stickle for the prevalence of his own opin- | sister-in-law, Madame Adelaide, and the ion, and endeavor to carry his point.

When the cabinet breaks up the ministers dispute with each other for the caricatures and figures which escape from the sovereign's fertile pen. These are treasured up in portfolios by female friends, and per-worthy religieuses the primeur of his claret sons of high rank, and altogether form a curious collection. Several of them may be seen in a certain portfolio in the Place St. George.

time, Madame Adelaide and the king's se- | King of the French ever escape the recretary, the Baron Fain, were the only proach of deep delusion and the most persons who always had access to this unworthy, unkingly, and ungentlemanly apartment. His majesty seldom retires to blague and humbug, when our young soverest till two or three in the morning, and reign was domiciled at Eu. then he reposes on a lit de camp, just such as may be seen in the sleeping apartment of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle.

There can be no doubt that the demise of the last of his race, and the companion of his earliest childhood and adolescence, has had a deep effect on the health of his majesty. It came upon him like a thunderbolt after he had been suffering an attack of that horrible complaint called la grippe.

The chief and only merit of the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, during the last seven years, has been that he has preserved the peace of Europe; but we question that this merit belongs to him in a greater degree than to any other minister; for all Europe is disposed to be peaceable; and with Great Britain the cry is almost la paix quand même, equivalent to M. Guizot's cry in 1841 of la paix partout et la paix toujours.

and manufacturing classes; and not all the oratory of M. Montalembert against Lord Palmerston-that Montalembert whose father commenced his career as a cornet of cavalry in England, and made, in the English armies, the campaigns of Egypt and India, of Spain, Portugal, and Holland, and in which armies he reached the rank of colonel, when he married an Englishwoman, the mother of the present peer-can induce dispassionate observers, even in France, to think that the conduct of our ministry has been wrong in reference to Switzerland. In fact, it is the narrow religious bigotry of a zealous Romanist Jesuit that speaks from the heart of Montalembert, and not the voice of a statesman.

Both king and minister have sacrificed far What is the grippe? the English reader too much of the chivalrous and honorable will ask. Well, then, it is an epidemical feeling of France to the money power and the catarrh, somewhat equivalent to our Eng-material interests of the banking, mercantile, lish influenza; and the substantive comes from the French verb gripper, to seize one suddenly, to overtake, to surprise, &c. This complaint chiefly affects and irritates the mucous membranes lining the throat, windpipe, and chest, and in old subjects often produces bronchitis and catarrh fever, dangerous and fatal. The King of the French had nearly recovered from his first attack, when his sister's death gave him a shock from which he has not since gained strength. His Majesty caught fresh cold at Dreux, and in attending the funeral; and during the past fortnight has no longer enjoyed his usually robust health. When it is remembered that he is now in his seventy-fifth year, that internal and external relations are becoming daily more delicate and complicated, that the cry for reform is becoming louder and more general, and that a large portion of the ablest and most influential men in the nation have ranged themselves round the Duchess of Orleans, by whom they would rally in case of the demise of the king, it may well be conceived that the position of Louis Philippe is far from an easy one.

In so far as prudence and sagacity can help a man, no doubt his coolness, courage, and experience, will stand him in good stead; but it cannot be denied that ever since the affair of the Spanish marriages, the foreign policy of France has become more and more enmeshed and embrangled. The foreign minister has made great mistakes, and descended to trickery and discreditable subterfuge, unworthy of a man of mind or a man of letters. M. Guizot will never get over the passage relating to en même temps; nor will His Majesty the

It becomes not the King of the French to encourage such zealots, or to permit his sons to applaud their speeches. The King of France is standing with one leg in the grave; and were he to depart to-morrow, or within the year-an event which seems so likely as to be generally discussed-it might come to pass that the throne which he gained by one revolution his descendants would lose by another of less duration than three days. Molière says, in his Les Précieuses Ridicules,—

O Fortune! quelle est ton inconstance ! and in nothing is the remark truer than in the succession to an inheritance of which the right and title is neither par droit de conquête, nor par droit de naissance.

But enough of politics, on which we have dwelt so long that we have not left ourselves space to say that Alboni, Grisi, and Persiani, with Mario, Coletti, Gardoni, and Ronconi, font fureur aux Italiens.

