From The London Review. FLOCCI. and that a happy coincidence of events makes America's grave difficulty India's golden opportunity. It is on the cards to give the ryot of Hindoostan his share in the profits of a trade of twenty millions per annum. It is on the cards to destroy a monopoly, which endangers the markets and the industry of half the world. It is on the cards to deal an indirect blow at the slave trade, which shall complete England's ransom of the African, and set her ships free from a costly watch. What do you play, Messieurs the Rulers of the East and Merchants of the West? Nations watch your game and history will follow its issue. THE Latins chose this word for "a thing of little value" without consulting the Sibylline books; or perhaps the day when cotton would decide the fate of nations was foreshadowed in the volumes which the Sybil could not sell. That day is certainly come; cotton, if the uncomfortable metaphor may pass, is in every man's mouth; and half the interest of a great war and more than half the hopes of Indian administration centre on the flocculous seed-vessel of a malvaceous shrub. The natural world seems to symbolize the social in this immense preponderance of small things over No fitter opportunity than this can recur great. Those debaters of back-street par- for the development of Indian cotton-growliaments, who discuss in cloudy conclave the ing. Mr. Laing, like a second Camillus, has question, "Was Creation a Mistake?" would flung his shears into the ill-adjusted scale of feed their world from forests of bread-fruit, Indian finance, and the beam is at last even. and clothe it with ready-grown garments. The cotton districts, thanks to Lord DalBut the food of men is a little grain-the housie's administration, are, to a beegah, lowest of his standards of measure; his ours. Practical experience and the attendress is spun for him by a worm, or grown tion of interested bodies have been brought for him in a seed-cup or a stalk; and the to bear upon the subject since the report of coral insect rears islands for his foot to rest 1847. The old-fashioned gin, the ekhathee, upon from the deeps of the sea. The "many has given place to those inventions whose a little" in labor and its product, makes a introduction to America wrought almost a "muckle" which subdues and sustains the earth; and so the "wool-tree," a curiosity to Herodotus, is become an imperial care to us. In no proverbial sense, indeed, there is at present "much cry and little wool." True, the deficiency in cotton is rather feared than felt, but it is one that can no more be awaited, than if a householder should defer his insurance till the back-stairs were in a blaze. Whatever comes of this American disruption, will include American cotton among the interests it affects. The civil war-certain issue of principles set aside for expediency, just Nemesis for ingenious joint-worship of God and mammon-cannot rage long without a servile rising, general or partial. When that is afoot, before that even, by the distractions and drains of the war, the cultivation of cotton will be stopped; and with it, if no remedy is provided, a thousand mills, and a million active hands will be thrown out of work. Already the transmission of bales is checked-already the chances of hostile movements imperil a crop badly and scantily harvested, as Mr. Cheetham assures us. It is fortunate, at such a crisis, that commerce is in some degree prepared, miracle of improvement. Above all, railways and roads are opened, or just opening, into the cotton countries. Omrawuttee, Barsee, and Sholapore are names of stations on the "Great Indian Peninsula," instead of cotton marts, separated from the sea by a hundred koss of ruts, miscalled roads, and a mountain chain as steep and difficult as the Apennines. In spite of these obstacles, and greater, India has been supplying the shortcomings of America. Year after year the long line of ox-carts has toiled over the plains of the Deccan with bales of cotton, ill picked and roughly ginned, sometimes weighted, too, with earth and stones, interesting to a geologist, but interfering with the mill-owner's purposes. What the oxen had not meditatively chewed from the bale before them, or spoiled by the sweat of their much-enduring bodies in passing the Ghât, reached Bombay, and the screw-press, and an English market, to give Indian cotton a bad name. From this opprobrium, circumstances and the Cotton Supply Association are beginning to clear it. The black, disintegrated trap-rock of the Deccan can grow cotton to rival Sea Island; and the soil of the Southern States deteriorates indeed; | ground. The middle-man-the "wakhavia” as it recedes through many crops from the absorbs the profits, which the Government qualities inherent in virgin forest-earth. assessment sufficiently reduces. Nor is cotton a crop which delays to render a return. The annual yield of Egypt lay contained, a few years ago, in the pods of a plant in a garden at Cairo; and the seeds and stalks, too, repay the process of cleansing. The Times, in devoting a leader to the subject, has relegated it to the domain of demand and supply. Emphatically we observe that the ryot knows nothing of political economy, and will grow no cotton because he ought to do it by reason of Adam Smith. Mr. Money has shown us that the system by which the Dutch Government regenerated Java, and which enriched the villagers as well as the state