of the little daughter of the Cashmeer mimic, who had treated him with kindness, and for whom he had shown some kind of attachment. In about four months he began to understand and obey signs. He was by them made to prepare the hookah, put lighted charcoal upon the tobacco, and bring it to Janoo, or present it to whomsoever he pointed out.

One night, while the boy was lying under the tree, near Janoo, Janoo saw two wolves come up stealthily, and smell at the boy. They then touched him, and he got up, and, instead of being frightened, the boy put his hands upon their heads, and they began to play with him. They capered around him, and he threw straw and leaves at them. Janoo tried to drive them off, but he could not, and became much alarmed; and he called out to the sentry over the guns, Meer Akbur Allee, and told him that the wolves were going to eat the boy. He replied, Come away and leave him, or they will eat you also;' but when he saw them begin to play together, his fears subsided, and he kept quiet. Gaining confidence by degrees, he drove them away; but, after going a little distance, they returned, and began to play again with the boy. At last he succeeded in driving them off altogether. The night after, three wolves came, and the boy and they played together. A few nights after, four wolves came, but at no time did more than four come. They came four or five times, and Janoo had no longer any fear of them; and he thinks that the first two that came must have been the two cubs with which the boy was first found, and that they were prevented from seizing him by recognising the smell. They licked his face with their tongues as he put his hands on their heads.

Soon after, his master, Sanaollah, returned to Lucknow, and threatened Janoo to turn him out of his service unless he let go the boy. He persisted in taking the boy with him, and his master relented. He had a string tied to his arm, and led him along by it, and put a bundle of clothes on his head. As they passed a jungle, the boy would throw down the bundle, and try to run into the jungle, but on being beaten, he would put up his hands in supplication, take up the

bundle, and go on; but he seemed soon to forget the beating, and did the same thing at almost every jungle they came through. By degrees he became quite docile. Janoo was one day, about three months after their return to Lucknow, sent away by his master for a day or two on some business, and before his return, the boy had ran off, and he could never find him again. About two months after the boy had gone, a woman, of the weaver caste, came with a letter from a relation of the Rajah, Hurdut Sing, to Sanaollah, stating that she resided in the village of Chureyrakotra, on his estate, and had had her son, then about four years of age, taken from her, about five or six years before, by a wolf; and, from the description which she gave of him, he, the Rajah's relation, thought he must be the boy whom his servant, Janoo, took away with him. She said that her boy had two marks upon him, one on the chest of a boil, and one of something else on the forehead; and as these marks corresponded precisely with those found upon the boy, neither she nor they had any doubt that he was her lost son. She remained for four months with the merchant Sanaollah, and Janoo, his kidmutghar, at Lucknow; but the boy could not be found, and she returned home, praying that information might be sent to her should he be discovered. Sanaollah, Janoo, and Ramzan Khan, are still at Lucknow, and before me have all three declared all the circumstances here stated to be strictly true. The boy was altogether about five months with Sanaollah and his servants, from the time they got him ; and he had been taken about four months and a half before. The wolf must have had several litters of whelps during the six or seven years that the boy was with her. Janoo further adds, that he, after a month or two, ventured to try a waist-band upon the boy, but he often tore it off in distress or anger. After he had become reconciled to this, in about two months, he ventured to put on upon him a vest and a pair of trousers. He had great difficulty in making him keep them on, with threats and occasional beatings. He would disencumber himself of them whenever left alone, but put them on again in alarm when dis

covered; and to the last often injured or destroyed them by rubbing them against trees or posts, like a beast, when any part of his body itched. This habit he could never break him of.

