and forces her to resume her place, whilst a dozen voices shout in unison"Eh! madame! what are you about? You can't get out now! the train's off!"

"It matters not-I want to get down!—my place is in a berline!— Coachman, stop!-let me get out!"

Shouts of laughter greet the exclamation of the jeweller's wife, who casts an angry look on her travelling companions.

Madame Grenat found herself in a waggon, the seats of which were uncovered. She had on her left a couple of men in blue smock-frocks, cotton bonnets, and leather gaiters, redolent of tobacco, garlic, wine, and brandy; on her right a young and pretty-looking woman, deep in conversation with a very young man; a couple of children and a nursery-maid; facing her, three young men of ill-looking exterior, two young peasant-girls, by no means pastoral-looking, an old beau of sixty, and a couple of workmen in their Sunday clothes.

The two peasantesses eyed the jeweller's lady with a sneer; the workmen, ditto; the superannuated beau began to leer and ogle; the young men joked, and the carmen swore.

"We are one more than our number," said the old buck, " there ought not to be so many persons in one waggon."

"Gentlemen, I entreat you," resumed Madame Grenat, after a moment's pause, " tell them to stop. I wish to return to my place with my family!" "We don't go very quick yet," said one of the men in a smock frock to his companion.

"Oh! we shall go at the devil's rate directly, see if we don't; a man might sharpen his knife on the road?"

"Oh! how delightful!" said one of the peasant-girls.

"So it is, indeed," said the other; "one don't seem to be moving at all.” "We are one too many!" repeated the old beau, striving to open wide his eyes, to stare at the young and pretty women, who kept talking apart, without noticing their neighbours.

"What a queer noise it makes," said one of the workmen.

"It's the effect of the machine, in the what d'ye call 'em," replied his comrade, assuming the air of a connoisseur.

"D'ye think that's the cause of that 'ere?"

"Parbleu !—don't I know all about mechanics! and by this token, that I might even have been employed in the works, only I presented myself too late, seeing that I didn't know of it before."

"There! there! now don't it go like blazes?" said one of the carmen.

"I think I am going to be taken ill," said Madame Grenat, in despair, at no one taking any notice whatever of her.

"We are one too many!" cries the aged beau, mumbling a toothpick, to make believe as though he had teeth left.

"Is he always going to repeat the same thing, over and over again?" muttered one of the peasant girls, shrugging her shoulders.

"I've no patience with the old moulted parrot! he keeps looking at me incessantly."

"Why don't you make a face at him?"

"Oh! heavens! where are we? we're in the dark!" exclaims Madame Grenat, as the train arrives nnder the tunnel.

"Be quiet then, madam," says one of the carmen. "Can't you hold your tongue? you deafen our ears with your noise."

"But I can't see at all, sir."

"Well, no more can we either!"

Why! dear me, how very strange!-to travel with strangers in the dark?"

"Oh! don't be alarmed! If you were twenty years younger, one might understand your cause for fear; but, at present, old lady, you may safely travel for fifty leagues without lamp or candle.”

Madame Grenat bit her lips with sheer mortification; her self-love got the better of her terrors. She muttered between her teeth: "People without education are excessively coarse with women!"-But this she said in so low a tone as not to be heard by her neighbours. And then, giving a violent jerk with her elbow to her right, and a desperate kick with her foot to the left, she uttered not a single word more, during the remainder of the journey.

Whilst all this was passing in the waggon wherein Madame Grenat was seated, her husband was enduring his share of tribulation. After leaving the carriage in search of his son, the jeweller had run towards another of the first-class carriages, into which he had seen a little boy enter, who looked, at a distance, very like Benjamin. Having discovered his error, he was about getting down again; but, at that moment, the hubbub began; M. Greuat had found himself wedged in and dovetailed between a couple of passengers; then came the signal for starting, so that he was fain to make the best of his position, and to remain fixed where chance had located him.

The carriage, in which M. Grenat thus found himself, as it were, a prisoner, was extremely well occupied: firstly, there was an English family, an old countess, accompanied by her niece, a banker from the Chausséed'Antin, and a couple of barristers. There was only one person who acted as shadow to the picture; this was a little man of rather shabby exterior, wearing a hat with scarcely any rim left, a threadbare coat, very brown at the seams, and with trousers so short and scanty, that they might easily pass for tight breeches, in spite of every effort of the wearer to make them reach to his ankles. The little man, by the way, seemed to be perfectly conscious in himself that he was out of his element in such fashionable company. He made himself as small as possible in one corner of the coach, kept constantly looking at his shoes, and, when he blew his nose, hid his head in his hat, which he ever and anon took off for that express purpose.

