according to which an actress undertakes not to interest, but to fascinate. They are charming—"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric, and imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mlle. Croizette; for although she has very great attractions, I think she may (by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a less inspired, and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal" Sarah Bernhardt. (Mlle. Croizette's "brutality" is her great card.) As for Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present, in Paris, one of the great figures of the day. It is hard to imagine a more brilliant embodiment of feminine success. It is hard to imagine a young woman leading a more complete and multifold existence. The intellectual fermentation of a productive, creative (and most ambitious) artist, the splendors of a princess, the glories of a celebrity, and various other matters besides—these are a sufficiently interesting combination. But as an artist, as I have said, Mlle. Sarah Bernhardt would almost deserve a chapter for herself.

Henry James, Jr.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

By Justin McCarthy.

CHAPTER VII.

ON THE BRIDGE.

There was one walk of which Minola Grey was especially fond, and which she loved to enjoy alone. It led by a particular track through Regent's Park, avoiding for the most part the frequented paths, and bringing her at one time to the summit of a little mound or knoll, from which she could look across broad fields where sheep were grazing, and through clumps of trees and over hedges, and from which, by a happy peculiarity, all sight of the beaten and dusty avenues of the park was shut out. The view from this little eminence was perhaps most beautiful on a moist and misty day. There the soft, loving, artistic breath of the rain-charged clouds breathed tenderly on the landscape, and effaced any of the harsher, or meaner, or in any way more prosaic details. There the gazer only saw a noble expanse of delicious green grass and darker hedgerows, and trees of dun and gray, and softly-mottled moss-grown trunks, and here and there a bed of flowers, and all under a silver-gray atmosphere that almost seemed to dissolve while the eye rested on it. When Minola had looked long enough on the scene opening below the mound, she then usually pursued her course by devious ways until she reached one of the bridges of the canal, and there she made another halting place. The scene from the canal-bridge, unlike that from the mound, looked best on a bright, breezy day, of quick changing lights and shadows. There the brown water of the canal sparkled and gladdened in the sun, and Minola, leaning over the little bridge, and fixing her eyes on the water as it rippled past the nearer bank, might enjoy, for the hour, the full sensation of one who floats in a boat along a stream, and watches the trees and grasses of the shore. The place was quiet enough, and rich enough in trees and shrubs, and little reeds quivering out of the water, to seem, at least in Minola's pleased eyes, like a spot on the bank of the canal far in the country, while yet there was to her the peculiar and keen delight of knowing herself in London. Sometimes, too, a canal boat came gliding along, steered by a stalwart and sunburnt woman in a great straw bonnet, and the boat and the woman brought wild and delicious ideas of far-off country places, with woods and gipsies, and fresh, half savage, half poetic life. Minola extracted beautiful pictures and much poetry and romance from that little bridge over the discolored canal, creeping through the heart of London.

The population of London—even its idlers—usually move along in tracks and grooves. Where some go, others go; where few go, at last none go. It is wonderful what hours of almost absolute solitude Minola was able to enjoy in the midst of Regent's Park. Voices, indeed, constantly reached her: the cries and laughter of children, the shoutings of cricketers, the dulled clamor of the metropolis itself. These reached her as did the bleating of sheep and the tinkle of their bells, the barking of dogs, and occasionally the fierce, hoarse, thrilling growl or roar of some disturbed or impatient animal in the Zoölogical Gardens near at hand. But many and many a time Minola lounged for half an hour on her little knoll or on her chosen bridge, without seeing more of man or woman than of the lions in their cages on the other side of the enclosure. There was a particular hour of the day, too, when the park in general was especially deserted, and it appears almost needless to say that this was the time selected usually by Miss Grey for her rambles. It was sometimes a curious, half sensuous pleasure for her thus alone, amid the murmur of the trees, to fancy herself, for the moment, back again within sight of the mausoleum at Keeton, where she had spent so many weary and solitary hours, and then, awaking, to rejoice anew in her freedom and in London.

It was a fortunate and kindly destiny which assigned to our heroine a poetess for a companion. Much as she loved occasional solitude, Minola loved still better the spirit of fidelity to the obligations of true camaraderie, and if Miss Blanchet had had any manner of work to do, from the mending of a stocking to the teaching of a school, in which Minola could possibly have assisted her, Minola would never have thought of leaving her to do the work alone. Or even if Miss Blanchet had work to do in which Minola could not have helped her, but to which her presence would be any manner of encouragement, Minola would have stayed with her, and never dreamed of play while her companion had to be at work. But we may safely appeal to all the poets of all time to say whether anybody ever desired companionship while engaged in the composition of poetry. Sappho herself could have well dispensed with the society of Phaon at such a moment. It is true that Corinne threw off some of her grandest effusions in full face of an admiring crowd, and recited them not only with Lord Nelvil, but at him. Corinne, however, was of the improvisatrice class, to which Mary Blanchet did not profess to belong; and we own, moreover, to a constant suspicion that Corinne must have sat up late for many previous nights getting her improvisations by heart. At all events Miss Blanchet was not Corinne, and required seclusion, and much thought, and comparison of rhymes, and even looking out in dictionaries, in order to the composition of her poems. At the present time Minola was well aware that her friend had a new collection of poems on hand, and that the poems would be churned off with less difficulty if the author were occasionally left to herself for an hour or two. Therefore Minola was free to go into Regent's Park, with untroubled conscience and light heart. The woman who was not a poet revelled in the rustling branches and the sight of the soft grass, and was filled with glad visions and dreams by the flowing even of a poor, clouded, slow canal stream, and was rapt into the ideal at the sight of a reed growing in the water and shaken by the wind. The poetess remained at home in a dull room, and hammered out rhymes with the help of a dictionary.

But, to do Minola justice, she was not wholly given up, even in these free and lonely hours, to the sweet, innocent sensuousness that fills certain beings when amid trees and the sounds of flowing water. She had many scruples about the possible selfishness of her life, and wondered whether it was not wrong thus to live, and whether it was not through some fault of hers that no opportunity presented itself to her of doing any good for man or woman. She asked herself sometimes whether she had not been impatient and wilful in her dealings with the people at home. She still, when in a self-questioning and penitential mood, thought and spoke of Keeton as "home," and