66

St. Paul's.

knees with her head bent forward on the placing it on one side, continued her hopeless ground. Before, however, I had time to plunge flight. But I was now close on her, and having the knife into her back, she rose unexpectedly become desperate with heat and fever, I sprang and made off with a staggering pace, but only on her downwards, risking all, and thrust the to fall prostrate a gunshot farther on. I now knife into her heart. Ah, la pauvre bête! considered there was no danger, and going up to mais je lui aurais fait grâce," said Henri Jesson, the animal, I prepared with confidence to end the one of the guests, who felt compassion for the adventure. It was here I learnt that lesson of poor sow, so tender for a helpless being, even in which I have since realised the importance on the trying moment of her own extremity. "Et many an occasion - namely, to distrust the ap-moi, Messieurs," replied the Count, "qui avais pearances of exhaustion in powerful and dan- perdu deux dents!" And with this the Count gerous animals. On bending over this appar- raised his upper lip, and exhibited the vacant ently dead sow, to ascertain the precise wherea- space once occupied by two front teeth, knocked bouts of her mortal wound, she started up sud-out in his collision with the gentle sow. denly, and dealing me with her head a blow on the mouth that sent me reeling, she bolted off full gallop and left me unconscious on the HERALDIC ANIMALS.-Among the wild aniground. On recovering the shock, which was mals are elephants, lions, tigers, wolves, bears, a most severe one, I perceived the sow had again antelopes, stags, lynxes, porcupines, foxes, and relaxed in her pace, and I rushed after her wild boars, not to mention hogs and pigs and breathing rage and vengeance. Fortunately, a piglings innumerable, long-tailed, short-tailed, team of bullocks had passed in the interval, and and curly-tailed. Concerning all these denizens diverted her from the marshes-where I should of the forest, the most remarkable thing is the assuredly have lost her-and at the same time a unanimity that reigns among them in regard to shepherd and his dog had intercepted her return one particular matter; what I mean is, that, to the cover. She had consequently struck di- with an occasional exception in favour of the rectly into the high road, which was indeed her pigs and piglings, one and all of them stand on only alternative, unless she had faced round in their hind legs. Whatever else they do, they are defiance of my drawn and shining knife. I had sure to do that; with their fore feet and paws no time to reload, for though the sow ran limp- they may push against some shield or hatchment, ing, her pace was rapid enough to try my ut- they may grasp as best they can a dagger or a most wind, and I was compelled at last to drop battle-axe, or flourish their tails aloft and expand my piece in order to run more lightly. After their nostrils as if eager for the fight; but under some twenty minutes of this exercise, a party of any circumstances they decline to settle down on field labourers approached in the opposite direc- all fours, so that I am forced to conclude that the tion, and the sow turned off immediately into the position which is natural to their congeners open fallows. Here my strength began to fail, foreign to them. With regard to some of them but I still held on, encouraged by the sight on there are certain cabalistic expressions used one side of some horses feeding, and, on the other, which it is possible, if one could get at their sig of a straw cottage. These objects seemed to pre-nification, would throw some light on their his vent the sow from diverging, and I was able to tory. Thus, concerning a leopard with spots on keep her in view for a long distance ahead. She his body as big as pancakes, it is gravely stated had now decidedly the best of it, I being reduced that he is "countercompony of the first and seeto a walking pace and she being out of sight. ond." If the reader can solve the mystery in Presently, however, I saw her running back to- volved in that expression he is a much cleverer wards me, having been turned, I presume, by fellow than I am. Again, a porcupine pousset some object which I was too distant to perceive. ting, who has had his quills combed dow I thought it was her intention to attack me, in- smooth and sleek, is described as 66 gyronny of stead of which she turned off obliquely and fol- eight," which expression is also too crabled for lowed an open cart way leading to the entrance of my powers of penetration. A lion who seems to a large farm. Here she began to run more stand ill at ease, as though on one leg rather faintly, and I gained upon her sensibly. She than two, presents an enigma somewhat less l then stopped for an instant, but seemed immedi- ficult; concerning him it is said, "lions gam ately to recover her strength and proceeded to erased in bend within a boudure," by which I limp on with fresh courage. Another moment understand some accident or other to the s brought her to the farm-yard, into which she ran mal's leg; gamb means leg, of course, and the without hesitation and I followed close behind erasure, which must be an injury of some kind. her. A pathway through the farm led to low may have been consequent on the brute's hav 2 ground visible from the entrance. Into this put his foot into chancery somehow or other, pathway the sow struck forthwith, and you will seems to me to be intimated by the term with imagine my horror on perceiving right before her a boudure." In the case of one of the lynes, ! on the ground an infant of tender years, sitting find the expressions made use of to deser he hit heedless of all peril, alone at play. The sow ran or it may be something belonging to him, straight at the child, and I closed my eyes in paina bend cotised sa," the purport and as already in fancy I saw it dashed into the air, of which, I am sorry to say, I am not lyns-ye or killed and mangled on the spot. Not so, gen- enough to discover. tlemen. She took it up most gently, and softly

prope

Leisure Hoar

DOCTOR JACOB. By M. Betham Edwards. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
HAPPY THOUGHTS. By F. C. Burnand. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

