father under your real name and title? He loves his daughter too tenderly to refuse his consent to a union on which her happiness depends."

"Dearest Florinda !" replied Vicenzo, "how could my ardent love abide the delays this course would entail? How can you so cruelly urge me thus to postpone my happiness? See you not how many obstacles to our union the step you advise would raise up? Your father, unwilling to part with his only daughter, (and such a daughter!) would assuredly object to our immediate marriagewould make your youth, my roving disposition, fifty other circumstances, pretexts for putting it off. And did we succeed in overruling these, there still would be a thousand tedious formalities to encounter, correspondence between your father and my family, who are proud as Lucifer of their ancient name and title, and would be wearisomely punctilious. By my plan we would avoid all long-winded negotiations. Before daylight we are across the frontier; and before that excellent Madame Verlé has adjusted her smart cap, and buttered her first roll, my adored Florinda is Marchioness of Monteleane. A letter to papa explains all; then away to Florence, and in a month back to Marseilles, where you shall duly present me to my respected father-in-law, and I, as in humility bound, will drop upon my knees, and crave pardon for running off with his treasure. Papa gives his benediction, and curtain drops, leaving all parties happy."

How often, with the feeble and irresolute, does a sorry jest pass for a good argument! As Vicenzo rattled on, his victim looked up in his face, and smiled at his soft and insidious words. Fascinated by silvery tones and gaudy scales, the woman, as of old, gave ear to the serpent.

"Tis done," said the stroller, with a heartless smile, as he rode off with Fontaine, half an hour later-" done. A postchaise at midnight. She brings her jewels-all the fortune she will ever bring me, I suppose. No chance of drawing anything from the old gentleman?"

"Not much," replied Fontaine drily.

"Well, I must have another thousand from you, besides expenses. And little enough too. Fifty yellowboys for abandoning my place in the troop. I was never in better cue for the ring. They are going to Paris, and I should have joined Franconi."

"Oh!" said Fontaine, with a slight sneer, "a man of your abilities will never lack employment. But we have no time to lose, if you are to be back at midnight."

The two men spurred their horses, and galloped back to Marseilles.

A few minutes before twelve o'clock, a light posting-carriage was drawn up by the road-side, about a hundred yards beyond Anthony Noell's garden. Vicenzo tapped thrice with his knuckles at the postern-door, which opened gently, and a trembling female form emerged from the gloom of the shrubbery into the broad moonlight without. Through the veil covering her head and face, a tear might be seen glistening upon her cheek. She faltered, hesitated; her good genius whispered her to pause. But an evil spirit was at hand, luring her to destruction. Taking in one hand a casket, the real object of his base desires, and with the other arm encircling her waist, the seducer, murmuring soft flatteries in her ear, hurried Florinda down the slope leading to the road. Confused and fascinated, the poor weak girl had no power to resist. She reached the carriage, cast one look back at her father's house, whose white walls shone amidst the dark masses of foliage; the Florentine lifted her in, spoke a word to the postilion, and the vehicle dashed away in the direction of the Italian frontier.

So long as the carriage was in sight, Fontaine, who had accompanied Vicenzo, sat motionless upon his saddle, watching its career as it sped, like a large black insect, along the moonlit road. Then, when distance hid it from his view, he turned his horse's head and rode rapidly into Marseilles.

UPON the second day after Florinda's elopement with her worthless suitor, the large coffee-room of the Hotel de France, at Montauban, was deserted, save by two guests. One of these was a man of about fifty-five, but older in appearance, whose thin gray hair and stooping figure, as well as the deep, anxious wrinkles and mournful expression of his countenance, told a tale of cares and troubles, borne with a rebellious rather than with a resigned spirit. The other occupant of the apartment, who sat at its opposite extremity, and was concealed, except upon near approach, by a sort of high projecting counter, was much younger, for his age could hardly exceed thirty years. A certain sober reserved expression, (hardly amounting to austerity,) frequently observable in Roman Catholic priests, and which sat becomingly enough upon his open intelligent countenance, betrayed his profession as surely as some slight clerical peculiarities of

costume.

