suspended by a spectacle that, for the moment, made me doubt the evidence of my senses. Slowly-slowly-slowly, as one might do who arises unwillingly from a bed of rest, the corpse began to raise itself on the couch, and, while the Suniassie, awed into motionlessness, stood before it, slowly, still slowly, but steadily, it attained a sitting posture, its eyes wide open, and staring with glazed eyeballs! the idea of this Royal visit, and one would be sorry to undeceive them; but you, my friend, must obstacle to the proposed meeting between the Majesties of France and England. be made aware of the real and insurmountable * * * In the first place, be assured that there are no political feelings interposed to render less corthe abandonment of the expected visit. No; but dial the relations of the two countries, or to cause there is a consideration before which all hopes must vanish-a consideration which it is endeavored to shroud in the most profound secresyAt that moment, overcome by wonder, but one which, nevertheless, forces itself vividly upon the attention of all in "high places"-the perhaps by terror, I lost command of my-health of the King. This terrible secret, which self and discharged the pistol. There was is still sought to be imprisoned within the walls a yell-a rush towards the bath-room-the of the palace, may be expounded to you, and it clash of arms-the sounds of conflict and is indeed no longer a secret for those who, like seizure, and in my ears a soft, sweet voice, the danger. His Majesty has already suffered unmyself, have opportunities of seeing and judging a woman's, and I became insensible. That der several fits, similar to those which soft, sweet voice, no longer full of tears, was in my ears when I awoke to consciousness; and when it said, in gentle, happy ac"Ai! bhaeebund mera!" (Oh! my brother friend) "jeeta hie!" (he is alive), the whole truth flashed upon me. The whole truth? Yes! Calvert Montfort lived, he was restored from a death-like syncope to the arms of Azeeza; and for the nature of the punishment that awaited the Suniassies, I refer the inquisitive reader to the orderly books of the 1st of May, 1821, at Nagpore, in which he will find that they were provided for in a manner effectually to prevent them from assisting at any future human sacrifice, or from procuring unlawful ingredients for the composition of unguents dedicated to the goddess Kali. cents, and secresy in vain attempts to conceal the events which terrified the palace of the Tuileries and Whitehall; indeed, secret transchantment to the master of the Tuileries, and in actions in St. James's Palace are revealed by enreturn you have information of the fatality which has fallen upon us-upon us, do I say? upon the whole of Europe. powerful will, struggle in vain; he is not yet The King is ill; his courage, his intellect, his stricken down, but he is wounded; a physician leaves him neither by day nor night, but watches incessantly over his invaluable life. The King struggles; but will his faithful counsellors permit him to risk himself in the voyage which now occupies the minds of your populace? Non, cent fois non!-Court Journal. POLAND.-Nature would seem to be in conspiracy with man, for the chastisement of unhappy Poland. The accounts from that country are filled with the most distressing narratives of the devastations occasioned by the rising of the Vistula, and her other rivers. At Schwetz, situate THE KING OF THE FRENCH.-[The following at the junction of the Schwarzwasser with the most important intelligence comes to us in a pri- Vistula, it seemed as if the rivers had been turned vate letter from Paris. We have every reason to through the streets for their destruction. Onerely upon the authority of the writer, whose po-third of the town lay in ruins among the waters; sition justifies us in accepting and publishing any and of the houses still standing, the roofs only information reaching us under such a sanction were visible above them,-from whence the inIt is scarcely necessary to say, that this news is mates were calling for that help which human too important, in the influence it is likely to exercise, not merely over France, but over the power could not give. A furious storm had arisen to aid the work of destruction, which dashed the whole present policy of Europe, not to require waters of this deluge in mighty waves against the from us an explicit asssurance that we should not remaining buildings, shaking them to their foungive it a place in our Journal if we did not confi-dations. From Kulm, the accounts are of the same dently believe it to be true.