I added mildly, "I must confess I never could form any idea of a fighting Providence, and least of all can I appreciate a Providence so inconsistent, not to say treacherous, as to fight on both sides, for whilst she gives us the victory at sea, she as invariably gives the triumph to Napoleon on shore. Trafalgar comes between Ulm and Austerlitz." My triumph over my hostess was evident in the faces of the company, and the conversation was changed with the grace and facility peculiar to the French.

It was two years after this, that I had a singular opportunity of escaping from Verdun. I had ceased to be on parole, and a combination of circumstances advantageous to my escape was offered to me by my friends. My plan was to go to Paris, and from thence to travel to Bourdeaux as an American merchant, returning to Baltimore.

ners.

In the Diligence to Bourdeaux was a vivacious and loquacious little French woman-very pretty, and of most insinuating manAnother compagnon de voyage was a Captain of the Cuirassiers of the Imperial Guard. He was the beau ideal of a military hero-young, tail, of a powerful frame, with an open noble countenance, and a profusion of jet black whiskers and mustachios.

We became almost confidential even at the outset of the journey, and what did not a little surprise me was, that he spoke to me by my assumed name as if we had been old friends, though I felt convinced I had never set eyes on him before. So superb a Muratlike figure of a military officer was not easily forgotten.

Arrived at the little town of about twenty English miles from Bourdeaux, he took me into the recess of the window of the house where we changed horses, and informed me that he was on a visit to his uncle, who had a small estate and chateau just off the high road, and he first invited, then pressed, and at last insisted, that I should accompany him and stay two or three days with "the good old man." In vain I urged the necessity of my mercantile affairs, and my anxiety to get back to my counting-house at BaltiThe officer repeated mysteriously, "I am a gentleman and a soldier, accept my invitation, or you'll repent it."

more.

I was at last reluctantly overcome, and the officer sent a boy off to his uncle with the news, loudly delivered, that he and his old friend had at length arrived at the inn, and would be with him in an hour.

I was very hospitably received by a venerable old lady and gentleman, in a house of some grandeur. One fortnight elapsed, nor could I get away from my kind hosts, in spite of my palpable and uncontrollable anxiety to depart, and my incessant fear of being detected. At last, at night, after the old lady and gentleman had

retired to rest, my friend, pouring out the last glass of a bottle of fine old claret, said, without any preface or apology, 66 You must go to Bordeaux to-morrow-1 have ordered my uncle's carriage and horses for you precisely at six-" "Shall I not take leave of the family ?" "Decidedly not. My uncle and aunt are invalids and cannot be disturbed so early, and they will dispense with the ceremony, so good night." I was bowed out of the room, and lighted to my chamber in a very summary way, and I was much perplexed and not a little annoyed at so much kindness, mixed with a singularity which became almost insulting.

The next morning at six, I found an open carriage at the door, with my friend's horses and liveries, and my friend himself awaited me in the hall.

Taking me into a little boudoir, he briefly and abruptly said, in the style of his master, Napoleon ::-"You have been perplexed at the singularity of my manners-at my taciturnity-and vexed at your detention from your Counting-house at Baltimore. My friend, you are not an American returning to your country; in plain terms, you are an English prisoner escaping from Verdun.Do not start nor colour-I presume you are Dr You were

not on your parole when you escaped, but two of your countrymen who had their parole, have shamefully violated it, and they escaped from Verdun eight-and-forty hours after you left it.

The Emperor was vexed at this dishonour, and the police on the coast were using their utmost vigilance. That pretty woman in the Diligence, with whom you seemed so much inclined to become intimate, is the wife of a police agent at Bourdeaux. The only way to save you was, to treat you as my old familiar friend, travelling with me to my uncle's chateau,-now all is explained.. Entering Bourdeaux in this equipage, and with a passport from this house, you will excite no suspicion. I need not say the injury I shall suffer, if you betray the service I have rendered to you. But, no-you cannot-you are a man of honour-and now, my friend, do not imbibe the vulgar prejudices instilled into your countrymen by your Press, that the French officers are ferocious canaille. We fight for military glory, whilst the personal malignity of your officers against us strips war of all its pride and magnanimity. Farewell, and let us exchange these snuff-boxes as a memorial of this scene-but-I have one favour to ask of you: Do you know an English town called Reading?

"Intimately, it lies on the high road between the metropolis and my little paternal property. I pass through it five or six times

every year.

"Then do me this sacred office of friendship. I have a young

brother, a lieutenant de Vaisseau, who was badly wounded and captured by one of your ships of war. He is a prisoner at Reading; I have never relieved his necessities, partly from the want of means, and partly from my absence with the Emperor at Austerlitz, Wagram, and Jena. Take these seventy Napoleons, deliver them to my brother, and console him by saying what you know of me and of his kind old uncle and aunt."

We parted: I was but eight-and-forty hours at Bourdeaux, when I obtained a passage on board a ship, bound to Charleston, South Carolina. In the night, when out of sight of land, the captain put the helm up and steered due north. On my expressing my astonishment, he frankly told me, that his American papers were all forged, and that he was bound to the Port of London, adding, "You need pay me nothing for your passage, since I was obliged to deceive you, and from London you may get a passage to Baltimore any day in the week." I became equally confidential and to his equal astonishment.

