rooms became literary parliaments, where the aspirant for literary honors read his poetry, or declaimed his tragedies, or anticipated the publication of his history; the drawing-rooms of the Countess Baraguay d'Hilliers, of Madame de Lacretelle, of Madame Angier (the wife of the Perpetual Secretary of the French Academy), of M. Campenon, and especially of Madame Ancelot, were celebrated by the brilliancy of their literary evenings. M. de Lamartine, and M. Victor Hugo soon appeared in all the splendor of their genius. It was not a long time before the excited war of the Classics and the Romantics, gave a new vigor to the passion taken in literature. French literature, too long cooped up with the narrow thought that there was no world without its field, had become acquainted with all the literatures of Europe; nearly all the master-pieces of foreign authors were translated into French, and inquisitive students explored all of these new mines.

David, who had long ruled the dictator of painting (the just reward of the immense service he had rendered art, by saving it from the decline it was menaced by the imitators of Boucher and Watteau), David's school of art was attacked by Gros, Prudhon, Gericault, and Eugene Delacroix, who, by works which are now celebrated, urged the claims of color in opposition to the rank David had given to drawing. As under the Restoration, religion again occupied the place from whence it had long been dethroned; in the general desire to give it all its wonted pomp, music was not forgotten: Chérubini and Lescear organized the royal chapel, and provided the best musicians, the finest voices, and the most gifted singers of Paris to interpret the religious music. M. Auber then gave those promises of his musical talents, which have been more than fulfilled. It was not long afterwards before Rossini came to Paris with all those operas now familiar to every ear from St. Petersburgh to Canten. Nor should we forget that it was at this time that Boieldieu's genius reached its maturity, and gave the world La Dame Blanche.

M. Veron tells us also that a real revoIntion took place in dresses, and a great deal of advantage was gained from the bints suggested by the Russian and Prussian uniforms: the ridiculous shortwaisted coats and dresses disappeared for a more healthy and a more beautiful

fashion. "We borrowed from the English, in 1814," says he, "a new art to France, newer than is generally thought: the art of cleanliness. Persons were well dressed and perfumed under the ancien régime, but during the worst days of the Revolution, and of '93, clean hands made you suspected. From the first days of the Restoration, cleanliness was understood and practised. Human nature was respected and honored; man was no longer, as they said, food for cannon (chair à canon). I am far from pretending that in a single day the public mœurs changed from vice to virtue; but the scandals of license gave place to an observed decency, and to the severities of prudery; nay, they even went to elegance; yellow gloves became fashionable and indispensable in the drawingrooms, and in the boxes and stageboxes."

M. Veron is not less happy in describing the Restoration. He depicts to us the entry of the Allied Armies into Paris the 20th March, and his own sensations at meeting a Cossack holding the horse of a Russian officer, and the gallantry of the Czar Alexander, replying to some ladies who waved the Bourbon colors, and exclaimed: "Vive Alexander if he gives us our Bourbons!" "Yes, ladies," replied the monarch, "you shall have them again. Vive Louis XVIII., and the pretty ladies of Paris!" The Emperor of Russia at that time became the guest of the Prince de Talleyrand, at whose house the Provisional Government of the day met, the Emperor of Russia presiding over their deliberations. It was there the "spoils" were distributed to the "victors,”—a very delicate office, for, as is always the case, where one was satisfied, an hundred were discontented; let us, however, instance one laughable incident, which (with others) relieved the monotony of discontent, and which is too good to be lost. The distribution of offices and decorations having been made upon the principle inculcated by the old saw, "charity begins at home;" all of Prince de Talleyrand's immediate friends were well cared for, except the Abbé de Pradt, who by some accident had been forgotten. Every post was filled except the Grand Chancellorship of the Legion of Honor; it was given to the Abbé de Pradt, who immediately hastened to take possession of his official residence; he was met at the threshold by an old usher, whose appointment dated from

