Prince T. Don't you? What do you think of yourselves, after having encouraged the Unions, acknowledged them, corresponded with them, admitted them to consultations, and all the rest of it, bringing up all your guards and guns, arms and artillery, planting them round London, and then, with bayonets at their throats, rejecting their petition about the Dorchester unionists, and taking it in at the front door of Melbourne's office and sending it out at the back?

Vis. P. I am only answerable for my own department.

Prince T. I was there. I left my carriage by Grey's Gate, in the Park, and saw the whole fun. I think you match me, my Čupid.

Vis. P. Nobody can match you: you are inimitable. Why you have sworn to thirteen constitutions.

Prince T. So would you have done, if they had changed in your country as often as they have in mine. You were a Tory; wer'n't you? You wrote in the New Whig Guide,'-ridiculed Duncannon,-bullied Brougham,and lampooned Hobhouse: yet here you are coopering up the concern, more of a Whig than your neighbours.

Vis. P. One-a is obliged to change with circumstances-a

Prince T. Granted! That's all I can have done; but my changes have been advantageous to me ;-yours the reverse. Upon my honour,-don't be angry,-I have buttered you over as long as I thought there was a chance of your keeping yourself up: but it really is too ridiculous. You are not fit for Foreign Secretary. You'd do beautifully for a ViceChamberlain, like Belfast,—or a Captain of Beef-eaters, like Clanricarde, -or anything of that sort, where you might dress smartly, and curl those darling whiskers. But for a Foreign Secretary, I—

Vis. P. What, Sir?

Prince T. You'll excuse me, I speak out-you are just as fit as your friend Dr. Wade would be to be Archbishop of Canterbury, or Mr. Baron Williams, that cockymehoppyme-lawyer, commander-in-chief.

Vis. P. Gad! this-a is rather a new turn you have taken.

Prince T. I cannot help it. Constantinople was without a minister when the most important treaties were to be signed and the most serious business to be transacted. Cousin Ponsonby could not get there because the north-easterly wind blew incessantly during six months of an Italian year; and you sent him the red riband because he was absent, and did nothing. Stratford Canning, another of your red ribands, dare not go to Russia; Nicholas won't have him; and America laughs at you, and won't send you an ambassador. We have got Ancona and Algiers,— that is to say, the Mediterranean. Otho, your Greek King, costs you a million and a half of money; Leopold, your Belgian, costs you 50,000l. a-year, and is not worth his salt. Howard de Walden botches your affairs in Portugal; George Villiers bemuddles them in Spain; and now I have wheedled you into a treaty by which France will in six months be in possession of the Peninsula, and England have to pay the expenses.

Vis. P. I am not disposed to be twitted in this way by a man who has been all things by turns-a bishop—a—

Prince T. Stop; don't be pert, Cupid. I have saved you many an exposure. I know that I manage you, but don't provoke me further. You are a very nice man; there's an end, so good day. Perhaps we may meet in Arlington-street to-night. Don't pout-I say, how did you like it, when, at the dinner of the Knights of the Bath, the King commanded the Speaker to return thanks for the Civil Grand Crosses, instead of you? Eh? Good bye. How did you like yourself in the evening? Au revoir. Good bye: don't pout.

Vis. P. Devil that he is, thank heaven, he has stumped off with his cloven foot!

Scene-A Chamber in the " Chamber" of Deputies. Present-M. PERSIL, M. GUIZOT, GENERAL LAFAYETTE, M. LAFITTE. M. Persil. I am about to present a communication to the Chamber from an individual who once held an illustrious station in the councils of this kingdom. It is from M. Polignac! who is also in attendance, by permission of the government, in order to give such explanations as may be required of him. He simply prays the Chamber to address the Crown for a remission of the remaining period of imprisonment to which he and his colleagues are subject under the sentence of the Chamber of Peers, on the ground that the recent proceedings of government, and the movement on the part of the people, have clearly proved that the ordonnances of July, 1830, were not only justifiable by the actual state of things, but altogether inevitable.

Gen. Lafayette. The next thing you will do, M. Persil, will be to send for Charles X., or at least for Henry V. I repeat it, that this is a most violent outrage upon the system of the barricades. M. Persil ought to be sent to Ham.

M. Lafitte. Before the Minister proceeds further in this important counter-revolution, I think that M. Polignac ought to be present. I have a few questions to put to him, which perhaps may throw some light upon this astonishing coup d'état.

M. Guizot. Such republican interruptions are not to be tolerated.

(M. Persil, who had withdrawn, returns with M. Polignac, who takes a seat beside the chairs of the Ministers.)

