality to produce a fairly complete illusion when they are before us. They are, furthermore, arranged in extremely interesting relations with one another, and the ingenuity of the author in devising new situations is really extraordinary. An additional element of freshness is provided by the great variety of scenes to which we are introduced, and by the extent to which characters of other nationalities than the author's own are made to figure. The descriptive powers of the novelist are admirable, and we 'skip' in reading him at the peril of missing something delightful or important. In fact, his readers soon learn that they cannot afford to 'skip' him, for his books have almost no padding, and are finished in the minutest details. Economy of material, united with crispness in expression and deftness in the lesser touches of his brush, form a combination of qualities that go far toward explaining his charm. That he is both a man of the world and a scholar trained in the processes of exact thought are two further