position,—if a time ever arrives when any estimate can be final. But already has a selection been made of the masterpieces which survive, and from which an author is judged by the next generation that will have time to criticise only the most famous of the works this generation leaves behind it. We can see also that much of Daudet's later writing is slight and not up to his own high standard, although even his briefest trifle had always something of his charm, of his magic, of his seductive grace. We can see how rare an endowment he has when we note that he is an acute observer of mankind, and yet without any taint of misanthropy, and that he combines fidelity of reproduction with poetic elevation.

He is—to say once more what has already been said in these pages more than once—he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with "things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting. It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional adventures which is untrue and therefore immoral. Daudet's most individual peculiarity was his skill in seizing the romantic aspects of the commonplace. In one of his talks with his son he said that a novelist must beware of an excess of lyric enthusiasm; he himself sought for emotion, and emotion escaped when human proportions were exceeded. Balance, order, reserve, symmetry, sobriety,—these are the qualities he was ever praising. The real, the truthful, the sincere,—this is what he sought always to attain.

Daudet may lack the poignant intensity of Balzac, the lyric sweep of Hugo, the immense architectural strength of M. Zola, the implacable disinterestedness of Flaubert, the marvellous concentration of Maupassant, but he has more humor than any of them and more charm,—more sympathy than any but Hugo, and more sincerity than any but Flaubert. His is perhaps a rarer combination than any of theirs,—the gift of story-telling, the power of character-drawing, the grasp of emotional situation, the faculty of analysis, the feeling for form, the sense of style, an unfailing and humane interest in his fellow-men, and an irresistible desire to tell the truth about life as he saw it with his own eyes.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

Columbia University,
in the City of New York.

CONTENTS

Page

1. Dr. Jenkins' Patients7
2. A Breakfast on Place Vendôme37
3. Memoirs of a Clerk.—A Casual Glance at
   the "Caisse Territoriale"63
4. A Début in Society77
5. The Joyeuse Family103
6. Felicia Ruys128
7. Jansoulet at Home156
8. The Work of Bethlehem172
9. Grandmamma193
10. Memoirs of a Clerk.—The Servants216
11. The Fêtes in Honor of the Bey238
12. A Corsican Election272

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. "'Take away your flowers, my dear'"Frontispiece
2. In Felicia's Studio26
3. "'His Excellency, the Duc de Mora!'"88

From drawings by Lucius Rossi.

THE NABOB.

A hundred years ago Le Sage wrote these words at the head of Gil Blas: