over, at no time, in the doctor's "seminary," did nail-brushes abound; but warts were as plentiful as fingers; and ink being deemed a cure (if daily put on, and never washed off), the manual exhibition which presented itself was of a rather dingy, and of a very mottled, appearance. The show of hands on the negative side of the question, though it argued some division in opinion, only proved that, in respect to general complexion, the "palmy state" of Dr. Latherump's establishment was of a uniform character. It was agreed at all hands that "motley was the only wear." The negatives, however, were in a minority; the muffin-dish carried the day: and a committee of the whole school, with powers to add to their number, was appointed to carry into effect the purchase and presentation of the muffindish.

The committee did its duty, in the provision of an elegant silver muffindish, with a bottom to hold hot water, and a cover, on which was inscribed the following:

TO DR. LATHERUMP,

As a testimony of the grateful approbation awarded to him by his Pupils.

"E'en as the muffin, glowing hot,
Beneath this cover rests,
So grateful favour, ever warm,
Shall keep within our breasts.

Though thou a many goodly birch

Hast left a twigless stump,
Yet still on memory's tree shall bloom
Thy virtues, Latherump.

Then lift the cover thankfully--
Thy mouth, too, open wide;
And may thy muffins ever be

Well butter'd on each side."
(Then follow the names of the donors.)

A day having been appointed for presenting the muffin-dish, a suitable address was prepared by the delegated Pipson. Dr. Latherump, however, remained in such perfect ignorance of the honour intended him, that he occasioned the temporary subversion of the intended scheme. The doctor's orchard had been robbed. He taxed all the mischievous boys with the theft, and all the others with the knowledge of it; and, as he could neither convict any one of the former, nor obtain evidence from any one of the latter, he

tended to be employed in the ceremony of presenting the plate, ate his muffins from a platter of blue crockery, and, lumping together the innocent and guilty of the "establishment," sent them all supperless to bed.

It became, then, a question with many of the subscribers, whether they should present the piece of plate with a laudatory oration as originally intended, or at once emphatically address the feelings of the doctor by shy-ing" the muffin-dish at his head. It was thought, however, that a quieter revenge would be the more complete; and they therefore worked out their bondage and their fast, and postponed the execution of their patronage until the morrow.

The unsatisfied Latherump was about to renew his inquiries after the yet undiscovered offender, when the assembled school, headed by the delegated Pipson, approached him in a body. Latherump, thinking that the brazen front of open rebellion was before him, stood indignant and aghast, when he was at once surprised and relieved by the respectful manner in which the leader of the assembly, with the bow of a most submissive courtesy, laid before him the silver muffin-dish.

"Young gentlemen," said the abashed pedagogue," what am I to understand by this?"

Now, without giving the exact words in which the reply was delivered (and which, we need not say, affected to be very respectful), we report its substance to have been as follows:

"We mean you to understand, you savage old gentleman, that, although deprived by your tyranny yesterday of our recreation and our supper, we still harbour no revenge beyond that of compelling you to own that we are merciful judges of your actions. We offer you a muffin-dish in token of forgiveness and peace, when we might have assailed your ugly old head with a volley of lexicons. In resolving to present you with this testimony of our approval, we are now obliged to confess that we rather consulted our own dignity and deserts, than yours; and we trust you will receive it as a lesson never to be forgotten, that your boys are henceforth your peers; and that, however you may hold the rod, we

Paris, August 6, 1839. MY DEAR YORKE, Bang-bangbang! went the cannon of the Invalides on Saturday, July the 27th, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine, at the most unsentimental and unfriendly, as well as untimely hour, of six. "Plague take their banging !" I could not help exclaiming, as I turned myself, " I wish they would commence their festivities at a less early hour." But wishing in this, as in most other cases, was, of all expedients, the worst; and so as the bangs-bangs-bangs! continued, I sprung from my couch, and upbraided the lovers of late hours and of morning dozes. As I looked on the "milkmen's carts from the Beaulieu ;" on the early apprentices clearing the boutiques; on the greengrocery trucks returning from the Halle to the fauxbourgs, with the provisions of another day; on the cooks hastening with their paniers to purchase early and cheaply, that they might gain a greater profit out of their worthy masters and mistresses— I felt initiated once more into the secrets of that unseen portion of life, which are transacted in a great city between the hours of five and eight in the morning. The chiffonniers, or handand-basket scavengers, were already on the alert with their baskets on their backs, scraping with their little stick and its iron hook at the end, among the sweepings out of the shops and ground-floors, and depositing over their left shoulders into the basket aforesaid with a vivacity and celerity quite amusing, the morsels of paper, card, rope, string, glass, bones, and other vend-able articles they met with on their march. "All is fish that comes to net," is the maxim of these chiffonniers; and so on they trudge, rummaging over every heap of rubbish, till the basket is quite full, and till it is time to be sorting its contents.

At length the banging ceased. The Invalides had terminated their thunder

ing exploits, and Paris had been loudly informed that "the fêtes were begun.'

It may just be possible, my dear Yorke, that some one reader of REGINA may ask, What fêtes are these to

so I will answer the question in a very few words.

The fêtes of July are certain public entertainments held on the 27th, 28th, and 29th of that month, from 1831 downwards, to celebrate the anniversary of three similar days in 1830; in which the inhabitants of Paris drove from the palaces of their forefathers the descendants of Henry the Fourth and Louis le Grand; in which they overthrew the throne and the altar.

But, as a gentleman of high morals, unblemished integrity, and consistent conduct, has directed us," when we are far from the lips that we love, simply to make love to the lips that are near," we must make the best of what the gods who now govern give us, and endeavour to extract some merriment even from the least promising materials. So, as the banging of the cannon of the Invalides has announced to us the commencement of the fêtes of July, we will say with the gamin of Paris, "Nous nous en donnerons."

When the programme had been inspected, and the weighty matters of dinner-hours and chapeaus had been discussed, we sallied out right merrily to see the fêtes; resolved, coute qui coute, on finding "sermons in stones, books in the running brooks, and 'fun' in every thing." Such a resolution was, to say the least of it, particularly indecorous on the weeping and mourning day of the fêtes of July; for, at the very moment we were sallying forth for "fun," the patriotic journeymen tailors of the good city of Paris were assembling on the Place de la Bourse to visit, in a most solemn and 'imposing procession, "The Tombs of the Martyrs of Liberty," who died in attacking the throne, the altar, and the hearth, in the month of July, 1833!

After the banging of the cannon had ceased, and the panes of glass no longer shivered at the magnificent roaring of the Invalides' artillery, the very old women and very gray men of each arrondissement, proceeded to the house of the mayor to receive the relief, or cold meat and other condiments, provided for them on this Eret deri'a golobration of the unlanı amil

So here we are at the mayor's house of the first arrondissement, Rue d'Anjou, St. Honoré, with a company of National Guards to keep order, a tricoloured flag at the gate to excite enthusiasm, and cold-boiled stickings, loaves of bread, and macon and water, to satisfy hunger and assuage thirst.

"Pauline Devaux," cries the mayor, in a tone of official protection, " come forward, and receive your provisions !" Poor old soul! she is ninety; lives in the sixth floor above the entre-sol, (which, for the life of me, I can never make more nor less of than the seventh story); has been a widow forty-seven years; supported her mother for thirty years; has not had a new gown since Napoleon was married to Josephine; remembers the first revolution, and talks of its events with precision and firmness; describes Robespierre most graphically; and is as good a Conservative as can be found in the Carlton. She advanced steadily, though slowly, for her cheer, and took back to her lonely mansarde a four-pound loaf, a pound of stickings, and a quart of burgundy. She must have a good digestion, as well as a good appetite, to master her provisions; but poverty makes a woman acquainted with strange dinners, as well as it does a man with droll bedfellows. Poor Pauline! she will die one of these days without being missed. She has outlived all her contemporaries; she has no relatives; and, of course, no friends-not even a seventieth cousin. If ill, she must be her own nurse; if dying, her own priest. The surly porter would never ascend to the seventh floor, except on quarter-day to collect the rent for the landlord; and if it should so happen that she dies some day after the rent has been paid, her old bones may remain without a coffin till the next rent-day conducts the collector of rents to the latch of poor Pauline. There she goes ba-ck to her mansarde, her wine in a pitcher, her beef in her pocket, and her bread under her arm. "Bon jour, Pauli ne," "Bon jour, monsieur." "Il fait bien chaud aujourd'hui, Pauline." "Oui, monsieur, et surtout pour une pauvre femme de quatre-vingt-dix ans." The crowd stare at her, for she walks off with something even of dignity about her. She was born before the first revolution, and there is more pure blood in her veins than is to be found

in the whole faubourg St. Antoine. There was a time when, in good old England, such an old lady as Pauline would have been kindly treated in a parish poorhouse; but since the Whigs have become the national almoners, Pauline is as well off in her mansarde, as she would be in the "Union."

"Pierre Canut!" calls the mayor again; and one of the faithful subjects of Louis XV. makes his appearance. He is eighty-six. He was born when Massillon, Rousseau, Crebillon, Voltaire, and Montesquieu, were, more or less, in their glory; and, even at his time of life, repeats passages from the Henriade with propriety and taste. He has lived under the reigns of Louis XV., XVI., XVIII., and Charles X.; beside the revolution, the empire, the republic, and the new-fangled system of a "republican monarchy." He has served the two first sovereigns as a soldier, and relates anecdotes of their private life, amours, and glory. I asked him," if he had heard the cannon at six this morning?" He laughed heartily, and told me that he had cried from fear when an infant of a year old, as those same cannon announced the birth of Louis XVI.!

