work of its universality. In the 'Romans Populaires,' comedy occupies a larger place than in the more serious and highly-pitched works. From the very first, when their stories were struggling for birth in the Paris journals, a genuine humour has characterised MM. Erckmann-Chatrian's style. We may say the key-note of their works is humour alternating with pathos. We may yet expect from our authors other striking additions to their historic series. Erckmann was at Pfalzburg during the late siege, and Chatrian was shut up in besieged Paris.

After the mystification which they practised with regard to their joint productions on their first appearance in the Paris journals, and taking into consideration their subsequent intimate collaboration, we might well doubt whether we could find anything that could be guaranteed as the work of Erckmann alone, or of Chatrian alone. There is nothing which either could write without old habit subjecting him to the sympathetic influence of the other. Under the

name of Émile Erckmann only there appeared, in 1843, a brochure on the subject of military recruiting. Erckmann was at this period studying law in Paris: can we be sure that the pamphlet was not written during a visit to Pfalzburg, with Chatrian looking over his shoulder? As Chatrian, however, was at this date only sixteen years of age, perhaps we may give Erckmann the credit of having for once indulged in authorship all by himself. Indeed, he may certainly be allowed that honour, for it is doubtful whether he was acquainted with Chatrian in 1843. The account from which we have already quoted fixed the commencement of their brotherhood during their college career; but another account gives us to under

stand that it was not until 1847 that they were introduced to each other, and began their literary partnership.

We can point to a specimen of composition which it seems more than probable is the sole work of Chatrian. It is a letter from him to a friend of his, an English clergyman, living at Broughton-in-Furness. The letter is dated from Paris in October, 1868, and was printed in the 'Times' of the 21st October, 1870, being deemed of interest on account of the fact that Chatrian was at that date shut up in Paris, from whence it was doubtful whether he would ever emerge. We translate a portion of the letter here, as it possesses a special interest, apart from its inherent value, in the fact of the singular resemblance of its minute and vivid style to many a narrative page in the ErckmannChatrian novels. Chatrian's own history is evidently akin to that of some of the characters he introduces us to. The letter which we translate runs as follows: -'I see myself again, quite little, between the knees of my father behind the great cast-metal stove; my mother and my sister are spinning, the spinning-wheels are buzzing; my uncle Antoine, an old soldier, is striding to and fro, with his hands crossed upon his back; my brother Édouard is. sleeping in a corner; and JeanBaptiste, the eldest, is seated at the table, by the side of the little copper lamp, and reading the History of Napoleon the Great!

'How I listened! how I opened my eyes at the story of those marches,. of those countermarches, of those mighty battles, of those squares. broken by cavalry, of those redoubts taken by assault, of those standards taken from the enemy, and of those despatches startling as trumpet notes!

'And when misfortunes arrived -the retreat from Russia, Kulm, Dennewitz, Katzbach, Leipzig, the rain, the lack of ammunition and provisions, the defection of the allies all these miseries! and, finally, the invasion-how my poor little heart sank oppressed!

'I remember how, whilst hearing for the first time the story of the battle of Waterloo, when my brother, whose voice was trembling, cried out the "Sauve qui peut!" I burst into such sobbings that Uncle Antoine ordered the book to be shut, and my good father had infinite trouble to console me. I had to be promised that as soon as I was big I should go to fight against the English.

'Yes; these are the memories which the beautiful portraits you have sent awaken in me; and the fact fills me with many a reflection upon the influence of the surroundings, and the power of the first impressions, of youth. I can recall clearly what energy it has cost me, and what strife against my own family, to get rid of that Napoleonic Legend in which my infancy was cradled.

'Thank God, I have attained to such deliverance. I have even the satisfaction of having dealt it some rough blows; and you will easily imagine, my dear friend, that I have no longer any desire to fight against the English. If I ever make a descent into England-which I ardently long to do—it will not be for the purpose of seeking a quarrel with you, but to sit down at your fireside and chat with you on the topic of the brotherhood of humanity. He alone is great who proclaimed it eighteen centuries ago. CHATRIAN.'

Is not this a charming letter? M. Chatrian has been called the business-man of the partnership; and it might be supposed that his

province had been more that of a critic and subduer of Erckmann's vagaries, than that of an originator. We are compelled by this letter to acknowledge that Chatrian cannot be the less the creator, the less forgetive of ideas, of the two. How simple, and yet how forcible is his style; how unadorned and yet how picturesque !

