own often misty conclusions placed before him with exceeding clearness, and an insight into the poet's meaning not too commonly to be met with.

Mr. McCarthy's study of Victor Hugo is a brilliant piece of criticism, open, we think, to some objections. With perfect appreciation of the great Frenchman's genius, he is not blind to his faults, to the over-elaboration with which at times, even in his most graphic sketches, he wearies the reader; or to the licentiousness in art which, allowing no limit to its proper province, revels in monstrosities of horror. It is chiefly in his estimate of Les Misérables that, while acknowledging the weight of argument on his side, we are compelled to differ from him. "The examination," he says, " of the character of Jean Valjean is the analysis of the whole scheme of philosophy, heart, and moral of the book," and he asserts that in criticizing this effort of Victor Hugo's genius and patient art we must see that it satisfies three requirements if it is to be pronounced a complete success:

or the hulks betrays the Jean Valjean who sits by the bed of the dying Fantine; who nurtures, trains and loves Cosette." But Victor Hugo knew that such manners and such habits, inevitable though they might be, would be but the rough clothes disguising the man; that it was truer to the heart and brain of his hero if he revealed the working of the higher inner nature, even at the sacrifice of the man's very skin. The weight and thickness of convict manners would have concealed, not destroyed, exactly that which we conceive it was Victor Hugo's most intense desire to reveal. "The coarsest reed that trembles in the marsh, If Heaven select it for an instrument, May shed celestial music on the breeze." As to the third count, Mr. McCarthy asks, " Judged as its author has insisted that it shall be judged, as a moral and philosophical lesson, does the warmest admirer of Les Misérables pretend that it has helped us in the least towards a wiser and truer blending of justice and mercy than that which socially We honestly believe that it has; that from and judicially we strive to carry out ?" the story of Bishop Myriel in all its impractical and half immoral beauty has been distilled the very essence of much soberminded movement. The story itself has its roots in a truth which is eternal, but Victor Hugo would be untrue to himself could he leave us in the light which only flashes over his own mind; and much of the As concerning the first of these require-criticism of the pages before us is invaluments, Mr. McCarthy says, "I do not hes-able in the unerring accuracy with which it itate to pronounce the character of Jean Valjean absolutely perfect." To the second he has a distinct negative; Jean Valjean is not, in his estimation, a possible human being:

"First, is the character in itself, regarded simply as the ideal hero of Victor Hugo's story, a consistent, artistic, and impressive figure as the central form of the romance? Second, is it a successful picture of a probable, or at least possible, human being? Third-and from this final test we cannot release the creator of Jean Valjean-is it true as regards the practical moral which it professes to inculcate?"`

- the

pecially the breadth, of as great a genius gauges the height and depth, and more esas France this day can boast. But the volume before us has lighter subjects. "The Bohemia of Henri Mürger" is very good. “But admitting that the soul of Jean Valjean Mürger has tried to classify the shades, demight have been thus miraculously regenerated, grees, and classes of Bohemia. The great are we to believe that the habits and the man- section of artists unknown to fame, ners stamped by half a lifetime of the prison and men who have been called, but through the galleys, of association with the rudest, the some fatal mistake, ignorance of practical basest, and most brutal of human creatures, life, or what not, not chosen he dubs could have dropped off in a moment as the rags "ignored Bohemia," and says, "it is not of the beggar girl in the pantomime give place a road, but a cul de sac." While graphat the touch of a wand to the lustrous garment ically describing the London Bohemia, Mr. and spangles and flowers of the Columbine? The McCarthy gives sufficient reasons for his transformation of Jean Valjean is absolutely not belief that Bohemia, in its English phase less miraculous and complete than that by which Byron's Deformed puts on in a moment the at least, is an ephemeral institution; but if beautiful form and noble lineaments of Achil- he be sanguine as to the short-lived duration of a phase of social life just now telling very distinctly upon us, he is less hopeful concerning the tone of society in general. There is, he says, a decided decadence of conversation. They were a grand old race, the extinct professors of the art of

les."

