world or to the requirements of the nation.

Education and enlightenment had been making constant progress, while modes of government had remained stationary. The people had outgrown their political clothes; they were not suffered to enlarge or exchange them, so they burst them. Behold the solution of the mystery y! The ruled have discovered that knowledge is power, yet rulers seem to have been unaware that in the present state of the moral world, a thought is a more formidable weapon than a sword, truth and right the best artillery, and public opinion, when backed by these champions, a thousand times more puissant than a steel-clad army behind a bristling rampart.

Moustached musqueteers giving up their weapons to beardless boys: oppressors betrayed by their armies, and conquered by the scum of their people!! Rare sport for the mob thus to see the engineer "hoist with own petard!" Puzzling times for the artilleryman when the recoil of the cannon is more dangerous than its discharge! Such unparalleled events turn over a new leaf in the world's history: what shall we read next? we know that the present is pregnant with the future, but who shall say what it may bring forth?

O! contrast strange and sickening to the heart! 'Tis midsummer day. I am sitting in my lone embowered cottage, the very nest of brooding peacefulness; the sunny skies and bright-faced earth seem to be smiling at each other; ring-doves are cooing from the copse whose boughs wave gently with a hushing sound; I gaze over a fair and fertile landscape, and through the tufted openings here and there may see the white-sleeved mowers ply their task, and catch the ringing of the whetted scythe. All is tranquillity and bland content. Now hover o'er my heart the dreams it loves, of Time's all-civilising influence; Religion's hallowing sway, the blessed reign of universal peace, and man's sure progress to the lofty destiny intended by benignant Providence.

Hence, vain deluding joys!

Dwell in some idle brain,

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes possess,
As thick and numberless

As the gay motes that people the sun's beams,

for lo my newspaper, a true Pandora's box, has vomited its ghastly catalogue of horrors, and I stand aghast and petrified as I behold nations, brethren, fellow citizens in ferocious madness cutting each other's throats, bombarded cities, blazing and overthrown, blood-flowing gutters fed by demoniac rage, mid shrieks, and yells, and groans, the crash and roar of murderous artillery and horrent sounds and scenes that make a hell of Europe's fairest regions. Utopian fancies and delusive hopes, and visions dear to sanguine Optimists, oh, whither have ye fled? Gone-gone are ye all, and in your stead misgiving fears and melancholy doubts fall heavy on my heart, croaking the sad reflection that to toil at the advancement of civilisation, at the upraising of the human race, at the perfectionment of art and science, is but to labour at the stone of Sisyphus, which when it has been painfully elevated to a certain height, rolls back again at the decree of an inexorable fate. If history lie not, this is Nature's law. Numerous, patient, toilsome, were the centuries that built up Egypt's proud pre-eminence in architecture, learning, arts, and arms. Slowly she reached the culminating point, when the arresting fiat went forth, and lo! her sculptured and solid monuments are gradually buried in the sand,

her skill, and lore, and science disappear, and rude barbarians, grovel and gibber in the ruined halls, which were once the temples and the colleges of priests and sages. So was it with Judæa, Greece, Etruria, Rome; and in the later and longest eclipse of all, the thousand years of our dark

ages.

And now France, ever incapable of peace and liberty, leaps at a bound fifty years backward in the scale of civilisation, and sympathising Europe will be drawn into the refluent vortex, and the crimson wings of war will be spread over the darkened nations, and as peace, and arts, and learning vanish, the world will recommence another Sisyphean descent into barbarism.

Hence! baseless prophecy,

Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born,

In Stygian cave forlorn,

Find out some uncouth cell,

And under ebon shades, and low-brow'd rocks,

As ragged as thy locks,

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.

for lo―the Pandora's box that I opened was not emptied, it still contains a beacon and a lighthouse by which the storm-tossed nations may direct their course, and shun the wrecking rocks, for from its murky depths, radiant and uninfected, arises HOPE in the form of BRITANNIA, leaning on her peaceful shield, but not abandoning her resistless lance. Yes, this loved and goodly realm of ours, the widest and most magnificent empire, the noblest monument of civilisation, liberty, and law that man has ever reared, standing firm and unshaken on her constitutional rock amid the collision and crash of exploding empires, shall still assert her proud prerogative of "teaching the nations how to live," by showing them how to reconcile progression with stability, liberty with order, and above all, how to modernise and repair without destroying, how to effect reform without plunging into the horrors of revolution.