exchequer, was by no means let to grow." We cannot, indeed, imitate the paternal despotism of Van den Bosch, who used no compulsion, but only observed to his Malays, “You must.” Lord Canning has justly defined the limits within which Government aid can be afforded to cotton enterprise, but these include the passing of good laws. The cotton-grower in India-the ryot-starves under bad ones. His crop is mortgaged before it is above the 66 If regard is not had to the condition of the cultivation cotton may be grown, but it will not be planted in India. It is a crop which is put in and taken off the land too easily to be permanent without assured and lasting inducements. Let the society, which has done so much, press for an amelioration of the poor Hindoo's status. They will find him, like the mass of the Hindoo people, nexus and addictus, bound hand and foot to the money-lenders. Not cotton only, but order and peace will be impossible unless the cultivators of Hindoostan be rescued from mahajun and marwarrie. All India lends or borrows money at ruinous usury; but the lenders are few, and the borrowers many and miserable. In the mutiny, a town or village, bursting into license, attacked first the books of the usurer, and then the Nabob whose courts protected him. Let Mr. Haywood and the able coadjutor whom Sir C. Wood has given him in Dr. Forbes, look to this. Cotton may so be instrumental in helping slaves in the East as well as the West. ACCIDENT ON MONT BLANC.-A party as- | backs, swollen, the fingers as if the ends were cending Mont Blanc, consisting of Messrs. H., B., and others, all firstrate meuntaineers, with their guides, had slept out all night, and after breakfast Mr. B. left the others for a few minutes, being on a slight slope near a precipice. In returning to the party Mr. B. slipped, fell on his back and then over. He slid down 1,500 feet at an angle of 45 deg. by measurement, at a velocity of not less than sixty miles an hour, over frozen snow covered by little peas of ice like hail, and being brought up at a crevasse by the collected snow in his clothes; this, owing to the arrangement of his dress at the time of the accident, his trousers being down, no doubt saved him, by tying his legs together. Dr. Metcalfe was sent for to St. Gervais late that night, and arrived there at six A.M. the following morning. He found Mr. B., a young gentleman of nineteen, in a state of collapse, wrapped in cold wet sheets, which were at once removed and restoratives given until reaction set in. Sensible; no alteration of the pupil; face looking like that of a man four or five days in the water, covered with blood, much swollen; skin off the right side of the nose and face; forehead abraded, hands burnt black on the ground down on a coarse grindstone; nails all There was no He fell at seven From Chambers's Journal. LITTLE CAPET. a few hours the minister was to invest in all state with the Order of the Holy Ghost, would by and by become as the most squalid A SKILFUL Belgian has painted a very little Arab of the most squalid quarter of the touching picture of a wan, squalid child, city, and would give up its persecuted spirit crouching and shivering on the ground in on a stone floor, fairly eaten away with dirt the corner of a miserable room. The face is and vermin, its heart worn out with ill-usage one of those oval, French-child faces, very and starvation! It would be only natural smooth and very yellow, patterns of which that the suggestion-besides being ungenwe see flitting by us in scores over the Fields teel and out of place in a royal palaceElysian, distracting their screaming and bon- should be dismissed as impossible. Poor netless bonnes. A French boy's face to the child! that walked from its cradle, always life; wanting only the little frill round its prattling and gambolling and saying pretty neck, and those other elegancies of dress things, straight to that hideous destiny. with which the exquisite taste of French Better had some of the hundred and one mammas love to invest their offspring. But ogres croup, whooping-cough, and other this French child's face looks out with a pit- ailments, that wait in ambush for children eous, stony insensibility. It seems to shrink of tender years-burst out and strangled it; away from an unseen, uplifted hand. Its even with the result of obliging the noble clothes are torn and ragged: its thin limbs, gentlemen and ladies of the court to exmuch shrunk away, protrude. Shown at the change their bleu-de-roi and rose-colored Great Dublin Exhibition, in 1853, among silks for unbecoming sables, and putting other notable pictures, it drew succeeding them through all the gradations of the hemicycles of commiserating spectators; "greater and the little grief." faces of mothers especially-with tearful eyes, sorrowing over that miserable child. The name of the skilful Belgian is Wappers, and a little Bonnet Rouge, or French Cap of Liberty, tossed lightly in a corner, tells us who is this boy with the French boy's face: the most unhappy child-taking him in reference to his station-that ever lived; the miserrimus of little ones, the scapegoat of tender years driven out into the desert,third of our series, and Louis the last but one. Miserrimus of royal children: the little proto-martyr of kings' sons! This is a piteous distinction; a wretched notoriety. Never did child of a royal line bear so many sorrows. When the courtiers and noble ladies poured in to