lip, as if painful remembrances touched her at the sight of the little langes," now yellow with age. Then she fixed her eyes again on Petit Jean, and listened in silence to all Madame's loquacious descriptions of the courage, wit, and vivacity of the boy's earliest years.

66

Sister Thérèse, with kindly authority, gave good advice to Jean and his adopted mother, and promised to renew her visit at some future time. "But," said she, "we have so little leisure; what with the school-children and the sick, and the Church offices, we have rarely a moment to spare. Come, Agnes, bid farewell to the good Christian who has been a mother to a forsaken child. We have hardly time to gain the Hôtel Dieu for our watch."

She rose to depart, saluting us all with a wave of the hand and a quiet smile.

"Au revoir," murmured the pale Sister Agnes, following her with a slow, mechanical step. She crossed the threshold, then suddenly returning, took Jean by the hand, and imprinted a long yearning kiss on his forehead; her lips seemed to grow there, and her sad eyes overflowed with tears meanwhile. Jean watched them from the door.

"Mademoiselle," whispered the porteress to me, "did you observe that

kiss?"

"Yes; why?"

"Only mothers kiss like that," she replied, shaking her head with a glance full of meaning-" only mothers! Hélas! la pauvre fille!"

Three years afterwards, when I was far removed from the Quartier Latin, occurred one of those periodical minor revolutions to which poor France has been always subject since the great shock to her system in the latter part of the last century: sort of epileptic fits following a terrific attack of delirium, treated by copious bleeding instead of good food and tonics.

Petit Jean on this occasion headed a band of the youthful gardes mobiles, and received his death-blow at a very early stage of the business. He lay bleeding behind a barricade of overturned fiacres and omnibuses, when two Sisters of Charity advanced to him. One raised his head, the other attempted to stanch the blood from a wound in his breast.

"Ah! is it you, Sister Thérèse? ever my good angel; and you too, Sister Agnes?"

"Not sister," whispered the poor woman, pressing to her bosom his drooping head; "not sister, but mother, your own unfortunate, most erring mother. Tell me you forgive me, my son!"

Death was fast veiling the bright eyes which sought hers so eagerly at these words; the hand which would have clasped hers fell limp and powerless; but the lips moved, and on the strained ear of the listener fell the soft sound, "My mother, my dear mother!" One kiss, and the newly-claimed tie was severed, severed for a time, to be re-united-yes, grant it, forgiving Lord!-re-united for ever.

And so passed away Petit Jean; and good Madame Babois has had a florid history of him engraven on his tomb, which she decorates monthly with fresh wreaths and crosses, and inspects as often the little packet of linen so often watered by her tears.

Doctor Meyer and his wife are flourishing in Canada, where there is ample scope for the exercise of his talents, and fewer people to remark on

their little difference of rank in the social ladder. Will is a portly family man, and I have more than one small tyrant clinging to my maternal skirts. The Quartier Latin has become to me a dream; yet no ;-dreams are less pleasant, more eccentric; it is rather a page in the history of my life read over and over again by the lamp of memory-read so often, that my fond prejudice led me to fancy others might like to read it too. The mature reader will forgive me, for he too must have some vivid chapter in his youthful life over which he dwells when all has changed, the actors have vanished, the scene is shifted, nay, even his own identity lost in the difference of costume.

In gala dresses, with garlanded heads,
Their lips in laughter extended,

They joyously sit at the banquet of life-
The sickle falls,-all is ended!

In festal attire, with roses adorn'd,

Still blooming with life, these glad mortals,
These fav'rites of Fortune, reach at last
The shadowy realm's dark portals.

They ne'er were disfigured by fever's attacks,
They die with a joyous demeanour,
And gladly are welcomed at her sad court
By Proserpine, hell's czarina.

O how I envy a fate like theirs!—
Seven years I daily languish
For death, as on the ground I writhe
In bitter and speechless anguish.
O God! my agony shorten, that I
May be buried-my sole ambition.
Thou knowest that I no talent possess
For filling a martyr's position.
I feel astonish'd, gracious Lord,
At a course so inconsequential;
Thou madest a joyous Poet without
That joy that is so essential.