some time early in the Empire; he threw open all the doors before the new Grand Chancellor, and bowing profoundly, said to his new master: "Mon General, you have but to command-your orders shall be obeyed!" We learn from M. Veron, the history of the celebrated mot attributed to Charles X., at that time Monsieur: "Nothing is changed in France -there is only one Frenchman more!" The evening of the entrance of the Count d'Artois (Monsieur) into Paris, the 12th April, 1814, there was a reception at Prince de Talleyrand's; the latter asked if Monsieur had said anything. Receiving a negative answer from those who had accompanied Monsieur, he said, "He must be made to say something. Beugnot (a gentleman present), you are a man of talents, go into my study and make us a mot for Monsieur." M. Beugnot took a candle and went into the study he twice returned to the drawing-room with some phrases which were rejected; a third time he returned to the study, and in a short time he re-entered the drawing-room with an air of triumph, exclaiming: "Nothing is changed in France-there is only one Frenchman more." The company applauded it, it was printed in the morning papers, and it has become historical as being the expression of the thoughts of Monsieur, while, in reality, it was only the expression of the opinions and of the wishes of the frequenters of the Prince de Talleyrand's drawing-room. At this moment, Paris, with the inconstancy of enthusiasm which has now passed into a proverb, was fevered with delight at seeing its ancient dynasty again in the Palace of the Tuileries; every evening, songs and dances were improvised under the Palace windows; in the theatres unanimous audiences demanded the Bourbon songs, of Vive Henry IV., and Charmante Gabrielle; all the members of the Royal family visited the several theatres in state, and were received by the audiences with an uncontrollable enthusiasm. The first and the most remarkable of all these performances was at the Théâtre Français, where the crowd was so dense, they at one time broke past the ticket-takers, and a great many people entered the theatre without paying; the prices of seats in the pit were twenty-five dollars-we mean the prices asked by and paid to the speculators who had bought up the pit ticketsthe legal price was forty cents. At seven o'clock precisely, the Duke de Duras,

first gentleman on service, appeared alone in the royal box and announced: The King! The entrance of the king and the royal family excited the liveliest emotion in the house. For a quarter of an hour there was nothing but tears and frenzied cheers; Racine's Britannicus, and Alex. Duval's Les Héritiers, were the pieces performed. According to the old ceremony, two actors with wax candles in their hands received the king at the door, and escorted him to his box; when the royal family retired, Talma (who had played in Britannicus) was one of the actors who escorted the king to the door; the king said to him: "Monsieur Talma, I have been very much pleased with you, and my opinion is not altogether to be disdained, for I saw Lekain play very often."

These halcyon days were soon interrupted by clouds, and soon the political ocean was again tempest-tossed. How the storm ended by throwing the House of France again an exile on a foreign shore, is freshly remembered by our readers, notwithstanding the four revolutions which that country has since undergone. The people and the soldiery were animated with the same implacable hate of the Bourbons; even in the Garde Royale, this aversion existed to a so great degree that the Guards exhibited it among themselves on every occasion: when in the games with cards in their barracks they had to count eighteen points at piquet, they invariably used the obscenest word in the French language. At the translation of the remains of the murdered Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette from the old Cemetery of the Madeleine to Saint Denis, the crowd of persons that were assembled along the route of this funeral procession insulted all the persons that were in it, and, when, by an accident, the decorations of the funeral car became engaged in one of the swinging lamps, at that time the only lamp used to light the streets, the cry of A la lanterne! that cry of the worst days of the Reign of Terror, was raised. Our readers may remember that this was the cry with which the populace would engage their leaders to hang by the ropes which supported the swinging street lamp (la lanterne) any person whose hands were too clean, or whose clothes were too elegant for their democratic tastes. During the whole period of the Restoration, secret societies covered France; almost every

person was a conspirator.

