it to Ludwig, saying in French, This gentleman would not allow our passport to be valid, because you were not with us. See the consequence of your romantic fancy for by-paths, dear brother! You are Count Wallersheim, added she, softly, in German.'

"Confounded and amazed as Ludwig was by this strange adventure, he quickly understood enough to see that he had the power of rendering an essential service to the bewitching being, who stood anxious and tearful before him. Unhesitatingly therefore he entered into the stratagem, and rejoined, Be easy, sweet sister, I will speak to the gentleman. He then turned to the officer, and in order to gain time and acquire some knowledge of the state of affairs, said,. May I request you, sir, to repeat your objection to our passport, as you know that ladies are too inexperienced in such matters.' From this moment,' returned the officer, I have not the slightest. You are named in the passport as the companion of the countess, your sister, and you were not present. Hence it appeared incorrect. The countess explained, indeed, that you had alighted to ramble along a romantic by-path, and would rejoin the carriage beyond the town; but our orders are so strict for frontier towns, like Duomo d'Ossola, that I could not have avoided requesting the young lady to wait until you, lord count, the proper owner of the passport, should appear. Be assured, however, that I should have deemed it my duty to send to seek you.'

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Ludwig stood speechless with surprise, the rather that the old servant, getting down from the box, took his travelling bag from his arm, laid it in the carriage, and inquired whether he would not be pleased to step in. In confusion he gave his hand, with a few civil words to the officer. The polite Frenchman handed the young lady, closely wrapped in her green veil, into the carriage; Ludwig followed, assisted by the servant; the officer bowed, repeating his Bon voyage! Ludwig found himself seated by the side of his enigmatic unknown beauty, and the carriage rattled through the streets.

*

Ludwig was about to repeat his question respecting this extraordinary incident, when his fair companion thus addressed him: You may well be amazed at what has befallen you: but the political vicissitudes that are now convulsing kingdoms and nations often bring individuals into strange and eventful situations. Such a one is mine. I had given myself up for lost, I trembled for what is dearer to me than life, when Heaven sent you as my deliverer. But will you afford me further assistance? To my last gasp!' exclaimed Ludwig, passionately. Promise nothing,' said the unknown, interrupting him, till you know what I have to entreat of your generosity-it is, that you would remain my brother, and as such accompany me, without a moment's rest, till we are on German ground; and it is not unattended with danger to you." Ludwig haughtily and indignantly disclaimed the idea of recoiling from any sort of danger. The unknown resumed

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That I knew; for that I gave you credit; but I have yet a more painful confession to make. I must appear ungrateful, mistrustful; for

while I implore your aid, I must withhold my secret from you; I must, for it is not my own. I am bound by the strictest, the most inviolable duties. Scarcely may I reveal any thing beyond what you must already have divined, for that I am not the Countess Wallersheim, not even a German, cannot have remained undiscovered by you.

"But by what name am I to address you?' asked Ludwig, in accents of pained disappointment. And is your history to be for ever veiled from me?'

"No, I hope not at least,' rejoined the young lady ; ́ and meanwhile you must be content to call me sister Bianca.'"

Various agitating incidents heighten and strengthen the tender interest of Bianca and Ludwig in each other, during the brief period of about twenty-four hours that they continue together. He manages to mislead the pursuer from whom she is thus mysteriously flying; and then an accident parts them as abruptly, and as ignorant of each other's name, condition, and country, as they had met.

Upon this adventure the whole story turns. The seeming servant is an intriguing Russian count, a secret caballer against Napoleon; the pursuer a French police underling, who had sought to use his knowledge of the father's conspiracies to the daughter's dishonour; and who, enraged at being foiled, virulently persecutes her deliverer Ludwig, upon whose head, as an accomplice of the Russian, a price appears to be set. He, with his friend Bernhard, a painter, so far falls into the power of this underling, Beaucaire, that his powerful friend, Count Rasinski, can no otherwise rescue them than by receiving the two young men, as volunteers and under false names, into the regiment of Polish cavalry that he is raising for the Russian war. Thus the civilian patriotic Germans reluctantly form part of the colossal host which invaded Russia in 1812, and henceforth the novel becomes a history of the campaign, taken, as the author avows, from Ségur.

