’Of the three stories which adorn this part of the book, Le Cachet Rouge is the loveliest, La Canne au Jonc the noblest.  Never was anything more sweetly naive than parts of Le Cachet Rouge. La pauvre petite femme, she was just such a person as my ——.  And then the farewell injunctions,—­du pauvre petite mare,—­the nobleness and the coarseness of the poor captain.  It is as original as beautiful, c’est dire beaucoup.  In La Canne au Jonc, Collingwood, who embodies the high feeling of duty, is taken too raw out of a book,—­his letters to his daughters.  But the effect on the character of le Capitaine Renaud, and the unfolding of his interior life, are done with the spiritual beauty of Manzoni.

’Cinq-Mars is a romance in the style of Walter Scott.  It is well brought out, figures in good relief, lights well distributed, sentiment high, but nowhere exaggerated, knowledge exact, and the good and bad of human nature painted with that impartiality which becomes a man, and a man of the world.  All right, no failure anywhere; also, no wonderful success, no genius, no magic.  It is one of those works which I should consider only excusable as the amusement of leisure hours; and, though few could write it, chiefly valuable to the writer.

’Here he has arranged, as in a bouquet, what he knew,—­and a great deal it is,—­of the time of Louis XIII., as he has of the Regency in “La Marechale d’Ancre,”—­a much finer work, indeed one of the best-arranged and finished modern dramas.  The Leonora Galigai is better than anything I have seen in Victor Hugo, and as good as Schiller.  Stello is a bolder attempt.  It is the history of three poets,—­Gilbert, Andre Chenier, Chatterton.  He has also written a drama called Chatterton, inferior to the story here.  The “marvellous boy” seems to have captivated his imagination marvellously.  In thought, these productions are worthless; for taste, beauty of sentiment, and power of description, remarkable.  His advocacy of the poets’ cause is about as effective and well-planned as Don Quixote’s tourney with the wind-mill.  How would you provide for the poet bon homme De Vigny?—­from a joint-stock company Poet’s Fund, or how?

    ’His translation of Othello, which I glanced at, is good for a
    Frenchman.

’Among his poems, La Fregate, La Serieuse, Madame de Soubise, and Dolorida, please me especially.  The last has an elegiac sweetness and finish, which are rare.  It also makes a perfect gem of a cabinet picture.  Some have a fine strain of natural melody, and give you at once the key-note of the situation, as this:—­

      ’"J’aime le son du cor le soir, au fond des bois,
      Soit qu’il chante,” &c.

    And