"Continuing my examination, I remarked with pleasure that the _grande désolée_ had not yet completely renounced human vanities; for, beneath the floating sleeves of her gown, at the junction of the wrist with the white and delicate hand, I saw the glitter of two little gold bracelets of exquisite workmanship. These feminine trinkets, which became her much, greatly reassured me touching the sombre tint, and the politico-philosophic exaltation, of certain of George Sand's recent writings. One of the hands that thus caught my attention concealed a _cigarito_, and concealed it badly, for a treacherous little column of smoke ascended behind the back of the prophetess." Whether or no the interview thus described really took place, Madame Dudevant should feel obliged to her biographer for his gentle treatment and abstinence from exaggeration. On the strength of the puff of smoke and the epicene dressing gown, many writers would have sketched her hussar fashion, and hardly have let her off the mustaches. We are nearly at the end of our parcel, at least of such portion of it as appears worthy a few words. Here are a brace of volumes by M. de Kock, over which we are not likely long to linger. An esteemed contributor to Maga expressed, a few years ago, his and our opinion concerning this ancient dealer in dirt--namely, that he has no deliberate intention to corrupt the morals or alarm the delicacy of his readers, for that morals and delicacy are words of whose meaning he has not the slightest conception. Paul, every Frenchman tells you, is not read in France, save by milliners' girls and shopboys, or by literary porters, who solace the leisure of their lodge by a laugh over his pages, contraband amongst _gens comme il faut_. No man is a prophet in his own land; and yet we have certain reasons for believing that, even in France, Paul has more readers, avowed or secret, than his countrymen admit. But at any rate, we can offer the old gentleman (for M. Kock must be waxing venerable, and his son has for some years been before the public as an author,) the consolatory assurance, that in England he has numerous admirers, to judge from the thumbed condition of a set of his works, which caught our eye last summer on the shelves of a London circulating library. To these amateurs of "Kockneyisms," whether genuine cockneys, or naturalised cooks and barbers from Gaul, _Taquinet le Bossu_ will be welcome. The hunchback, everybody knows, is a great type in France. Who is not acquainted with the glorious _Mayeux_, the swearing, fighting, love-making hero of a host of popular songs, anecdotes, and caricatures, and of more than one romance--especially of a four-volume one by Ricard, a deceased rival of De Kock? Well, Paul--who, we must admit, is quite original, and disdains imitation--has never meddled with the hackneyed veteran Mayeux, but now creates a hunchback of his own. Taquinet is the dwarf clerk of