Suddenly a waiter entered the room, and approaching the old man with an air of great respect, informed him that a gentleman, seemingly just come off a journey, desired particularly to speak with him. The person addressed raised his eyes, whose melancholy expression corresponded with the furrows of his cheek, from the Paris newspaper he was reading, and, in a voice at once harsh and feeble, desired the stranger should be shown in. The order was obeyed; and a person entered, wrapped in a cloak, whose collar was turned up, concealing great part of his face. His countenance was further obscured by the vizard of a travelling-cap, from beneath which his long hair hung in disorder. Splashed and unshaven, he had all the appearance of having travelled far and fast. The gentleman whom he had asked to see rose from his seat on his approach, and looked at him keenly, even uneasily, but evidently without recognition. The waiter left the room. The stranger advanced to within three paces of him he sought, and stood still and silent, his features still masked by his cloak collar.

"Your business with me, sir?" said the old man quickly. "Whom have I the honour to address ?"

"I am an old acquaintance, Mr. Anthony Noell," said the traveller, in a sharp ironical tone, as he turned down his collar and displayed a pale countenance, distorted by a malignant smile. "An old debtor come to discharge the balance due. My errand to-day is to tell you that you are childless. Your daughter Florinda, your last remaining darling, has fled to Italy with a nameless vagabond and stroller."

At the very first word uttered by that voice, Noell had started and shuddered, as at the sudden pang of exquisite torture. Then his glassy eyes were horribly distended, his mouth opened, his whole face was convulsed, and with a yell like that of some savage denizen of the forest suddenly despoiled of its young, he sprang upon his enemy and seized him by the throat.

"Murderer!" he cried. "Help! help!"

The waiters rushed into the room, and with difficulty freed the stranger from the vice-like grasp of the old man, to whose feeble hands frenzy gave strength. When at last they were separated, Noell uttered one shriek of impotent fury and despair, and fell back senseless in the servants' arms. The stranger, who himself seemed weak and ailing, and who had sunk upon a chair, looked curiously into his antagonist's face.

"He is mad," said he, with horrible composure and complacency; quite mad. Take him to his bed." The waiters lifted up the insensible body, and carried it away. stranger leaned his elbows upon a table, and, covering his face with his hands, remained for some minutes absorbed in thought. A slight noise made him look up. The priest stood opposite to him, and uttered his name.

Dominique Lafon," he said, calmly but severely, "what is this thing you have done? But you need not tell me. I know much, and can conjecture the rest. Wretched man, know you not the word of God, to

whom is all vengeance, and who repayeth in his own good time?"

Dominique seemed surprised at hearing his name pronounced by a stranger. He looked hard at the priest. And presently a name connected with days of happiness and innocence broke from the lips of the vindictive and pitiless man.

แ

Henry la Chapelle !"

It was indeed his former fellowstudent, whom circumstances and disposition had induced to abandon the study of the law and enter the church. They had not met since Dominique departed from Paris to receive the last sigh of his dying mother.

Who shall trace the secret springs whence flow the fountains of the heart? For seven years Dominique Lafon had not wept. His captivity and many sufferings, his father's death, all had been borne with a bitter heart, but with dry eyes. But now, at sight of the comrade of his youth, some hidden chord, long entombed, suddenly vibrated. A sob burst from his bosom, and was succeeded by a gush of tears.

Henry la Chapelle looked sadly and kindly at his boyhood's friend.

"He who trusteth in himself," he said in low and gentle tones, "let him take heed, lest his feet fall into the snares they despise. Alas! Dominique, that you se soon forgot our last conversation! Alas! that you have laid this sin to your soul! But those tears give me hope: they are the early dew of penitence. Come, my friend, and seek comfort where alone it may be found. Verily there is joy in heaven over one repentant sinner, more than over many just men."

