xture of love and war, and by the blending of arms with amours
in the conventional style of historic fiction. The lowest depth is
reached when the reminiscences of an Emperor's valet, to whom he is
still a kind of hero, are served up with that succulent dressing of
vivid particularity which is swallowed with relish because it brings
down a great man to the level of the most trivial experience.

How far these Memoirs are genuine in the sense which makes them so
attractive--that is to say, as literally authentic pictures of a great
man's interior life, of his actual words and behaviour as witnessed by
his intimates--must always remain doubtful to the sceptical mind. True
reminiscences are naturally somewhat cloudy in outline, hanging loose
together with gaps and interruptions; whereas these are all coherent,
clear-cut, and written in a style that gives superior polish and
setting to every scene and anecdote. That they are compiled upon a
solid substratum of truth need not be questioned; nevertheless some of
them seem to differ only in degree from the realistic novel of the
very latest type, such as Zola's _Debacle_, which contains a very
strong and pervading mixture of pure historical fact.

But whatever may be the exact proportion of authenticity which this
class of Memoirs can justly claim, they completely fulfil the prime
conditions of popularity prescribed for the modern novel, which must
work out minute details with the greatest possible resemblance to
actual life and circumstance. Upon this ground, indeed, the ablest
professors of fiction might despair of competing with those who
exhibit a mighty man of valour in undress, who lead us where we may
hear him talk, watch him eat or shave, and study his conjugal
relations. It is to be feared that if the multiplication of such
Reminiscences continues, they will seriously trench upon the province
of the novelist, who will be left no scope for the employment of his
craft in a field that has been thoroughly ransacked, and who must
inevitably retire before writers who have discovered the art of making
truth quite as amusing as fiction, than which it must always be more
interesting. The brilliant success of Marbot's Memoirs, which were
undoubtedly written by himself, seems to have warmed into activity and
circulation various other volumes of similar reminiscences that must
have been hibernating for one or two generations in the family
archives, or have otherwise fallen into t