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I not know by heart all his delightful works.

MONTECLAIR.-In that case you must be able to recollect perfectly the History of the Thirteen ?

LEONA. That imaginary association of some men who took upon themselves the mission of avenging society by frightful means? Yes, truly, that interested me much.

MONTECLAIR.-You must then be delighted to find yourself in the presence of its two best known adepts-M. de Marsay and M. de Rastignac-and two neophytes, to whom the illustrious novelist has not given the same celebrity-M. de Brias and myself.

LEONA (eyeing d'Avatienne and the notary). Truly! I tell you that it would be hard for me to take these gentlemen for heroes of a novel.

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LEONA. And you think, no doubt, that in every case to attempt to frighten a woman, even when the attempt is unsuccessful, is a thing in very bad taste."

Montéclair goes on to defend his position, and to show that, in certain cases, a woman may forfeit the respect which gallantry owes her by nature.

"LEONA (rising, and quitting the table). -Monsieur de Montéclair, you have eaught me in an odious trap, and you have a fine opportunity of insulting me.

MONTECLAIR. You appear to think that it is of you I would speak.

LEONA. You are a coward, Montéclair, and you would not dare to speak thus to a man.

If it

MONTECLAIR.-You are right. were a question of a man having done all this, I would send him before a court, and I question if the judges would be more polite than myself.

LEONA.-Montéclair! Montéclair! MONTECLAIR. You laugh no longer, Leona? You find the adventure amusing no longer? You see that each has his turn.

LEONA (commanding herself, and approaching again the table).-But what do you want with me then, gentlemen? for I begin to think that the invention of the novelist will become a reality. I begin to think that I have fallen into the hands of assassins.

MONTECLAIR (rising_in_his_turn).— Would you rather that I should put you in the hands of those gentlemen the

police? They are the born protectors of innocence.

LEONA.-Once more, what is your ob

ject?

MONTECLAIR.-To ask your advice. LEONA.-Will you have done, sir? MONTECLAIR (pointing to the chair).Be seated then. (Leona seats herself again). You will not admit that you are here in the hands of M. de Balzac's heroes? But suppose for a moment that it is true, only to follow my course of argument. Suppose that we are that tribunal, secret, implacable-which dispenses, unperceived, justice in the dark, which strikes the guilty, like Providence, by unknown methods-suppose that we are bound to each other not only by honour but by complicity-suppose that we are in an out-of-the-way castle, as mine is, and admit that, entirely stripped of that chivalrous spirit which allows a woman every crime under the protection of her weakness, we should open under your feet an abyss like this one-(He opens a trapdoor-Léona makes a movement of terror). Then Léona, Madame de Beauval, Madame d'Estève, if you will, disappear for ever. Georges is a widower: he repairs his fault, and none but the guilty is punished. What would you think of this justice?

LEONA. That it would be a crime, for death is the punishment only of murderers.

MONTECLAIR (shutting the trap-door). Well, I have only shown you this danger to let you understand better the conclusion of my reasoning, which is, that all may be arranged if Georges is free.

LEONA (aside).-I understand, at last. (Aloud) I am cut to the heart at not being able to give him this freedom, but divorce is abolished.

MONTECLAIR. Perhaps you do not know the law exactly (giving Léona the statute-book open). Will you take the trouble to read this passage? There, article 180.

LEONA (reading with a voice gradually faltering). The marriage which has been contracted without the free consent of the contracting parties, or of one of them, cannot be attacked but by the parties, or by that one whose consent has not been free.' Would M. Georges d'Estève pretend to say that he was not free, and has he charged you to tell me that he demands the annulment of our marriage? It is contemptible.

MONTECLAIR.-Pardon me-pass to the second paragraph.

LEONA (reading).-'When there has been a mistake in the person, the marriage can be declared null.'”

This is the turning-point. Léona is not Madame de Beauval, the widow who married Georges, but Isabelle Pommier, her maid, who has personated her. The conversation reaches its climax. There is a story of a sea voyage, of a shipwreck, of mistress and maid being shipwrecked and saved together by a good Dutchman, who did not know a word of French; who mistook maid for mistress in consequence, and gave her the best room, with the mistress, who was well, to wait upon the maid, who was ill. Montéclair is telling the story.