My torments blunt each feeling of mirth,
And melancholy make me;

Unless I get better ere long, to the faith

Of a Catholic I must betake me.

Like other good Christians, I then shall howl
In Thine ears my wailings dreary-
The best of humorists then will be lost
For ever-O miserere!

THE CONFEDERATE JUSTIFICATION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

SIR, It was as far back as September that you were good enough to insert some observations of mine upon the present unhappy contest going on in the United States of North America. I did not flatter myself that they would have attracted notice on the other side of the Atlantic, and that an American gentleman, who declares himself to be of the State of Arkansas, in a publication entitled "Confederate Notes for English Circulation,"* should have done me the honour of noticing, although in reprobation, the article to which I allude. Not that I complain; I am let off gently compared to Professor Cairnes, who, in his work entitled the "Slave Power," has shown a more decided feeling of opposition to the slave system which it has been the object of the Southern States not merely to maintain on the footing it stood at the period of the declaration of independence, but to extend and ramify as much as possible in order to render the extirpation of that curse of humanity next to impossible. As slaves could not be openly imported it became necessary to multiply them at home by all possible modes. A part of Virginia, rendered hopelessly barren owing to the over-cultivation of the soil, until it was utterly exhausted, turned the attention of a portion of its people to breeding slaves as they would breed swine, to dispose of in the more Southern markets. The trade became a flourishing one in the Virginian hutches. Cross-breeds, semi-whites, or pure African blood, all would do-like Peter Pindar's razors-to sell. In place of attempting to lessen the evil, the object was to increase and render it a lasting system. By dint of union in the South, and by successful efforts to detach a certain number of members from the North, so far as to maintain a predominant influence in the government, not only the maintenance of slavery was strengthened and established on the firmest footing, but also its extension almost to the Pacific by new states. The American papers long ago detailed to the world the unseemly individual contests on the floor of the congress, proceeding even to coarse brutality towards individual representatives who ventured to censure the degrading system in a free expression of their opinions. Still slave-breeding went on. Many slaves had two or three wives. Some owners even hoped each woman would lie in annually, and enhance the stock for sale. As long as a preponderance was maintained by the South, matters proIceeded with tolerable smoothness. Now and then the brutal explosion of an angry Southerner would take place when some one of the North ventured to be hostile in relation to slavery. The representatives of the South boast of being the élite of the American people, aping at a distance sufficiently remote the feudal lords of the past time in Europe with their wretched serfs. Yet matters going their own way, and the men in authority not presuming to differ from them,

* Confederate Notes for English Circulation. By M. B. H., of Arkansas. C. S. Simpson, 10, King William-street.

the State machine worked tolerably smooth, but still with the repetition of curses, loud and deep, upon those who did not hold Southern opinions. The choice of a president privately opposed to the objects and system of the Southern extension of slavery, although he might not proceed to any action which seriously affected their interests, and although he might not arrest further encroachments upon the laws of reason and humanity, was fully sufficient to incite the South to a covert design for the destruction of the existing government, and the establishment of slavery as a fixed and permanent rule, this even if an anti-slavery president were only elected, although he should display no overt act of hostility to slavery. According to the South, the advantage of unpaid labour and white idleness (for it is upon his own idleness that the Southerner builds his ideal claim to the gentleman) was no stigma upon a whole empire for the crime of a part, and no denial to the Northerners of holding an opinion on the matter, or a right to feel solicitous about the disgrace to the national character among other countries; this was openly denied. The election of a president who held sentiments favourable to the best interests of mankind, irrespective of action, became a signal for open rebellion, for which all had been long duly prepared in the South in case of such a contingency. It should be "their way," or they would not longer obey the general government. The slave-master minority would be master of the government or separate by rebellion. The spirit of petty tyranny in the land must needs be that of political rule. The familiarity with despotic power in their domiciles imparted a similar spirit in regard to public affairs, and, singular enough, the world was desired to take notice that where the most absolute slavery existed, and free citizens dared not express an opinion adverse to that held by the South upon any point, that such a people so violating every law of humanity was to be credited as "politically" free! In regard to the right any American state, a fraction of the territory, has to declare itself free, because it possesses the power of self-government to a certain extent, and the affirmative, can only be supported by the success of the treason which changes the name, and points out a new designation. The English counties are self-ruled. They have a military establishment, at the head of which is the lord-lieutenant, who raises and controls troops of no contemptible class. He has his deputies. The sovereign does not even sign the commissions of the officers. The civil power is in the hands of the justices, who raise and control the expenditure, and almost all the offices are held by people locally appointed, yet will any sane man say that Yorkshire, for instance, is not in rebellion against the English crown if it rise in arms, and declare itself free on the order of the local government, under the false pretext of not liking a tax levied by parliament? It is clear, as said before, that the Slave States of America had long decided on rebellion if they found the head of the government, or the government itself, such as did not suit their ideas, horribly despotic as their views were and are, and that, too, whether the general government interfered or not with the existing system.