And the good priest drew his friend's arm through his, and led him from the

room.

Dominique's exclamation was prophetic. When Anthony Noell rose from the bed of sickness to which grief consigned him, his intellects were gone. He never recovered them, but passed the rest of his life in helpless idiocy at his country-house, near Marseilles. There he was sedulously and tenderly watched by the unhappy Florinda, who, after a few miserable months passed with her reprobate seducer, was released from further illusage by the death of Vicenzo, stabbed in Italy in a gambling brawl.

Not long after 1830, there died in a Sardinian convent, noted for its ascetic observances and for the piety of its inmates, a French monk, who went by the name of brother Ambrose. His death was considered to be accelerated by the strictness with which he followed the rigid rules of the order, from some of which his failing health would have justified deviation, and by the frequency and severity of his self-imposed penances. His body, feeble when first he entered the convent, was no match for his courageous spirit. In accordance with his dying request, his beads and breviary were sent to a vicar named la Chapelle, then resident at Lyons. When that excellent priest opened the book, he found the following words inscribed upon a blank page:

'Blessed be the Lord, for in Him have I peace and hope!"

And Henry la Chapelle kneeled down, and breathed a prayer for the soul of his departed friend, Dominique Lafon.

FOR the abnormal, and, we must think, somewhat faulty education of our later boyhood-a few random recollections of which we here purpose to lay before the reader-our obligations, quantulacunquæ sint, are certainly due to prejudices which, though they have now become antiquated and obsolete, were in full force some thirty years ago, against the existing mode of education in England. Not that the public-quâ public-were ever very far misled by the noisy declamations of the Whigs on this their favourite theme: people for the most part paid very little attention to the inuendoes of the peripatetic schoolmaster, so carefully primed and sent "abroad" to disabuse them; while not a few smiled to recognise under that imposing misnomer a small self-opinionated dique-free traders in everything else, but absolute monopolists here-who sought by its aid to palm off on society the jocosa imago of their own crotchets, as though in sympathetic response to a sentiment wholly proceeding from itself. When much inflammatory "stuff" had been discharged against the walls of our venerable institutions, not only without setting Isis or Cam on fire, but plainly with some discomfitures to the belligerents engaged, from the opposite party, who returned the salute, John Bull began to open his eyes a little, and as he opened them, to doubt whether, after all, the promises and programmes he had been reading of a spic-and-span new order of everything, particularly of education, might not turn out a flam; and the authors of them, who certainly showed off to most advantage on Edinburgh Review days, prove anything but the best qualified persons to make good their own vaticinations, or to bring in the new golden age they had announced. Still, the crusade against English public seminaries, though abortive in its principal design -that of exciting a general defection

VICTOR HUGO, Odes.

from these institutions-was not quite barren of results. It was so far successful, at least, as completely to unsettle for a time the minds of not a few over-anxious parents, who, taught to regard with suspicion the credentials of every schoolmaster "at home," were beginning to make diligent inquiries for his successor among their neighbours "abroad." To all who were in this frame of mind, the first couleur de rose announcements of Pestalozzi's establishment at Yverdun were news indeed! offering as they did-or at least seeming to offer the complete solution of a problem which could scarcely have been entertained without much painful solicitude and anxiety. 'Here, then," for so ran the accounts of several trustworthy eyewitnesses, educational amateurs, who had devoted a whole morning to a most prying and probing dissection of the system within the walls of the chateau itself, and putting down all the results of their carefully conducted autopsy, "here was a school composed of boys gathered from all parts of the habitable globe, where each,by simply carrying over a little of his mother tongue, might, in a short time, become a