-ED. C. J.] fearful character. At Kirlin, the Vistula had risen Paris. higher than at any time during the last hundred "The King of the French is coming;" such years. "It is impossible to say," one account exis the hope which is causing amongst you in Eng-presses itself," how many thousand villages may land, those vast preparations, which, though they be inundated by the mighty river, in its long will not have the advantage of accomplishing course from Cracow to Dantsic. Above and be their object, have at least that of leading captive public attention, and of forming a stimulus to industry. Your populace, always ready to be led away by a spectacle, are doubtless delighted at low Calon, a hundred towns and villages are as in a sea.' The last accounts from Warsaw, to the third of this month, just received, mention that the waters are subsiding.-Athenæum HISTORIC FANCIES, BY THE HON. SYDNEY ( Bards and Scotch Reviewers," where he is apostrophised as ume. SMYTHE. From Fraser's Magazine. TALK of an M. P.'s maiden speech! far more interesting is the virginity of his volDelightful task, to mark the roseate hue tinging its bashful pages; to watch the delicate bud blushfully unfolding its leaves in mild and modest developement-sweet symbol, just washed by a shower, which already methinks we see Mary to Anna convey" through the medium of the circulating libraries; a thing fragrant, fresh, nor yet fruitless, but rather bursting like a pomegranate in the garden-courts of Al Hambra; a thing of soothing gentleness, like the mystic dulcimer in the hands of an Arab maid "sitting on Mount Abora;" a gushing thing, to quote Leigh Hunt-and glad are we, parenthetically, that he has of late got some bread and butter to his jar of honey from Mount Hybla. "Tis welcome to our worldly wearied sense as the spring-dove's earliest cooing; or, to speak more seasonably, welcome as the first fleet of oysters at thy gates, O Billing! Confined per force to our last metaphor, such is the book before us; a bushel of the freshest Fevershams sent to us, with his compliments, by the young member for Canterbury. Bland must be our reception of these tender, unsophisticated natives, which now, as we ope them with ivory knife, seem, dumb things though they be, to court at our hands the accustomed alternation from the pepper-castor of praise and the cruet of criticism. But, ere we broach the gift, a word anent the donor. The Hon. Sydney Smythe, who in parliament represents the above-said old cathedral-town, and in literature a young constituency of later growth, is no mere casual child of the muse. He is the eldest son of a coronetted poet, who appeared as a somewhat free translator of Camoens* about the beginning of the Peninsular war, and who on that occasion broke through the Portuguese lines with a freedom not given to the French in their attempts on those of Torres Vedras. Hence the gallant Irish peer got somehow mixed up in Byron's promiscuous mob of "English "Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue!" κ. τ. λ. He is now, we believe, a retired diplomatist. We know not whether he has cast his eyes (ylavxoriç) over this production of his boy; but if, and even so, we see no reason to fancy the venerable viscount looking a shade less blue than usual. Shakspeare somewhere expresses a wish to know "Where was fancy bred, Or in the heart, or in the head;" and we are thus particular as to the genealogical origin and idiosyncracy of these Funcies, lest the ignorant public, and more particularly the drab-colored population of Pennsylvania, should confound our author with an elderly writer whose name is nearly similar, but whose phantasies, generally of a droll, are lately of a querulous and arithmetical description. It is a coincidence, that both these fanciers, the honorable as well as the reverend, should enjoy the melodramatic prefix of Sydney-an ornamental appendage shared by Lady Morgan, also by a seaport in Botany Bay-nevertheless, the house of Smythe has " that of Smith whatever. As a matter of mere spelling, the distinction may seem trifling, yet is there more in it than strikes the i. Folks have sneered at the homoousian controversy, and at its victims (how erroneously we need not demonstrate), as les martyrs d'une dipthongue. A single vowel may be reconditely significant, nay, make all the difference imaginable. no connexion" with Even to The letters I and Y are not æquipollent, nor ad libitum convertible. In an aesthetic sense they are, in truth, with reference to each other, quite at variance. English ears the I conveys a notion of intense selfishness and egotism; but among the Latins it was suggestive of much worse, for it had an actual patibulary import; at the aspect of its lank configuration, a gallows rose in the imaginary landscape, and LITERAM LONGAM EACERE was an undoubted slang term for the ceremony performed sive intra sive extra pomarium, whenever a Roman "Larry was stretched." Far otherwise in point of symbolism is the "The things given to the public as the poems of Camoens, are no more to be found in the original vowel Y,-y Grec, as the French call it. than in the Song of Solomon."