crown to a person in black who showed me the cathedral, and then I asked him the address of a gentleman to whom I had a letter from the Dean. It turned out that it was to him the letter was addressed. He looked like a fool, and I too; but he kept the money." The most interesting thing throughout the later letters is not, however, the witty anecdotes and the raps at the writer's confrères, but the development of his scepticism and cynicism. He took his stand early in life on his aversion to florid phrases (one must remember, in palliation, that he was a Frenchman of the so-called generation of 1830), and he fell a victim ultimately to what we may call a dogmatization of his temperament. His dislike for fine names led him at last to a total disbelief in fine things. He had found a great many pretty puppets stuffed with sawdust or nothing at all; so he concluded that all sentiment was hollow and flattered himself that he had pricked the bubble. We have noted but a single instance of his speaking of a case of moral ardour without raillery more or less explicit; and even here it is a question to what extent the ardour is in fact moral. "Since there have been so many romances and poems of the passionate or would-be passionate sort every woman pretends to have a heart. Wait a little yet. When you have a heart in good earnest, you will let me know. You will regret the good time when you
