with all this mass of calamity, ever benevolent, gracious, meek, humble, grateful for the smallest tribute of respect, an angel in virtue, and a saint in religion! For such a mother to have lost, and in such a manner, her eldest son, brave, affectionate, and good, is one of those events which show man his short-sightedness, and teach us all that rank, fortune, and honours cannot escape the grasp of the dread tyrant! There is, however, this consolation for thee. He loved thee well! On all occasions he consulted thee, confided in thee, looked up to thee, and, when there was cause for joy or congratulation, rejoiced with thee. "My mother-the Queen!" were nearly his first words when death appeared to stare him in the face at the memorable review on the Boulevards. And this same ejaculation he would have undoubtedly uttered the other day, had not death at once set his iron seal upon him. FOURTH PHASE. Ir was on a very cold day in the month of January, 1837, that the late Duke was desired by his father to proceed some forty miles from Paris to meet his future bride and duchess, the Princess Helena of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He had seen her portrait, but not herself. He had heard of her virtues, her talents, her love of constitutional freedom, her attachment to the religion of her ancestors, and her determination never to marry any one, however exalted his rank, large his fortune, or splendid his acquirements, if he required her to change that religion in which she had been educated. These moral and physical attractions had inspired him with strong prepossessions in her favour; and their correspondence had added to his convictions that nothing like disappointment would ensue. Still he had not seen her, and she had not seen him. The first glance from each eye might fix their mutual fate in this world; and from that moment might be decided whether the marriage to be consummated would be one of unbounded affection and confidence, like that of the King and Queen of the French, his father and mother, or whether it would be a marriage of convenience, propriety, or necessity. It is said that all these anxieties he communicated to his royal mother; and that really, with a trembling heart, he set off on his matrimonial expedition. The news spread through the city, the road was soon sprinkled with visiters, the first interview was watched for by more than one curious and inquisitive person, and the following is a correct report of the scene: At the spot previously agreed on, or rather fixed upon by Louis Philippe, the late Duke arrived some time before the equipages of the Princess Helena had come from Germany. At least an hour elapsed before the meeting took place. The first glance was satisfactory to both. He kissed her with warmth and feeling and she did not disguise the pleasure which she experienced on perceiving that he was not disappointed. For herself, she could not be. That was impossible. Elegant in his manners, cheerful and gay, as well as instructive and witty in his conversation, pleasing and engaging in his countenance and bearing, he must have been just such a man as the Duchess of Orleans, who is so full of sense, virtue, taste, and goodness, could not fail to have desired. The Duke displayed towards her at once that she charmed him. There was no reserve. He took care that she should feel that to such a woman he could give his undivided affections and heart; and she reciprocated those feelings and their expression with promptitude and with truthfulness. It was a charming sight to see the young foreigner throw himself into the midst of a foreign population, a foreign court, and fogin habits, customs, and manners, relying on the chivalry and hospitalty of all to whom she addressed herself. "You are not afraid of us then?" was one of his first inquiries of his future bride. "It is another feeling than that of fear which predominates," she replied, in her own most peculiar and bewitching manner; and from that moment they understood each other. Along the road he smiled with joy, laughed with delight, and conducted to the palace that" afflicted one" who now weeps over his ashes, and is inconsolable for his loss. During the whole of his journey to Paris with her, he received proofs of great interest and affection on the part of the village inhabitants; and many were the garlands and the bouquets, in spite of it being the middle of winter, which were exhibited on that occasion. Alas! after having given to him, and to France, two royal princes to continue the line of the Orleans dynasty, she is left alone in a world of anxiety, sorrow, and despair. No!-not despair-for she has children to instruct, and princes to prepare for high destinies and for great events. I might indeed allude to another " Phase," but it is too painful to reflect on, too harrowing in all its details to record. It is HIS DEATH. What! the Duke of Orleans, the young, athletic, graceful, courageous, enlightened, affectionate, noble-minded Duke of Orleans dead! and at thirty-two-with a family adoring, and friends loving, and a mother respecting, honouring, and confiding in him! Yes, even so-the Duke of Orleans is dead. On his tomb, all who love truth, virtue, patriotism, and generosity, may shed tears of honest, well-principled, poignant, and heartfelt regret. Admirable Prince, adieu! EPIGRAM. THREE traitors, Oxford-Francis-Bean, And may all shots against the Queen, For why, I mean no turn of wit, But seriously insist, That if Her Majesty were hit, No one would be so miss'd. T. H. THE CHEMIST'S FIRST MURDER. BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ. "I KNOW not how to begin the story," said the chemist, sighing heavily, while a slight spasm passed over his sorrowful face; "but when I used to poison people-" "I can't accept that for a beginning," said I, interrupting him. "Your conscience is over-nice, too sensitive and suspicious by half. Begin, in plain, honest English, When I was a chemist-"" "It means the same thing," he answered. "The people in Albania, you know, always commence their stories with When I was a thief." " "So might some of us in England, who belong to what Sydney Smith calls the undetected classes of society; but you never heard a lawyer, when settled in his easy-chair, opening a narrative of the past with 'When I used to ruin half the parish,' nor do retired members of parliament, referring to past periods of legislation, preface their anecdotes of patriotism with When I practised bribery through thick and thin." "You speak," returned the chemist, sadly, "of people wiser than I am; people who can very well bear their own reproaches, so long as they can contrive to escape the world's. But enough of this. When I was a pois- Well, then, when I was a chemist—” "That's it-now go on." But London con ........At that time London had the Byron fever. tains many Londons, and they all had it with greater or less virulence. Thinking and thoughtless London-those who read much, and those who never read any thing-the large-souled, the little-souled, and the no-souled every one took the infection. It became quite the fashion, all of a sudden, to feel. Iron