themselves, and to regret the head-long precipitation that bid a ruinous price for a questionable reform, a reform far more effectually obtainable by less violent means. In short, the February Revolution has long been held as legitimate game for ridicule in France as in any other European country. Numerous as are the jests of which it has been the object, the satirists have not yet exhausted themselves, and the year 1850 finds them still improving the text. M. Jules Sandeau is not usually a favourite of ours. Those of his works that have come under our notice are for the most part tame and insipid. It was, therefore, with agreeable surprise that we read the very smart and lively opening of his last novel, in which he has abandoned sentiment for satire, and risen above his usual monotonous level. We cannot say that the book is altogether an agreeable one, as most persons understand the word. Similar, in this respect, to a recent well-known satirical novel of English society, it contains no characters with which the reader can heartily sympathise. The motives of all the characters are more or less sordid and selfish, at least till quite the close of the tale, when two of them exhibit more generous impulses. The book has a double aim: to satirise French society generally, and to ridicule the February Revolution. As far as we can discover, M. Sandeau's leanings are Orleanish; but he does not intrude his friends upon us, contenting himself with ridiculing their enemies. A certain epigrammatic vivacity of style and expression, occasionally amounting to wit, and an ingenious plot, fully sustain the reader's attention. The types presented of certain important classes of Frenchmen are certainly not flattered, but neither must they be looked upon as mere caricatures. Legitimacy finds little favour with M. Sandeau, or at least he presses hard upon its partisans, those denizens of the noble faubourg who to the last held aloof from the monarchy of July. The republicans, whether of the eve or of the morrow, are painted in not very attractive colours. The pivot of the tale is the misplaced ambition of a wealthy Parisian burgess, whose heavy purse and huge vanity render him the target of a host of intriguers, and especially of a dowager marchioness, more proud of her pedigree than scrupulous in her manœuvres. The first four pages of the book are perhaps as good a specimen as it affords of the author's _piquant_ and animated style. They introduce and describe four of the principal actors in the comedy; a purse-proud citizen and his daughter, a democratic notary and an impoverished nobleman, a compound of the fortune-hunter and the _chevalier d'industrie_. The chapter is too long to extract unabridged, but we will endeavour so to condense it as to give a faithful idea of its style, premising that we aim at rendering the spirit rather than the letter of the original.