MISCELLANEOUS.

LETTER FROM PARIS.

his correspondents, thought fit to apply to the Abbé himself, and accordingly addressed him the following question, through the medium of his Journal. Si es, ubi es?

It is well known that, during the entire of his journey from Elba to Paris, Buonaparte never ceased speaking of his truce, for twenty years, with the English, of the succour he expected from Austria, and of the immediate return of Maria Theresa. Once, however, in possession of the supreme power, promises. In allusion to this circumstance,

Paris, 1825. At a late sitting of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at the Institute, M. Arago communicated his remarks on a halo, observed on the very day of sitting, at 12 o'clock at noon. M. Arago seems to sanction the theory of Mariotti, that these phenomena are produced by frozen water carried along by the clouds, and refracting the light of the sun. By means of an apparatus of his own invention, he is able a wag posted on the Pont Neuf the follow

to distinguish polarized light from that which is not so, and that the light of these halos is a refracted and not a reflected light, as must be supposed by those who refuse to allow the explanation given by M. Marotti. M. Arago adds, that the observations made by him, and the conclusion to which they lead, are very important, inasmuch as they may furnish a means of determining the law of the fall of temperature, in proportion to the degree of elevation above the ground. M. Pastié read a memoir on the geography of plants. The principal object of the

not a word more was heard of all these fine

ing: Notice-Lost, in coming from the island of Elba, a pocket-book, containing a treaty of peace and a lady's passport. A handsome reward will be given to whoever will bring the above to the palace of the Tuilleries.

On the 5th of December, 1815, a law was passed at the Chamber of Deputies, ordering the celebration of expiatory ceremonies in memory of the death of Louis XVI. Among the most enthusiastic supporters of this measure was the Viscount Sosthenes de la Roch

efoucauld, who distinguished himself upon the

author of this memoir is to establish the opi- occasion by the animated warmth of his lannion, that, in order to learn the medicinal guage. On the evening of the same day, a properties of plants, it is much more neces- scene, which caused a hearty laugh, took sary to direct our attention to the nature of place at the Pavillon Marsan. Being comthe soil in which they grow than to the plimented by Monsieur (now Charles X.) on genus to which they belong, or even to the the rare talent he had displayed in the dechymical principles that enter into their bate of the morning, and that prince comparcomposition. For instance, he remarks, that ing him to the eloquent defender of the liball the plants which grow on high grounds, erty of Greece, M. de Rochefoucauld repliand in dry and cold places, are of a tonic ed, "That he could not flatter himself with

and stimulant power, while those which grow in low and moist grounds possess quite the contrary properties.

To these scientific details I add a few historical anecdotes:

The following trait deserves to be recorded, as an instance of the religious sentiments that animated the breasts of the Vendean troops. Two soldiers belonging to the cavalry having fallen into a dispute, agreed

to decide their quarrel with the sword. The Marquis de Donnissan, passing by at the moment, remonstrated with them on their

want of charity: "Jesus Christ," said he, "pardoned his executioners, and a soldier

of the Christian army endeavours to kill his

comrade." At these words the two soldiers threw aside their sabres, and rushed into each other's arms.

being equal to Demosthenes in talent, but that he would not yield to that celebrated orator in devotion to his legitimate sovereign." This anachronism excited a general laugh at the expense of the Viscount, and was for several days the amusement of the salons at Paris.

NUMISMATICS.-A great number of pieces of ancient coin have been lately deposited in the Museum of Warsaw. These pieces were found in a village not far from Plockz

At the time of the Revolution of the 18th Brumaire, the Abbé Sieyes disappeared for some time from the political horizon. ko: they date from the beginning of the Some wags feigning to consider his absence 11th century, and belong to different couna public calamity, wrote to the Journal de tries, but principally to England. It is difParis, asking for information respecting the ficult to explain by what means such Endisappearance of the ex-director. The edi-glish coins were introduced into that country tor not being able to satisfy the inquiries of in times so remote.

