on pain of starvation to clear out this mouldy habitation. With herculean labor they expelled the spiders, cockroaches, centipedes, and other inmates of this undesirable lodging-place, and scraped off some little of the slimy crust that covered its mouldy wall and floor. We then descended en masse, and dragging in with us each a damp unsavory straw mattress, ensconed ourselves at our best ease on them, round the tallow candle which faintly illuminated the den. We formed a scene truly worthy of Rembrandt. A dozen as ill-assorted individuals as fate could bring together-lying, sitting, or now and then standing,-there was not room enough to walk a step; sleeping, smoking, talking, or chewing the black bread which was cast to us in lumps, we made up a picture wholly indescribable. In costume, in face, and in the manner of braving our captivity, we differed variously. Besides the actual darkness of the dungeon, the utter want of ventilation increased the picturesque horror of the scene, for a veil of foul air mixed with the fumes of tobacco added to the dimness of the atmosphere, and almost overwhelmed the feeble rays of the wretched candle that flickered in the midst. As the hours rolled slowly on, the "bears" who had betted against our release on that day began to prevail over the "bulls" who had backed us to escape, and at three we had almost given up all hopes, when the order came to mount to the upper air. It was a veritable resurrection; the fresh air of heaven smelt like the fragrance of a paradise. We were to march under escort to Mont Valerien, and thence be sent on straight to Versailles.

Our walk from Courbevoie between a double file of gendarmerie was festive and hilarious. It resembled rather a triumphal march than a procession of doomed criminals. Yet had we known what fate was reserved for us at the Royal City, we should have walked in with heavy hearts and dire forebodings, or even regretted mouldy quarters in the barrack cellar. But of our march and its sights-not few nor uninteresting-I must not pause to give account. It must be imagined how we were hooted by the populace, and cursed by the passers-by: how we were shelled in descending Mont Valerien by the Communist batteries in Paris, who, naturally enough, took us and our gallant escort

for a hostile company of infantry issuing from the fort. It was here that our cannibal, the man of excellent wit, shone to marvellous advantage, retorting upon our revilers with chaff of irresistible efficacy, and turning the gall and bitterness of our various escorting guards into laughter and civility. At the last stage where we changed escort, we fell to the lot of half-a-dozen mounted gendarmes. It was getting dark, and in consideration of our ferocious character and heinous offences, we were chained two and two together. The fool of the party, being odd man-in both senses-without a pair to be chained unto, was attached by a cord as sort of dexioseiros to the cannibal and his associate. The trio led the way, and we thus marched up the street of Versailles attended by a huge queue of yelling "loyalist" rabble.

Arrived at the cavalry barracks and before the pro tem. Commissaire de Police, our miseries very speedily recommenced. I had been assured by every one at Courbevoie, Mont Valerien, and everywhere else, that immediately on reaching Versailles my letter would be forwarded to the Embassy. I applied therefore with empressement to the dignitary before whom we were presented for inspection, to send on my little note without loss of time. "Do you think, then," responded this polite authority, "that I am here as a postman, or that I have men to send about on errands for you or the like of you!" Perhaps a gendarme might be persuaded for a napoleon to do this very moderate service. No, the eye of the stern man of justice was upon him, and he was incorruptible. We were thrust down, dusty and footsore with our twelve miles' walk, into another dungeon deeper even than the one which we had so lately and so hopefully quitted.

Here once more I feel how powerless are words to convey a picture of the scene to which I was introduced: a long, lowroofed corridor lined with a whole regiment of grimy faces of every form and type, from the degraded and semi-idiotic visage of the French country boor to the delicate and intelligent features of the born Parisian-from the scowl of crime and vice to the open mien of manifest innocence. The denizens of this frightful abode crowded towards the foot of the dark staircase to scrutinize the new arrivals. Far away into the black darkness of the

inner dungeon the rows of dirty faces could be seen. It was an event in their miserable lives, the coming of a new batch of unfortunates. They were not sorry to have more companions in misery; but, on the other hand, every new arrival diminished the amount of space and air, and added its quota to the horrible closeness of the imprisoned atmosphere. Even in this abyss of misery I did not wholly despair of getting my letter taken out. "Is there any one going up out of this hole tonight!" I shouted as a last chance, holding up my letter and my napoleon. The wretches around me laughed with a grim ridicule, "Ha, ha! on ne sort pas d'ici, citoyen. Parbleu ! la poste ne fonctionne pas ici-bas. Eh? nom de Dieu !" But the bystanders had a certain sympathy for the tall Englisher. And a man with a napoleon who could write a letter might, after all, be a useful friend. If he did get out, he might carry letters, or at all events take messages. But the world of ici-bas was very incredulous as to any chance of sending a letter out by fair means. In truth I had never expected to see so good a realization of one's idea of the Inferno, and it began to seem as if Dante's motto might really be truly written over its subterranean portals-"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

