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either sex possess, to face an admiring assemblage of well-dressed and scrutinizing speetators in such a costume. But the fact that the system exists in France, and has been carefully arranged by the authorities as a model of decency and decorum according to their ideas, may teach us a lesson as to the conventional character of those terms, and the dan

promotion, still it can hardly be said that the French plan of bathing adds anything to their opportunities in that respect. It would hardly be possible to commence an eligible acquaintance in the sea, or to pursue a promising flirtation at the moment that both parties were wading out dripping wet upon the shingle. A neighboring cabane might give an opportunity for a Pyramus and Thisbe ad-ger of censuring an apparent breach of them venture, if unfortunately the cabanes of the two sexes were not generally kept apart. On the other hand, it is an utter destruction of the comfort of bathing. It is not bathing it is only getting wet through in a rather elaborate manner. Moreover, it requires more courage than a good many English people of

in the customs of other nations. It is difficult for an Englishman to conceive a method of proceeding less consistent with his ideas of strict decorum; and yet it is adopted by a people who unanimously agree to censure him for his outrageous disregard of decency in respect to the same subject-matter.

by the partisans of the doctrine of spontaneous generation. This tenacity is especially remarkable in monads, vibriones, and bacteria, which sustain life under the most unfavorable circumstances. It is nearly impossible, Mr. Samuelson says, to assign the time after which revivification ceases, but when these animalcules are revived they are very sensitive of surrounding influences. Cold kills them, and the chemical rays of light are more favorable to their development than the calorific rays. The chemical rays do not produce infusoria by spontaneous generation; but by promoting the decomposition of the substances submitted to their action, they furnish to the already living germs the elements necessary for their existence and development.

LIFE IN THE ATMOSPHERE.-At a recent meet- | weather than after much rain. 4. The tenacity ing of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, Mr. of life of these germs is greater than is supposed James Samuelson, the founder of the Popular Science Review, read an account of his experiments, made for several years on the germs of animals and plants suspended in the atmosphere. In September, 1862, he obtained a great number of rags from all parts of the world, and thereby became possessed of the atmospheric dust of Alexandria, Japan, Melbourne, Tunis, Trieste, Peru, etc. On June 26, 1863, he sprinkled some of this dust on fine muslin in vases of distilled water exposed to the air. At the same time he exposed some pure distilled water under glasses, colored blue, red, and yellow. All the dust produced crowds of infusoria; and on the dust of Alexandria a new species was remarked. In each vase, for three or four days, a great increase in the amount of life took place, which afterwards gradually diminished." As long as the distilled water under the colored glasses remained covered, nothing lived in it; but the day after the glasses were removed and dust deposited in the vases a light sediment was perceived, formed of mineral and vegetable molecules, combined by a transparent pellicule, which gradually enlarged and became a multitude of monads. These animalcules soon became animated and peopled the water. From his various experiments Mr. Samuelson draws the following conclusions: 1. The atmosphere in all the great divisions of the world is more or less charged with representatives of the three kingdoms of nature, mineral, animal, and vegetable, with spores and germs of animalcules, and sometimes, but rarely, with germs of nematoid worms. 2. The infusoria comprise, in a great part, not only the obscure types, known as monads, vibriones, and bacteria, but also glaucoma, cyclydes, vorticella, etc. 3. The germs are found in the air in greater quantities in dry

A SCHEME on foot in America, the plans for which are being much discussed, is one for the preparation, by combined labor, of an absolutely complete catalogue of all the books that have been published in America to the present time. A collateral scheme is for a complete catalogue of all the books that have been published anywhere relating to America; and the laborer in this field furnishes what he believes were the first and the last items in such a catalogue at the date of his writing to wit: COLUMBUS: Epistola Cristoferi Colom., etc., мCCCCXCIII.," and "UTLEY, H. S.: History of Slavery and Emancipation: Philadelphia (June 18), 1863."

A NEW edition of "The Friend," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in two volumes, will be published in September by Messrs. Moxon and Company.

From The Spectator. MARIE ANTOINETTE'S NECKLACE.

cent of that one, which, nevertheless, weighed heavily against her in the scale of popular prepossession. The story has been widely spread; Goethe has made it the subject of a drama (Der Gross-Cophta), and Alexandre Dumas has told it in his own anti-historical fashion. According to the French lawyers who were engaged in the case, and among whom we have to mention Cremieux, Emile Leroux, and Dufaure, the affair happened in the following manner :

