hat she had led a life of singular duplicity;
'Soeur Philomene' is a terribly true glimpse of hospital life, and
'Manette Salomon,' with its half-human monkey drawn from the life, is
transferred without change from the Parisian studios under the Empire.
'Renee Mauperin' comes nearest to the model of an ordinary novel; but no
one can read of the innocent tomboy girl struck down with fatal remorse
at the consequences of her own natural action, on learning of her
brother's dishonor, without feeling that this picture too was drawn from
the life. Several of their stories were dramatized, but with scant
success; and a play which they wrote, 'Henriette Marechal' and had
produced at the Comedie Francaise through the influence of Princess
Mathilde, their constant friend and patroness, was almost howled
down,--chiefly however for political reasons.

After the death of Jules de Goncourt, his brother wrote several books of
the same character as those which they produced in union, the best known
of which are 'La Fille Elisa,' and 'Cherie,' a study of a girl, said to
have been inspired by the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff. The best
critics in France, notably Sainte-Beuve, have given the brothers
Goncourt a very high place in literature and conceded their originality.
English reviewers have been less ready to exalt them, mainly on account
of the offensive part of their realism. They have objected also to their
superficiality as historians, and to their sympathy with the sentimental
admirers of such types as Marie Antoinette; but they too have been ready
to praise the brothers as leaders of a new fashion, and especially for
their devotion to style. In this respect the Goncourts have few rivals
in French literature. Balzac himself was not more finical in the choice
of words, or more unsparing of his time and energy in writing and
re-writing until his exact meaning, no more or less, had been expressed;
and they covered up the marks of their toil better than he. In a letter
to Zola, Edmond de Goncourt said:--"My own idea is that my brother died
of work, and above all from the desire to elaborate the artistic form,
the chiseled phrase, the workmanship of style." He himself spent a long
life at this fine artistry, and died in Paris in July, 1896.

TWO FAMOUS MEN

From the Journal of the De Goncourts

March 3D [1862].--We took a walk and went off to find Theophile
Gautier.... The street in which he lives is composed of the most squa