are termed so in the present day-of course without black soup and many other self-denials, while the Dupins were almost regarded as aristocrats, according to the present acceptation of the term.

Dupin l'ainé must have had some hope of success, when, on February 24, 1848, he led the Duchesse d'Orleans, that princess so esteemed and revered by the French nation, with her little son to the Chamber of Deputies, and sought to direct the movement in favour of the Regency. The date of this attempt is still too fresh for us to discuss it impartially; but what person, who did not desire absolutely to overthrow the throne, could regard it as opposed to actual liberty?

The temper of the Chamber appeared favourable to this proposal, when a band of miscreants rushed in (under the command of the notorious Lagrange, as is now well known) and dissolved the Assembly. The young Comte de Paris was in considerable danger, and it has not yet been satisfactorily proved whether his handkerchief was unfastened accidentally or by some one grasping at his throat. The little Duc de Chartres concealed himself so well under a table in a neighbouring room, that the duchess did not perceive his absence when she was driven out, and the child was eventually taken to his desolate mother in female attire at a late hour in the evening.

Dupin, consequently, was unsuccessful; but history will hardly condemn him for his design.

About the end of 1831 our authoress met these notabilities at the house of a very agreeable Portuguese family, where Arago was presented to Don Pedro of Brazil. It will be remembered that the latter was forced to quit South America, in consequence of the revolution which took place in Rio de Janeiro on April 6, 1831. Our authoress consequently saw him a short while before he undertook his expedition from Terceira, and when only three-and-thirty years of age:

This prince was, on the whole, possessed of a very attractive manner, and I must here contradict the public opinion that was formed about him. As he only enjoyed a short life of thirty-six years, a complete metamorphosis must have taken place, physically and morally, in him, in order to render those assertions true. When I saw him several times at this house, his figure was, if not tall and imposing, very agreeable. He possessed a noble demeanour, his eyes sparkled with animation, and his talents, as well as his desire to leave no opportunity unemployed to extend his knowledge, were the best methods to arouse a favourable feeling towards him. The Royal Infanta, the Marquise de Loulé, was also present with her husband on these evenings. The beauty of this young couple can scarce be described by words, and can never be forgotten by any one who saw them in the full bloom of youth. Both were the ideal of beauty, and could furnish the text for those children's fairy tales which always commence: "There were once a prince and princess, who were so beautiful," &c. The Infanta was graceful and delicate as a nymph; her features resembled the purest antique model; add to this, a fine flashing eye, and her black hair, which had a bleuâtre tinge, and the simple white wreath of roses she almost constantly wore, and it may be credited that I never shall forget this beautiful creature.

If the marquis showed too strongly his consciousness of possessing corporeal advantages, still this weakness may be, as an exception, pardoned him, for the possession of such a beautiful Infanta was well calculated to excite feelings of vanity in a young man.

Although the French perfectly recognised the faults which had after

wards stained the revolution of '89, still they were equally conscious of the first good ideas, and the various mighty events that emanated from it. Their memory still retained the glory of the ensuing epoch of brilliant deeds, when every coming day saluted a new hero; and though they dare not expect any forgiveness from the whole world, still the hope lived in them that the royal family had forgiven them, for they had forgiven the royal family. The two laws brought forward in 1825, one to indemnify the emigrés, the other against sacrilege, naturally aroused great indignation. It may not be uninteresting to state here, that Lafitte, who at that time was one of the most important members of the opposition, was not entirely opposed to the indemnity, but had even defended it against his own party in 1817, while he turned with horror from the law which demanded the punishment of death for sacrilege. We need not go through Lafitte's history from the commencement, for all the world is acquainted with it; but the following may not be generally known:

Although Fortune is represented with veiled eyes standing on a rolling wheel, and the justice of this allegory can never be appreciated more fully than when allied to sudden popular favour, still while everybody was well versed in the story of Lafitte's rise, many erroneous stories were in circulation, and especially in other countries, as to the causes why his star sank below the horizon. The multitude on one hand, and his political friends on the other, believed, and wished to propagate the belief, that his immense fortune had been sacrificed in the cause of liberty. This opinion, however, took no root in the higher financial circles, and many immense speculations, difficult to manage and incautiously entered into, are said to have broken various spokes in his Fortune's wheel, even before 1830.

