to leave the room, and I then told them what I thought of the detestable dinner of the young prince. They repeated that it was according to instructions from the Municipality, and that before their time it was still

worse.

"We ordered them to alter this mode of proceeding, and to begin by serving up directly some nice things and some fruit. I sent out for some grapes, which are very scarce at this season.

Having given these directions, I returned to the prince's room. He had eaten up the whole. I asked him, whether he liked his dinner? No answer! Whether he was fond of grapes? No answer! A moment after, the grapes were brought in; they were placed on the table, and he ate them, without saying a word. 1 begged him to say, whether he wished for some wine? He still remained silent.

“It was no longer possible to doubt, that all our attempts to obtain an answer would be made in vain. I finished by saying, " It is very vexatious to us to be obliged to believe that we displease you. Do you wish us to go?" He was still mute. We then quitted the room, full of the most melancholy reflections, on so obstinate a silence; and on the moral and physical situation of the young prince."

We have thought it a duty to make a long extract from this report of the Commissioners of the Convention, because it incontestably establishes the state of physical and moral imbecillity to which he was reduced by the barbarous treatment that he had suffered during fifteen months*, and because that it destroys, without reserve, the hopes of the factious, who wish always to shew us the person of Lewis the seventeenth,

It has, in some Memoirs, been pretended that the si lence of the young prince, was the consequence of an he roic resolution, formed by a child ten years old, for the purpose of testifying with more energy the disdain and the horror inspired in him by the members of the Convention, and the Municipality. This is one more error to be added to the voluminous chapter of errors, which are committed every day by enthusiasm, fanaticism, and the spirit of party.-E.P.M.

in the figure of any impostor who dares to assume his name*.

A few days after this visit, in the course of May, the Committees decided that M. Desault, one of the first surgeons in Paris, should visit the young prince. As soon as he saw him, he declared that it was too late, and that the constitution of his patient was so broken as to render it almost impossible that he could recover. He did not, however, the less propose to remove him immediately into the country, where he hoped that constant medical attendance, proper care, and pure air, might prolong, for a few months, his feeble existence.

The Committees did not come to any decision on this subject. Desault, meanwhile, employed all the means which his zeal and his talent could suggest to him, to ameliorate the situation of the declining prince. But he himself died on the first of June, and the cause of his sudden and unexpected death has never been rightly known. On

On the fifth, M. Pelletan and M. Dumangin, the one head surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, and the other principal physician at the hospital of Health, were appointed to attend on the young prince. The first step was to direct that he should be carried into the jailor's drawing room, the windows of which looked into the garden. The sight of the sun and the verdure seemed for a moment to alleviate his pains. He smiled some times, but he never spoke again. On the seventh he had a fainting fit, which gave warning of his approaching end, and, on the eighth, at two in the afternoon, he ceased to live and to suffer.

A

During the period which elapsed between the death of Lewis the Seventeenth and the fall of Napoleon, at least two false Dauphins appeared on the scene. The number, of partisans whom they gained is no less surprising than the warm at'achment to them which those partisans displayed. One of them was particularly fortunate in captivating those who were the friends of the Bourbons. Some of the adventures of these pretenders were so amusing, that we may, perhaps, one day or other, present a sketch of them to our readers.-E.P.M.

NOW the ropes were cut asunder. The balloon soared majestically aloft, the flags fluttered in the variegated gondola, the adventurous aeronaut waved his hat, fiftys thousand eyes stared, and as many hands clapped. I was standing in the middle of the crowd: the sublime spectacle drew tears from my eyes. The aeronaut was lost in the clouds, and I in contemplation on the depth of the human understanding.

A singular appearance roused me from my reverie. Three steps from me a little old man was standing, who appeared to be unable to endure the sight of the balloon, which filled every one else with rapture. It was impossible to determine to what country he belonged; his long white beard proclaimed him a Mussul man, his countenance a Bramin from the coast of Malabar, and his dress a Greek of the time of Apollonius of Thyana; with his little grey eyes he was looking up towards the clouds, his mouth contracted to a smile of contempt, while he shook his bald head back wards and forwards.

