University of Oxford, which he declined. I remember once hearing him speak when Prime Minister, in the Chamber of Deputies, in 1843. He made use of the expression "La France a besoin de se senter gouvernée-France requires to feel herself governed"-than which a truer thing was never said. This language excited storms of indignation. The Emperor Napoleon III. has shown that he believes in the same doctrine, and most intelligent Frenchmen now agree with him. Little M. Thiers, M. Guizot's formidable adversary in his days of power, is physically about as insignificant a specimen of humanity as could be picked out of a crowd. His mental gifts are of the very highest order. The ablest man, probably, whom the present Emperor has had in his government is M. Drouyn de l'Huys, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs. He retired from the Ministry after the failure of the effort to patch up a peace with Russia at Vienna before the death of Nicholas, his views and those of the Emperor being understood to differ. M. Drouyn de l'Huys has one of the largest fortunes in France. It is not generally supposed that the Emperor Napoleon cares to be surrounded by first-class men. He likes good executive officers, but prefers to do his own thinking. It is said that he never enters into a discussion at a cabinet meeting. He takes the opinion of each Minister in turn, and then announces his decision, seldom assigning reasons for it. His uncle followed very much the same system. I have had the pleasure of the acquaintance of many other eminent Frenchmen, whose names, however, are but little known to readers on this side of the Atlantic. I presume that the public men of France are, as a class, the most laborious in the world. In a clear apprehension of abstract questions and in administrative capacity they have, probably, no equals. Ever since the Revolution of 1789 the French Government, under each successive change, has always been a most ingenious and nicely adjusted piece of machinery. Only there has generally been something wrong about the main-spring. II. SOME AMERICANS IN PARIS. Some years ago I acted for a short time as Secretary of Legation, and during that year we viséd over seven thousand passports. Many of our wealthy gentlemen, who go there to reside a few years, have just retired from business, having been engaged actively all their lives in cotton or pork. Their preparation, from no fault of their own, has not usually been such as to fit them to lead, advantageously to themselves, the lives of men of leisure in the capital of France. The most unfortunate visitors that Paris receives are the horde of young men, with more money than brains, who rush wildly into all the dissipation which lies upon the surface, without even suspecting the existence of all the admirable advantages which surround them, or caring for them if they know of them. I recollect once asking a young gentleman which he preferred, Rome or Naples? "Rome," he said, "because the brandy was better!" It must be confessed, too, that Paris does no good to many of our women. If it develops in them nothing worse than frivolity, that is to be deprecated. I am inclined to think it would be better for our country if there were no Paris. We are importing thence into New York every thing evil and foolish; and I have yet to learn that we have copied the French in the first of the noble characteristics which underlie their national character, or that we have studied, to any advantage, the admirable lessons in the economy of life, in science, and in art, which Paris can teach us. Our countrymen are a droll people when they get away from home. If the traveler be a young man, the first thing he requires on his arrival is the address of a tailor, a bootmaker, and a hatter. A visit to the Louvre and to Versailles is quite subordinate to this great necessity Indeed at any time the dancing gardens, the masked balls at the opera, a petit souper at the Café Doré, or an introduction into the coulisses of a minor theatre, are greater attractions than all the picture-galleries and public buildings on the Continent. Insensate youth! 