Eugène, a popular French novelist, was born at Paris on the 10th of December 1804. He belonged to a family of physicians, who had distinguished themselves in more than one reign of the sovereigns of France. His father was household physician to Napoleon, and the future novelist was presented at the font by the Empress Jose- phine and her son Eugène Beauharnais. Having received his name from so illustrious a house, it became his care afterwards to do what he could to render it immortal. Sue originally began the family profession, but gave it up in a short while for the more showy career of a military man. After pursuing his adventures both by land and sea for a number of years, he in 1831 returned to Paris, where he found his father dead, and some L1600 a year awaiting him. He began to spend it with great good-will, and took to writing first as an amusement, and subsequently as a necessity. His first novels were received with neglect, such as Plièk et Ploch, 1831; Atar-Gull, 1831; La Sala- mandre, 1832; La Coucaraçcha, 4 vols., 1832-34; La Vigie de Koat-Ven, 4 vols., 1833. Next followed his con- spicuous failure, L'Histoire de la Marine Française, 5 vols., 1835-37, which provoked the waggish jocularity of some of the naval officers at Toulon, who presented the author with a silver medal to express "the gratitude of the French navy to Eugène Sue for the history he has not written." Numerous romances followed this historical attempt, in which vice, as is usual with French novels, triumphed over virtue. In 1840 M. Sue resolved to try the virtuous novel, and, as a commercial speculation, it had an amazing suc- cess. One of the great literary events of Louis Philippe's reign is described as the publication of Sue's Mathilde, in 6 vols., 1841. On this followed in close succession, Les Mystères de Paris, 10 vols., 1842; Le Juif Errant, 10 vols., 1844-6, all which appeared in the pages of La Presse, Les Débats, and Le Constitutionnel. This literary lion, for such he had now become, was feasted and praised as only Frenchmen can praise and feast. This vicious pan- demonium to the lowest feelings and worst passions of the mob was, to the great mass of the French people, the immortal delineator of manners, and the most exquisite writer which had ever appeared. This virtuous author would not hold his public in suspense, accordingly they gave them Le Morne au Diable, 2 vols., 1842; Martin l'Enfant Troué, 12 vols., 1847; Les Sept Péchés Capitaux, 16 vols., 1847-49. The Mystères du Peuple, 1849-56, was in process of publication when, in 1857, it was condemned, and suppressed as im- moral and seditions by the assize court of Paris. This was a timely hint to Sue that his services were no longer needed as the instructor of his age. He afterwards wrote, with a marked decrease of popularity, his Les Enfans de l'Amour, 4 vols., 1850; La Bonne Aventure, 6 vols. 1851; Fer- dinand Duplessis, ou Memoirs d'un Mari, 6 vols., 1852. In 1848, Sue, who was an extreme Socialist, was elected a representative of the Assemblée Nationale; but on the election of Napoleon III. he was expelled from the French territory. He retired to Annecy, where he died on the 3d of July 1857.