a compact with the rulers of France? Through what means shall the two peoples meet except through their Governments de facto? For us to say to France-Cleanse yourself from this emperor before we can ally with you! would be the very interference with France's internal policy which M Schoelcher deprecates. Justly deprecates, we think for a nation, like an individual, has the right of regulating its own internal life, going through its own experience to its own redemption. We as a nation have no more right to reject France, because of the scab of imperialism upon its brow, than we should have to interfere in the government of any other country. France has submitted to Louis 'Bonaparte.' Our business as a nation is with a nation: Bonapartist or not— that is not the question. A highly moral and strictly virtuous nation might be allowed to rebuke another in some such fashion as this-We ally with you for a great purpose, but truly we are somewhat ashamed of those with whom in your name you bid us treat. But a highly moral and strictly virtuous nation has not Aberdeens and Palmerstons for its own ministers. With good reason to be ashamed of your own foulness, you are not in the nicest state to rebuke a neighbour. The Tzar's old friend and the apologist of the Decemberist are very fit men to negociate an alliance with the Emperor of France.

The alliance of France and England is good. The alliance between the Governments of the two countries is at least natural. The peoples have their purpose to answer, and the Governments have theirs. Pity that we can not on both sides of the Channel rid ourselves of the evil point of contact. Then the real good and gain of our alliance, the salvation of Europe, would be attained. But there is no reason for our Government to be averse to Louis 'Bonaparte'; and there is no consistency in our people objecting to him, with the men we have for our own rulers. Truly M'Bonaparte' stands alone as Thief, Perjurer, and Assassin; but our rulers admired him at the moment of his daring,' and adore him now that Theft and Perjury and Murder are gilded with success. England and France are in the same predicament: each ruled by men careless of morality or right, the misrulers in each case submitted to by the people. Only this difference subsists: in France a coup d'état was necessary, in England the result has been obtained in a more gradual and business-like manner, better suited to the graver genius of our race. Indeed, M Schoelcher! any Englishman, with a conscience, might ask you-With what face shall the 'constituents,' or the subjects, of a Coalition Government rebuke the slaves of your Charlemagne-Mandrin? ↳

Let enslaved France and 'free' England be thankful that, for whatever purpose, their rulers have brought about this alliance. It is the only alliance they ever made for us which we shall care to ratify when the 'high contracting parties' have met with their deserts: that is, when Bonaparte is at the hulks, and our masters are under the people's feet. Let us sweep our own doors clean before we call our neighbour names.

b Does the title need explanation? Translate it into Imperial Thief-for want of a stronger phrase.

'A Charlemagne by the Devil hewn out of a Mandrin,'

says Victor Hugo in his Chastisements.

A HOMILY.

WHY hath God led thy noble beauty hither?
To lay upon my heart, a gather'd flower,
Through the brief time of passion; then to wither,
And drop away upon my coffin'd hour?
Is human life nought but a lusty living,
A day of pleasure nighted by the grave,
With no hereafter dawning, no forgiving

Of all the eternal hopes our spirits crave?
Is Love the mere lamp of a wanton chamber,

Whose walls are grave-stones, ne'er so finely hid? Is all the height where Love and Hope can clamber, Alas! no higher than our coffin-lid ?

Is Love a fool for all its future-yearning?

Wise only in the drunkenness of bliss?
Is there no flame divine within us burning?
Is Hope betray'd so cheaply with a kiss?
Why hath God led thy noble beauty hither?

Why doth celestial light inform thine eyes?
Is it to guide the lone wayfarer? Whither?

The Star o' the East hangs not o'er Paradise.
Some girl with delicate skin and golden tresses,
And eyes that float in their voluptuous light,
Holding her boy-adorer in the jesses

Of her caprice, staying his spirit's flight,
Smoothing his folded pinions with light fingers,
Kissing his vigour to a pleasant swoon,
Until the God sunk in the Dreamer lingers
Fondly beside her for the frailest boon,-

Is this the highest end of all thy beauty?
O noble woman! art thou but a girl?
Hast thou no thought of all the scope of duty?
No aim beyond the fingering of a curl?
Why hath God made thee beautiful and loving?
Only to bear the bacchanal cup of life?
Cup-bearing Hebe! seek thou Jove's approving :
O Beauty! be thou Strength's diviner wife.