'I recollect an absurd incident which occurred many years since. I met in the street one day an American friend, and not a very young man either, who was visiting Europe for the first time. He was delighted to see me, for I spoke Our countrymen who travel abroad may be French, and he did not; and I knew all the divided into two great classes-those who are ropes, whereas he had just arrived. The first so obstinately prejudiced in favor of every thingusiness to be attended to, as might be anticiat home that they can see nothing good in foreign lands, and those who affect to despise their own institutions and become more European than Europeans themselves. There are a few exceptions of intelligent persons who recognize some excellence and some evil on both sides of the Atlantic; but the number is not large. Those who belong to the first of my great divisions are only short-sighted; the others are contemptible. We have a permanent colony in Paris, numbering it would be difficult to say how many, but I should think not less than two thousand. The transient travel is, of course, much greater. So I took my pated, was a visit to a tailor. This was dispatched. Then came the bootmaker's turn. This was likewise attended to. Then some pocket handkerchiefs were required, which it was desired to have very elegant. friend to Doucet's, in the Rue de la Paix. When we entered the shop neither M. Doucet nor any of his assistants happened to be in; they were somewhere in a back room. Lying on a counter were some beautiful specimens of cambric, each elaborately embroidered in one corner with a coronet. These at once attracted my friend's attention and admiration. He asked me what the coronet meant. I told him that the owner was some nobleman. This he doubted; the coronet might be only an ornament. He had a great mind to have some exactly similar. I ridiculed the idea, and just then M. Doucet, who speaks English, came in. "Whose handkerchiefs are these, M. Doucet ?" I asked. "They belong to Prince- a Russian." I thought this explanation would silence my companion, and so it did for a time. At length a happy thought seemed to strike him, and he suddenly asked the tradesman if he could not embroider an American Eagle on some handkerchiefs for him! It was as much as Doucet could do to keep his countenance. He replied as gravely as he could that undoubtedly it could be done, but that he was not acquainted with the peculiarities of our national bird. Thereupon my friend triumphantly took a half dollar from his pocket and threw it on the counter. The order was given and booked, and I presume executed; but I made no inquiry, and I took a vow that from that day forward I would never be induced to accompany an American on a shopping expedition. Fathers of family when they come to Paris, probably impelled thereto by their wives and daughters, are usually frantic about presentations at Court, and invitations to balls and fêtes. I have mentioned that I acted for a short time as Secretary of Legation. A charming position that seems to be in the distance. In reality it is a most unpleasant one. The regular duties are severe if conscientiously attended to; but that is nothing. But upon the unfortunate Secretary the responsibility of the whole Social Department rests; and this is awful. Every individual who brings a passport to be signed, whether he is acquainted with any member of the Legation or not, and whether the bearer of any letters or not, immediately expects to receive attentions from the servants of the people. Why, it would employ a messenger all the time to leave sufficient cards on all these persons to satisfy their pretensions. This is bad enough. But there is worse to come. Every crack-brained inventorand their name is legion-who tumbles upon you expects you immediately to procure for him a private interview with the Emperor, which small favor is not always to be obtained. But the greatest trial comes when the Préfect of the Seine (or some other functionary, as the case may be) notifies you of an approaching ball at the Hôtel de Ville, and politely requests you t send in a list of your countrymen whom you desire invited. What are you to do? All the permanent residents think they have peculiar claims to your courtesy, and that you are bound to take care of them. Whereas the transient people think there is no comparison in the case it is all in their favor. Residents can go at any time; have been before, and may go again. They, on the contrary, will never have another opportunity. They have deferred their journey to Italy a week expressly on account of this ball. Jane and Maria have set their hearts upon it. In a word, they must have tickets, or look out for your political head at Washington. In deVOL. XXIII.-No. 137.