And here occurs one of the faults to which we alluded when we said that 1812 was defective as a work of art. Our author, even while professing to consider the Russian as the just causehow indeed could he do otherwise ?-enlists all our sympathies on the side of the invaders. Nor let it be supposed that very extraordinary skill would have been requisite to awaken simultaneous sympathy with the Polish hero, Rasinski, and with the Russian nation, both of whose causes are just. A few scenes of high patriotic enthusiasm amongst the Russian nobles, of simple patriotic and religious enthusiasm amongst the peasantry, with a sketch of their sufferings from the invaders, would have sufficed. Rellstab has given us nothing of this; he talks of the justice

and enthusiasm of Russian resistance; but the individual Russians to whom he introduces us are degraded and brutalized Russian serfs, or yet more degraded and brutalized petty tyrants, the proprietors of their fellow-creatures; all of either class who display any better qualities proving-with the exception of the frail peasant girl Axinia, and the truly excellent parish priest Gregor-to be born Germans.* We ascribe this great fault of the book,-in a French or Polish author we should not deem it such, but in a German, writing of a period when all Germany was inthralled by a foreign sovereign, we hold it a heinous fault to interest us on the side of aggression,-not to want of skill in the author, but partly to his unbounded admiration of Napoleon's genius, and partly to an unconscious bias resulting equally from the political disappointments that, in many parts of the continent, have followed the French conqueror's overthrow, and from fear and dread of the present preponderance of Russia in Europe.

We will now select an extract or two illustrating the gradual demoralization of the French army during the retreat, and connected both with the pictures of Russian barbarism and with the story. At Smolensk we find the disorder begun. Rasinski, after establishing the remnant of his regiment, about a fourth of the number he had led into Russia, in the quarters assigned him, sends his two officers, Boleslav and Jaromir, with their men, severally to receive his rations of provisions and forage. At the provision magazine Boleslav finds a frightful scene:

"The hungry soldiers and stragglers had crowded round the doors, like ravens round a corse, filling the air with moans and yells. Some had broken in, notwithstanding the guard, and flinging themselves in blind ravenousness upon the provisions, devoured them raw. It was evident that they had found only death; and what should have preserved the lives of hundreds was flagitiously wasted to glut the insane appetite of a few. Hence arose the necessity, shocking as the measure might seem, of opposing lawful force to this unlawful violence. The superintendents of the magazine were compelled to employ soldiers to repel their own comrades with sword and bayonet. They did not immediately succeed, inasmuch as famine appeared more horrible than a sudden and soldier-like death; and the troops were ordered to fire upon the throng. This dispersed them, leaving the ground strewed with bleeding corses.

In proof that it is solely to a German's interesting us in the cause of anti-German aggression we object, we must observe that, much as we individually abhor Napoleon as the enemy of all liberty-civil, political, and intellectual, we can, in "Rellstab's Algiers and Paris in 1830," fully sympathize with the veteran of the imperial army, in his passionate love for his master, and detestation of the pacific Bourbons. It is appropriate. By the by, our author makes Ney, whom he praises to the skies, premeditatedly a traitor, in league with Napoleon, when accepting the confidence of Louis XVIII., instead of, what we believe him, merely a weak man, incapable of resisting the Emperor's cajolery.

"Through such an horrific tumult had Boleslav to make his way, and steadily but sadly he effected it. But so great were the numbers of those entitled to rations, that hours passed in struggling and crowding, ere he could receive the provisions allotted him. His men were still obedient, and carried what they had received untouched to their comrades, to be shared together. No easy task, however.

"Close pressed, man to man, and with cocked pistols, was Boleslav compelled to lead his troop through the yelling, complaining multitude, defending themselves as against a band of robbers. Thus they at length, with great difficulty, reached the quarters of their regi

ment.

"Jaromir's had been a much less arduous office, as there was little pressure at the forage magazine.