POLITICAL MAXIMS. (From the French.) -It has been said in literature, that "Genius is long continued patience." It is true in politics. Time is a statesman's principal assistant.-That is the most unhappy popu

"At the end of her sleeves she had
A pair of hands so white,
It sure would have made my heart glad,
Had they box'd me from morning till night."

MEDAL OF LORD BYRON.-A bronze me

lation of a state whose wealth is not in pro- dal to the memory of Lord Byron has been

portion to its intelligence. Ignorance, rich or poor, is contented.-Nature has provided for the continuance of the world, by imparting a greater force to the parental than to the filial instinct. Thus the chain of beings is perpetuated. So, in the body politic, think of the rising generation rather than of that which is passed. Govern for the future; it is the secret of duration. In governments, honest people endeavour to make themselves

useful; clever people endeavour to make

executed in London. It is about two inches

in diameter, and consists of a head of the deceased bard, on one side; and on the other, of a laurel flourishing under a cloud, whence

lightning issues. Some parts of this production are very fine, and do honour to the medallic art. The head is in high relief, and the countenance nobly expressed, a little at the expense of resemblance; for the nose is hardly of the order which actually belonged to the original. The hair is mannered, and

themselves necessary; and ambitious people the neck out of human proportion; thus if

endeavour to make themselves indispensable.

A democrat when on foot, an aristocrat when in his carriage, such is a Parisian; nay, such is a Frenchman;-nay, such is man in every country. True policy says nothing; it does. There ought to be two kinds; that of speech and that of action; the one serving to conceal the other. Politics is the art of governing men according to time, place, and circumstance. It can therefore have no absolute rules. It can never be learned from books. The book of a

you cover the hinder half of the medal, you have a superb design in the portion left visible, to which the whole is far inferior. The

word ΒΥΡΩΝ is inscribed. The obverse

bears ΑΦΘΙΤΟΝΑΙΕΙ (imperishable.)

Although the following observations in Madame Belloc's "Lord Byron," are of an exaggerated character, and although they certainly betray a jealousy of English opulence, there is, nevertheless, some truth

statesman is the human heart. Political eco- in them; and it is well for a country as for nomy is the best, if not the only politics for an individual to receive a lesson from a the nineteenth century. Ascertain what neighbour, even when that lesson may not you produce, and what you consume; dis- be dictated by the kindest motives, or concover what are your wants, and what are veyed in the most civil terins.

your resources; reckon the amount of your "Money," says the fair author, "daily

physical and your intellectual force; compare your importations and your exportations; balance all these things; and the result will furnish you with a complete system of both internal and external policy.

On the first execution of the celebrated

assumes more importance in England.Every thing in that country is becoming the subject of sale or speculation. The coffers of the English run over, whilst their hearts harden. A woman of genius, and of a high and noble spirit, thus writes to me from London: We approach the epoch predicted by

Miserere of Lully, before the court of Louis Burke, and which, notwithstanding all his

XIV. in the chapel at Versailles, the monarch being on his knees during the whole time, necessarily kept his court in the same position. At its conclusion the King asked the Count de Grammont his opinion of it. " Sire," he replied, " the music is very soft to the ears, but very hard to the knees."

Anne of Austria, mother to Louis XIV. was one of the finest women of her time; the greatest of her personal beauties, however, was her hands. The Duke of Mantua, who frequented her court, made many extravagant verses in their praise, which gave rise to the following epigram by Scarron:

"Elle avoit an bout de ses manches,
Une paire de mains si blanches,
Que je voudrois en verité.
En avoir été souffleté."

Which has been rendered as follows:

prejudices, he could not contemplate without horror; that period at which England, instead of commanding her riches, is to be commanded by them. The base aristocracy of wealth threatens to supersede all other aristocracies. It is the sole good that is regarded, felt, conprehended, desired;-for which we hope to live, and for which we dare to die.""

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Phi Beta Kappa Repository.

No. 2.

FIDE AC FIDUCIA.

NEW-YORK, SEPTEMBER 17, 1825.