-T T spair the maddened Secretary hangs up a list in the Legation for signatures. Three to four hundred are soon appended; but this only includes a tithe of the people you are bound to think of without their taking any trouble in the premises. At last you send in your list five hundred strong, feeling ashamed of your own unavoidable impudence. Back comes a polite note from the Préfect. Very sorry, but you have asked for more invitations than can be accorded to all the foreign Legations combined. Be so good as to select forty names, and cards will be immediately sent. Those who finally go do not thank you; it was their right. The disappointed swear vengeance upon you. In this way a Secretary has a fine opportunity of making enemies of all his countrymen in less time than a twelvemonth. There was a very odd fish in Paris the summer of 1855. He came from somewhere on our Western frontier, and crossed from New York to Havre in the North Star. He dressed in a complete suit of furs, and during the voyage slept on deck every night. He appeared to be a very intelligent man, had plenty of money, but was remarkably eccentric. In Paris he went to Meurice's Hotel, where he soon became the wonder of the crowds of cockneys who frequent that house. Standing in the centre of the courtyard, and describing around him a magic circle of tobacco juice, he would tell the most marvelous stories with a look which said, plainly, You had better not express any doubts if you do not want a bowie-knife between your ribs. The cockneys were at a complete loss what to make of him. A highly-cultivated friend of mine, who had accidentally made his acquaintance, was once guilty of the imprudence of asking him to take a walk. Now if our late Japanese visitors were to appear in the streets of Paris hardly any one would turn round to look at them, so accustomed are the people to all kinds of foreign costumes. But the big backwoodsman in his furs proved an exception to this rule, and my friend soon perceived that they were attracting more attention than was altogether agreeable to his modesty. After a time they arrived at the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, which they entered. As soon as they got in the frontiersman commenced looking round, as if anxiously searching for something. Presently he espied a marble font or receptacle for holy water. His face at once lit up, and advancing to within six feet of it, he with the most accurate aim discharged a stream of tobacco juice directly into the centre. A sacristan who happened to be passing came up greatly excited at the sacrilege. It was some time before he could be convinced that the stranger thought the thing was a substitute for a spittoon. "What on earth else could it be meant for?" he asked. The American students-humanes they call themselves-in the Latin quarter are a queer set. Among them were two young medical men from Louisiana, who had come over to enter the Russian service, but had never got be yond Paris. One of them carried a card, which he seriously presented whenever introduced to a Frenchman, on which was engraved as a crest two alligators fighting with their tails, and under this, Le Baron d'Attakapas. The device of the other I forget, but he sported the name of Le Comte de Plaquemines. OF LOSS. TRETCHED silver-spun the spider's nets; The blackbird's scarlet epaulets The mountain in his purple cloak, From farm-house bells the noonday rung; The teams that plowed the furrows stopped; The ox refreshed his lolling tongue, And brows were wiped, and spades were dropped; And down the field the mowers stepped, With burning brows and figures lithe, As in their brawny hands they swept From side to side the hissing scythe; "Till sudden ceased the noonday task, The scythes 'mid swathes of grass lay still, As girls with can and cider flask Came romping gayly down the hill. And over all there swept a stream I drank the glory of the scene, Its autumn splendor fired my veins; And ah! methought I heard a sigh That were before the white man's ships. And so I came to think on Loss I never much could think on Gain. A poet oft will woo a cross On whom a crown is pressed in vain. I came to think-I know not howPerchance through sense of Indian wrongOf losses of my own, that now Broke for the first time into song. A fluttering strain of feeble words "O loss!" I sang-"O early loss! O blight that nipped the buds of spring! O spell that turned the gold to dross! O steel that clipped the untried wing! "I mourn all days, as sorrows he Whom once they called a merchant prince Over the ships he sent to sea, And never, never heard of since. "To ye, O woods, the annual May Restores the leaves ye lost before; The tide that now forsakes the bay, This night will wash the widowed shore. "But I shall never see again The shape that smiled upon my youth; A mist of sorrow veils my brain, And dimly looms the light of truth. "She faded, fading woods, like you! And fleeting shone with sweeter grace; And as she died the colors grew To softer splendor in her face. "Until one day the hectic flush While thus I moaned I heard a peal Of laughter through the meadows flow; I saw the farm-boys at their mealI saw the cider