is rather friendless, rather an alien and an outcast, in the
society of French fiction. Monsieur de Camors is not of our monde,
nor is the Enfant du Siecle; indeed, perhaps good Monsieur
Sylvestre Bonnard is as sympathetic as anyone in that populous
country of modern French romance. Or do you know Fifi Vollard?

Something must be allowed for strange manners, for exotic ideas,
and ways not our own. More perhaps is due to what, as Englishmen
think, is the lack of HUMOUR in the most brilliant and witty of
races. We have friends many in Moliere, in Dumas, in Rabelais; but
it is far more difficult to be familiar, at ease, and happy in the
circles to which Madame Sand, M. Daudet, M. Flaubert, or M. Paul
Bourget introduce us. M. Bourget's old professor, in "Le
Disciple," we understand, but he does not interest himself much in
us, and to us he is rather a curiosity, a "character," than an
intimate. We are driven to the belief that humour, with its loving
and smiling observation, is necessary to the author who would make
his persons real and congenial, and, above all, friendly. Now
humour is the quality which Dumas, Moliere, and Rabelais possess
conspicuously among Frenchmen. Montaigne has it too, and makes
himself dear to us, as the humorous novelists make their fancied
people dear. Without humour an author may draw characters distinct
and clear, and entertaining, and even real; but they want
atmosphere, and with them we are never intimate. Mr. Alfred Austin
says that "we know the hero or the heroine in prose romance far
more familiarly than we know the hero or heroine in the poem or the
drama." "Which of the serious characters in Shakspeare's plays are
not indefinite and shadowy compared with Harry Esmond or Maggie
Tulliver?" The SERIOUS characters--they are seldom very familiar
or definite to us in any kind of literature. One might say, to be