sudden movement of the latter's tongue into his cheek, and his finger to his nose :

"The pantomine was harmless, you perceive, but appeared an insult to the dignity of the gentleman. With one blow of his huge, black hand he stretched poor Benoît on the deck, and called out,

"Do you take old Blind-eye (le Borgne) for a lubber then-Here, you there, tie up this brute by the legs.'

"This was done despite the reiterated exclamations of Benoît. The boat's crew did not interfere, from respect to le Borgne and his worthy friends.

"A huge, hideous, curly head now appeared above hatches, calling out- Le Borgne, Le Borgne, captain wants to know what's all this jaw on deck.'

"It's this here old alligator that owns the brig; he is being kept quiet.' "Down went the great head, "Up it came again

"Here,' said the cabin boy, here, le Borgne, captain says that 'ere gentleman is

to come below.' "9

"Indeed'

"Oh yes: I had some thoughts of descending to the Red River to make up my cargo with Grand Namaquois-for if the Great Namaquois sell the Little, they take prisoners on both sides; and these eat the Great. Now, if they eat them, they would sell them cheap; and I tell you of this place as a great secret.'

"Oh, I get my cargoes of blacks in another way-quite another thing-a kind of tontine-but I fund largely.'

"But now you see I'm losing time: all I can do for you is to give you six casks of water and two barrels of biscuit; and considering I have twenty in crew and eighty blacks on board, it is a great deal; I am giving my blood for you'

"That's the word,' observed Brulart, with a peculiar smile.

"I can't spare a particle more,' said Benoit, with an air of decision. "I swear nevertheless * that you shall do more for me; you Mister of the Grand Namaquois.'

"Will you betray me?' said Benoît, pale as death.

666

'I betray you?"

Offended by the laugh that followed, the choleric captain assaults the corsair.

Benoît, wishing to spare him the trou- his iron fist, while with the other hand he "But Brulart, seizing his two arms in ble of beginning, opened the conversation untied the 'cord round his waist, Benoît with dignity: "I want to know what for'-but Bru-bound neck and heels, so that he could not was in a few moments doubled up and lart's loud voice interrupted him"What for, yourself;-dog, don't ask me questions, but answer them.' Why have you been so long coopering up your tub ?' * *

on

"Where are you bound from?" "I'm from the African coast; I have made a purchase; got my cargo board, and am going to Jamaica to sell my blacks'

I know that better than you: I only asked to see if you'd tell me a lie.' "You knew it?'

"I have been after you from Goree.'

VOL. XXI.

31

stir; Brulart placed him across his great sea-chest, saying, Bye and bye we'll have a laugh together, shipmate.'

"And he mounted the deck amidst all the imprecations, abuse, insult, and outleaps upon the chest, just as a fish on a cries of the unhappy Benoît, who moved by

sand-bank."

"You give up guessing-well, listen'"He tossed off a large glass of rum, and Benoît closed his eyes.

his eyes: he petitions for mercy,-for death, if his crew be spared but all in The fatal sentence is executed to the

vain.
letter.

We next proceed to give our readers some specimens from La Salamandre. The scene opens with a tobacco shop in the Rue de It was conGrammont, at Paris in 1815. stantly full, for a crowd of Germans, Russians, Prussians, Bavarians, and English, desirous of charming away their leisure mo. ments, always thronged M. de Formon's establishment.

Unhappily for M. de Formon's peace, the day when the story commences he is absent from the shop; the customers are mystified by this unwonted event, but he is no farther off than in his own parlour, where he learns that his friends of the Restoration have procured for him, with the resumption of his own title of Marquis, an appointment as captain of a

"But, recollecting himself "I'll not frigate, to which he is in every way incom. hear you, rascally vagabond,' he ex-petent. M. de Formon is anxious only to claimed, 'I'll stop your speaking, you remain unknown and happy in his shop; bul shall see'this base propensity receives small encou ragement from his better half.

"And Claude Borromée Martial began to gabble, bawl, sing, and swear, to drown the voice of M. Brulart, and avoid hearing his atrocious jests.

"Two or three of the sailors, alarmed by this infernal uproar, ran to the cabin door, thinking somebody was cutting his

throat.

"Get on deck again, rascals,' said Brulart-' don't you see it is only the gentleman amusing himself by singing Namaquois airs. Ah! wretch of a musi

* *

"The impatience of his faultless partner,' (as he had just styled her) could bear no more. Rising suddenly from her chair, she seized her husband by the arm, and dragged him to the farther end of the

room.

"Then drawing back a slight gauze curtain, she displayed to him the portrait of a naval officer, whose costume denoted the last century.

cian.' "There,' she said, pushing back poor "Poor Benoît continued his cries, in Formon so violently that he fell upon the every varity of tone but he was sofa; 'there, look, and die with shame in speedily gagged: his eyes became blood-shot, and seemed starting from his comparing what you might have been and

head."

what you will be.'

