Dercy bears the loss of Mademoiselle Dubrocard the more philosophically, having in the mean time fallen in love with Victorine Lorsay, an orphan niece of Madame Dubrocard, a lovely, but somewhat whimsical creature, whom her aunt had allowed a shelter under her roof, and treats with some harshness, and great parade of charity. He makes his suit to Victorine, and is rejected-not, as he soon afterwards learns from her own mouth, because she cannot return his affection, but because he is rich, and she has nothing. The embarrassments of Dercy now thicken upon him. He, for once, consents to a fraud. Dharville, with his knowledge, lodges in the hands of Mons. Dubrocard, the guardian of Victorine, a sum of money, which he falsely pretends was sent her by the captain of a privateer, to whom her father had lent it just before his decease, and who had not since been heard of. At their very next interview, Dercy reveals the stratagem of Dharville; Victorine, offended at the trick attempted to be put upon her, indignantly dismisses him from her presence, and the next day the money is returned. In the mean time, the Duke de * * * dies; and to the great wrath of his relations, and the utter disappointment of Dauvert, who supposed that the arts and attentions of himself and his wife had secured a will in their favour, it is found that he has bequeathed to Dercy the greater part of his large property. Dercy accepts the legacy; the duke's relations, instigated and aided by Dauvert, bring a suit to set aside the will; Duprè, the attorney, petitions for a commission of lunacy against him, with a view of being appointed his guardian; the public murmurs; his acquaintances avoid him; his character is blackened in the public journals; and Victorine, who had disappeared soon after her last interview with Dercy, is no more spared than her lover. At this moment there comes out from the press a memoir bearing the signature of Francis Leclercq, a young manufacturer, who avows himself the illegitimate son of the Duke de * * *, stating that the bequest to Dercy was made in trust for him, that this trust was communicated in a private letter from the Duke to Dercy, and that it had been partly executed by the purchase of an estate for his benefit. All testamentary dispositions of this nature are void by the French code; Leclercq loses by his frankness the provision intended for him; the Duke's relations pocket it, and quarrel till it is spent; but the character of Dercy is vindicated, and all Paris is loud in his praise. Dercy, however, disgusted with the fickleness of the world, and weary of being cheated by its falsehoods, departs, no one knows whither. He had first provided generously for Leclercq, paid the debts of VOL. I.

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his uncle St. Firmin and of his nephew le Morinnière, and disposed of all the rest of his property to charitable purposes, reserving only two hundred thousand francs-the very sum he would have bestowed upon Victorine. At the end of eight years, the story finds him married to Victorine, whose scruples he had contrived to overcome, living happily on the borders of Switzerland, not yet quite cured of his habitual easiness of belief.

"We must confess that our hero still retained much of his former simplicity of character and single-heartedness; and it was more particularly with regard to the public events of the day that this part of his character displayed itself. When the revolutions of Spain, Naples, and Portugal, took place, he supposed that the principles on which they were founded were recognised by their respective princes: but he grieved for both the people and their masters, when the congresses and battles informed him that the sovereigns had accepted the constitutions only out of policy. He had the simplicity to imagine that, after the victories our arms had obtained in Spain, that country would be governed according to the principles of the glorious decree of Andujar; and to suppose that all the European powers would take the part of the Greeks against the Turks. He once flattered himself for a short time that France was about to enter into a negociation with Hayti, and he rejoiced both on account of the state and the families of the old colonists. When he saw that the English had recognised the independence of South America, he regretted that France, which had contributed so much towards that of North America, had not set the example. After all, notwithstanding that he had more than once been deceived in his hopes, and notwithstanding what he saw actually passing in the two hemispheres, he thought that the attempts made to arrest the course of the human race towards ultimate perfection, were only temporary; and that the progress of reason and intelligence, though slow, were certain; while the hope which he entertained of the general felicity of mankind, rendered his own private happiness still sweeter to him. Persecuted by his fellow-creatures, he had indulged in a violent fit of misanthropy ; but, in the bosom of his family, and surrounded by neighbours to whose virtues he had contributed by his example, he indulged in the most exalted philanthropy and benevolence."-Vol. 2, pp. 275, 276.

The people who have given our friend Dercy so much trouble in the course of his adventures. all come, as they ought, to a bad end. Such is the abstract of a plot full of incident, and of which the fault, if it has any, is, that it is too artificial, and dramatic in its structure. One cannot help thinking, while reading it, that it would make an excellent plot for a comedy. The fewness of the characters, their being kept in sight from the beginning to the end, and concerned in almost every thing that takes place, the complication of difficulties and mischances in which Dercy is involved near the close, and its sudden disentanglement by unexpected circumstances, remind us more of a story contrived for stage effect, and dramatic convenience, than of the fortunes of real life. We have already observed, that this work contains no very striking delineation

of individual character and disposition. The author draws the genus, rather than the species, and still less the variety. Dercy is virtuous and credulous, Dharville rash and generous, Victorine, of whom we see little, very good, and full of elevated notions of rectitude. The ingredients of which the characters of Dercy's relations, of Dauvert and his wife, and of Mons. and Madame Dubrocard, are compounded, are selfishness, inhumanity and knavery, a little varied, it is true, in their proportion. The Duke de *** is selfish and knavish like the rest, but possessed of some humanity, and some little consideration for integrity.

