the same hand-gallop fashion in which the
personage in Blake's lines enjoyed both the peach and the lady.

The earlier and shorter, but not short, interval, mentioned above,
passes to 1852, and does little more than bring the now "Parisian"
narrator into fresh contact with his old school-fellow Baptistin, now a
full-grown priest, but, though very pious, in some difficulties from his
persistent love of sport. Sixteen years later, again, in 1868,
reappears, "coming to his death,"[534] Galabru himself. The part is
chiefly occupied by a _recit_ of intervening history (including a sadly
unsuccessful attempt, both at spiritual and physical combat, by
Baptistin) and by a much-interrupted journey in snow.[535] But it gives
occasion for another agreeable "idyll" between Vincinet, Galabru's son,
and the Abbe Baptistin's god-child Lalie; and it ends with a striking
procession to carry, hardly in time, the _viaticum_ to the dying wizard,
whereby, if not his own weal in the other world, that of the lovers in
this is happily brought about.

Not very many generalities are required on M. Ferdinand Fabre. How
completely his way lies out of most of the ruts in which the wain of the
French novel usually travels must have been shown; and it may be hoped
that enough has been said also to show that there are plenty of minor
originalities about him. No novelist[536] in any language known to me
(unless you call Richard Jefferies a novelist) has such an extraordinary
command of "the country"--bird-nature and rock scenery being his
favourite but by no means his only subjects. For "Scenes of Clerical
Life" he stands admittedly alone in France, and has naturally been dealt
with most often from this point of view. Of that intense provincialism,
in the good sense, which is characteristic of French literature, there
have been few better representatives. Wordsworth himself is scarcely
more the poet of our Lake and Hill country than Fabre is the novelist of
the Cevennes. Peasant life and child life of the country (he meddles
little, and not so happily, with towns of any size) find in him
admirably "vatical" properties and combinations; and if he does not run
any risk of Feste's rebuke by talking much of "ladies," he knows as much
about women as a man well may. His comedy is never coarse or trivial,
and the tragedy never goes off through the touch-hole. Of one
situation--very easy to spoil by rendering it mawkish--the early but not
"calf"-love of rust