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which was being waved in front of the gate, he found himself in the ring face to face with General Scott.

"The General, in the mean time, had scraped a hole for himself two or three inches deep, in which he was lying down. This, I was told by those who had seen his performances before, was his usual fighting attitude.

"The bull was a very beautiful animal, of a dark purple color marked with white. His horns were regular and sharp, and his coat was as smooth and glossy as a racer's. He stood for a moment taking a survey of the bear, the ring, and the crowds of people; but not liking the appearance of things in general, he wheeled round, and made a splendid dash at the bars, which had already been put up between him and his pen, smashing through them with as much ease as the man in the circus leaps through a hoop of brown paper. This was only losing time, however, for he had to go in and fight, and might as well have done so at once. He was accordingly again pursuaded to enter the arena, and a perfect barricade of bars and boards was erected to prevent his making another retreat. But by this time he had made up his mind to fight; and after looking steadily at the bear for a few minutes, as if taking aim at him, he put down his head and charged furiously at him across the arena. The bear received him crouching down as low as he could, and though one could hear the bump of the bull's head and horns upon his ribs, he was quick enough to seize the bull by the nose before he could retreat. This spirited commencement of the battle on the part of the bull was hailed with uproarious applause; and, by hav- | ing shown such pluck, he had gained more than ever the sympathy of the vast assemblage of people.

"In the mean time, the bear, lying on his back, held the bull's nose firmly between his teeth, and embraced him round the neck with his fore-paws, while the bull made the most of his opportunities in stamping on the bear with his hind-feet. At last the General became exasperated at such treatment, and shook the bull savagely by the nose, when a promiscuous scuffle ensued, which resulted in the bear throwing his antagonist to the ground with his fore-paws.

"For this feat the bear was cheered immensely, and it was thought that, having the bull down, he would make short work of him; but apparently wild beasts do not tear each other to pieces quite so easily as is generally supposed, for neither the bear's teeth nor his long claws seemed to have much effect on the hide of the bull, who soon regained his feet, and, disengaging himself, retired to the other side of the ring, while the bear again crouched down in his hole.

"The bull showed no inclination to renew

the combat; but by goading him, and waving a red flag over the bear, he was eventually worked up to such a state of fury as to make another charge. The result was exactly the same as before, only that when the bull managed to get up after being thrown, the bear still

had hold of the skin of his back.

"In the next round both parties fought more savagely than ever, and the advantage was

rather in favor of the bear; the bull seemed to be quite used up, and to have lost all chance of victory.

"The conductor of the performances then mounted the barrier, and, addressing the crowd, asked them if the bull had not had fair play, which was unanimously allowed. He then stated that he knew there was not a bull in California which the General could not whip, and that for two hundred dollars he would let in the other bull, and the three should fight it out till one or all were killed.

"This proposal was received with loud cheers, and two or three men going round with hats soon collected, in voluntary contributions, the required amount. The people were intensely excited and delighted with the sport, and double the sum would have been just as quickly raised to insure a continuance of the scene. A man sitting next me, who was a connoisseur in bearfights, and passionately fond of the amusement, informed me that this was the finest fight ever fit in the country.'

"The second bull was equally handsome as the first, and in as good condition. On entering the arena, and looking around him, he seemed to understand the state of affairs at once. Glancing from the bear lying on the ground to the other bull standing at the opposite side of the ring, with drooping head and bloody nose, he seemed to divine at once that the bear was their common enemy, and rushed at him full tilt. The bear, as usual, pinned him by the nose; but this bull did not take such treatment so quietly as the other; struggling violently, he soon freed himself, and, wheeling round as he did so, he caught the bear on the hind-quarters and knocked him over; while the other bull, who had been quietly watching the proceedings, thought this a good opportunity to pitch in also, and rushing up, he gave the bear a dig in the ribs on the other side before he had time to recover himself. The poor General between the two did not know what to do, but struck out blindly with his fore-paws with such a pitiable look, that I thought this the most disgusting part of the whole exhibition.

