enchanting, dazzlingly white, nimble, and graceful, with intelligent brown eyes. This spoiled pet was, if possible, more mad, wanton, and reckless than his owner, and the cat grieved, even to emaciation, over his impudence.

And it was Sunday, as the cat, springing up and down, was drawing forth wild, fantastic strains from the harp, and his master was gazing so full of thought into the distance, as I have described him, --and behold! the dreaded visitor appeared, in the middle of the first prelude. With a light, joyous step, he drew near, this youth, with the beautiful locks and fresh cheeks, at whose side was springing and dancing his darling companion. "Good morning, Master Scarlatti," cried the new comer, with a friendly tone and look, "how I rejoice to see you again!" Scarlatti nodded and smiled, half in kindly reciprocation of the affectionate greeting, and half in mockery at the queer German accent of the speaker, and replied: "I am but a sorry companion and friend, to-day, Hasse. I have a great deal in my head-all sorts of tones are buzzing confusedly in my ears, and I can form no melody out of them; I am searching for something very especially original, and that I can't find-it throws me into despair. I beg of you leave me at peace, with your nonsense, or I shall twist off your little spoilt puppy's head." "Hold, hold, Master Scarlatti!" cried the guest, "not so fast. You are in a bad humorthat I can well see-but you shall not lay a finger on my little Truelove; you know he was the parting gift of my lovely, blond, German sweetheart, and accompanies me always, like her love and truth."

The master turned toward the young man, with a tender smile, and gazed at his clear, and almost childlike countenance. There stood the young enthusiast, leaning against an orange-tree, shaded by its luxuriant southern foliage, his eyes directed to heaven; he seemed to be dreaming of his distant, beloved home, of lovely Germany, with her clear sky, green trees, beautiful flowers, and snow-capped mountains; or, were his longing thoughts given to his faithful, distant bride, the loveliest of all flowers? But the clouds which had gathered over his youthful brow soon vanished; Truelove jumped upon him and kissed his hand. The Master lost himself again in deep thought, and left it to his pupil to take measures for the preservation of peace and order in his little commonwealth. This the young man did, for a time, preaching a most excellent and reasonable sermon to both animals-at the close of which, however, he drew out of his pocket a little wig and pair of spec

tacles, with which, in spite of all resist ance, to decorate the silently indignant Ponto. This seemed to cause especial delight to the little Truelove; he barked loudly, and sprang about the despairing sufferer with the agility and elegance of a ballet-dancer. Scarlatti cast a glance at the group, and could not help, secretly, smiling, though he took good care not to betray this sign of weakness to his mad pupil, but, on the contrary, he growled out something in no very gentle tones, so that Hasse, dreading a volcanic outbreak, snatched up both animals, and carried them hastily into the Master's little room.

The old piano stood open, the young man's hands glided over the keys-he played a furious Witches' Dance. Truelove jumped about as if possessed, and at last, in the excess of his excitement, threw himself, with a yell of joy, upon the wretched Ponto's back, clinging tenderly with his fore-paws to the cat's neck. Then, at last, the tough thread of patience in the cat's heroic soul was broken. With the thought, "to be or not to be," he began, with the light burden on his back, to race, nay, to fly around the room, trying to run up all the walls, sprang, sput tering and squalling, over chairs and tables, till the Master's papers were scattered about like chaff, and the room was filled with clouds of dust. Hasse started up, but his calls and scolding were to no purpose. At length Ponto was exhausted. Shame at the disgrace which had been inflicted upon him, anger at his own weakness, inspired him with a sublime idea. He wanted to summon his master to the

rescue. Without hesitation, he sprang upon the keys of the piano, whirled about, ran twice wildly up and down, at the same time that he sounded his tribe's bone-and-marrow-piercing cry for help. At the first strange tones, Truelove tumbled half senseless from the back of the inspired cat. A hollow accord marked his fall. The cat's spectacles followedonly the wig remained. The confused tones grew into a melody. Hasse looked round -the Master's face appeared at the open window, in the midst of the grape-leaves and wild roses, illumined with the most passionate joy, while he cried, "Come to my heart, Puss, thou hast found it!" And Ponto threw himself, almost fainting into his master's arms. Scarlatti sent off his mad pupil, straightway, until the following morning.

When the young man appeared, the next morning, before his master, Scarlatti showed him, with a brilliant, triumphant look, a sheet thickly covered with notes, over which was printed, in large letters, the title, "Katzenfuge." Master Scar

THE

HE whole force of English romancewriting has been deployed during the last six months. Dickens, Thackeray, and Bulwer, the chiefs of that department of literature, have been in full play, and Miss Bronte (Jane Eyre), Mrs. Gaskell (Mary Barton), Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Gore, Miss Julia Kavanagh, and lesser ladies, have advanced almost simultaneously, and platoon-wise, discharged each a new novel. They have all, at least, achieved what Frenchmen, with their facile flattery, call a succès d'estime. A succès, by the bye, with which no man nor woman was ever known to be content. We are not sure that Thackeray's "Henry Esmond" was more ardently anticipated, than Miss Bronte's "Villette." "Jane Eyre"—a novel with a heroine neither beautiful nor rich, an entirely abnormal creation among the conventional heroines-came directly upon "Vanity Fair, a Novel without a hero," and made friends as warm, and foes as bitter, as that noted book. "Shirley" disappointed. It is in fact entirely overshadowed by its predecessor. But now, after six years, “Villette appears, and takes rank at once with "Jane Eyre," displaying the same vigor-the same exuberant power-the same bold outline-the same dramatic conception-and the same invincible mastery and fusion of elements usually considered repugnant to romance. The great success of "Jane Eyre" as a work of art, and apart from the interest of the story, which is very great, consists in its rejection of all the stage-appointments of novels-all the Adonis-Dukes and Lady Florimels in satin boudoirs, which puerile phantoms still haunt the

pages of Bulwer (although he is rapidly laying them) and the remorseless James, and are, of course, the staple of the swarm of "the last new novels " which monthly inundate the circulating libraries in England. The author takes the reader among a crowd of ordinary human beings, and declares proudly, “Here you shall find as much romance and thrilling interest, as in the perfumed purlieus of palaces." And she keeps her word. It is as if we were dragged to a lonely common, jagged with sad trees, and confronted with the splendor of a sunset. Is it less gorgeous than when seen from your palace window streaming through the green-house? asks the bold painter who has drawn us thither, because he knew that the unutterable glories of nature needed no architectural nor upholstering setting.