From the New Monthly Magazine.

A VISIT TO SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Forsan et hæc olim meminisse juvabit.

[A writer in the New Monthly has been for some time, cordial reception be blotted from my mind. narrating interesting facts and anecdotes relating to emi-On learning that I should be compelled to nent literary characters, under the title of "a Graybeard's gossip about his Literary acquaintance." The last of these is the following lively sketch of a visit to Sir Walter

Scott, which will not be without interest.-Ed.]

F the exact date of the most trivial circumstance will sometimes fix itself in the memory, well may I recollect that so memorable an occurrence as my first interview with the illustrious Sir Walter Scott took place on the 7th of July, 1827.

in court." To this proposition we gave an eager assent, and I need scarcely add that on the following morning we presented ourselves at his door, within a minute of the time specified.

quit Edinburgh in two days, my fellowtraveller, Mr. Barron Field, having business at the Lancaster assizes, he kindly invited us to dine with him, either on that day or the next, for both of which, however, we were unfortunately pre-engaged. Though the parties who had thus bespoken us were barrister friends, from whose society I anticipated no small pleasure, most willingly would I have forfeited it, had I foreseen the greater delight and honor in Having left Speir's Hotel in Edinburgh, which I might have participated. "Posiat an early hour, I proceeded to the Court tively, I must see something of you before house, in which a few persons were already you leave' Auld Reekie,'" kindly resumed assembled, awaiting the arrival of the Sir Walter. Suppose you come and judges. At one extremity of a railed en- breakfast with me to-morrow, suffering me closure, below the elevated platform appro- to escape when I must make my appearance priated to their lordships, sat Sir Walter, in readiness for his official duties as clerk of the court, but snatching the leisure moments, as was his wont, and busily engaged in writing, apparently undisturbed by the buzzing in the court, and the trampling Our host was dressed, and ready to feet of constant new comers. The thoughts receive us; his daughter, Miss Scott, prewhich another man would have wasted, by sently made her appearance, shortly followgazing vacantly around him, or by "bald, ed by her brother, Mr. Charles Scott. disjointed chat," he was probably at that During our short meal I can recall one remoment embalming, by committing to paper mark of Sir Walter which, trivial as it was, some portion of his immortal works. Let may be deemed characteristic of his jeame frankly confess that his first appearance lousy in the minutest things that touched disappointed me. His heavy figure, his the good reputation of Scotland. I hapstooping attitude, the lowering gray brow, pened to observe that I had never before and unanimated features, gave him, as I tasted bannocks, when he entreated me, and thought, a nearer resemblance to a plodding earnestly repeated the request, not to judge farmer, than to the weird magician and of them by the specimen before me, as they poet whose every look should convey the were badly made, and not well baked. Our impression that he was "of imagination all conversation chiefly turned upon Edincompact." Quickly, however, were his burgh, of which city, so grand and pictulineaments revivified and altered when, upon resque from its locality, so striking from glancing at a letter of introduction, which the contrast of its old and new towns, I exmy companion had placed before him, he pressed an unbounded admiration. Our hastened up to the rail to welcome me. host, however, assured me that the HighHis gray eyes twinkled beneath his uplifted land scenery would have been found much brows, his mouth became wreathed with more romantic and imposing, and expressed smiles, and his countenance assumed a be- his wonder, considering the quickness, fanignant radiance as he held out his hand to cility, and economy with which it might me, exclaiming,-"Ha! my brother scri- now be explored, that I should lose so favorbler! I am right glad to see you." Not able an opportunity of proceeding further easily, "while memory holds her seat," north, even if I did not pay my respects to will that condescending phrase and most the Hebrides.

