pel, with a step still slower and graver than on the preceding day. He officiated himself to assist the presiding cardinal, with such calmness and tranquillity, that all were astonished. Not one flash of the hurricane at work within him gleamed in his eyes; the most inquisitive glance could read nothing but a pious unconcern on his impassible

countenance.

He passed through to the hall of the Conclave with the same indifference, and took his place amongst the electors as if the interests to be discussed had no reference to him.

At length the scrutiny commenced. Although the result was known beforehand to each, the attention of the august assembly was not the less profound, and every glance was eagerly fixed upon the Sicilian, to detect on his iron brow some sign of joy or hope. But faithful to himself to the last second, neither look nor gesture betrayed his internal intoxication.

Twenty times had the fatal hand plunged into the urn, and one name only had been drawn out,-that of the Sicilian. Proclaimed by the Secretary of the Conclave every time, it smote as a battering ram against his invincible heart, so loudly that every stroke seemed to deprive him of breath; but the struggle was to himself alone; it was internal only; had neither communication nor echo from without, and its violence was invisible. Thus concentrated, it was but the more terrible, and the occult torture for an instant was so dolorous, so powerful, as to be almost triumphant. Beneath these repeated shocks, the stout heart of the Sicilian trembled; at the thirtieth stroke he felt himself giving way, but at the instant of being overthrown he was ashamed. Could he without ignominy, without being wanting to himself, belie at the last hour the falsehood of forty years? He collected then in one last, one superhuman effort, all that remained to him of physical and moral energy: he made a buckler of his pride, and his pride saved him. Preserved by that from his fall, he found afterwards, in the grandeur of his destiny, a surer and more dignified support.

Whilst these tempests were rife within the heart of the future pope, the electors deemed his inertia and immobility, stupidity. They already congratulated themselves upon a choice that was to make themselves masters of Rome, and indulged in ideas of wealth and renown

beneath the weak croak of the accommodating pastor. But this accommodating pastor read their thoughts better than they did his, and was silently preparing for them the metamorphosis of Sixtus the Fifth.

He again compared himself to Etna, no longer, as formerly, in its isolation, but Etna in the plenitude of its power. Did he not conceal, like the giant of Sicily, a consuming fire beneath a brow of snow? Was he not about, like Etna, to manifest himself by a sudden and reverberating eruption? like it, to reign over Italy? Scarcely separated by a few minutes from the throne, after so long a career these last minutes were to him centuries; so wearisome seemed to him the lengthened deception; so irksome was it, not to shew himself in his true character-not to lay aside for ever his borrowed mantle.

Thirty bulletins had issued from the urn, each of the thirty bearing his name. The thirty-first, the thirty-second, the thirty-third, were inscribed with the same; and all presaged to the austere Franciscan of Petralia the honour of unanimity accorded formerly to the facetious Archbishop of Bologna. This was the opinion of the Conclave; the four following suffrages but confirmed it,all the four were his. It was the same with the thirty-eighth.

The secretary had just read the thirty-ninth bulletin, which, like all the rest, bore the name of the High Penitentiary; only one vote then was wanting, and that supreme vote the hand of the scrutator was drawing from the urn, when the Austrian cardinal entered.

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I have the honour," said he, in cold and sinister accents, " to inform your Highnesses that the emperor, my master, gives the exclusion to the High Penitentiary."

So saying, he sat down.

What a turn of the wheel! The Conclave were astounded, and in confusion. The cardinals spontaneously quitted their seats, and disorder reigned throughout the hall. Never had a more unexpected exclusion disconcerted their intrigues; they could not believe it; they were fain to suppose it a trick, or a mistake, so unsuspected was the High Penitentiary by them, so proverbial was his political nullity.

But the Austrian ambassador was better informed.

Every eye was turned towards the object of this inconceivable interdict. The same in defeat as in victory, the

Sicilian had neither changed his attitude nor his countenance; impassible beneath the weight of the veto, as beneath the weight of the tiara, he rose with gravity, and crossing the hall with dignity, went direct to the Austrian cardinal, to whom he said, embracing him-" What do I not owe to your Highness, for the fortunate intervention that has freed me from the burden on the point of overwhelming my weakness!" At these words he withdrew to his cell, with the same measured and tranquil step with which he had left it; and of all those who so greedily rivetted their glance on the intrepid monk, not one could boast to have surprised in his voice, gesture, or features, the most insensible alteration.

It was thus that the information of the Austrian spy snatched the tiara from the brow of the Bastard of Sicily. Bedford, Jan. 26, 1835.

B. E. M.

TRAVELLER'S NOTE UPON

TOURVILLE,

A HAMLET OF ANCIENT NORMANDY.

(Translated from the French).

WE had heard much at Dieppe of a hamlet on the coast remarkable for its situation, traditions, and ruins: this was sufficient to prompt the wish to visit Tourville. We set out towards the close of one of those dubious autumnal days when the general agitation of nature seems ominous of storm and hurricane. The arrangement of the clouds, the sudden gusts of wind, and the purple and livid sky, all confirmed the dismal foreboding. We, however, pursued our way over a rocky road, across the high steeps bounding the Manche, the unvaried whiteness of their immense masses opposing a strong contrast to the gloomy but changeable hues of the restless waters beneath. The wreck of an unknown world, they have that death-like sterility, the characteristic of past creations, whose vital powers are extinct. Their parts without homogenity, adhesion, or power, brittle as the calcined bones whose colour and fragility they imitate, appal the imagination with the inertia of their ashes. The steeps of la Manche already bear the impress of the end of terrestrial things; it is an ossuay of fifty centuries, which Ocean has drifted to these shores as a mighty monument of time finished, rolling onwards to the gates of infinity. Rocks covered with a yellow and mournful-looking short grass;

the noise of the waves beating against the shore; the distant sound of an echo, that renewed from behind us the roaring of the sea, as if the beach had suddenly become an island unknown to navigators. The extraordinary appearance of the sunset, at the approach of the tempest, brought back to our remembrance our excursions in the western Hebrides of Scotland, amidst the whirlwinds of the north.

