in M. Berthoud's confession, so great a hold had the anecdote
taken on the public mind; and a Paris newspaper went so far even as to
declare that the original autograph of this letter was to be seen in a
library in Normandy! M. Berthoud wrote again, denying its existence, and
offered a million francs to any one who would produce the said letter."

From this we may learn two lessons, the first being that utterly
baseless but plausible stories may arise in queer ways. In the above
case, the most far-fetched hypothesis to account for the origin of the
legend could hardly have been as apparently improbable as the reality.
Secondly, we may learn that if a myth once gets into the popular
mind, it is next to impossible to get it out again. In the Castle of
Heidelberg there is a portrait of De Caus, and a folio volume of his
works, accompanied by a note, in which this letter of Marion Delorme is
unsuspectingly cited as genuine. And only three years ago, at a public
banquet at Limoges, a well-known French Senator and man of letters
made a speech, in which he retailed the story of the madhouse for the
edification of his hearers. Truly a popular error has as many lives as
a cat; it comes walking in long after you have imagined it effectually
strangled.

In conclusion, we may remark that Mr. Delepierre does very scant justice
to many of the interesting questions which he discusses. It is to be
regretted that he has not thought it worth while to argue his points
more thoroughly, and that he has not been more careful in making
statements of fact. He sometimes makes strange blunders, the worst of
which, perhaps, is contained in his article on Petrarch and Laura. He
thinks Laura was merely a poetical allegory, and such was the case, he
goes on to say, "with Dante himself, whose Beatrice was a child who died
at nine years of age." Dante's Beatrice died on the 9th of June, 1290,
at the age of twenty-four, having been the wife of Simone dei Bardi
rather more than three years.

October, 1868.

IX. THE FAMINE OF 1770 IN BENGAL. [30]

[30] The Annals of Rural Bengal. By W. W. Hunter. Vol. I. The
Ethnical Frontier of Lower Bengal, with the Ancient Principalities of
Beerbhoom and Bishenpore. Second Edition. New York: Leypoldt and Holt.
1868. 8vo., pp. xvi., 475.

No intelligent reader can advance fifty pages in this volume without
becoming aware that he has got hold of a very remarkable book. Mr.
Hunter's style, to begin wi