concluded, both arose, and descended at opposite sides, without exchanging a word, and Tchamalouri perfected that dislike which difference in politics had commenced.

Raymond concludes that as Les Anglais are numerous on the hills, there must be a decent crop in the plains, and he is not disappointed he finds Italy a garden of English people, with a slight sprinkling of Italian natives.

:

His bete noire is Lady Penock, a young damsel of three score, very thin in person, and very reserved. He meets her every where, and she chooses to consider that he is lying in wait for her, and cries out on some of these occasions, shocking, shocking. He wishes to enjoy the Coliseum by moonlight, but Lady Penock's parasol is in the way. He strives to inspect St. Peter's, Pagan and Catholic Rome, all in vain: she is there before him. He cannot enjoy The Laocoon, nor The Communion of St. Jerome, without taking in the end of her sharp nose. After seeing her rise like a spectre in different places before him, he takes flight to Tuscany, and finds her at the cascade of Terni, at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi, under the gate of Hannibal at Spoleto, sitting on Petrarch's threshold at Arezzo. The first person he meets at Florence, gazing on Benvenuto Cellini's Persius, was Lady Penock. She appeared to him in the Campo Santo at Pisa; and in the gulf of Genos her barque pitched into the one that was conveying himself. At Turin, he encountered her in the museum of Egyptian antiquities, still, always, and every where, Lady Penock. At Grenoble his spirits at last expand; what does he care now for Lady Penock! the Alps divide them. He is reposing on the pillow of security, when a cry of fire is raised rushing forth, he hears a female scream in an upper story of the buruing mansion; he siezes a ladder, runs up, breaks a window and door, rushes into the room, finds the sensitive Lady Penock in terror of the flames, but more in terror at his determined pursuit of her, shrinking into a corner, and reproaching him for having, like Lovelace, set the house on fire, ‘pour enlever moi. He carries her down in safety, in spite of her modest cries and kicks, burns and hurts himself severely, and after a confinement of three weeks, he is presented with a bill of damages by the considerate proprietor of the broken window and door. (Mme. De Braimes nurses him tenderly till he recovers)

The Poet De Meilhan is now deeply in love with the sup

posed Louise Guerin. He cannot bring himself to offer marriage to one in her doubtful circumstances; and the propriety of her deportment has hitherto prevented all less honest proposals. A little party is arranged to visit the castle of Caur de Lion on the banks of the Seine, in the neighbourhood of Rouen :

The banks of this river offer delightful views: the hills form delicious outlines, dotted with trees, and intersected by strips of cultivation. Sometimes, the rocks issuing through the light soil, present the most picturesque objects: the distant chateaus and farm houses are revealed by the sparkling of their slate roofs. Isles as wild and savage as those of the Pacific, spring from the bed of the river like gigantic flower baskets; and yet no Captain Cook has yet described these South-Sea Islands lying within a half day's journey of Paris. Louise felt an intelligent and sincere admiration for the various shades of foliage, the water mohair agitated by the light breeze, the abrupt flight of the kingfisher, the graceful undulations of the water lily, whose large leaves and yellow flowers were spread on the surface, the little Forget-me-nots of the bank, and all the details by which the course of the stream is diversified.

The strong castle of Richard Coeur de Lion reminds us by its position and its architecture of the fortresses on the Rhine. The masonry and the solid rock are united in such sort that you cannot tell where nature ends and where art commences.

The Poet is so fascinated with the lovely widow, who by the way is entirely heart whole, that his mother gives her an invitation to their little chateau, in order to keep her son under her own eyes. In a chance visit to Paris, Irene (or Louise Guerin, which you please) finds her prince in very doubtful society at the opera; and her sensitive heart is so wounded that she resolves never to renew the footing on which they formerly stood. In this sad affair poor Prince Roger is innocent enough. To divert his melancholy, he had accepted a dinner with a couple of his young friends; and these youths had, unknown to him, invited a pair of ladies imperfect in household virtues. All attended the opera after dinner, and for the outspoken maxims of these women, punishment descended on the head of the prince, who merely occupied a back seat in the box.

At the country seat of De Meilhan's mother, it is announced that Don Quixote is coming to pay a visit; this is Raymond, the owner of the twin luminary in the former days of poverty, Lady Penock's admirer, and, in consequence of his accident, the patient of the kind Madame de Braimes, at Grenoble,

Irene's correspondent; finally, the Ideal of Irene de Chateaudun herself.

The doomed lovers meet in a most romantic manner at a spring in the grounds, and on being formally introduced to each other, a very interesting conversation ensues. She asks him why he is called Don Quixote, and he is obliged, though reluc tantly, to acknowledge the cause :

I am called so, madame, because I am a kind of madman, an original, an enthusiastic admirer of all noble and holy things, a determined enemy of all fashionable felonies, a dreamer of good deeds, a defender of the oppressed, a persecutor of egotists. Because I think a man ought to respect himself out of respect to the woman who honors him by her love; that she should never be absent from his mind that he should avoid whatever would give her uneasiness; that he should preserve himself pure for her sake. Besides, I love my country with all the love of a grumbler of the old guard. My friends call me a Frenchman of the Vaudeville, but I tell them that it is better to be so, than a sham Englishman of the stable, like themselves. They call me Don Quixote because I scorn them when they disparage women; because I sympathise with those who struggle and suffer for a cherished faith; because I have courage to turn my back on those I despise; because I have an unhappy penchant for speaking truth; because in looking on evil I have still faith in good.

