the poor mother, in spite of her heroism, was on the point of being sacrificed, when the naturalist seized the staphylin, and threw him out of the flower-pot. Then turning to his young friend, he said, as if to excuse this compassionate action, What would have become of our investigation if she had been killed?' Henry smiled, and pressed his hand.

Thus ended the perils of the forficula and her young ones. From that time nothing occurred to interfere with their complete development. We are confirmed in this belief by the fact, that the naturalist's garden speedily became infested with swarms of earwigs, which increased and multiplied to such an extent that he could not preserve a single peach or pink. The last visit that Henry paid his friend, he found him busily employed in collecting staphylins to destroy his rapacious guests.

ADULTERATION OF FLOUR.

The fraud I allude to has been practised in the flour trade in the city and county of Cork and Limerick alone for the last forty years, and is done as follows by the millers: Two stone weight of alum dissolved in hot water, two pounds of pearl-ash, eight pounds of rock-salt, two pounds of spirits of salts, one pound of magnesia, and one quart of the strongest oil of vitriol, are all dissolved separately, and then mixed together, and put into twenty gallons of limewater; and after letting the whole stand for a short time, it is put into the wheat, when it is prepared for grinding in the following manner :-The miller keeps a large sprinkling can, like that used in gardens, out of which he pours the above liquid on the wheat, whilst two men turn it backward and forward until the wheat gets quite dry, which is soon effected, in consequence of the great quantity of vitriol used as a dryer. The quantity of the above liquid is used in proportion of five pints to every twenty stones of wheat, and when it is put into it, it is ground off as soon as possible, to prevent the stuffs from evaporating. Flour made by the above treatment obtains 5s. per bag more than flour made from the best quality of wheat, in the plain and natural way, and on that account the county Cork and Limerick millers adopted the use of the liquid described above. Besides, they have the advantage of the weight of twenty gallons of water put into about thirty-five barrels of wheat, for which reason the Cork flour, of all other Irish flour, will not endure a sea voyage. Millers (and millers only) are so well aware of the very bad effects which the bran made from some of those receipts has on cattle, that they don't use the flour in bread themselves, nor give the bran of it to their own cattle.-Cork Examiner.

NEVER GET ANGRY.

It does no good. Some sins have a seeming compensation or apology, a present gratification of some sort; but anger has none. A man feels no better for it. It is really a torment; and when the storm of passion has cleared away, it leaves one to see that he has been a fool. And he has made himself a fool in the eyes of others too. Who thinks well of an ill-natured, churlish man, who has to be approached in the most guarded and cautious way? Who wishes him for a neighbour, or a partner in business? He keeps all about him in nearly the same state of mind as if they were living next door to a hornet's nest or a rabid animal. And as to prosperity in business, one gets along no better for getting angry. What if business is perplexing, and everything goes by contraries,' will a fit of passion make the winds more propitious, the ground productive, the markets more favourable? Will a bad temper draw customers, pay notes, and make creditors better natured? If men, animals, or senseless matter cause trouble, will getting 'mad' help matters, make men more subservient, brutes more docile, wood and stone more tractable? An angry man adds nothing to the welfare of society. He may do some good, but more hurt. Heated passion makes him a firebrand, and it is a wonder if he does not kindle flames of discord on every hand. Without much sensibility, and often bereft of reason, he speaketh like the piercing of a sword, and his tongue is an arrow shot out. He is a bad element in any community, and his removal would furnish occasion for a day of thanksgiving. Since, then, anger is useless, needless, disgraceful, without the least apology, and found only in the bosom of fools,' why should it be indulged at all?-Boston Reporter.

WHAT IS BEAUTY?

To

WHAT is Beauty? Form and feature,
Impress of the hand of Nature;
Line and hue together blending,
Impulse still to sweetness lending.

Look upon Ianthe's graces

There her lines young Beauty traces;
There her lineaments behold,
Cast in nature's chastest mould:
Look into her heavenly eye-
There the azure's purest dye;
There the light of life and mind,
With love and modesty combined:
Look upon Ianthe's cheek-
There is all that's mild and meek;
And coral red and ivory white
Kiss each other, and unite

On lips that love dare scarcely press,
Sacred in their loveliness.