It is hoped that M. Chatrian may some day communicate the story of his life to his English friend. Should this anticipation ever be fulfilled, an exceedingly interesting sketch may be expected, for with him the autobiographic faculty is manifestly a natural gift.

The qualities that mark the letter just quoted may be traced throughout the whole series of our authors' works. The praise they have earned has been for their straightforward honesty, simple beauty, and lack of sensationalism and extravagance. They may, indeed, when compared with the feverish voluptuousness of much that is produced in France, on the one hand, and the mawkish sentimentality-so called religionon the other, lay claim to a high place apart. The characters they introduce to us may not be conspicuous for genius, or abnormally attractive, but in MM. ErckmannChatrian's manner of bringing them before us, there is a dramatic simplicity that is Shakespearean. A calm common-sense runs through all the books. It is doubtless from this commonplace, but most estimable sanity, manifested in a country given overmuch to screaming, that the political effect of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian's books, or the dread of their political effect, has arisen.

Our Transatlantic brethren, as we have said, are fond of these, the least Parisian of novelists. Colonel Higginson, who edits an

American version of Madame Thérèse,' says: 'That rural life of France, which is so hid from us Americans behind the glare of Paris, fills these books with a pure and healthful atmosphere. You see the great world through innocent eyes. There is nothing so hard, perhaps, as to be thoroughly simple in fiction. The simplicity of Lamartine, for instance, is apt to turn out, on second thoughts, the extreme of affectation; but here is a simplicity that is genuine, noble, uncloying. These are among the few French novels that do not leave, as Charlotte Brontë said, a bad taste in one's mouth.'

The Erckmann-Chatrian novels have indeed shown that Paris is not France, and that it would be well for the health of Paris could she be less self-centred, and know something more of the simple, shrewd thoughts and instinctive realism of the neglected peasants of her provinces. Had Paris not despised the bucolic people outside of her, perhaps she and they would not so far have become the prey of the priestly factions that distract them.

MM. Erckmann-Chatrian are likely to be even more widely known than at present. When we are given their full recital of the events that have thrilled us in years just gone by, we shall be possessed of a perfect encyclopædia of historic romance. Their stories are as graphic as the narrative of

the best war-correspondent, and fraught with a simple sincerity that tells its own tale and wins its own friends. Should these matterof-fact romances, these records alike of revolutions and of untroubled rural life, ever lose their interest with the ordinary novel-reader, they will not thereby be rendered useless and fit only for the dusty top-shelf of the library. They will grow into invaluable documents of history, for, without the light of their fictional truth, much of French history will be but imperfectly intelligible in days to come.

Just as Walter Scott's romances are expected to live by their perennial historic interest, when newer excitements have banished them from the circulating library, so may we fairly prognosticate with regard to those of MM. ErckmannChatrian. Such a position is no small thing to have been gained by two homely provincial nonentities, one a railway clerk, the other an incompetent lawyer, plodding away together in obscure lodgings in Paris. They have mounted it step by step by their persistent, plodding work before the dawn of fame, by their unchanged artistic conscientiousness and truth thereafter, and last, but perhaps not least, by the mystic, strange support their mated intellects afford each other-bringing up to practical power a literary partnership that is without parallel.

KENINGALE COOK.

Westminster Hall was that which commenced on the 24th of May, 1616, in the reign of James I. The King's favourite, only three months before created Lord Chamberlain, and his Countess, a celebrated beauty of the time, were on that day charged with having poisoned Sir Thomas Overbury, for many years the Earl's special confidant, adviser, and friend. Dark secrets, it was thought, would be elicited; and all the world of rank and fashion crowded the hall, eager to see culprits of so high a posi

On

Rod and the Usher of the Black Rod stood near him, while the Garter King of Arms and the Sealbearer were also present, attended by eight Sergeants-at-Arms. either side of the High Steward, in a gallery twelve steps from the floor, sat the twenty-one peers who formed the court. The Judges, in their scarlet robes and collars of S.S., sat in a row somewhat lower than the peers; foremost among them being that eminent lawyer, Sir E. Coke. At the lower end of the hall ranged the King's Counsel, headed by the Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon. The superstitious feelings of the public were excited about this suit, as it was known that the Countess had consulted Dr. Forman, a well-known astrologer of the day; and some

seized in his study.