"After another round or two with the fresh bull, it was evident that he was no match for the bear, and it was agreed to conclude the performances. The bulls were then shot to put them out of pain, and the company dispersed, all apparently satisfied that it had been a very splendid fight."

Such were the scenes witnessed in San Francisco but eight short years ago. Few cities in the Union can boast of more order-loving citizens, especially since the celebrated Vigilance Committee undertook the task of ridding it of its murderers and gamblers; and we have much pleasure in apprizing Mr. Borthwick of the fact, which, up to the present, he appears to be totally ignorant of. San Francisco has steadily advanced in morality, and the days when her citizens delighted in bear and bull-fighting are past.

TH

THE FATE OF LAVOISIER.

HE philosopher who gave the final coup de grâce to the wild mysticism of alchemy, and laid the foundation of modern chemistry as we find it, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, was an extraordinary character. He was also an unfortunate man. He lost his head by a stroke of the guillotine in the stormiest part of the first French republic, and because of a tobacco question! Yes, it was even so. For this cause, ostensibly, the wise, the generous, the benevolent Antoine Laurent Lavoisier died. He was said by his enemies to have watered his tobacco!

It was in the year 1794, when the notorious triumvirate of public safety were committing their atrocities-when to be good, or well-born, or rich, was each a sufficient cause to be held in suspicion by the triumvirate-that Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, and his friend Berthollet, were engaged in making some of those discoveries which have rendered them both so celebrated. The house of Lavoisier was where they prosecuted their experiments. That house was in Paris. Men engaged in any deep pursuit usually take little heed of political strife. They live in a world of abstraction, all their own, and are not usually much influenced or affected by what is taking place outside their own sphere.

Lavoisier was like Cavendish in one respect he was a scientific man, and he inherited riches. His family had for many generations held the post of fermiergeneral-an office, we need hardly say, abolished before the time of which we write, because the terrible revolution swept all those posts of the old régime away. Would that all the crimes to be laid to the charge of the French revolutionists were so venial as this! The office of fermiergeneral was of this kind; a responsible individual agreed, for a consideration, to pay into the exchequer a fixed sum on behalf of certain things, tobacco being one. The fermier-general then, whoever he might be, held the monopoly for the sale of tobacco for his own district. For many generations the post in question had been held by the family of Lavoisier. They grew wealthy upon it, which may be taken as a proof that they found it a good thing. But no flagrant charge of impropriety was ever brought against the Lavoisiers. People shook their heads sometimes, and

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smiled, and remarked that farmer-generalship was a fine trade-they wished they had the like; but if the old Lavoisier had been a little close, young Antoine Laurent, when the office devolved on him, was so generous-thinking so little of amassing wealth, and doing so much good with it— that it would have been difficult to find a rich government official with fewer enemies. Then, finally, when the storm of revolution came, and the lucrative sinecure, with others of its stamp, was swept away, Lavoisier treated the matter so lightly— speaking of it as a positive gain, and as giving him more time to cultivate philosophy, that the few who had been envious of him were constrained to admit Antoine Laurent Lavoisier to be-what his friends and the world knew long before—a philosopher.

At the period to which our remarks apply, Lavoisier was living at Paris, whither he had come some years before, the better to follow out, in the society of congenial minds, some experiments in which he was engaged. Being himself rich, he threw open his house and his laboratory to those who, with similar tastes to his own, had fewer means of gratifying them.

One great disadvantage under which a chemist is placed, in comparison with workers in other branches of philosophy, is the expense of the instruments with which he has to work. Many a student of pure mathematics has positively no instruments. If he have to practically apply his mathematics, a few fixed, unchanging instruments are all he requires. Give the botanist a pocket lens, and, if he be luxurious, a microscope, and he is well provided; and though the instruments necessary to the astronomers are costly, they too are for the most part unchanging. But men who devote themselves to new lines of chemical investigation frequently require instruments to be devised, and, what is still more difficult, the wherewithal to pay for them.

