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Invalides, or passing in spectral review the dead of Austerlitz and Borodino, suspend your lonely walk, curb your shadowy charger, and contemplate this pitiable spectacle! You, too, gave dukedoms, and lavished even crowns, but you gave them for services worth the naming. Ney and the Moskwa, Massena and Essling, Lannes and Montebello, are words that bear the coupling, and grace a coronet. The names of the places, although all three recall brilliant victories, are far less glorious in their associations than the names of the men. But Bugeaud and Isly! What can we say of them? Truly, thus much-they, too, are worthy of each other.

When reviewing, about two years ago, Captain Kennedy's narrative of travel and adventure in Algeria, we regretted he did not speak out about the mode of carrying on the war, and about the prospects of Algerine colonisation; and we hinted a suspicion that the amenities of French military hospitality, largely extended to a British fellow-soldier, had induced him, if not exactly to cloak, at least to shun laying bare, the errors and mishaps of his entertainers. We cannot make the same complaint of the very pretty book, rich in vignettes and cream-colour, entitled, A Campaign in the Kabylie.

Mr Borrer, whom the Cockneys, contemptuous of terminations, will assuredly confound with his great gipsy cotemporary, George Borrow of the Bible, has, like Captain Kennedy, dipped his spoon in French messes.

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has ridden with their regiments, and sat at their board, and been quartered with their officers, and received kindness and good treatment on all hands; and therefore any thing that could be construed into malicious comment would come with an ill grace from his pen. But it were exaggerated delicacy to abstain from stating facts, and these he gives in all their nakedness; generally, however, allowing them to speak for themselves, and adding little in the way of remark or opinion. In pursuance of this system, he relates the most horrible instances of outrage and cruelty with a matterof-fact coolness, and an absence alike of blame and sympathy, that may

give an unfavourable notion of his heart, to those who do not accept our lenient interpretation of his coldblooded style. The traits he sets down, and which are no more than will be found in many French narratives, despatches, and bulletins, show how well the Franco-African army carry out the merciful maxims of Bugeaud.

Mr Borrer, a geographer and antiquary, passed seventeen months in Algeria; and during his residence there, in May 1846, a column of eight thousand French troops, commanded by the Duke of Isly in person, marched against the Kabyles, "that mysterious, bare-headed, leathern- aproned race, whose chief accomplishment was said to be that of being crack-shots,' their chief art that of neatly roasting their prisoners alive, and their chief virtue that of loving their homes." It may interest the reader to hear a rathermore explicit account of this singular people, who dwell in the mountains that traverse Algeria from Tunis to Morocco—an irregular domain, whose limits it is difficult exactly to define in words. The Kabyles are, in fact, the highlanders of North Africa, and they hold themselves aloof from the Arabs and Europeans that surround them. Concerning them, we find some diversity in the statements of Mr Borrer, and of an anonymous Colonist, twelve years resident at Bougie, whose pamphlet is before us. Of the two, the Frenchman gives them the best character, but both agree as to their industry and intelligence, their frugality and skill in agriculture. They are not nomadic like the Arabs, but live in villages, till the land, and tend flocks. Dwelling in the mountains, they have few horses, and fight chiefly on foot. Divided into many tribes, they are constantly quarreling and fighting amongst themselves, but they forget their feuds and quickly unite to repel a foreign foe. "Predisposed by his character," says the Colonist, "to draw near to civilisation, the Kabyle attaches himself sincerely to the civilised man when circumstances establish a friendly connexion between them. He is still inclined to certain vices inherent in the savage; but of all the Africans, he is the best disposed to live in friendship and harmony with us, which he will do when he shall find

