Arsene Houssaye, like his almost un-namable contemporary Belot, is the Laureate of Vice. His imagination is as unclean as a street-gutter, only it is a gutter that runs rose-water. He deals exclusively with the "roses-and-raptures" side of the question. He always lays the scene of his romances in dainty boudoirs, beneath the soft light of real wax candles (gas would be far too vulgar). He revels in annals of the nobility. His heroes seldom or never are without a "handle to their names." His heroines are usually selected from a set whose name he has chosen as the title of one of his novels--_Les Courtisanes du Grand Monde_. His books would be injurious if they were not so very stupid. They are improbable in incident, immoral in tone, exaggerated in style and lamentably dragged out in length. The trail of the class among which M. Houssaye spends his days is visible in every page. M. Houssaye is possessed with a passionate desire to become a member of the French Academy. Well, why should he not sit where Taine does not and where Sardou does? His _History of the Forty-first Fauteuil_, one of the brightest and wittiest of his works, will probably avail, not to open the doors to him, but to bar them against him. L. H. H. FRANCOIS BULOZ. The man whose fortunes were to be during nearly half a century connected with the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ was born in 1804 at Vulbens, a village in French Savoy. Without becoming anything of a savant, M. Buloz received the fair education then obtainable at the College Louis le Grand. After leaving school he was forced to take a situation at some chemical works in Sologne, but soon returned disgusted and without means to Paris. There we find him passing his days in a printing-office, and his evenings--and often, too, his nights--in miscellaneous reading. In all that he did he displayed that indomitable energy which characterized his entire subsequent career.