Lavoisier, at the period of our memoir, was engaged in proving what has since become a truth in the mouth of every moderately educated person, namely, that the diamond and charcoal are in composition identical. An investigation so curious made great stir at the time, and the English chemist Priestley, and the celebrated French chemist Berthollet, were appointed to come to the laboratory of

Lavoisier, and see the experiments. Berthollet had already arrived, as we have said, but Priestley was yet absent.

It was evening. A large argånd lamp, having its rays cast downward by a shade, played upon some diamonds laid on a piece of black paper, ready to be sacrificed to Lavoisier's splendid though exquisite discovery.

"It is well Robespierre does not know of this," said Berthollet, a smile lighting up his large features, which seemed as if they had been chiseled out of a rock; "or it would make work for the Louisette."

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"We chemists are not high game enough for the monsters," replied Lavoisier. "These are indeed fearful times! Ugh!" continued he, shuddering, "what the end will be I know not."

"It seems," replied Berthollet, smiling, "that some sort of revolutionary infection is in the air: even you, my friend, are struck with the malady."

result of combustion; no difficult matter in this case, inasmuch as the result is a solid.

We shall not entrap the reader, against his knowledge and will giving him a chemical lecture in the place of a biographical incident; but it will be at least worth while to make him aware of some of the great points of philosophy developed by the subject of our memoir.

While Lavoisier and Berthollet were thus engaged, the bell rang, and immediately afterward Priestley was introduced.

"Mon ami," said Lavoisier, going to meet him, and grasping his hand, "why so late?"

Priestley trembled, and was pale; his coat, too, was torn; he sank into a chair, and for a time could find no words. When at last he spoke, Priestley explained that he had been lost in a crowd of revolutionary miscreants, who were parading the streets with a model of the guillotine. Such wild revels were frequent, at the time. Bands of savage creatures, after glutting their eyes with the sanguinary scenes of a wholesale execution, would parade the streets of an evening, calling at the guinguettes, and quaffing strong drinks; carrying with them a model of the guillotine, which every now and then they would set down, and display its mechanism to all who contributed a sou. It was dangerous for a well-dressed person to be in the streets at this time. Rags and drunkenness were the only claims on the respect of these depraved wretches, the " sans culottes," as they gloried in being called.

Indeed, few persons have been more revolutionary than Lavoisier in his own way; he revolutionized the whole domains of chemistry; he reduced the nomenclature of that science to a system, and gave us most of the names by which chemical substances are at the present time known. "I shall not wait longer for Priestley," at length said Lavoisier; "I am impatient to show you my experiment:" and, saying this, he made arrangements for burning a piece of iron wire in oxygen gas. Every itinerant chemical lecturer performs the experiment now, because it is so brilliant. The performance of it by Lavoisier, in the presence of his friend Berthollet, marked the downfall of a theory. It was one of the capital discoveries of Lavoisier, that when a body was burned and the results of combustion collected, they were heavier than the body consumed; from which it is quite clear that combustion cannot depend upon the loss of a something which philosophers called "phlogiston," but that itary vocabulary. was attended with the gain of something. So Lavoisier proceeded to weigh his iron wire; he then burned it, and weighed the

The instrument of death invented by Dr. Guillotin, and now universally known as the guillotine, was for a time denominated the Louisette, because it was the deputy Louis who first made himself acquainted with its capabilities, and furnished a report upon them to the National Assembly.

While Priestley was yet explaining the cause of his absence, the ignoble throng surged by. Hoarsely they yelled the revolutionary street cries of the day : "A bas les rois," la Louisette," ," "A bas les philosophes."