"LEONA. Well then?

MONTECLAIR. Well then, what you would never believe came to pass, that Isabelle Pommier, who was dying, had strength enough to get up in the night and poison Madame de Beauval, who was in excellent health!

LEONA.

You lie, Montéclair! Madame de Beauval died of her illness. All (getting up at once with Léona). -What next?

LEONA. What a wretch I am!

MONTECLAIR (very quietly).-Madame de Beauval is dead; this is all we wanted to know."

The scene is admirably sustained throughout. Of course, no alternative is left to the murderess, Isabelle Pommier-the false Madame de Beauval -but to do as she is desired, and declare her husband free. Montéclair satisfies her of the legality of the proceeding by presenting his pretended friends as the constituted authorities, witnesses of her declaration that the person she personated is dead. He tears the paper she has signed, and tells her that she is free to leave the castle. She goes unpunished; but the dramatic difficulty is got overeverybody who wished it, marries everybody who wished the same. There is a general hand-shaking all round, and the piece ends happily. It was watched during its whole performance with great apparent interest by two personages who sat in the imperial box-one of them the head, the other, shall we not say the heart, of the French empire? Many a time in the representation she is visibly affected, sometimes even pale and weeping -a perfect contrast to him whose features retain a bland, gentlemanly impassiveness, as meet for the fea

tures of one who has to rule the destinies of men. They remain to the very last; so do the undistinguished spectators, including your most obedient, who has to get up by six o'clock on a winter's morning to take the train for Bologne and England. We are at Bologne two hours before the departure of the Folkestone steamer; we will have a peep at the camp for want of something better to do. Was the locality chosen that it might represent the position of the allied armies before Sebastopol? We thought so when we climbed the clammy, muddy, bottomless sand-cliff between the sea and the camp. But whatever the approaches might be, all was decency, order, and cleanliness there. If our poor fellows in the Crimea had seen the huts with their stores and perfect arrangement, even some with pretty porches, and every contrivance to keep out cold, it would have made their mouths water. It was like a village, or rather city of wigwams, arranged by the very genius of neatness and taste; or shall we not rather say, a town of Irish cabins, with a total absence of pigs and everything else Hibernian? This latter idea struck us forcibly, and it seemed odd to us how it comes to pass that one race of Celts has so little poetry and so much tidiness, the other so much poetry and so little of the organ of order. Yet so it is; the Irish and the French are in blood and temperament much alike, but in these matters wholly and essentially unlike. In a French household everything has a place, and is in its proper place; in an Irish, everything is comically misapplied. The chambermaid warms your bed with the gridiron, indignantly answering your unreasonable remonstrance, "Is not the frying-pan engaged in doing the chops for your honour's supper?" In France there is a neat dodge to do everything; and everything useful, however homely, strives after shapeliness and elegance. There is good sense in this; for there is no reason that things which we must see always, such as jugs and mugs, should not give pleasure when seen. As to the affairs of war, we are beginning to learn by experience the most bitter, that fighting, though an important part, does

not constitute the whole art of war. It may go unquestioned now that the French are our superiors in all points of war but fighting. Above all, 66 economy " is their forte; not the wretched economy which stints a war establishment, mere penny-wise pound-foolish economy of money, but economy in its true sense of arrangement, method, and mutual dependence of parts. We have all heard of the fable of Menenius in Coriolanus. A French expedition is like the members fed by the alimentary canal; an English, at least the present one, is like the members, and head, and stomach attempting to live and act independently and without relation one to another. Lamentations are heard in every household, and grief is felt in every heart, at the sad disorganisation of our splendid Crimean army. We all feel that somebody ought to be disgraced, even to be hanged for it but who? that is the question. Where does the blame lie? The truth appears to us that it lies more or less on every Briton's door-step, except such as, like Maga and her contributors, have protested year after year against the state of things that produced this crisis. Every man, for his health, though he may be engrossed in study or business, must take daily exercise, riding or walking, or in some kind of athletic pastime. Every nation, if it would hold up its head among nations, must, whatever be its pursuits, take warlike exercise, not necessarily in blood-shedding, but in all those practices which denote an active preparation for war. Woe be to a nation that neglects this healthful duty! What a mercy it is that at the time when the Times was launching its philippics, or rather Napoleonics, against the present sovereign of France, she did not take her opportunity and wreak on us her vengeance for some of the old grudges; she is now taking the nobler way of heaping coals of fire on our heads by clothing our naked soldiers, and conveying our wounded to hospital, who would otherwise be helpless; for the horses are all gone, and the saying of "dying like sheep" will soon be changed for "dying like cavalry horses at Balaklava." This propensity to lapse into unwarlike obesity and for