nerves relaxed, hearts of stone broke to pieces inwardly. There might be some who did not know what to think-yet these could of course talk; and there might be a few who, from long-established habits, found it quite impossible to get fast hold of a feeling-still they could shed tears. Society became a sponge, soaking up those briny showers of the muse, which only descended faster and faster," and the big rain came dancing to the earth." Young men wept until their shirt-collars fell down starchless and saturated; young ladies, sitting on sofas, were floated out of the drawing-room window into the centre of Grosvenorsquare; and I verily believe that if those cantos (but they were not yet in existence) which found some little difficulty in making their way into families, could have got into a needle's eye, they would have extracted a tear from it. For the ladies, however, I do not answer positively-I can only vouch for the condition of my youthful brethren. You might have seen them with the new volume-bought-bought, mind-not borrowed; with the volume itself, not an American broadsheet that had pirated its precious contents; with a wet copy of the first edition, not a smuggled, sneaking, cheating, French version; with this volume of world-en chanting wonders tenderly grasped, you might have seen them hurrying along the street, stopping every now and then, and just opening it so as to peep at the mighty line within-then hastening on a little way, repeating the half-dozen" words that breathe" just read, until they were breathless-then, burning with curiosity for the passionate revelation, they would glide down a gateway, or shelter themselves at a shop-door, to dive a little further into the sea of thought, bringing up a pearl at every dip. The sensation with which these young people first read— Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child? constituted an epoch in their lives. It did in mine. That third canto was my first rock a-head. I never knew one bottle from another afterwards. All drugs became alike— merged into a drug. I hated Apollo in his connexion with physic, but I worshipped him in his poetical divinity. I did not aspire to write verse-my appreciation of it was too enthusiastic, exalted, and intense;—to read it, to understand it, to recite it silently, accompanying myself on the pestle and mortar, was sufficient ecstasy. By degrees, rather rapid, the pestle and mortar accompaniment was omitted. I abjured all practical superintendence of the affairs of “ the shop." I regarded with a scorn that bordered on disgust the people who visited it, with prescriptions testifying to their miserable and innately vulgar concern for the welfare of their bodies-I longed to read them a favourite passage or two, prescriptive of mental medicine. sudden burst With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go, A startled the matter-of-fact applicant for an ounce of that strengthening medicine; and an involuntary application of the ever-recurring line, Is thy face like thy mother's, my fair child? would elicit from the simple girl who came for hartshorn, the explanation, that in general it was, "only mother's is swelled." Disgust naturally came in time, and with it, as a matter of course, total inattention to " business." Add to this the fact, that I was possessed, in the person of an apprentice, of one of those things called "treasures"-in short, a precocious genius-and it will readily be understood that a few mistakes in the mixing of medicines would occur every now and then. "Physicians' prescriptions carefully prepared," inscribed in gold letters upon purple glass, neatly framed, figured in the window; and no doubt care was taken to prepare as many as might be presented; but the lad had unhappily an experimental turn, and he was always for throwing perfumes upon Dr. Somebody's violets. When he had no particular ground for guessing how an improvement might be effected, he would hazard an alteration for the sake of change, just to keep his hand in; and the bottle to the extreme right, or the drawer to the extreme left, or the jar next to him, had an equal chance in these cases of being resorted to. The effect was sometimes to heighten, to an alarming degree, some peculiar influence delicately in fused by the learned prescriber, and sometimes to neutralize altogether the essential principle of the prescription. "Men have died from time to time," says the poet," and worms have eaten them-but not for love." Can this be said of physic? At that time, however, I heard of no disaster. Men died doubtless, and worms dined. This was perfectly natural. At the worst, if any mysterious case obtruded itself, and the death of a patient followed immediately upon his taking a new lease of life from the verdict of a physician, there was always the convenient broken heart to fall back upon. Broken hearts were then as plenty as blackberries. "And some," says Manfred, pleasantly enumerating the various disagreeables whereof people perish— And some of withered or of broken hearts, For this last is a malady that slays More than are numbered in the lists of fate. We always used to set down any little inadvertence to the inevitable malady, the broken heart. A wrong medicine perhaps produced a very embarrassing and equivocal turn in the disease,-which came after a little while to look like a totally different complaint-and having an odd appearance with it, it was clearly a case of broken heart. . . (The chemist groaned heavily, and appeared to labour under an attack of conscience.) It was all very well while the mischiefs that arose, either from my own deliberate neglect, or the apprentice's speculative genius, were uncertain and obscure-so long as the body of the victim was not laid right against the shop-door. But alas! a case occurred one after noon (The speaker stopped at the very threshold of his confession, but after swallowing a glass of water, his faintness vanished.) I was in the little apology for a parlour behind, reading the fourth canto, when the treasure of an apprentice quitting his place at the counter came to consult me upon something doubtful, either of quantity or ingredient, in a prescription just presented for preparation. I was in the heart of an enchanting, a soul-enchaining stanza. I had got to the line— Though I be ashes, a far hour shall wreak when in he broke with an impertinent, an intolerable inquiry. I answered, in the flush of my excitement, any thing-I named an ingredient or two for the compound offhand, and bid him vanish―resuming the passage, and completing the stanza— And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse. All medicines, however mixed, seemed weak to that idea. Prussic acid could not, so it appeared to me, have kept pace with such poetry. Its effect upon my mind as I read was, to make the most dangerous and deadly poisons appear perfectly contemptible, and not worth the care and trouble of weighing them out in mere half-ounces! But suddenly, after a little time, an idea stole darkly across my mind of drugs compounded, and pills delivered;-of an intrusion on the part of the young genius of the shop, an order given by myself in |