to visit them and to have them visit me, and soon learned to speak their language as easily as my own. My children played with theirs, and chatted with them in a way that I thought very pretty to hear. The houses of the Spaniards in those days were never well furnished, but they were always clean and the yards used to be swept as clean as possible. All about them grew Castilian roses filling the air with fragrance, the sweetest roses I have ever seen.

After father went away I had more trouble than ever in finding clothes for my children. There were no stores in Santa Cruz, and all our supplies came from Monterey. Even there common goods, suitable for making everyday clothes for children, were very scarce. Silks, satins, velvets, and crape shawls, were comparatively plentiful. At one time my little girls went about barefooted in black satin dresses and embroidered China crape shawls. At another time a bolt of blue drilling was sent to me from Monterey, and they all had dresses of that. They wore them to church the first Sunday after they were finished, wrapped in their crape shawls, and Sarah had on a Quaker bonnet that I had brought to this country with me. Catherine and Ellen were barefooted, but Sarah wore moccasins made by myself, and sewed to blue yarn stockings of my own knitting, to keep them on. Sarah always cried when she had to go barefooted, but Catherine and Ellen hated to have their feet covered, and were large girls before they stopped hiding their shoes and stockings under the fence on their way to school.

Father was gone to the mines about four months, and was among the men who discovered the rich diggings of Hangtown, now Placerville. He and his

two partners picked up six pounds of gold in one day. But all the gold he found did not repay us for the long illness he had after his return, neither did the illness teach him the necessity of remaining at home with his family, for he was no sooner well than he started out again. This time I did not bear his departure patiently, I was too tried; and poor little Ellen had fallen into the fire and been dreadfully burned. I thought to myself, the best of men are selfish sometimes.

Father and Captain Aram were together on this trip. They had a load of goods from which they cleared twentytwo hundred dollars in five days. In the fall; father returned with gold enough for every comfort that money could buy ; but that was not much in those days.

From that time, however, we felt that Santa Cruz was our home, and we became identified with all the growing interests of the place. In time I grew to feel that father had perhaps been wiser than I should have been, in managing everything as he had.

WITH this ended the wanderings of Mrs. Hecox and her family. Her husband, Adna A. Hecox, was so strongly attracted to beautiful Santa Cruz that he determined to rest there and build a permanent home for his family. Mrs. Hecox found much to reconcile her to her surroundings, and she and her husband devoted themselves energetically to the furtherance of any movement looking to the growth and improvement of the place, and are intimately connected with its early history. Mr. Hecox was the last Alcalde of Santa Cruz, and held this position until the State laws came into force, and a Justice of the Peace was elected

Marie Valhasky.

GAUTIER long ago said that no one could pretend to write a life of Balzac. Many sketches of his life and of his work have been printed since then (Gautier's own being one of the very best). There is something strange in the fact that to this young country of America we owe the admirable series of Balzac translations already issued by Miss Wormeley, and that now we are indebted to her for the most satisfying memoir of his life that has yet appeared. It is a "memoir," not a life; and it is designed as an introduction for American readers to the series of translations already mentioned.

There are as many different opinions upon Balzac as there are men who read him. Matthew Arnold has said, for example: "The motive of Balzac is curiosity. The result is that the matter on which he operates bounds him, and he delineates not the life of man, but the life of the Frenchman, and of the Frenchman of these our times; the homme sensuel moyen. Balzac deals with this life, delineates it with splendid ability, loves it, and is bounded by it." On the other hand, Gautier, one of these very Frenchmen,-homme sensuel, if not moyen,— has summed up his character in a few words: "Balzac est un moraliste austère, monarchique et catholique; il défend l'autorité, prêche le devoir, exalte la religion, morigène la passion, et n'admet le bonheur que dans le mariage et la famille." And of his life he says: "L'opinion des plus intimes amis de Balzac est qu'il pratiqua la chasteté qu'il recommandait aux autres."

