se "beings of the mind" which will he permanently remembered.

Heroism, active or passive, is the lesson taught by this romance, and
we know that the author, in his life, illustrated both phases of the
quality. His novels, which, when he was alive, the booksellers refused
to publish, are now passing through their tenth and twelfth editions.
Everybody reads "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent," and everybody must
catch a more or less vivid glimpse of the noble nature of their author.
But these books give but an imperfect expression of the soul of Theodore
Winthrop. They have great merits, but they are still rather promises
than performances. They hint of a genius which was denied full
development. The character, however, from which they derive their
vitality and their power to please, shines steadily through all the
imperfections of plot and construction. The novelist, after all, only
suggests the power and beauty of the man; and the man, though dead, will
keep the novels alive. Through them we can commune with a rare and noble
spirit, called away from earth before all its capacities of invention
and action were developed, but still leaving brilliant traces in
literature of the powers it was denied the opportunity adequately to
unfold.

* * * * *

FOREIGN LITERATURE.

To keep pace with the productions of foreign literature is a task beyond
the possibilities of any reader. The bibliographical journals of France,
Germany, Italy, and Spain weekly present such copious lists of new
works, that a mere mention of only the principal ones would far exceed
the limits we have proposed to ourselves. However, from the chaos of
contemporary productions it is our intention to sift, as far as lies in
our power, such works as may with justice be styled _representative_ of
the country in which they are produced. Ranging in this introductory
article through the year 1861, we shall limit ourselves to a few of the
contributions upon French literary history.

No branch of letters is richer at the present time than that in which
the writer, laying aside all thought of direct creativeness, confines
himself to the criticism of the works of the past or present, analyzing
and studying the influences that have been brought to hear upon the
poet, historian, or novelist, anatomizing literature and resolving it
into its elements, pointing out the action exercised upon thought and
expression by the age, and seeking th