A short reconnoissance, under the guidance of one of the habitues of this hell, revealed its horrors in their full extent. The vaults had once served as cellars to a royal palace. "You will have the satisfaction," said my guide, "of saying that you have visited the cellars of Henri IV." "Thank you, that is pleasure rather dearly bought. I should prefer to visit them when their bins are stored with some of your French wines, than when they are crammed with your French unwashed humanity." The side alleys or galleries of these vaults branched off from the main corridors, and into them "gave" the square dens which once had been stored with the several vintages, but now were tenanted by parties of the more lucky captives. I say lucky, for those who were too late to occupy a place in one of these dens, or not strong enough to save it from invasion, had to sleep on the damp, rotten floor outside. Such was the lot of most of my fellow-travellers who arrived with me from Courbevoie. As for me, I was fortunate again. My London

built coat, or my irreproachable hat, or some other peculiarity, recommended me immediately to the hospitality of a Garde National. "Will you have a place in my appartement, citizen? it is at your disposal; here, No. 6, in the Rue St Pierre." For even in this dismal scene the facility of French wit had already named the different filthy corridors. There was the "Rue des Martyrs," by which you entered first; the "Avenue de la Grande Armée," where the gendarmes on duty stood; at the far end, beyond the third and last tallow candle, the "Champs Elysées," over whose horrors I will permit myself to draw a veil, and-most appropriate, as I thought, of all-the grand "Boulevard d'Enfer."

Over these vaulted, unventilated passages, tallow candles stuck against the wall threw their dim, unwholesome rays. The wretched lights struggled almost unsuccessfully against the foul air which encompassed them. By day a faint glimmer of daylight forced its way down some narrow chinks at the very edge of the roof on one side of the vault; but neither by night nor by day would there have been light enough to read, had there been anything to read. Along the galleries hung and floated in loathsome slothfulness clouds of noxious air and horrible odors, poisoning the air one breathed, and oppressing the lungs with a sickly feeling that seemed as if it must produce some horrible pestilence. The creatures who had been living for days là-bas had got quite accustomed to it, and minded it apparently no more than rats whose home is in the sewers. One animal there was-he had put off almost all semblance of humanity-possessed of some loathsome and, it was said, contagious disease. This wretch, who was also idiotic in mind, or perhaps wholly devoid of that incumbrance, was shunned as a pestilence, and exiled somewhere to the Champs Elysées. At times he would appear like a phantom stalking along the passages, when his approach was heralded by loud shouts of warning, and a stampede ensued, every one fleeing before his path. I shuddered as the spectral figure passed down outside our den.

Into the square apartment to which I had been admitted as the sixth occupant, the propriétaire had collected a good store of straw. I was informed that this luxury had quite lately been added to the furniture of the dungeon. But there was very

little of it, and that little had all been appropriated long ago to the luckiest and strongest householders. In the other apart ments and in the corridors the miserable prisoners crouched down on the dank slimy earth, or walked about by night, waiting for the day to get a lodging in the apartment of some compassionate propriétaire. Our chamber was, therefore, comparatively luxurious. It was tenanted by some of the most respectable of the "criminals," two of them being Gardes Nationaux. At bedtime the door was barred by an ingenious contrivance to provide against a nocturnal invasion of the destitutes. In the morning there was conversation, joined in by each in turn as he gave up his hopes of a longer sleep. By this talk I found out that almost all the prisoners here had been arrested on the same frivolous and unfounded charges as those which had lost my companions their liberty. There was a Dutchman there, a very intelligent fellow, who had been in goal nine days. He was not accused of anything except of not being a Frenchman, and not being where he ought to have been. Then there was a Belgian; and a Spaniard from the Indian colonies had been brought in the same day that I arrived. There had been an American, but he had been released; the rest were all Frenchmen, and, including the whole number of prisoners, there must have been very near upon a hundred in this one prison. The said prison was only one, as I was assured, of fifty then existing at Versailles; whether the accommodation was the same in their case as it was in ours I have no means of knowing.