"A complete life of Balzac cannot be written at the present time, and possibly never can be. The necessary documents either do not exist or they are not obtainable. Unpublished letters and papers there are, in possession of the compatriot who best understood him, and who ought to write his life, if it ever be written,- the Vicomte de Spoelberch de Louvenjoul; but it is doubtful if even these papers will throw light on that inner self which Balzac's own will, aided by circumstances, withdrew from the knowledge of others. There are periods in his life when he disappears. Nearly the whole of what he was to himself, what his own being was, how that eye which saw the manifold lives of others saw his own life, how that soul which crowned its earthly

work with a vision of the Living Word was nurtured,

what that soul was, in short,-has been concealed

from sight.

"When he reappears, it is chiefly as he was seen and known by his literary friends and associates in Paris, bearing up against the trials of a hard life editors and publishers, and letting the reaction from with his hearty gaiety, battling for his rights with his heavy toil and from the inward stress of his spirit have full swing in the eccentric joviality which was a phase of his nature. This is almost the sole aspect under which the man, taken apart from his work, has been made known to the world. The the ear of the public; and to this day their books and publications with two or three exceptions, remain, not false perhaps, but misleading, — so misleading that they have concealed the real man, and have forced us to look at the feet of the statue, not suffering us to see its head. "Of his childhood and early youth his sister Madame Surville has written a charmingly sincere and simple narrative. But she pauses on the threshold of his manhood. She gives certain facts of his struggling life, and relates his conduct under them; but to the man himself, the matured spirit, the great soul who has bequeathed us so rich a legacy, we are left without a guide. His correspondence [only a small part of which we have] throws invaluable light on his ideas and opinions about his books, and also on the closing years of his life; but on the formative years of his youth and early manhood it is silent. Of the records left by his contemporaries, that of Gautier is incomparably the best. Mate

men who saw him thus, his literary associates, had

1A Memoir of Honoré de Balzac, by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1892.

material side, which was very strong and real, he nevertheless has left us almost the only true appreciation of Balzac's spirit. It would seem as if the

sincere affection which united them had given him insight if not intuition."

The arrangement of the book into chapters is most happy. Indeed, it seems to be the necessary one. Chapter I is introductory (and portions of it have just been quoted).

Chapter II is a part of his sister's narrative, covering the years from his birth. in 1799 to 1823, and Chapter III is Miss Wormeley's own account of his childhood and youth. His sister's narrative is continued in Chapter IV, and is supplemented and explained by Miss Wormeley in the three following, which treat of his Early Manhood, of his Literary Life, of the Judgments of Contemporary Friends. Chapter VIII concludes his sister's narrative, and it is followed by two brief chapters from Miss Wormeley,- Retrospective, and Last Years. Four most useful Appendixes conclude the book. I gives a list of Balzac's Complete Works arranged in their logical and final order, with the date of each composition and the name of the person to whom it is dedicated. II gives a list of the works written in each year, from 1829 to 1849. And what an immense labor is here exhibited! Appendix III recites the titles of works announced by Balzac but never printed, and IV gives a list of the series of translations made or to be made by Miss Wormeley. An excellent index is also added. The frontispiece to the book is a portrait of Balzac, made an hour after his death, and there is one illustration showing the "prison" of the College Vendôme, in which the dreaming boy spent so many hours of his schoollife; where he composed his Treatise on the Will; where he learned with astonishment that "an idea could cause physical pain"; where the child asked himself the meaning of this, his first discovery. "What is to be made of that?" Miss Wormeley explains in her preface that her memoir is meant to be a presentation of the man, and not of his

work except as it was a part of himself; and she refers her readers to her translations, which when completed will contain at least three fourths of the Comédie Humaine; the Comedy and Tragedy of Human Life. The small French edition of this work is printed in forty vol

umes.

The Comédie Humaine is a world in itself, and in this society all the personages appear and reappear from time to time, from book to book, just as in real life real persons cross our path, vanish, and come again. As M. Bourget has said: "Let any one imagine for himself the quantity of isolated facts which are implied by these two thousand biographies (of different characters in the Comédie Humaine) each of which is individual, distinct, and follows the personage from the cradle to the grave, and traces his connection with past and future generations. The relation of each character to his environment and to each other character is accurately appreciated and exhibited. He knows his personages like a master, through and through; the maladies of their bodies and of their souls are familiar to him. He knows when a sentiment is simple, and when it is complex; when the heart is the dupe of the intelligence and when it is merely deceived by the senses."