"I refuse the command,' added he, throwing the despatch upon the table.

I do not believe it ;' and keeping her hus band's arm compressed in her dry and bony hand, she smiled with an air truly diabolical."

The details he had given the corsair are "You refuse it!' articulated slowly the now turned against the poor captive; for Bru- marchioness, making him sensible at the lart communicates his fate. He with his same time of the points of her sharp nails. crew are to be surrendered to the Little Na-You refuse it !'-repeated she. No, no, maquois, in exchange for the same number of captives these may have made; the induce ments to the savages being, that they may eat the unhappy whites in revenge for the imputed murder of the Little Namaquois captives they had bought of King Taroo; and to substantiate this charge, one of these last is to be drowned, and his body carried, as in evidence, by a detachment of the pirate crew, to the savages. By this Brulart disposes of his white prisoners, who are useless to him, and acquires twenty blacks more, whom he can sell.

The wretched man, on hearing this infernal resolution, bursts a vein and faints; but is restored by some drops of rum poured into

A month after, the Marquis de Longtour set off for Toulon to assume his command. In his youth he had been once at sea, for he had gone from Toulon to Rochefort.

We have no room for a scene on board the frigate, where the government commissary pays the seamen's wages, and proves to the astonishment of a sailor, that the latter, by receiving 160 franks less than his claim, is a gainer to that amount in excess. We cannot give the details, nor the scene of the crew, counting over their money, and swear

ing to spend it at once. They are not per- | kicked off, &c. followed in the same track. mitted to leave the ship. The party was under the control of reason, for, observes the author, "neither man or woman had yet been thrown from the window." It seems however that the last named kind of projectile was about to suc. ceede the rest, for this way descended the proprietor Marius, pale, frightned, raving, and swearing.

"About midnight the officer of the watch, seeing the weather perfectly calm, and the sea magnificent, quitted the deck and went to his cabin, desiring the boatswain, La Joie, to keep a good look-out. Boatswain La Joie watched as long as he could; but the weather was superb; there was no fear for the ship, and he would be awaked by the first noise."

One of the sailors, Giromon, appears at the balcony; his hair carefully powdered. "We begged of you to descend, d'ye see old curmudgeon, becanse you were driving us wild with your go aways.'

แ

A cabin-boy gives the signal to the crew: they were all dressed and ready, in their hammocks; the watch left the deck and eighty sailors got out of a port-hole into "But, brute that you are,' said the other, the three boats, and rowed to shore, leav-'you have broken everything in my house, ing no means of sending after them. (Such and bilged my casks.' tales are never told of British or American seamen.)

Boatswain La Joie, waking, pipes all hands in great dudgeon; but imagining the crew afraid to come up goes on gradually excusing them for a timidity that so magni. fies his own importance; on discovering his blunder he rouses the officers by his furious calls. The boats are gone, and the crew: even the yawl has disappeared; but a strip of an officer's uniform, left on the rails, shows the lieutenant that his boat could not have been taken by the crew. His son is missing also.

A far less anxious scene was meantime

going on at the auberge, or public-house of St. Marcel; so far aloft from other inhabitants, that the police-regulations never in. cluded it their visits.

The present guests had the advantage of being under the guardian care of " M. Marius, a gentleman versed in the abstract sciences," and who had established a scale of proportions that proved mathematically that a sailor's money went five times as far as others." "Accordingly he made them pay five times the value of all they took."

"There is nothing so delicious as a fine summer evening to prolong a gay repast under the doubtful gleam of the moon, and inhale the sea-breeze that cools the burning forehead, flushed with generous wine.

"To judge by the cries and songs which then rang through the auberge of St Marcel, it might be presumed the breeze would have plenty of foreheads to cool that night."

The scene, it appears, was somewhat animated: "a noise, an infernal uproar shook the few panes of glass that yet remained "plates, full and empty bottles, glasses, chairs, and furniture, from time to time sallied forth from the three windows of the balcony and fell to earth like bombs.". Hats, garments of all kinds, shawls, shoes

16

"We'll pay for them.'
"You broke my tables!'
"We'll pay for them.'

"You broke my chairs, glasses, and-
"We'll pay for them; we'll pay for

them.

"You have twice nearly set my house on

fire!'

66 6

We'll pay for it. Now I consider, we'll pay for it, and then it will be ours: and if you have the ill-luck to come near it, we'll have a dance on your carcase. Now then, what's the price of your crib?'

"Giromon turned his head away, examined the exterior like an architect, and said,

"Will you take ten thousand franks for the whole set out as it stands, and leave us before we go, we'll set fire to it.' alone? Its a bargain; the crib's ours; and

*

**

*

In spite of the refusals of Marius, Giromon went in delighted with the idea. Five minutes after he re-appeared, with two heavy bags.

