OUR CONTINENTAL CORRESPONDENCE. Paris, July 20, 1866. THE last fortnight has been unfortunate to literary men. Count de Montalembert has had a relapse, and his days are considered in danger. M. Villemain, the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy, is so ill several physicians have been summoned to his bedside. Dr. Grisolle, eminent as a medical practitioner and writer, has had an attack of paralysis which raises the most serious apprehensions; he has lost speech. M. Baudelaine continues to vegetate in a water-cure establishment; the contractions of his face have disappeared, he can again move his arms, but the only articulations like speech which he can utter are something like an oath when the water of the shower-bath reaches him. We have buried a poor young fellow whose fate was a hard one. He was the nephew of that unfortunate French naval officer, M. Cournet, who was assassinated by a scoundrel named Barthélemy, at London. The family seemed born under an unlucky star. M. Aimé Cournet, whom we buried the other day, lived by translating English novels into French; but he was most cruelly wronged out of his earnings. Too poor, too modest, and too obscure to get near publishers, he was obliged to give his labors to some-I cannot say more fortunate-literary acquaintance known to publishers. The latter would sell the translations for $500 a volume, and he would pay poor Aimé Cournet $25! Can you wonder the poor fellow died of consumption, and in the deepest poverty? Of course he had a wife and children; his misery would not have been complete, had not his dying hours been tortured by the sight of poor creatures he had damned to life, and who, great as was the wrong he had put upon them, loved him better than all the world besides. We have lost too V. de Mars, the secretary for above twenty-five years of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," a man of talents, but cowed, as it is said, by M. Buloz, the proprietor and chief editor of that best of French periodicals, a man of arbitrary, domineering, and bad temper, and worse manners. M. de Mars was humble and gentle, and lived in constant dread of doing or saying something which might compromise the "Revue" or its proprietor. He was a man of delicate literary taste, great acquirements, and some talents for writing. He wrote a great deal for the "Revue," but most of his contributions were made to order. He has been for years the butt of the ridicule of the petty press, and his funeral pall did not preserve his memory from its shafts. He was only forty-eight years old. I informed you two years ago into what a melancholy condition Edouard Martin had fallen; he was bereaved of sight and memory. He has lingered these twenty-four months gone in one of our private hospitals, gradually sinking into the grave. Death came to his relief a few days since. Edouard Martin was born in humble station of life, and for many years passed as a good but dull fellow. He never, even to the last of his life, shone in conversation; but by patience and industry he rose to respectable rank as a dramatic author, and threw into his plays a sprightliness, vivacity, wit, and life few authors here can equal. He had too a wonderful instinct of the exigencies of the stage; he knew its arbitrary, singular code thoroughly, and never stumbled into forbidden measures. This instinct is rarer, even among the French, than is commonly supposed. A pleasing trait in his character was his love for his father. As fortune favored him, his father was made more comfortable. When he moved from his garret to an elegant suite of rooms he gave his father a cozy suite of rooms on a groundfloor opening into a pleasant garden, and he said:

"As I have my Louvre, it is at least but fair my father should have his Tuileries." His father died some months ago. I may mention, for a strange circumstance, the night the father died poor Edouard Martin woke from his sleep with a start, and leaped out of bed, saying: "I hear my father's voice calling me. Quick! quick! let us to Belleville to see him." The nurse who watched him said: "Why, it is only three o'clock in the morning; we can find no carriage at this hour." "Do you promise me we will go as soon as it is day?" 'Certainly." He returned to bed murmuring: "God grant I get there before it be too late." He forgot all about it the next morning. He was never told of his father's death. He would sometimes say in a sorrowful tone: "It seems to me it has been a long time since my father came to see me." His nurse would invariably reply: "Why, M. Martin, he was here this morning." He would answer: "It is strange; I do not remember things which occurred five minutes ago.' Edouard Martin was born in 1827. He made his first appearance in print in 1848, by writing one of those ten thousand sheets sold during revolutionary agitation. His first piece was written for the Théâtre Choiseul; it was a fairy piece, "Les Talismans du Diable." He afterwards wrote for the Delassments, the Variétés, the Palais Royal, the Vaudeville, and La Cirque; but it was not until he became the colaborer of M. Eugène Labiche he wrote his best pieces: "L'Affaire de la Rue de Lourcine," "Les Petites Mains," "Les Vivacités du Capitaine Tic," "Les Trente et Sept Sous de M. Montaudoin," "Le Voyage de M. Perrichon,' and "Moi." The French Emperor generally allowed him 1500 f. a year, and the royalty on his plays enabled him with this pension to be ignorant of the hardships of poverty. We have lost this week J. A. de Wailly, a literary man of some merit. I cannot tell you what works we owe to him; there are so many de Waillys who are authors I find it hard to discover their respective contributions to literature.

As M. Alex. Dumas, Jr.-who, by the way, has just passed through Paris returning from a visit to M. Edmond About at Saverne, and going to St. Valery for sea-bathing-as M. Alex. Dumas, Jr., occupies a considerable share of public attention in consequence of the recent publication of his "Affaire Clemenceau" (which has already put $6000 into his pocket, despite the war), I am sure you will read with interest some particulars of his character which I find in one of our daily papers: "At the period of life when most men think they cannot throw away their days, nights, money, and health fast enough, Alexandre Dumas, Jr., tried his best to spend as little as possible of all of these things. Frank and of sterling integrity in everything, he had received many offers of magnificent marriagesmagnificent even for him-but he always declined them with exquisite delicacy, saying: 'I know no woman I hate so much as to make her my wife.' He fortunately has changed his mind after waiting many years, and in this instance likewise this fortunate man proved that he knew how to act wisely. While he was a bachelor he lived for a long time in a small mansion in the Rue de Boulogne. The house and garden were so very small that one day his father said, while breakfasting with him in the dining-room on the ground-floor: 'Good gracious, Alexandre! do open your window to give a little air to your garden.' He never thou's anybody; he would not even thou the man who saved his life. He has a horror of promiscuous association, and avoids familiarity as a cat shuns dirt. He has as much wit as his father, and all of his witty sayings tell. One day I asked him what had become of an assiduous parasite whom I was astonished to see