No hollow tiny tub to the whale, no sham, no flam, no mere repeal of "the rate-paying clause" will accomplish this great and all-important result! England, which in all liberal institutions has so long taken the lead of its neighbours, cannot-will not, brook an inferior and less honourable station. Some extension of the suffrage, based upon intelligence and property, must frankly be conceded: some, and somewhat sweeping retrenchments must be effected. Good, my Lord John! if you still retain the opinion that the middling classes desire no more reform; and that the Mastership of the Buckhounds, with a salary equal to that of the President of the United States, is an office essential to the honour and dignity of the Queen of England-declarations which, when I read them, oppressed my heart with sore disquietude and deep dismay, I prophesy that you cannot long continue to be a ruler over the people. Behold! there ariseth a little reform cloud like a man's hand-but ere long it may spread over the length and breadth of the land, and the heaven may become black with storm, and wind, and a great rain, and if thou art not prepared for this outburst, Fate may say unto thee, as Elijah said unto Ahab-"prepare thy chariot, and get thee down!"

THE RUE DE LA ROQUETTE.

AN EPISODE OF THE PARIS INSURRECTION.

THE following narrative, containing the substance of a journal, and embodied in the form of a letter, which was written by an eye-witness of the scenes described in it, will not, we imagine, be read without interest. The position in which the writer was accidentally placed, afforded facility for observation which could scarcely have been obtained by any other means. We present the manuscript unaltered save in one or two slight particulars, and suppressing only the writer's name.

ED. N. M. M.

I.

Paris, July, 1848.

Ir has cost me a strong effort to comply with your earnest request that I should give you a detail of all that has befallen us since the fatal 24th of June. I scarcely know how I should have been able to accomplish the task had I not been aided by the rough notes which I hastily threw together in the intervals of comparative repose when hostilities had ceased for the day-more in the expectation of their proving a legacy-my only one-to the finder, than of using them afterwards as a matter of reference. It has, however, pleased heaven to spare my life, and as you so urgently desire it, I will describe to the best of my ability, all that has occurred in which I was a sharer.

The retrospect of the last few months has certainly been the saddest of my whole life, involving as it does the loss of the one who was most dear to me the wreck of "name, station, fame," by those to whom I was most bound by feelings of reverence and gratitude, and so gloomy a list of friends proscribed and ruined, that I wonder at times how such events can have taken place, and I-like the messenger of evil to Job-alone alive to tell them.

But it is no more the desire of your sympathising heart to exact from me, than it is my design to tell, the history of the sorrows and anxieties which have surrounded me since the day when the House of Orleans was overthrown and my own hearth made desolate by the blood which was spilt on the Boulevard des Capucines in February last. With these sad mischances you are already fully acquainted; you know what I suffered in losing my husband, and how, in spite of your friendly entreaties to return to England and take up my abode under your hospitable roof, I remained in the city which had witnessed the destruction of all my hopes, that I might at least have the consolation of being near HIS grave, to shed on it daily my frequent though unavailing tears. None better than yourself (whose generous offers I can never forget) are aware of my restricted means when my greatest calamity befel me, nor can more readily appreciate the motive which induced me to choose for my place of residence the quarter of the town in which I resolved to dwell-partly because of its cheapness, but chiefly on account of its proximity to the

Cemetery of Père le Chaise. But amongst my acquaintance were many, ignorant alike of my circumstances and the feelings which influenced me, who, when I announced my intention of removing from the quartier of the Chaussée d'Antin to the Faubourg St. Antoine, earnestly dissuaded me from taking such a step. It was, they said, not only a derogation as regarded my position in society, but, considering the character of the inhabitants, positively dangerous. To the first objection I paid no attention, for having no blood relationship in France, my English friends having all left Paris, and the only society I had enjoyed being broken up by the late political convulsion-no tie existed to bind me to any particular locality, even had I been without the wish to withdraw as far as I could from the scene of my husband's death. Neither was I moved by the possible prospect of danger, for though I had not then "supped full of horrors," as since I have, the sense of personal fear was extinct within me, and I felt that I would rather welcome peril than shun it. Such then were

the reasons which induced me to establish myself with my small ménage (consisting only of Antoinette, who unites in her person the various functions of bonne, cuisinière and femme de chambre), in the Rue de la Roquette, a street, which, as you know, forms an angle with the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine, and opens upon the Place de la Bastille.

