uthors whom we
could name, were they worth the naming. It is undeniable that the
ingenious plots of his very entertaining books turn, for the most part,
on matters difficult to touch upon with propriety, and which English
writers usually avoid; frequently, for instance, on illicit passion and
conjugal infidelity. And therefore many Englishmen, with whatever
interest and amusement they themselves might read his volumes, would
hesitate to recommend them to their sisters and daughters. Some few of
his tales, especially of the shorter ones, are in all respects
unexceptionable. We instance "La Peau du Lion," translated as "The
Cossack's Grave;" and "L'Anneau d'Argent," which has also appeared in
English. Gerfaut, one of this author's earliest works, and
unquestionably his masterpiece, has little that can justly offend,
although its translation met, we believe, a cold reception. The plot
turns on an attachment between a married woman and the hero of the
story. But if M. de Bernard falls readily enough into the easy,
matter-of-course tone in which his countrymen habitually discuss amatory
peccadilloes--and he could hardly have attained his present popularity
in France had he assumed the prude--he does not disdain or neglect to
point a moral after his own fashion. In administering a remedy, a wise
physician has regard to the idiosyncrasy of the patient as well as to
the nature of the disease. A nation whose morality is unhealthy, must
not be treated like a sick horse, whose groom crams a ball down his
throat, and holds his jaws together, and his head back, to prevent its
rejection. The dose must be artfully disguised, wrapped in a sweetmeat,
and the invalid will take it kindly, and sooner or later feel the
benefit. We would fain discern, in some of M. de Bernard's books, under
a perfumed envelope of palatable trifle, a tendency worthy of applause;
a design to combat, by quiet and implied ridicule, the moral maladies of
his country. It is not his wont, as with many of his competitors, to
make the vicious interesting and the virtuous fools. His husbands are
not invariably good-natured, helpless noodles, with whom, even in their
direst calamities, the most right-thinking have difficulty to
sympathise: the Lovelaces who pursue married women with their insidious
and dangerous attentions, are not by him for ever exalted into heroes,
redeeming their pleasant vices by a host of high and chivalrous
qualities. On the contrary, the apparen