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXXIII.

getfulness of our duties is no new one. It began, perhaps, at the union of the two crowns of the British Isles, when the two chief parts of the nation were safe against each other, and from dangers on the land side, and, like the one-eyed stag in the fable, did not dream of danger coming from the sea. Depend upon it, that in the olden time the men of Berwick and the burghers of Carlisle were in no danger of becoming members of the Peace Society. It was provided in a statute of Queen's College, Oxford, that the inhabitants of the northern counties should be privileged in certain scholarship elections, in consideration of the sufferings of these counties from the incursions of the Scotch. In spite of their sufferings, we know that Carlisle's burghers had the character of being "merry." They were merry because they were forced to be warriors by their noble enemies. Were the men of Manchester ever called "merry"? They may have been when Manchester was a Roman camp; they certainly have never been since. I am not arguing for the repeal of the Union between England and Scotland, for I do not think we could well have spared Sir Colin Campbell at Alma or Balaklava, or his kilted men, to whom the French paid the compliment, "Ces soldats ne reculent jamais;" but I do think it would be well if we had an imaginary border somewhere, and imaginary enemies on the other side of it, keeping us on the alert, ready to carry on war at any time with all the appliances of an advancing age. It is strange that, in the outcry for reform on all hands, one great reform was always forgotten,-the reform of our military establishments; we had better have left some others alone, and looked to this. But we suppose that a candidate for a manufacturing town taking up this cry would probably have missed his seat; and in such cases men, πάντων απερίοπτοι εἶσι παρὰ TO VIкây, care for nothing but success, without regarding the principle on which success is founded. Better days are, we hope, in store for us: we have escaped a great danger, it is more than fortunate that our weakness has been shown us in a struggle with a power comparatively unable

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to injure us, at least while our navy is intact. We ought to be thankful that the chastisement we have received has not been heavier. Our women (the boast of Sparta) have never yet seen the smoke of an enemy's camp. They might have seen it, even more plainly than they now can see the smoke of our quondam enemy's camp at Boulogne. We have now drawn the sword, with the fall of the Coalition Ministry, entirely out of the sheath: the scabbard had better be thrown away for ever, for there can be no harm in keeping the sword drawn; for while our empire is what it is, our envious enemies must be legion.

Adieu, despotic France: we are in free England again, as we heard an Italian refugee congratulate himself; and it struck us that, after all, to sober well-conducted people there is not so much difference between a despotic and a constitutional country. We cannot help in sadder moments thinking a constitutional government like a constitutional walk, a necessary bore. Certainly for all practical purposes a good dictatorship is much better, if we can secure its goodness. And is not our boasted freedom to nine Britons out of ten the merest fallacy? Individuals who keep out of his way are generally too small to be crushed by a big despot, but in the freest of free countries there are a thousand ramifications of petty tyranny which take the joy out of the life of a private man. Let the Dissenting minister, for instance, under the Voluntary system, try to act

counter to his principal patrons; he is free to do so, and starve. Let the dependent clerk try to act independently against the master who pays him; he is free to do so, and starve. Take any of our towns, dominated by a popular preacher or by a religious clique, and let a medical man, or any other dependent on the public, act on different principles; he is free to do so, and starve. The individual might resist the tyranny; he might refuse to be lengthened out or cut down to the measure of the bed of his Procrustes; he might face starvation by himself in a country where poverty is the unpardonable sin; but, alas! perhaps he is not alone; and "baby fingers, waxen touches," take the image of his manhood from his breast, and he bows his neck to the inevitable slavery.

