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Men might not wish him back again, but they worshipped him as the national demigod. After Sedan he was pulled down literally and metaphorically from his pedestal; and the old feelings about him which half a century ago even foreign nations seemed to share, now seem obsolete and extravagant to readers of Lanfrey and the books of Erckmann-Chatrian.

Both kinds were usual enough on the English stage in the days of Elizabeth, but we can recall the ever-memorable example of Beaumont and Fletcher, while we forget the chance associations of Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary literature we have before us the French tales of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian and the English novels of Messrs. Besant and Rice.

Thus endeth the translation of these Three Worshipful Kings: Melchior, Balthazar, and Jaspar. A French Yeoman's Legend. "He laughed fit to make the plates rattle, his little brown eyes twinkling all the while." Erckmann-Chatrian. "Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou?" "Yes, reverend Father, two magnificent turkeys stuffed with truffles. There's no mistake, for I helped to stuff them myself.

It is remarkable that the excellence of the first group has been maintained by a new generation, Murger, About, Feuillet, Flaubert, Erckmann-Chatrian, Droz, Daudet, Cherbulliez, Gaboriau, Dumas fils, and others. During this period the romance-writing of France has taken two different directions.

Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz's 'Monsieur, Madame, et Bebe', and those books which leave for a long time a perfume about you? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac?

We disarmed them and ordered them to walk back until they fell in with our cavalry, or the infantry, which was being brought forward in trucks. As we bowled along in pursuit the scene reminded me of descriptions in the novels of Sienkiewicz or Erckmann-Chatrian. The road was littered with equipment of every sort, disabled pack-animals, and dead or dying Turks.

His "Trois Mousquetaires" and "Monte Christo" are considered his best novels. Of a similar kind are the novels of Eugene Sue. Both writers were followed by a crowd of companions and imitators. The taste for the novel of incident, which had nearly died out, was renewed in another form, with the admixture of domestic interest, by the literary partners, Erckmann-Chatrian.

But the law studies were always uncongenial, and Erckmann meeting Chatrian as a fellow student in the gymnasium at Phalsbourg, the two young men decided to join forces in authorship. The Erckmann-Chatrian partnership lasted from 1860 to 1885, and resulted in a remarkable series of novels, short stories, plays, and operas.

Nor have we to inquire how it would have presented itself to Erckmann-Chatrian, because the Alsatian collaborators made it their own in the somber pages of the 'Rantzau.

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," for example, is less important merely as a novel than as the epic of the great cause of abolition. Underlying many of the works of Erckmann-Chatrian is an epic purpose to advance the cause of universal peace by a depiction of the horrors of war.