Rajah Hurdut Sewae, who is now in Lucknow on business, tells me (28th January 1851) that the sowar brought the boy to Bondee, and there kept him for a short time, as long as he remained; but as soon as he went off, the boy came to him, and he kept him for three months; that he appeared to him to be twelve years of age; that he ate raw meat as long as he remained with him, with evident pleasure, whenever it was offered to him, but would not touch the bread and other dressed food put before him; that he went on all fours, but would stand and go awkwardly on two legs when threatened or made to do so; that he seemed to understand signs, but could not understand or utter a word; that he seldom attempted to bite any one, nor did he tear the clothes that he put upon him; that Sanaollah, the Cashmeeree merchant, used at that time to come to him often with shawls for sale, and must have taken the boy away with him, but he does not recollect having given the boy to him. He says that he never himself sent any letter to Sanaollah with the mother of the boy, but his brother or some other relation of his may have written one for her.

It is remarkable, that I can discover no well-established instance of a man who had been nurtured in a wolf's den having been found. There is, at Lucknow, an old man who was found in the Oude Tarae, when a lad, by the hut of an old hermit who had died. He is supposed to have been taken from wolves by this old hermit. The trooper who found him brought him to the King some forty years ago, and he has been ever since supported by the king comfortably. He is still called the wild man of the woods.' He was one day sent to me at my request, and I talked with him. His features indicate him to be of the Tharoo tribe, who are found only in that forest. He is very inoffensive, but speaks little, and that little im

perfectly; and he is still impatient of intercourse with his fellow-men, particularly with such as are disposed to tease him with questions. I asked him whether he had any recollection of having been with wolves. He said 'the wolf died long before the hermit ;' but he seemed to recollect nothing more, and there is no mark on his knees or elbows to indicate that he ever went on all fours. That he was found as a wild boy in the forest, there can be no doubt; but I do not feel at all sure that he ever lived with wolves. From what I have seen and heard, I should doubt whether any boy who had been many years with wolves, up to the age of eight or ten, could ever attain the average intellect of man. I have never heard of a man who had been spared and nurtured by wolves having been found; and, as many boys have been recovered from wolves after they had been many years with them, we must conclude, that after a time they either die from living exclusively on animal food, before they attain the age of manhood, or are destroyed by the wolves themselves, or other beasts of prey, in the jungles, from whom they are unable to escape, like the wolves themselves, from want of the same speed. The wolf or wolves, by whom they have been spared and nurtured, must die or be destroyed in a few years, and other wolves may kill and eat them. Tigers generally feed for two or three days upon the bullock they kill, and remain all the time, when not feeding, concealed in the vicinity. If they found such a boy feeding upon their prey, they would certainly kill him, and most likely eat him. If such a boy passed such a dead body, he would certainly feed upon it. Tigers often spring upon and kill dogs and wolves thus found feeding upon their prey. They could more easily kill boys, and would certainly be more disposed to eat them. If the dead body of such a boy were found anywhere in the jungles, or on the plains, it would excite little interest, where dead bodies are so often found exposed, and so soon eaten by dogs, jackals, vultures, &c., and would scarcely ever lead to any particular inquiry.

MORE than a twelvemonth has now elapsed since the leading papers both of France and England recorded more or less cursorily the untimely death of M. Alexandre Thomas, a young Frenchman, who, after achieving a high reputation as a publicist and periodical writer in his own country, made a vigorous and all but successful effort to attain an equally honourable station in the literature of England. Of the passing records of his life to be met with in the English press, that of the Atheneum, May 30, 1857, though evidently supplied by one that knew and loved the author, scarcely exceeds the limits of a brief obituary; while the almost universal regret expressed by the press of France was necessarily qualified as well as curtailed, from fear of giving umbrage to that authority to which the author, while he lived, had ever shown himself an inflexible opponent. In the Journal des Débats (May 18, 1857), Saint-Marc Girardin, while he cautiously avoids any political allusion, gives noble utterance to his personal feelings of regret for the friend and distinguished publicist:- As to the friends of M. Thomas, who, in his case,' says the eloquent teacher of youth, loved the man even more than they did the writer, they will faithfully cherish his memory in their hearts, as that of a man who courted, as much as others shunned, the frowns VOL. XXVII.- OCTOBER 1858.

