satisfied with a military sovereignty and tribute, like their half- ancestors the Romans, they took lands, houses, wealth of all sorts, burnt every record of independence, and finished by taking the people, whom they reduced to the condition of beasts of burden, till every one of them died. The English, with respect to their conquests, have acted throughout pretty much like the Romans in similar circumstances. They have never meant ill towards any nation which they conquered; they have always at least been full of professions as to taking foreign nations in charge purely for their good. Never were there such lambs of conquerors, if you were to believe their own story. Any one, however, who wishes to get at the truth, must not sit down by the fireside and look into books. He must put his hat on his head, and take his staff in his hand, and go and take a view of the things which books do not speak out upon. Let him, if he is not afraid, cross the sea to Ireland, where he will see as hopeless a coil of confusion as ever was exhibited by any nation ruled by the the once splendid gardens of Babylon (Persia did it). Out of the whole set of adventurers who produced these multifarious disorders, the Romans were, on the whole, the best. They were ambitious, but not cruel; and in all matters of municipal concern, in the countries which they conquered, they were perfectly tolerant and accommodating. All they ever cared about was imperial sovereignty and tribute. The people whom they took in charge might worship what they liked, and live in any way they liked, provided they sent annually to Rome a certain quantity of cash. The Turks were the next best; tribute with them being also the great thing; but they were intolerant and cruel, and smashed all objects of art in pieces. The Danes were a kind of sea Turks; they went about plundering and subduing nations, greedy for tribute, and regardless of what havoc they committed among the fine arts. Out of the whole, the Spaniards have been decidedly the worst. With them, conquest was annihilation. Not Reflecting on what may be observed in an excursion of this kind to Ireland, and at the same time bearing in mind the aforesaid lamb-like character of the conquerors, we inevitably arrive at the conviction that there is, and must have been from the beginning, something radically bad in the whole conquering process. Can any one imagine what this can be? Let us hazard a guess or two. In the first place, the acquisition is by VIOLENCE and INJUSTICE. That is just as clear as that the sun is in heaven. A great number of men, very much in want of employment, some of them on horses, and others on foot, land in a strange country which perhaps never before heard of them, and being expert in the use of certain weapons which they carry in their hands, and very powerful, they, without rhyme or reason, all at once begin knocking the people about, and making themselves masters of their country and all that is in it. This treatment being considered somewhat unkind and unreasonable, the people very likely ask what it means. They cannot possibly understand why they should lose their country! In some instances the commanders of the men with the weapons vouchsafe an answer, and sometimes they don't. The Spaniards were always exceedingly polite in answering questions of this unpleasant nature. They came prepared for it. Along with every squad there went a first-rate logician, the pick of the Spanish universities, who, if required, and at a moment's notice, could have proved that black was white, or that two and two made five: nothing came amiss to him. This useful personage never made his appearance till all the party were landed, and the talk about the why and wherefore had begun. Exactly in the nick of time he was introduced, and he took especial care to come forward in a dress which helped materially to mystify his audience. Clearing his throat, he delivered, through an interpreter, a remarkably neat harangue, in which he showed, by a course of history which began at the creation of the world, how the Spaniards were entitled, by every principle in law, reason, and divinity, to take possession of the country. And on concluding his discourse, he never omitted one important particular, which was this:-My good friends, if you remain unconvinced after all I have said to you, I shall be under the very disagreeable necessity of allowing these gentlemen to do their duty'-pointing, almost with tears in his eyes, to go away home, and threatening their lives if they didn't. to a row of stout fellows on horseback, frowning terrifically through their bushy beards and eyebrows, and handling their long knives as if ready to fall to. This At this juncture a very strange affair happened. A latter argument usually prevailed. Bamboozled and little girl, a quiet, modest, thoughtful creature, who frightened, the unhappy wretches scratched their sun-lived near the village of Domremy