On Conjugal Love the classic models are first consulted,--Oenone, Evadne, Medea,--these characters being followed through the delineation of modern dramatists. We know of no more exquisite criticism than the pages devoted to Griseldis. Analyzing the accounts of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Perault, our author concludes with the play of "Munck Bellinghausen." The last chapters, on "Love and Duty," are among the most eloquently written in the volume. For style, M. Saint-Marc Girardin is second to no living author of France. In this course we find an evident predilection for the models of antiquity. When a comparison is instituted between the ancients and the moderns, we feel pretty certain of the result before the writer has proceeded very far. Not that we ever find a systematic idolizing of all that is classic merely. Far from it. Modern writers are not neglected. In this particular a genuine service is done to critical literature. It often seems as if literary lecturers and historians were attacked by an aesthetic presbyopy. For them the present age never produces anything worth even a passing remark. The masterpieces they notice must be old and time-honored. Not so in the present studies on the passions. Ponsard finds his place side by side with older names. After an appreciative notice of the Lucretia of Livy, we find a comment on the Lucretia which may have been played the week before at the Théâtre Français. Nor is it a slight service done to contemporary letters, when a master-critic turns his thoughts to works which, if they do not hold the first rank, yet, by the talent of their authors and the nature of their subjects, have attracted all eyes for a time. Such are the writings of Madame George Sand. Of these, "André," "La Mare au Diable," and "La Petite Fadette" are reviewed with praise in the work under consideration, while the force of criticism is expended on "Indiana," "Lelia," and "Jacques." * * * * * Whatever claims the academician Victor de Laprade may have to poetic talent, he certainly sinks below mediocrity when he attempts to discuss the principles of the art he practises. Since it has been his good-fortune to be numbered among the illustrious Forty he has several times attempted literary criticism, but never so extensively as in his last work, "Questions d'Art et de Morale."[I] This is a series of discursive essays, a few upon art in general, the greater part, however, restricted to letters; the whole written in a poetic prose not without a certain charm, but wearisome for continuous reading. [Footnote I: _Questions d'Art et de Morale._ Par Victor de Laprade, de l'Académie Française. Paris: Didier et Cie. 8vo.]