she said, in a soft voice, with her hand outstretched as if she would have lifted the latch herself. A uniform appeared--Coralie sprung forward, and met a stranger-" Eugene, where is he?" cried the bewildered girl, retreating, and her eyes turning from the intruder, strained as if seeking some one following in his rear.

When Eugene's return might be expected any day or even any hour, Coralie begged for a holiday-all occupation had, indeed, become impossible to her. The parents of her little flock were enthusiastically unanimous in their consent :--"Mais oui, mais oui, ma pauvre demoiselle; allons donc, ma chère bonne demoiselle; du courage, ça va finir bientôt, le bon temps viendra."

Le bon temps viendra ?" repeated Coralie, and this strong, lively girl would sit whole hours motionless, or move only to look at the hands of the pendule.

At last, one Sunday morning, Coralie awoke with an unusual feeling of cheerfulness; it was early spring, and a bright sun was shining merrily into the room, in defiance of her snow-white curtains--some caged lark near was singing his pretty matins-and, as Coralie opened her window, a soft air wooed her heated cheek. A few warm tears gathered in her eyes, her heart throbbed tempestuously, and then she felt a presentiment, she would scarcely own it to herself, that he would come that day. First, Coralie prayed, as she had not prayed for weeks-poor soul, was she trying to bribe Heaven? Then she dressed herself in her pretty new blue muslin, her hand shaking so she could scarcely fix the buckle of her band, she smoothed and smoothed her hair till it shone like satin, laced on her new brodequins, and finally drew forth a pair of cuffs and a collar she had embroidered and laid by in sweet anticipation of Eugene's return. They will grow quite yellow," soliloquized she, dissembling her own motive, "if I let them lie longer in the drawer," and with sudden resolution she put them on. And then-why then, she knew not what to do with the long day, and sat down on her sofa in restless, yet happy listlessness.

About noon, there was a man's step on the stair-Coralie was not startled, not astonished, she had known it would be so, only she panted hard as it came nearer, and at last stopped at her door. She rose, but had

"Pardon, mademoiselle," answered the visitor, "I have come by his wish. You perhaps know my name-Jean Rivarol-I was Eugene's comrade for many years."

"He has often written to me of you," returned she, "but you have expected to find him too soon-he has not yet come-but he will soon be here."

The young man leaned his hand on the back of a chair, turned a strange look at the excited speaker, and then cast his eyes on the ground.

"In truth," continued Coralie, "I thought it was him when you entered; and so," she added, after a moment's pause, with a sweet smile, " to speak truly, the sight of you was a disappointment, and I was, perhaps, ungracious to Eugene's best friend-forgive me! Think, I have been waiting for this day five years-five weary years!"

The last few words broke forth with a burst of long pent-up feeling. Then with more composure she asked

"Where did you leave him?"

To this direct question Rivarol, who was still standing in the middle of the room, murmured something like "on the road."

"He will be here to-day, then?"

"Not to-day, I think I suppose—that is -as he is not here yet."

"To-morrow?" persisted Coralie; "morning or evening, do you think?"

"I cannot tell," said Jean, evidently embarrassed, and looking very pale. "Pardon, mademoiselle, my intrusion, I will take my leave."

Coralie thought he was hurt by the ungraciousness of her first reception.

Nay," said she, gracefully, "you must look on this as Eugene's home. It will be his-ours, in a few days-and his friends will always be welcome. See," she went on, "there stands his arm-chair, I worked the cover myself, and, to tell you a secret, those slippers, and that smoking-cap are for him. While he, poor fellow, has been going through toil and danger, it would have been too bad if I had been idle. I think Eugene will be pleased with our modest home."

"What a hurry he is in; I shall tell Eugene." And with this determination, the stranger vanished from her thoughts, which returned to their former train. Nevertheless, she had gathered one certainty, that her betrothed could not be with her before next day. To-morrow!-how long! And yet it felt like a relief. Anticipation long on the stretch, as the intensely desired meeting nears, becomes somewhat akin to dread. So, the porteress, who was always running up on one pretext or another, and other female neighbors also-all in remarkably high spirits were told that M. Eugene could not arrive before the morrow.