circling go. And still the mountain calmly slept, His feet with valley vapors wet; And slowly circling upward crept The smoke from out his calumet. Mine was the sole discordant breath That marred this dream of peace below. "O God!" I cried-"give, give me death, Or give me grace to bear thy blow!" POLL JENNINGS'S HAIR. T is sometimes a relief to have a story with I claim for mine. Nothing heroic or wonderful casts its halo about little Poll Jennings, the seventh daughter of Abe Jennings the South-side fisherman. Not even one of those miraculous poor cottages that are always so exquisitely clean, and have white curtains and climbing roses through all depths of poverty and suffering, held my little girl in its romantic shelter. Abe's house, lying between three of those low sandhills that back the shore on our New England coast, like waves of land that simulate the sea, was not in the least attractive or picturesque. At first a mere cabin of drift-wood, the increasing wants and numbers of his family had, as it were, built themselves out in odd attachmentssquare, or oblong, or triangular, as wood came to hand, or necessity demanded-till the whole dwelling bore the aspect externally of a great rabbit-hutch or poultry-house, such as boys build on a smaller scale out of old boards from ruined barns, palings of fence, and refuse from carpen. ters' shops: though no constructive magazine furnished inside or outside of the fisherman's home; it was all fashioned from the waifs of a great Destroyer-all drift-wood from the sea, that raved and thundered half a mile off, as if yet clamorous for its prey. Still uncouth and rude as was its shaping, a poet might have found it more suggestive than any model cottage in the land-if a poet be not merely the rhymer of sentiment and beauty, but he whose creative soul, jokes that people will waste on that tint-artistic, historic, exquisite as it may be-were lavished on Polly's head till hot tears filled her least allusion to it. Moreover, her physical capacity was far inferior to that of her sisters; her slight hands and arms could not row a boat through the rolling seas outside the bar; she could not toil at the wash-tub, or help draw a seine; and when a young farmer from inland came down "to salt," or a sturdy fisher from another bay hauled up his boat inside the little harbor of Squamkeag Light, and trudged over to have a talk with old Abe, it was never Poll who waded out into the mud, with bare white legs and flying hair, to dig clams for supper; or who, with a leather palm, in true sailor fashion, mended sails by the fireside, singing 'longshore songs at her work. Poll's place was never there: she shrank away to gather berries or hunt for gulls' eggs, or crouched motionless in a darker corner, her great luminous eyes fixed on some paneled fragment of the wall that hungry seas had thrown ashore, painting to herself the storm and the wreck till she neither heard nor saw the rough love-making that went on beside her. So it happened that Mary and Martha, the twins, married two young farmers up the country, and led the unpastoral lives that farming women in New England must lead-lives of drudgery and care. Nancy went off with a young fisherman over to Fire Island; Ruth, the oldest, had lost her lover, years gone by, in a whale-ship that sailed away and was never heard of more; while Jane was just about to be married to hers, mate on a New Haven schooner-"Mdse. to Barbadoes," as the shipping-list said; and Adeline laughed and coquetted between half a dozen of the roughest sort. from one slight thread of association spins a wide web of fancies, and tracks the idea through all its windings, till imagination becomes reality, and the real and the ideal are one. How-eyes and burning color suffused her face at the ever, no poet ever entered there to talk or think all this nonsense; and the old walls, where teak, that an Indian forest missed, stood side by side with oak from English uplands and pine from the Æolian woods of Maine. The windows, that had been driven ashore, void of their crystal panes, from some full-freighted steamer, gone down too deep for any more wistful eyes to watch receding shore or hurrying storm-rack through the sashes; doors, that had swung to in the last lurch of the vessel, and made the state-rooms they guarded tombs of the dead-all these spoke nothing to the practical brain of old Abe Jennings, nor softened to any pathos the high spirits of his six rosy daughters, who laughed and romped and worked, as regardless of any outside suffering as if they were the world, and their sand-hills comprised all life and destiny. But Poll, the last and least of the seven, was one of those exceptional