French Fiction.

The Goncourt Academy of Ten and the women's academy that has gathered around the illustrated review, La Vie Heureuse, are by way of influencing French literature, in particular French fiction, by their prizes. Both seek for their prizes in the year's novelties, which means, that the prizes go to the young to whom the world is still new. The women's academy, with its usual cautious conservatism, has chosen in past years for its laureates writers who had already received safe recognition. The Goncourt Ten have not, been so wary. Of all their prize-winners, none has yet earned a sure place in literature; and the public has regularly learned of their existence from the prizes suddenly bestowed oil them.