abandoned that part of the house which, from an instinct I cannot explain, they had so minutely explored. The poor fugitives now drew their breath freely, and the Duchess thought herself safe; but this hope did not last long.

"The gendarme who had kept watch, anxious to take advantage of the silence which had succeeded the noise made by the workmen, under whose efforts the whole house had tottered, now awoke his companion in order to have a nap in his turn. The other had become chilled during his sleep, and felt almost frozen when he awoke. No sooner were his eyes open than he thought of warming himself. He therefore relit the fire, and as the turf did not burn fast enough, he threw into it a great number of bundles of the Quotidienne, which happened to be in the room. They soon caught, and the fire again blazed up in the chimney.

"The paper produced a denser smoke and a greater heat than the fuel which had been used the first time. The prisoners were now in imminent danger of suffocation. The smoke passed through the cracks made by the hammering of the workmen against the wall, and the plate, which was not yet cold, soon became heated to a terrific degree. The air of the recess became every instant less fit for respiration: the persons it contained were obliged to place their mouths against the slates, in order to exchange their burning breath for fresh air. The Duchess was the greatest sufferer, for, having entered the last, she was close to the plate. Each of her companions offered several times to change places with her, but she always refused.

"At length, to the danger of being suffocated was soon added another that of being burned alive. The plate had become red-hot, and the lower part of the clothes of the four prisoners seemed likely to catch fire. The dress of the Duchess had already caught twice, and she had extinguished it with her naked hands, at the expense of two burns, of which she long after bore the marks. Each moment rarified the air in the recess still more, whilst the external air did not enter in sufficient quantity to enable the poor sufferers to breathe freely. Their lungs became dreadfully oppressed; and to remain ten minutes longer in such a furnace would be to endanger the life of

her Royal Highness. Each of her companions entreated her to go out; but she positively refused. Big tears of rage rolled from her eyes, and the burning air immediately dried them upon her cheeks. Her dress again caught fire, and again she extinguished it; but the movement she made in doing so, pushed back the spring which closed the door of the recess, and the plate of the chimney opened a little. Mademoiselle de Kersabiec immediately put forward her hand to close it, and burned herself dreadfully.

"The motion of the plate having made the turf placed against it roll back, this excited the attention of the gendarme, who was trying to kill the time by reading some numbers of the Quotidienne, and who thought he had built his pyrotechnic edifice with greater solidity than it seemed to possess. The noise made by Mademoiselle de Kersabiec inspired him with a curious idea: fancying that there were rats in the wall of the chimney, and that the heat would force them to come out, he awoke his companion, and they placed themselves, sword in hand, one on each side of the chimney, ready to cut in twain the first rat that should appear.

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They were in this ridiculous attitude, when the Duchess, who must have possessed an extraordinary degree of courage to have supported so long as she had done the agony she endured, declared she could hold out no longer. At the same instant M. de Ménars, who had long before pressed her to give herself up, kicked open the plate. The gendarmes started back in astonishment, calling out, "Who's there?"

"I,' replied the Duchess. I am the Duchess of Berri; do not hurt me.'

"The gendarmes immediately rushed to the fire-place, and kicked the blazing fuel out of the chimney. The Duchess came forth the first, and as she passed was obliged to place her hands and feet upon the burning hearth; her companions followed.

It was

now

half-past nine o'clock in the morning, and the party had been shut up in this recess for sixteen hours without food."

General Dermoncourt was sent for, and on his árrival beheld for the first time the Duchess of Berri. A conversation ensued, in which he displayed much of the artful gallantry habitual to a

Frenchman, and nothing now remained but the perilous duty of conducting her to the chateau, little more than sixty yards distant, without making her a victim to the fury of the citizens of Nantes, who, having been much straitened by the continuance of the Vendean insurrection, now vowed vengeance against the prime mover of it. Dermoncourt, however, having pledged himself for her safety, was resolved to redeem it, and taking her arm in his, preceded by the Prefect and Mademoiselle Kersabiec, led her through the muttered curses of the inhabitants that lined the crowded streets.

