used to rush in and fleece the burghers, than the convenient and airy dwellings which better suit our pacific times. The shops, like all French shops, are neat and attractive; their goods tastefully bestrewed with a nice eye to effect. I dropped into several, more to have a chat than to make purchases; that's the way-I recommend it to young travellers, to pick up information. And in France the shops are so inviting; perhaps because they are reigned over by the ladies. How odd it looks to an American to see a woman keeping the books, watching the clerks, and exercising supreme authority; whilst the poor wretch of a husband, if he is there at all, is somewhere out of the way, meekly employed in the humblest details of his business, trusting fanatically to the wit and blandishments of his helpmate for quick sales, and good profits. And who can stop to haggle with them, so charmingly dressed; so elegantly coiffe; or so gaily decked in their neat caps and cherry-colored ribbons. And they are not afraid of the police, not they; and they know as much of politics, and more, than the maire of the commune. But for the women a traveller could know little of the popularity of the ministers out of Paris; and I should infer from what I picked up in Compeigne, that when the present dynasty "goes out of office," no body will put on mourning.

Gobbling down my dinner, for I had lost time talking politics, I was done in ten minutes, and as Baptiste closed the carriage-door on me, I ordered him to keep the postillions hard at it without counting the pourboire, for, I added, je suis, "bound to go through." "Plait-t-il ?" queried Baptiste, quite mystified. "Nimporte-en avant," I said, waving my hand. I love to use an American phrase now and then in a foreign country it comes so pat; is so expressive, and puts one in mind of home. Baptiste is sorely discomfited by this wantonness of mine, and no doubt regrets his barbarous ignorance of the English language, little dreaming that in America we have set up phrases of our own that would perplex a Cockney as deeply as a Greek Idyll.

To while away time, I picked up a French book I brought along with me, entitled, "The Chateau of Ham," published in 1842. The author had been one, he says, of the very few who by skilful contrivance had won over the cerberus of the 'Home office,' and got permission to visit the Prince Napoleon, of whom he gives a highly wrought sketch. This work is well written. What wonderful facility the French have for writing. It seems to come by nature, so limpid flow their sentences; so sparkling is their fancy; so copious their remark. In expression no writers excel them, so pointed, pithy and pretty. In logical arrangement they are not surpassed by Aristotle or Bacon; but in knowledge candor forces me to declare, they are often quite inferior. The French write chiefly to amuse, rarely to instruct. Even Montesquieu oftener thought of glitter than truth, and he would not hesitate to confuse a student's ideas of government, rather than sacrifice the dramatic structure of a sentence. Yes, French writers have too much esprit, as they call intellect; they are always running after theories, soaring on wings of speculation, or seating themselves complacently on a high mountain of hypothesis, nearly out of sight. To plod along on the plain, hard dry road of fact and common sense, they won't do it. The readers must go ballooning with them, whether or not; so spurning the earth, you find them like Mahomet's coffin, always suspended in the air, where dangling, let us leave them. I could explain this phenomenon which is connected with the history of their civilization, but that would be far too prosy just now.

My author of the Chateau of Ham mingles more matter-of-fact than usual with his rhetoric, and his book is very artistically constructed, like all Freuch books. In a glowing preface he tells us all about himself, as an author should; and it appears that his bosom is stuffed full of disgust of what he calls the organized disorder in France, and I don't wonder. He has tried his hand at all parties, and hear what he says of * them.

"Oh, the sterile instability of some; the sepulchral immobility of others; the envious mediocrity of these; the exclusive ambition of those; the collective helplessness of all." This is rather fine, French, and vague, but after writing in the same strain for some lines longer, he states, "that all these things, all these parties, and all these men, have made a Free-thinker of him who writes these pages." And thus cured of all illusion above all anger, and free from pledges, he quit Paris, which is next to quitting the world, and came down to Ham to see what prospects France had of future happiness, should the luckless prisoner there ever be transferred from a dungeon to a throne.

The greater part of the book itself is taken up with the history of Ham and its celebrated fortress. The origin of the town, he says, is lost in the shades of tradition, but of that bye-and-bye. He relates a number of curious and thrilling stories of the old citadel, which was re-constructed in the 15th century, and passing by "sack and storm," from the possession of one feudal lord to another, has experienced all the rough vicissitudes which checquer the history of the middle ages. What varying scenes of horror must have been witnessed there-what furious onslaught in the moats around-what scaling of walls -what death-struggling on the battlements-what carnage mingling with shouts, and the trumpet's blast; And then the calm which followed victorious possession-the short-lived peace consumed in feasts and intrigues-the tournament by day-the wassail by night, till the silence of midnight reposed on those grim ramparts, broken only by the slow tramp of the sentinel, the warder's challenge, or the groan of some sinking wretch in the dungeons beneath! It makes one shiver to read of the cruelties of which that grey old castle of Ham has been the bloody theatre.