see him at Versailles on the night of his birth, which took place at "five minutes before seven in the evening "-for events of this character are noted as with a stop-watch-and the cannon was thundering from all the fortresses, and the fireworks were squibbing off in the Place d'Armes, and there was universal delight and congratulation at this fresh introduction of royal flesh and blood into the world-how would that smirking, simpering ruck of fine ladies and gentleman have been aghast, had it been whispered to them that the splendid infant just arrived, that tender fleur-de-lis whom in We know this Royal Boy intimately. Even in the horror and agitation of those days of June and August which preceded their removal to the Temple, they thought of making him sit to Monsieur Dumont—the famous miniature painter--and who was besides "painter in ordinary to the queen." Turning over the fashionable "Who's who?" of the year-a boastful octavo of vanity, bursting with strings of names and offices, and christened the Royal Almanack-we light upon this gentleman, set out gloriously with all his style and titles. Someway a reference of this sort, a scrap, a newspaper cutting, brings a period home to us with a greater vitality. It is as though we had sent for the Directory, and were searching out M. Dumont's address with a view to calling on him professionally. His miniature has come down to us; for a marvel having escaped being crunched under the hoof of an "unbreeched." The most lovely chestnut hair, tumbling in profuse ringlets upon his shoulders, large blue eyes of wonderful sweetness and intelligence, with the rich vermilion lips of his beautiful mother, and a special dimple, for which she was noted exactly reproduced. He was the child whom ladies would love to call over to them and take on their laps and smother with kisses. His little neck was open with a wide collar, turned tons. over, and a dainty frill; with a diminutive coat and small Robespierrean flaps and butSuch a pretty boy! so young, so sweet-tempered, so gracious, so ready and clever! We may be sure gossips marvelled at the absence of the true Bourbon elements, and wondered suspiciously how he could ever come to be shaped into the true and genuine Bourbon type. We, who look back, cannot see the makings of that perfect character, which should develop themselves into the stiff-neckedness, mulishness, insensibility, cruelty, and other virtues which adorn scions of that famous line. The chronicles of this pretty child's sayings and doings are very full-indeed, are almost Boswellian in their abundance. If we are to trust these note-books, he was making wise, affectionate, smart, and witty speeches all day long. But the truth is, most of these details come from a suspicious direction, being furnished by a sort of dynasty of valets, whose works must necessarily have a savor of their office. No doubt there were brave and faithful menials about him, from whom was purged away, as by fire, this corrupting influence. Still, Mr. Carlyle cautions us against what he calls men of the valet species, not professionally filling that office, yet who have a crooked, flunkey twig tied up with their bundle of eccentric sticks. Much more should we be on our guard against an original unplated article. There is a valet way of viewing things, an innocent menial exaggeration which magnifies, a gaping bumpkin wonder and consequent distortion, and a gradual gathering of moss as the narrative stone rolls on. The valet historian, become of a sudden the depositary of important facts, finds his details accumulate prodigiously with every fresh recital, and as he grows older, thickens his varnish, and deepens his colors. So was it with the showman at Waterloo: so is it with that ex-valet who now tells and sells his stories at the Invalides. Therefore must we accept these legends of little Capet with a grain of salt. It must have been a fearfully wise child that at four years old could address its father in a speech of this description: "Papa, I have a fine immortelle in my garden; it will be at once my gift and my compliment. In presenting it to mamma, I shall say, May mamma resemble my flower!" Only con THIRD SERIES. ceive, four years old! How his amazed parent must have looked at him as he lisped his way through this elaborate period. Another time-still rising four years-he astounds us by a neat and ingenious turn which should be held up to all ordinary children at their lessons. He was making some strange sounds with his mouth over his task, and was scolded. "Mamma," said the mysterious infant, "I was hissing myself, because I said my lessons so badly." Some one tried to stop him forcing his way through some briers. Opposition was instantly silenced by the reply, "Thorny ways lead to glory! He fell down on the gravel-walk, and picked himself up with four lines of an apt quotation from La Fontaine. He made puns; checking himself in his intention of bringing some soucis (a species of flower) to his mother, because she had already a sufficiency of them (cares). He was fearfully ready with his classics, and told some one that he was more fortunate than Diogenes, because he had found a man and a good friend. He liked his garden grenadiers (flowers) very much, but would rather be at the head of living grenadiers. He was, in short, a royal, "terrible child." No, this is the valet's child, the changeling of the servants' hall. The poor hapless boy has been so