I QUESTION very much whether I shall be able to write with my usual good sense upon this most interesting and serious subject. Love is a passion, which, from the days of

Sappho down to those of Miss L. E. Landon,

VOL. I.

one of your archest and sunniest smiles on the happy youth who sits beside you, "good heavens! can he ask such a question?" The gallant St. Preux, to whom your words are addressed, flinging into his tones the gentle melody of a shepherd's pipe upon the mountains, whispers tenderly, "Forgive him, Amelia; he has never seen you." The blushing Amelia casts her bright eyes upon the ground, and her heart, "fra tanti palpiti e tanti," convinces her that she at least knows what love is.

I once thought so too, Amelia. But I was mistaken, and so are you, fair maiden. A

man may be in love for twenty years, -nay, for all his life, and yet not have the most distant notion of the sort of person he has to deal with. Cupid is a very Proteus. The

has been celebrated above all others for exercising the most despotic sway over human actions and character. The being, perhaps, never lived who did not at one pe- cameleon never assumes so vast a variety riod or other of his existence experience the of hues as he can do. Besides, there are a full force of its influence. It is the passion thousand impostors abroad, no more like the which supplies the materials of history, gives true son of Mars and Venus " than I to Her

cules." They are pseudo-pretenders to the name of Cupid, born of Nox and Erebus, or of the apothecary Mercury and the fair huntress Diana. It is often very difficult to

detect these false deities. They puzzle

even a connoisseur;

"Methinks there be six Richmonds in the field; Five have 1 slain to-day, instead of him."

interest to the pages of romance, and breathes new fervour into the inspirations of poetry. It is the passion by which a mortal may be raised to the skies, or an angel pulled down to the earth. On one hand, we find it giving rise to all the miseries of separation, all the wretchedness of inconstancy, and all the agonies of jealousy; on the other, we trace to it the source of the purest and highest pleasures of which the human mind is sus- But sooner or later the counterfeit is disceptible, and in comparison with which even covered. Much good blacking is sold for the happiness that results from the attain- Warren's, but you may depend upon it, unment of well-merited glory is of small ac- less that great man's signature is on the botcount. Such happiness is, in its very nature, tle, your boots will never have the true personal and selfish, and so all are the en- polish. Thus many a little urchin, abunjoyments of mortality, except those which dantly blind, and with a quiver sufficiently spring from love. It is to this very circum- full of arrows, will venture to attack you as stance that it owes its superiority, for, as you move through your own sphere of soci Madame De Stael has well remarked, "il ety; but be of good heart; you are in no n'est pas un moment ou d'avoir vecu pour danger. The true conqueror of conquerors un autre, ne fut plus doux que que d'avoir but rarely sends a shaft from his omnipotent existe pour soi." bow. He who rides on the dolphin's or lion's

But

But gently, my good Pegasus, gently. back, and breaks in pieces the thunderbolts You are in the clouds already. A little less of Jove, is a proud but generous tyrant. It declamation, if you please, and somewhat is but seldom that he condescends to assert more common sense. Will you have the his power over the breast of man. goodness to tell me, thrice excellent reader! when he does,-sauve qui peut. The burnwhat love is? "Good heavens!" I hear ing of Moscow was a mere joke to the flame you exclaim, with the silver softness of he kindles within; but of this more here"sweet eighteen," casting, at the same time after.

ous.

It is Moore, I think, who tells us that "love is heaven, and heaven is love." It may be so, the more especially as we know for certain that "there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage; " a ceremony which, if it were allowed to take place, would of course render the poet's intelligence erroneBut let this be as it may, (although I hope the time will come when we shall all have an opportunity of ascertaining its truth,) it is at all events indubitable, that to be in love is to be at the height of all earthly felicity. In love!-how can any dull pen write the words without breaking forth into the enraptured language of enthusiasm and delight!

"They lov'd, they were belov'd. Oh, happiness! I have said all that can be said of bliss,

In saying that they loved !"

