In _Monte Christo_ he has evidently taken pains to do well, and the result is the best written book he has yet produced. But we lose sight of our parcel, as yet but half unpacked. Here is a volume of the _Député d'Arcis_, (another of the continuation family,) heavy stuff, seemingly, by Balzac; and this brings us to the end of the continuations. With these exceptions, the French writers who have not altogether left off writing, have at least kept within circumscribed limits. Here we have a volume from M. Méry of Marseilles, a clever, careless writer, not much known in England; another by the authoress of _Consuelo_; two more from M. Alphonse Karr; a couple from that old sinner, Paul de Kock, who is not often so concise, having superadded, of late years, to his other transgressions the crime of long-windedness; a brief Sicilian sketch from M. Paul de Musset. We turn aside a heap of political matter, of no great merit or value; a few pamphlets, of some talent, but fugitive interest, by Girardin and others; a ream of portraits and caricatures; a few more novels whose authors' names or whose first pages condemn them; _Mourir pour la Patrie_, and some other revolutionary staves, bad music and worse words, and the box is empty. We sit down to peruse the little we have selected as worth perusal from the pile of printed paper. _La Famille Alain_, by Karr, is the first thing that comes to hand. We have read the greater part of it already, in the French periodical in which it first appeared. M. Karr is rather a favourite of ours. There are many good points about his novels, although he is, perhaps, less popular as a novelist than as the writer of a small monthly satirical pamphlet, _Les Guèpes_, The Wasps, which has existed for several years, with varying, but, upon the whole, with very great success. M. Karr's wit is of a peculiar order, approaching more nearly to _humour_ than French wit generally does. There is an odd sort of dryness and fantastic _naïveté_ in some of his drolleries, quite distinct from what we are accustomed to in the comic writings of his countrymen. With this the German origin to be inferred from his name may have some connexion. There is also a Germanic vagueness and dreaminess in some of his books, although their scene is usually on French ground, frequently on the coast of Brittany, a country M. Karr evidently well knows and loves. One of his great recommendations is the general propriety of his writings. Of most of them, the tone and tendency are alike unexceptionable, and some are mere "simple stories," which the most fastidious papas--who deny that any good thing can proceed from a French press, and look upon the yellow paper cover with "Paris" at its foot as the ineradicable mark of the beast, the moral quarantine flag, betokening uncleanness which no amount of lazaretto can purge or purify--might with safe conscience place in the hands of their blooming artless sixteen-year-old daughters. The fact is,