The recital of Dauvert's gallantries, which we could wish had been spared, is nauseous enough; and along with some other incidents and allusions in the course of the work, seems to indicate a very different state of manners in France, from that which prevails in this country. The moral impression left by this book is, however, upon the whole, exceedingly sound and wholesome. We are obliged to the author for satirizing so well the falsehood, the treachery, the heartlessness, and the blind greediness of gain and of distinction, that prevail in the world, and of connecting them so ingeniously and naturally with the consequences that undoubtedly belong to them. Not that we expect that the perusal of such a book will reform any body whom these propensities have already enslaved. Moral habits are even more difficult to eradicate than physical. Of all changes of character, the least to be hoped for is that which is to make him, who is accustomed to dissemble and defraud, true-hearted and sincere. Age, which moderates the haste of the passions, which looks timidly at consequences, and delights in surrounding its feebleness with the means of comfort, brings no diminution of the habit of dishonesty and deceit. It is a habit which finds its nourishment in its own nature, and hides itself from detection and expulsion in the darkness of its own innumerable windings. The solitude and silence of the desert, where there is no opportunity for its exercise, are its only cure. It is something, however, to do what our author has done,-to encourage the virtuous by demonstrating the safety and policy of humanity and honesty, and to check the first leanings towards a vicious habit, by showing the miseries and misfortunes that wait behind it.

It seems to us, however, that either for the sake of effect, or from mistaken views of human nature, M. Picard has shaded his picture a little too darkly, and has represented the dispositions and practices of which we have been speaking, as engrossing the minds and influencing the conduct of men to a degree

not to be met with in actual life. His unprincipled characters are too unvariably unprincipled, and too unreserved in the expression of their contempt of every thing that resembles integrity. It is not true, as one would be led to suppose from the perusal of this book, that mankind, with a few rare exceptions, are utterly destitute of humanity and honesty, and ready to avow the low estimation in which they hold these unprofitable qualities. Kind offices and upright motives are ever of good repor in the mouths of men; and the humanity that should provide for a superannuated domestic, and the integrity that should refuse to defraud the revenue by a legal evasion, would not, we think, be misunderstood or ridiculed either in this country or in France, even by those who were least inclined to imitate the example. The falsest of our race sometimes let pass occasions of treachery, the unkindest sometimes perform acts of mercy; how much oftener, then, the great mass of mankind, in whom good and bad qualities are mingled in every variety of proportion? How many good offices do we receive daily from those whom we suspect of an unfriendly disposition towards us, and how many trusts are faithfully executed by those who are reputed unworthy of confidence. The most, perhaps, that can be said of such people, is, that you have no security for their virtue, no certainty that opportunity and temptation will not overcome those who have already found them too strong to be resisted. There is a rational medium between believing too well, and too ill of mankind: it is as great a'mistake to suppose them all knaves, as to suppose them all fools. He who thinks worst of others, generally thinks well enough of himself; but to imagine all virtue concentrated in one's own person, is, to say the least, a proof of quite as much vanity as penetration.

If the author has made those by whom Dercy is surrounded too uniformly unprincipled and designing, he has also represented Dercy himself as too credulous and too easily duped. He is not deficient in good sense and sound judgment on most subjects, possesses a prompt capacity for intellectual acquisitions, and ready talents for business, and takes in certain instances, most wise and judicious measures to extricate his friends from difficult and unpleasant emergencies. That such a man should not have at length learned a lesson so often repeated that he should suffer himself to be deceived again and again, by those of whose treachery he had received so many proofs evinces an incapacity for drawing conclusions, and of profiting by experience, not altogether consistent with the measure of intellect allowed him. This strong mixture of credulity

and simplicity in the character of Dercy, heightens, notwithstanding its improbability, the effect of the work. Had he been made to possess less understanding, we should respect him less; had he possessed less credulity, he must have met with fewer embarrassments, and would attract less sympathy.

From the multitude of bad translations from French authors, executed both in this country and in England, we are tempted to suppose that the booksellers entrust this employment to those who are thought to be deeply versed in a foreign language, because they are ignorant of their own; on the ground that every man is to be deemed a master of one language at least. The translator of Le Niais, though not chargeable with that tremendous and parricidal mangling of his mother tongue of which some others stand guilty, is not such a translator as the work deserves, and has performed his task in a very hasty and negligent manner.

ART. XXX.-Remarks on the Disorders of Literary Men, or an Inquiry into the means of preventing the Evils usually incident to Sedentary and Studious Habits. Boston: Cummings, Hilliard & Co. 1825.

By H. G. Bryant

No class of men among us need more often to be reminded, that there is a certain blessing of no inconsiderable value, called health, which certain habits are pretty sure to destroy, and which certain others have a tendency to preserve, than those who devote their industry to literary pursuits. One would be apt to imagine that those who are so greedy after knowledge, would not neglect that, which is so necessary to its acquisition, and without whose continuance its acquisition is but useless. It might be thought, that the scholar would not be unwilling to add to his other learning, an acquaintance with the best methods of preserving the health; and that he who would feel ashamed not to know, or not to practise other means of erudition, would never show himself ignorant or careless of this. With his high respect for the intellectual part of his nature, upon which he is continually heaping gifts and ornaments, it might be expected, that he would take care to provide it, if possible, with a sound and safe habitation. We should think little of the conjugal kindness of that husband, who, satisfied with seeing his wife well dressed and well fed, should insist upon lodging her in a crazy ruinous garret, ready to fall upon her head, there to listen to the voices of the winds, and receive the visits of the storms. It was a poor conceit of Wal