Lafitte himself really enthralled every one who approached him, by his pleasant and amiable manners. His elegant features, his southern animation and highly peculiar accentuation, an extraordinary memory for all he had read or seen, and, finally, his continually increasing political influence, attracted everybody to his soirées. Among his intimate friends, who had rendered themselves conspicuous after the peace by making their appearance in public, and revealing their sentiments by the most poignant wit, may be counted Béranger and Thiers. This now so well known statesman, who in the ten years between 1830 and 1840 effected so much good and evil, may be regarded as the pen of the political Lafitte ; and the latter, on the other hand, as the lever and reflector of the National, a radical paper commenced by Thiers in 1829.

Thiers' pamphlet, written in 1823, "The Pyrenees and Southern France," first attracted popular attention to him, and Lafitte soon recognised his remarkable talents. He clearly perceived the advantage he could draw from a young, ambitious publicist, whose career had still to be formed, and he became his patron.

Up to this time no history of the revolution had been written, entering into the details of the various events, causes, and views; and, in fact, no one had dared, during the several governments which followed one another after '89, to represent the revolution as having anything good about it. The reminiscence of sanguinary and horrible deeds had been rechauffe by eye-witnesses, but there was no written panegyric of the improvements which had resulted from the overthrow of the then existing relations. To undertake this, and embellish it with the most flattering

colours, was a difficult task at that day. The task was entrusted, simultaneously, to the talented pens of Thiers and Mignet. In the year 1824, these young men, still poor bachelors and friends, inhabited a modest fourth floor together, and worked with indefatigable zeal on their histories of the revolution. They cautiously passed over every terrible deed without any reproachful remarks, to represent with redoubled zeal every victorious battle with its brilliancy and glory, but avoided any mention of the misery necessarily attached to it.

The public has never properly understood how two so closely united friends, of nearly the same age, worked up the same subject at the same time, in two different works, but with the same tendency, and were so far from displaying the slightest rivalry, that they mutually aided one another. The applause that Mignet's work gained was, probably, not so universal as that of his friend, for the former, partly through taste and partly because he did not succeed in being elected to the Chamber, withdrew as far as possible from politics, more especially from journalism, to devote himself calmly to historical studies.

The following anecdote of Thiers is highly characteristic:

In spite of his pliant manner, as long as he was minister, and his great talents, he was compelled to yield, in 1840, to his antagonist Guizot. I frequently saw these two statesmen, who had both commenced their career as publicists, at the house of Bertin de Vaux (then proprietor of the Journal des Débats). Still Guizot was the more intimate friend there, and on simpler terms of friendship. I shall ever remember Bertin de Vaux's sarcastic and scarcely concealed smile, when Thiers paid a visit on the first occasion after his being appointed minister. The servant tore the folding-doors open, and announced "His Excellency the Minister of the Interior!" I knew Bertin de Vaux too well not to read his thoughts when the new minister, who was of remarkably small stature, moved in slowly and with immense grandeur.

While Lafitte threw himself, with all the passion of a talented, energetic, southern Frenchman, into the arms of the revolution, which was regarded by his friends as the result of the highest self-sacrifice, by others as the result of the highest ambition, he could not pay much attention to domestic affairs, or have much intercourse with his family. Now and then astonishment was expressed that the only really pretty daughter of the rich Lafitte would not present a son-in-law to her father. At length the eldest son of Marshal Ney, the young Prince de Moskwa, was selected. The marriage, however, was very far from being a happy one, and the prince eventually was forced to appeal to the public courts to settle his domestic circumstances.

CHAMOIS HUNTING.*

THERE is a flower called Edelweiss-the Gnaphalium leontopodium of botanists-which is met with only on some of the highest mountains in certain parts of Tyrol and Bavaria, and is much valued for the snowy purity of its colour, but still more so for the difficulty in getting it. The very name, "Noble Purity" (edel, noble-weiss, white), has a charm about it. Strangely enough, it always grows on a spot to be reached only with the utmost peril. You will see a tuft of its beautiful white flowers overhanging a precipice, or waving on a perpendicular wall of rock, to be approached but by a ledge, where, perhaps, a chamois could hardly stand. But it is this very difficulty of acquisition which gives the flower so peculiar a value, and impels many a youth to brave the danger, that he may get a posy of Edelweiss for the hat or bosom of the girl he loves; and often has such a one fallen over the rocks just as he had reached it, and been found dead; in his hand the flower of such fatal beauty, which he still held firmly grasped.