M. L. M. Polignac, although somewhat surprised to see you here, I wish to put a question to you. Have you not been lately frequently visited by the King, and by the Keeper of the Seals? and if so, I should be glad to hear what passed between you and them on those occasions.

M. Polignac. It is true I have recently had the honour of being consulted by some persons of the highest distinction, whose names I am not at liberty to disclose, and who have questioned me as to the substance of some ordonnances originally intended to have accompanied those about which so much clamour was made in 1830.

M. L. Those ordonnances, which you then kept back, were framed, I believe, for the purpose of authorizing the apprehension of myself, M. Lafayette, and other Honourable Deputies obnoxious to the King.

M. Pol. One of the ordonnances in question was to that effect, undoubtedly.

M. L. What was the purport of the others ?

M. Per. It is highly inconvenient in the present state of the country, when the most alaming movements are going on at Lyons, Poitiers, and even in the capital itself, to question the illustrious prisoner as to any communications which he may have had with the Ministers.

M. Pol. I certainly conceived that, in coming here, my only duty was to defend myself against a sentence which the Chamber must now be fully convinced was in every way unjust. I demand my liberation; I appeal to the justice-to the honour of France!

Gen. L. I for one am most anxious to hear what the Prince has to say in his own behalf.

M. Pol. I have now before me a copy of the ordonnances which gave rise to the barricades, and I find that the existing government has not only re-issued them in another form, but has also carried them into execution. Our misfortune was, that we foresaw coming events too clearly, and at too great a distance. In our report to the King, we stated that "signs of disorganization and symptoms of anarchy manifest themselves at almost every point of the kingdom." Have not disorganization and anarchy

actually made their appearance since that period in almost every part of France?

M. G. Undoubtedly.

M. Pol. We declared that "pernicious and subversive doctrines were propagated amongst all classes of the people.' Witness the declaration of adhesion to the principles of Robespierre published last year.

M. Per. But we have put it down.

M. Pol. We merely endeavoured to prevent it from being made. We foresaw trouble and civil war, and perpetual commotions. All these things have since occurred.

Gen. L. It is because the Ministry have followed in your footsteps.

M. Pol. Well, we said that the agitations of the day were produced by the press-the great focus of rebellion. We took measures for destroying it; have you not said and done the same thing? You prosecuted the "Tribune" newspaper ninety-six times; and then, when you found prosecution of no avail, you sent your officers to the bureau of that journal, sealed up its presses, seized its materiel, and expelled its compositors. An act of this description on our part brought about the revolution.

M. L. Wait a while; the revolution is not yet ended.

M. Per. What does the Honourable Deputy mean that we are to have a revolution every year?

M. G. Or does he suppose that we are to stand by with indifference while a violent and disaffected press is endeavouring by constant, persevering, and malignant efforts to relax all the bonds of obedience and subordination, to weaken all the springs of public authority, to oppose and embarrass the Government, to raise citizen in arms against citizen, father against son, brother against brother, and to deluge the capital with blood?

M. Pol. Those very words, M. Guizot, you have borrowed from our report to the King.

M. G. I should certainly never have consented to the suppression of the "Tribune," had it not uniformly laboured, by the anarchy of its doctrines, to produce anarchy in the state.

M. Pol. You must have got my report by heart, for these are also my expressions. I find, moreover, that a law is now in discussion in the Chamber for removing prosecutions against the press from the cognizance of juries. This is another plagiarism from our ordonnances.

M. L. The Prince is perfectly right.

M. Pol. But further, although we felt that a turbulent democracy was preparing to supersede all law, and although we abolished the freedom of the press, dissolved the new Chamber, repealed the existing law of elections, and ordained a new one, we did not go so far as this Chamber and the present Government have done in depriving France altogether of the power of associating for political purposes. We left the law of Napoleon on that subject untouched.

M. G. Mon Dieu! what was to be done? In every street there was an association organized for the diffusion of Republican principles. Were we to suffer them to go on until they conquered us, or were we to put them down at once?

M. Pol. I do not, of course, mean to censure your policy. You have at this moment eight hundred individuals under arrest in Paris charged with political offences-your hospitals are crowded with citizens sabred by the Guards-there are nearly one hundred dead bodies waiting to be recognized, slain in your streets--more property and a greater number of lives have been lost lately in Lyons than during the most sanguinary scenes of the revolution-and you are expelling your subjects from all parts of the territory; these are events which never could have occurred under the

reign of Charles X., for he abdicated his throne rather than attempt to keep it at the expense of French blood.

M. Per. The Prince speaks the truth. It must be no longer concealed that he was well informed of the state of the kingdom when he presented his report to Charles X., and that we are now only taking the steps which he should have adopted at that period.

