covered it and the fences completely
with black: when they again rose, and after a few evolutions descended
on the skirts of the high-timbered woods, they produced a most singular
and striking effect. Whole trees, for a considerable extent, from the
top to the lowest branches, seemed as if hung with mourning. Their notes
and screaming, he adds, seemed all the while like the distant sounds of
a great cataract, but in a musical cadence."

ERNEST INGERSOLL.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE MODERN FRENCH NOVELISTS.

The grand old race of French story-tellers has wellnigh departed. One by
one the great names in this department of modern French literature
become erased from the lists of the living. Nor is this all. Many of the
most brilliant of the novelists of the day have relinquished the pen of
the romance-writer for that of the politician. About, for instance,
expends in the leading articles of the _XIXe. Siecle_ the wit, the
sparkle, the energy that charmed us long years ago in the pages of his
novels. The younger Dumas--always less a novelist than a dramatist
and (we must coin a word to do justice to the position) an
_im_moralist--confines his efforts now to the production of unclean
plays and uncleaner prefaces, that glow with unwholesome lustre like the
phosphorescent flames that are bred of corruption and quiver over
graves. Pitiless and cold, with a scalpel in one hand and a
magnifying-glass in the other, he is at once the closest observer and
the most eloquent denunciator of the moral maladies of French society.
But he is not a novelist, strictly speaking. His gifts have another
direction, his mind another bent. Nor is he altogether a dramatist, as
is Sardou. His comedies are less remarkable on the stage than they are
in the library. An invincible passion for preaching mars the development
of the action. His characters say more than they do, and his plays charm
less by any actual theatrical qualifications than by the extreme finish
and brilliancy of their style. He will bring two men on the stage, and
will let them talk together for half an hour without moving a muscle.
They say wonderfully wise and witty things, it is true. But such
dramatic writing is not exactly in the manner of Shakespeare. M. Dumas
evidently dreams that his mission is to regenerate French society, but,
apparently, he has as yet found the task beyond his powers. Nor are the
means he suggested-