Les 31 - emoires dun Merle, eerits par lui - metne: Conies enfantins. Par
Mdlle. F. de Guer. (Paris : Santon.)—It is not the fault of the authoress of these charming little stories if the title of the first recalls to our minds a work of a much higher genius, Alfred de /gusset's "Marie Blanc." Mdlle. de Guer's stories are of a very different order ; simple, childlike, and naive in thought and expression, they have nothing in common with the caprice, the sarcasm, and the blase elegance of the French poet. The bird to which we are introduced hero is a genuine feathered songster, not a member of the romantic school in disguise. We are told how it belonged at first to a poor family, and had to be sold under the pressure of severe distress ; how the rich people into whose hands it passed had also their sorrows, and were wanting in the sympathy belonging to the poor; and how at length the thrush returned to its former owners, to find that they had met with an accession of fortune, while the rich family was gradually being reduced to poverty. In the other stories that follow, the skeleton which serves as a plot is not much more elaborate than in the one we have analyzed, but the tone of all is equally healthy, and the book may be cordially recommended to young girls who want at once practice in French and an object of genuine interest. Perhaps the fairy tales are a little wanting in excitement, and the trials to which mortals are ex- posed by both good and evil spirits too easy, but anything more com- plicated might have marred the harmony of the book.
Previous page
