tly easy-going husband often
proves a smart fellow, and thorough Tartar--the brilliant lover an
emancipated bagman, or contemptible _chevalier d'industrie_. Of this we
have an example in "Le Gendre," in some respects one of the most
objectionable of De Bernard's novels, certainly not well suited for a
birth-day present to misses in their teens. A seemingly tame, insipid
clown of a husband counteracts the base manoeuvres of a dashing Paris
_roue_; and finally, after refusing to fight the would-be seducer, whom
he has ascertained to be an arrant swindler, takes truncheon in hand,
and belabours him in presence of his intended victim and of a roomful of
company. But setting aside any moral tendency which goodwill towards
such a vastly pleasant author as De Bernard may induce us, by the aid of
our most complaisant spectacles, to discover in his writings, his
gentlemanly tone is undeniable, his pictures of French life, especially
in Paris, are beyond praise. In the most natural and graphic style
imaginable, he dashes off a portrait typifying a class, and in a page
gives the value of a volume of the much-vaunted "Physiologies." And this
he does, like all he does, in a sparkling, well-bred, impertinent style,
peculiar to himself, and peculiarly attractive.

We have already remarked, that M. de Bernard has written little. The
assertion was comparative; we meant that he has produced, since the
commencement of his literary career--not yet very remote--an average of
only three or four volumes per year. This rate, in days when French
scribes carry on five romances at a time, in the daily feuilletons of
five newspapers, and when certain English authors, emulous of Gallic
fecundity, annually conceive and elaborate their dozen or two of
octavos--says little for his industry, or much for his judicious
forbearance. Latterly, however, we regret to observe in him a
disposition to increase the length of his books, and abandon the
pleasant one, two, and three volume tales with which he began. In this
he is wrong; books of so very light a description as his will not bear
great prolongation. Things agreeable enough in small quantities, pall
and cloy if the ration be overmuch augmented. However fragrant and
well-spiced, syllabub is not to be drunk by the bucketful; neither would
it be satisfactory to dine off a _souffle au marasquin_, though
compounded by the philanthropical Regenerator himself. In England,
custom has decided that three volumes