d carrying the spirit
of monarchy to an excess which no Stuart could surpass. Cromwell,
indeed, is wise, and the king he punished with death is foolish: Charles
is faithless and Cromwell crafty; we see no other difference. Cromwell
does not in power abide by the principles that led him to it; and we
cannot help, so rose-water imbecile are we, admiring those who do. To us
it looks black for one who kills kings to grow to be more kingly than a
king."

The other paper of which we desire to speak in this connection, is one
treating of the French novelists prominent at the time, and in
particular of Balzac, Eugene Sue, and De Vigny. Of these three names,
the first alone retains the prestige which it had when Margaret wrote
her essay. De Vigny, remarkable mostly for purity of sentiment, finish
of style, and a power of setting and limiting his pictures, is a
_boudoir_ author, and one read only in boudoirs of studious refinement.
Sue, to whose motives Margaret gives the most humanitarian
interpretation, has failed to commend his method to posterity. His
autopsy of a diseased state of society is thought to spread too widely
the infection of the evils which he deplores. His intention is also too
humane for the present day. The world of the last decade and of the
present is too deeply wedded to the hard worship of money to be touched
by the pathos of women who perish, or of men who starve. The grievances
of the poor against the rich find to-day no one to give ear to them, and
few even to utter them; since those who escape starvation are too busy
with beggary and plunder to waste time in such useless musings. Of the
three here cited, Balzac alone remains a king among novelists; and
Margaret's study of him imports as much to us to-day as it did to the
world of her time.

She begins by commenting upon the lamentation general at that time, and
not uncommon in this, over the depravity of taste and of life already
becoming familiar to the youth of America through the medium of the
French novel. Concerning this, she says:--

"It is useless to bewail what is the inevitable result of the movement
of our time. Europe must pour her corruptions no less than her riches on
our shores, both in the form of books and of living men. She cannot, if
she would, check the tide which bears them hitherward. No defences are
possible, on our vast extent of shore, that can preclude their ingress.
Our only hope lies in rousing in our own community a soul