If there's Beauty-it is this!
What is Beauty? Come with me
In my skiff along the sea;
Look into its crystal waters,
And behold its algine daughters,
Where the painted fishes play,
And the wave sings roundelay:
Or let us, roaming hand in hand,
Wander o'er the golden strand,
Where the sea-shells gleam like pearls,
On the neck of Orient girls:
Or, seated by the pebbled shore,
List the music of the oar,
Or the sea-birds' plaintive cry,
As on labouring wing they hie,
While the ever-murmuring tide
Saluteth earth as its own bride:
Come with me, and there confess
If there's Beauty-it is this!
What is Beauty? Come with me
Into nature's sanctuary;

To the mead or to the wild wood,
Where the flowers in blooming childhood
From the emerald sod looked up,
Each a diamond in its cup;

A silver or a golden cell

Where a fairy queen might dwell:

Come where the yellow broom is waving,

Or the stream the lily laving;

Where the rills glide on in pleasure,
To a low, sweet, murmuring measure;
Where the hawthorn scents the gale,
And zephyr, wandering through the vale,
Bears on its aerial wing

The breath of each sweet odorous thing;
While the birds in choral glee,

Trill their sylvan minstrelsy;

Or, wandering o'er the flowery holm,
Where the wild bee loves to roam-
Where the light-winged butterfly,
Beauty's favourite child, flits by:
Come with me to yonder glade,
At noon beside the cool cascade,
Where plumy fern of brightest green,
And moss of every hue is seen;
And the rose and jessamine
With the honeysuckles twine:
There shall Nature's self control
Each emotion of thy soul;
Make thy heart with joy confess
If there's Beauty-it is this!

What is Beauty?-What is Beauty?
Truth, and love, and filial duty,
Breathed from lips by sin unstained,
Told by looks that never feigned-
Beaming as I see them now
On yon little maiden's brow-
Lovely 'midst its golden tresses,
Gladdened by her sire's caresses;
Or, kneeling with her little brother,
Beside their tender loving mother,
Offering to the God above

The incense of her pure heart's love,
Then parting with the good-night kiss-
If there's Beauty-it is this!

J. C.

No. 313. NEW SERIES.

MORAL PERIODICITY. AGAIN the earth has performed its annual journey round the sun, and without pausing even for an instant to take breath, has started anew upon another circuit. Not so with the human passengers it carries. Unconscious of the whirling ball on which they travel, they seize the opportunity of looking back upon what they have accomplished during the journey, and forward with interest and curiosity into the dim vista before them. Not, however, that the great majority know or care anything about the nature of the cycle that has been completed. They are observers of times' without knowing why. Being finite beings, they cling instinctively to earthly periodicity; and they accept the year, quarter, month, day, hour, set down for them, without caring on what principle, or by whom the calculation has been made. When Noah's dove could find no restingplace for its feet, it flew back to the Ark; and at this day, if a bird is set free from a balloon at a great altitude, it will return to its prison rather than trust itself in the awful deserts of air. Even so is it with mankind. They dread immensity. They divide their journey into imaginary stages, and please themselves at every new period with the idea that they have accomplished a fact, and reached a restingplace.

How sweet is the night which terminates a laborious day! How blessed the Sunday that follows a restless week! Who does not look upon the new moon with a thrill of antique superstition? But of all the periods into which our lives are divided, there is none so interesting as that which is marked by the termination of one year and the commencement of another. Years are the measure of age; and the old physicians attached a mystical importance to the epochs they form, by supposing that at such periods of life the human constitution reached a critical point. In a day we merely complete a whirl on our own axis; in a month, our little satellite the moon has performed her circular obeisance to us; but in a year we have put a girdle round the mighty sun, and travelled several hundred million of miles through the realms of space. This is the extreme verge of periodicity. Science, indeed, dreams of a Central Sun, round which the other suns and systems circulate; but even if the fact were established, it could afford us no measure of so comparatively minute a speck as human time.

We are told from the pulpit at this season that it is an awful thing to reflect that we are a year nearer the grave. And so it is in a religious point of view, but in no other. We do not think, on resigning ourselves to repose at night, that we have a day less to live; and the holy tranquillity of Sunday is undisturbed by the idea that we are a week nearer eternity. At such times we merely thank God for the past, beseech his blessing on

PRICE 14d.

the present, and turn a hopeful eye towards the future. This hopefulness is inherent in the moral constitution of man, and distinguishes him from the lower animals. It is this which makes him cling to periodicity. It is this which makes him celebrate times and seasons. It is this which makes him draw imaginary lines across his path of life, separating the evil that is past from the good his fancy sees in the distance. How often do we cry, Thank God, this dreadful year is over!'-as if supposing that there is some necessary connection between the year and its misfortunes, and fancying that a new cycle of time will bring better things! But although to the practical astronomer this may be a superstition, the moralist sees in it a boon of Providence which elevates the character and conduces to the advan cement of the species.

