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SULEIMAN PASHA.

WRITTEN IN 1846.

DURING that strange episode of the French Revolution the siege of Lyons, a wealthy tradesman of the name of Selves was one of the most active defenders of the independence of his native city against the tyranny of the Directory. His eldest child, a boy of about seven years old, brought his daily food to the ramparts, and grew inured to the fierce game of war. When resistance became useless, and the infuriated conquerors took possession of the devoted town, it was not probable that Citizen Selves would escape a vengeance which honoured no courage and respected no submission. He was accordingly soon summoned before a tribunal composed of the most savage partisans of the central authority, and having been denounced by an old acquaintance, was on the point of being led to execution, when one of the judges, to whom Citizen Selves had happened to have shown personal kindness, asked him whether his accuser did

not owe him some money. Selves asserted the fact to be so, and the friendly judge contrived to represent the accusation as a trick of the denouncer to avoid payment of a just debt. The attempt succeeded-yet, that the auto da fé of liberty might not be cheated of a victim, the court substituted the plaintiff for the defendant-and Selves at once obtained his own freedom and ample satisfaction on his prosecutor. But the boy who attended his father on the walls well remembered the scene of domestic anguish-while the mother, believing herself a widow, sat weeping among her children, and would not be comforted, till the well-known knock at the door roused her in an ecstasy of astonishment, and she fell into the arms of the husband so miraculously rescued. And her dark hair, blanched by those few hours of mental agony, remained as one of the many tokens of that impartial tempest which spared neither the most elevated nor the least obtrusive classes of society.

Thus early initiated in the severest realities of life, the boy grew up, and soon desired to take his share in the mighty battle which France was then waging with the world. The profession of the navy was open to everyone who passed the requisite examination, and young Selves was ad

mitted as aspirant de marine. In this capacity he showed great intelligence and undaunted courage, and was engaged in that conflict which Napoleon announced to his council as the loss of some vessels by the severity of the weather, after a combat imprudently engaged in,' but which we English remember as the Battle of Trafalgar. He was on board the vessel from which the shot was fired that mingled a nation's sorrow with a nation's triumph, and years afterwards he recounted the circumstances of the death of Nelson to those who escorted him, an honoured guest, over the battered hulk of the Victory.'

A short time afterwards the midshipman Selves fought a superior officer in a duel, at Toulon, about a lady, and had the misfortune to give a fatal wound to his adversary. Fearing the consequences, he determined not to return to his ship, but to try and seek employment in the Army of Italy, then flushed with triumph, but glad to receive young and vigorous recruits. He passed several regiments till he came to one of light cavalry which he thought would suit him, saw the commander, and frankly told him the story of his desertion; his former captain, when applied to, verified his statement, and what is more, interested himself to get

him formally transferred from the one service to the other, which was effected without much difficulty. Soon after his enrolment in the regiment it became necessary to instruct the cavalry soldiers in infantry practice, and young Selves' knowledge of the exercise was of the greatest use and brought him into general notice.

The incidents of a life which is all adventure are rarely recorded, and though the old soldier would gladly relate how his commission and his cross were won, and though he has a tale of every field and an illustration for every page of that wild and varied volume of the world's work, it is from his own lips they should come, narrated with epic simplicity, and full of the hero-worship, the selfsacrifice, and the unconsciousness of that great pagan episode of modern history.

During the Russian campaign he acted as aidede-camp to Marshal Ney, and saved his own life in the retreat by judiciously buying a fur pelisse from a soldier at an enormous price.

After the occupation of Paris, in 1814, he submitted unwillingly to remain in the army, but was one of the first to join the standard of Napoleon the following year. You should hear him tell the story himself. He was quartered at Lyons, his

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