They arrived in safety, and the next day General Dermoncourt bid adieu to her, and took the route to La Chasliére, in search of M. de Bourmont. He never saw her again. An hour after his departure, a steamer bore the Duchess of Berri down the Loire to the brig Capriceuse, and in a short time she was far from the scene which she had consecrated by her misfortunes and her heroism.

Of General Dermoncourt's style of composition it is difficult to judge, seeing it as we do through the medium of an unambitious translation. He gives extraordinary animation to his descriptive passages, but his reflections are affected and unphilosophical, and are more than once dragged in so malàpropôs, as to destroy the effect of the

narrative they are meant to dignify or elucidate. This fault, however, be has, in common with most French authors, especially those of the revolutionary school, who never can shake off that unconnected, half-dreamy sentiment that seems meant to give its own extenuating tint to any particular action, no matter how glaring it may be in itself. The translator appears to do tolerable justice to the original, but his notes had been much better omitted. They only satisfy the coarsest curiosity, at an expense too heavy for the reader of refinement, and while he puts stale jests upon the public in the cloak of originality, he publishes secrets and names of state with a degree of self-sufficiency that naturally inclines us to question the accuracy of his information.

We had congratulated ourselves on the worthy General's having kept up the interest of the volume by avoiding all allusion to the circumstance which has since thrown a sort of ridicule upon every thing connected with the Duchess. He could not, however, leave off without one word on the subject; and as reviewers we feel ourselves obliged to quote, in conclusion, the last sentence in his book.

"Let another now undertake the task of relating the third act of the drama, which began à la Marie-Therèse, and has ended à la Marie-Louise."

Bishop Berkeley, with that happy mixture of acuteness and humour, which characterizes most of his queries respecting Ireland, asks, "whether a tax upon dirt would not be very productive, and a very useful way of encouraging native industry ?" The suburbs of almost every one of our cities and considerable towns, consist of long straggling disjointed rows of miserable tumble-down huts, the abode of filth and wretchedness, which are in general emphatically styled Irishtown, as if in extenuation of the mass of pigs, poverty, and population, which they present to the offended eye of the English or foreign traveller, until his sight becomes "more Irish and less nice." We cannot see why these nests of abomination and all uncleanness should be suffered to remain, disfiguring the fair face of our smiling land, and rendering our people a byeword and a reproach in the mouths of our sadder and more cleanly fellowsubjects across the water. For though "dirty and cheerful," like "cheap and nasty," has passed into a proverb, we cannot, for our own poor peculiar, perceive the necessary connexion between filth and hilarity. Indeed, next to a fast gallop on a high-mettled racer, we know of few things more cheering to the spirits, when the heart of a man is depressed with care, than a good wash, a thorough purification of the whole body corporate in a warm bath, or the like, and of this the Irish peasantry, to do them justice, seem to be not wholly unconscious, for when they strip to their work, or peel in a scrimmage, no men show cleaner or whiter skins. How they keep their bodies or their butter free from the contamination of the surrounding noisomeness, is to us, we own, a marvel and a mystery, but the high estimation in which both are held among the most dainty judges, sets the fact beyond dispute. Nevertheless, it were seemly and convenient that those VOL. II.