Gen. L. Ah! if we had but again the opportunity of choosing between a republic and a monarchy! I protest I see no difference whatever between Charles X. and Louis Philippe-between Persil and Polignac.

M. Pol. It will follow, therefore, that if I am to remain at Ham with my colleagues in misfortune, the present Ministers should participate in our punishment; but if the Chamber will not impeach the Government, we, who are guilty only in intention of what they have reduced to practice, should be restored to freedom.

THE ADVENT OF WINTER.

MOSCOW.

HE comes-he comes-from the land of snows!
The quaking Earth his footstep knows,
And the Sun looks cold, and dim, and pale,
Through the gathering tempest's murky veil.
He comes the Winds, in numbers deep,

Herald his march from steep to steep,
And the voice of the Cataract, less remote,
Welcomes his advent in louder note;
And the Forest is doffing his leafy crown;
And the Mountain is casting his chaplet down;
And the swallow is winging her way afar

To the climes where the grape and the citron are.
Ye may trace his steps by the cloud and shower,
And the faded grass, and the fallen flower,
And the rifted elm, and the scatter'd flock,
And the hovel crush'd by the loosen'd rock.
He has swept the fields of their golden store,
He has blacken'd with wrecks the sandy shore.
Clamour, and Tumult, and Fear, and Pain,
And Famine, and Death, are in his train.
Bind his brow with a chaplet sere,
Crown ye the Victor of the Year!

A louder shout! let it rend the sky

Proclaim a nobler victory!

He has stricken a King in his hour of might,
He has wither'd the arm that was strong in fight!
He came, when the burning city's glare

Stream'd through the dark and sulphurous air,
When the lance and sword were black with gore,
And the trumpet's clang, and the cannon's roar,
And groan, and shout, and laugh, and yell,
And shriek, and curse were likest Hell.
In tempest, and in cloud, he came,
Quell'd was the battle, quench'd the flame,
Feeble the hands that never fail'd,

And faint the hearts that never quail'd.
Crown ye the Victor!-bind his brow
With the undying laurel bough!

AN ESSAY ON WONDERING.

I WONDER What sort of a place this world would be, if we had nothing to wonder at. I do not at all approve of the nil admirari system; for we cannot help wondering; and if we attempt to avoid it, we are sure to fail. Nay, if a man, by any effort of mind, has arrived at that pitch of perfection as to wonder at nothing, he must, of course, wonder at himself, that he is so much superior to the rest of the world. But show me the man who never wonders, and I will show you the man who never thinks. Everything was made to be wondered at, and we were made to wonder at everything. Asses never wonder; they take everything for granted, and seem to be complete fatalists. They receive the cudgel as patiently as if it were pre-ordained, and essential to the harmony of the universe. We intellectual folk, who are not asses, investigate, think, wonder, and cease to wonder; but we have no sooner ceased to wonder at one thing than we begin to wonder at another.

I am willing to grant that there is nothing new under the sun; but, for all that, we live in a very wonderful world, and are constantly surrounded by a world of wonders. In good sooth, I am inclined to think that everything is wonderful, and that the greatest wonder in the world would be to find anything not wonderful. We can scarcely take up a newspaper without finding something wonderful-such as a wonderful turnip, six feet in circumference; or a wonderful primrose, in a wonderful garden, in consequence of the wonderful mild weather. I remember that when I was at school, my master used to wonder at my assurance that I should dare to disobey, in any one particular, his high behests; and I, in turn, used to wonder at him for wondering at me; so I had my revenge in retaliation,-wonder for wonder-tit for tat,-only I did not tell him of my wonder: I kept that to myself; and I verily believe, now I come to think of it, that my wonder was much the sincerest of the two. If you wish to write an essay, or to begin a conversation, and are at a loss for something to write or talk about, only write or say "I wonder," and something will be sure to follow.

Wondering is the peculiar faculty and privilege of human and intellectual beings. I have said above that asses do not wonder: they have not wit enough. I was going to say that wondering may be applied as a distinctive epithet of the human species, and that Plato might have amended his definition by this addition; but I fear I should be wrong. Plato, you must know, defined man as a featherless biped; upon which Diogenes, who was what the world calls a wicked wag, stripped the feathers from a poor, unfortunate bantam-cock, and exultingly exclaimed, "There is Plato's man!" Now, if Plato, in order to render his definition more definite, had defined man to be a wondering, featherless biped, Diogenes would still have been down upon him, saying, "Look at Plato's man-a featherless biped, wondering what has become of his feathers!"

If, however, wondering be not altogether and exclusively confined to the human species, it exists among them in its greatest perfection and delightful fulness. It is by wondering that we are kept awake all day. When cats and dogs have had their dinner they go to sleep; but man keeps awake, wondering what cats and dogs can find to dream about,