Evil thrives in the world because it is well cultivated: why should not good flourish if the same care was bestowed on its culture? If I was only loyal and charitable, they would call me Grandison, I would be a lost man. So I exaggerate my defects, and am the first to assail rather than be obliged to act on the defensive.

Now the brave and good Raymond is really all he professes to be, and more; but why are his good qualities catalogued by himself? We consider this an oversight on the part of Mine. de Girardin, if she was the author. It reminds us of Dumas' self-consciousness of merit on the occasion of the memorable trial. We may surely be allowed a doubt on the subject of authorship, for if Balzac had concealed his male identity, where is the penetration so acute as to detect a man's hand in his analysis of the female heart and mind. We do not say this in his praise, nay we intend it for the reverse; for we hold that no good and true man is, was, or ever will be qualified to describe truly that terra incognita, the understanding and affections of woman.

Now that Irene and Raymond have come to sight and speech of each other, they are thoroughly unable to avoid an intense mutual attachment, and at once the course of true love begins to be ruffled. The prince on paying a chance visit, after searching hills, vales, palaces, and cabins for his cruel betrothed,

catches a sight of her robe as she makes her escape from his dreaded presence. She is seen no more while he stays, and he, perceiving an estrangement between Raymond and Edgar, urges Raymond to depart and abandon the prize to his friend who was first in the field. He yields with despair in his heart, but Edgar is not a bit the nearer to gain Irene's affections. He is formally refused, and flies to Havre to secure a passage to the Prairies and Savannahs, to howl out his grief to the wilds, but his mother so works on the compassion of Irene, who is given to understand that Raymond is obliged to marry some other lady against his will, that she consents to join her in her pursuit of the truant, if yet they may arrest him on French soil. And, how do they find him occupied ? Dressed in a Mussulman's flowing robes, sitting cross-legged on a divan in company with other friends similarly attired. A black female slave lying asleep at his feet (her guitar silent by her side), and himself contemplating the ceiling with an indescribable, but far from sorrowful expression of countenance.

Here is the mode in which this transformation was effected. A certain Arthur Granson, Edgar's friend, has arrived at the conviction that every nation despises its own costume, however picturesque an Andalusian Majo will make apologies to you for not appearing in a skimpy frock, and round hat. The Arnaut contemning his own picturesque and splendid costume, seriously thinks on shooting you in the next defile for the sake of your riding coat, and if nothing is done, the Turks will throw off in a heap their flowing robes for our confounded saucepan hats, and our other vulgar shapeless habiliments. So feeling that Turkey was menaced with the Paletot and Chapeau Tromblon, he went to Constantinople, and arrested Abdul Medjid in the middle of his ridiculous tailoring occupations. Meeting Edgar in Havre on the point of embarking, he seizes on him by force and arms, clothes him in a rich Osmanli costume, and swears by the sacred camel, and the black stone at Mecca, that he must spend an evening with him in the eastern style. Our flighty, passionate, selfish man of genius, lets himself be seduced into the swallowing of a few grains of Egyptian Hachis; and while Mahomet's paradise is unveiled to his orbs, which appear to be counting the ornaments in the ceiling, Irene beholds him from a gallery, and finding her compassonate sacrifice not needed, takes the wings of the steam engine, and flies to her beloved little asylum in the Marais.

Edgar mentions in a future letter, some recollections of his experience under the influence of the drug; we present an extract or two :

In a few minutes I felt an agreeable warmth in the region of the stomach, sparks issued from my body, and I felt myself enveloped in a lambent, painless flame. I became independent of the laws of matter; weight, opacity, size, all had vanished. I preserved shape, but it was fragrant, flexible, transparent, fluid: bodies went through me without causing me inconvenience, I shrunk or expanded according to pleasure; I transported myself hither and thither as I willed. I was in a world enlightened from a vault of azure, in the centre of an eruption of fire-works ceaselessly renewed, consisting of luminous flowers with gold and silver leaves, and chalices of diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. Foun tains composed of moon beams fell and splashed in crystal basins which sung the most enchanting melodies. A symphony of perfumes followed this first enchantment; and these sunk in a shower of glittering spangles in a few seconds. The new movement consisted of an odor of the iris and of the acacia, and these pursued, fled, and interlaced each other in the most enchanting manner.

Immediately the perfumes took the form of the flowers from which they emanated, and blew out in a vase of transparent onyx. The iris sparkled like blue stars, and the acacia flowed and heaved in waves of gold. The onyx took a female form, and I looked on the pitying and heavenly face of Louise Guerin. The monotonous harmony of the Tarabouk and Rebeb (played by the attendants) came vaguely to my ears, and served as rhythm to this strange poem which has rendered for evermore the epics of Homer, Virgil, Tasso and Ariosto as wearisome as a table of logarithms.

Irene and Raymond taking possession of their former humble abodes, are startled by the mutual re-appearance of the lights of old. Some trees have been removed which grew in an intervening garden in the old times, and what greets Irene's eyes when morning light comes forth, but her idol looking towards her room from his now open window! She makes little ceremony of throwing up her own; and now, ye nymphs and beardless youths, bring orange flowers and bridal wreathes; bring but stay! what will Prince Roger and Poet Edgar think of the false one's conduct, and the treachery of their ci devant bosom friend?

And here let us bewail the precarious state of Paris Journalism, which, in order to preserve the number of subscribers at paying price, is forced to keep their sensibilities at fever heat, by the daily piecemeal issue of an exciting and pernicious tale, every part of which must have its own unhealthy interest, and render the reading victims miserable by suspense