re
incompatible; that there was but a choice of alternatives; and purely
on the ground of historical criticism, he says, not on any abstract
objections to the supernatural, or to miracles, or to Catholic dogma,
he gave up revealed religion. He gave it up not without regrets at the
distress caused to friends, and at parting with much that was endeared
to him by old associations, and by intrinsic beauty and value; but, as
far as can be judged, without any serious sense of loss. He spent some
time in obscurity, teaching, and studying laboriously, and at length
beginning to write. Michel Levy, the publisher, found him out, and
opened to him a literary career, and in due time he became famous. He
has had the ambiguous honour of making the Bible an object of such
interest to French readers as it never was before, at the cost of
teaching them to find in it a reflection of their own characteristic
ways of looking at life and the world. It is not an easy thing to do
with such a book as the Bible; but he has done it.

As a mere history of a change of convictions, the _Souvenirs_ are
interesting, but hardly of much importance. They are written with a
kind of Epicurean serenity and dignity, avoiding all exaggeration and
violence, profuse in every page in the delicacies and also in the
reticences of respect, not too serious to exclude the perpetual
suggestion of a well-behaved amused irony, not too much alive to the
ridiculous and the self-contradictory to forget the attitude of
composure due to the theme of the book. He warns his readers at the
outset that they must not look for a stupid literalness in his account.
"Ce qu'on dit de soi est toujours poesie"--the reflection of states of
mind and varying humours, not the exact details of fact. "Tout est vrai
dans ce petit volume, mais non de ce genre de verite qui est requis
pour une _Biographie universelle_. Bien des choses ont ete mises, afin
qu'on sourie; si l'usage l'eut permis, j'aurais du ecrire plus d'une
fois a la marge--_cum grano salis_". It is candid to warn us thus to
read a little between the lines; but it is a curious and unconscious
disclosure of his characteristic love of a mixture of the misty and the
clear. The really pleasant part of it is his account, which takes up
half the volume, of Breton ways and feelings half a century ago, an
account which exactly tallies with the pictures of them in Souvestre's
writings; and the kindliness and justice with which he speaks o