Among which of the wilds of Kamschatka,

in what desert of Otaheite, shall I find a barbarian rude enough to deny a truth so simply but powerfully expressed! Where is the being so dead to all the finer feelings of humanity, as to confess that his heart is with

out the chord that vibrates to the touch of love, and spontaneously discourses "most eloquent music?" In love! -Does not the phrase spread a halo of immortal light round the imagination? Does it not conjure up

But this is knowledge which experience alone can give; and the constantly recurring hope, that the future will excel both the past and the present, long postpones the time when the discovery is made. Many, too, flutter about from flower to flower, always imagining that the next will be fairer and sweeter than the last. Such men know not that love is a grave, a deep, and absorbing passion, one that when it once takes possession of the heart "sedet, aeternumque sedebit." They know not that love has nothing to do either with blue eyes or auburn hair, and that a girl who is merely (in their own phrase) "a glorious girl," can never inspire it. They think themselves in love when their pulse is at a hundred instead of sixty. They forget that this may be ardour; it may be fire; it may be the rate at which

the blood should flow in preparation for "burning sighs" and "lava kisses"-any thing, in short, but love. Yet it is love with which they are acquainted. Like a wisp of straw, it blazes away most heroically, and

is consumed in its own flames. But let me not blame too severely, for I was myself, for a long while, as ignorant of the matter as the worst of them.

I was not fourteen when I first took it into

before us, in bright array, all the fairest my head to fall in love. Before that period, scenes of nature? Does it not awaken a I had read my way through half-a-dozen cirlong train of almost more than mortal asso- culating libraries. Every thing that bore ciations? Does it not transport us to the woods, and streams, and sunny skies of

Greece, and place us in the midst of the
Naiads, and Oreads, and Sylvan Fauns?

Does not Pan pipe beside us in the grove,

whilst the white garments and flowery chaplets of Arcadian girls glitter among the trees, and all is song, and dance, and smiles? But why travel back into ancient times? Who is there who will turn his back up the stream

upon its title-page the name of tale, novel, or romance, I had greedily swallowed. I stuck at nothing. With the most delightful indifference to all the beauties, either of composition, taste, or judgment, I had plod

ded on, page after page, chapter after chap

ter, and volume after volume, through a whole Bodleian of works of fiction. The

common amusements in which boys find so much delight were to me without interest. A match at foot-ball or cricket had no

of life, and visit the fairy haunts, through charms to win me from "The Mysterious

which he himself has sailed, that will not again call into birth the thrill of awakened

Freebooter." or "The Castles of Athlin and

emotion which love produced-long dor- Dunblane." Neither angling nor skating

mant, perhaps, but never entirely forgotten?

Does see that he behind

moments of delight, such as he may never again experience? Does he not remember bright eyes that once gazed on him in all the confiding tenderness of early years, and light hearts, whose every pulse beat in unison with his own? Then it is he feels what a

store

had power to charm me from the "Myste

ries of Udolpho," or "The One-handed

Monk." Nay, all school learning appeared to me contemptible. What were Horace and Virgil, when compared with "Thaddeus of Warsaw," and "St. Hillary the CrusaHelen of Troy, and Dido of Carthage, were they for a moment to be put in "Julia Rosenberg," or

der?"

of wealth there is in the fresh and joy- competition with

ous bosom of youth, and, sighing, he confesses that neither the lofty aspirations of ambition, nor the dazzling splendour of success, compensate the loss of the first wild witcheries of young and innocent existence. Once more, once more, he exclaims, give me back the gay morning of life;

"Its clouds and its tears are worth evening's best light."

* The writer is mistaken-it is Scott who tells us this. Ed. Lit. Gaz.

"An

of Castle Powell?" Neg

Anna, Countess lecting, therefore, all other attainments, and having my mind, in consequence, pretty tolerably endued with all the precious lore of sentimental milliners, it is not to be wondered that I thought, a little sooner than usual, of my turning my knowledge to some account, and of advancing from theory to

practice.