This hopefulness, being instinctive, is found everywhere throughout the world. Everywhere men trample joyfully on the grave of the old year, and hail with acclamations the advent of the new. How can it be otherwise? What old year would any being endowed with human reason wish to live over again? Alas for the perished hopes, the lost loves, the broken friendships, the death-bereavements of a single journey round the sun! All these-and all the bitter moments of humbled pride, disappointed ambition, chilled affection, wounded self-love-we place to the account of the old year; and it is no wonder that we feel a savage joy in contemplating his end. The New Year, on the other hand, is a blank, which we fill up with hopes and visions as thick as motes in the sunbeam, and we therefore welcome its approach, like that of some fabled deity, with songs and libations. This is every where the case. Even in that land of mystery which, till recent times, was shut up like a sealed book from the rest of the world, the customs of the season were found to be strictly analogous with those of Europe of the nineteenth century. On the occasion of the New Year,' says this humble pen in a graver page than the present, all the world exchange bows, visits, compliments, presents of eatables, and articles of dress. It is also the season for the settling of accounts, even if money should have to be borrowed for the emergency; for the dirtiest to sweep their floors and wash their persons; for the very atheist to present himself at the temple; and for all to clothe their faces with smiles, and their limbs with new garments. China sits up to see the New Year come in; she resolves to be kind and happy during its continuance; she forgives God Almighty for the past."*

In England, the season is not devoted merely to conviviality and family reunions, but likewise to works of

This is the mot of John Wesley, who, on meeting a friend looking still wo-begone some time after a family bereavement, said to him, What, have you not forgiven God Almighty yet?'

charity. We visit our poor neighbours in kindness and mercy; we present gifts to our dependents; we feast the very felons in our jails. But it is in its character of a period, a line, a boundary, a restingplace, that the New Year is the most interesting. The earth whirls on at the rate of 1133 miles in the minute, but its denizens stand still to remember and to dream. Our senses receive no special impression when the annual revolution is completed, any more than the mariner knows by his sensations that his vessel is crossing the equinoctial line. But our spirit is awake; we feel as if we were reaching a point; we fancy that in our progressive history we have come to the bottom of the page, and prepare to turn over the leaf. The fact of this periodicity is interesting; but the character of our thoughts at the time is still more so. On one side is gloom, on the other light. Man, like the earth which carries him, has always the sun in his face, and darkness behind.

It may be said that this idea is more fanciful than real that we are so constituted as to be always looking backward and forward; and that every transaction we complete brings us to a resting-point. Yes, to a restingpoint from which we see the individual transaction, and look on to another. But at the New Year the whole cycle passes under review, and the next opens to our mind's eye in the distance. The petty demarcations by which we divided our path of life, while creeping on, disappear, and we see, as from a tower,' the whole region we have traversed. The view is seldom very satisfactory, but always suggestive of HOPE; and therein lies the benefit of the mental exercise. It is a mistake to say that man descends to the grave: he climbs to it. Even when his outward circumstances are undergoing a decline, his mind, if it have the true manly leaven, rises. Hope grows out of disappointment, and a proud eye and gallant heart are turned towards a new year. We are not to measure the spirit by the purse. The poor scholar who flings over the world-maybe from his garret-the thoughts that are destined to quicken the minds of others, and the hard-working mechanic whose soul opens to receive the gift, have each a feeling that soars above his worldly position. From year to year they continue to climb, not to sink; and their intellectual part may have reached its highest altitude at the same moment when their body seeks the rest of a pauper's grave. The fortunes of the mind and body rarely run in parallel lines; and our constant forget fulness of this simple and obvious fact is the cause of a thousand mistakes and anomalies.

In a yearly retrospect our judgment is not troubled by the small details which vexed and harassed us during the event. Objects appear in large and perfect masses. We are able to interpret the text by the context. It is like reading history instead of daily politics, and our minds open proportionably to grasp the subject. During the present expiring cycle, for instance, we were tormented by a thousand hopes and fears relative to the destinies of our country; our hearts were full of anger and bitterness; and we launched accusations right and left of incapacity, supineness, or profligacy. But looking from this vantage-ground, all these little eddies disappear, and we see only the flow of a calm majestic stream, The British Pallas still stands proud, tranquil, and alone amid the convulsions of nations, the tide of the world's commerce rippling at her feet, her shield resting against her knee, and her hand clasping gently her dread but idle spear. The change in the view

does not occur because the causes of discontent were unreal, but because, seen from a distance, they bear

no proportion to the majestic whole; and for this reason we have often thought that there is something unconsciously philosophical in the New Year's reflections; that they conduce to loftiness as well as kindli ness of character; and that they minister to that divine flame of Hope which burns the brightest in the bosoms of the great and brave.