M. Grenat had settled down between two Englishmen; he had accosted them with a faint smile, muttering from time to time-"I am here by mistake, and against my will.-I'm in search of my son, a little boy in blue trousers-I thought I saw him get into this carriage—but I was mistaken.— where can he be?-I'm all of a fidget!"

The Englishmen had, at first, looked hard at M. Grenat, then looked away again, and made him no sort of answer. Whereupon, the jeweller had turned towards the little shabby-looking gentleman; but the latter, having sneezed violently, by mistake, quickly hid his head in his hat.

For some minutes, a dead silence had reigned throughout the company. But, in passing under the great tunnel, a little English girl having uttered a cry of alarm, one of the company said in a half-whisper

"Be quiet then! it's very ill-bred to be frightened!"

The little English girl held her tongue. But M. Grenat, who had been frightened too, exclaimed, on once more emerging into daylight:-"Ah! saprebleu!-I'm very glad we're out again! One would do well to insure one's self in the Phoenix before embarking."

The distinguished society whispered not a word. The little shabby man turned round to take a pinch of snuff from a tin box; and M. Grenat, abashed at perceiving that his attempt at wit had missed fire, re-adjusted his wig, and shrunk back into his cravat.

After a moment's pause, the old countess inquired, addressing one of the Englishmen "What are those men we see so often by the side of the road, near a little watch-box, and who hold up their arm in the air, as they stare

at us?"

"Oh! they're station men; they are placed there to inform us that we may pass on without danger. When they hold up a small black flag, that's as much as to say-you must not."

"Must not what?"

"What for?—I meant to say-must not go on.”

"Oh! I understand," says M. Grenat, who must always be joining in any conversation going on." When they raise the black flag, that's as much as to say, that the cholera's at Saint-Germain: very ingenious indeed!"—

The Englishman turns sharp round on the jeweller, eyes him for an instant with disdain, and then mutters out-" You don't know what you're talking about!"

M. Grenat feels, for the moment, inclined to take offence: but on second thoughts, imagines he had better not. During the remainder of the trip, silence is only interrupted by a sneeze or two, stifled in the crown of a hat.

Return we now to Master Benjamin. On quitting his parents, he had found himself by the side of a waggon, just on the eve of starting. Not knowing what to do, in order to rejoin his father, the little boy had burst out crying. A vigorous hand had seized him by the arm, and lifted him into the waggon; and then a tall man, with a cross at his button-hole, and with black mustachios, had said to him:

"Come! my little fellow, don't cry: here you are, seated; you're going to take a ride on the railroad."

"Yes! but I'm not with papa and mamma!"

"What made you leave them?"

"To see the great thing that smokes. They are in a carriage with cushions to the seat."

"You will find them again at Pecq."

"But, I'd sooner find them directly."

"It's too late now-you can't get out, we're off on our journey."

"But I-"

"Silence, I say!"

"But I will."

"Oh! corbleu! let's have silence, or I shall get angry!"

Master Benjamin was silent; for his neighbour, the military man, did not seem disposed to treat him with the indulgence to which he had been accustomed.

The conversation soon began amongst the persons in the waggon. The company consisted of a grisette, several shopkeepers of the capital, three military men, and a middle-aged gentleman, who frequently drew from his pocket, with an air of great affectation, a metal-gilt snuff-box, into which he thrust his fingers, sparkling with enormous rings, set with imitation stones. He would then describe a semicircle with his elbow, so that whenever he took a pinch of snuff his right-hand neighbour was obliged to make himself small, to avoid receiving a poke in the face.

"Gentlemen," said one of the tradesmen, addressing his fellow-travellers collectively, "we must all admit that industry is a fine thing, and that this is an enterprize that will be of great advantage to travellers.'

"Yes, it's a fine undertaking indeed," said one of the military men; "but when they can put cavalry troops inside the waggons, it will be finer still; because then we may go a hundred miles without knocking up the horses."

"I see nothing impossible in that, sir; they've already put the two-penny post into omnibusses.'

"I want to go to papa!" says Benjamin.

"Silence, boy! little chaps must listen and not talk."

The man with the false diamonds here made another semicircle with his arm, exclaiming, "What's most to be desired is, that the present undertaking -hum!—bum!—may, above all things, be profitable to the theatres."

And, thereupon, he begins singing, in a contr'alto voice, beating time on his metal-gilt snuff-box -"Ah! quel beau jour-one, two-chantons la gloire one, two, three, four, pour son amour-one, two, quelle victoire!”

"Are we going through a subterraneous passage?" enquires the grisette, feigning alarm.