North Africa is ill-adapted to French constitutions. M. Desjobert has already told us the average loss of the army, and General Duvivier, in his Solution de la Question d'Algérie, fully corroborated his statements. "A man," said the general, "whose constitution is not in harmony with the climate of Africa, never adapts himself to it; he suffers, wastes away, and dies. The expression, that a mass of men who have been for some time in Africa have become inured to the climate, is inexact. They have not become inured to it; they have been decimated by death. The climate is a great sieve, which allows a rapid passage to everything that is not of a certain force." Supposing 100,000 men sent from France to Algeria for six years' service. At the end of that time, their loss by disease alone, at the rate of six per cent-proved by M. Desjobert to be the annual average-would amount to upwards of 30,000, or to more than three-tenths of the whole. The emigrants fare no better. "They look for milk and honey," says Borrer: "they find palmetta and disease. The villages scattered about the Sahel or Massif of Algiers (a high ground at the back of the city, forming a rampart between the Metidja and the Mediterranean) are, with one or two exceptions, a type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots, distant from water, the poor tenants lie sweltering between sun and sirocco." A Mississippi swamp must be as eligible "squatting" ground as this-Arabs instead of alligators, and the Algerine fever in place of Yellow Jack. "At the gates of Algiers, in the villages of the Sahel," said the " Algérie" newspaper of the 22d December 1845, "the colonists desert, driven away by hunger. If any remain, it is because they have no strength to move. In the plain of the Metidja, the misery and desolation are greater still. At Fondouck, in the last five months, 120 persons have died, out of a population of 280." The reporter to the Commission of the French budget of 1837 (Monsieur Bignon) admitted that "the results of the colonisation are almost negative." He could not obtain, he said, an estimate of the agricultural population. At the same.

period, an Algiers newspaper (La France Algérienne) estimated the European agriculturists at 7000, twothirds of whom were mere marketgardeners.

It is unnecessary to multiply proofs; and we will here conclude this imperfect sketch of Franco-African colonisation, of its crimes, its errors, and its cost, by extracting a rather remarkable passage from a writer we have more than once referred to, and who, although perhaps disposed to view things in Algeria upon the black side, is yet deserving of credit, as well by his position as by reason of his painstaking research and, so far as we have verified them, accurate statistics.

"The colonists cannot deny," says Monsieur Desjobert in his Algérie en 1846," and they admit :

"1°. That Europe alone maintains the 200,000 Europeans in Algeria. In 1846 we are compelled to repeat what General Bernard, minister of war, said in 1838: 'Algeria resembles a naked rock, which it is necessary to supply with everything, except air and water.'

"2°. That so long as we remain in this precarious situation, a naval war, by interrupting the communications, would compromise the safety of our army. In 1846 we repeat M. Thiers' words, uttered in 1837: If war surprises you in the state of indecision in which you are, say that the disgraceful evacuation of Africa will be inevitable.'

"M. Thiers did not speak the whole truth when he talked of evacuation. In such an extremity, evacuation would be impossible. Our army would perish of misery, and its remnant would fall into the hands of the enemy."

Another enemy than the Arabs is here evidently pointed at; that possible foe is now a friend to France, and we trust will long remain so. But on many accounts the sentences we have just quoted are significant, as proceeding from the pen of a French deputy. They need no comment, and we shall offer none. We wait with interest to see if France's African colony prospers better under the Republic of 1848 than it did under the Monarchy of 1830.

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THE CAXTONS.

PART IX.-CHAPTER XXXIX.

at least made a sensation. But if you had all the snows of the Grampians in your heart, you might enter unnoticed: take care not to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbour, and not a soul is disturbed, not a "comforter" stirs an inch! I had not slept a wink, I had not even laid down all that night-the night in which I had said farewell to Fanny Trevanion-and the next morning, when the sun rose, I wandered outwhere I know not. I have a dim recollection of long, gray, solitary streetsof the river, that seemed flowing in dull silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity-trees and turf, and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end of the great Babel to the other: but my memory only became clear and distinct when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of my father's house, and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into the drawing-room, which was the rendezvous of the little family; for, since we had been in London, my father had ceased to have his study apart, and contented himself with what he called "a corner"-a corner wide enough to contain two tables and a dumb waiter, with chairs à discretion all littered with books. On the opposite side of this capacious corner sat my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and he was jotting down, in his stiff military hand, certain figures in a little red account-book-for you know already that my uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most methodical of men.