Hope, we have said, is the parent of this moral periodicity. When the season of retrospect comes, whether it be daily, monthly, or yearly, we make haste to draw the line of demarcation between the past and the future; and after a survey-in most cases a sad one-of the things that were, we turn our clouded brow and tearful eyes to the rising sun. Were it not for these petty spaces into which human life is divided, how dreary would be the track! An endless day would be almost as bad as an endless night. It is good, then, to hail the New Year: it is good at this season to ponder and to dream: it is good to look steadily back upon the whirl we have had round the sun; and then to gird up our loins and begin a new journey in hope and L. R. joy.

THE PRISONS OF PARIS AND THEIR TENANTS.

CONCLUDING ARTICLE,

IN surveying the prisons of Paris, one is struck with the fact, that some of the most horrible dungeons are found in those buildings which were formerly religious houses. The robe of the abbot, and the cloth that covered his luxurious table, too often hid a fearful vault · where some wretched captive starved with cold and hunger. These dreadful places of confinement went by the name of Vade in Pace—(‘Go in Peace'); because it was in that form that sentence was pronounced on those who were doomed to die by this slow torture. Bicètre and the Abbaye are of this description. The former, which was originally a monastery of Carthusians, and is now used wholly as a lunatic asylum, was, formerly used as a prison also; and many who were not mad when they went there, became so in consequence of the miseries they endured. There were both cells and dungeons in this place of confinement; and in both the system appears to have been the solitary one,' the merits of which have been so much disputed in the present day. The cells were bad enough, and the dungeona worse. The prisoners were allowed neither light por fire, nor sufficient food, nor clothes enough to cover them; water streamed down the walls; and the barred aperture that let in air admitted the rain, snow, and wind, and with them such disgusting odours from the sewers, that the poor captives were not only afflicted with the most agonizing rheumatisms from the cold and damp, but with other frightful maladies occasioned by these mephitic gases.

One of the victims of this cruel system was Salomon de Caus, a man of genius of the seventeenth century. At the age of twenty, De Caus had already distin guished himself as an architect, painter, and engineer; and after serving the Prince of Wales and the Elector f Bavaria in these capacities, he returned to France with the avowed desire of giving his country the benefit of a discovery he had made-namely, that the steam of boiling water might be used as a powerful motive force. At that time there resided in Paris an Italian Crœsus called Michel Particelli, who was in love with a beartiful woman called Marion de L'Orme; and one day Michel Particelli took Salomon de Caus to the house of Marion de L'Orme, and bade him lavish on the deco

rations of the building all the resources of his genius. 'Spare nothing,' said he; neither gold, nor silver, nor jewels, nor marble, nor precious stuffs of the East or the West: invent, devise: I give you carte blanche; and when all is done, draw on me for the amount of your demands.' Salomon de Caus accepted the commission; but alas! whilst he fulfilled it, he had so many opportunities of contemplating the beauty for whom all these luxuries were designed, that he lost his heart to her. Flattered by the admiration of so brilliant a genius, Marion appears at first to have encouraged his suit; but soon wearying of his earnest and passionate love, she got rid of him by recommending him to the notice of the Cardinal de Richelieu.

'He is very clever,' said she in her letter to his eminence, and has, according to his own account, discovered a world of strange and surprising things; but I am sorry to say he has also discovered the secret of wearying me to death, and I shall be really obliged if you will relieve me of so troublesome an acquaintance.' On the following day Salomon de Caus was summoned into the presence of the cardinal minister, to whom he gave an account of his discoveries, especially of the motive powers of steam. The interview was long, and at its termination Salomon de Caus was declared mad, and sent to the Bicêtre. Mademoiselle de L'Orme was told that he had been despatched out of the country on a scientific mission, and as she heard no more of him, she believed it; but two years afterwards, having been requested to show an English traveller, the Marquis of Worcester, the sights of Paris, she took him, amongst other public institutions, to the Bicêtre; and there, as, laughing and talking, they passed a grated cell, a chained and haggard captive darted suddenly to the bars, and cried aloud, Marion Marion! deliver me, deliver me! I have made a discovery that will enrich my country. Deliver me! I am Salomon de Caus!' The letter in which Mademoiselle de L'Orme relates this event has descended to posterity; and she adds that his appearance was so frightful, and her own horror so great, that she left the place more dead than alive."