dingy dens of dirt and of disease to which we have been paying our compliments above, should be displaced by neat and comfortable cottages, fit for the habitation of man, as distinguished from the brute creation; and truly we see not why Berkeley's tax on dirt should not be brought into general and lively operation to effect this consummation so devoutly to be wished. If people will insist in vegetating in the rank luxuriance of a dunghill, rather than use a little trouble and a sprinkling of fair water, to live cleanly, we see not why they should not be made to pay for that luxury, just as much as for leave to eat dirt under the name of tobacco, or even more; for the dunghills are perhaps the more noisome nuisance of the two. "The houses of these suburban paupers," says the same high authority we have already quoted, "can be compared only to the cave of poverty. Within you see a pot and a little straw-without, a heap of children tumbling on the dunghill. Providence and nature have done their part for Ireland, and no country is better qualified to furnish the necessaries of life; yet no people, perhaps, are worse provided. In vain is the earth fertile and the climate benign, if human labour be wanting. Nature supplies the materials, which art and industry improves to the use of man, and it is the want of the application of this industry which occasions all our other wants. Idleness is the mother of hunger and the sister of theft, which hatcheth many vices, and figureth a lion in the way, and is proof against all encouragement. We are a people, and the only people, who starve in the midst of plenty." We cannot deny our readers the felicity of viewing the completion of this picture, nearly a century after it was first sketched, by a famous fellow-countryman of ours, Jemmy Connery by name, and of "the city of slaughtering and prime mess beef," by station. "Hav

4 Q

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ing occasion," writes this accurate and graphic observer, "to go to a cottier tenant's house, the latter end of March, 1830, between four and five o'clock in the morning, when the family were all asleep," (fie! Mr. Connery, how could your "occasion" lead you to be so naughty?) and, as the door was shattered and open in the joints, and no fastening to it but a spade that I observed to bear against it from the within-side, which I easily removed and gained admittance; and there I beheld the entire family, consisting of the man, wife, and six children, snoring in a bed of very coarse heath on the cold ground, (if I be allowed the expression) before the fire-place in the kitchen, with the heads of half of them reversed, having but a very small share of covering, and the father who was a tall man, over six feet, with his head projecting a few inches to the rere of his couch, beyond the rest, and his beloved" (wife? no,) "cow, though tied to a stake, was lying down equally contented, having her"-(oh fie! fie, naughty Mr. Connery, but the English word is ultimatum,) "within a few inches of the man's nose as he lay on his back, and on my calling aloud he started up with a large clod of the unsightly filth," (order, order, Mr. Connery) "in which his long bushy hair was entangled, who requested of me to stand outside the door while dressing, as he apprehended a vicious sow that had a young litter of pigs close by his bedside, would make a rush, which might destroy me with her tusks, as she was in the habit of doing to all strangers" (oh the murderous villain!) "through ferocity in defence of her young."

I calmly asked him, when he came outside the door to me, the reason of his suffering such a devouring animal so near his bed, who told me she was quite reconciled to himself and children," (not a word of the wife,) "I secondly upbraided him for sleeping so near the fire-place, at the tail of his cow, and so near the pigs, who replied he could not help it, as the fleas ejected him some time before from the bed in which he usually lay, in a dungeon of a room he had."

Let the facetious reader fancy to his mind's eye so sage and celebrated a philsopher, and writer on national statistics, as Mr. Connery, standing outside the door of the cottier-tenant's mud edifice, and calmly upbraiding two yards and upwards of potato-eatting humanity, adorned by a clod of cow-mire as to his long bushy hair, with the ferocious character of an integral part of his entire family, and with the snuffing pig-tail by night as well as day! We confess to having shed seven gallons of tears, imperial measure, on reading this so touching description. What proportion of the amount may have been due to the sad story of poor Paddy's sleeping and snoring sorrows, what to the novel nature of his perfumed hair pomatum, and what to Mr. Connery's peculiarly pathetic use of the relative pronoun, we leave to be determined by the rational and figurative reader. But “non obstante" this pleasant dash of the ludicrous, not the less exquisite for being wholly undesigned, the bill is a true bill; the cottier tenant does too often live pretty nearly in the manner described, and the maxim "noscitur a sociis," that is, show me a bull dog and I'll show you a blackguard, holds. Those who live with brutes will live like brutes, and infinite pains should be taken to remove this just reproach which has so long been one of the "burning shames" of Ireland. With all her faults, England, it must be owned, does not present the painful contrast of misery with splendour which so often strikes and shocks the stranger on entering an Irish town. If the attention of the government were at all directed to the subject, we cannot conceive that with the aid of the municipal authorities in corporate towns, and of the chief constable or principal public officer in others, any insuperable difficulty could be offered to the suppression of gross and offensive filthiness of the kind complained of, especially if a system of small fines for filth, and premiums for tidiness, were established, and impartially administered by those persons who should thus be made to a certain degree publicly responsible for the decent cleanli