The repeating this assurance constantly was Coralie's only conversation with her humble friends that day. Her heart was full of disquiet, and when alone she often muttered to herself some of Rivarol's speeches, harping on "Séjour fait pour le bonheur," or counting over her little treasures in a dazed sort of way. On the Wednesday following, towards evening, as Madame Ferey and her daughter Pauline, one of Coralie's former pupils, were sitting together, talking pleasantly, over Coralie's happy prospects, a ring came to the door of the apartment. Madame opened the door herself, and there stood a figure which for a few seconds she did not recognize. The shrunken height, the stoop which brought the shoulders forward like two points, the shawl which hung over them in a wretched dangle, the blanched cheek and lip, the sunken eye, the premature lines and angles of age -all bore the unmistakable impress of dire calamity and forlorn despair.

"Chère Mademoiselle Coralie ?" at length burst from Madame Ferey, in a voice of sorrowing surprise. And taking her by the hand, she led her in silence to a seat by the

fireside, and then folding one of the girl's hands in her own, she asked in a whisper, "What has happened ?"

"Dead!" said Coralie, holding out a folded paper to Madame Fercy, and averting her face as if the sight of it scorched her.

It was a most touching letter from Jean Rivarol, asking forgiveness for his courage having failed before the purpose of his visit to her on the preceding day. At sight of her, he had not had the heart to speak; his tongue had refused to tell her the fatal tidings. Eugene had fallen in a skirmish for which he had volunteered only two days before the regiment embarked for France. Jean Rivarol had been by his side, and received his last instructions. He had carried his friend's body within the French lines, and given it Christian burial near Oran, putting up a rude cross bearing the name of Coralie's affianced husband, to mark the place where he lay, with a wreath of immortelles, to show that a friend had mourned over that distant grave.

God alone knew what the poor widowed heart went through, for Coralie wrestled with her first grief alone; no eye had been allowed to watch those death-throes of happiness. What can any one say to the bereaved, but "Lord, we beseech thee to have mercy."

Good Madame Ferey and Pauline cried as if their hearts would break, but Coralie shed no tear. She sat in a listless attitude, her eyes fixed on vacancy, as if looking at and seeing only her own thoughts.

"And when did you get this terrible letter, my dear?" at length asked Madame. "I do not know-a long time ago—just when I was expecting him."

Madame Ferey looked up alarmed at this answer.

"I mean the day before yesterday," said Coralie, making an effort to collect her thoughts. "The day before yesterdayMonday. An age of grief has passed over me since then." And now, having broke silence, she went on talking: "I have lived in him -a love of so many, many years-it is very hard. I may say, no action of my life, however trifling, not even the gathering a flower, but was done with the thought of him in my heart. He was the rudder of my life. And so he will be still. For, Madame Ferey, I have thought and thought, and settled it all in my mind. I cannot remain in Paris, to see ever around me all that I had prepared for his return-all I did for him; I should go mad."

Madame Ferey indeed began to fear she might, and concurred in the necessity of a removal.

"You feel that," said Coralie, eagerly; "you are a real friend."

"And where would you go?" "To Oran." And then Coralie told her plan. It was a wild, adventurous scheme, particularly some years back.

But Madame Ferey made no objections, feeling it better to let the poor girl follow any decision she had come to for herself, and believing that the difficulties of carrying it into effect would give time for consideration. In taking this view, the kind lady underrated the firm will of her protégé.

Carolie's aim and ambition was to bring back Eugene's remains to France, and to lay them by the side of her mother in the cemetery of Montmartre. She had already 'made inquiries; it would cost three thousand francs.

"I can perhaps earn as much at Oran, and if not I can pray by his resting-place, and mark it better than by a wooden cross; and at last we will rest in the same grave, either in our native France or under the African soil where he fell. It little matters, so we are together."

