of kid
gloves in which he always writes. At each chapter a new and perfumed
pair is presented him. He writes five or six hours steadily, without
correcting or reading. His income is from sixty to eighty thousand
francs a year from these writings. After laborious writing, Sue makes
his toilet in the best style, and prepares for dinner, which is
everything that an epicure might desire. After dinner he mounts a fine
horse and rides among the hills which surround his home, until his
digestion is completed. He returns, smokes tobacco from an amber pipe,
and enjoys himself at his leisure."

Of Eugene Sue's character it is, perhaps, needless for me to make any
criticisms. He has many admirers in all parts of the world--and also
many enemies. That he is a romancer of astonishing powers nobody will
deny, but we well may question the use he has made of those powers.
Nearly all of his earlier romances are unfit for the eyes of pure men
and women, and now that he is dead, let us hope that they too will
perish. In later years, M. Sue has endeavored to advocate the cause of
the poor, and with great eloquence, in his fictions. But he has probably
caused as much harm by the licentiousness of his style, as he has
accomplished good by his pleas for the poor. It is stated that he has
given very liberally to the poor, and in practice exemplified his
doctrine. His books give an indication of the present fashionable
morality of Paris and France, and though they have sold largely in
America, their influence cannot be good.

M. THIERS

[Illustration: M. THIERS.]

M. Thiers has figured prominently in French politics, was a minister of
Louis Phillippe, and is a historian. He is a man of a singular nature,
witty and eccentric, rather than profound and dignified, and it will not
do to pas him by without a notice. He was born in Marseilles, in the
year 1797. His father was a common workman, but his mother was of a
commercial family which had been plunged into poverty by a reverse of
fortune. The young Thiers was educated through the bounty of the state,
at the school of Marseilles, and was, when a boy, known principally for
his rogueries. He sold his books to get apples and barley-sugar.
Punishments seemed never to have any terror for him. At one time he
concealed a tom-cat in his desk in the school, with its claws confined
in walnut shells, and suddenly in school hours let him loose, to the
great astonishment and anger of his teachers