It is precisely the same thing with chamois hunting, or rather shooting, for there is, strictly speaking, no hunting in the case; it is not the mere act of killing the only antelope of Europe on its mountain heights, still less is it the bagging of a large and particularly fine piece of game, that gives favour to the sport; it is the difficulty and the danger of the thing-the lofty mountain and deep precipice, the narrow ledge and slippery lahnes, the snowy summit and dark abyss, dangers and privations enhanced by the love of enterprise and adventure, pure air, bracing exercise, unrivalled scenery, and a very wild and wary prey; all combined, rendering, perhaps, chamois shooting, although an European sport, the most peculiar and the most dangerous of all. Better probably to some nerves the chance of life upon a bullet delivered safely in the one fatal spot, against lion, elephant, or rhinoceros, than the dangerous way across the slippery steep, or snow or grass-clad declivity, with a firm footing impossible, nothing to hold by, not even a latschen or creeping pine, and a fathomless abyss below; or a narrow ledge, not many inches wide for the toes to rest on-the feet being out of the question, with a leap here and there, no hold for the hands, and a dizzy precipice yawning so far below as to end in Styxian darkness! In the one case the nerves may be aroused to a fixedness of purpose equal to the emergency, in the other the strain upon them must be prolonged till we can readily imagine the sense of danger to become at times a positive torture.

The experienced forester or mountaineer naturally thinks less of these dangers than the novice or the amateur. For example, on the ascent of the Miesing, in company with Berger, an under-forester:

We now came to the broad path or mountain way that leads up the Miesing, made to enable the wood-cutters to bring down the wood in winter, as well as for the cattle which in the summer months are driven up to the high pasturages. Beside us, on our left, a clear stream was falling over the blocks of stone that had tumbled into its channel, and beyond it rose a wall of rock, well-nigh perpendicular, eight hundred feet or more. This was the Gems *Chamois Hunting in the Mountains of Bavaria. By Charles Boner, with Illustrations by Theodore Horschelt, of Munich. Chapman and Hall.

Wand, a famous place in other days ere the new laws had been put in force, and where, on ledges so narrow that it seemed a bird only might cling there for some moments, the chamois were always to be seen, standing at gaze or stepping carelessly along. But now the rock was indeed desolate. Over the face of this high wall of stone were scattered the friendly latschen, with here and there a pine that had been able to twist its roots into some gaping crevice. It was as nearly perpendicular as might be, and, except that the strata of rock formed projecting ridges, there was hardly a footing to be obtained. However, if there are latschen one may climb almost anywhere. We stopped occasionally to look across with our glasses and scan its rocky face, in order to see if perchance a solitary buck were loitering there alone. But not a thing, animate or inanimate, was stirring. As I looked up at the precipice, I observed to Berger, " To get along there would be no easy matter-eh? What think you, could you manage it?"

"I went along there some time ago, when out with Mr. --. He wounded a chamois, and it climbed upwards along the wall. It was difficult work, for there was nothing to hold on by; and what grass I found was not firm, and gave way in my grasp. Once I was rather uncomfortable, for while hanging to the rock with both arms raised my rifle swung forward over my arm."

"Ay, that is a horrid situation; let go your hold you dare not; and how to get the rifle back again one does not know either. When it swings down and knocks against the rock, it almost makes one lose all balance. The rifle is sadly in the way in such difficult places. Without it—”

“Oh, without it," said Berger, interrupting me," one could go any and everywhere. Without it I could climb through the world. The rifle makes an immense difference. But, as I was saying, at last I got up and reached the chamois. The coming down was the worst part. However, I took another way than in going up. I pulled off my shoes, for you can then feel your ground better, and take hold of every little projection with your toes."

"But that must have hurt you terribly?"

"No; I was then accustomed to go barefoot, and would formerly much rather have climbed so than down with thick nailed shoes on. Once before I

came down yonder wall from over the ridge: it was ugly work, I can tell you. We drove the game that day, and I had to go over the top and roll down stones to make the chamois cross to the other side."

One of the great difficulties of stalking the mountains is to do so almost unheard. Fragments of stone are lying about, latschen, or pines and larches, with their long trailing branches and dense foliage, or steep beds of geröll (loose rolling stones on the side of a mountain), cross your path, which the lightest step will set in motion; and yet you must advance quickly, and pick your way quite noiselessly, for the roll of a single pebble will arouse the attention of the wary chamois, and, if followed by a second, he will be off in a moment to other rocky inaccessible solitudes. Let us, however, take an example of what chamois stalking is from the author's own words:

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"Look, don't you see a black spot, right across to the right of the geröll and the snow. Now it moves! There is another!-one, two, three!" "I see them now! Confound it, they see us! Let us move on-don't stop or look; keep away from them, up to the right." And up we went, keeping in a contrary direction, and then stopped among some large loose

stones.

"Look, Berger! now you can see them well; they are crossing the snow,