Yet, before descending to particulars, let me not dismiss, with nothing but a sneer, somehow or other, I had contrived to introthose days of early romance, and unsophis- duce in the two last lines a very complimenticated, harmless, unhesitating credulity. tary allusion to the "fair Matilda," the Alas! the stern truths of reality force them-name, as it happened, of my uncle's only selves but too soon upon the mind. Too daughter. Nothing was farther from my soon must we turn from that which might or intention than that Matilda should see should be, to that which is;-too soon must this opus inaugurale; but, in spite of my we grapple with the world, and see the rain- precautions, she did accidentally get her bow visions of youth "evanishing amid the hands upon it, and being about as good a storm." In the pride of its awakened ener- judge as I was a writer of poetry, she scrugies, the mind may rejoice to break through pled not to declare that it was the sweetest the mists of error by which it was surrounded. thing of the sort she had ever read. Many Too soon will it find that it was only through a deep blush did her praises cost me, for in the medium of these very mists that the those days blushes were with me more frecreations of the material world were seen quent than smiles. Matilda was three years arrayed in the fairy colours of enchantment. older than I. But she was very pretty, and It is true, that the "Mysteries of Udolpho" very good natured. She laughed, indeed, have ceased to charm; the "Black For- too much; but then her teeth were the finest est" possesses no longer its wild attractions; I ever remember to have seen. The flatand one of the common-place houses in tery she bestowed upon me was not, I beGeorge-Street or Charlotte square holds a lieve, meant as such; and, though I myself higher place in my esteem than the Cas- felt secretly convinced that it was somewhat tles either of Athlin or Dunblane. But extravagant, I could not bring myself to shall I say that I am therefore happier? Do like it the less on that account. I find in the speculation of a Locke or of a Of all sorts of praise, that which comes Stewart, or in the sober histories of a Hume from the lips of women is the most intoxicaor a Robertson, greater delight than I did ting. The commendations obtained by of old in the wonderful imaginings of a Rad- youth from experienced age, the applause cliffe or a Lathom? Oh no! Give me back bestowed upon the courageous soldier on the days when I believed in all things wild the field of battle, the loud acclamations and strange, as firmly as I now do in politi- that ring in the ear of the successful cal jobbing and religious hypocrisy. Ah! orator,-the delightful words of approbation "These-these were the times," as Dame and encouragement that flow so sparingly Quickly said to Goldsmith, when the fancy from the cautious pen of the critic, and was ready to take for granted every thing it shine before an author's eyes like sunbeams, wished to consider true. I have sailed along -all are nothing when set in competition the shores of Languedoc, -I have descended with the soft accents of indulgent woman. the valleys of Switzerland, I have sat in No one thinks of her capacity to judge, but, the solitary chateau,-I have gone out to satisfied with having afforded her pleasure, the glorious fight with the scarf of my Ade- he dreams not of inquiring whether his laide for a banner,-I have mingled in the talents are fit for higher things. Preferring battle,-I have returned victorious, -I have both tomilitary renown and sovereign power, been met with smiles, I have revelled in the compliments paid him by Cleopatra,

Anthony lost the dominion of the world.
Had Anthony been a writer of sonnets, as
I was, he would never have thought of con-
tending for it.

When I returned to town, Matilda still reigned paramount in my imagination. I

the luxury of love; after all this, oh, ye heavenly muses! must I open my eyes upon the world,-must I move along the streets,-must I be jostled by every unidea'd mechanic,-must I eat, and drink, and sleep, like the other animals around me,must the cherished source of my happiness had written more sonnets, and Matilda had drop away like an icicle in the sunshine? given them yet higher praise. Besides, I Am I indeed an author,-one of that name- had saved her once from the menaced attack less tribe who write in Magazines, and of a bull, -I had helped her over at least a whose lucubrations live but for a few months, dozen stiles, and about as many ditches,-I and are then forgotten for ever? It is even had once stood beside her, under a tree, so; and not being able to change the course during a thunder-storm, and twice, when of Nature, the sooner I bring this digression her horse had become unruly, and would te a conclusion the better.

have run off with her, I had succeeded in

I fell in love, as I was saying, at fourteen, stopping him. If all this was not enough to that is, I thought I fell in love. It was, of make a reasonable man in love, I know not course, no more love than it was the typhus what was. True, I had never " told my fever. I had gone to visit my uncle in the love," and true, also, Matilda had not the country, and when there, I had been guilty most distant idea of its existence. But what of a sonnet. Being the first effort of the kind, then? In the very spirit of romance, I said it was, of course, addressed to the moon, but, to myself, that time would, sooner or later,