ABOUT, EDMOND FRANIO1S VALENTIN, a French litterateur of great and rising reputation, was born at Dieuze, on the 14th Feb., 1828. He studied first at the Lycee Charlemagne, where he greatly distinguished himself; and afterwards at the Ecole Normale. In the beginning of 1852, he received an appointment to the French school at Athens, an institution supported by the French government, with no very definite object, but with the hope that the members, who are selected on account of their attain ments and promise in scholarship, and left perfectly free to choose their own studies, should be able to make contributions to the history or the archmology of Greece. A. remained at Athens for about two years. He wrote,•as required by the terms of his appointment, a memoir for the academy of inspections, entitled L'Re d'.Egine; but it was as the satirist of modern Greece, not as the investigator of Grecian antiquities, that his name first became familiar to the public. On his return to France, towards the end of 1853, he published La Greee Contemporaine, a work which at once attained to great popularity, and was in course of the following year translated into several foreign lan guages. This work, full of lively and pointed sketches, abounding in shrewd and witty observation, its censures, very severe as they were, scarcely seeming offensive, from the ease and perfect good-humor with which they were conveyed, at once made its author be regarded as among the most promising writers of the day. It unquestionably affected European opinion as to the character and the capabilities of the modern Greek; the truth fulness of its portraiture being confirmed by all who had special knowledge of this people. It gave earnest of the qualities which go to making a brilliant novelist; and A. did not long delay to conic before the public as a novelist. His first novel, Tolla, appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and was republished early in 1855. It did not disappoint the high expectations formed of it; but the author bad laid himself open to a charge which, whenever it can be colorably sustained, is certain to be disastrous. He had taken many of his leading incidents from an Italian work, Pittoria .C(trarelli, published in 1841, and soon after withdrawn, the incidents contained in which were well known as actual occurrences; and, thought something of this was hinted in the book, there was no distinct acknowledgment of it. A hue and cry of plagiarism was got up against A., from which his reputation took some time to recover. His comedy, Guillerq, brought out in Feb. 1856, at the Theatre Francais, did not make his peace with the Parisians; it was a com plete failure, so far as the theatre-going public was concerned, and had to be withdrawn after two representations. A set of stories which he now began to contribute to the
Mimi/cur, however—Lee Mariages de Paris—had a success which more than made up for the savage criticism which he had had to endure, they placed him high in public favor; and since then his career has been a series of successes. Les .Mariages de Paris was fol lowed by Le Rol des Montagnes (1856), Germaine (1857), Les Echasses de Maitre Pierre (1857), Le Turco (1866), Elnfame (1867), Les Mariages de Prorince (1868).
In 1859, after a tour in Italy, of a portion of which he contributed a description to the Atonitour, A. published a political pamphlet—La Question Romaine—which, displaying the same qualities as his early work on Greece, but matured, and wielded for a dehnite• object, and being, moreover, regarded as written with the approval of the emperor of the French, created a sensation throughout Europe. His object was to expose the abuses of the ecclesiastical government at 'Rome; and numerous answers to his work were made by friends of the papacy. In the following year, lie published two political pamphlets, La .NOurelle Carte d'Europe, and La Prusse en 1860; both of which, being taken as indic ative of the emperor Napoleon's leanings, underwent criticism in all parts of Europe. A second work on Rome--;--Rome Contemporaine—appeared in 1861. Id. A. was decorated with the Legion of Honor in 1858.
Of late years, he has been producing novels with unabated popularity; and he has also written several slight dramatic pieces, which have been favorably received. It is unneces sary to put down a catalogue of works which are perfectly familiar to those who are interested in French contemporary fiction. In 1864, he published Le Progres, a work of considerable pretensions, in which he discussed at great length, but with his usual liveli ness of style, the existing state of society, especially in France, and the methods of improving it. His conclusion was that in France there were needed for progress the liberty of association (for the purposes of production and trade), an amendment of the land-system, a proper distribution of population as between country and town, the absence of police interference in the affairs of private persons, freedom of religious worship, and other similar conditions. In 1868, A. became a leading contributor to the Gat/lois news paper. At the outbreak of the Franco-German war in 1870, he accompanied the army of lac31alion to Alsace as special correspondent of the Soir, and in 1872 he became editor of Le XIX." Sleek. He published Alsace in 1872. In the same year he suffered a week's imprisonment, for some abusive newspaper articles, from the German authorities, who chose to consider him as a German subject from his being a native of Lorraine.