s the false position of two beings
towards a factitious society: the soldier, now that standing
armies are the mode, and the poet, now that Olympic games
or pastimes are not the mode. He has treated the first best,
because with profounder _connoissance du fait_. For De Vigny
is not a poet; he has only an eye to perceive the existence
of these birds of heaven. But in few ways, except their own
broken harp-tone's thrill, have their peculiar sorrows and
difficulties been so well illustrated. The character of the
soldier, with its virtues and faults, is portrayed with such
delicacy, that to condense would ruin. The peculiar reserve,
the habit of duty, the beauty of a character which cannot look
forward, and need not look back, are given with distinguished
finesse.

'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 b