," "A bas les aristocrats," "Vive

"Ah! is it come to this?" ejaculated Lavoisier faintly, as he heard the latter exclamation, a new one to the revolution

Apparently, a sufficiently large crowd had now come together to give hopes of a plentiful harvest of sous to the bearers of the guillotine. The crowd stopped near where the philosophers were assembled. The hateful machine was placed on the ground; the mock executioner raised the knife, and, instead of letting it fall immediately, gave out the first line of a revolutionary song, while one of the party went

round for contributions, as the proprietor of a punch-raree-show does in our own streets. Amid shouts of wild laughter, and abuse of all that is great and good, the words of a song written in honor of the guillotine fell on the ear.

"I wish those ruffians would pass on," remarked Lavoisier, losing his patience, as they continued the revolutionary air. But the men had other ends in view.

The ery of" Farmer-general! Diamond philosopher!" rose on the breeze, and the crowd surged on.

So, by some means or another, the outside myrmidons of Robespierre had made themselves acquainted with what Lavoisier was about. The three philosophers exchanged glances ominously. To have the reputation of riches was, at the times of which we speak, a cause of political suspicion. Lavoisier saw that he was compromised.

"Escape while you may," said Berthollet, addressing him.

"What matter?" replied Lavoisier. "If they set their minds upon having my poor fortune, have it they will, whether I escape or not. I have never heeded riches, save for the power they gave me of aiding others. I have used them to accumulate facts. Now in future, if God will, I will earn my bread as an apothecary, and work out theories by reflection."

Poor Lavoisier! So soon as he perceived himself to be compromised, he took it as a matter of course that he should lose all the wealth he had, and be obliged to recommence the world at the age of fifty. He anticipated nothing worse: why should he? What wrong had he done? Many days, however, had not passed before a different train of feelings came across him. It was the custom of the myrmidoms of Robespierre at that period to circulate prejudicial reports against those whom they had already doomed to destruction. Vague rumors came to Lavoisier's ear of malversations committed while he was fermier-general. True, conscience acquitted him of the charge; but what mattered whether true or false, provided Robespierre and his confederates had determined to have him? In an evil moment, Lavoisier escaped and hid himself, which only seemed to give probability to the charges brought against him. The minions of Robespierre were still on his track, but could not discover him; indeed, Lavoisier

might have escaped; but, actuated by a noble and generous sentiment, he determined to give himself up—not to the officers of justice, for justice was not then in the French dominions-but to the officers of the monster Robespierre.

His wife's father, M. Paulzé, happened to be in the power of Robespierre at the time when Lavoisier escaped the latter no sooner became acquainted with this circumstance, than he determined at once to surrender himself, lest his absence might give color to the charge against him and his father-in-law, and lest the latter might be unduly prejudiced.

Revealing his place of concealment, therefore, Lavoisier was seized by the triumvirate, along with twenty-seven others, all of whom had been fermiers-general before the Revolution. A great cry was now being made against the peculation of these same officials; and notwithstanding the office had been abolished by the Revolution, and that none but an unprincipled tyrant would have judged people for retrospective offenses in a case like this, Robespierre was not a man to be restrained by such scruples. The fermiers-general were | rich; that was enough.

So Lavoisier was sent to prison, in company with the other twenty-seven. He was brought to a mock trial and condemned; but the frivolous charge on which he was to die proclaims, better than a whole treatise, the integrity of his previous life. If the reader of this can divest himself of the knowledge for one moment of the fact that the axe of the guillotine is poised aloft, waiting for a victim; if he can drive out from the recesses of memory recollections of this fearful time, and carry himself ideally back into the council chamber of the horrid triumvirate, where the nature of Lavoisier's derelictions were gravely set forth, he may indulge a passing smile. Fancy a man, retired from business many years, gravely brought to trial for having watered his tobacco some ten years ago! Yet so it was; no graver charge than this could be brought against Lavoisier by those who, depend upon it, said the worst they were able about him. For this he died, on the 8th of May, 1794.