bewailed, talked over, wept over, that he has been actually gossiped into a new shape. There is a handsome margin left for the good and the sympathizing, who would weep over the wretched destiny of the most gifted and promising child ever born to a crown. As a matter of course, he was soon put to take his part in the theatrical shows of the time. The little Royal Red Book alluded to, shows a catalogue of names-crowded as the names of an army list-who form the rank and file of the various "houses" of his majesty, the queen, of monsieur, and the other persons of "the blood;" and, naturally enough, the little Capet had his share in the show. He was splendidly glorified, this royal bambino, as yet only toddling across the palace saloons, with a whole department to himself, labelled "Education of my Lord the Dauphin." He was encumbered with a superfluity of stately supervision, and watched over by a governor-in-chief, two sub-governors, two clerical tutors or "in stitutors," a reader, a secretary in ordinary, crowded with gaudy scenes, horrid night a governess, and four sub-governesses. We have always some picturesque glimpse of this favored child. Now we look down at him from the Tuileries windows, pacing his gardens at the head of a tall company of National Guards, he himself a tiny National Guard in a miniature uniform. How comic the contrast between this Tom Thumb Dauphin pacing up and down in his Lilliputian regimentals, and the grave giants in the cocked-hats stalking solemnly behind him! He made speeches to these warriors with a quaint old-fashioned ceremoniousness that makes us smile. He apologized for the smallness of his own private garden, where he himself was gardener, regretting that its little walks could not accommodate the gentlemen who came to visit him. That fatally precocious wisdom, and strange readiness of speech, someway suggest the childish partner in the firm of Dombey and Son. mare pictures, and snatches of Elysium, all jumbled together in violent contrast! As he shall lie hereafter, shrunk and coiled up in a corner of his dark cell, with a film before his eyes, and brain disordered by disease, literally rotting away, what a company of spectres shall be with him all night long! How the black veil, which always hung before the dark walls, must have parted and floated away to the right and to the left, showing him ghostly pictures, theatrical tableaux, such as he had often gazed at from the royal box in the Paris theatre! We, too, can see them as well as he. TABLEAU FIRST. A snatch of Elysium! There was surely one happy night to look back to, that in the hall of the theatre at Versailles-that pretty playhouse which strangers and holiday-folk now go down to admire. There has been a The Tom Thumb uniform was soon weight of care over the great palace, for the changed, and we see him presently in the monster dungeon has been destroyed; the full dress of a miniature colonel-Colonel of people are growing strangely insolent and the Piccol'uomini-or, more respectfully, the even dangerous; and the little prattling child Royal Dauphin Regiment. Royal Bonbon, keeps down its spirits, seeing how dejected said the French gamins, screaming with and anxious seem the king and queen. laughter, as the little men fluttered their colors, beat drums, saluted, carried arms, and relieved guard at important posts, in a droll parody on their elders. By and by this Tom Thumb colonel will appear in other dresses. Alas! not uniforms. He will be looking back with despair in that boy-old age of his, from out of darkness of soul and body, to that mimic coloneling! When, of that first of October night, he is dressed smartly and taken down with mamma and papa into the theatre, where the newly arrived officers are dining, he goes silent and wondering. What a blaze of lightwhat cries of joy and enthusiasm; for the officers are all standing up in wild excitement, having sprung to their feet on their entrance, and are shouting "Vive le Roi," and swearing eternal fidelity. The vision of that beautiful mamma and her children has had much to do with this. They will die for that lovely lady. Down with the vile cockades of the nation, and trample them under foot! The color has come back to her cheeks-the kingly face smiles benignant. Let us all join,-scarlet-coated Swiss, Guard National in the Hogarthian sugarloaf soldiers' hats, and officers of the Royal Flanders Regiment,-and, drawing swords, drink frantically to our dear sovereigns. I For, indeed, into that ten years which see them all now-in an old print-standing made up his little life were compressed the up and pledging that beautiful lady-and I whole seven ages of man. He saw a kind see the orchestra in cocked-hats, high up in of copy of youth, of manhood, and the terri- a corner, just striking up the sweet air, “O ble enforced decay of a childish old age. I Richard! O my king! though all the world fancy no life of that duration was ever so abandon thee!" Halcyon night! We may Our little Capet was fated to know some troubled nights during his short span of ten years. It seemed to be his destiny to be perpetually awakened from his first sleep towards midnight, and to be snatched from his cot and hurriedly dressed. Or else, where all the elements were raging, and the human storm howling, to be brought out and held up by way of show, to soothe the agitation. On a child's mind those midnight rousings must have left a bewildering impression. |