Dr. Bell! it would have been but decent in them to caution their scholars not to write-so well, and interfere in this scandalous manner with the regular practitioners. For my own part, were it not that it would look like an affectation of singularity, now that every body is an author, I would leave Apollo to dry. up my ink, cut my pen into a tooth-pick, forswear essay-writing, cease to publish, and float down the stream of life -"Like ships transported with the tide, Which in their passage leave no print behind.” "A wise man," says lord. Chesterfield, "will live at least as much within his wit as his income:" I am determined to do both, and keep my good things to myself, for I am fairly tired of alembicizing my intellect, and as an earnest of my sincerity I thus crumple up the sheet on which I have been scribbling, and cast it into the grate. P. S. Guess my amazement, most unexpected reader, when I found, upon my accidentally calling in Conduit-street, that the preceding paper was actually set up in the press! My servant having had directions to preserve the least scrap enriched with my invaluable lucubrations, had found and brought it to me for orders; and on my pettishly exclaiming that he might throw it to the devil, the blockhead, mistaking my meaning, conveyed it as he had done many others to the printer's devil. I have only had time to give it the title it now bears, and to add this explanatory postscript, which enables it to makė its own apology.. THE FLOWER THAT FEELS NOT SPRING. FROM the prisons dark of the circling bark The leaves of tenderest green are glancing; While music and joy and jubilee gush From the lark and linnet, the blackbird and thrush. The butterfly springs on its new wove wings, To light and life from the darkness leaping; Their youth's first perfume and primitive bloom. What renders me sad when all nature glad And water'd its bed with a father's tears; That eye, whose soft blue of the firmament's hue Such as angels shake from their sunny wings- Yet the blaze sublime of thy virtue's prime, As the matin ray of the god of day Brightens the dew which at last it dries: Yes, Fanny, I cannot regret thy clay, When I think where thy spirit has wing'd its way. So wither we all-so flourish and fall, Like the flowers and weeds that in churchyards wave; Our leaves we spread over comrades dead, And blossom and bloom with our root in the grave; Springing from earth, into earth we are thrust, Ashes to ashes and dust to dust! If death's worst smart is to feel that we part From those whom we love and shall see no more, It softens his sting to know that we wing Our flight to the friends who have gone before; 53 ROUGE ET NOIR. "Could I forget What I have been, I might the better bear That have been wretched-but to think how much SOUTHERN. NEVER shall I forget that accursed 27th of September: it is burnt in upon the tablet of my memory; graven in letters of blood upon my heart. I look back to it with a strangely compounded feeling of horror and delight; of horror at the black series of wretched days and sleepless nights of which it was the fatal precursor; of delight at that previous career of tranquillity and self-respect which it was destined to terminate-alas, for ever! On that day I had been about a fortnight in Paris, and in passing through the garden of the Palais Royal had stopped to admire the beautiful jet-d'eau in its centre, on which the sun-beams were falling so as to produce a small rainbow, when I was accosted by my old friend Major E-, of the Fusileers. After the first surprises and salutations, as he found that the business of procuring apartments and settling my family had prevented my seeing many of the Parisian lions, he offered himself as my Cicerone, proposing that we should begin by making the circuit of the building that surrounded us. With its history, and the remarkable events of which it had been the scene, I was already conversant; but of its detail and appropriation, which, as he assured me, constituted its sole interes: in the eyes of the Parisians, I was completely ignorant. After taking a cursory view of most of the sights above ground in this multifarious pile, I was conducted to some of its subterraneous wonders to the Café du Sauvage, where a man is hired for six francs a night to personate that character, by. beating a great drum with all the grinning, ranting, and raving of a madman; to the Café des Aveugles, whose numerous orchestra is entirely composed of blind men and women; and to the Café des Variétés, whose small theatre, as well as its saloons and labyrinths, is haunted by a set of Sirens not less dangerous than the nymphs who assailed Ulysses. Emerging from these haunts, we found that a heavy shower was falling: and while we paraded once more the stone gallery, my friend suddenly exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the numbers of the houses "one hundred and fifty-four!-positively we were going away without visiting one of the gaming-houses was the meaning of the term he employed, though he expressed it by a word that the fashionable preacher never mentioned to "ears polite." "I have never yet entered," said I, a Pandemonium of this sort, and I never will:-I refrain from it upon principle ;- Principiis obsta;' I am of Dr. Johnson's temperament-I can practise abstinence, but not temperance; and every body knows that prevention is better than cure." "Do you remember," replied E-, "what the same Dr. Johnson said to Boswell?-My dear sir, clear your mind of cant:' I do not ask you to play; but you must have often read, when you were a good little boy, that 'Vice to be hated needs but to be seen,' and cannot have forgotten that the Spartans sometimes made their slaves drunk, and showed them to their children to inculcate sobriety. Love of virtue is best secured by a hatred of its opposite to hate it you must see it; besides, a man of the world should see every thing." "But it is so disreputable!" I rejoined. "How completely John Bullish !" exclaimed E- "Disreputable! why I am going to take you to an establishment recognised, regulated, and taxed by the government, the upholders of religion and social order, who annually derive six millions of francs from this source of revenue; and as to the company, I promise you that you shall encounter men of the first respectability, of all sects and parties, for in France every one gambles at these saloons-except the devotees, and they play at home." He took my arm, and I walked upstairs with him, merely ejaculating as we reached the door-" Mind, I don't play." Entering an ante-room, we were received by two or three servants, who took our sticks and hats, for which we received tickets, and by the number suspended around I perceived that there was a tolerably numerous attendance within. Roulette was the game to which the first chamber was dedicated. In the middle of a long green table was a circular excavation, resembling a large gilt basin, in whose centre was a rotatory apparatus turning an ivory ball in a groove, which, after sundry gyrations, descended to the bottom of the basin, where there was a round of little numbered compartments or pigeon-holes, into one of which it finally settled, when the number was proclaimed aloud. Beside this apparatus there was painted on the green baize a table of various successive numbers, with divisions for odd and even, &c. on which the players deposited their various stakes. He who was in the compartment of the proclaimed number was a winner, and if he had singled out that individual one, which of course was of very rare occurrence, his deposit was doubled I know not how many times. The odd or even declared their own fate: they were lost or doubled. This altar of chance had but few votaries; and merely stopping a moment to admire the handsome decorations of the room, we passed on into the next. This, whispered my companion, for there was a dead silence in the apartment, although the long table was entirely surrounded by people playing |