We think it is just at this point Victor Hugo has been true to himself and to the highest art. "No trace," urges Mr. McCarthy, "of the habits of the hovel, the dungeon,

46

talk, the Johnsons and Burkes, and Col- subjects we are quitting, we rejoice that he eridges and Goethes; " but he admits that has written for a generation which, if it "human life has grown too active for their cannot talk, can at least read.

pos

THE SIX NIGHTCAPS.

brilliant monologues," while complaining that we have in no way supplied their places. He believes neither the nonsense nor the pedantry of the preceding generation was "so barren, so utterly empty, as the kind of thing which constitutes the staTHERE is much in these little books to ple converse of at least three-fourths of the inspire us with a kindly feeling towards ordinary drawing-rooms of the present days. them and their writer. One thing at least We cannot believe our author's own expeis certain, for we have tested it practically, rience has been so unfortunate, for he avers that the young folks like them. We have his disbelief in the axiom that "talents sometimes thought that in reviewing chilare nurtured best in solitude;" yet he asks, dren's books we were setting up a standard "Is there any one who has to meet many for children's tastes, dictating to them, not that was too purely ideal, we were legislating people and mix in general society who is not frequently forced to observe that in allowing them to choose for themselves. whatever else we are rising, the tone of our Sometimes it happened that a book which ordinary conversation is falling?" Is it? we thought well adapted for a young audiWe doubt this much. The kings of society ence was received coldly. A story which we are, it is true (we think encouragingly true), refused to read at first, and then read under beating their swords into ploughshares and protest, was applauded. The truth was we pickaxes, and the keen edge of them is had forgotten that childish tastes were unsibly somewhat blunted in the process, but formed. Perhaps we had been led astray the subjects of conversation are surely by Wordsworth's panegyric on the best growing in wider, higher interest. The philosopher, the eye among the blind, mere diffusion of scientific knowledge has whose external semblance doth belie his of itself acted beneficially in this respect. soul's immensity. Anyhow, till our misTo choose some passing year of an individ- take was shown us by experience, we rather ual existence as a testing-point in a na- misjudged some of these nightcap stories. tion's growth would, we are confident, be We thought their lessons too obvious and deemed an unworthy argument by our auelementary. Their humour as well as their thor. Yet is it quite fair to put a Goethe sentiment seemed occasionally overdone. or a Coleridge amongst the lights of a day But after reading them through two or that is dead? And letting our range ex- three times to boys of different ages, we tend over even the short space of some were enlightened. We then saw that they twenty years, will any one venture to aswere not meant for us, but for our children. sert that Sydney Smith was as a talker in- Strictly speaking, we ought to keep a staff ferior to any but Johnson? Are Whately, of boy reviewers on the premises, and Browning, and Thackeray to be passed by about Christmas time we ought to give up utterly? There is an epigrammatic sound a few columns to young writers and young in saying that "The bringing one's mind readers. But our daily or weekly task is down to the proper level of ordinary con- too serious for any such diversion. versational imbecility, and keeping it there, have to write for the parents who put is a dreadful task; but it is, at least, one books into the hands of their children, not which no rational human being need under- for the children who receive the books from take. Sydney Smith, says our author, used their parents. And therefore it is to pato say that he had lived twenty-five years rents we address ourselves when we recomin the country and never met a bore, but he mend these six little books of stories, and would have met nothing else had he set when we state that they are written for a about "bringing his mind down to the gradation of children beginning with those proper level of conversational imbecility." who can only just read, and mounting up to There are, at least, two sides to this shield. those who can appreciate the poetry of Mr. McCarthy's judgment is no light one, fairyland. It is true that there are some but it is beyond the range of our more fee- stories in each book which will commend ble imagination to conjure up the picture themselves to every age. Grown children of an assembly of men and women of read Baby Nightcaps with the patronizing intelligence and education" in which "for air with which a boy of five calls his baby hours no intelligent thought is expressed." And yet, differ from him here and there as we may, as we glance back over the list of

66

We

*Baby Nightcaps; Little Nightcaps; Old Nightcaps; New Nightcaps; Big Nightcaps; Fairy Nightcaps. By Aunt Fanny. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. 1868.