There are horrors enough in my author's book to eke out a dozen melo-dramas and six first-rate novels, to suit the love-and-murder taste of the day. It was here, among other strange incidents related by the "Free-thinker," that the last heir of Charlemagne was imprisoned and died; and now the heir of the modern Charlemagne is sent here to linger in the hope of his dying.

At last, having finished with the town and the castle, my chronicler arrives at his main topic, Prince Louis, of whom he discourses in this fashion: 'It was the rare good fortune of the writer to find himself face to face with the nephew of Napoleon for several hours, which that Prince nobly occupied with one of those frank and intelligent conversations which the mind and heart never forgets. The author entered the Chateau of Ham indifferent, reserved, and shall he say it, full of distrust; but resigned, if necessary, to return with the same indifference, and a disappointment the more like a logician, who, accustomed to failures, still goes on searching the solution of his problem, when he has only as yet the premises to support him. But when he heard the Prince raise and assimilate himself by the elevation, liberality, and patriotism of his ideas, to the level of his origin; when he saw that there-separated by the walls of a prison of state from all that world without, of ambitions, of cupidities, and self-aspirations which,

dominating and unrestrained, weakens, wastes, and devours this fine country of France; that there he had before him a noble young man who loved better to pine away slowly each day of his captive life under his native sky, than joyfully to pass his days, feted and gay, on a foreign soil, amid all the delights that youth, fortnne, and a great name could bestow. When he felt-" But it is not worth while to venture quoting some pages more of the author's sensations, which go on crescendo, swelling and dilating till they reach a climax of alarming intensity, when he seeks relief in the following declaration: "Oh, then, the author of this book came out of the Chateau of Ham, his heart as full as his mind; staggering under the weight of his emotions and thoughts, like a man who had just beheld a great soul, aux prises, struggling with a lofty reason." What he exactly means by this I cannot precisely make out; perhaps my reader

can.

After a deal more caracoling of the same sort, he brings up at last on a grandiloquent piece of writing, where the chief incidents of Prince Louis' life are set forth with a pomp not likely to please the taste of a good critic in biography. "Grandson of an Empress! son of a king! nephew of the Emperor!" (and he might have added, cousin-german of the imperial families of Austria, Russia, and Brazil, and of the royal ones of Sweden, Wirtemburg, &c.!) "Born amid the sound of the cannon of Wagram, and at the very height of the marvels of the Imperial epoch, and under the regards of the eagle whose wings touched the Pyrenees and the Danube!

Inscribed on the great book of state deposited in the Senate house deciding the order of succession to the throne!

Banished in perpetuity, he and his, from the country which gave them rank in exchange of glory !

Receiving in exile an education at once manly and useful, as if, like a child of the people, he expected his fortune only from his personal labors! Devoted to the study of the arts and sciences, as if he were condemned to require of them the eternal oblivion of his fallen grandeur and the charms of a life opulent but tranquil! Formed, however, early to the life of a camp, whence the chief of his race came forth an Emperor, as though it was in the camp only he could expect to find the new consecration of his family and name!

Soldier of the popular cause in Italy, where one of his uncles gave away thrones and principalities; where another wore a crown; where still another reigned as Vice-Roy!

Disdaining to reign over a country which was not that of his birth;* yet wandering over it proscribed at the moment when, in 1830, it rose to deliver itself; but who was not included in the new chart of freedom, though he begged, as a favor supreme, an asylum for which he would sacrifice his blood and his gold!

Throwing himself twice resolutely into bold enterprises, when, after the danger was past, the terrors reassured of some-the faded hopes of others, sought vengeance in slander; and that when it is known as regards the first (Strasburgh) it failed only through that chance which disconcerts the calculations of the most provident genius, and which is called

l'inattendu.

Representative of the vote of four millions, and judged as if that vote had never been given ! Condemned to a perpetual prison, as if the shameful treaties of 1815 could be maintained in perpetuity!

* This refers to the refusal of Prince Louis of the hand of Donna Maria, Queen of Portugal,

Enfin, cradled in his infancy between two thrones; his youth given up to the lessons and trials of exile; prisoner at 34 years in his own country, which, alas, he will lose, the day he ceases to be so! the Prince Napoleon Louis reunites himself, at this hour, all the grandeurs and reverses it has pleased the good and bad fortune of France to accumulate, in less than half a century, on that grand Imperial dynasty which Napoleon founded; which the sovereignty of the people enthroned; that the Holy Alliance proscribed; and of which the rock of St. Helena devoured the trunk, the court of Vienna the branch, aud of which the prison of Ham promises to consume what is left !" Now a less ambitious penman would have given in plainer language much clearer information, by simply stating the naked facts of the case, which with the utmost brevity I will subjoin. Prince Louis was born in 1808, (a whole year before "the sound of the cannon of Wagram,") and is the second son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and of Hortense d'Beauharnais, the daughter of the Empress Josephine. In 1815, when the Imperial family was expatriated, Hortense fled with her two sons to Switzerland. Here Prince Louis received a military education from General Dufour, and remained in quiet till 1830, when, with his elder brother, he joined the democratic cause in Italy. After taking part in several engagements, his brother suddenly fell ill and died, and he was prostrated by the same mysterious sickness.* On his recovery he returned to Paris, and applying to enter the French army, was refused, and summoned to quit the kingdom. He retired again to Switzerland; published several books, military and political; made the attempt at Strasburgh which sent him to America, and again the attempt at Boulogne, which consigned him to Ham-the very place which I am now approaching with every change of horses.