of fortune, who more than another felt and inspired friendship in spite of time and absence, and who, in short, applying his rigorism to none but himself, could love those whom he knew more indulgent to themselves and others.' Such a summary as this from one so conversant in character, denotes a compound rarely to be met with in a land where uniformity in instruction as well as the general system of government, alike combine in erasing even the strongest lines of individuality. M. Thomas is not merely interesting to an Englishman, as forming a remarkable exception to what are generally conceived to be the ruling features of his countrymen; he is interesting as holding in high esteem our character and institutions, and more interesting still as having strained every nerve to become a British subject, an effort which eventually cost him his life. Various causes having combined, as will be seen in the sequel, to prevent justice being done to such a character in the columns of his native press, it becomes a paramount duty on the part of our English organs of publicity to give life and circulation to every particular which can illustrate the instincts and genius of a man who cherished independence as a personal blessing, and who devoted his extraordinary powers to its defence as well as national diffusion.

2 B

M. Alexandre Thomas, who could read fluently at the age of three, though nobody knew how, was early intended for one of those crowded schools where the French youth nestle at night in beds as thick-set as the graves of a cemetery, and where, during the day, they are boxed off into dull ill-ventilated wards or studyrooms, each under its Argus-eyed usher, the tedium of whose presence is regularly relieved by a four hours' attendance at college, or failing these, by the master of languages, the master of history, the master of science, or the master of general literature; and this, with slight interruption, from morn to eve. In a densely peopled academy, every way similar to this, the youth received a first-rate education, for which he was, to say the least of it, as much indebted to his powers of resistance as to his powers of acquisition. The feelings of tenderness and affection he created in the bosom of his masters he repaid by more than the wonted number of academic and Sorbonne distinctions, fairly cancelling the debt of gratitude by a brain fever, which well-nigh swept him from the scene of his victories. Yet, stimulated as he certainly was, no prize, even by the youth's own confession, ever gave him half so much satisfaction as he would have experienced mortification, had he failed in obtaining it. In 1837, at the age of nineteen, he took his first university degree of bachelier-ès-lettres; his second, licencié-ès-lettres, in 1838. Even at this early period, he was successively deputy-professor of history at Bourbon College, and deputy-professor of rhetoric at Charlemagne, the scene of his own boy labours, and where he taught with success and authority pupils even older than himself.

A shorter cut to fortune was now pointed out by his paternal schoolmaster, and the reluctant youth transferred as tutor to the almost regal mansion of one of the first banking names in Europe. But neither the contemplation of opulence, the satisfaction of rearing embryo-bankers, nor the certain prospect of a competency for life, could smother the young man's yearnings after studious and solitary independence. In a few months he abandoned these El Dorado

regions for the poverty-stricken and dingy walls of the Sorbonne, entered into a successful competition for the rank of agrégé or graduated deputyprofessor of history, in which capacity he was appointed to the college of Dijon, where he remained till 1843. In 1844, he took his doctor's degree, on which occasion he produced the usual double thesis in Latin and French. In the former of these he treated the much-vexed question of the renowned Pascal's scepticism. The very choice of such a subject indicated a decided fondness for psychological questions, while the vigour with which he entered the lists, breaking a lance not only with the literary leaders of the time, but even with the first French philosopher of the day, one of his quorum of judges, announced more than mere aptitude for such delicate discussions. He boldly denies Pascal ever to have been a sceptic at all in the modern sense of the word; and utterly scouts the hackneyed idea that the mighty antagonist of the Jesuits had got involved in his own toils, or ultimately hurt himself with the very weapon which he had poised against scepticism. No, the scepticism of Pascal had nothing in common with that of predecessors in the dangerous walk. It was merely argumentative, got up for the purpose of depressing reason and exalting faith. His book of Thoughts is an evidence of unshaken faith, the framework of a mighty though unfinished edifice. His melancholy had nothing to do with scepticism. It sprung from his religious belief, no house of refuge to him, but an ever-welling source of the bitterest anguish. Pascal's haughty genius, more Jansenian than sceptical, thought it could never sufficiently bow his will and reason to God. Incensed against reason, not because it denied or doubted the existence of God, but because it too proudly presumed to approach the Godhead unassisted by the simplicity of mystical affection, Pascal wandered into the paths of Jansenius, was struck with the wildness of the scene through which he passed, and saw on every side gulfs yawning around him. 'Such,' observes the ingenious thesist, as unwilling to yield free-will to a system of theology