It

brother "little darling." The tricks played | says, "Only look, dear mamma, what an on the fairy prime minister in the last book excellent plan I have got to cure you! of the series will amuse the youngest chil-Your back will always be well now. dren, especially when they hear of his hav- won't hurt the chair to have a ducking ing to turn head over heels across three every night. It will make it stronger. tight-ropes stretched in his way by a spider, What a pleasant picture this gives us; the of his having the gout from eating too much little boy jumping up and down while deroast tiger-lily and of his almost cracking his scribing his sure way to improve the furnileft wing by sneezing after a pinch of dust ture! And there are plenty more nice chilof snap-dragon. But as a rule, the plan dren in the books. There are the children laid down by the author may well be fol- who can't speak plain, but call their brothers lowed, and parents may distribute the books" bedders," and say they "sant" do things, according to the size of the print and the length of the stories.

and give new versions of Blue Beard, making out that his name was Blue Man's Beard, It is not so easy for us to say why we like and that, instead of telling his wife that he the nightcap books. We have admitted al- would kill her, he said to his sister, "If ready that at first our critical judgment was you don't come down I gib you popping." not wholly in their favour. We have been And there are the children who, when they converted by better judges, but they have are being christened, pull off the clergynot supplied us with any reasons for the man's spectacles, and who land their porconversion. A child likes a book because ridge on the tip of their nose instead of he likes it. A grown-up person must be guiding it into their mouth. And others go able to give an account of his likes and his to church one Sunday when there is a coldislikes, if not instinctively, at all events lection, and march up the aisle during serby the force of habit. We can pick out vice, and put their bright new pennies into certain stories which pleased us from the the plate, instead of waiting for it to be beginning. The descriptions of the fairy handed round. This variety of children, world with the little pink and white buttons and the conviction that they are all drawn of mushrooms springing out of the earth from life, give the nightcap books one and making satin-wood tables for the fairy great attraction. It is plain that we are revel, of the golden buttercups full of spark- admitted into the family confidence of the ling May dew which had been bottled up for author. She expects that the children to six weeks, and now foamed out its fragrance, whom she tells her stories will exclaim, took our fancy. "The Rose Crown," in" Why, mamma, I know Lily!" and Big Nightcaps, is an exquisite story. We hardly like to tell it, because it ought to be read through, and no summary could do justice to it. Then we are much pleased by the account of "Good Little Henry" who hears his mamma say that lifting him in and out of his bath makes her back ache, He steals quietly upstairs, puts one little chair at the side of the bath and another in the water, and steps in and out with their help. When his mamma, who thought he was still downstairs reading, finds out what he has done, he "jumps up and down," and

"Why, it is Howard, little Howard!" Of course there cannot be the same amount of personal recognition on this side of the Atlantic, as there was in the State from which these six nightcaps have flown like so many small white balloons crossing the wide ocean. But we think there will be no lack of friendliness among English children for their new cousins and the aunt who has brought them over, and though no passport is needed, we hope our words may serve to introduce them into many families.

METEORS.-When we are told, remarks the Express, that seven and a half millions of meteorites, large enough to be visible at night, fall into our atmosphere in every twenty-four hours, and that ninety-nine out of every hundred of these never pass away again beyond its confines, the question naturally suggests itself "How far are we safe from the effects of so tremendous a bombardment?" Granted that the major part of these missiles weigh but a few pounds, yet even so, we seem, at first sight, to be but inefficiently protected. Four-pounder guns, for example, have ere this worked serious mischief in battles and sieges. Nor will astronomers

even allow us the comfort of supposing that but few of the heavier missiles from outer space are hurled against our planet. On the contrary, we are told and there is no reason for disputing the announcement that many hundreds of the larger sort of aerolites fall in a single day into our atmosphere. The heaviest missiles made use of on board our iron-clads or in our most powerfully-armed forts are mere feathers compared to some few of the aerolites which are thus hurled at us. There is now in the British Museum the fragments of one of those aërolites, and this fragment weighs nearly six tons.

Public Opinion.

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LETTICE LISLE.

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