which met with decided favor, the verses were contributed by Casimir and Germain Delavigne, who succeeded much better in this department of composition than Scribe.

Some of our readers will be interested in learning that Scribe furnished the libretti of several well-known operas,among them of Robert le Diable, Le Huguenots, and Le Prophète, written for Meyerbeer. Auber also is under similar obligations to him.

The prodigious amount of literary work with which Scribe must be credited, after making all reasonable allowance for the contributions of his collaborators, makes an inquiry into his habits of labor a matter of interest. It was his custom, we are told, to rise at five, winter and summer, a habit, it may be remarked, much more general in France than in our own country. He at once stationed himself at an elevated desk which permitted him to write standing. He was occupied with the task of composition until noon, when he breakfasted. Of course he had previously, on awaking, made a slight, informal meal. After breakfast he perhaps bent his steps to one of the theatres, if he had a new play under rehearsal, or mentally arranged the plan of the next day's composition. On Thurs

day evenings he was in the habit of receiving his friends, on which occasions no one knew better how to play the agreeable host. During the summer he retired to a country estate, which liberal means, under the direction of good taste, had converted into a terrestrial paradise. Here he enjoyed all the consideration of a grand seigneur, and was regarded with reverence and affection by the poor of the neighborhood, to whom he was liberal in his benefactions.

At a comparatively early age, as far, back as 1836, he obtained an honor which every Frenchman of scientific or literary taste covets, admission into the ranks of the French Academy.

It is an amusing illustration of the business-like method which Scribe carried into his compositions, that one day, looking over the titles of his plays, he found that all the letters of the alphabet were represented except K, Y, and X. Anxious to remedy this unintentional slight, he at once set about writing Le Kiosque for the Opéra Comique, Yelva for the Gymnase,

and Xacarilla for the grand Opéra. After this, as his biographer naively expresses it, the alphabet had no cause of reproach against him.

Scribe's disposition is characterized by his biographer as amiable, his manners as affable and pleasing. Though the large concourse of authors in attendance at his funeral testifies the regard which he inspired in his own class, it is not perhaps singular that his brilliant and overshadowing preeminence should have stirred the hearts of some to envy. In the provinces, and in some Continental cities, he was credited with even more than his due, so that, we are told, it was not unusual to see such announcements as the following, on the posters of country theatres: "TARTUFFE, a comedy in five acts, by M. Scribe. LUCRÈCE, a tragedy in five acts, by M. Scribe, etc." Another cause, reflecting only credit upon our dramatist, is assigned for a certain lack of cordial regard on the part of some of his confrères. Scribe, though affable and easy of access, was quiet in his tastes, and was never seen in the estaminets, or beer-shops, where those of his class were much in the habit of meeting. In spite, however, of these drawbacks, he won the cordial respect and regard of those authors whose good opinion was best worth having. This he richly merited, since no one labored more zealously than he to establish the rights of authorship, and to obtain for authors more adequate compensation than before his time had been conceded to them. He was the founder of the society of Authors and Dramatic Composers referred to in the early part of this article.

So engrossed was Scribe with his multifarious labors, that it was not until the age of forty-eight that he found time for matrimony. He selected Madame Biollay, the widow of a winemerchant. His choice appears to have been a wise one, and productive of much happiness. It is to the lady's credit that, previously to her marriage, she enjoyed the acquaintance and friendship of Béranger.

Enough has been said to give a general idea of Scribe's merits as a dramatist and a miscellaneous writer. Though we cannot allow him genius, applying this word in its broadest and highest sense, he blended tact and talent in a remarkable degree; and this happy conjunction gained for him a success VOL. XCVII. NO. 201.

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which never would have accrued to genius alone. Director of the French Academy, gives the following just analysis of his prominent characteristics :

"His wit was supple, inventive, adroit, never-tiring, full of unexpected turns and sprightly sallies. Eager for success, he knew how to bear failure; he was impatient only of repose. One success only urged him to attempt another. His most dazzling triumphs served but as a spur to his activity. Thus for fifty years his inexhaustible talent was employed in the service of four theatres at one and the same time. He devised plots by hundreds, created characters, imparted to the improbable all the charms of reality, accomplished in his single person more, perhaps, than all his rivals together, and, rounding off a half-century of labor, has left us the charming recollection of his talents and his virtues."