on the borders of burnt pates, and with a discontented growl submitted to their doom. The accounts of these interviews are among the richest things in history. Lorraine, and whose employment was herding sheep, came home one day to her mother and said that she had seen an angel. The little girl had of course been dreaming while asleep, as she lay on the sunny hillside tending her small flock. However, one of the features of her character was a wild earnestness, which would not admit this interpretation of her vision. She stuck to her story, and insisted that she had seen an angel, who told her to rouse the French nation, and drive away the English. Was ever anything so frantic heard of? What a notion for a poor little herd lassie! Her mother and everybody said it was all nonsense; but the girl would not be driven from her purpose. She went away on a wandering excursion; spoke to this one and spoke to that one; and actually had the address to put herself at the head of an army. Long and desperate were the fights which ensued. The English were everywhere beaten; and the two dukes and the bishop were reduced to great straits. Enraged beyond measure at the courageous efforts of the little girl, they tried every sort of plan to catch her; and, by an accidental turn of affairs, they succeeded. Now was the time to do for the maiden of Domremy! They made short work of her. The bishop proved, by a line of reasoning which very easily convinced the dukes, that the girl was a witch; and so, being a witch, they burnt her to ashes with a collection of tar-barrels in the town of Rouen! With what emotions of compassion, horror, and shame-shame for England-have I looked around the square, with its antique buildings, where this fearful crime was perpetrated! Neither the bishop nor the dukes had a day to do well afterwards. The French rose en-masse, and turned them, and every one who belonged to them, out of the country. Thus was France saved from being made a led-farm, and England once more saved from being millstoned. Another fortunate escape that was! The English, to do them justice, never tried to come over the people whom they wished to conquer in this fashion. They would not give themselves the trouble. Yet, considering what a wise and saturnine people they are, they have done some remarkably odd things; and this brings us to a striking feature of our tableau. When an agriculturist gets uncomfortably rich on a good farm, he begins to have a fancy to take another, which he understands is to be let a number of miles off, and which he proposes to manage by means of servants and post-letters. This is called in Scotland 'taking a | led-farm.' He accordingly strikes the bargain, which, ten chances to one, turns out a losing concern. The servants are far from being dishonest; they do all they can for their master; still the thing, somehow, won't pay. The ambitious agriculturist discovers his error when too late; he would give the lease of the led -farm to anybody who would take it off his hands; and as nobody will, it hangs like a millstone about his neck-till he is ruined. England on one occasion took a fancy to make a ledfarm of Scotland, as she had previously done of Ireland. The way it happened was this. The Scotch having some difficulty in knowing which of two competing princes to choose as king, they, in order not to fight about it, referred the matter to the arbitration of the king of England. This king was selfish and knowing; and what did he do but get Scotland a good deal into his own hands, on pretence of keeping things in order, and then say that he was the proper king of the country himself. The Scotch, however, would not stand this sort of usage, and the unjust king, with his banditti, each one of whom expected a snap at something good, were at length fain to give up the affair as a bad job. It is, now-a-days, generally felt by the English that it was as well, if not better, that their cunning and avaricious There are differences in the manner in which conold king did not on the above occasion get hold of Scot-quered countries are brought efficiently into the conland, to make a led-farm of her, for she might have proved another Ireland, and then England would have had two millstones around her neck instead of one. Fortunate escape that was! Talking of this, and if I am not tiring the reader with these historical portraitures, I may call to mind another escape which the English made from millstoneing. When the Normans gained possession of England they still retained their French territories; and these, by means of fighting, intermarrying, and balderdash sophistry, they contrived to swell out to such a size, that they included the whole of France. Being now kings of France as well as England, they seem to have hesitated considerably with respect to which country they should stay in, and which they should turn into a ledfarm. England saw very little of them during these hesitations. At