THE POETICAL WRITINGS OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, with Extracts from those of
Joseph Rodman Drake. Edited by James Grant Wilson. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10.

From The Quarterly Review.

By the Countess of Minto. Edinburgh, 1868.

I

that the day would come when I should be A Memoir of the Right Hon. Hugh Elliot. obliged to mix diplomacy with every action of my life? There were moments when, dismissing the anxieties caused me by these trickeries, burst out laughing to think that I was directing the most important interests in concert with foreign ambassadors and ministers. Behold me surrounded by the Pope's Nuncio, Monseignor Giraud, Archbishop of Damas; the Count of Marcy Argenteau, Austrian Ambassador; the English Ambassador, Viscount Stormont; M. de Monecnigo; and all the other great and petty members of the diplomatic body. How sly I was with that Moncenigo, who was sly in everything. How reserved I was with Lord Stormont, who phlegmatically tried to win me over to the interests of England. He was eternally hanging about me. I could not guess the reason of his tiresome assiduity. At last, one fine day, he told me that his Court desired to give me proofs of its good-will, that it contemplated offering me an annual present worthy of it and me. "My Lord," I replied, in a severe honours with his friendship is rich enough to "the woman whom the King of France make presents, and esteems herself sufficiently to receive none !"'"

WE should be sorry to chill the hopes or cloud the prospects of a distinguished and popular class of public servants, but we are afraid that diplomacy has seen its best days; and that if steam, electricity, and responsible government have not proved its ruin, they are rapidly accelerating its decline. An ambassador at a corrupt or despotic Court, several days' or weeks' journey from his own country, had ample scope for the display of tact, insight into character, knowledge of affairs, and even statesmanship. He had to deal with favourites, as well as with ministers of state. He had to humour caprices, and watch for happy moments the mollia tempora fandi —as well as to draw up prototols or dictate despatches. Instead of telegraphing for instructions, he was obliged to act upon his own judgment and responsibility on the spur of the occasion, when haply the fate of kingdoms depended on the success or failure of an intrigue. It was a mistress, Madame de Pompadour, irritated by some contemptuous expressions imprudently let drop by Frederic the Great, that induced France to join the combination against him in the Seven Years' War; and many similar instances might be adduced in favour of Voltaire's well-known theory of causation in history that great events are brought about by small things. When empires were ruled by loose or capricious women, there were no bounds to the influence which an accomplished and quick-witted man of the world might exercise; and prior to the French Revolution a Court or Government controlled by reason, or anything that could be called policy, was rather the exception than the rule. Many men, in all nations, long for peace,' says Carlyle, speaking of 1759; but there are Three Women at the top of the world who do not: their wrath, various in quality, is great in quantity, and disasters do the reverse of appeasing.' These three women were Elizabeth of Russia, Maria Theresa, and Madame Pompadour.

Ah, my friend! [writes Madame du Barri] who would have told me in my fifteenth year

tone,

A pupil in the Chesterfield school would have avoided such a blunder, and this was the school in which the most renowned diplomatists of the eighteenth century were brought up. The Prince de Broglie, who dates (and, we think, a little antedates) the subversive change in diplomacy from the French Revolution, speaks thus of its professors or practitioners prior to 1789:

Their memory was a gallery of living portraits, and their conversation, studded over with the most august names, but marked by a discreet malignity, resembled that which is often carried on in the vestibule about the habitués of the château. There is nothing offensive in such a comparison. During a régime under which kings represented the entire State, faithful domestic service without meanness was a natural form of patriotism. A large portion of their wandering lives was also spent in the pursuit of sensuality and elegance, in sumptuous fêtes, where they were hosts and guests by turns, wherever they pitched their tents. They gave the signal for pleasure. Strange pastime, it will be said, for the depositaries of the destinies of nations. But this judgment would be as superficial as pedantic; for if their policy was frivolous, their frivolity was still oftener political These diversions were but an occasion for en.