"Did it ever happen to you, when you were a good little boy at school, that your mother sent you a parcel, in the centre of Spite of the ridicule which, from the which she had deposited your favorite sweet-erection of Strawberry Hill to the present meat, whereof you had no sooner caught a day, has been lavished upon such modern glimpse, than you put it aside, that you antiques; spite of the very questionable might wait for a half holiday, and carry it taste which induced Sir Walter to embody with you to some snug corner where you in his new house old materials, occasionally could enjoy it without fear of interruption?" exhibiting remote dates and heraldic em"Such a thing may have occurred," said blazonments, until the incongruous strueI, much marvelling whither this strange in- ture might well be termed an architectural quiry was to lead. anachronism; I myself could find no fault with either the conception or the execution of this most interesting pile. To me it offered a mural presentment of the mind,

as well as a fitting receptacle for the body ties, most of the weapons having an historiof a man, all whose predilections and asso- cal or personal interest attached to them. ciations were with the middle ages; and Some of these were donations from indiwho had so little sympathy with the classi-viduals, but when Sir Walter became a cal, that he could derive no gratification purchaser of such rarities, he must have from Roman antiquities, even when he stood, labored under the disadvantage of raising at a later period, within the very precincts of the market price against himself. The gun the Colosseum. For pagan remains, and the of an obscure marauder could be of little five orders of Vitruvius, he cared not a rush. value to any one; but when it was known It was his object to build up an imitation to have belonged to Rob Roy, the hero of of the medieval style, not so close or slav- a popular novel, and was to be sold to the ish, however, as to unfit it for the require- author of the work, it acquired an adscitiments of modern civilization. The armory, tious enhancement, which must have rentherefore, which, as the paramount object, dered its purchase much more expensive. would have occupied the largest chamber in In the library I noticed a splendidly bound a baronial castle, was restricted to a mode- set of our national chronicles, presented by rately-sized hall; while the principal apart- George IV., one of the very few instances ment was appropriated to such a splendid ever evinced by that monarch of a taste for library as became the most eminent author books, or of any attention to an author. In of a literary age. one of his poems, Sir Walter cautions the reader that

He who would see Melrose aright,
Must view it by the pale moonlight;

A building composed of such materials, constituted a museum of relics so rich in historical associations, and many of them bearing such immediate reference to some of his novels, that almost every stone might but as I had been told that he himself had literally be said to "prate of his where- never taken his own advice, I proceeded to about." While deriving an interest from inspect the abbey in the daytime, and in its present ownership, Abbotsford conjured my next morning's drive over a dreary up a new one out of the past, leaving the moor, of forty miles to Otterburn, had abunspectator in doubt which had imparted to dant time to reflect upon all that I had seen him the most pleasurable sensation. What and heard in the modern Athens, and in man of suggestive mind, for instance, could the residence of our age's most illustrious pass the gateway of the Edinburgh Tol- writer. booth, reconstructed where it now standsthat gateway through which so many had In the following year, I had occasion to dragged themselves with heavy hearts, in solicit a favor from Sir Walter Scott, which anticipation of their merited doom, or from was granted with his usual promptitude and which they had bounded away in the rap- courtesy. A paragraph had found its way inture of recovered liberty, without extempo- to print, penned by an amicable but indisrizing imaginary novels almost as numerous creet hand, stating the writer's belief that I as the motes that animate the sunbeam? shared the opinions of a mutual friend, who, To me the whole scene appeared a fairy- in the temerity of youth-it might almost land of terra firma-a dream of realities; be said of boyhood-had avowed sentiments and when I reflected that all had been ac- of a most unorthodox tendency. The paracomplished by an author's copyright money, graph was perfectly gratuitous and unauI yielded to a preposterous vanity, suggest- thorized. Keeping scrupulously aloof from ed by Sir Walter's compliment of "brother polemical discussion, I had never looked scribbler," and whispered to myself, in imi- with any other feeling than that of compastation of the painter, "ed io anche sono sion upon the wretched gladiators who, in autore." The wizard poet, the Amphion the name of a religion that inculcates peace of his day, had built up these walls with and love, carry on such an incessant war of his lyre, and methought the sculptured hatred in the spiritual arena. From politiheads that surmounted them, not less mu- cal disquisitions I have been equally averse, sical than that of Memnon when vocalized but enough, it seems, had escaped to subby Apollo's rays, still gave out melodious ject me to a reviewer's accusation of being sounds that recalled his early poems, no-" sadly tainted with liberalism;" a charge vels, and romances. not altogether harmless in the high Tory days of which I am writing.

Small was the armory in the hall, it excelled many a larger collection in curiosi

During the discussions occasioned by