long since been evident, that the books published under it proceed from a more guarded and uniformly sprightly pen, than that of M. de Balzac. The plot of the "Gentilhomme Campagnard," is based on the dissensions of two villages, or more properly speaking, of a hamlet and a very small town, situated within a mile of each other, and which had once constituted two separate parishes, but had been amalgamated at the revolution of '89, greatly to the detriment and indignation of the weaker party. It is in 1836 that M. de Bernard takes up the imaginary history of their jealousy and squabbles, as a canvass on which to embroider the flowers of his invention. The hamlet, Chateaugiron-le-Vieil, is inhabited, and virtually governed, by the Gentilhomme Campagnard, the Baron de Vaudrey--a retired colonel of cuirassiers, whose services under the empire do not prevent his stanch adherence, under the citizen monarchy of July, to the legitimate and exiled sovereigns of France. His nephew, the Marquis of Chateaugiron, less addicted to the fallen Bourbons, arrives, at the opening of the tale, at his family mansion in Chateaugiron-le-Bourg, with certain electioneering projects, highly displeasing to the baron, who resolves vigorously to oppose them, and accordingly gives the whole weight of his influence to a neighbouring iron-master, M. Grandperrin, also a candidate. The iron-master has married a second wife, a heartless vindictive woman, and former mistress of the marquis. She plays an important part in the clever plot, which, although complicated, is perfectly clear. To sketch at any length even the principal of the numerous characters in the amusing comedy, would lead us much too far; we can barely afford to glance at a few of them. On the foremost line--after the Gentilhomme Campagnard himself, a fine, generous-hearted veteran, an excellent compound of the soldier and the nobleman, possessed of great good sense and shrewdness, and altogether one of those personages of whom, whether real or imaginary, one reads with pleasure--stands Madame Bonvalot, or _de_ Bonvalot, as she best loves to be styled, the _parvenue_ widow of a Bordeaux wine merchant. Her beautiful and amiable daughter, an excellent model of a virtuous French lady, gracefully and delicately drawn, is married to the Marquis of Chateaugiron. The mother, an affected, frivolous, rouged, bejewelled dowager of fifty, who, through ambition to figure at the Tuileries, has extorted from her noble son-in-law a promise that he will adhere to the new order of things, is followed from Paris by one Pichot, ex-clerk to a notary, also a former lover of Madame Grandperrin, and self-styled Viscount de Langerac. This fortune-hunter has managed to worm himself into the intimacy of the marquis, and to kindle, in the too-susceptible breast of Madame Bouvalot, a tender flame, which he diligently fans. Then we have a young country-lawyer, Froidevaux, an honest, independent