It was dangerous to stand up and speak well of a man in those days; nevertheless, the citizen Hallé did so. He boldly impugned the right of trying a man on a retrospective charge; but he did it un

availingly. He then, when the trial was over and the sentence passed, invoked the mercy of the triumvirate. Alas! they had none. He set forth Lavoisier's discoveries, his many acts of benevolence, his charity, and his other excellent qualities; but all in vain-Lavoisier was to die.

The philosopher did not murmur; he submitted himself to the impending fate with meekness. One request he made, and only one; any individual a shade less vile than Robespierre would have granted it.

"Let me live a few more days," said he, "to see the result of some experiments now going on."

"Bah!" replied Coffinhall, the president of the judicial conclave, who had been sitting on the mock trial," the republic doesn't want philosophers. Away with him!"

Thus mournfully ended the mortal career of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

ASCENDING MOUNT VESUVIUS,

and day he must be on the alert to note any threatening change in the symptoms of his patient. We have seen one of the curious bulletins which this public functionary presents to his government, and it recorded in the most minute manner the fluctuations in the interesting case under his care.

But there are other functionaries who reap the harvest of their daily bread, “in the sweat of their brow," from off the same hot field of labor. There is a whole population of stalwart guides, unreclaimedlooking savages as they are, who may be said to live upon ashes, and to tread their daily path over the heated crust of a furnace. A sobering calling this, a solemnizing engagement! Nay, but you know not a Neapolitan, if you think thus. His spirits run up in heat and in fiery danger, like the quicksilver in a thermometer, until they reach the boiling point of true Neapolitan luxury. "Ah, signora mio! your excellency has come at the very moment of such happiness! Vesuvius is mad to-night! For your precious life, excellency, spring upon my beautiful

1

HERE is an official personage at Na-mule. He is the famous Gennaro, sign

THER

ples whose duties are of a somewhat remarkable nature. He has to hand in a daily report respecting the state of health, not of the "body politic," with its fever symptoms, its painful delirium, or the dull lethargy and indifference which follow such accessions of disease, but of the mighty Vesuvius himself! It is his responsible duty to feel, as it were, the beating pulse of the volcano; to lay his feeble hand as upon the heaving heart of the giant, and to ascertain whether the forces of nature be working regularly and smoothly, or whether, fierce and intermittent, they betoken the wild disturbance of fever. Campanelli is a man of experience, and when he pronounces on the varying symptoms of the wondrous case before him, and issues his daily bulletins, they may say that he can form a good "diagnosis" of disease. But when he stands on the crumbling edge of the fiery crater, when he feels the hot and sulphureons breath of the volcano, and notes the convulsive heavings of the internal malady, he knows well that there is but one Power that can control such mighty forces, and that only he who creates can hold or heal. But it is Campanelli's duty to watch, to listen, and to feel. Night VOL. XI.-19

ora mia! He glories in a grand eruption; he is my friend, my own life, my Gennaro! Mount, signora mia.”

Of course one cannot resist such burning language as this, illustrated by the fiery flashes of a Neapolitan eye, and the native eloquence of a southern action. You are instantly on Gennaro's back; and Matteo is right; he is a very fine, trustworthy fellow, tough in limb and sure of foot. How carefully he picks his footing on the scrambling path, struggling upward over blocks of lava, wild as the bed of a mountain torrent, the dead and fixed tide of a past eruption. Then up comes Matteo to your side, and chronicles the fearful history of the mountain: "This was the tide, signor, that overwhelmed Pompeii; that was the river that poured down upon Torre del Greco." Still Gennaro struggles upward, only trying to crop surreptitiously a few tempting sprouts of the famous vine, whose rich juice bears a name so irreverent that we hesitate to write it.

At last we reach the hermitage, a little desolate lodge in the black and burning wilderness. Within dwells a civil old Franciscan monk, who acts hermit in the waste; but there is rather too bright a sparkle in his eye for a mortified and

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