In three days we had passed through the English Rochefort Squadron and Channel Fleet, and I went on board the Ville de Paris, where I had a long interview with the Admiral in Chief, the Earl St Vincent.

I had been but a few days in London, when I went to Reading on my friend's mission. I found his brother had died about six months before, partly of his numerous wounds, and partly of the melancholy of his sensitive temper, at his neglected, impoverished state. He had died in great distress.

I had an opportunity of sending the seventy Napoleons to their owner, by a gentleman going to Paris. However, to my great grief, in about three months I received from this traveller a bill of exchange for the same amount, with a letter saying, that my friend had been killed in a charge upon the Russian Cuirassiers at Friedland.

Travelling for amusement in the South of France in 1815, I repaired to Bourdeaux, and visited the chateau of my friend's uncle, who was dead, but the widow, though extremely old, recognized me, and was bitterly afflicted with the recollections I occasioned of her nephew. Into her hands I put the seventy Napoleons; and I remained two days under her roof, consoling her with merited eulogies of my generous friend-the Captain of Cuirassiers.

Court Journal.

THE COUSINS.

A COUNTRY TALE.-BY MISS MITFORD.

TOWARDS the middle of the principal street in my native town of Cranley, stands, or did stand, for I speak of things that happened many years back, a very long-fronted, very regular, very ugly brick house, whose large gravelled court, flanked on each side by offices reaching to the street, was divided from the pavement by iron gates and palisades, and a row of Lombardy poplars, rearing their slender columns so as to veil, without shading, a mansion which evidently considered itself, and was considered by its neighbours, as holding the first rank in the place. That mansion, indisputably the best in the town, belonged, of course, to the lawyer; and that lawyer was, as may not unfrequently be found in small places, one of the most eminent solicitors in the county.

Richard Molesworth, the individual in question, was a person obscurely born and slenderly educated, who, by dint of prudence, industry, integrity, tact, and luck, had risen through the various gradations of writing clerk, managing clerk, and junior partner, to be himself the head of a great office, and a man of no small property or slight importance. Half of Cranley belonged to him, for he had the passion for brick and mortar, often observed amongst those who have accumulated large fortunes in totally different pursuits, and liked nothing better than running up rows and terraces, repairing villas, and rebuilding farm houses. The better half of Cranley called him master, to say nothing of six or seven snug farms in the neighbourhood, of the goodly estate and manor of Hinton, famous for its preserves and fisheries, or of a command of floating capital which borrowers, who came to him with good securities in their hands, found almost inexhaustible. In short, he was one of those men with whom every thing had prospered through life; and, in spite of a profession too often obnoxious to an unjust, because sweeping, prejudice, there was a pretty universal feeling amongst all who knew him that his prosperity was deserved. A kind temper, a moderate use of power and influence, a splendid hospitality, and that judicious liberality which shows itself in small things as well as in great ones (for it is by twopenny savings that men get an ill name,) served to ensure his popularity with high and low. Perhaps, even his tall, erect, portly figure, his good-humoured countenance, cheerful voice, and frank address, contributed something to his reputation; his remarkable want of pretension or assumption of any sort certainly did, and as certainly the absence of

every thing striking, clever, or original, in his conversation.

That he must be a man of personal as well as of professional ability, no one tracing his progress through life could for a moment doubt; but, reversing the witty epigram on our wittiest monarch, he reserved his wisdom for his actions, and whilst all that he did showed the most admirable sense and judgment, he never said a word that rose above the level of the merest common-place, vapid, inoffensive, dull, and safe.

So accomplished, both in what he was and in what he was not, our lawyer, at the time of which we write, had been for many years the oracle of the country gentlemen, held all public offices not inconsistent with each other, which their patronage could bestow, and in the shape of stewardships, trusts, and agencies, managed half the landed estates in the county. He was even admitted into visiing intercourse, on a footing of equality very uncommon in the aris tocratic circles of country society-a society which is, for the most part, quite as exclusive as that of London, though in a different way. For this he was well suited, not merely by his own unaffected manners, high animal spirits, and nicety of tact, but by the circumstances of his domestic arrangements. After having been twice married, Mr Molesworth found himself, at nearly sixty, a second time a widower.

His first wife had been a homely, frugal, managing woman, whose few hundred pounds and her saving habits had, at that period of his life, for they were early united, conduced in their several ways to enrich and benefit her equally thrifty but far more aspiring husband. She never had a child; and, after doing him all possible good in her lifetime, was so kind as to die just as his interest and his ambition required more liberal housekeeping and higher connexion, each of which, as he well knew, would repay its cost. For connexion accordingly he married, choosing the elegant though portionless sister of a poor baronet, by whom he had two daughters, at intervals of seven years; the eldest being just of sufficient age to succeed her mother as mistress of the family, when she had the irreparable misfortune to lose the earliest, the tenderest, and the most inestimable friend that a young woman can have. Very precious was the memory of her dear mother to Agnes Molesworth! Although six years had passed between her death and the period at which our little story begins, the affectionate daughter had never ceased to lament her loss.

It was to his charming daughters that Mr Molesworth's pleasant house owed its chief attraction. Conscious of his own deficient education, no pains or money had been spared in accomplishing them to the utmost height of fashion.