length they decided on setting up housekeeping permanently in England, which always abounded in good butchers' shops, and of making France the led-farm. Having, after many doubts, come to this resolution, they despatched two dukes and a bishop to live in Paris, and do what they could to keep things from going to disorder in their absence. The French were very far from being in a pleasant humour with these delegates, and were constantly telling them dition of led-farms. The Spaniards, as has been seen, gave their preaching first, and did their killing afterwards. The English reverse the practice. They begin with the killing, and end with the preaching. Not that they ever want to kill; it is only people's own blame if they wont be quiet, and so get knocked on the head. True, it is all the same in the end; but it is satisfactory to go by regular rules. Having got the people somehow or other to be quiet, the next step which the English take is to land three boxes from a ship. These boxes are made up in London by persons who know all about it, for they have had immense experience in the trade. What is imported in these boxes is of the first consequence. Is the reader curious to know what are the contents? I shall tell him. In the first box is contained a theodolite, with the entire apparatus for measuring land. In the second box is contained a set of the statutes at large from the reign of Edward I., with a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries on the law of England, and a chief justice's gown and wig. In the third box are found all suitable paraphernalia for the church service. Until these things have been opened out and brought into use, the constitution cannot be said to have begun. The theodolite usually puzzles the natives. While loitering, poor innocents, about their cottage-doors on a sunny forenoon, they are very much struck with observing a man in a stooping posture, who is looking through a strange brass instrument mounted on three wooden legs. First he looks this way, and then he looks that way; he goes across fields, enters gardens, and pushes through hedges; and everywhere is he seen looking through that very droll instrument. They cannot make out what he is about; and they never do make it out till some months afterwards, when they are visited by a man with a red neck to his coat, who tells them to be off, for their lands now constitute Lot 17, Section D, in the third Concession of Bundle-and-go County, and were sold by auction yesterday at seven-and-threepence an acre. They might have bought them if they had a mind; the auction was duly advertised by the sheriff. nobody in it. Not a living thing is seen in the street but two broken-hearted hens, which go disconsolately about looking for crumbs, having not been able to scratch up a single particle of food since breakfast time. What a marvellous phenomenon! Desperate with curiosity, you hasten to the inn, where stand your horses munching slices of brown bread out of a trough, and you ask Boniface what is the matter; has the town been conquered, and all the people carried away? Not exactly conquered, monsieur; we have only been mediatised. Bonaparte mediatised us one afternoon, when on his way to Russia. It was done, I am told, in seventeen minutes and a half: the document was signed on the top of a bass-drum.' Mediatised, you afterwards learn, is a slang law phrase, which signifies to be extinguished as a nation, and the country given away to different adjoining sovereignties-a bit to one, and a bit to another. Most of the German states have several times, without leave asked, been cut up, ruined, and handed from one to another in this free-and-easy fashion. The people grumble horridly, to be sure, to be so tossed about; but what can they do? Perhaps they are nurs When the French take possession of countries they also bring boxes ashore, but their contents are somewhat different. Roads and land-measuring they don't care about; and a field-marshal's baton is the sum and substance of their constitution. Still they cannot do without bringing boxes along with them. These packing up their vengeance! ages are made up in a tradesmanlike manner in a large establishment at the end of the Rue Richelieu. They contain a complete set of the plays of Molière, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire; a great variety of dresses for mock kings, priests, soldiers, bandits, distressed ladies, savage old fathers, rebellious sons, clever waiting-maids, and so on. And in attendance on the boxes there is a troop of men and women, who are to perform the parts of these personages. A good supply of rouge, pomatum, and moustaches is not forgotten. With all these things the French set up a theatre wherewith to keep them merry in their exile from Paris; and provided they are allowed to do this in peace, they get on pretty well. Outrageous things no doubt they have done, as in Algiers; but it is a universal