"Yes, mademoiselle, that is to say, under a vault," replies the military man who had taken charge of Benjamin; "but don't disturb yourselfthere's no sort of danger. Come! come! young gentleman, legs still! if you please, or we shall fall out-d'ye hear?"

"It must be much more terrible to be passing through the tunnel under the Thames," says one of the shopkeepers.

"Yes, indeed!" says the singer, "I have heard a great deal about the road you speak of, under the river Thames; they say, it's to be as brilliantly lighted up as the Passage-des-Panoramas. I think they ought to construct an opera-house there-in the Tunnel, I mean,-Ah! quel beau jour—one, two, pour son amour, one, two.-Do you take snuff, sir?"

"With pleasure."

At this moment they entered beneath the great archway. Master Benjamin began to roar most lustily, when he found himself in the dark; and as there was no quieting him, his neighbour, the military man, gave him a smartish box on the ear, adding-" Cowards must be checked in time, or, when they grow up, they'll turn out poltroons."

Benjamin had never received a box on the ear in his life before. This little piece of correction produced such an effect upon him, that during all the rest of the journey he durst neither speak, move, nor even stir on his

seat.

At last, the train arrives at Pecq, just as the gentleman with the rings has finished counting one, two, three, for the twentieth time. The military man helps down the little boy from the waggon, at the same time remarking in a softened tone :

"Come! we've been very good, indeed, at last. I thought I should make something of you."

In

Benjamin makes no reply, but sets off running away as fast as his legs can carry him; for he has caught sight of his father, who has rejoined his mother, who has discovered her daughter. Whereupon they all fall into each other's arms; to behold them, one would imagine that they had not seen each other for the last ten years. Madame Grenat even kisses her daughter, a circumstance unusual with her, excepting upon very extraordinary occasions. other respects, the trip on the railroad has not been unproductive of its good effects. The jeweller's wife has become infinitely less of a coquet than formerly, the husband less talkative, Master Benjamin more obedient, and Mademoiselle Adolphine knows that she is pretty; the young clerk at the Magazin de Nouveautés told her so more than once during the journey. After all this, who will venture to deny the great utility of railroads?

Here, for the present, we take our leave of Paul de Kock; but not without again expressing our satisfaction at the marked improvement in his style exhibited in the volumes before us, as regards the objection to which we have before alluded.

EDUCATION OF THE DEAF AND DUMB.

Uber die Taubstummen und ihre Bildung, in ärztlicher, statistischer, pädagogischer, und geschichtlicher Hinsicht; nebst einer Anleitung zur zweckmässigen Erziehung der taubstummen Kinder im älterlichen Hause. (On the Deaf and Dumb and their Education, from a medical, statistical, pedagogical, and historical point of view; with directions for the proper education of Deaf and Dumb Children at Home.) By Dr. E. Schmalz, Physician to the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb at Dresden. 8vo. 1838.

This is one of those complete works, in the manufacture of which the Germans avowedly excel all other nations. The most eager curiosity which can possibly be excited by the unfortunate condition of that peaceable and interesting class of the community, the deaf and dumb, by their silent and mystical doings, and by all the singular schemes which the ingeniously benevolent have invented for their relief, may here be gratified by a stream of information, rising in the remotest ages, swelling in its descent to the present, with all that time has spared us on the subject; and enriched, when it reaches a modern date, with innumerable facts flowing in from all climes and countries. The author commences with a definition of Taubstummheit, (deaf-dumbness,) then treats, (in separate sections,) of its origin, essential nature, causes, degrees, physical, moral, and mental consequences; of the legal rights of the deaf and dumb; of their number, age, proportion in the two sexes, and, finally, of their medical treatment and education. The above subjects are comprehended in the first section, which extends to 106 pages. The second section, amounting to a hundred pages, contains the statistics of the deaf and dumb in Saxony, (in the capital of which, Dr. Schmalz is physician to the asylum for the deaf and dumb,) and several other German states, in Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, Denmark, Russia, Great Britain, the United States, and Lower Canada. The second part of the work is the larger, and more practical and important; it treats of the history and statistics of the education of the deaf and dumb, and gives an account of the various institutions for their reception throughout Europe and the United States, and of the various systems which have been adopted for their treat

ment.

By comparing the statistical tables on this subject, which have been drawn up in the countries above enumerated, it appears that the origin of the affection, in two-thirds of the cases, is congenital deafness; in the remaining third it is deafness supervening after birth. It was formerly believed that the dumbness of the deaf frequently arises from an abnormal development of the organs of speech, which, in consequence of this theory, have been subjected to painful and utterly useless operations, but it is now