After journeying for two hours, we came in sight of a few cottages forming the entrance to a valley, and which might have been fancied gloomy walls raised for dykes to the wretched fields annually devastated by the waters. A small number of earthen mounds, partially destroyed by a recent inundation, attested the unavailing efforts of man to oppose barriers to the ocean, and gave us a sad presage of the fate awaiting the poor inhabitants of this sea-beaten shore on the first tempest. Beams of wood, thrown across a kind of galley, served for a bridge over the river of Tourville, and conducted to a few half-abandoned huts forming the hamlet.

Cape Ahi has doubtless derived its imitative name from the groans of the shipwrecked, or from the murmur of the waves breaking at its feet. It, however, shelters a small bay capable of affording a refuge to the fishermen against the violence of the east wind; for there are few dangers near which Providence has not placed a resource and a hope. It was probably this little haven, known to the mariners, that induced several families to construct near it their fragile tenements, so open to dangers by sea and shore: thus it is that misfortune founds colonies.

This hamlet, disinherited of the gifts of nature, was, however, placed near a protection that allays all anxieties, and consoles every sorrow. It had a temple, whose walls for many centuries defied the storms that ravage these coasts; but it fell a short time ago by the agency of a different tempest. The north wind contented itself with whistling through its domes, and the sea with beating against its foundations; but men destroyed it.

What remain of its ruins belong to the brilliant period of the revival of the arts. The shaft of a column bearing an iron cross, still standing, presents round its upper portion a triple row of pearls and shells, sculptured with much elegance. This imitation of the productions of the sea is in graceful harmony with its shores, and gives rise to thoughts

of soothing melody. There is something prompting to a reflection on the uncertainty and heedlessness of life, in the solicitude of the artist who spent his time to entrust his monuments to the sands of the sea, and to decorate a breaker!

The terrific aspect of the sea continued to increase. We are acquainted with few sites that present a sterner front to the glance or the imagination than Tourville in this state of stormy atmosphere; it reminded us occasionally of the moving sands of Saint Michael, and of the barren shores of the Lido; and never did the melancholy character of a landscape more dispose our minds to give ear to the superstitious traditions of the spot.

RHODES.

B. E. M.

"RHODES," says M. de La Martine, "rises like a bouquet of verdure out of the bosom of the sea: the light and graceful minarets of its white mosques erect themselves above its forests of palms, of sycamores, of plane, carobtrees, and fig-trees. It attracts from afar the eye of the navigator to those delicious retreats, the Turkish cemeteries, where one sees the Mussulmans lying on the grassy tombs of their friends, smoking tranquilly, like sentinels waiting to be relieved.

"The oriental character of its bazaars; the Moorish shops, constructed in sculptured wood-work; the street of the knights, where each house bears the arms of ancient families in France, Spain, Italy, or Germany, still preserved entire on its doors, all interested us.

"Rhodes still exhibits some splendid remains of its ancient fortifications, and the rich Asiatic vegetation which crowns and envelopes them, imparts more grace and beauty than are to be seen at Malta.

An Order that could allow itself to be

driven from such a magnificent possession, must have received its death-blow. It seems as if heaven had formed this isle as an advanced post on Asia. Any European power who was master of it would hold at once the key of the Archipelago, of Greece, of Smyrna, of the Dardanelles, and of the seas of Egypt and Syria. I do not know in the world a better maritime military position, a finer climate, or a more prolific soil. Turks have stamped that air of indolence

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and inaction on it which they carry everywhere all is in a state of inertion and poverty; but if this people neither creates, preserves, nor renews, it neither injures nor destroys. They at least allow time and nature to act for themselves."

INVASION AVERTED BY STRATAGEM.

DURING the Pindarrie war, says Mr. Thornton in his work on India, the Burmese were in communication with several of the belligerent native chiefs, and were even prepared for an invasion of the frontier of Bengal. This was averted by a stratagem. The Marquis of Hastings had received a rescript from the Burmese monarch, requiring the surrender of all provinces east of the Bangrutty. The projected hostility was evidently a measure concerted with the Mahrattas. Lord Hastings sent back the envoy with an intimation that the answer should be conveyed through another channel. It declared that the governor-general was too well acquainted with his majesty's wisdom to be the dupe of the gross forgery attempted to be palmed upon him, and he therefore transmitted to the king the document fabricated in his august name, and trusted that he would submit to condign punishment the persons who had endeavoured to sow dissension between two powers, whose reciprocal interest it was to cultivate relations of amity. this proceeding the necessity of noticing the insolent step of the Burmese monarch was evaded, and that sovereign, on hearing of the defeat of his Mahratta allies, was content to remain at peace.

GRACE-FUL.

By

"Be sure you remember to say • Your Grace,' if the Duke speaks to you," said the landlord of an inn in a borough town, where the nobleman alluded to was momentarily expected, to an ostler of recent date in the concern. Whilst Boniface looking as pleasant as a primrose at was yet speaking, up rode the Duke, Christmas, and in the best temper imafate ordained it, the Duke, before disginable with every thing about him. As mounting from the fine courser he bestrode, called the ostler to him, who, with the instructions just received full in his mind, ejaculated with the greatest solemnity as he approached--" For what I am going to receive, the Lord make me truly thankful!”