That evening the wretched girl left Madame Ferey more calm than she had been since the fatal news. The discussing her project with a friend had given it reality. She had none to help her in her inquiries or preparations. She felt that she must be up and doing, and instead of indulging in natural grief, she roused herself to action. Many days passed in the arrangements necessary for her plan; then it was rumored among the scholars that Mademoiselle Fischer was going away ever so far, and would never keep a school again. There was a sale, and all the furni

LORD STANLEY ON EDUCATION.-The following remarks were uttered by Lord Stanley before the members of the Mechanics' Institutions connected with the Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, at Knowsley:-"In education, as in other matters, self-help is the best help-that a little which men do for themselves is better than a great deal that they get the State to do for them. We see, too, this-and not long ago it was a matter which philanthropists and the public were too much in the habit of overlooking-we see that we cannot by any interference on the part of Government or the

ture and other precious possessions, so hardly earned-objects around which were twined so many tender thoughts and joyful hopeswere sold and scattered abroad. Everything, except the arm-chair which she still called his; that she begged Madame Ferey to keep in case she ever returned. The slippers and cap she took with her. Grief-true grief, has strange vagaries. She bade every one adieu quietly, without having told any but Madame Ferey whither she was going. Some months elapsed, and then Madame Ferey received a letter dated from Oran. Coralie had made her way through difficulties and disagreeables of all kinds; but she was used to struggles, hardships, and self-reliance. She was now settled at Oran, and supporting herself as a day-governess among the families of the French officers. She was very kindly treated. Before leaving Paris, she had seen Rivarol again, and received all the information requisite to find out the spot sacred to her affections. Each morning, before the heat of an African day, and before the toil of her avocation begins, she walks beyond the walls of the town to kneel and pray by the side of a retired grave.

The native population by whose dwellings she passes, noticed this young French woman's diurnal pilgrimage, watched her steps, and discovered its object. It raised her high in their veneration.

One morning an old negro, himself a toiling servant to Arabs, awaited her coming, and presented her a nosegay with these words:

"Moi donner ces fleurs à vous car vous bonne." (Me give you these flowers because you good).

Any traveller visiting Oran may easily find out our heroine. She was still toiling on in I hope a few months ago.

public, deprive the parent of the privilege or absolve him from that duty and responsibility which lies primarily on him-that of duly instructing his children. And from these admitted truths it follows, that, in order to do any real good, it is the parent who must be interested in the work of education. That you can only accomplish by giving him also an interest in literature and literary pursuits, on his own account; and that is what, in associations of this kind, you undertake and endeavor to effect, and the work upon which we one and all are engaged."

CARDINAL MAZARIN said to Don Louis de Haro, at the time of the peace of the Pyrenees: "How lucky you are in Spain: there, women are satisfied with being coquettish or devout; they obey their lover or their confessor, and interfere with nothing else. But here, they wish to govern the State. We have three such: the Duchess of Chevreuse, the Princess Palatine, and the Duchess of Longueville, women who would overthrow empires by their intrigues."

The Chancellor Maupeon used to say that women could not understand politics more than geese. A Duke of Wurtemberg held the intelligence of the fair sex in equally low estimation. His wife having ventured an observation upon the war which he had to sustain against Swabia, "Madame," he said, we took you to give us a successor, and not

to give us advice."

Jean V. of Brittany averred that a woman knew all that was wanted of her "quand elle savoit mettre différence entre la chemise et le pourpoinct de son mary." Molière has dramatized this historical saying, related by Montaigne, in his "Femmes Savantes:"

Nos pères, sur ce point, étaient gens bien fensés,
Qui disaient qu'une femme en sait toujours assez
Quand la capacité de son esprit se hausse
A connaître un pourpoint d'avec un haut-de-

chausse.

In a letter of the 6th of November, 1806, the Emperor Napoleon I. wrote to Josephine: "You appear to be annoyed at the bad things I say of women. It is true I hate intriguing women above all things. I am accustomed to women who are good, mild, and conciliating; those are the women I like."

Always ready to enter the lists with the conqueror of Italy, Madame de Staël asked him one day, in a large circle of society, who in his estimation was the first woman in the world, dead or alive?

"Celle qui a fait le plus d'enfants," answered Napoleon, smiling.

