berty of
comparing M. Dumas with one of these artistical _cuisiniers_, possessing in
the highest degree the talent of making much out of little, by the skill
with which it is prepared, and the piquant nature of the condiments
applied. A successful dramatist, as well as a popular romance-writer, his
dialogues have the point and brilliancy, his narrative the vivid terseness,
generally observable in novels written by persons accustomed to dramatic
composition. Confining himself to no particular line of subject, he
rambles through the different departments of light literature in a most
agreeable and desultory manner; to-day a tourist, to-morrow a novelist;
the next day surprising his public by an excursion into the regions of
historical romance, amongst the well-beaten highways and byways of which
he still manages to discover an untrodden path, or to embellish a familiar
one by the sparkle of his wit and industry of his researches. The majority
of his books convey the idea of being written _currente calamo_, and with
little trouble to himself; and these have a lightness and brilliancy
peculiar to their lively author, which cannot fail to recommend them to
all classes of readers. They are like the sketches of a clever artist, who,
with a few bright and bold touches, gives an effect to his subject which
no labour would enable a less talented painter to achieve. But M. Dumas
can produce highly finished pictures as well as brilliant sketches,
although for the present it is one of the latter that we are about to
introduce to our readers.

Every body knows, or ought to know, that M. Dumas has been in Italy, and
found means to make half a dozen highly amusing volumes out of his rambles
in a country, perhaps, of all others, the most familiar to the inhabitants
of civilized Europe--a country which has been described and re-described
_ad nauseam_, by tourists, loungers, and idlers innumerable. On his way to
the land of lazzaroni he made a pause at Marseilles to visit his friend
Mery, a poet and author of some celebrity; and here he managed to collect
materials for a volume which we can recommend to the perusal of the daily
increasing class of our countrymen who think that a book, although written
in French, may be witty and amusing without being either blasphemous or
indecent.

We have reason to believe that many persons who have not visited the
south-eastern corner of France, think of it as a "land of the cypress and
myrtle;" where