It is certain that no man since Shakspere has created a world so alive as that of the Comédie Humaine. In one sense Balzac may almost be said to have created the intelligent France of today, as he also depicted the France of the past. France today approaches nearer and nearer to the types he has exhibited, along the very paths he prefigured. And who has judged Catherine de Medicis, Napoleon, the Revolution, as he has judged them? In one of the latest numbers of the Revue des Deux Mondes I find this paragraph of M. Leroy-Beaulieu, which is almost the fulfilment of Balzacs predictions of half a century ago. M. Beaulieu says:

"It is a rude backset to the pride of the century and to the new social order that scarcely one hundred years after the Revolution of 1789, which was expected to remodel the face of the whole world, we find this new society calling for new transformations, and for new revolutions. Let us have the candor to recognize and admit that we have expected too much from Liberty. She has not fulfilled all the promises which have been made in her name, and now she has become the victim of the extravagant hopes which we have based on her. Why should we not frankly admit it?" This is like an echo of Balzac's own words of fifty years ago. And as in this single instance, so in scores of others. Balzac has done his full share in opening new ways for life to all those who can see, and it is not impossible that he will one day be quoted among those early benefactors of the race who have pointed out the doors leading to a fuller measure of human life which will then have become the common heritage and possession of all mankind. We may truly say that he

"Of such a height hath built his mind,

And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong,
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame
Of his resolved powers; nor all the wind
Of vanity or malice pierce, to wrong
His settled peace, or to disturb the same.
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may
The boundless wastes and wilds of Man survey!
And with how free an eye doth he look down
Upon these lower regions of turmoil,
Where all the storms of passions mainly beat
On flesh and blood; where honor, power, renown,
Are only gay afflictions, golden toil.

He sees the face of Right appear as manifold
As are the passions of uncertain man ;
Who puts it in all colors, all attires,

To serve his ends, and make his courses hold.
He sees, that let Deceit work what it can,
Plot and contrive base ways to high desires;
That the all-guiding Providence doth yet
All disappoint and mock this Smoke of wit.

Although his heart (so near allied to earth)
Cannot but pity the perplexed state
Of troublous and distressed mortality,
That thus makes way unto the ugly birth
Of their own sorrows, and do still beget
Affliction upon imbecility;

Yet seeing thus the course of things must run,
He looks thereon not strange, but as fore-done.
And whilst distraught ambition compasses,
And is encompassed; whilst as craft deceives,
And is deceived; whilst man doth ransack man,
And builds on blood, and rises by distress;
And th' inheritance of desolation leaves
To great expecting hopes; he looks thereon
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye,
And bears no venture in impiety."

Balzac is pre-eminently a moralist — the greatest moralist of the century. He does not expound his principles, but he depicts them in action, and shows all their consequences. Take, for example, his attitude towards Woman and his teaching of a new doctrine. Miss Wormeley has exhibited this attitude in one of her clearest pages:

"In his earliest youth, almost in his childhood, he had longed to meet a woman - angel, and the desire kept his spirit and his body pure. When he the pass to which woman had been brought and had brought herself, he set about to better her condition. How has he done it? By presenting facts in their most awful reality; not sparing woman with any false tenderness, but warning her by his realism, teaching her by the eye to see the horror and the distortion of her position. He himself gives this as his deliberate purpose; it is, he says, by showing facts that he must bring men's minds to the emancipation of women and their higher education; and he had in view something far more fundamental than our present surface questions. This is what he sought to do for woman, leading her step by step from her lowest degradation in Cousine Bette, up through Eugén e Grandet, Eve Séchard, Marguerite Cläes, and others like them, to Séraphita, where the destiny is presented as a series of lives ascending through love of self, love of others, love of heaven, till the end be won."

entered life and saw the condition of womanhood,

It is this latter book which M. Taine tells us is the "consummation of Balzac's work; a book in which his genius. attains its complete expression, foreseen, explained, justified, and led up to, by all his other work."

This judgment seems to Miss Wormeley and to those who, like her, have given patient and loyal study to the master, to be eminently and distinctly true. But she goes further in the analysis of the beliefs of Balzac, and explicitly