as liberty to a system of theocracy; such is the punishment not only of Pascal, but of the whole Port-Royal; the chastisement reserved for all those who, the better to honour the Divinity, attempt to despoil man of his liberty.' These rapid and thinking premises are supported throughout and wound up with reflections at once psychologically and historically correct. In Pascal,' says our original thinker, nothing is to be found that can liken him to the characters drawn by our more recent poets; nor even the slightest pretence for ranking him with a society as really as it is coarsely sceptical. If these characters have any one thing more remarkable than another, it is that Titanic pride with which, after using and abusing their free-will, and now destitute of all self-government, no longer able to square their natural powers of action with their desires, they lower themselves, as it were, into the depths of hell. Seeing their stormy existence checked and necessarily confined within the narrow measure of human strength, they abandon themselves to despair. The soul of Pascal, because he could not frame unto himself a mode of life sufficiently humble, sufficiently calm, and because he always seemed too much taken up with outward things, was sick even unto death. What then is there in common between such mystic melancholy and a scepticism so wild and daring? And who but at once distinguishes between the blind impulse of a heart in the service of God, and the blind and desperate impulse of human liberty? Having annihilated all semblance between the melancholy genius of Pascal and the fiercer creations of a Byron and his imitators, our author evinces equal skill and clearness in the proofs which he adduces that Pascal's scepticism was merely a form of argument, and, bating the priority of Descartes, a process exclusively his own. Modern melancholy,' says our author, has invented a solution of the difficulty which nothing but itself could have originated. As we cannot now be sceptics without some vague and mighty melancholy, as doubt, far from being a pillow on which we can lean our listless heads, is absolutely secret torture, we have framed Pascal

like ourselves, doubting the truth, and, like ourselves, a prey to melancholy. Our melancholy, however, exhibits something altogether novel, proceeding from quite a different source, and having nothing to do with the old sceptics, who were by no means conscious of their misery. Besides, few in those days were tossed or perplexed by religious doubts. The power of religious discipline, and the authority of Christian traditions, were such that no serious mind ever dreamt of throwing off the yoke. If any were sceptical, they were so simply as individuals, and forming neither school nor doctrine. Poets, soldiers, rakes, might be found challenging the truth of their hereditary faith, and lightly scoffing at its tenets, in short professing themselves sceptics. But these deserve no such appellation, as inferring in their case no claims whatever to anything philosophical. Others, again, turned out sceptics in a different as well as more straightforward fashion, though not a whit more in consonance with reason. Lured by the love of letters, they plied the study of the ancients, and after perusing all, not so much for their mental instruction as for the satisfaction of a restless curiosity after books, maintained that nothing could be affirmed as certain,-thus drilling their minds to as much purpose as teeth grinding against teeth. The barren joy of multifarious knowledge concealed the inanity of such science; and, so long as its professors were keenly bent on investigating the remains of Greek and Latin learning, assumed I know not what of playful and ingenious. Among these, Montaigne of old held a well-deserved station; though what he drew from the ancients he so adorned by a dress of his own, and with such power and copiousness of fancy, that what he imitated you would say he invented. But even Montaigne gave nothing new in the way of sceptic argument, or, as our thesist words it, nullam in humana natura veluti rimam sua rursus ipse vice perspexit, qua certi et veri conscientia dilaberetur et efflueret, opened up, that is, in his turn no particular chink or cranny in human nature, through which the consciousness of truth or certainty