on the field of honour, fighting the battles of their country, and shedding their blood for their convictions! It will be sufficient to mention the gifted Marceau, who fell, a general scarcely twenty-seven years old, and the high-minded Desaix, who received the death-wound in the midst of the triumph of Marengo, to which he contributed so much. Tell the first consul, said he, that I die regretting not to have done more for the Republic ;' and in order not to discourage his soldiers, he added, ' Conceal my death.'

That poor royal vagrant and really good man, Stanislas Leczinski, king of Poland, and afterwards father-in-law of Louis XV., and duke of Lorraine, where his memory is still held in great veneration by the peasantry, died in 1766, at the age of more than ninety, by a mournful accident. He set his clothes on fire by the hot cinders of tobacco, and said himself jocularly: 'There was only such a death wanting to an adventurer like I was.'

If we read the lives of statesmen, we shall find that the Cardinal d'Amboise, one of the few good ministers which it has been the lot of France to possess, and to whom that country was mostly indebted for the franchise of its cities, said, a few minutes before his end, to a lay brother who attended his sick-bed : 'Frère Jean, frère Jean! why have I not been my whole life nothing but a frère Jean?'

Everyone is acquainted with the beautiful lines which Shakspeare puts in the mouth of the dying Cardinal Wolsey, but the words of the great dramatist are but a poetical amplification of those really uttered by the minister of Henry VIII. : 'Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me up in my grey hairs.'

Now, all the men, the last moments of whom we have recorded, teach us a useful lesson. They all knew that they were dying, and gave, therefore, vent to their real feelings, for there are but few who would or could act a part at that solemn moment.

One general remark we may venture to make is, that the last desire of each receives a peculiar direction, mostly in accordance with his avocations or his aspirations in life, and that no good or great man ever fears death. But we will not extend this subject too far. We have said enough to convince our readers that, if the records of eminent lives are highly interesting, there

is also much attraction in what we may be allowed to name, 'the annals of death.'-The Cosmopolitan Review.

65. THE CHILDREN IN THE BUSH.

A story comes to us by the Australian mail which will fill many a mother's eyes with tears, and touch the sterner hearts of all those true men who love little children, and are tender to them. The colony was ringing with it when the steamer came away. Years hence, probably, it will get into a ballad, and be 'sung or said' to the tiny Australians of generations to come, like the 'Children in the Wood' to their small cousins at home. Antiquarians are afraid to pronounce how old that famous nursery story is; but what do the little ones care about antiquity and dates? Haven't they Robin Redbreast hopping about the garden and the window-sill all the winter-a palpable witness to the narrative? Doesn't he chirp out, as plainly as a bird can, that 'it's all true, every word of it'? and isn't he plainly of opinion that 'it's murder to kill a robin,' and that nobody with a conscience will touch him, ever since he chanted, with his musical throat, that funeral service over the little people in the wood, and 'covered them with leaves'? The wicked uncle, and the brother and sister, and the ruffians, and the kind birds have become part of the pretty religion of the nurseries, which 'loves man, and bird, and beast,' and only through much tribulation with grammars, and many disillusions, enters into the reluctant belief that there are bad people in the world besides giants.' Our Australian story has, indeed, no 'Robin Redbreast.' If birds had any part in it, they must have been the grass parroquet, or the blue bird, or the bell bird '—something outlandish to English nurseries. But it has the old, old pathos of children's suffering, and children's tender truth and courage towards each other; with a happier ending, too, than the English ballad, which is a capital thing; for although the conduct of Robin Redbreast was highly laudable, we never yet met the audience of wee faces that was consoled by that ‘respectable funeral.' They can't see why the one that was of milder mood' didn't go through with his penitence, and, after 'slaying the other there,' bring the twins out of the blackberry bushes, and then everybody, except the 'wicked uncle,' would have 'lived happily ever after.' Well,

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that's exactly how the Australian story does end, and so we tell it with the greater pleasure.