66 6

Here's your money, you dog of an oilBe off, or eater; now the house is ours. plague us, and it makes us modest-and we'll give you chase: Come, sheer off; you these here ladies too. There's money.'

your

"And the bags came to earth with a heavy clink. Marius picked them up.

"Ah, you drive me out of my house, thieves, plunderers, brigands, bonapartists as you are.

* *

"Giromon returned into the room with the steadiness and confidence of a gentleman on his own grounds."

We cannot help noticing that the term Bonapartist is sunk in the south of France to a mere epithet of foulest reproach; and throughout the books before us does anything but recal the glories of the empire, and its enthusiastic supporters. It is early, perhaps, for such an excess of devotion so to counterpoise itself.

The drunken scene is given at ample ength and with considerable spirit; but

• So the Northerns call the Provencaux.

We need not detail the horrible scene of

these are overwhelmed by numbers, and on the point of utter destruction when a fresh party, sent to make up the complement of the Salamandre, arrives, headed by La Joie and Pauf, the lieutenant's son; the Provencaux are vanquished and bound with ropes.

we are far from certain that it is entirely z ds, you wont speak against me, all adapted to our pages. All readers familiar of you: so long live the Emperor!" with our neighbours must have remarked "And he fell, dead." how easily excitable and noisy they speedily became under the influence of liquor, while our more phlegmatic constitutions drunken and infuriate contest that ensues scarcely betray a symptom of its effect till between the two parties. The Queen of long after but though far more peaceably Sheba is stabbed by one of the sailors, but disposed than ourselves under a tolerably strong stimulant of this kind, and inclined to gaiety rather than to differences or quarrals, as with us, yet when carried to the extreme of inebriety the former is far the more dangerous character, while the worse humours of the latter appear to have worked themselves off. In intoxication, the ex travagance of the Englishman, generally speaking, is frolic, that of the Frenchman frenzy. The characteristics of the two nations are ever the antipodes of humanity. At a loss for amusement the sailors first propose throwing the ladies out of the win dow; but as this expedient is declined by the parties chiefly interested, they pile up the bodies of their insensible comrades, thirty-five in number, with straw hats, scarfs, towels, cudgels, and chair-bottoms heaped round them, in order to smoke-dry them by setting fire to the whole mass. This frantic task is arrested at the moment of execution by a violent knocking at the door. Giromon goes to the balcony.

An immense crowd, grotesquely habited, as clowns, satyrs, fauns, with Herod, Pluto, Proserpine, and the Virgin, all led by a ragged, filthy, bearded, gigantic clown under the guise of the Queen of Sheba, sur. round the house with torches, and attempt to force the door. They are hailed by Gi romon with the broken neck of a bottle by way of speaking-trumpet; they charge him and his comrades with having robbed and beaten their worthy friend Marius. A table is thrown down and crushes several of the assailants: they take to the two fire-arms they have brought, and Giromon receives a ball in the throat and dies, bequeathing his wife and daughter to a comrade. We must offer a specimen of every kind.

We cannot but give our praise to M. Sue for the force and spirit with which he has But we pourtrayed this revolting scene. are glad to turn from it; and fain would ask if such a state of things is possible in civilized France? England assuredly has ample cause to blush for outrages committed at home, and deeds of violence and fraud: but the discipline of our navy seems to have infused a spirit of moderation, to a certain degree, into even the common sailors. M. Sue is a Frenchman, writing of Frenchmen; and if his tale is, as we imagine it must be, the exaggeration of a novelist, we at least cannot give him the credit of seeking to elevate the character of his country. men. Monstrosity is the favourite resource of one school of writers in France; but we doubt if a single Englishman could be found to outrage so extravagantly his country's navy.

As a sequel to our remarks we light, curiously enough, upon a contrast between French and English sailors.

"You treat your men too gingerly ;—

the English'

"The English, the English, sir-have not French blood in their veins. You bring them into action with the cat-of-ninetails; and that is a poor courage, sir, which fights only when placed between two dangers, or gorged with rum and wine(!) I times in nine years, sir; I have seen my have only given the rope's-end eleven old shipmates (flambarts) under fire, and I know what they can do."

"Avast, resumed Giromon with diffiTo do M. Sue justice, however, this is culty, you perceive I'm running aground. almost the only passage we have met with Good bye, my old hearties (flambarts). that reflects on the courage of our seamen— Our time is all up, d'ye see: our flag's losing colour; the English are boarding us:-I am going to see aloft if their ships have stays and royals. Good bye, my hearties. Heave me overboard d'ye hear; and tie a thirty-six pounder to my legs;its a sailor's grave. Good bye, good bye, Parisian! Love my poor daughter a little, and don't beat my wife too much; and

they can freely afford him the sneer. The French themselves admit that the sea is repugnant to their habits; and even if our author be correct, it only proves how feeble is that boasted moral courage which has so often struck its flag to this courage of the Cat.