Baptiste, meanwhile, is doing wonders, and displays all the dexterity of an old courier. It is not by paying a frane or two above their pay merely that you inspire the whip arm of the French postillion, much less do you get speed out of him by remonstrance or complaint. But maintaining a friendly interest in the newness of his toggery, or "like a scurvy politician," as Lear says, "seeming not to see" the holes in their patched culottes; praising their nags; perhaps with great delicacy venturing a doubt of their ability to go; asking after his sweetheart, and expressing your entire confidence in no rival keeping pace with him either on the road or in the favor of his bien-aimè. These are the ways and means to reach the heart of a French postillion; and it was amusing to see with what adroitness Baptiste threw his lasso, and how cunningly he managed them, giving them words for sous, which, disinterested souls, they like as well. No such currency would pass "down

east."

Darkness came on as we sped along the high-road, and I closed the book of the "Free-Thinker," nothing loth. I did not like his inflated style, his bombastic phrases, his never-ending terraces of climax which carried you up, up, till you lost your wind, and all recollection of the place you started from. It is all very well to make the most of your hero; to array his virtues in admiring order; to throw a graceful veil over his faults of course, if he has any; this is conciliating and allowed. But to Boswell your Johnson to death; to insist on his uniting every excellence and accomplishment; that he is the just one made perfect; that he is a great man in esse, and a great angel in posse,-why this is to overshoot the mark, and knock your idol down.

Prince Louis must have a deal of vitality of some sort to survive all the ridiculous things written about him, (this amongst the rest,) as well as some unaccountable things he has done. In this way I mused a long while with my cloak gathered about me for it was a crisp evening in autumnand my cap pulled down over my brows to the charming accompaniment of the rapid pattering of the horses' hoofs on the hard road, and the steady roll of the carriage-wheels. I was in a queer state of betweenity, as Willis would say, with my head in the land of Nod, and my feet rather cold under the opposite seat, when the door opened with a jerk, and "Arrivè, Monsieur," was almost shouted in my ear by the contented Baptiste.

III.

I was cordially welcomed to Ham by a tall, fine-looking man, with a bright face and pleasant smile, the landlord of the only hostelry in this very old, but very small town. He escorted me up one pair of stairs to a neat salon with a bedroom attached, everything wearing a neat and tidy appearance, that gave me a good opinion of the dame du menage. No carpets on the floor of tile, which are not to be looked for out of Paris, and there they are used more for ornament than comfort. A piece no larger than probably answered Aladdin for journeying through the air is usually paraded before your bed, and sometimes a rug is decoratively disposed before the fire-place, which looks dreadfully lonesome without a carpet for company. It is a long while before an American recovers from his sense of discomfort in living in a room with a bare floor; but he does at last, and that is the advantage of travelling, which shakes off those local ideas which identifies enjoyment with numberless superfluities that really have on other value than custom gives them. Having made survey of my apartment amid the profuse recommendations of my host, I essayed to cut off his loquacious tattle, by saying it would do. But this only changed the subject, for after asking and answering his own questions about my journey down, he added, "Ah, Monsieur, how I envy you the privilege of seeing the Prince Louis!" I looked up in surprise. "Why, is it so common a thing for travellers," I inquired, "to visit the citadel that you infer I came here for that purpose?"

“Oh, mon dieu, no; but everybody in Ham knew this morning that Monsieur was coming to see the Prince."

This was a poser, for I only knew it myself the evening before; and how the intelligence could have been anticipated some 12 hours after all my hurry along the road that was just what, after cudgelling my brains for some minutes, I could in no wise make out.

Pray, allow me to ask how 'everybody' got this information," I said, considerably perplexed.

"Certainement," replied Boniface, delighted to oblige me, "the police was telegraphed last night, and instructions sent down with full particulars of Monsieur's intended visit."

46

Indeed," I responded, by no means overjoyed at this pertinacity of the police-office. "It is really very good-natured in the minister to take so much pains about me. He evidently attaches more importance to my business here than I do myself." I spoke in a tone keenly ironical, and my host was not slow to perceive my displeasure. He seemed

astonished thereat, and opined, "that, Monsieur, was not Français."

No, thank Heaven!" I exclaimed, giving vent to my feelings.

"That