creatures that come as some new and strange variety of a flower does, as unlike all its congeners in tint and habit as if it were the growth of an alien soil and climate. Ruth and Mary and Martha, Nancy, Jane, and Adeline, were all straight and strong, with thick dark hair, varying only from the tar-black of Ruth's coarse curls to the shining deep-brown of Adeline's braids. Roses of the deepest dye bloomed on their faces; except Ruth, they were never sad or moody; they had their sweet-hearts and their frolics, and were altogether common-sense, ordinary, wholesome girls as one could find. Polly could lay claim to none of these charms or virtues; she was slight and pale, with great hazel eyes, that oftenest looked vague and dreamy; her very lips were colorless; and her There were enough at home to do the work, skin, roughened and red, offered neither bloom and Ruth's set sobriety, Jane's boisterous healthinor purity to attract the eye, but her hair was ness, Adeline's perpetual giggle, none of them truly magnificent. Of the deepest red, undeni- chimed with Poll's dreamy nature. A weary ably red as is the glossy coat of a bright bay sense of her own incapacity oppressed her all the horse, it fell to her feet in shining waves, so time; she could not work as they did; and, worst soft, so fine, yet so heavy, that it seemed as if of all, the continual feeling that she was ugly, the splendid growth had absorbed all the beauty "red-headed," "white-faced," "eyes as big as a and strength that should otherwise have been robin's," brooded over her solitary thoughts, and hers in face and form. But with this peculiar made her more sad, more lonely from day to coloring came also the temperament of which it day. Yet though no refinement of speech ever is the index-sensitive, passionate, shy as a turned plain "Poll” into Pauline, and no suave quail, yet proud as only a woman can be. If ministrations of higher civilization toned her Poll Jennings had been taught and trained to wild grace into elegance or wove her beautiful the height of her capacities, or even had the locks into the crown they should have been, she means of self-training, her latent genius would had her own consolations, for Nature is no fosterhave dawned on her sphere in one shape or an- mother, and she took this sobbing child into her other; and perhaps an actress, perhaps an au- own heart. Polly's highest pleasure was to steal thor, some star of art, some wonder of vocaliza-out from the cabin and wander away to the shore; tion, might have delighted or astonished the world. But, happily for Poll, another and a better fate than these awaited her, though its vestibule was only a hut, and its locality the sand-hills of the Atlantic shore. Yet this special beauty of the child's-her resplendent hair -was made her peculiar torment. To her sisters and father it was red, and only red; and all the there, laid at length among the rank grass whose leaves waved and glittered in the wind, she watched the curling waves of beryl sweep in to leap and break in thunder, while the spray-bells were tossed far and sparkling from their crests on the beaten sands, and the crepitation of those brilliant bubbles crushed beneath the wave scarce finished its fairy peal of artillery ere another and a heavier surf swelled, and curled, and broke | deep sighs that are the echoes of a great sorrow above it; while milk-white gulls darted and screamed overhead, or a lonely fish-hawk hovered with dire intent over the shoal of fish that dimpled and darkened the water with a wandering wave of life; and far beyond, through the purple haze that brooded on the horizon, white-sailed ships glided into sight, and, stately as dreams, vanished again whence they seemed to come. Here, while the fresh breeze swept her cheek with its keen odor of the seas, and the warm sands beneath quickened her languid pulses, Poll lay hour after hour, and dreamed, not such dreams as girls have whose life is led among luxury and society, but pure visions of far-off countries beyond the ocean, whose birds and flowers and trees were all of earth's brightest, and all quickened with the acute life of the sea itself to poignant beauty. Here, in this paradise, no mocking mirth, no harsh word, no cold or storm intruded, and in its castles a new life dawned for the fisherman's girl that held her in its trance safe from the harshness of her own, and lapped her in its soft sweetness from all that was hard and bitter in reality. So all the summer days passed away, lying on the shore or wandering on the sand-hills that rolled back to sand-plains or boggy stretches of inland; plains that had their own treasures of great open-cyed violets, azure as the sky