AND my father pushed aside his books. O young reader, whoever thou art,or reader, at least, who hast been young, -canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of home-come back to the four quiet walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before thee in the path of the passions-the generation of thy parents (not so many years, perchance, remote from thine own)-how immovably far off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have merged-the occupations that they have found sufficing for their happiness, by the fireside-in the armchair and corner appropriated to each how strangely they contrast thine own feverish excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pursuits, as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more, and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your candle, and creep miser--the first proof of his first work-his ably to your lonely room.

Now, if in a stage coach in the depth of winter, when three passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen, descends from the outside and takes place amongst them, straightway all the three passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars, re-arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly a sensible loss of caloric-the intruder has VOL. LXV.NO. CCCXCIX.

My father's face was more benign than usual, for, before him lay a proof

one work-the Great Book! Yes! it had positively found a press. And the first proof of your first work-ask any author what that is! My mother was out, with the faithful Mrs Primmins, shopping or marketing no doubt; so, while the brothers were thus engaged, it was natural that my entrance should not make as much noise as if it had been a bomb, or a singer, or a clap of thunder, or the last "great novel of

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the season," or anything else that made a noise in those days. For what makes a noise now? Now, when the most astonishing thing of all is in our easy familiarity with things astounding when we say, listlessly, "Another revolution at Paris," or, "By the bye, there is the deuce to do at Vienna!"-when De Joinville is catching fish in the ponds at Claremont, and you hardly turn back to look at Metternich on the pier at Brighton!

My uncle nodded, and growled indistinctly; my father

"Put aside his books; you have told us that already."

Sir, you are very much mistaken, he did not put aside his books, for he was not engaged in them-he was reading his proof. And he smiled, and pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind of humour, as much as to say-"What can you expect, Pisistratus?-my new baby! in short clothes-or long primer, which is all the same thing!"

I took a chair between the two, and looked first at one, then at the other, and-heaven forgive me!-I felt a rebellious, ungrateful spite against both. The bitterness of my soul must have been deep indeed to have overflowed in that direction, but it did. The grief of youth is an abominable egotist, and that is the truth. I got up from the chair, and walked towards the window; it was open, and outside the window was Mrs Primmins' canary, in its cage. London air had agreed

with it, and it was singing lustily. Now, when the canary saw me standing opposite to its cage, and regarding it seriously, and, I have no doubt, with a very sombre aspect, the creature stopped short, and hung its head on one side, looking at me obliquely and suspiciously. Finding that I did it no harm, it began to hazard a few broken notes, timidly and interrogatively, as it were, pausing between each; and at length, as I made no reply, it evidently thought it had solved the doubt, and ascertained that I was more to be pitied than fearedfor it stole gradually into so soft and silvery a strain that, I verily believe, it did it on purpose to comfort me!— me, its old friend, whom it had unjustly suspected. Never did any music touch me so home as did that long, plaintive cadence. And when the bird ceased, it perched itself close to the bars of the cage, and looked at me steadily with its bright intelligent eyes. I felt mine water, and I turned back and stood in the centre of the room, irresolute what to do, where to go.

My father had done with the proof, and was deep in his folios. Roland had clasped his red account book, restored it to his pocket, wiped his pen carefully, and now watched me from under his great beetle brows. Suddenly he rose, and, stamping on the hearth with his cork leg, exclaimed, "Look up from those cursed books, brother Austin! What is there in that lad's face? Construe that, if you can !"

CHAPTER XL.

And my father pushed aside his books, and rose hastily. He took off his spectacles, and rubbed them mechanically, but he said nothing; and my uncle, staring at him for a moment, in surprise at his silence, burst out,—

"Oh! I see-he has been getting into some scrape, and you are angry! Fie! young blood will have its way, Austin-it will. I don't blame that it is only when-come here, Sisty! Zounds! man, come here."