"Rasinski shook his head on hearing Boleslav's report, and said, These are ominous signs! We shall not stay long here, but probably press forward with all speed to the Russian frontiers. In our present condition, with such utter dissolution of all discipline, a bold attack would be our annihilation, I sent Ludwig and Bernhard to receive ammunition; there they found few claimants. When the soldier forgets his means of resistance, what can we look for? Nay, even at the pay office, hardly a third of the regiments had applied, though all are in arrear.'

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They are as yet stupified with hunger, cold, and the other calamities of the retreat,' said Boleslav apologetically. "Think how hardly have even we preserved our courage; we who, under thy conduct, have been so much better off than the rest.'

Next day Ludwig and Bernhard are despatched to see if they can procure boots or shoes for the regiment.

They seemed to know one another again, having now, for the first time since leaving Malo-Jaroslawez, had the power of changing their clothes, and effecting a complete purification of their persons.

"Upon my word,' said Bernhard, as they went forth, we look quite magnificent. You are really a handsome fellow, now that your beard does not make an overgrown stubble-field of your chin; what a pity that there is no one here to fall in love with us!'

"Already all levity again,' observed Ludwig with a smile; but in truth it is something not to disgust one's-self; at least I feel comfortable now.'

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They walked on, trusting more to chance than to any fixed plan, for accomplishing their object, and took their way towards the hospital of the army of reserve in the lower town. In front of a large, half ruinous, but still habitable building, they saw two men cloaked in furs ; they were evidently issuing orders.

Doubtless a brace of scoundrels,' exclaimed Bernhard, with gestures of aversion, who make money by our double starvation, and look sneeringly on, in their comfortable pelisses, when the piercing cold wrings bitter tears from the poor soldier,'

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"They may, nevertheless, supply our occasions,' said Ludwig; ‘let us try if we can get what Rasinski wants from them.'

They approached the fur-clad men, whose backs were towards them. At the sound of steps, the strangers turned round, and the features of both parties expressed their surprise.

"Do we meet again?' said the younger of the strangers, whilst his lips contracted to a repulsive smile. As he spoke, Ludwig, with a sensation as if he were falling into the chasm of a glacière, recognized Beaucaire, and his superior, St. Luces.

Beaucaire, ere Ludwig could speak a word, or form a resolution, called out, Gens d'armes, arrest these men and confine them in the strongest prison; they are traitors, sold to Russia!'

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Ludwig looked at the serjeant who, with three men, was guarding them. He wore the cross of the legion of honour, two scars adorned his brow, and his eye bespoke noble sentiments. 'You are a soldier,'

said he; you will not refuse comrade's request.'

"Not unless it be contrary to my duty,' replied the serjeant gravely.

We are guiltless; we are victims to revengeful spite, and are irredeemably lost unless our colonel, Count Rasinski, be informed of our arrest; give me your word to make it known to him.'

"Willingly, if I be not enjoined secrecy.'

"He will reward you liberally, and meanwhile accept my thanks,' exclaimed Ludwig joyfully, and endeavoured to place his full purse in the serjeant's hand.

"But the serjeant drew back, and retorted, No bribes! I will do my duty as a soldier and a comrade, but away with your gold! Nay, what good should that do us here? we have more than enough of such trash!'

"You are a man of honour! At least take a squeeze of the hand for your good will.'

"The serjeant gave his hand in silence, but with a look of good

Our young friends are now thrown into a horrible dungeon, then taken out for separate examination, and Bernhard is brought back alone to this den of wretchedness. The soldiers express their unwillingness to leave a comrade for the night in a place that, in such weather, must be his death.

"The serjeant deliberated, then spoke with sudden determination : 'No, I cannot leave you in this vault, the cold is too severe, and grows sharper and sharper. A murderer they shall not make me, especially these knights of the quill, who never smelt powder, and know not what the soldier has to bear, while they sit in well-filled magazines warmly wrapt up in their furs! Whatever crime you may have committed you must not perish here of cold and hunger. You look like a brave chap, and I must say the pride you showed under examination pleased me; it