remark, that no foreign possessions are in the main so kindly treated as those of France; the truth being, that the French do not care a whistle about any country they go to, except to have the glory of calling the country their own, and giving it a taste of the legitimate drama. Gipsies, thieves, and all other predacious classes have a language of their own, by which they can conceal or treat with levity any crime they commit. Any piece of deceit they call a lurk; to thieve is to prig. Something of the like ingenuity may be observed to exist with respect to conquered nations. In travelling through Germany, your voiture stops for a short time in a neatlybuilt, dull town. To stretch your legs, you walk to the end of the street, where stands a great whitewashed palace, with gardens behind it of a superb description. You walk into the gardens, and all through them, but there is nobody there. Flowers are blooming and opening their sweet petals to the sun; but there is nobody there to enjoy their beauty or perfume. A long row of orange-trees, each growing from a green-painted tub, the size of a sugar-barrel, in vain offers the spectacle of its golden fruit; nobody is there to rejoice in the feast. Leaden gods and goddesses, seated in the midst of fountains, are busy spouting water from their mouths, as if their cheeks were like to burst; but not a soul is there to see them-literally no one, except a decayed gendarme with one eye and a wooden leg, who sits by himself all day long under a tree playing at dominoes, his right hand against his left. You come back to the town, and with increasing interest you begin to observe that there is Whatever be the actual methods of operation, it all comes to this: nations dishonestly taken possession of, like ill-got wealth, seldom thrive. We may read our sin in our punishment:' so saith the Scripture. Our pleasant vices make us whips to scourge us:' so says Shakspeare. 'Every immoral act contains the seeds of its own dissolution:' so says Philosophy. True, there are examples of military aggression-that INIQUITY OF INIQUITIES, of which the world has too long been tolerant-being not unattended with benefit and social happiness to the conqueror as well as the conquered; but in these a new sequence of action is evoked, of which I may afterwards have occasion to speak. Meanwhile I confine myself exclusively to the first or fundamental principle, followed by its usually rude and troublesome consequences. As to what may be inferred from the secondary or healing principle, I need not now further advert to it, than by saying that it is partly embraced in that sublime sentiment of Ezekiel, which forms the opening passage of every Englishman's Book of Common Prayer-When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.' Here Ireland, that terrible word, rises up in judgment-transgressions committed and persevered in hundreds of years ago, but for which, in the nature of immutable moral laws, there seems to be no oblivion. The only shade of penitential consolation consists in the fact, that the Danes were before the English in the diabolical work of mischief. But for these marauding wretches, what would that beautiful isle of the ocean not have been? Along the whole eastern coast are seen traces of their rapacity. Near Drogheda, on the borders of Louth, the seat of the great medieval colleges of learning, I crept on my hands and knees into a temple of remote antiquity, and with candles brought with me on purpose, lighted up a dome-shaped vault of the most interesting construction; which, since its visit by the Danes, has been a scene of the wildest desolation. The ragged carman who acted as guide on the occasion had the Irish Monasticon by heart, and could tell who built, who endowed, who sacked, and who pocketed the rental of every ruined abbey which we passed. Such is Ireland, a country which, I confidently believe, is till this minute not understood by the English. W. C. THE FISHERMAN. It would be a curious and picturesque trip to embark in a coasting-vessel, and from port to port, from village to village, to visit all the shores of France; to go from Dunkirk to Bayonne in the Western Ocean, from Port Vendre to Cannes in the Mediterranean; to behold, gradually defiling before you, the undulating downs of the north, the white steeps of Normandy, the savage rocks of Finisterre, the smiling groves of Vendée, the wooded meads of the Gironde; and, mingling with the amphibious population of the coasts, to study and delineate from the life sailors, fishermen, preventives, smugglers, wreckers-all those who live by the sea, in skimming its surface, in fathoming its depths, in confronting its treacherous caprices. The fishermen especially form a race apart, the more worthy of observation, as, from the nature of their life and habits, they present a perfect contrast with the industrial occupants of the interior. Characteristic traits common to the whole