The diet prescribed in our peculiar dungeon was of a very simple kind, consisting of black bread, rather similar to that to which we were treated in Paris in the last days of the Prussian siege. My kind host offered me a hunch from a private store which he had hidden away in his "apartment." "Nay, don't refuse," said he, as I assured him that I was not hungry. "You may be glad of it to-morrow. They only give it us out once a day, in the afternoon; and precious little of it when they do." As for drink, the most bibacious of mankind would hardly have indulged very freely in this place. There was a single huge can set on the floor in the Boulevard d'Enfer, to which every one applied his lips when he had occasion. I did not see

it replenished with fresh water as long as I was in the dungeon; but I believe that, before it was absolutely drained to the dregs, a complaisant gendarme would generally have it filled again. Whether the leper, or diseased outcast, whatever he may have been, ever got access to the water, I do not know. I should imagine it was "defended" to him to drink until the rest of the world were satisfied. Of course washing was an impossible luxury. It was beyond the thoughts of any one. The unshaven beards and matted dirty hair of all the "criminals" added greatly to the general effect of their appearance.

Yet even in this veritable hell one could not help observing the inextinguishable vivacity of the national character. Amidst even this pestilential and oppressive darkness there shone out occasionally the sparkle of French wit, and there went on continuously the hum of light cheerful conversation, and the raillery that we stigmatize with the name of chaff. Your true Parisian must always be acting before the public eye. He must keep up his part even in a dungeon; and there his part as a philosopher is naturally the role of toujours gai. So he hides his tears and chagrin behind some corner in the dark, and he airs his bon-mots and his affected gaiety before his audience with creditable assiduity. The grande nation has its defects, and we have seen them pretty clearly just latterly; but for a partner in temporary misery, and a cheerful companion even up to the very steps of the scaffold, commend me to a modern Gaul of the free-thinking school. Of all remarkable differences which struck me as existing between these occupants of the French prison and a similar motley collection, if such could have been found, of our Britannic countrymen, the greatest was this-the almost utter absence of all blasphemous or obscene language. In an English prison the air, pestilential as it was, would have seemed doubly so by reason of the volleys of oaths that would too surely have flooded the passages. The English common people, and more especially the common soldiers, can hardly open their mouths without an oath ; and their ordinary language is such, that no lady and no decent woman can venture within earshot of them. But the Parisians don't care for swearing any more than they do for praying or getting drunk. The lowest of the low have a certain pride in talk

ing respectably and "Frenchly," as they call it. There were few moments when any one in the prison at Versailles need have stopped his ears to the talk around him.

It is not necessary to detail the steps by which I ultimately obtained my release. Still more superfluous would be a tribute paid to the kindness and prompt attention of the British Ambassador. I will confess that my satisfaction at escaping was tempered with a regret at leaving so many more innocent victims buried in this disgusting

tomb. There was some excuse for my confinement, but for the greater part of them there could be none at all. As I heard several of their procès verbaux read, I felt if possible more ashamed than ever of French justice and French common sense. I will just quote the pass which was given me on being discharged by the Provost Marshal: it is rather a curious legal document. "Le nommé sujet anglais, est mis en liberté, aucune inculpation n'ayant été relevée à sa charge."

BEGINNERS in Literature, or those who think of beginning, must be very much puzzled with the confusion of statement in what they read and what they hear about a literary life, taken in connection with their own observation and experience, if they have a little of either. Take the case of a young fellow who either is or thinks himself very clever; who reads (as he may read in a dozen respectable places) that editors are only too glad to enlist fresh talent under their flags; and who yet, while frequently sending papers to magazines whose editors he reasonably presumes to be discriminating, is always getting them returned. The conventional stroke of politeness (upon which a word of justification by-and-by), that the rejection of a proffered contribution does not necessarily imply that it wants merit, will hardly console him much, or clear up his bewilderment. And, in truth, I do not know that the case has ever been fairly and exhaustively stated.

Take, again, deliverances like that of Dickens, who, over and over again declared, in print and out of it, that all the talk about literary cliques barring the way of the young adventurer, about lions in the path, and the rest of it, was nonsense; he never found any lions in the way; and success in literature turned exclusively upon the same points as success anywhere else, such as merit, perseverance, and so on. How would this have sounded to Jean Paul, starving for ten years because the public would not listen to him? His was a peculiar case; but there are thousands NEW SERIES.-VOL. XIV., No. 3.

I.

of people to whom such words as those of Dickens must seem false and cruel.

Let us try and make a little honest way into the question. I promise not to shirk a single point that occurs to me, out of my own experience or otherwise, or knowingly to overstate or understate a single fact.