The statistics which I used were undeniable. The writer attempts to explain them away. He appeals to some lady, of whom I have now heard for the first time, who paid America a visit a few years ago, as a competent witness in behalf of slaveowners and slavery. Really, this

is pushing evidence rather too far. A casual visit to America, South or North, by a young lady, or a young gentleman either, can decide nothing. Men have gone over to the States, and, returning to England, have written books after a visit of a few weeks, abusing all Americans. No one would take these for more than their worth at a glance. A young or old lady, who has, it appears, written some letters to England, called the slave-holding planters "preux chevaliers," and judged the Southerners by their jolly countenances, so different from the Northerners. I will not quarrel about the beauty of the Yankee features, North or South, for in Europe we call all Americans Yankees. Now, if there be such a striking difference, perhaps the hard personal labour of the North compared with Southern idleness-the work being done there by unpaid labourers this may account for the difference which the discriminating fancy of the lady may more correctly judge than one of the other sex is likely to do, by the rotundity or acuteness of the features of Americans in general. I have never denied the hospitality and good cheer of the Southern planters. Pleasanter men-provided they have their own absolute way, and you do not contradict them in any favourite or interested opinion, held with inflexible tenacity-pleasanter men do not exist. This must be understood in the sense which attached to our old ignorant feudal lords, in the halls where they feasted the stranger over the dungeons beneath filled with victims, and were permitted to torture and decapitate their serfs occasionally in the way of amusement.

But such kind of evidence is nothing to the purpose. It is clear the South had prepared for rebellion the moment it was aware that slave interests would be no longer supreme in the Union. If such a resistance be not rebellion, it is very difficult to find an English name for it. A president whose private sentiments were unfavourable for slave-breeding and selling, although so difficult a question that he could not venture to agitate it, were he in office, still his private sentiments made him the object of implacable animosity to the South.

Mr. Cairnes, late Professor of Political Economy in the University of Dublin, comes in for much severer censure than myself in reference to his work entitled the "Slave Power," &c. That gentleman is said to be "indoctrinated more thoroughly than Mr. Redding by the sainted missionaries of the Northern money-changers." No doubt the professor can defend his opinions, and will not quote the Scriptures of the Jews to uphold slavery. Our Arkansas friend would no doubt defend suicide from the Scriptures, for suicide is found there as well as slavery. He cannot see the difference between a system existing in barbarous times among heathens, or men little better, and a more enlightened state of things in humanity, science, and literature, ripened by the philanthropic genius of Christianity. I trust we are a little nearer advanced towards the doctrines of the New Testament, and shall not find a modern guide in any of the barbarities of the old Jew, or heathen, which a Christian system has superseded. My other statistics remain uncontradicted, but there is an attempt to palliate differences, which amounts to little against figures.

Referring to my former article in the New Monthly Magazine, the defender of the South, from Arkansas, says, in substance, that we have much to unlearn; that the North deceives the world, which is ruled by