he has little, and his books are somewhat open to the
charge--which has been brought against those of so many of our own
second-best novelists--that they are somewhat machine-made, or, if that
word be too unkind, are rather works of craft than of art. Yet the work
of a sound craftsman, using good materials, is a great help in life; and
a person who wants good story-pastime for a certain number of nights,
without possessing a Scheherazade of his own, will find plenty of it in
the thirty years' novel turn-out of Victor Cherbuliez.

[Sidenote: Short survey of his books.]

He did not find his way at once, beginning with "mixed" novels
of a Germanish kind--art-fiction in _Un Cheval de Phidias_;
psychological-literary matter (Tasso's madness) in _Le Prince Vitale_;
politico-social subjects in _Le Grand-oeuvre_. But these things, which
have not often been successes, certainly were not so in M. Cherbuliez's
hands. He broke fresh ground and "grew" a real novel in _Le Comte
Kostia_, and he continued to till this plot, with good results, for the
rest of his life. The "scenes and characters" are sufficiently varied,
those in the book just mentioned being Russian and those in _Ladislas
Bolski_ Polish--neither particularly complimentary to the nationalities
concerned, and the latter decidedly melodramatic. _Le Comte Kostia_ is
sometimes considered his best novel; but I should put above it both _Le
Roman d'une Honnete Femme_ (his principal attempt in purely French
society and on Feuilletesque lines, with a tighter morality) and _Meta
Holdenis_, a story of a Swiss girl--not beautiful, but "_vurry_
attractive," and not actually "no better than she should be," but quite
ready to be so if it suited her. _Miss Rovel_ with another
girl-heroine--eccentric, but not in the lines of the usual
French-English caricatures--is a great favourite with some. _La Revanche
de Joseph Noirel_ is again melodramatic; and _Prosper Randoce_ is not
good for much. But _Paule Mere_, one of its author's best
character-books, is very much better--it is a study of ill-starred love,
as is _Le Fiance de Mlle. Saint-Maur_, a book not so good, but not bad.
_Samuel Brohl et Cie_ is a very clever story of a rascal. I do not know
that any of his subsequent novels, _L'Idee de Jean Teterol_, _Noirs et
Rouges_, _La Ferme du Choquard_, _Olivier Maugant_, _La Vocation du
Comte Ghislain_, _La Bete_, _Une Gageure_, which closes the list of my
acquaintance with them, will disap