This actuality is the very genius and spirit of modern English fiction, and this is its humane and prodigious triumph. The democratic principle has ordered romance to descend from thrones and evacuate the palace. Romance is one of the indefeasible "rights of man." Disraeli's "Young Duke," and Bulwer's "Harley L'Es trange" and "Pelham " are tailor's blocks and fashion-plates. Give us men, scarred and seamed as you please, that we may feel the thrill of sympathy and learn, if we may, from their thought and action, how we should think and act. Discrown the "Lady Arabella" and the "haughty Countess" sacred in satin from warm emotion, give us no "impossible she," but,

"A creature not too bright and good For human nature's daily food." So cries the age, with stentorian lungs.

And they come, thick-thronging poetry and prose, the women around whose heads glance the loveliest lights of human sympathy, in whose pictured forms we recognize the image of our sweetest hopeswhose characters, fair and feminine, play amid the press of life like flowers in the wind. Or they come, as in Lucy Snowe and Jane Eyre, more brave than beautiful, but inspiring deeper reverence for integrity, and strength, and devotion. We open our novels, and there is our life mirrored, -dimly sometimes, and insufficientlybut not impossibly nor incredibly.

This actuality we conceive to be the healthy principle of contemporary fiction. We will not now stop to say that it may very easily run, on the right hand, into a want of that sufficient stimulus which belongs to "ideal" portraitures, and which, by the charm of an almost fabulous virtue, allures us to excellence; and on the left, into that sermonizing and romance of reform which is the quick destruction of story-telling. No man bidden to a feast of fiction expects to sit down to a sermon. Vinegar is good-under restrictions-but when you are smilingly turning a glass of supposed Steinberger-Cabinet, suddenly to taste vinegar, is to be angry with your host, to spoil your dinner, and to run the risk of an indigestion. If the novelist do really hold the mirror up to nature, he need not fear that any delicate reader will too finely scent a moral. But if he attempt to pin the moral to the picture, to say that Johnny being good had a gooseberry tart and naughty Tommy was put into a dark closet,-he simply assumes an accident as a consequent, and treats resolution. What intelligent Johnny wouldn't be good for a nice tart, and general approbation, and a front seat at the theatre? The true thing would be, if you wanted to show character, to feed naughty Tommy with illimitable tarts, and then permit him to incarcerate Johnny who had been longingly watching the operation, in the dark closet. Then we should see whether Johnny were really good, and heroic, and enduring, or simply greedy for gooseberry pie. The tart theory is not true. If goodness were always served with gooseberry sauce, who would be bad?

Thackeray is the most ponderous protestant against this nursery and primer view of human nature and human life, and close upon him, comes Miss Bronte. Jane Eyre was a governess, and a strongminded woman. She was by no means the lady with whom Harley L'Estrange in or out of "My Novel" would ever fall in love. There were great doubts whether she knew how to dress, and

none at all that she had no "style." She moved up and down the novel totally regardless of nerves and the "tea-table proprieties." She was a woman bullied by circumstances and coping bravely with a hard lot, and finally proving her genuine force of character by winning the respect and love of a man who had exhausted the world and been exhausted by it; & man in whom the noble instincts were so deeply sunk, that they could only respond to a ray so penetrant and pure that it would not be dispersed in fogs-but which instinctively, when they were touched, would respond and rule the life. Of course a novel of this kind, full of the truthful and rapid play of character, and from which rustling silks and satins are rigorously excluded-except once, when they sweep, cloud-like, down the stairs, in one of the most picturesque passages of the book-has no interest for those who are snuffing in the air for perfumes. It wears an almost repulsive sternness to those who quiz it daintily through tortoise-shell eye-glasses.

"Villette" has the same virtues. It is a novel of absorbing interest as a story. It is somewhat less severe than "Jane Eyre." Paulina is a strain of grace and tenderness that does not occur in the other book. Paul has many traits like Roches ter. Lucy Snowe is a governess like Jane Eyre herself-neither very young, nor lovely, nor fascinating, as we can easily see from the impression she makes upon Grahame Bretton. He is such a hero as daily experience supplies. We have all seen many Grahame Brettons, free, joyous natures, bounding through life; and therefore we are the better for meeting him in "Villette." Harley L'Estrange, on the contrary, is a boarding-school girl's "Mortimer," and therefore of no use to us, though we do meet him in "My Novel." Grahame Bretton loves Paulina, who loves him from her childhood. The opening pages of the book, depicting Paulina as a child, are remarkable. She is the "creation" of the book. We have not met her in other stories, and her picture is like an alto-relievo, it is so strongly carved. Lucy Snowe fancies a little that she loves Grahame; but Lucy Snowe, in her situation, would have loved any chivalrous man with whom she was intimately thrown. Certain flowers require a southern exposure; and it is no fault of Bretton's that his nature demanded in a mistress something more tropical than Lucy Snowe. He was always noble to her. She had doubted him sometimes; but unjustly, as the event always proved. When Paulina first saw Grahame, she loved him, although she was but six years old.

He