แ

youthful Mezzofante, and take his choice of many in return; a school which, wisely eschewing the routine service of books, suffered neither dictionary, gradus, grammar, nor spelling book to be even seen on the premises; a school for morals, where, in educating the head, the right training of the heart was never for a moment neglected; a school for the progress of the mind, where much discernment, blending itself with kindness, fostered the first dawnings of the intellect,and carefully protected the feeble powers of memory from being overtaxed-where delighted Alma, in the progress of her development, might securely enjoy many privileges and immunities wholly denied to her at home-where even philosophy, stooping to conquer, had

become sportive the better to persuade; where the poet's vow was actually realised the bodily health being as diligently looked after as that of the mind or the affections; lastly, where they found no fighting nor bullying, as at home, but agriculture and gymnastics instituted in their stead." To such encomiums on the school were added, and with more justice and truth, a commendation on old Pestalozzi himself, the real liberality of whose sentiments, and the overflowings of whose paternal love, could not, it was argued, and did not, fail to prove beneficial to all within the sphere of their influence. The weight of such supposed advantages turned the scale for not a few just entering into the pupillary state, and settled their future destination. Our own training, hitherto auspiciously enough carried on under the birchen discipline of Westminster, was suddenly stopt; the last silver prize-penny had crossed our palm; the last quarterly half-crown tax for birch had been paid into the treasury of the school; we were called on to say an abrupt good-by to our friends, and to take a formal leave of Dr. P. That ceremony was not a pleasing one; and had the choice of a visit to Polyphemus in his cave, or to Dr. P in his study, been offered to us, the first would certainly have had the preference; but as the case admitted neither evasion nor compromise, necessity gave us courage to bolt into the august presence of the formidable head-master, after lessons; and finding presently that we had somehow managed to emerge again safe from the dreaded interview, we invited several classfellows to celebrate so remarkable a day at a tuck-shop in the vicinity of Dean's Yard. There, in unrestricted indulgence, did the party get through, there was no telling how many Lady's-fingers," tarts, and cheese-cakes, and drank-there was no counting the corks of empty gingerbeer bottles. When these delicacies had lost their relish-xaι ¿¿ ¿pov Evrothe time was come for making a distribution of our personal effects. First went our bag of "taws" and "alleys," pro bono publico, in a general scramble, and then a Jew's-harp for whoever could twang it; and out of one pocket came a cricket-ball for A, and out of

แ

another a peg-top for B; and then there was a hocky-stick for M, and a red leathern satchel, with book-strap, for N, and three books a-piece to two class-chums, who ended with a toss-up for Virgil. And now, being fairly cleaned out, after reiterated good-bys and shakes of the hand given and taken at the shop door, we parted, (many of us never to meet again,) they to enjoy the remainder of a half-holiday in the hocky-court, while we walked home through the park, stopping in the midst of its ruminating cows, ourself to ruminate a little upon the future, and to wonder, unheard, what sort of a place Switzerland might be, and what sort of a man Pestalozzi!

These adieus to old Westminster took place on a Saturday; and the following Monday found us already en route with our excellent father for the new settlement at Yverdun. The school to which we were then travelling, and the venerable man who presided over it, have both been long since defunct--de mortuis nil nisi bonum; and gratitude itself forbids that we should speak either of one or of the other with harshness or disrespect; of a place where we certainly spent some very happy, if not the happiest, days of life; of him who— rightly named the father of the establishment-ever treated us, and all with whom he had to do, with a uniform gentleness and impartiality. To tell ill-natured tales out of school-of such a school, and after so long a period too-would indeed argue ill for any one's charity, and accordingly we do not intend to try it. But though the feeling of the alumnus may not permit us to think unfavourably of the Pensionat Pestalozzi, we shall not, on that account, suppress the mention of some occasional hardships and inconveniences experienced there, much less allow a word of reproach to escape our pen. The reader, with no such sympathies to restrain his curiosity, will no doubt expect, if not a detailed account, some outline or general ground-plan of the system, which, alas! we cannot give him; our endeavour to comprehend it as a digested whole-proceeding on certain data, aiming at certain ends, and pursuing them by certain means-has been entirely unsuccessful; and therefore, if