CAMILLE DESMOULINS, being in the year 1792 reminded of an event which took place before the States-General were convoked in 1789, pointedly remarked, "Oh, that was before the deluge!" And truly enough, the French people invariably date their new state of existence from the great revolution which swept a whole world away, as it were, and gave birth to a renovated society. In spite of Thierry's researches and Tocqueville's ar- Cardinal de Rohan, who seems to have been guments, to that powerful political convul- deeply in love with his queen, had fallen into sion they attribute whatever is grand in their disgrace and was banished from the court. country, whatever is weak in their organiza- This happened in the year 1784, and he was tion. It may be well to read in school-books then fifty-two years old. It was notorious and novels of ancient kings and time-hon- that he could not bear quietly to submit to ored feuds; but, as far as the France of the his fate, and a bold, intriguing woman, the nineteenth century is concerned, all these Countess de Valois-Lamotte, the last descendstories refer to the epoch" before the deluge." ant of an old line of kings, as she pretended, It was, therefore, with some degree of curi-resolved to work on his weakness. Helped by osity, not unmixed with bewildering amaze- Cagliostro, she convinced the worldly son of ment, that the civil tribunal of Paris had, a the Church that she was highly favored by few days ago, to listen to the pleadings in a the queen, and undertook to bring about a lawsuit which turned entirely on one of these reconciliation. In the twilight a young. Pariantediluvian events. It sounded like a voice sian prostitute, Mademoiselle d'Oliva, who from the nether world, like an echo from the had a slight resemblance to an Austrian archgrave and the scaffold, this case in which some duchess, played the part of the French sovof the most far-famed names in history, be it ereign in the groves of Trianon. The cardifor good or for evil, were handled by unfeel-nal received his pardon, was admitted to kiss ing barristers and shrewd attorneys. Queen the hand of her whom he took for his lovely Marie Antoinette, Cardinal de Rohan, the Duke d'Enghien, even Louis XVI., and the Congress of Vienna, not to speak of minor luminaries like Cagliostro, the Countess de Lamotte, and Mademoiselle d'Oliva, were mentioned in quite an off-hand manner by the glib tongues which are bent on making the law alternately clear or dim, according as it suits their purpose. And all that on account of a claim of two millions of francs set up by the heirs of Nicolas Gabriel Deville, Secretary of Louis XVI., against the heirs of Louis René Edouard de Rohan, Cardinal, Grand Almoner of France, Prince-Bishop of Strasbourg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of the German Empire, Abbot of St. Vaast, and, above all, the possessor of a princely fortune. The whole trial revolved on the famous necklace affair, for which scandal did by no means spare poor Marie Antoinette, then the flighty and flirting queen of France. Among many other sins laid to her charge, and of which she may have been more or less guilty, she appears at all events to have been inno

queen, and rose from his knees intoxicated with pride and happiness. Madame de Lamotte understood to perfection how to take advantage of the silly vanity of Cardinal de Roban; she asked him, in the name of Marie Antoinette, at first for a loan of 60,000 livres, and then for a second one of 100,000. But, not satisfied with that telling success, she resolved on striking a great blow. The court jewellers, Böhmer and Bassange, were in possession of a unique necklace, set in pearls and diamonds, and valued at 1,200,000 livres.

That splendid ornament had been originally destined by the lavish Louis XV. for Madame Dubarry. But the crowned profligate died in the interval, and the jewellers finished the set in the hope that the young queen who now ruled at Versailles might be induced to buy it. Marie Antoinette was willing enough to adorn her pretty person with the glittering collar, but still she shrank before the enormous expense, and said to Böhmer, "We want a ship more than a jewel." The goldsmiths began to despair of a bargain, when lo! the 24th

of January, 1785, four months after the Trianon comedy, Cardinal de Rohan came in person to inspect the priceless trinket. The foolish swain had been persuaded by Madame de Lamotte that the queen requested him to buy the necklace for her, and he took for genuine a badly forged signature, by which he was authorized to complete the purchase. In fine, he obtained the costly jewel for 1,600,000 livres, agreed on terms of payment, and delivered it to the clever trickster, who, of course, promised him to hand it to the enraptured spouse of Louis XVI.

followed. The cardinal, when he was arrested in the king's Cabinet, sorrowfully exclaimed, "I have been deceived, sire; I ask pardon of your majesties, and am willing to pay for the necklace." And, indeed, he consented to give the jewellers an assignment of 1,919,892 livres on the revenue of his Abbey of Saint-Vaast, which produced 225,000 livres a year. The jewellers, who were indebted for more than a million to M. Deville, the king's Secretary, transferred the assignment to him. But, before the first instalment fell due, the deluge came over the world, Cardinal Rohan lost his ecclesiastical dignities and revenues, the court goldsmiths became bankrupts, and M. Deville never received a farthing. To-day, his heirs maintain that they have a claim on the heirs of Louis Rége Fdouard de Rohan. The poor prince of the Church, “cardinal by the grace of God and the authority of the Apostolic Holy See," as he styled himself, had fled before the flood as far as Ettenheim,

