the bad luck to suggest "London Parcels Delivery." That is an
accident, but the Revolution is in itself too terrible and pitiful,
and too near us (on both sides!) for fiction.

On Dumas' faults it has been no pleasure to dwell. In a recent work
I find the Jesuit Le Moyne quoted, saying about Charles V.: "What
need that future ages should be made acquainted so religious an
Emperor was not always chaste!" The same reticence allures one in
regard to so delightful an author as Dumas. He who had enriched so
many died poor; he who had told of conquering France, died during
the Terrible Year. But he could forgive, could appreciate, the
valour of an enemy. Of the Scotch at Waterloo he writes: "It was
not enough to kill them: we had to push them down." Dead, they
still stood "shoulder to shoulder." In the same generous temper an
English cavalry officer wrote home, after Waterloo, that he would
gladly have given the rest of his life to have served, on that day,
in our infantry or in the French cavalry. These are the spirits
that warm the heart, that make us all friends; and to the great, the
brave, the generous Dumas we cry, across the years and across the
tomb, our Ave atque vale!



MR. STEVENSON'S WORKS



Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson's works, now so many and
so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of
the child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse,