mountains loftier than the loftiest of the land, its valleys more profound, the pinnacles of its hills islands! What immense shapes of animal and vegetable life may fill those boundless pastures and plains on which man shall never look! What herds, by thousands and millions, of those mighty creatures whose skeletons we discover, from time to time, in the wreck of the antediluvian globe! What secrets of form and power, of capacity and enjoyment, may exist under the cover of that mighty expanse of waves which fills the bed of the ocean, and spreads round the globe!

masses of summer cloud in the sunshine. It was my first sight of the ocean, and that first sight is always a new idea. Alexander the Great, standing on the shores of the Persian Gulf, said, "That he then first felt what the world was." Often as I have seen the ocean since, the same conception has always forced itself on me. In what a magnificent world do we live! What power, what depth, what expanse, lay before me! How singular, too, that while the grandeur of the land arises from bold irregularity and incessant change of aspect, from the endless variety of forest, vale, and mountain; the same effect should be produced on the ocean by an absence of all irregularity and all change! A simple, level horizon, perfectly unbroken, a line of almost complete uniformity, compose a grandeur that impresses and fills the soul as powerfully as the most cloud-piercing Alp, or the Andes clothed with thunder.

This was the ocean in calm; but how glorious, too, in tempest! The storm that sweeps the land is simply a destroyer or a renovator; it smites the surface, and is gone. But the ocean is the seat of its power, the scene of its majesty, the element in which it sports, lives, and rules-penetrating to its depths, rolling its surface in thunder on the shore-changing its whole motion, its aspect, its uses, and, grand as it is in its serenity, giving it another and a more awful grandeur in its convulsion. Then, how strangely, yet how admirably, does it fulfil its great human object! Its depth and extent seem to render it the very element of separation; all the armies of the earth might be swallowed up between the shores of the Channel. Yet it is this element which actually combines the remotest regions of the earth. Divisions and barriers are essential to the protection of kingdoms from each other; yet what height of mountain range, or what depth of precipice could be so secure as the defence so simply and perpetually supplied by a surrounding sea? While this protecting element at the same time pours the wealth of the globe into the bosom of a nation.

Even all this is only the ocean as referred to man. How much more magnificent is it in itself! Thrice the magnitude of the land, the world of waters! its depth unfathomable, its

While those and similar ramblings were passing through my mind, as I sat gazing on the bright and beautiful expanse before me, I was aroused by a step on the shingle. I turned, and saw the gallant guardsman, who had so much interested our party on the night before. But he received my salutation with a gravity which instantly put an end to my good-humour; and I waited for the dénouement, at his pleasure. He produced a small billet from his pocket, which opened, and which, on glancing my eye over it, appeared to me a complete rhapsody. I begged of him to read it, and indulge me with an explanation. He read it, and smiled.

"It is, I own, not perfectly intelligible," said he; "but some allowance must be made for a man deeply injured, and inflamed by a sense of wrong."

I read the signature-Lafontaine, Capitaine des Chasseurs legers. I had never heard the name before. I begged to know "the nature of his business with me, as it was altogether beyond my conjecture."

"It is perfectly probable, sir," was the reply; " for I understand that you had never seen each other till last night, at the house of your friend. The case is simply this: - Lafontaine, who is one of the finest fellows breathing, has been for some time deeply smitten by the various charms of your host's very pretty daughter, and, so far as I comprehend, the lady has acknowledged his merits. But your arrival here has a good deal deranged the matter. He conceives your attentions to his fair one to be of so marked a nature, that it is impossible for him to overlook them." I laughed, and answered,

"Sir, you may make your friend quite at his ease on the subject, for I have not known her existence till within these twenty-four hours."

"You danced with her half the evening-you sat beside her at supper. She listened to you with evident attention-of this last I myself was witness; and the report in the neighbourhood is, that you have come to this place by an express arrange. ment with her father," gravely retorted the guardsman.

All this exactness of requisition appeared to me to be going rather too far; and I exhibited my feeling on the subject, in the tone in which I replied, that I had stated every thing that was necessary for the satisfaction of a "man of sense, but that I had neither the faculty nor the inclination to indulge the captiousness of any man."

His colour mounted, and I seemed as if I was likely to have a couple of heroes on my hands. But he compressed his lip, evidently strangled a chivalric speech, and, after a pause to recover his calmness, said

"Sir, I have not come here to decide punctilios on either side. I heartily wish that this affair had not occurred, or could be reconciled; my countrymen here, I know, stand on a delicate footing, and I am perfectly aware of the character that will be fastened on them by the occurrence of such rencontres. Can you suggest any means by which this difference may be settled at once ?"

"None in the world, sir," was my answer. "I have told you the fact, that I have no pretension whatever to the lady that I am wholly unacquainted even with the person of your friend that the idea of intentional injury on my part, therefore, is ridieulous; and let me add, for the benefit of your friend, that to expect an apology for imaginary injuries, would be the most ridiculous part of the entire transaction."

"What, then, am I to do?" asked the gallant captain, evidently perplexed. "I really wish that the affair could be got over without fracas. In fact, though the Jewess is pretty, Lafontaine's choice does not much gratify any of us."

"What you ought to do, sir, is sufficiently plain," said I. "Go to your friend; if he has brains enough remaining to comprehend the nature of the

case, he will send you back with his apology. If he has not, I shall remain half an hour on the sands until he has made up his mind."

The captain made me a low bow, and slowly paced back to the lodging of his fiery compatriot.

When I was left alone, I, for the first time, felt the whole ill-luck of my situation. So long as I was heated by our little dialogue, I thought only of retorting the impertinent interference of a stranger with my motives or actions. But, now, the whole truth flashed on me with the force of a new faculty. I saw myself involved in a contest with a fool or a lunatic, in which either of our lives, or both, might be sacrificed-and for nothing. Hope, fortune, reputation, perhaps renown, all the prospects of life were opening before me, and I was about to shut the gate with my own hand. In these thoughts I was still too young for what is called personal peril to intervene. The graver precaution of more advanced years was entirely out of the question. I was a soldier, or about to be one; and I would have rejoiced, if the opportunity had been given to me, in heading a forlorn hope, or doing any other of those showy things which make a name. The war, too, was beginning-my future regiment was ordered for foreign service-every heart in England was beating with hope or fear-every eye of Europe was fixed upon England and Englishmen; and, in the midst of all this high excitement, to fall in a pitiful private quarrel, struck me with a sudden sense of self-contempt and wilful absurdity, that made me almost loathe my being. I acknowledge that the higher thoughts, which place those rencontres in their most criminal point of view, had then but little influence with me. But to think that, within the next hour, or the next five minutes, I might be but like the sleepers in the rude resting-place of the fishermen; with my name unknown, and all the associations of life extinguished

"This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod"

was an absolute pang. I could have died a martyr, and despised the flame, or rather rejoiced in it, as a security that I should not perish forgotten. But a fancied wrong, an obscure dis

pute, the whole future of an existence flung away for the jealous dreams of a mad Frenchman, or the sport of a coquette, of whom I knew as little as of her fantastic lover, threw me into a fever of scorn for the solemn fullies of mankind.

The captain returned. I had not stirred from the spot.

"I regret," said he, "that my friend is wholly intractable. He has convinced himself, if he can convince no one else, that he has wholly lost the good opinion of his fair one, and that you are the cause. Some communication which he had from London, informed him of your frequent intercourse with her father. This rendered him suspicious, and the peculiar attention with which you were treated last night, produced a demand for an explanation; which, of course, heightened the quarrel. The inamorata, probably not displeased to have more snitors than one, whether in amusement or triumph, appears to have assisted his error, if such it be ; and he returned home, stung to madness by what he terms her infidelity. He now demands your formal abandonment of the pursuit."

All my former feelings of offence recurred at the words, and I hotly asked-" Well, sir, to whom must I kneel to the lady or the gentleman? Take my answer back-that I shall do neither. Where is your friend to be found?"

He pointed to a clump of trees within a few hundred yards, and I followed him. I there saw my antagonist; a tall, handsome young man, but with a countenance of such dejection that he might have sat for the picture of despair. It was clear that his case was one for which there was no tonic, but what the wits of the day called a course of steel. Beside him stood a grey haired old figure, of a remarkably intelligent countenance, though stooped slightly with age. He was introduced to me as General Deschamps; and in a few well-expressed words, he mentioned that he attended, from respect to the British, to offer his services to me on an occasion "which he deeply regretted, but which circumstances unfortunately rendered necessary, and which all parties were doubtless anxious to conclude before it should produce any irritation in the neighbourhood."

My

He

To the offer of choice of weapons, I returned an answer of perfect indifference. It had happened, that as my father had destined me for diplomacy, and had conceived the science to have but two essentials, French and fencing, I was tolerably expert in both. Swords were chosen. We were placed on the ground, and the conflict began. antagonist was evidently a master of his art; but there is no weapon whose use depends so much upon the mind of the moment as the sword. He was evidently resolved to kill or be killed; and the desperation with which he rushed on me exposed him to my very inferior skill. At the third pass f ran him through the sword arm. staggered back with the twinge; but at the instant when he was about to bound on me, and perhaps take his revenge, a scream stopped us all; a female, wrapped in cloak and veil, rushed forward, and threw herself into Lafontaine's arms in a passion of sobs. An attendant, who soon came up, explained the circumstance; and. it finally turned out, that the fair Mariamne, whatever her coquetry might have intended at night, repented at morn; recollected some of the ominous expressions of her lover; and on hearing that he had been seen with a group entering the grove, and that I, too, was absent, had conjectured the truth at once, and flown, with her femme de chambre, to the rendezvous. She had come just in time.