It is matter of history that the necklace was broken into pieces, which were sold in Paris, in England, and in Holland. When the jewellers addressed a memorial to the king, the fraud which had been practised on them was immediately discovered, and poor Cardinal de Rohan was conveyed to the Bastille, together with the two plotting women, Lamotte and d'Oliva, and with Cagliostro and some other accomplices. The Grand Cham- a small town in Baden which belonged to bre took up the affair, and put all the parties him. He acknowledged, in an authenticated on their trial on the 31st of May, 1786. document, that the trial before the Grande The cardinal, Cagliostro, and Mademoiselle Chambre, and "the general confusion and d'Oliva were acquitted. Count de Lamotte, spoliation of all property, sad effects of the the husband, was sentenced to be whipped, French Revolution, which deprived him of branded, and sent to the galleys for the re- all his revenues derived from the bishopric mainder of his life, whilst his wife, the of Strasbourg, his abbeys and all his church daughter of the Valois, received for punish-lands in France, have taken from him the ment, "to be beaten and scourged with rods, means of paying." He died in 1803, instihaving a rope around her neck, and whilst tuting by a formal will as universal legatee naked, then marked on the two shoulders the daughter of his cousin, the fair Princess with a hot iron in the form of the letter V., Charlotte Louise Dorothée de Rohan-Rocheand finally to be conducted to the House of fort, known for the deep love with which she inCorrection attached to the Hospital de la Sal- spired the unfortunate Duke d'Enghien, who pêtriere, and detained there forever." dwelt with her at Ettenheim, where he was illegally kidnapped in 1804 by Bonaparte's gendarmes.

The sentence was rigorously executed, and Madame de Lamotte terrified the public, and even the executioners, by her wild and almost Before the unhappy prince was shot on the unearthly shricks. Among the curious doc- glacis of Vincennes he begged of one of his uments which were read at the late civil law-executioners to give the princess a ring, some suit of which we are speaking, is the memoir of his hair, and a letter written in his last referring to Cagliostro's share in the affair, moments. On her side, she proved faithful and evidently written by himself. He not only exculpates himself with remarkable ability, but dwells also on the romantic incidents in his life, which he relates in the tone of a man who affects to believe in himself, and with an extraordinary knowledge of the art of "getting up" an intricate melodrama.

So far, almost every one may be assumed to be more or less acquainted with this strange affair; the late trial revealed likewise what

to his memory, and remained unmarried to the day of her death, which took place in 1841. On account of her relation's insolvent state she had only accepted the cardinal's inheritance sous bénê fice d'inventaire, that is, on condition to pay no more debts than the estate would yield profits, and she bequeathed her fortune to Prince Armand Meridec Montbazon de Rohan-Rochefort, the father of the princes who were defendants in the case.

Among the landed property appertaining the payment of several debts, and that, thereto the Cardinal Rohan was a small house fore, her heirs were not entitled to the privibuilt on the spot where Turenne fell, near lege of the bénéfice d'inventaire, but ought to Salzbach, and used as a dwelling-place by the be bound to pay two millions, forming the keeper who had to watch over the monument capital and interest of the original debt. erected to the memory of the great captain. But the tribunal decided against them, deIn 1796 the house and the monument were claring that the Princes de Rohan-Rochefort destroyed, but they have been rebuilt since have a right to repudiate the bond given by that time. the cardinal, because he did not leave sufficient money to redeem it. The judgment adds, it is true, that the debt was legitimately due by Madame Lamotte's dupe; but that appears a poor compensation for two millions of francs.

Leaving these startling historical souvenirs for the actual facts of the legal action, we may shortly record that the heirs and assignees of Secretary Deville contended that Princess Charlotte had been very negligent in business matters, and had omitted to pursue

THE American Publishers' Circular and Literary Gazette (Philadelphia) thus speaks of the swarms of publications in America called forth by the war: "It will be interesting to the future bibliographer to note how much of the campaigning of our civil war has been conducted

by books and pamphlets. The number of publications of the latter class is beginning to be, as Dominie Sampson was wont to say, 'prodigious.' There are pamphlets upon the whole subject, and pamphlets upon special topics; pamphlets upon the politics, pamphlets upon the law, and pamphlets upon the gospel, of the controversy; pamphlets little and big themselves, and by authors big and little, of no name and of famous name. The collecting and vending of these pamphlets, like the dealing in Congressional documents here, or in blue-books in England, Kave become a new branch of business." A register of the war-publications hitherto issued has appeared under the title of " Bibliography of the War." Nine parts of this register have been published; and the items in the ninth part alone, published July 1, are 191. The American Publishers' Circular, in view of the fact that such pamphlets become valuable historically after a time, recommends that the collection and preservation of them should not be left to the chance taste of individuals, but should be undertaken by some one in the trade.

