FRENCH SUMMER READING.

IN the Advocate of June 9, 1876, I gave the titles of a few French books for the benefit of those who wished to do a little reading during the vacation. Being asked to do something of the same kind this year, I would, without repeating the list then given, suggest the following as easy and pleasant summer reading.

Any of Sandeau's novels will be found interesting. Le Docteur Herbeau, Sacs et Parchemins, and Mademoiselle de la Seigliere are three of his best. Alphonse Daudet has lately gained a certain celebrity. Most of his novels are very painful reading. Fromont jeune et Risler aine is his best (lately translated under the title Sidonie). Charles de Bernard deserves not to be forgotten. The volume entitled Le Noeud gordien contains several of his stories. Ferdinand Fabre has devoted himself to what might be called the novel of clerical life in France. L'Abbe Tigrane is a work of great power. It will carry the ordinary reader into a world entirely new to him. In addition to the titles I gave last year I ought also to add: Erckmann-Chatrian, L'Ami Fritz; Droz, Les Etangs; Mery, La Guerre de Nizam; and Sue, L'Orgueil.

Jules Verne's extravagant stories have a sort of fish-hook interest about them. It is too often forgotten by those who criticise him severely that he writes for the young, and that almost all he publishes appears in a magazine for young folks. To my unscientific mind he succeeds perfectly in what he attempts to do. One of his latest works, L'lle Mysterieuse, is a sort of Robinson Crusoe romance. But there is, after all, little choice among his books, of which everybody should at least read one in the original. Hector Malot's Romain Kalbris is a charming boy's book, which would interest any one.

The last-mentioned are all easy, so easy that they ought to be read without a dictionary. In reading a foreign language we must try to forget the language, and have the thought come to us directly without the interposition of our own tongue. Until this is done there is no real enjoyment. When you read for pleasure never mind the small points, nor even the words you do not know, if the sense carries you along. Read enough, and all will come as it came to you in English, without labor. But to accomplish this, do not hesitate in the beginning to read simple books, - Perrault's Contes de Fees, for instance, or Laboulaye's Contes bleus; in fact, books that contain just such talk as gave you the English vocabulary you now have.

If any one wishes to grapple with more difficult French than anything yet mentioned, I should advise Theophile Gautier's Le Capitaine Fracasse.

F. B.