almost every part of Christendom.

[Footnote 1: THE PHANTOM WORLD: a Philosophy of Spirits, Apparitions,
&c. By AUGUSTINE CALMET. Edited by Rev. Henry Christmas.]

* * * * *




AUTHORS AND BOOKS.

George Sand, as elsewhere noted, has written her "Confessions," in the
style of Rousseau, and a Paris bookseller has contracted to give her
a fortune for them. The three greatest--intellectually greatest--women
of modern times have lived in France and it is remarkable that they
have been three of the most shamelessly profligate in all history. The
worst of these, probably--Madame de Staël--left us no records of her
long-continued, disgusting, and almost incredible licentiousness, so
remarkable that Chateaubriand deemed her the most abandoned person in
France at a period when modesty was publicly derided in the Assembly
as a mere "system of refined voluptuousness." Few who have lately
resided in Paris are ignorant of the gross sensualism of the
astonishing Rachel, whose genius, though displayed in no permanent
forms, is not less than that of the Shakspeare of her sex, the
forever-to-be-famous Madame Dudevant, whose immoralities of conduct
have perhaps been overdrawn, while those of De Staël and Rachel have
rarely been spoken of save where they challenged direct observation.
We perceive that Rachel is to be in New York next autumn, with a
company of French actors.