ART. III.The Trial of the Constitution. By SIDNEY GEORGE FISHER. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1862.

THE trial of the Constitution has been in progress ever since it was adopted. At that time the authority of the nation, as it existed under the Revolutionary government, and under the Confederation, had become practically extinct, for the want of power to enforce such ordinances and requisitions as it was constitutionally authorized to make. The national authority had to be organized anew, and on the basis of an entirely new fundamental law. The only practically efficient power was then exercised by the local authorities, not by constitutional right, but by usurpation against the national authorities, who were denied the power to perform their own constitutional duties, or even to defend their own existence. They could not protect their own frontiers, execute their own laws, pay their own debts, fulfil their own treaties and contracts, or even defray the necessary expenses of their own nominal administration.

It was necessary to make an entirely new adjustment of the relative powers and duties of the general and local governments. Obviously this could not be done by those governments

themselves, by any treaty, league, or contract among them. It could be done only by the whole people, who had a right to control all the powers, general or local, to be exercised under or upon themselves. Accordingly, the Constitution was made by them, distributing so much of their power as they chose to delegate, and establishing the law, and the jurisdiction, by which every claim of power under them, or any of them, must be finally adjudicated and settled.

But this distribution was not made by parcelling out the powers numerically to the one government and to the other, saying that the general government shall have this, and the State governments that, and so on through the catalogue. They foresaw that such a course would place the governments in collision at every step. Alexander Hamilton said "that no boundary could be drawn between the general and State legislatures"; and Mr. Madison said substantially the same: "To draw the line between the two is a difficult task. I believe it cannot be done." The Convention and the people were apparently of the same opinion, for they made no such attempt. They conferred no powers on the State governments, in reference to their local jurisdiction. They assigned to them certain duties in relation to the administration of the general government, and growing out of the provisions of the Constitution. But the Legislature of Virginia, in their elaborate Resolutions of February, 1820, on the Missouri restrictions, ask emphatically, "What rights are conferred by the Federal Constitution? Upon the federal government," they answer, "many; upon the State government, or upon the citizens, none; one only excepted, the right of a citizen of one State to the privileges of a citizen in all the States." While nothing is conferred, there is but one existing power specially and expressly reservea by the Constitution to the States; and that is "the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline provided by Congress.'

Instead of conferring powers on the States, what they actually attempted and did was to "establish this Constitution for the United States," "in order" to effect six specified objects, by means of the execution of certain powers therein granted, which powers were to be carried into execution by any "laws,

necessary and proper" for the purpose. The Constitution and laws so made were to be "supreme" over all other laws and institutions whatever; and any powers of the people not thus "delegated" to their government were "reserved" to themselves or to the States.

The Constitution was much opposed in the general and State Conventions, previously to its adoption, and obviously on grounds other than those most loudly insisted on in debate. These were generally too insignificant to be supposed capable of influencing the minds of sober men, when acting on a subject of momentous import; yet it is worthy of note, that the determined opponents of the national system never abandoned the most futile exception that was ever alleged against its details.

When the system first went into actual operation, few topics of internal regulation pressed on the immediate attention of the general government. While the external relations of the country demanded much attention, domestic affairs were naturally permitted to keep mostly in their former course. It had been foreseen and foretold that the operations of the general government would be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; and those of the local governments in times of peace and security. Such a beginning tallied well, for the time, with the policy of both parties. The friends of the new system were naturally desirous to avoid any unnecessary alarm or agitation of the public mind, or excitement of old prejudices, by unlooked-for changes, before the beneficent character of the agent had approved itself to the understanding, by a practical application of its remedial powers to the more immediate and palpable evils connected with the international relations of the country. Their opponents were certainly not less pleased with a course of events, which, while it removed the national government to the greatest distance from the people, and reduced it, in their view, to the smallest dimensions, left everything in which they had occasion to recognize the action of government to the management of the local authorities, thus magnifying their importance at the expense of the national.

*Federalist, No. 45.