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of a mile to the left hand, with a great deal to do I prevailed upon the postilion to turn up to it. The look of the house, and of everything about it, as we drew nearer, soon reconciled me to the disaster. It was a little farmhouse, surrounded with about twenty acres of vineyard, and about as much corn; and close to the house on one side was a potagerie of an acre and a half, full of everything which could make plenty in a French peasant's house; and on the other side was a little wood, which furnished wherewithal to dress it. It was about eight in the evening when I got to the house; so I left the postilion to manage his point as he could,— and for mine, I walked directly into the house.

The family consisted of an old gray-headed man and his wife, with five or six sons and sons in law and their several wives, and a joyous genealogy out of them. They were all sitting down together to their lentil soup; a large wheaten loaf was in the middle of the table; and a flagon of wine at each end of it promised joy through the stages of the repast; 'twas a feast of love. The old man rose up to meet me, and with a respectful cordiality would have me sit down at the table; my heart was set down the moment I entered the room, so I sat down at once like a son of the family; and to invest myself in the character as speedily as I could, I instantly borrowed the old man's knife, and, taking up the loaf, cut myself a hearty luncheon; and as I did it, I saw a testimony in every eye, not only of an honest welcome, but of a welcome mixed with thanks that I had not seemed to doubt it. Was it this, or tell me, Nature, what else it was,-that made this morsel so sweet; and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour? If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more so.

When supper was over, the old man gave a knock upon the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance. The moment the signal was given, the women and girls ran all together into a back apartment to tie up their hair, and the young men to the door to wash their faces and change their sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready, upon a little esplanade before the house, to begin. The old man and his wife came out last, and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door. The old man had some fifty years ago been no mean performer upon the vielle; and at the age he was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose. His wife sung

now and then a little to the tune, then intermitted, and joined her old man again as their children and grandchildren danced before them.

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, for some pauses in the movement, wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause or the effect of simple jollity. In a word, I thought I beheld Religion mixing in the dance; but as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally mis leading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; believing, he said, that a cheerful aná contented mind was the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay. Or a learned prelate either, said I. From the "Sentimental Journey.»

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

(1850-1894)

FTER the death of Thackeray and Dickens, English prose fiction tended more and more towards "the novel with a purpose,"

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and in the last quarter of the century, when Stevenson first made himself felt, the reading public was wholly under the power of fiction, which was properly classed as degenerate." Much of it was radically unhealthy. It is no exaggeration to say that tons of fair, white paper were desecrated by "studies" of problems of physiology and psychology on which no healthy mind will wish to dwell -if for no other reason than that their existence as "problems" does not become evident except through abnormality in its most diseased and generally its most contagious form. Stevenson brought about a strong reaction. His "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," the prose masterpiece of the nineteenth century, was in some sense a problem book," but it deals with the whole problem of human life as a struggle between good and evil. Stevenson, who saw things, as he expresses it, "bare to the buff," felt this struggle in himself, and saw it everywhere in the world outside of himself. The expression he gives it in "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" verges on the supernatural. In this book at least, Scott's greatest pupil is greater than his master. The romantic novel and the prose allegory found their perfect union and their climax in this book, which stands quite unique in English literature, since Stevenson himself never approached it afterwards. His other stories and novels show, however, a great and compelling genius for narration. In some of them it is almost too great to be endurable. «Treasure Island," for instance, is professedly a book for boys, but any one of any age who surrenders himself to it is apt to feel an effect from it comparable to nothing less violent than that of brandy. This intensity appears in all Stevenson's work. He had an extraordinary power of focusing all his energies,- a power as dangerous as it is unusual. It belongs only to genius and it cannot be exercised except at the expense of vitality. What Landor knew of "the pangs of approaching the gods," Stevenson felt as he gradually burned his life away in the brilliant flame of his own powers. He welcomed death with joy, as the reward of one who had done his best without sparing himself. There is nothing more pathetic in literature than the stanza he wrote for his own epitaph:

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