My father gently brushed off the captain's hand, and, advancing towards me, opened his arms. The next moment I was sobbing on his breast.

But what is the matter?" cried

Captain Roland, "will nobody say what is the matter? Money, I suppose -money, you confounded extravagant young dog. Luckily you have got an uncle who has more than he knows what to do with. How much?-fifty?— a hundred? two hundred? How can I write the cheque, if you'll not speak?"

"Hush, brother! it is no money you can give that will set this right. My poor boy! have I guessed truly? Did I guess truly the other evening, when-”

"Yes, sir, yes! I have been so wretched. But I am better now-I can tell you all."

My uncle moved slowly towards

the door: his fine sense of delicacy made him think that even he was out of place in the confidence between son and father.

"No, uncle," I said, holding out my hand to him, "stay; you too can advise me strengthen me. I have kept my honour yet-help me to keep it still."

At the sound of the word honour Captain Roland stood mute, and raised his head quickly.

So I told all-incoherently enough at first, but clearly and manfully as I went on. Now I know that it is not the custom of lovers to confide in fathers and uncles. Judging by those mirrors of life, plays and novels, they choose better;-valets and chambermaids, and friends whom they have picked up in the street, as I had picked up poor Francis Vivian-to these they make clean breasts of their troubles. But fathers and uncles-to them they are close, impregnable, "buttoned to the chin." The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did anything like other people. When I had ended, I lifted my eyes, and said pleadingly, "Now, tell me, is there no hopenone?

"Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland hastily-"the De Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself, all I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her own happiness." I wrung my uncle's hand, and turned to my father in anxious fear-for I knew that, in spite of his secluded habits, few men ever formed a sounder judgment on worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to look at them. A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars and poets often have for others, though they rarely deign to use it for themselves. And how on earth do they get at it? I looked at my father, and the vague hope Roland had excited fell as I looked.

"True; but Lady Ellinor was not then an heiress, and her father viewed these matters as no other peer in England perhaps would. As for Trevanion himself, I dare say he has no prejudices about station, but he is strong in common sense. He values himself on being a practical man. It would be folly to talk to him of love, and the affections of youth. He would see in the son of Austin Caxton, living on the interest of some fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds, such a match for his daughter as no prudent man in his position could approve. And as for Lady Ellinor"

"She owes us much, Austin !" exclaimed Roland, his face darkening.

"Lady Ellinor is now what, if we had known her better, she promised always to be-the ambitious, brilliant, scheming woman of the world. Is it not so, Pisistratus?"

I said nothing. I felt too much.

"And does the girl like you?—but I think it is clear she does!" exclaimed Roland. "Fate-fate; it has been a fatal family to us! Zounds, Austin, it was your fault. Why did you let him go there?"

"My son is now a man-at least in heart, if not in years-can man be shut from danger and trial? They found me in the old parsonage, brother!" said my father mildly.

My uncle walked, or rather stumped, three times up and down the room; and he then stopped short, folded his arms, and came to a decision

"If the girl likes you, your duty is doubly clear-you can't take advantage of it. You have done right to leave the house, for the temptation might be too strong."

"But what excuse shall I make to Mr Trevanion?" said I feebly-"what story can I invent? So careless as he is while he trusts, so penetrating if he once suspects, he will see through all my subterfuges, and-and-"

"It is as plain as a pike-staff," "Brother," said he slowly, and said my uncle abruptly-" and there shaking his head, "the world, which need be no subterfuge in the matter. gives codes and laws to those who live I must leave you, Mr Trevanion.' in it, does not care much for a pedi-Why?' says he. Don't ask me.' gree, unless it goes with a title-deed to estates."

"Trevanion was not richer than Pisistratus when he married Lady Ellinor," said my uncle.

He insists. Well then, sir, if you must know, I love your daughter. I have nothing-she is a great heiress. You will not approve of that love, and therefore I leave you!' That is the

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