six hundred pages, the sole bit of so-called fine writing is the
following, justified by the prominence of its subject in the incidents,
and showing in spite of itself a certain masculine contempt for the
finicalities of language:--

"The leaves were many shades deeper and richer than any other tree could
show for a hundred miles round,--a deep green, fiery, yet soft; and then
their multitude,--the staircases of foliage, as you looked up the tree,
and could scarce catch a glimpse of the sky,--an inverted abyss of
color, a mound, a dome, of flake-emeralds that quivered in the golden
air.

"And now the sun sets,--the green leaves are black,--the moon
rises,--her cold light shoots across one-half that giant stem.

"How solemn and calm stands the great round tower of living wood, half
ebony, half silver, with its mighty cloud above of flake-jet leaves
tinged with frosty fire at one edge!"

This oak was in Brittany,--the very one, perhaps, before which,

"So hollow, huge, and old,
It looked a tower of ruined mason-work,
At Merlin's feet the wileful Vivien lay."

Indeed, Brittany seems a kind of fairy-land to many writers. Tennyson,
Spenser, Matthew Arnold, Reade, all locate some one of their choicest
scenes there. The reason is not, perhaps, very remote. We prate about
the Anglo-Saxon blood; yet, in reality, there is very little of it to
prate about, especially in the educated classes. When the British were