In the first place, then, success, great or small, in literature, depends upon the same conditions as good fortune of all other kinds in this mixed and trying world. Much depends upon what we call chance. The good tradesman may be sent to the wall by the bad; the brave soldier does not always, or usually, carry a marshal's baton in his knapsack, or even, as a rule, get the recognition he deserves, as desert goes under the sun. There is a chance of success for every man who tries after it. The normal order of things is for merit to win the prize. And this normal order is actually verified in a number of cases sufficient to encourage any one who cares to try and make his own case illustrate it once again. This is merely general; but it must be borne in mind. I do not know that to men who fail there is any particular consolation in it. And, on the other hand, to speak out boldly the truth, that merit does not always succeed, too often acts like an infuriating red rag to the very people who have no merit at all. It encourages them to consider themselves victims when they are only nuisances, and they go on butting all the more at the barriers that will never fall before their style of attack.

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Here, however, we must define. What is "success"? What is your precise obWhat is your precise object in literature? If it is money, immediate fame, or indeed fame at all, then you may be enabled, after a certain number of attempts, to say if you have succeeded, or, in any case, if success is probable. The same applies if your object is anything else that is immediately tangible, like a party movement or a social change for example. But the case becomes more difficult when we pass upwards from the ranks of the "Bread-Artist," as the Germans call him. Suppose a man has set his heart upon the production of poetry that will live, or the communication of a certain impulse to the thoughts or feelings of men. Here, we may affirm, to begin with, that, if he has once found an audience of much variety, genuine qualification is certain of some recognition. The variety in the audience is, however, essential if this is to hold true. Reason good: what is one man's meat is another man's poison; and numbers of persons, though sensitive to merit of one kind, are insensitive to merit of another. But the effect a man produces as poet, thinker, or what not during his lifetime, is no gauge whatever of the value of his communications to the world; that he is at once recognized by competent people proves that there is something in him; but what may happen in the way of subsequent recognition is all dark. Spinoza, while living, was known for an able man, but his influence has been immensely greater since his death, and the amount of this influence upon modern thought is utterly inscrutable. John Sterling has been much more influential since his death than he ever was during his life, so far as we can tell. But these are matters in which we never can "tell" much. So that no man who has found his capacity recognized need despair at what appears to him the limited character of the impression he has made. A clergyman named Gay lives in philosophy on the strength of a mere pamphlet, in which (what is called) the law of association is (said to be) first assigned its proper place. Waller, Richard Lovelace, Gray, Andrew Marvell, and others, are remembered chiefly by a few happy lines apiece.

"Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round."

It is this exquisite couplet which may be

It is an

said to have kept Waller alive. awkward thing to refer to living poets; but I believe that very small, sweet fragments will keep Mr. William Allingham and some others in memory quite as long as Mr. Tennyson or Mr. Browning will be known.

The statement, so often repeated, and by people who ought to know better than to say such a misleading thing as that naked statement-I mean the dictum that capacity need never fear of failing to find prompt acceptance, inasmuch as editors are always on the lookout for fresh talent-is one that must be received with much qualification and reserve. It may be taken as a general rule that very special talent, amounting to genius, stands at first a bad chance, especially with periodicals. What chance would anything as new as Richter's "Hesperus" or Mr. Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" have with our ordinary magazine? The chances are a million to one that the editor, though able and good-natured, would reject it at once, as not being "suited" to his "pages." A reason which would perhaps be a sound one; yet nobody can tell till the trial is made what kind of public an eccentric intellectual product may find. We know what a hard fight a man like Mr. Browning has to wage before he wins his way to such a position that he is sure of being read; and it is precisely the same with eccentric capacity of a lower order. That also is under difficulties. Two or three kinds of capacity stand a good chance at once. First, brilliancy of a slightly bourgeois or "philistine" order. Ingoldsby is a case in point, and irreverent though it seems, so is Dickens.* Secondly, talent of the usual journalistic or magazine kind, combined with adequate culture and knowledge of the world. Third, effective power, not easily fatigued and quick to produce, of an order which happens to suit the market at the time. At this moment, for example, the talent of the journalist and the talent of the novelist are in great request. It cannot be said that the supply of either exceeds the demand.

But here is perhaps the place to say that no capacity of any kind can hope to suc

*This truth being spoken-for the truth it is only dull people will disbelieve me when I add that it is impossible that any one should have a more intense feeling for the genius of Dicken's than I have.