THE third edition of "An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the American Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers, read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, Aug. 14, 1862, by George Livermore," has just been published in Boston. The first edition was for private distribution only; the second was in the form of a paper among the proceedings of the MassachuBetts Historical Society; the present is for gen

eral circulation. It is a handsome pamphlet of two hundred pages, and the American papers speak of it as important.

A NEW and revised edition of Dr. Daniel Wilson's " Prehistoric Annals of Scotland," a standard work, which won the regard of Hallam, is, we understand, in course of preparation. The author, who is now over from Canada on a visit to this country, is probably using his opportunities for collecting fresh matter for the work.

AN American author, Mr. Lossing, living at Poughkeepsie, N. Y., is to write a large history of the present American war, as soon as it is over, and is making vast and miscellaneous collections for the work.

A NEW edition of Mrs. Cowden Clarke's revision of Shakspeare's text is announced for publication in a single octavo volume. At the same time a revised reprint will appear of the American edition, with introduction, notes, and glossary, in four volumes octavo, upon which both Mr. and Mrs. Clarke have for some time been engaged.

SIR LASCELLES WRAXALL is about to publish a" Life of Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark,” from family papers in his possession, probably collected by his grandfather, Nathaniel Wraxall.

MR. ADAM BLACK is devoting his lesiure to the study of the law of copyright as regards both literature and art, previously to bringing forward a bill on the subject after the meeting of Parliament.

From The Saturday Review.
ANNEXATIONS.

tie. Still it is not so strong but that other ties may sometimes prove stronger. Relig ious, political, or geographical circumstances may outweigh the community of blood; they may turn strangers into countrymen, and countrymen into strangers. If, then, people of the same blood and tongue are divided, or people different in blood and tongue are brought together, it does not at all follow that the existing arrangement is one to be condemned off-hand. But before we can say whether it is good or bad, we must look much more narrowly both into the present circumstances and the past history of each partieular case.

| and a very strong one; yet it is not so strong but that, under some circumstances, other In looking over the map of Europe, and in ties may prove stronger. So it is with comlooking more especially at those parts of it munity of blood on a great scale. Here, too, whence we hear the cry of" oppressed nation- community of blood gives a start. The prealities," we soon meet with facts which speed-sumption is in its favor. The tie of blood ily upset almost any theory that can be put forms a nation more readily than any other forward. In one place, we see artificial states formed by the union of several races or portions of several races; in another, we see countries where union seems required, and not forbidden by geography, still divided between several independent powers. There is not one among the greater powers which exactly coincides with any strict ethnological division, nor are there many among the smaller ones which do so. These are palpable facts, in asserting which we are asserting nothing new. Nor is there more of novelty when we add that it does not do to lay down any sweeping general rule affirming that all political arrangements which contradict the great theory of race are in themselves unjust and ought at once to be altered. We have often tried to show that race, though an important element, is only one element among several in the formation of that corporate being-much more easy to know when we see it than to define which we call a nation. The truth is, that community of blood on a large scale works very much like community of blood on a small scale. A man's kinsfolk by blood are not necessarily the persons in whose company he takes most pleasure, or with whom he has the greatest number of interests in common. A man may greatly prefer a friend who has no known common ancestor to his first cousin, or even to his brother. But, nevertheless, kindred counts for a great deal in common life.

It does not ensure either affection or community of taste; but it goes a good way towards producing the one, and towards sometimes producing, sometimes supplying the want of, the other. Community of blood, and still more community of early associations, gives a man a start. It makes it more easy to form a real friendship, if there are any materials for real friendship, and it makes it more easy to get on with him on kindly and familiar terms though there be no real friendship in the case. A man has, after all, a feeling for one of his own blood which he has not for a stranger of whom he thinks far more highly, and in whose company he takes much more pleasure. The tie is a real tie,

And here, again, we must give the universal caution against rashly judging either the past by the present, or the present by the past. An arrangement, whether of union or division, which was thoroughly unjust and inexpedient when it took place, may have so turned out as now to be the best arrangement possible. It constantly happens that, though it may not be the best arrangement possible, yet it turns out so well that to meddle with it now would do more harm than to leave it alone. So, again, an arrangement which every one wants to get rid of now may have had thoroughly good reasons for it at the time when it was made. We must avoid both the dead conservatism which would defend everything now because it may have served a useful purpose some ages back, and the shallow pseudoliberalism which at once despises the past because some of its institutions and arrangements are now a good deal the worse for wear.

Thus, among the successive annexations made by France, a large portion, in all ages, have been made in defiance of all existing rights either of princes or people. They have often been made distinctly against the will of the inhabitants of the annexed provinces, to the great injury of other powers, and to the general danger and disturbance of Europe. Among the countless acquisitions of territory by France, there have not been above two or three, from the seizure of Lyons to the seiz

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