-BYRON (Notes). It is styled the Pythagorean letter by the "Et numeros, et Laudavere sales, nimium patienter utrumque, grammarye writers of the middle ages; its the rest, and at our return were loud as the structure was curiously considered as figura- oldest wiseacres at our club in praising tive of a high moral teaching-no other les- both the unprecedented concourse and son than that conveyed in the choice of Her- splendid aggregate of the plundercules. Its lower part, or stem, depictured to the initiated the common highway of life; that broad and easy road turning off to the left, leading, as do all sinister paths, to perdition; while yon slender, narrow path, branching off to the right and trod by the chosen few, typified and illustrated a whole parable to the simple understanding of mediæval mankind. Ne dicam stulté." The youth of England must be encouraged, and a fine-spirited set of lads are growing up at Eton, even though they do manifest a precocious determination to " push us (old fellows) from our stools" a little preNext to an author's proper identification, maturely. Something of this kind was apfollows, in every well-ordered review, a prehended in the time of Burns, when scrutiny into his previous associations, or, That beardless laddies Should think they better were informed "Coningsby harangues, The court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs." as the French tribunals have it, ses antece-" Reverend greybeards raved and stormed, dens. Much of this trouble has been taken off our hands. For who has not read Mr. D'Israeli's Coningsby; or, the New Generation? Are not the incidents of his non- Yet in those days it came to nothing. We age chronicled therein under that transpa- confess we find nothing particularly alarmrent pseudonyme for our guidance? We ing in the doctrines of the " new generaand the public have gratefully received that tion," whether as they are adumbrated in wisdom-breathing narrative. Of old, for a the mystic incidents of the brilliant youthsimilar work on the youth and education of hood of Coningsby, or ultimately revealed Cyrus, all Greece shouted applause, and in these Fancies. By some, indeed, whose crowned with laurel the thoughtful brows memory supplies them with the narrative of of Xenophon. Three editions have testi-Sir Balaam," in Pope's epistle, and who fied our sense and appreciation of Mr. D'Is- possess the inward consciousness of having raeli's Smythopædia. pursued a similar political .career, an apIn that wonderful performance the most proaching catastrophe may be apprehendinstructive details are afforded of the prepa-ed-the name is ominous; the hour is ratory pursuits and exercitations which have come-and the man eventuated in the production of the volume before us. Mental discipline at Eton is, we apprehend, somewhat altered from what it was in Gray's elegiac times, when schoolboy aspirations soared no higher than to "enthrall the captive linnet," "snatch a fearful joy beyond the bounds of silvery Thames," or "chase the rolling circle." The quadrature of the latter is now sought to be achieved, and vigorous attempts are made to ignite the former. To accomplish this purpose, as is wisely observed by one of the juvenile interlocutors of the novel, "It takes a deuced deal of history, and all that sort of thing," being a palpable allusion to this work, then in embryo. Yet of Eton, and its antique towers and timehonored observances, we hope no one will suspect us of speaking in disparagement. Our sentiments cannot be misunderstood. Last spring we went with the crowd to the Montem celebration at Salt Hill, so interesting did we deem Mr. D'Israeli's enthusiastic description of that academic mysterie. We paid our due portion of muriate of soda like "Old Toryism" is clearly demolished; but how many other humbugs and worn-out "conventualities" of our social system are to follow, we still look to learn on a more fourth edition. We only wish Mr. D'Israeli diligent perusal of the novel, when at its would, in that edition, make himself a little more