When the distribution of beef, sausages, bread, and wine, was over, we wended our way "to the tombs." "But the shops are all open!" said Mary. "But no one is in black !" said Fanny. Very true. Act-of-parliament tears are not very plentiful, either in France or elsewhere; and "the heroes of July, 1830," have merited more reproaches than pity. As the programme would have it, however, "that funeral-services, in honour of those who fell at the revolution," were to be performed in the churches, as well as at the tombs, in front of the Louvre, in the Rue Froid Menteau, in the Marché des Innocens, and in the neighbourhood of the Champs de Mars and the Pont de Grenelle, we were resolved to witness act-of-parliament grief, and to be present at funeralservices ordered to be celebrated by the chief of the police.

As the best plays are always performed at the head theatres, we resolved on witnessing the pantomime of official mourning at Notre Dame, and the shedding of tears over the graves of the heroes at the tombs of the Louvre. Nothing could be more orthodox than this arrangement; and

away we hastened through all the business and bustle of Paris, no one paying the smallest attention to us, to the heroes, or to the tombs, except the journeymen tailors to whom we have before alluded, and who are shortly to play an important part in the drama of our first day's festivities.

"But where is the fête?" again asked Fanny. Poor Fanny! she came to see fêtes, and she sees mock funerals. This is too bad; but how can you get up act-of-parliament mourning, without resorting to deception and artifice? As Fanny saw no fête at Notre Dame, she was determined not to be disappointed at the Louvre; and thither we hastened with rapid steps to the tombs of the heroes. But first of all, one word as to the tombs; and then another as to their contents. The tombs are nothing more than some black painted crosses and pieces of wood stuck in the earth, over and about a certain piece of land now railed in, and on the sides of the Louvre next the quay and the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois; into which were huddled, indiscriminately, the dead bodies of the thieves, pickpockets, assassins, marauders, escaped convicts, and other worthy citizens, who fell in the streets round and about the Louvre in their matchless and successful attack on the soldiers of the king, on the palaces of the Louvre and Tuileries, and on the laws, throne, and institutions of the country, on the 28th and 29th of July, 1830. A poor, timid, frightenedout-of-his-wits priest (made within the last few days, by Louis Philippe, a minor canon at St. Denis), was laid hold of by "the sovereign people" at that epoch, and compelled, nolens volens, to bless and consecrate this piece of ground; and from that epoch to the present hour, the wretches then and there buried have been styled "heroes!"

Surrounding this spot of ground were National and Municipal Guards, as well as some troops of the line. Small pieces of dirty, brown, hereditary crape, transmitted from festival to festival, were tied round their unfortunate arms; and every quarter of an hour the band played some funereal air, and occasionally a stave of the "Parisienne" to please the populace.

The sun shone most July-ly at

quiet, when, of a sudden, the sentinel approached the commanding officer, and announced that a column of men, consisting of many hundreds, were approaching, with a standardbearer at their head, and colours flying. It was the regiment of snips! The commanding officer lost not a moment. "Shut the gates," was the first order, and the gates were shut; but, oh! what a rush there was to those gates on the part of the lookers-on at the band and the tombs, before they were shut. A few could not escape. The column approached. "Are they armed?" asked the officer. "No," was the reply. Yet he directed his troops to draw up in order of battle. They did so. Every man's gun was loaded; every tailor would have been "winged," if he had even attempted to enter the gates. The column of tailors now drew up in martial order. The head of the snips directed the flags to be waved, and the flags were waved. The sign was given to take off hats; and white and brown, black and green, round hats, pointed hats, greasy hatsall were off. What a spectacle! The heads of five hundred tailors were presented to the beams of the sun. But the sun was merciful; a few dark clouds passed over his rays, and the five hundred journeymen stood up in all the dignity of citizens and of Frenchmen. I never shall forget the burlesque of that moment. The chief of the snips raised his eyes to heaven, very much in the fashion of a duck at thunder. The movement was electrical. The whole five hundred (with the exception of some half dozen who had only one eye each) did the same thing; and Heaven was invoked by nine hundred and ninety-four eyes of as brave and enlightened a body as ever marched down the Rue St. Honoré, or across the Pont Neuf. It was enough. The chief of the snips had been kindly apprised that the muskets of the soldiers were loaded; and, as the "sacred band of patriots' under his direction had never proposed to be shot, nor even to be wounded, the word "march" was pronounced; the hats were all on the heads again; the sun broke from behind the clouds; the perspiration, which was most profuse, partly from fear of being shot, and partly from the intense heat of the dan nallad down the most varied faces