above or white as its clouds; milky strawberry-blooms and clusters of their scarlet fragrant fruits; crowding flowers of pink and purple, trails of starry blackberry vines; and swamps that beguiled her wandering feet through fragrant thickets of bay-berry, tangled with cat-brier and sweet-brier, to great blucberry bushes, hanging thick with misty blue spheres, aromatic and sweet with a sweetness no tropic suns can give; while beside them bloomed the splendid wild lily, set thick as a pagoda with bells, and at its foot the rare orange orchis showed its concentred sunshine, and regal cardinal-flowers flamed through the thin grass with spikes of velvet fire. Not a flower blossomed or a fruit ripened for miles about that Poll did not know: it was she who hung the shelf above the chimney with bundles of spearmint, peppermint, bone-set, marsh-rosemary, pennyroyal, mountain-mint, tansy, catnip, sweet fern, sweet-cicely, prince's piny, sassafras root, winter-green, and birch bark, part the gatherings of her own rambles at home, part a tribute from her sisters up the country, who brought Poll only "yarbs" instead of the squashes for Ruth, the apples that filled Jane's apron, and the hickory-nuts Adeline cracked in her great white teeth. So things went on till Poll was seventeen, and our story begins, when Jane's lover came home and they were married, and Adeline betook herself to see Nancy, leaving only the eldest and youngest of the seven sisters at home for the winter that set in early and bitter. The last day of November was a wild northeaster; rain, that the fierce wind drove aslant against the hut windows, froze as fast as it fell, and while Ruth sat by the stove and sewed, drawing once in a while one of those gone past, Poll pressed her face against the blurred window-pane to see the storm she dared not be out in, and while she looked and dreamed the outer door burst open and in came her father, dripping as if he had been drowned, followed by a stout young fellow as pale as a sheet, carrying his right arm in a sling. "I veow!" said old Abe, shaking himself like a great water-dog, "ef this a'n't about the most weathersome weather I ever see! I ha'n't ben only jest outside the bar, an' my jib's as stiff as a tin pan, and the old fo'sail took an' cracked fore an' aft afore I could get her head on so's to run in. Ef I hadn't a had Sam Bent here along I dono but what I should ha' ben swamped whether or no; he and me both done our darnedest, and then I'll be drowned ef he didn't fall foul of a board 't was all glib ice jest as we was a landin', up flew his heels, and he kinder lay to on his right arm, so 't I expect it's broke. I slung it up with my old comforter till he could get under hatches here, 'n now you gals must take keer on him till I make sail over to Punkintown and get that are nateral bone-setter to come along and splice him." Sam Bent was no stranger to the girls, but though Poll had often seen him before she had never exchanged half a dozen words with him; but ceremonies are spared at South-side, so Poll took the scissors which Ruth handed her, and proceeded to cut the sleeve of Sam Bent's coat and jacket, while her sister set a spare bedroom to rights, and brewed some herb-tea lest the youth might be ordered a sweat. Poll's fingers were slight and careful, and she did her office tenderly-even Sam felt it through the pain of his doubly-broken arm; and when at length Abe returned from his walk to Punkintown-a settlement some four miles inland—he found Sam released from his heavy pea-jacket and coat, wrapped in Poll's shawl, with his feet to the fire, about as comfortable as he could have been under the disadvantages of the occasion. The "nateral bone-setter" worked his usual wonders on the occasion; and having duly splintered and bandaged the young man, took his knife out of his pocket, and began to snap the blade out and in as a preliminary to conversation, while he tilted his chair back against the wall, and cleared his throat with a vigorous "ahem." "Well, Sir; well, Sir," began Doctor Higgs, "that job is done, Sir. You will have rather of a procrastinating season with such a fracter as that is, but patience is a virtoo, Sir. Yes, Sir, and so is patients, too, we doctors think. He, he, he! Ho, ho, ho! Well, I am pleased to see you reciprocate my little joke; rayther hard to be ludiciously inclined, Sir, under the proximity of corporal anguish. Ahem shows you have good grit into you. I expect you'll become evanescent very rapid if you don't catch a cold, nor overeat, nor overdo the prudential noway. Do you reside in these parts, Sir?" "I live over to Mystic when I'm to home," modestly replied Sam, overcome with this tor |