On the following day the Marquis of Worcester obtained an interview with De Caus; and when he left him, he said, 'In my country, instead of being shut up in a madhouse, that man would have risen to honours, wealth, and station. Despair and captivity have made him really mad now; but when you chained Salomon de Caus in a dungeon not fit for a wild beast, you destroyed the finest genius of the age!' These were times, in short, in which the very word Bicêtre was an instrument of the most diabolical oppression. False and cruel confessions and accusations were extracted by the threat of Bicêtre. Bicêtre was bandied from parent to child, and from child to parent; from husband to wife, and from wife to husband; and it needed but a little interest at court, or with some man in power, to be able to fulfil the menace.

Amongst the portraits lately published as illustrations of Lamartine's History of the Girondins,' we see that of a beautiful but fantastically-dressed woman called Thénoigne de Mericourt. Thénoigne was a country girl, handsome and ambitious, violent and vicious. When the French Revolution broke out, she came to Paris to play a part in it. They made a heroine of her at first; but at length, disgusted with her depravity, the women laid hands on her, and she was publicly flogged. Strange to say, this profligate creature, who had appeared to be without shame, was so ashamed of this chastisement that she lost her senses. She spent ten years in confinement at Bicêtre, and ten more at the Salpetrière; and whenever she could escape the vigilance of the keepers, her practice was to take off her clothes, and inflict on herself the same chastisement she had received from others in the streets of Paris.

Louis XVI. diminished many of the horrors of this prison, and ameliorated the condition of the miserable captives; but three thousand persons of one sort or an

other were found confined within its walls when Mirabeau and his colleagues, in spite of the resistance of the governor, insisted on making their way into its deepest recesses.

Up to the year 1836, it was customary for the public of Paris to resort in great numbers to Bicêtre at certain periods to witness the departure of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and also the preliminary process of chaining them to one another. In 1818 there was an unusual concourse to behold this spectacle; for amongst the galley-slaves was to be seen the famous Comte de Sainte-Hélène, from whose adventures Alexandre Dumas appears to have borrowed some ideas for his celebrated novel of the Comte de Monte Christo, Through the instrumentality of a woman, Coignard (the real name of this personage) had obtained possession of certain papers belonging to a French emigrant of distinction who had died in Spain. By the aid of these documents he succeeded in deceiving the world in the first instance; whilst by his real bravery and conduct he earned for himself genuine honours and titles; first in the War of Independence in Spain, and afterwards under Napoleon. At the Restoration, he was received at the Tuileries, and Louis XVIII. gave him a command and the cross of the Legion of Honour. But one day at a review, in the year 1818, a man called Darius claimed acquaintance with him as an old comrade at the galleys. The Comte de Sainte-Hélène had the impolicy not to acknowledge his friend, and thereupon Darius denounced him; and after this brilliant career, Coignard was again chained to the oar.

It is said to have been the monks themselves who dug out the frightful dungeons of the Abbaye, where the vaults were so low, that no prisoner could hold his head erect in them. Fort L'Evêque (The Bishop's Fort), an ancient seat of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was also provided with horrible subterranean dungeons, where the prisoners were chained to the walls, whilst their wretched repasts were let down to them through apertures not allowed to be more than five inches wide. In later years the character and inmates of this prison changed, and it became the House of Correction for actors and actresses who quarrelled too loudly, or who inconve nienced the public and the court by refusing to play the parts assigned to them.

It was from the Abbaye that Charlotte Corday wrote that gay letter describing her journey to Paris for the purpose of assassinating Marat, and also her situation in the prison, in which she says, For the last two days I have enjoyed perfect peace: my country's happiness is mine. I am extremely well off, and the jailors I find excellent people. To be sure, to preserve me from ennui, they have favoured me with the company of some soldiers, which is more agreeable by day than by night. I complained of this indecency; but nobody cares for my representations.'

6

Grateful to the advocate that defended her for having said nothing derogatory to the noble motives that had urged her to the crime, she told him that, as a proof of her esteem, she left him to discharge her small account due at the prison, her own property being confiscated. Adam de Lux, deputy from Mayence, proposed to raise a statue to this heroine, inscribed with the motto, Greater than Brutus;' for which proposition he lost his head. He said he was proud of dying for Charlotte Corday; ate a capital breakfast on the morning of his execution; and as he quitted the Abbaye, handed his cloak to another prisoner, saying, Happier than you, I shall need it no more to defend me from the cold."

Some of the most horrible prisons of Paris were entirely demolished at the latter end of the last century, and amongst these are happily to be reckoned the Grand and the Petit Châtelets, two fortresses built at an early period of French history for the defence of the city. We read in the history of these buildings that the Grand Châtelet was divided into eight different compartments, each of which was distinguished by a name either literally or sarcastically denoting its honours: