arts and belles letters.

The last edition of the works of Canalis, printed on vellum, royal
8vo, from the press of Didot, with illustrations by Bixiou, Joseph
Bridau, Schinner, Sommervieux, etc., is in five volumes, price,
nine francs post-paid.

This letter fell like a cobble-stone on a tulip. A poet, secretary
of claims, getting a stipend in a public office, drawing an
annuity, seeking a decoration, adored by the women of the faubourg
Saint-Germain--was that the muddy minstrel lingering along the quays,
sad, dreamy, worn with toil, and re-entering his garret fraught with
poetry? However, Modeste perceived the irony of the envious bookseller,
who dared to say, "I invented Canalis; I made Nathan!" Besides, she
re-read her hero's poems,--verses extremely seductive, insincere, and
hypocritical, which require a word of analysis, were it only to explain
her infatuation.

Canalis may be distinguished from Lamartine, chief of the angelic
school, by a wheedling tone like that of a sick-nurse, a treacherous
sweetness, and a delightful correctness of diction. If the chief with
his strident cry is an eagle, Canalis, rose and white, is a flamingo.
In him women find the friend they seek, their interpreter, a being who
understands them, who explains them to themselves, and a safe confidant.
The wide margins given by Didot to the last edition were crowded with
Modeste's pencilled sentiments, expressing her sympathy with this tender
and dreamy spirit. Canalis does not possess the gift of life; he cannot
breathe existence into his creations; but he knows how to calm vague
sufferings like those which assailed Modeste. He speaks to young girls
in their own language; he can allay the anguish of a bleeding wound
and lull the moans, even the sobs of woe. His gift lies not in stirring
words, nor in the remedy of strong emotions, he contents himself with
saying in harmonious tones which compel belief, "I suffer with you; I
understand you; come with me; let us weep together beside the brook,
beneath the willows." And they follow him! They listen to his empty and
sonorous poetry like infants to a nurse's lullaby. Canalis, like Nodier,
enchants the reader by an artlessness which is genuine in the prose
writer and artificial in the poet, by his tact, his smile, the shedding
of his rose-leaves, in short by his infantile philosophy. He imitates
so well the language of our early youth that he leads us back to
the prairie-land of our ill