A gentleman-porter, bearing an axe with the edge turned from the prisoner, stood before the Countess. On the first day's trial the guilty lady, on entering the hall, made 'three reverences' to her judges and the peers. She was dressed in black tammel, with a cypress hood and a ruff and cuffs of the finest cobweb lawn, the contrast heightening the beauty of her fair, wicked face.

When the Clerk of the Crown said, Frances Countess of Somerset, hold up your hand,' she held it up till the Lieutenant of the Tower told her to put it down.

Some thought her manner 'anxious and confident;' but to many she seemed struck down with fear, for she turned pale when the indictment was read, and presently trembled and shed tears. When the name of Weston, one of her accomplices, was mentioned, she put her fan before her face and held it there till the indictment had been read.

The Clerk of the Crown asked her, 'Frances Countess of Somerset, art thou guilty of the felony and murder, or not guilty?'

The Countess, making an obeisance to the Lord High Steward, answered, 'Guilty,' in a low, timid voice. Sir Francis Bacon then panegyrised King James in the usual fulsome manner of the times, but held out hopes of pardon to the wretched woman. Coke also bespattered the foolish King with praise, and declared James's instructions for the in

vestigation of the murder 'deserved to be written in a sunbeam.'

The Clerk of the Crown then asked the prisoner if she had any cause to allege why sentence of death should not be pronounced on her.'

The Countess replied: 'I can much aggravate, but cannot extenuate my fault. I desire mercy, and that the lords will intercede for me to the King.'

She uttered the words in such a low, trembling voice that Sir Francis Bacon, who sat next to her, had to repeat them to the Lord High Steward. An officer of the Crown then presented the white staff to the Lord High Steward, and sentence of death was passed. The Lord High Steward then said:

'Since the lords have heard with what humility and grief you have confessed the fact, I do not doubt they will signify so much to the King, and mediate for his grace towards you.'

The guilty woman left the hall, weeping as she went.

For

such a crime it would have been short shrift indeed for a kitchen wench; but a countess was not to be lightly sent to the gallows. It was already evident she would escape; although the rope seemed twisting fast for her husband.

The Earl appeared the next day at the bar, dressed in the cloak and George of the Garter. He wore a black satin suit, laid with 'two white laces in a seam,' a gown of orient velvet, his sleeves laid with silver lace, a pair of gloves with satin tops, and his hair curled. His face was pale, his beard long, and his eyes were sunk in his head. As might have been expected, the Earl was found guilty, but soon pardoned.

That there had been a quarrel between the Earl and Overbury was very soon proved; and the

cause had been Overbury's endeavours to stop his marriage with the divorced Countess of Essex. This was proved by Payton, a servant of Overbury's, who deposed to hearing a remarkable conversation one night in the Privy Gallery in Whitehall, between the Earl and Overbury, which is indeed a key to the whole murder. The Earl, coming late to his chamber, met Overbury, and said, 'How now, are you up yet?' To which Overbury replied, 'Nay, what do you here at this time of night? Will you never leave the company of that base woman? And seeing you do so neglect my advice, I desire that to-morrow morning we may part, and that you will let me have that portion you know is due to me; and then I will leave you free to yourself to stand on your own legs.'

'My legs are strong enough to bear me,' answered the Earl, and flung away in great displeasure.

Such conversations, disclosed to the Countess, sealed Overbury's doom. He was deep in the Earl's secrets, dangerous, and to be removed. A plot was soon laid. Overbury, offered an embassy to Russia, was persuaded by the Earl to refuse the post, and to get imprisoned in the Tower for contempt to avoid certain dangers obscurely hinted at by the treacherous Earl. In a rash moment Overbury, still trusting his old friend, did as he advised, and was at once thrown into the Tower.

The prisoner, who had entered his dungeon gaily, believing it to be a mere matter of form-a sham imprisonment, which would be terminated almost as soon as begun-found the Tower gates slow indeed to re-open. In vain his old father came day after day to the Earl's levees of obsequious parasites, to supplicate for his son's release. Sometimes the Earl saw