This ambiguous behaviour, which so little harmonized with my feelings, displeased me very much; I stepped up to him," Old Grey Pate!" I said, "I wish you joy of having lived long enough to see such a spectacle."-" Joy!" the dwarf replied, with a derisive laugh; "short sighted son of this short sighted ge neration, I pity thee, and am silent!" "You may pity me, as much as you please, but why be silent? That is not in general the fault of old age." "Whom do you call old?" "One who bears on his bent down shoulders four-fifths of a century, like you." 66 Four fifths of a century! Ha! ha! ha! I could scarcely have believed that I should be taken for such a stripling." ." A stripling at eighty; you are mad."

In "the Fisherman's Hut," Vol. V. p. 167, line 18 from the bottom, for Virtue often rests herself," read "Virtue often veils herself."

"Youth!" the old man began, "my only son was killed at the building of Nineveh by a brick bat. My glass, which does not flatter me so much as you, tells me that I appear to have nearly reached the middle age of two thousand years; however I have already seen six thousand pass over my head, for which age I have to thank the Philosopher's Stone, which my friend Enoch imparted to me before he ascended to heaven. I have in the course of my life educated several pupils, among whom the Scythian Abaris, the Egyptian Hermes, and the Count St. Germain do me honour. I have seen and learnt so much that I did not think it worth my while to trouble myself about mankind. Nothing less than the event of this day, could have made me alter my resolution. It grieves me to be the witness of your imprudent folly. You love novelty, and I hate it. Your Rousseau inveighs against wisdom, and he is right.

"The first age of the world was denominated the Golden. Then nature held men in leading-strings, and they used to run about on four legs, A thousand years after, a wonderful revolution happened. An adventurous fellow caused it to be made known, that he intended to go on his hind legs, without any other assistance than a roller and rope, and that at last he would throw them away, and run full speed.

"You may easily imagine that all the public were prejudiced against him. It is a deception! all exclaimed; he cannot and will not go upon his hind legs, and should he attempt it he will certainly fall on his

nose

"In the mean time, a day was appointed. A great number of natives and strangers were there. We all squatted ourselves down, and expected the conjuror with impatience. He came; he stepped into the midst of us, with the confident air of a man certain of success. The conclusion crowned his boldness. You are sufficiently acquainted with all the evil which thence originated. Men ran upon two legs from one end of the world to the other, and soon reached the Silver Age.

A thousand years after this, a second great revolu tion happened. Another adventurer promised that he would swim in a tub upon the water, which should

only be fastened to the shore by a few ropes. At last, that he would cut the ropes asunder, and in the sight of every one push himself from shore to shore. The public were astonished: he will not venture, and if he does he will sink! was the universal exclamation. He did keep his word, however, without sinking. In the presence of a number of spectators on both sides the shore, he permitted himself to be carried down by the stream. Amid the shouts of the populace he got out of his tub; he was crowned with laurels; and came in triumph to his abode. Thus man learnt to govern a new element, experienced new wants, and sailed with a fair wind from the Silver Age to the Brass one!

"A thousand years after this, were the heroic times of Greece. Hercules reached in a boat the Meditera ranean sea. Proud of his boldness, he wished to per petuate the remembrance of this wonderful action, and erected two columns in the garden of the Hesperides, with this boasting inscription; "Nec plus ultra!" This occasioned new fermentation in the minds of men Navigation was the cause of commerce; people exchanged between each other the conveniences of life, and the ornaments of luxury. Thus mankind, clothed in purple and gold, turned their course to the Iron age.

"Three thousand years after this, a Genoese, who. did not wish mankind only to pass backwards and forwards between the three known quarters of the globe, formed the resolution to sail through the wide ocean. Fresh astonishment! New unbelief! Uni versal murmurs! He will not sail over, and should he attempt it, he will never return.

°2 "He departed and returned, after having discovered i a new world. This ship resembled Pandora's box→ gold, spices, and destructive pestilence overflowed the world. Give me a name, O youth, for this most wicked and degenerate age!

3. Hitherto every thing has gone from bad to worse Had I not reason then to be alarmed this day, when a daring adventurer has enlarged the limits of the hu man understanding?"

J. T.