AGATHON.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

UT of the dead level of our modern fine-ladyism every now and then a woman rises like a goddess standing above the rest: a woman of fair proportions and unmutilated nature, a woman of strength, will, intellect, and courage, practically asserting by her own life the truth of her equality with man, and boldly claiming as her right also an equal share in the privileges hitherto reserved for himself alone. None stronger, more independent, or more noble, than Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the first, as she was one of the ablest, defenders of the Rights of Woman.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT was born in 1759, on the 27th of April, the second child of her parents, respectable common-place people of the middle-class, who never comprehended and still less cared for the wonderful genius of their child. Her early life seems to have been very painful. Her father was a man of violent and unequal temper,—now kind and indulgent, now harsh and tyrannical; the mother was devoted to the eldest son, and treated her daughters with much more severity than tenderness. To Mary she was peculiarly harsh, thinking probably that a character so independent and a will so strong required 'breaking' and 'keeping down,' as is the case with most common-place parents who have original characters to form. Mary alludes to her home-life in these words, taken from the Wrongs of Woman: The petty cares which obscured the morning of my heroine's life; continual restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders, which as a mere child she soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being often obliged to sit in the presence of her parents, for three or four hours together, without daring to utter a word.' A sufficiently intelligible description of what her own young days had seen and suffered. Violence, cruelty, blows, and even more than blows threatened: all these made the young girl's life one prolonged series of tortures, which saddened her whole character. Perhaps, though, strengthening her mind by forcing on her so early the necessity of self-sustainment, and obliging her to think and act and judge for herself.

One of Mary's earliest friends was a clergyman, a Mr Clare,—a delicate, sensitive, deformed recluse, whose cultivated mind, however, was of great use to Mary, brought up as she had been almost entirely without instruction, a mere wild, beautiful child of nature, whose intellect was left to chance and to herself. Mr Clare was very kind to the young girl, and kept her in his house for days and weeks together, giving her instruction and forming her tastes, supplying in fact the workman's skill to that glorious unknown marble. But indeed every one out of her own family was conscious of her power of intellect, and every one but those nearest to her, who ought by nature to have been most interested in her, was anxious to help her forward in her mental culture.

On her return home-to find her school much decreased and her connection wavering-she wrote her first work, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, receiving for it her first literary payment, which she handed over to Fanny's father and mother, who wished to get over to Ireland. That was essentially Mary Wollstonecraft—that generous, noble act! After this she gave up the school and went to Ireland as governess to the daughters of Lord Kingsborough, staying there a year, and then quitting them, as it appears, on account of some change in their plans: a tour on the continent, in which she was to have been included, being postponed. At Bristol, where she was with Lord Kingsborough's family, she wrote her story, Mary: a Fiction. And then she came up to London, determined to begin a literary life in good earnest, and to make authorship her profession, if not her pride, partly urged thereto by her publisher, Mr Johnson, whose kindness and friendliness formed an epoch of immeasurable importance in her life: for without him perhaps she would never have decided on literature as a profession, and might have gone on through her whole life as governess or school-mistress, content with personal influence and local superiority, instead of making herself a name that shall last as long as women are loved or as genius is honoured.

The life she had chosen was not, however, all for gain or self. She spent large sums on her family, educating her sisters as governesses and assisting her brothers to better their situations. Her father himself was by this time dependent on her his affairs all so entangled and embarrassed that she took them into her own hands to arrange as she best might. Her personal expences she cut down to the smallest possible amount, living always in the extreme of economy that she might lavish upon others, spending on the pleasures and well-being of her relatives whatever she could save from her own needs or enjoyments.

And now began the real life by which henceforth she was known; now she came out fairly before the world as a thinker and a writer; now for the first time she found her true intellectual sphere, and could measure herself with her equals.

All the best people of the time loved Mary Wollstonecraft. Who could have failed to do so? Beautiful, enthusiastic, true, sensitive, clever in intellect, commanding in mind, the best part of a man's nature united with the lovingness and loveliness of a woman's: who could have failed to love her? Not Dr Price; not her own publisher, Mr Johnson; not Mr Bonnycastle, the mathematician; nor Dr Fordyce; nor Fuseli. These were all men of worth and note, and all acknowledged Mary Wollstonecraft's superiority and glorious nobility of soul. No light award in those days of woman's silken slavery and sugared degradation. Between Fuseli and herself indeed existed a very tender and a very true affection, which, however, did not advance her much in any way, filling her heart with regrets and tinging her mind with a sad and scornful scepticism that neither brought her happiness nor led her up to truth.

And now Mary's great work was written-a Vindication of the Rights of Woman-one of the boldest and bravest things ever published. Bolder then than now, when the idea of woman's equality has become so familiarized among