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Among the critical essays with which the French press teems we English take naturally a special interest in those which relate to our own literature. These are a numerous class, and the demand seems likely to increase the rate of supply. To allude to a few writers in this department: There is M. Arthur Dudley who, in the Revue des Deux Mondes has criticised Sir Bulwer Lytton's "New Timon," and the poems of Alexander Smith the romantic, and of Matthew Arnold the classical; and the literary merits at large of Thomas Moore and of Charles Dickens. M. E.-D. Forgues has initiated his countrymen in a large course of English belles lettres,—now taking for his theme the "Mount Sorel" of Mrs. Marsh, now the "Hochelaga" of Mr. Warburton,—anon turning the pages of (ce spirituel badaud) Mr. Titmarsh's "Irish Sketch-Book," and analysing the subtle beauties of Alfred Tennyson, and guessing at the enigma meanings of Robert Browning, and doing his best by the subtleties of Shelley, and the whims and oddities of Thomas Hood, and interpreting the natural supernaturalisms of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the strange vagaries of Edgar Poe, and the equivocal tendencies of "Sir Edouard's" Lucretia, and the crosses of Mrs. Norton's Stuart of Dunleath, and the autobiographical mystifications of George Borrow ;—M. Eugene Forçade has introduced to his countrywomen the romances of Charlotte Bronte, and analysed for his countrymen the History of Mr. Macaulay, and Warburton's Memoirs of Prince Rupert—M. John Lemoinne has discussed the memoirs of Lord Malmesbury, and of Beau Brummel;—M. Merimée (and others) Grote's History of Greece;—M. Gustave Planehe, not a few of our novelists, including Fielding and Bulwer Lytton, and of our latter-day dramaturges, Maturin and Fanny Kemble;—M. Léon de Wailly, the sonnets of Shakspeare, the tragedies of Shakspeare's predecessors, and the lyrics of Robert Burns;—the life and times of Bolingbroke, and the umbratic career of Junius, have been mimately treated by M. Charles de Rémusat, who has also given a "study" of that favourite subject for French études, Horace Walpole ;—M. Milsand has discoursed on the poetical charms of Campbell, of Tennyson, of Westland Marston, of Mrs. Browning, of Edmund Reade, and of Henry Taylor,—Talfourd's plays, Bulwer-Lytton's epic, and Carlyle's Latter-day Pamphlets;—M. Montégut has interpreted the Christian Socialism of Charles Kingsley's novels and pamphlets, band the writings of Margaret Fuller, and has appraised the pretensions of Carlyle, and his friend John Sterling, and the humours of Sam Slick, and the aspirations of Longfellow, and the oracles of Emerson. But of all writers who have thus taken upon them to familiarise French readers with English literature, and its American offshoots, M. Philarète Chasles enjoys probably the repute of pre-eminence; so diligent, so persevering, so minute, and so miscellaneous have been his researches into our literary doings, from Elizabethan days downwards. Seven years he spent on our shores, and made of them seven years of
