Alexandre Dumas is the subject of a masterly criticism in the Grenzboten, in which justice is done him with that impartiality and moderation in respect to which a competent German is unequalled among critics. Among Dumas's dramas, the writer regards Caligula as the best in spite of its grossness. In all the excesses, indecencies, improbabilities, and lawlessness of his romances, there is the trace of splendid talent. It is doubtful whether this talent could have been developed by industry and an earnest love of art into a higher sphere of power. Finally, the writer concludes that Dumas is doing more to corrupt the taste of France and Germany than any other romancer, except, perhaps, Eugene Sue.
Among the French socialists there has recently been considerable discussion on the principles of Government—discussion which has resulted in angry separation of the republican party into opposite camps; Rittinghausen, Considerant, Ledru Rollin, and Girardin having been severally aiming at the destruction of representative government, and the erection of Direct Legislation—a scheme which Louis Blanc, in his Plus de Girondins and La Republique Une et Indivisible, has opposed with a degree of ability which promised to restore him to a respectable reputation. But Prudhon, in his last book, not only denounces Rollin, Girardin, Blanc, and all the rest, with a school-boy vehemence, which The Leader says is "pitiless," but he attacks without disguise all government, no matter what its form, as false in principle and vicious in effect. He believes neither in absolute monarchy, in constitutional monarchy, nor in democracy; he admits no divine right, no legal right, no right of majorities. He only believes in the right of justice in the empire of reason. The principle of authority he rejects in politics as in religion: he will admit only liberty—reason. Prudhon has won a name for talents, and has frequently written with real force—but such propositions are a disgrace to any man who has ever possessed a good reputation.
The Republique, a new book just published By Paris, by M. Lefranc, a member of the Assembly, treats of the events which have filled up the time since the revolution of 1848. M. Lefranc is an ardent republican, and his exhibition of this momentous period is not favorable to the party which hitherto, at least, has managed to gain the victory, if not to assure itself the possession of its traits. His style is singularly animated and impassioned, and it is not without justice that a prominent Parisian critic (Eugene Pelletan) calls him the most direct inheritor of that light-armed yet potent style of polemical writing, of which the famous Camille Desmoulins was so great a master.
The popularity of Scott, in France, is shown by the appearance of the twentieth edition of Defauconpret's translation of his novels; and the announcement of an entirely new translation of them by another hand. If Defauconpret had been the only translator, twenty editions would have been an immense success; but there are besides, at the very least, twenty different translations of the complete works (many of which have had two, three, or four editions), and innumerable translations of particular novels, especially of Quentin Durward.
M. Blanquart Evrard, has commenced at Paris what he calls D'Album Photographique de l'Artiste et de l'Amateur. It is a pictorial work, containing reproductions by photography on paper of well-known works of art by ancient and modern masters. We have not seen it, but hear it spoken of as successful.