Its heroes are three little people-two brothers and a sister -of whom the eldest boy was nine, and the youngest five, the girl being seven years of age. They were the children of a carpenter named Duff, who worked at a place called Horsham. In Australia small hands can help; so these three used to be sent after brushwood for brooms and fires. They had gone dozens of times, and had come back safely; but this once, when their mother sent them, they wandered into the bush, and missed their way, and at night there were their little cots empty, and their little plates of supper getting cold, but no children. 'Lost in the bush!' Think what that means for an Australian mother ---when vigorous men have sometimes wandered but a hundred yards from the tract in those labyrinths of gum-trees, and gone hopelessly forward and backward, and backward and forward, till they laid themselves down to die. Of course there was a search for them, all night, all day, all the next night and day, many nights and many days, and every hour of the weary time stealing the hope slowly out of the poor hearts of the father and mother. At last they did what ought to have been done beforethey called the instinct of the savage to help them to find at least the corpses of the wanderers. Nobody can explain that instinct; everybody who has hunted or travelled with wild tribes has witnessed it. The face of the ground to them is like the leaf of a book to us—they read it. One of these Australian blacks will tell you if a kangaroo has crossed a creek, by the displacement of a pebble: blindfold him, and bring him into the thick of the eucalyptuses, he will point to his 'gunya' miles away; it is the sixth sense of races brought up in a life that could not exist on five. The blacks soon found the trail of the poor little three; and to find one end, for them, was to be sure of the other. So father, and mother, and friends, on the eighth day after the loss, followed the native trackers step by step. Here littlest one tired—look, sit down!' says one black bloodhound; and presently another grunts, 'Big one carry-see, travel in darktumble into this bush.' Farther on still, the keenest of the pack finds the mark where 'little one put down, too tired-big one fall on him face-no can jump up.' So yard by yard through the scrub, and round and round the dark tree trunks, the sad

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But, on a

hunt went, expecting death at best, perhaps worse. sudden, there they are! asleep, all the three of them, among the broom! the little toddler of five lying between his 'big' brother of nine and his 'big' sister of seven-not dead, but asleep! And look the smallest, not only tucked for warmth between the other two, but wrapped in 'Janie's' frock-that tender heroine herself remaining in her petticoat. Not dead; but oh, so near it! Nine days and eight nights without anything between their poor little lips but one drink of water ! and when they wake the eldest boy, those lips of his are so thin that they won't cover his teeth, nor help him to do anything but moan 'Father!' The smallest takes it coolest: 'Father! why didn't you come sooner? We cooeyed for you.' But the sister, who stripped her frock off and helped carry 'Frank,' is almost gone, and can only just murmur‘Cold, cold!' Is there any need to say how they were caught up, and warmed at the beating hearts of the hunters, and fed with wine, and soup, and sweet bread, till the light came slowly back to their eyes so nearly glazed, and the roses that were deathly white on their tiny cheeks blossomed back again into jolly Australian red; for they were saved, these small adventurers, to tell their tale?

But what a story they will have to tell, if that placid sleep together in the big green bed of the Australian bush, with the sky for their counterpane and the stars for their chamber-candle, and death—pitiful, gentle, merciful death—coming close at last to 'tuck them up' and kiss them, has not banished all from their tender memories. What a tale it will be now-what a recollection hereafter, to try to piece together again that long, long week of weary footsteps and sinking hearts! Think what it must have been for them, hand in hand, amid the vast and pathless bush of Australia, to see the sun rise, and glare, and set, and rise again, and again, and again, and ‘no father, no mother.' No father and mother, but only new trees, and new bushes, and new flowers, which yet seem old, because they are so all alike ; and no path anywhere out of them—always alike! Always a silent green ring about them; full of birds, perhaps, that chattered and chirped about the wanderers. How they must have gripped each other's tiny hands when the lizards shambled over the grass, or a snake hissed at them, and rustled into the bushes; and how they must have nestled together, and cried

for the warm beds at home, when the cold night brought the noises of the wide forest! Eight miserable mornings-eight nights of tears and broken sleep—and all the time bitter hunger and thirst pinching the little stomachs, and driving them to wander farther and farther away in the agony of purposeless effort. And yet, in what would have been in twelve hours more their forest death-bed, the little sister wraps the little brother in her frock, and lies down to die outside him, while the other one has carried him till the nine-year-old knees fail and founder, and he falls upon his face. But they were saved, and 'Janie Duff' is a heroine in the colony, with ever so many hundred pounds being collected to buy her a new frock and something else. By-andby, when they are grown up, will they not come to think and prove that their lives were saved for something noble? Let us hope so, as a sequel to the Australian story of the 'Children in the Scrub;' and, as all such stories must have an 'application,' let it be that good little boys and girls should never wander in the bush, natural or moral.

66. THE PASSAGE OF THE BERESINA.

The Russians, having destroyed in their flight the great bridge of Borisow, defended all the right bank of the Beresina, and occupied, with four divisions, the principal points where we could possibly attempt to pass it. During the 25th, Napoleon manœuvred to deceive the vigilance of the enemy, and by stratagem obtained possession of the village of Studzianca, placed on an eminence that commanded the river which we wished to pass. There, in the presence of the Russians, and notwithstanding their utmost opposition, he constructed two bridges, of which the Duke of Reggio profited, to cross the Beresina; and, attacking the troops which opposed his passage, he put them to flight, and pursued them without intermission to the head of the bridge of Borisow. During these operations, which took place within November 23 and 27, we passed four dreadful days, traversing many villages, among which we could only learn the names of Bohr and Kraupki, where fatigue compelled us to halt. The days were so short that, although we made but little progress, we were obliged to march during part of the night. It was from this cause that so many unhappy