The reconciliation was complete. I was now not only forgiven by the lover, but was the "very best friend he had in the world ;-a man of honour, a paragon, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche." The wound of the gallant chasseur was bound up, like an ancient knight's, with his mistress's scarf.

She upbraided me, with her glistening eyes, for having had the audacity to quarrel with her hero; and then, with the same eyes, thanked me for the opportunity of proving her faith to cher et malheureux Charles, Her little heart poured out its full abundance in her voluble tongue; and for a quarter of an hour, and it is a long life for happiness, we were the happiest half dozen in Christendom.

How Mordecai would admiré all this, was yet to be told; but my casual mention of his name broke up the rapture at once. Mariamne sud

denly became sensible of the irregularity of alternately fainting and smiling in the arms of a handsome young soldier; and in the presence, too, of so many spectators, all admirers of her black eyes and blooming sensibilities. She certainly looked to me much prettier than in her full dress charms of the evening before, and I almost began to think that the prize was worth contending for; but the guards man and the old général fiad felt the effects of the morning air, and were unsentimentally hungry. Mariamne and her attendant were escorted to the edge of the plantation by her restored knight; and I accepted the general's invitation to breakfast, instead of drowning myself in the next pond.

The general was lo lged in the first floor of a fisherman's dwelling, which, in more polished parts of the land, would have been pronouuced a hovel; but in Brighton, as it then was, bore the name of a house. We entered it through an apartment filled with matters of the fisherman's trade,-nets, barrels, and grapnels; and in a corner a musket or two, which had evidently seen service, though probably not in his Majesty's pay. The walls were covered with engravings of British sea-fights and favourite admirals, from the days of Elizabeth; patriotic in the highest degree, and most intolerable specimens of the arts; the floor, too, had its covering, but it was of nearly a dozen children of all sizes, from the bluff companion of his father down to the crier in the cradle; yet all fine bold specimens of the brood of sea and fresh air, British bull-dogs, that were yet to pin down the game all round the world; or rather cubs of the British lion, whose roar was to be the future terror of the foreigner.

The general welcomed us to his little domicile with as much grace as if he had been ushering us into the throne-room of the Tuileries. I afterwards understood that he had been governor of the "Invalides ;" and the change from the stately halls of that military paláce must have severely taxed the philosophy of any man; yet it had no appearance of having even ruffled the temperament of the gallant veteran. He smiled, talked, and did the honours of his apartment with as much urbanity as if he had been surrounded by all the glittering furniture, and all the live

ried attendance, of his governorship. I have always delighted in an old Frenchman, especially if he has served. Experience has made me a cosmopolite, and yet to this hour à young Frenchman is my instinctive aversion. He is born in coxcombry, cradled in coxcombry, and educated in coxcombry. It is only after his coxcombry is rubbed off by the changes and chances of the world, that the really valuable material of the national character is to be seen. He always reminds me of the mother-ofpearl shell, rude and unpromising on the outside, but by friction exhibiting a fine interior. However it may be thought a paradox to pronounce the Frenchman unpolished, I hold to my assertion. If the whole of "jeune France" sprang on their feet and clapped their hands to the hilts of their swords, or more probably to their daggers, to avenge the desecration of the only shrine at which ninetenths of them worship, I should still pronounce the Frenchman the most unpolished of Europeans. What is his look of conscious superiority to all that exist besides in this round world? The toss of his nostril, the glare of his eye, the contempt of his gathered lip? Give me the homeliest manners of the homeliest corner of Europe-nay, give me the honest rudeness of the American savage, in preference to this arrogant assumption of an empty superiority. Why, the very tone in which every Frenchman, from fifteen to five-and-forty, utters the words "la, France," is enough to raise the laugh, or make the blood boil, of all mankind.

Nearly twenty years after this, I happened to be sitting one day with Gentz, the most memorable practical philosopher of his age and country. Germany was then in the most deplorable depression, overrun with French armies; and with Napoleon at Erfurth, in the pride of that "bad eminence" on which he stood in such Titanic grandeur, and from which he was so soon to be flung with such Titanic ruin. Our conversation nattirally turned on the melancholy state of things.

"I think," said the great politi. cian, "that this supremacy must fall. I might not think so if any other nation were the masters of Europe; but France, though often à conqueror,