ness of their respective districts. In country parishes, where such means could not be employed, it is incalculable how much good may be done in this, as well as in a thousand other ways, by the exertions and kind attention of benevolent individuals. A good resident landlord, or an agent who performs his duty, may communicate heart and hope, habits of outward decency springing from feelings of increased inward self-respect, to hundreds upon hundreds who might otherwise have dropt into the grave amid neglect and wretchedness; and, if capable of appreciating the blissful consciousness of doing kindnesses, the effort and even the outlay it may cost them will, independently of other most desirable results, be found its own exceeding rich reward.

The location of poor tenants, whether in country villages or in the suburban districts of cities and towns, will both create a needful demand for useful labour in the first instance, and supply a constant stimulus to it afterwards, if conducted on a proper plan. The streets, in either case, should always be laid out very wide, with small gardens in front of the houses, well furnished with kitchen vegetables, and adorned with flowers, and evergreens, and flowering shrubs; the yard and necessary offices should be in the rere, the houses double, but the pairs not adjoining, as they thus present a much better, more respectable appearance, than either single houses

or

a continued chain of building. Wherever it is practicable, an acre, or even half or quarter of an acre, of kitchen garden to each cottage forms a most desirable addition. According to a plan in which every item has been accurately estimated, it is ascertained that under average circumstances, a sum of forty pounds will provide a comfortable slated cottage, for which, with an acre of garden ground, five pounds a year might be fairly charged, and would be cheerfully paid. This, taking the land at twenty shillings an acre, and twenty years' purchase, would yield within a minute fraction of eight per cent. on the property and outlay of the landlord or proprietor, and secure to him the measureless pleasure and advantage of a hap

py comfortable tenantry, under his own immediate controul, instead of a horde

of starving diseased and filthy paupers, promising perhaps to pay even more for miserable hovels and patches of potato ground, but incapable of procuring the means of manuring and cultivating their strip of land, much less of sustaining themselves decently, and paying their rent besides. But to delineate the condition of the hovelhaunting mendicants of Ireland we must again have recourse to the graphic pencil of the same excellent prelate we have cited before: "It is a shameful thing," he writes, "and peculiar to this nation, to see hordes of lusty vagabonds roving about the country and begging, without any pretence to beg;-ask them why they do not labour to earn their own livelihood, they will tell you they want employment; offer to employ them, and they shall refuse your offer; or, if you get them to work one day, you may be sure not to see them the next." I have known them decline even the slightest labour, that of hay-making, having, at the same time, neither clothes to their backs, nor food for their stomachs.

To such fellows a sore leg is an estate; and this may be easily got, and continued with small trouble. Such is their laziness, that rather than work they will cherish a distemper. This I know to be true, having seen more than one instance wherein the second nature so far prevailed over the first, that sloth was preferred to health.To these beggars, who make much of their sores and prolong their diseases, you cannot do a more thankless office than cure them, except it be to shave their beards, which conciliate a sort of reverence to that order of men. It is indeed a difficult task to reclaim such fellows from their slothful and brutal manner of life, to which they seem wedded with an attachment which no temporal motives can conquer. every road the ragged ensigns of poverty are displayed; you often meet caravans of poor, whole families in a drove, without clothes to cover or bread to feed them, both which might be easily procured by moderate labour. They are encouraged in this vagabond life by the miserable hospitality they meet with in every cottage, whose inhabitants expect the same kind reception in their turn, when they become beggars themselves; beggary being

In