Frequently as I had visited Paris, and long as I had resided there, this part of the town was in a great degree unknown to me. I had occasionally passed through it in a carriage on my way to the Bois de Vincennes, or the Jardin des Plantes, but had never explored it on foot, and to do so now afforded me the only relaxation from my life of solitude which, at intervals, I sought. I thus became acquainted with localities, the names of which I had before but rarely heard, though their celebrity was an ancient one. In making the discovery, I little thought I should

so soon have occasion to remember them for ever.

Notwithstanding the agitation which from time to time pervaded the capital, and the sinister predictions of those who were continually prophesying another reign of terror-the more fearful, they said, from its being so long deferred-I lived in my new abode as tranquilly, I believe, as I should have done in any other part of Paris. I might, inded, have retorted upon those who told me the Faubourg St. Antoine was unsafe, by pointing to the manifestation of popular will on the 15th of May, and the attroupements which so frequently took place in the best part of Paris; but it was enough for me that I was suffered to live on, any where, if undisturbed.

From this dream of rest I was suddenly and rudely awakened.

The first indications that all was not well with the popular mind began to show themselves about the middle of June, and on the evening of the 19th, and the two following days, the assemblages in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and at the Porte St. Denis, assumed somewhat of a serious aspect; not, however, of so menacing a character as to give occasion for those who were only acquainted with the outward appearance of affairs to imagine that the peace of the capital was positively endangered. From time to time Antoinette detailed to me particulars, which she had gleamed in the neighbourhood, of what she called "ces révolutions," but as every morning found Paris in the state it had been left on the night before, I merely looked upon her alarm as a consequence of the exaggeration to which the class she belonged to are so often prone.

On Thursday the 23rd, I had, however, an opportunity of judging for myself, for on the evening of that day, as I was returning from Père la Chaise, I observed a large crowd assembled in the Place de la Bastille, who, by the violence of their gestures, and the excited manner in which they addressed each other, were evidently under the influence of some strong feeling. They consisted altogether of blousards— the term which describes the real workman as well as he who only feigns to be one-and the discussion of their wrongs seemed to be the subject which engrossed them. For the first time since the melancholy events of February, a shade of apprehension passed over my mind, and as I glanced at the wild and turbulent expression of these men's countenances, all I had read or been told of the savage nature of a Parisian mob, was vividly brought to my recollection. I shuddered involuntarily, and passed quickly on. Antoinette greeted me at the door of my apartment, and her tale of terror was listened to with a more attentive ear than had ever been the case before.

"Mais, madame," said she, almost too breathless to speak, "n'est-ce pas que vous voyez avec vos propres yeux, tout ce que je vous ai répété y a huit jours!"

il

"I see, Antoinette," replied I, with as much calmness as I could assume, "I see a number of workmen assembled on the Place opposite." "Eh bien, madame, ce sont eux!"

"And who are they?" I asked.

"Ecoutez, s'il vous plaît, madame," she replied, following me into my little salon, "on ne peut pas se tromper à leur égard, ce sont des rouges, tout sera bientôt mis au vol, à l'incendie."

"Be composed, Antoinette,” said I, "there can be no fear of such extremities, this will not turn out any thing more than a simple attroupement; they will disperse soon, and we shall hear no more of them."

But Antoinette knew her countrymen better, or was better informed than I, for she persisted in her opinion, and to corroborate it she said that the men whom I had noticed, and who were still gesticulating fiercely on the Place, were a part of the body of workmen from the provinces who had behaved so violently at the Luxembourg that morning, refusing to leave the capital, whither they had been attracted by promise of payment if not of work.

"A la bonne heure!" she exclaimed, “si c'étaient des vrais ouvriers, même des campagnards; mais la plupart de ces gens-là ne connaissent de la campagne que les prisons, ce sont des forçats libérés, des repris de justice; enfin, tout ce qu'il y a de plus canaille!"

From invective' she proceeded to description, and' gave me a full account of how they had accused Monsieur Marie of calling them "slaves," of their outcries against the Executive Commission and the National Assembly, of their endeavours to force their way into the churches and sound the tocsin, of their having traversed the city in large bodies, calling upon their fellow-workmen to join them, of their loudly-uttered threats, and of the agitation which at that moment pervaded all parts of

Paris.

"On ne s'arrêtera pas ici, madame," she continued, "une fois l'épée tirée on jetera le fourreau, et alors, nous verrons des choses !"

"But suppose all that you fear is true," I observed, "what is to be