fraternity everywhere abound, although they are spread over a line of coast upwards of a thousand miles in extent. The species of the fish which they abstract from their liquid retreat varies according to the latitude; the tackle employed is modified according to the genus and locality of the prey which they pursue; but in the north or in the south, we find an everprevailing analogy in the minds, habits, and manners of fishermen. He who harpoons the tunny off Marseilles, differs but little from the Norman who caters for the saloons of Paris, or from the Breton, who tempts with a bait of red roe the shoals of migrating pilchards. At all points they inhabit the same cabins hung with nets, half buried in the sands, or perched like nests on the summit of a cliff. They are men of the same masculine figure, the same nervous limbs, the same healthy complexionactive, agile, indefatigable-sober as much from principle as necessity-freed from vice and corruption by isolation and by labour. While children, the boys are occupied in collecting shrimps, cockles, and other shell-fish which are to be found upon the strand; and at about twelve years of age they accompany their fathers to the fishery. They set sail as the tide begins to turn, and avail themselves of the reflux to regain the shore. Thus twelve hours out of the twenty-four, one-half of the lives of the fishermen, they pass upon the sea. Their boat is at once their workshop, their refectory, their dormitory, and their magazine. The fishermen's wives, not less industrious than their husbands, stretch the lines along the beach, mend the nets, gather oysters from the rocks at low-water, and carry the fish to market, without at the same time neglecting the cares of the household, and the education of & progeny always numerous. They watch for the return of their husbands, and when these re-enter the port, assist in unloading the vessel, in which the produce of the fishery glitters in silvery heaps. Often, alas! they watch in vain; too often the waves give them back but shattered wrecks and disfigured corpses. But recently, in the early part of July 1841, a numerous crowd was assembled upon the shore at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, while a violent squall lashed the surface of the sea, and far in the distance a man was visible, clinging to the keel of an overset boat. An infant was upon his shoulders, whose feeble arms convulsively grasped its father's neck, and the hapless couple floated at the mercy of the waves. A single fisherman had launched his little boat, and succeeded, after long and perilous efforts, in arriving within a few feet of the drowning persons; he stretched a boat-hook towards them, which the father essayed to grasp with one hand, without quitting his hold of the wrecked boat. At this moment a woman, bearing a basket of bread and boiled herbs, joined the spectators of this scene of desolation. What is the matter?' she asked. Look!' said one of the bystanders, 'yonder is Pierre Coulon drowning with his son.' The woman was the wife of the fisherman; before night, his widow. The fishermen who risk their lives in the pursuit of their occupation, never hesitate to brave dangers for f salvation of others. They have cast the rope of safety t many a shipwrecked mariner; they have dragged from the billows many a victim; rescued from the reefs many a half-drowned wretch; gained many a public recompense. The Dieppe fisherman Boussard, who obtained the honourable surname of the Brave,' has left many a successor among his compatriots. The rocky shores of Finisterre alone of all the French coast were long redoubtable to vessels in distress. The inhabitants placed a lantern between the horns of a cow, whose head they had fastened to the right leg with a cord. The animal, in bending the knee to walk, alternately raised and lowered its head, and the movements thus communicated to the lantern imitated those of a ship's light. Mariners who had lost their course believed that, in this vacillating light, they saw a faithful guide to a hospitable shore; but, deceived by the infamous fraud, they were precipitated upon the fatal rocks, and their last drowning cries of agony were welcomed by the savage clamours of the pirates. These acts of barbarity have happily ceased; the Breton fisherman is, as formerly, greedy of waifs, but the love of pillage does not stifle in his bosom the sentiments of humanity. There is no class of men who have more affection for their natal soil. All attempts to naturalise them elsewhere than on the borders of the sea would be vain : there they were born, there they wish to die. Their precarious and sorry huts are dearer to them than palaces. Sometimes the moving sand, which the storms of wind raise in vast billows, swallow up entire hamlets. Some fine morning, the inmates, astonished that the dawn does not appear, perceive that they have been buried with their domicile. Nothing daunted, they reconnoitre from the chimney, and having dug a passage through the roof, set peaceably to work to disinter their dwelling. In other quarters the coast is bordered with cliffs, on the platforms of which the fishermen build their cots, while the sea slowly saps the base. Such are the favourite dwellings of a race of men familiar with all the dangers of waves, winds, and sunken rocks. Pierre Vass had established himself upon the coast of Calvados, between the town of Armanges and the Fort of Maisy, at a little distance from Grandchamp. Pierre had lost his wife; the last of his sons had died at Trafalgar, and there remained to him but a daughter twelve years old. Though past the middle age, he had still sufficient health and strength to pursue his avocations with the assistance of his child. Lodged in a cabin upon the summit of a precipitous cliff, he descended to the sea by steps cut in the chalky soil. He fixed stakes in the sand, to which the little Louise attached long nets, and at low-water, soles, whiting, cod-fish, and flounders were taken in their attempts to regain the open sea. The neighbours of Pierre Vass often made their observations upon the insecurity of his residence. The waves undermined the cliff, which fell away in masses. My house is not very firm,' said Pierre Vass, but I have dwelt in it more than thirty years; all my children were born there, and my poor wife lived in it-God re-unite us when he shall judge proper! I will die surrounded by my old remembrances.' One day a tempest arose, the billows dashed against the cliff with fury, the wind shook the house of Pierre Vass, and the rocks started and cracked with a terrific noise. The old fisherman, habitually melancholy, seemed now lost in a dream. From time to time he rose, and opened the window to look out upon the dismal scene; then reseating himself, he would remain, his head resting upon his hands, a prey to some strange hallucination. Louise,' said he to his daughter, take this basket of fish and carry it to your uncle at Grandchamp.' 'Look at the dreadful weather, father!' 'He regales his friends to-morrow, and has need of provisions. Go directly-make haste,' added the old fisherman in a tone of severity, mingled with an indefinable expression of tenderness. Louise was accustomed to passive obedience, and was soon ready. Adieu, father; I will be back before it is dark.' She 53 ar uncle's to-night; you can return 4, my child-adieu. Heaven preserve her with passionate emotion, tore himself s, and watched her disappear in the distance his fast-falling tears permitted him to behold The house of Pierre Vass and five neighbouring oins disappeared during the night. This attachment of the fisherman for the rocks of his country, for the waves by which, and on which he lives, for the advantages, and even the dangers of his profession, is the cause of his submitting to the military service with an insurmountable repugnance. It is not that he is cowardly; he exhibits, on the contrary, a well-tried courage. Separated from death only by a few frail planks, he traverses the open sea, borne fearlessly onward at the caprice of the stormy waves. But a soldier he will not be; he would languish under the tedium of the apprenticeship; the air of the canteen would be more fatal to him than the balls of the enemy. A fisherman of Etretat, named Romain Bizon, was named in the conscription of 1810. The other conscripts quitted their homes to join the army, but Romain Bizon answered not the appeal. His mother declared that he had departed by night without taking leave. His betrothed bemoaned him as if lost for ever, and showed herself not insensible to the advances of a new suitor. Descriptions of the deserter were sent to every brigade; the gendarmes rummaged the village and its neighbourhood, but Romain Bizon had disappeared. At the distance of half a league from Etretat there is a cliff of immense height; the side which fronts the open sea rises precipitously to a point. Towards the centre of this façade there is a grotto, which the inhabitants to this day call the cave of Romain Bizon. It was there, in fact, that he had taken refuge. He had scaled the summit of the cliff, and by means of a rope, which he had succeeded in fixing firmly, had slid down perpendicularly as far as the opening of the grotto, more than a hundred and fifty feet below. Thence, by means of another rope, he descended every night to the strand, fished among the clefts of the rocks, received the visits of his mother and his betrothed, who brought him provisions, and before the break of day regained his inaccessible retreat. Several months had thus passed away, when the bold deserter was betrayed by the light of a fire which he had the imprudence to kindle during the night. The mayor gave notice to the lieutenant of the guard, and both swore to capture the rebel Romain Bizon alive or dead. But how to get at him? They were ignorant of his mode of