Seine, abdicated the title of man of letters to assume that of marquis, had no longer a claim on the official head of the literary republic. Hereupon the meditated challenge was given up. The representation of 'Les Mohicans de Paris,' a popular drama brought out by Dumas in 1864, having been prohibited by the censorship, he addressed and printed a spirited remonstrance to the Emperor:

Sire,-There were in 1830, and there are still, three men at the head of French literature. These three men are Victor Hugo, Lamartine, and myself.

'Victor Hugo is proscribed; Lamartine is ruined. People cannot proscribe me like Hugo; there is nothing in my life, in my writings, or in my words, for proscription to fasten on. But they can ruin me like Lamartine; and in effect they are ruining me.

'I know not what ill-will animates the censorship against me. I have written and published twelve hundred volumes. It is not for me to appreciate them in a literary point of view. Translated into all languages, they have been as far as steam could carry them. Although I am the least worthy of the three, these volumes have made me, in the five parts of the world, the most popular of the three; perhaps because one is a thinker, the other a dreamer, and I am but a vulgariser (vulgarisateur).

'Of these twelve hundred volumes, there is not one which may not be given to read to a workman of the Faubourg St. Antoine, the most republican-or to a young girl of the Faubourg St. Germain, the most modest-of all our faubourgs.'

His politics were never incendiary or dangerous in any way. They were always those of a moderate Re

publican, and he consistently adhered to them. His best romances rarely transgress propriety, and are entirely free from that hard, cold, sceptical, materialist, illusion-destroying tone, which is so repelling in Balzac and many others of the most popular French novelists. But Dumas must have formed a strange notion of the young ladies of the noble faubourg to suppose that they could sit out a representation of Antony' or Angèle' without a blush. After recapitulating the misdeeds of the imperial censorship and the enormous losses he had sustained, he concludes:

'I appeal, then, for the first time, and probably for the last, to the prince whose hand I had the honour to clasp at Arenenberg, at Ham, and at the Elysée, and who, having found me in the character of proselyte on the road of exile and on that of the prison, has never found me in the character of petitioner on the road of the empire.'

The Emperor, who never turned a deaf ear on a proselyte or companion on either road, immediately caused the prohibition to be withdrawn.

One of the strangest episodes of the Neapolitan revolution was the appearance of Alexander Dumas as its annalist. His arrival at Turin, on his way to Naples, created a sensation; and M. d'Ideville, who had been acquainted with him at Paris, was commissioned by the Marchesa Alfieri (Cavour's niece) to ask if it would be agreeable to him to meet Cavour and some other persons of literary or political distinction at her salon. The invitation was declined:

"Convey my warmest acknowledgments and deepest regrets to the Marchesa: it is impossible for me to accept.

Would you like to know why? Well, then, I should meet her uncle, the Count de Cavour, and I would not see him for any money. This surprises you, my dear friend. I will tell you my reason. I leave Turin in twenty-four hours: I embark at Genoa: in three days I shall be with Garibaldi. I do not know him, but I have written to him: he expects me. This man is a hero, a sublime adventurer, a personage of romance. With him, out of him, I expect to make something. He is a madman, a simpleton, if you like, but an heroic simpleton; we shall get on capitally together. What would you have me make out of Cavour; me, remember? Cavour is a great statesman, a consummate politician, a man of genius. He is a cut above Garibaldi; don't I know it? But he does not wear a red shirt. He wears a black coat, a white cravat, like an advocate or a diplomate. I should see him, I should converse with him, and, like so many others, I should be seduced by his play of mind and his good sense. Adieu to my promising expedition. My Garibaldi would be spoilt. On no consideration, then, will I see your President of the Council. He cannot be my man any more than I can be his. I am an artist, and Garibaldi alone has attractions for me. Although I visit no one here but deputies of the Extreme Left, Brofferio, and others, tell M. Cavour, I beg, that I fly from him because I admire him; and make him clearly understand why I quit Turin without seeing him."1

Dumas judged rightly. He would have made nothing out of Cavour, and he made a very good thing out of Garibaldi; although not exactly as he had anticipated, namely, by treating him artistically and making him the picturesque hero of a romance. Garibaldi was too picturesque already to stand any fresh

1 Journal d'un Diplomate en Italie. Paris, 1872.

draping and colouring. As not unfrequently happens, no ideal could surpass the real, no fiction could improve upon the fact. He stood in no need of the vate sacro; in his case, the simplest chronicler was the best, and the simplest might well be suspected of exaggeration by posterity. Dumas's books on Garibaldi and his exploits never attracted much attention, and are already forgotten. But the hero and the romanticist became sworn friends at sight, and Dumas was immediately installed in the palace of Chiatamone with the title and perquisites of Superintendent or Director of the Fine Arts. Here he lived at free quarters till the dictatorship ended and order was restored.

The next time Dumas passed through Turin, M. d'Ideville met him at a supper party, Garibaldi became the subject of conversation, and it appeared that Dumas's enthusiasm had been in no respect lessened by familiarity:

'Towards the end of the entertainment, to close the series of anecdotes relating to the dictator: "See here,” said Dumas, with singular solemnity and unfolding a scrap of paper, "here are lines written by him which shall never quit me! You must know, my friends, that having had a fancy to see Victor Emmanuel, whom I do not know, I asked Garibaldi for a note of introduction to present to the King." "Here," replied Garibaldi, handing me these words hastily written, "this will be your passport." And the charming narrator passed round the scrap of crumpled paper, which contained this unique phrase: "Sire, recevez Dumas, c'est mon ami et le vôtre.-G. Garibaldi." "You may well believe," added Dumas, respectfully replacing the letter in his breast pocket, "that to preserve this autograph, which

the King would doubtless have desired to keep, I deprived myself, without regret, of the acquaintance of King Victor. And now that the sovereign has shown his ingratitude towards Garibaldi, to whom he is so much obliged, you may judge whether he will not have a long time to wait for my visit."

The illness which ended with his death, brought on a complete paralysis of all his faculties, and he died towards the close of 1870, happily insensible to the hourly increasing disasters and humiliations of his country.

Occurring at a less anxious and occupied period, his death would have been commemorated as one of the leading events of the year, and it would hardly have been left to a foreign journal to pay the first earnest tribute to his memory. Take him for all in all, he richly merits a niche in the Temple of Fame; and what writer does not who has been unceasingly before the public for nearly half a century without once forfeiting his popularity?—whose multifarious productions have been equally and constantly in request in London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Madrid, Vienna, Calcutta, Sydney, and New York. Think of the amount of ainusement and information he has diffused, the weary hours he has helped to while away, the despondency he has lightened, the sick-beds he has relieved, the gay fancies, the humorous associations, the inspiriting thoughts, we owe to him. To lie on a sofa and read eternal new novels of Marivaux or Crébillon, was the beau idéal, the day dream, of Gray, one of the choicest and most fastidious minds of the eighteenth century, and what is there of