explicit, and also, perhaps, give us details, not merely of the youth, but also of the infancy of our hero. We like to trace things from their primordia. No doubt, the nursery-maid, if interrogated, will state his refusal, when a child, to use the ordinary neration; perhaps, also, that while other go-cart, in which toddled the previous geurchins, admitted to the basin of St. James, fed the ducks, he pelted those aquatic fowls as typical of quackery. Alas! alack! heu, qev! this latter element of social life is, we fear, not to be put The Senior University. down. The old birds may hide their heads ist repudiating it as a worn-out prejudice: for a moment before the peiting storm of eloquent raillery from these writers of a new generation; they dive but to rise again, and even under water keep up a cacophonous outcry against their young assailants. Quanquam sub aqua, sub aqua maledicere tentant," Εις τ' ευγένειαν ολίγ' εγω φράσαι καλα Such alternate phases of opinion occur not only in the national but even the individual mind, as in the case of the late lauwe all know preceded his Vision of Judgreate, whose tragedy of Wat Tyler (1795) as fully related in Ovid's Metamorphoses. After these preliminaries we may proceed :—a graceful and ingenuous prefacement (1811). If its literature be a safe ushers in the table of contents, from which index, the last century seems to have closed we are at once made aware that the volume is not homogeneous, but made in a very peevish ill-humor against all arisof prose up and poetry in alternate strata. A Scotch exciseman (1791) got This is tocracy. no new arrangement, being observable in the plenty of people to chorus in full tune oldest work extant, the Book of Job. The reader should, nevertheless, proceed cautiously, as the quiet amble often breaks into a full trot without marginal notice, and he while much more forcible language was in may often find himself on the back of a vogue among our French neighbors, who, winged "onager," careering into the wil-in a Pindaric composition of theirs called derness, when he thinks he is prosaically classes, adding, as Ca Ira, made very free with the upper classes, adding, as a climax, something bestriding a more domestic animal. about a "The rank is but the guinea stamp": "Lantern, On which they often made a wicked man turn.” of poems, "Give us back our old nobility!" It opens with an able essay on "The Aristocracy of France." The putting forth of such a topic in the van, and the fervor with which hereditary rank in the abstract is extolled, is most satisfactory. Tired and nauseated with the Radical slang of Mechanics' Institutes, we find ourselves sitting once more round the good old fire-side of the vicar of Wakefield, proud and happy to talk about "Lords and ladies, and knights of the garter." This is quite natural; a periodical fit of reverence for nobility is sure to occur whenever the opposite feeling has been prevalent too extensively or too long; and this particular organ of veneration has been so long depressed, that 'tis time it should shew itself intumescent into so much laughed at by Corn-Law-Leaguers, alto relievo. "Down with the lords!" was rick-burners, and universal-suffrage-men, if a popular cry ten years ago; and an Irish "pondered fillingly," highly became the gentleman, now in trouble," was then "descendant of Sir Philip Sydney." He, traversing England denouncing them as a too, is one of the brotherhood; and may nuisance, and advocating, to not unwilling exclaim, et ego in arcadIA. ears, their total abolition. We have some indistinct recollection of his calling them trious the world ever saw. "The aristocracy of France is the most illusThere may be soaped pigs." Reaction set in very soon. more ancient titles in Scotland or in Germany, Their "house" stood the blast of Billings- more arrogance of descent in Italy or in Spain, gate, and even Cobbett was heard to thank more gentle blood in our own old manor-houses God for it, much in the style he would beg of Northumberland or Lancashire; but no arisa blessing over his Hampshire bacon. If tocracy can compete with hers in sustained and European illustration. The very vice of we look among the Greek democracies, we the system was the cause and continuation of may observe similar fits. At one time Pin- its brilliancy. The nobleman of the ancient dar, soaring into raptures on the topic of régime was born to the high places of the army pedigrees and reviving the Homeric feeling and the state, as with us he is born to his hereabout ancestry, at another the tragic moral-ditary possessions. The baton of a marshal, the seals of a minister, the government of a Grammonts.