access to the grotto, which was more than a hundred feet above the level of the shore, and the base of the cliff was bathed by the rising tide. When the tide had receded, the mayor, girt with his scarf, the lieutenant at the head of his detachment, advanced upon the sand, and hailed Romain Bizon, who gave no sign of life. This joker wants the honour of a siege in form,' said the mayor; come, lieutenant, do your duty.' Prepare, armes!' commanded the lieutenant of the guard in a formidable voice. In less than a minute the fire of a platoon was directed against the grotto; whilst, armed with poles, cramp-irons, ladders, and ropes, a band of officials made their preparations for the perilous ascent. Romain Bizon had remained hitherto invisible, but at the moment they were commencing the assault, he showed himself suddenly, and wielding a pickaxe, detached huge masses of rock, which showered upon his enemies. In a twinkling the troop began to make a retrograde movement, and the tide, now returning, decided the victory in favour of the refractory fisherman. The next morning the rope which served him for a ladder swung idly from the cavern to the sands beneath; but Romain Bizon was no longer there. Eight years rolled away before he returned to Etretat. He arrived there about nine o'clock on a raw and gusty evening in autumn. The inhabitants had retired to rest, but one door was yet open, over which was inscribed, in charac ters of primitive form, 'Good draught cider.' Romain Bizon entered, seated himself, and invited the landlord, who was alone, to discuss with him a pot of his best liquor. The host, surprised at the visit of a stranger at so late an hour, commenced the conversation. You are not a native of this part?' 'No; but I passed a considerable time here formerly, in the emperor's day. At that period there was a great deal of talk of one Romain Bizon. Have you any recollection of that?' In spite of the affected indifference of the unknown, he trembled in pronouncing these words. 'Parbleu !" said the host, everybody knows that story. He was much sought after for a long time; but it appeared that he had embarked, under a false name, on board a privateer from Havre, and that he died a prisoner in England. "Tis hardly six months ago that we buried his mother-the poor old soul! She had had a deal of trouble.' The stranger kept silence; but without taking his elbows from the table, he clasped his hands together, wrung them in evident anguish, and sighed bitterly. 'I am sorry,' said the landlord, that what I have said appears to give you pain; but did you know that family? 'A little,' stammered the unknown. Was not Romain betrothed to a girl named Madeline Lebreton? What is become of her?" 'Madeline! Bah! she is my wife !' said the host. The stranger made an exclamation expressive of pain and bitter disappointment, then appeared to fall into a state of profound stupefaction. "There is nothing astonishing in that,' said the host unmoved; she could not always remain single, because her future husband had chosen to decamp.' The stranger, who had buried his face in his hands, did not reply. 'Barnaby,' cried a voice at that instant, are you not going to shut up? It is growing very late, and we shall be fined.' 'One minute, Madeline,' replied the host: "I am speaking with a guest. Put the children to bed; I will be with you directly.' Urged by feminine curiosity, Madeline descended to the shop. The stranger had risen at the sound of her step, had cast upon the table a piece of money, and had his hand upon the latch at the moment that Madeline presented herself. He could not refrain from turning round to look once more upon her whom he had so much loved. She recognised him instantly. Ah, my God!' cried she, it is Romain!' 'Adieu, Madeline !-adieu! Here is the pledge you gave me eight years ago. You will see me no more.' He cast the ring at her feet, and darting out, ran desperately towards the sea-coast. The host followed in pursuit, but arrived at the darkening sea only in time to hear his last agonising cry mingled with the murmuring of the waves. A NEW CHAPTER IN NATURAL HISTORY. HOWEVER regularly like gives birth to like in the higher orders of animals, it is a law by no means universal among the lower or invertebrate races, as has been recently demonstrated by Sars, Steenstrup,* and other continental philosophers. Among these humbler creatures, it has been shown that the progeny often bears no resemblance, either in form or in functions, to the parent; that the progeny again gives rise to a third form, differing as widely from either of its predecessors, but returns, it may be, in the fourth generation, to the form of the primitive parent. Thus A may give birth to B, B to C, and C to a progeny which reverts to the original A; so that a parent *The reader is referred to Steenstrup's interesting essay on the 'Alternation of Generations,' translated and printed for the Ray Society. |