Notwithstanding these records of ungal

lant attacks made by authority upon the fair sex, Dr. Véron justly remarks, that in France women have always exercised a certain empire upon society as it existed in their time; they have known how to change their parts, their attitudes, and their seductions under different régimes; and, at many epochs of French history, they have even pretended to govern the State.*

The empire of women was of brief duration at the breaking out of the revolution of 1789: the salons, at that epoch so numerous, so brilliant, and a few nights previously so powerful, were speedily dispersed by brutal and threatening influences-those of the clubs and the streets; influences which put to the rout all assemblages which required a certain quietude for their effective development.

ried

Madame de Staël, at that time in her première jeunesse, made an attempt, during the administration of M. de Narbonne and of the Legislative Assembly, to exercise a certain influence upon that assembly in her salon, and to rally and to direct its principal members, as at a later period was done, in the midst of the animated but regular movements of a constitutional monarchy. These precocious political reunions were overthrown by the same impetuous torrent which carthe throne of the 10th of August. away The vast influence of Madame Roland's salon is now a matter of history. This remarkable woman, clever and ambitious, ruled over the men of her party as if she had been their chief. She was the first who endeavored to organize the bourgeoisie of France of '89. She was in the possession of more graces and amiability than is generally supposed, but her projects for the future, perchance reasonable, but certainly premature, were quickly upset by catastrophes. There were no more salons when the scaffold became permanent!

Women, however, began to regain power the moment the days of Terror had gone

* Mémoires d'un Bourgeois de Paris. Par Le Docteur Véron. Tome Sixième.

Under the Directory, Madame de Staël saw, on her return from Switzerland, the leaders of all shades of the old party reassembled in her salons. Her doors were only closed to the Jacobins. The author of "Corinne" was indebted for this great influence to the remarkable qualities of her heart and intellect, to an indefatigable activity, and to a certain prodigality of herself and of her sentiments. Those even whom she pleased least capitulated in the long run. She succeeded in bringing within the sphere of her attractions every person of distinction or renown. But these reunions, where Madame de Staël pretended to reign and govern, were deemed to be incompatible with the new order of things. Exiled to Switzerland, she regretted there for a long time her salon in Paris, or, as she used to call it, her rivulet of the Rue du Bac.

The Consulat saw several salons of more or less importance open their doors, and allowed them to exist. Madame de Montesson, widow of a Duke of Orleans, whose wife she had been, as Madame de Maintenon had been the wife of Louis XIV., assembled at her soirées persons attached to different parties, and sought to effect a fusion between different régimes. Madame de Montesson, friend of the Beauharnais, showed herself devoted to the Bonapartes, and she made converts among the emigrants, and even among the great names of the old nobility, to the new order of things.

At this epoch, the graces, the charms, and the intelligence of Madame Récamier, attracted within her circle a polished and amiable society, but more of a literary than of a political cast.

Under the Empire, the women whose society was most courted, who took the first places at the imperial court, and who graced the brilliant assemblies of the staff on days of festivals, revelled in that great and rich beauty, which inspires neither elegies, nor madrigals, nor sonnets, but which moves the senses before either heart or intellect know anything about it.

Madame la Duchesse de Bassano, Madame la Comtesse Duchâtel, Madame Regnault de

The numerous varieties, and different shades of beauty, are in all times represented among women; but the diverse régimes that govern society only place in the foremost rank those whose beauty, so to say, shows itself to be in perfect accordance with the spirit, with the ideas, it might almost be said with the philosophy, of the time. Thus, under the Empire, an upright, imposing bearing, a Greek outline, a look full of fire, a power of attraction which would no more admit of being questioned than the bravery of French warriors, some sense and intelligence,-but an intelligence unclouded by chimeras or vain misgivings, keeping within the circle marked out for it, appreciating only positive things, and preferring in love a sustained heroism to a languishing sentimentality,-such were, in the first years of the century, the principal moral and physical features of the women who were celebrated by their triumphs in salons, as also perhaps by the glory of those who loved them.

The women of the Empire entertained the most tender enthusiasm, the most sympa thizing weakness for living illustrations of the field of battle; for those brilliant officers whose persons revealed force, vigor, and courage. The Lauzuns of that epoch were so many heroes.

Nevertheless, towards the end of the imperial régime, a new group of women gathered round Queen Hortense, and, taking after her, came under the influence of more refined graces, and more chaste and delicate sensibilities.

A new reign of women was inaugurated with the Restoration. Clever women, with some pretensions to beauty, aristocratic manners, and a simplicity which took uncommonly, shone with great lustre in the salons, where they were surrounded with homages and distinguished by a discreet and reputable celebrity. Lamartine came, and the political, the poetic and literary women, once more took the lead. It would be necessary to resuscitate the different classes, the dif