This sort of thing is passable in dialogue, but the effect is distressing when the narrator himself either altogether forgets the 1500 years which separate him from the characters of the story, and writes as they speak, or else employs expressions borrowed from the medieval romances of chivalry. He writes, for instance, in Homeric style: Nothing would have disturbed the happiness of Démodocus, if he could only have found a husband for his daughter who would have treated her with proper consideration _after leading her home to a house full of treasures_. And of Velléda, the Gallican Druidess, we are told, in the true ballad style: _Fille de roi a moins de beauté, de noblesse et de grandeur_. And if the author sometimes writes as if he himself were the last of the Homeridæ, his characters in retaliation often talk as if they foresaw the whole course of modern intellectual development. The Christian bishop, Cyrille, speaking of the heathen myths, says: "A time will perhaps come when these falsehoods of the childish days of old will simply be ingenious fables, themes for the song of the poet. But in our days they confuse men's minds." What an enlightened man! It is unnecessary to pass the whole work in review. The author's great ability is only displayed in details and incidental episodes. One beautiful passage is that in which he describes the arrival of the Greek family to visit the Christian family, who are all in the field, binding sheaves; it has a peculiar, idyllic charm which recalls the Book of Ruth, and yet it breathes the New Testament spirit. The account of Velléda's death is also very fine. There is all the fire and divine frenzy of Chateaubriand, the poet's, genius in his representation of Velléda. There are longer passages than these well worthy of attention, such as the description of the battle between the Franks and the combined armies of the Romans and the Gauls, which, written as it was a number of years before Sir Walter Scott's historical novels, is significant and novel with its element of national characterisation. As in all Chateaubriand's works, the descriptions of nature are fine.