Carbonarism (as these secret societies were called) had its rentes, or lodges, in all the colleges, in the learned professions, in the scientific bodies, among the literary men: in a word, everywhere, and especially in the army. All of the most distinguised men belonged to it; let us content ourselves to instance General de La Fayette, M. Guizot, M. Thiers, M. Arago, M. Lafitte, M. Casimir Perier, M. Odillon Barrot.

People conspired," says the Duke de Rovigo in his memoirs, "on the kerbstones at the street corners, and nobody, unless indeed the ministers be excepted, was ignorant what was going on." There were fifteen matured and publicly exposed conspiracies during the Restoration, and M. Veron gives new and intoresting details about them all. We rise from reading them with the conviction, that during the whole course of their career (great as their mistakes confessedly are), the Bourbons were much more sinned against than sinning. They covered with honors and with favor all the imperial generals who did not publish themselves as enemies to the throne. They nobly forgave all their enemies. And yet, as we have said, they were surrounded with conspirators: General Berton, the chief of the Saumur conspiracies, never missed a Sunday's reception held by the king and the princess, and when the Duke d'Angoulême went into Spain, nearly every one of his staff officers was a con-pirator against his family's throne. If we cannot find the space to lay before our reader even a sketch of all of these conspiracies, neither can we consent to pass by without mention the story of the lour sergeants of Rochelle.

A sergeant-major of the 45th Regiment of the Regular Army, while in garrison in Paris, in 1821, had been initisted to carbonarism by a law student. He, in turn, created a rente in his regiment, and, in the first place, received as members of it a soldier named Lefèvre and a sergeant named Goubin. After a while, the cente increased in numbers. The 22d January, 1822, the 45th Regiment quitted Paris to go to La Rochelle. A quarrel with some of the Swiss Guards in Orleans separated Bories from his comrades during the route. Suspicions had been excited. Bories opened his ind at Poitiers to Sergeant-Major Choulet, who informed the colonel of all that Lad passed, and he ordered that Bories should be lodged in the house of a retired oficer, who professed to be an enemy of

the government, and to whom he was so imprudent as to confide his position and his hopes.

At Niort, his comrades accepted a dinner offered by the liberal party, and at it they expressed themselves so freely as to compromise themselves. When Bories reached La Rochelle he was sent to the city jail, from whence he was taken and sent to Nantes, where General Despinois, the commardant of the division, wished to interrogate him. This, his unexpected departure, placed the direction of the rente in the hauds of Sergeant Pommier, who was not capable of this office. While Bories was going from La Rochelle to Nantes, the Saumur plot was at empted to be carried into execution, and failed, and Lieutenant Delon and General Berton (the chiefs of the Saumur plot) reached La Rochelle. Delon embarked with one of his friends, Lieutenant Moreau, for Spain. Berton remained in La Rochelle. He regarded the situation of La Rochelle as excellent: it was a sea-port, the seat of a central civil cente which was supported both by other civil rentes, by the 45th Regiment, and by two battalions of infantry quartered in the Ile de Ré; La Rochelle was a rallying point, and a point of refuge to which the sea remained always open. Berton opened communications with Pommier, and enjoined him to be prepared to act. Pommier assembled the carbonari of the 45th Regiment in an inn, about a quarter of a league distant from La Rochelle. He informed them of the presence of General Berton, and communicated to them the orders he had received. A sergeant-major, named Goupillon, insisted that they should act at once, and so carry away the regiment, as it were by force, and, as a means of diverting the efforts of their opponents, that they should fire the barracks. This proposition was rejected. Pommier refused to explain about the precise moment of action, and they separated, promising each other to be ready. This meeting took place the 11th March; the 13th, Pommier and Goubin, designated in the reports made to the authorities about the Niort dinner, were arrested, by order of the colonel, and imprisoned in the city jail. This double arrest alarmed Goupillon, who began to tremble for his own security. Urged by the Sergeant-Major Choulet, he made a declaration to the colonel, informed him of all he had seen, done, and heard, and gave him the names of all of the initi