Yes, when every British member votes exactly as he thinks, and every British elector according to his conscience, without consideration of his custom, it will be time to wear the cap of liberty, and even to plant trees of it; but the time is not come yet. Not one of us can move hand or foot without feeling the rasp or the itch of some social chain; and until we can get rid of every vestige of this feeling, we have no right to speak, or even to think, in disrespectful or uncomplimentary terms of our noble allies across the Channel, and the enlightened despotism to which, as the best thing under the circumstances, the good sense of the majority has taught them to submit. Ever yours, TLEPOLEMUS.

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THE STORY OF THE CAMPAIGN.-PART IV.

CHAPTER XV.-CIRCUMSPECTIVE.

DURING the lull in the operations, a glance at our present situation, and the successive stages which led to it, may not be out of place. We find ourselves, after two great battles and some minor actions, in possession of a position which, itself of great natural strength, has been so fortified as to be almost impregnable, if held by an army sufficiently strong to occupy it throughout its extent. The allied works are pushed close to those protecting the town, and reinforcements reach us constantly; while the garrison of Sebastopol and the Russian army outside must be suffering great privations, and their expenditure of men and material cannot be replaced. So far the advantage would seem to be with us.

But the sufferings of our troops, exposed to the rigour of winter, without clothing or shelter sufficient to resist it, had, when published from a hundred sources, excited universal sympathy. As soon as the change of temperature checked the ravages of cholera, the wet set in, bringing a new train of diseases. Horrible cramps resembling those of the epidemic, but accompanied by different symptoms and excited by other causes, seized numbers of those exposed, sometimes for nights in succession, to the duty of guarding the trenches. In their ragged garments, and with feet almost bare, they paced the wet mud, or, wrapt in a single blanket, lay in holes which they dug in the reverse of the batteries and lines, shivering the live-long night. When relieved, they crept back, rigid with cold, to the bleak shelter of the tents. On the troops newly arrived from England these unaccustomed hardships fell with double severity, and they died in appalling numbers, while the endurance of those seasoned by the previous campaign was now tried to the uttermost. In the months of December and January the sick in the English camp alone varied from 2000 to 3000; and including those at Balaklava and Scutari, or invalided to England, the sick returns showed the

astounding number of 14,000 men ineffective in the British army.

The force thus weakened was by no means replenished by the reinforcements which arrived from England and the Mediterranean garrisons, and, in consequence, the duties of those who remained effective were increased in severity. The trenches must be held at any price, and the same guards sometimes manned them for three successive nights.

To feed the army it was necessary to bring provisions daily from Balaklava; the labour of the siege had been such that up to the end of December our means of transport had never permitted us to accumulate one day's provisions in advance. Day after day accordingly saw men and horses, enfeebled by hardship, traversing the roads, clogged by mire and snow, to and from Balaklava. Strings of soldiers might be met carrying pieces of raw pork, and often these provisioncarriers, until late in the afternoon, did not break their fast. The cavalry brought up their forage on their horses, the artillery theirs on stript ammunition - waggons and Flanders waggons. A horse carried a truss of hay weighing from 180 lb. to 200 lb., or a sack of corn-a waggon took five or six trusses, and required ten horses to draw it thus loaded; and these, starting from the camp soon after daylight, seldom returned till late in the afternoon. Rows of waggons and of cavalry horses waited (men and animals up to their knees in mud) till their turn for loading came-the rule being that only one boat-load of forage should be disembarked at a time, as very few commissariat clerks could be spared to superintend the issue. It occasionally happened that the men of some of the divisions were for a day, sometimes two, without the ration of meat and rum, having only biscuit and unroasted coffee, while balf allowance was by no means uncommon. Now, if the reader will visit, in the coldest days of English winter, the poorest family in his neighbourhood, whose food is just sufficient

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