* Italy, we submit, produced province, devolved almost as surely as the greater and more illustrious races in every heraldic quarterings upon a shield or the seig-department of historic distinction; and we norial rights of an estate. The doctrine of the aristocratic succession, was upheld with a reli- can well imagine the shrug of surprise with gious pomp and a more than religious intole- which her sons would list to any muster-roll rance. It was not so much an order as a hie- of transalpine nomenclature, announced as rarchy." to supersede in "sustained illustration" the names of DORIA, COLONNA, PICCOLOMINI, Such is the appropriate exordium of a VISCONTI, SFORZA, GONZAGA, FARNESE, truly magnificent dissertation which follows. BORghese, Strozzi, MEDICI, SPINOLA, &C. Such is the bugle-key note of the strain in Mr. Smythe will at once perceive that we which our author discourses music most have not brought forward a single patronymeloquent, no doubt, in the ears of the noble ic from the golden book of St. Mark, not Faubourg St. Germain, where we are per- summoned one of those merchant princes, mitted to gather, from subsequent passages those planters of the lion, who were in their of his work, he has been, in salon as well day fully what England is now, viz. the as boudoir, deservedly well received. Now arbiters of Europe. They were, in sooth, we do not blame him for reciprocating their to use his own happy phraseology, the politeness in the dulcet sounds of blandish- seigneurs of the seas-dove signoreggiavano ment. He may be sure of finding his audi-davero,-and, tory over the water, fully alive to the harmonious accents of such high-toned flattery; nor will the French noblesse in their present decay treat him as they did an unlucky composer in the days when they formed a court: "La cour negligé tes talens, Le peuple applaudit tes merveilles ; "Oh! for an hour of blind old Dandolo," to read (or have read to him) the pretensions of any gasconading French casata to take precedence of those whose names glittered for 800 years on the libro d'oro of Venice. But more grievous, even than Peter's advocacy, is the blow just dealt by D'Israeli on the pride of her grandees. He has declared, in the face of that sun which once could never set on their empire, that they were all so many muffled Jews; he has detected, an occult synagogue in the old cortes of Castile and Arragon,-in the Golden Fleece itself, a remnant of the passover. Can such things be? Back, then, to your ghetto, noble line of MEDINA SIDONIA! Ay, if there be any truth in a book called the Bible in Spain, from which, we fear, this untoward discovery was borrowed, let her haughtiest hidalgos hide their heads, let Spain quickly devour the remainder of her own children, reckless even of infant-a-cide. As for Spain, God help her, her nobles, and her bygone glories! We are in the mood of melancholy Jaques thereanent at this present writing, and not even the chamBut we are simply apprehensive of a storm pionship of Peter Borthwick can fling a of jealousy from other quarters of the Con-dash of merriment into that subject. tinent, and, being sober men, have an eye to the peace of Europe. We happen to know pretty accurately, what will be thought of Mr. Smythe's proclaimed preference for French escutcheons throughout the whole length and breadth of the Holy Roman Empire, in many a frowning Schloss of hochgeborn Rhineland, in many a noble chapter of canonesses on the Danube, many a castellated berg in Bohemia, many a Hungarian keep, unpronouncable, but ending in stein, and bearing over its portcullis the cognisance of Swartzenberg or Esterhazy. Knowing all this, we fain would have suggested more moderation in the setting forth of this Gallic claim to superiority in blood, and we suspect the Herald's College would be of our opinion. In mere wanton compliment to our vain and volatile rivals, we would not willingly let slight or slur be thrown on the elder branches of European nobility; and there be names, beyond Alp and Pyrenee, quite as familiar to Fame's trumpet,-households as prolific of chivalry by an odd practice of spelling their names without capital letter,-de rohan, de noailles, de montmoas any within the circuit of France, be they rency. The late Bishop of Autum always signed, Montmorencys, Noailles, Tremoilles, or maurice de talleyrand. Mr. Smythe may think it a mere matter of taste to announce his partiality for the French aristocracy, treating it as a mere article of vertù. He may deem nobility to The very old French houses might be known |