into the plastic language of France by one to whom that flexible and harmonious idiom was not native (though hospitable), what must be its capabilities in the hands of those masters of the Gallic lyre, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Delavigne, and Béranger? To their effusions I shall gladly dedicate a few more papers; nor can I imagine any literary pursuit better calculated to beguile, in a pleasant and profitable fashion, the long winter-evenings that are approaching.

No. VIII.

THE SONGS OF FRANCE.

ON WINE, WAR, WOMEN, WOODEN SHOES, PHILOSOPHY, FROGS, AND FREE TRADE.

from the Prout Papers.

CHAPTER II.—WOMEN AND WOODEN SHOES.

"Nell' estate all' ombra, nel inverno al fuoco,
Pinger' per gloria, e poetar' per giuoco."

Salvator Rosa.

Cool shade is summer's haunt, fireside November's;
The red red rose then yields to glowing embers:
Drawings of cork and "Croquis" place before us!
And let old Prout strike up his Gallic chorus.

O. Y.

THIS gloomy month is peculiarly disastrous in northern climates. Indeed, our brethren of the "broad sheet" are so philosophically resigned to the anticipated casualties of the season, that they keep by them, in stereotype, the long-accustomed annual announcements, which at this time never fail to be put in constant requisition; viz. "Death by Drowning," "Extraordinary Fog," "Melancholy Suicide," "Ser

pentine River," "Felo de se," and sundry such doleful headings, borrowed from Young's "Night Thoughts," Ovid's. "Tristia," the "Newgate Calendar," and other authors in the dismal line. There is method in our spleen, and punctuality in this periodical recurrence of national melancholy. It certainly shewed great considerateness in that muchabused man, Guy Faux, to have selected the fifth of November for despatching the stupid and unreformed senators of Great Britain: so cold and comfortless a month was the most acceptable, in fact, which he could possibly have chosen for warming their honourable house with a few seasonable fagots and forty-eight barrels of gunpowder. Philanthropic citizen! Neither he nor Sir William Congreve, of rocket celebrity-nor Friar Bacon, the original concocter of "villanous saltpetre"-nor Parson Malthus, the patentee of the "preventive check"-nor Dean Swift, the author of " A Modest Proposal for turning into Salt Provisions the Offspring of the Irish Poor" -nor Brougham, the originator of the new reform in the poor-laws-nor Mr. O'Connell, the Belisarius of the poor-box, and the stanch opponent of

any provision for his half-starved tributaries --will ever meet their reward in this world, nor even be appreciated or understood by their blind and ungrateful fellow-countrymen. Happily, however, for some of the above-mentioned worthies, there is a warm corner reserved, if not in Westminster Abbey, most certainly in "another place;" where alone (God forgive us!), we incline to think, their merits can be suitably acknowledged.

Sorrowful, indeed, would be the condition of mankind, and verily deplorable the November chapter of accidents, if, in addition to other sources of sublunary desolation over which we have no control, Father Prout were, like the sun, to obnubilate his disk, veil his splendour, and withdraw the light of his countenance from a gloomy and disconsolate world:

“Dùm caput obscurâ nitidum ferrugine texit,
Impiaque æternam timuerunt sæcula noctem."

Georgic. I.

Then, indeed, would unmitigated darkness thicken the already "palpable" obscure; dulness would place another padlock on the human understanding, and

knowledge be at one grand entrance fairly shut out. But, no! such a calamity, such a "disastrous twilight," shall not befall our planet, as long as there is MS. in "the chest" or shot in the locker. Generations yet unborn shall walk in the blaze of Prout's wisdom, and the learned of our own day shall still continue to light the pipe of knowledge at the focus of this intense luminary. We are thoroughly convinced, so essential do we deem the continuance of these periodical essays to the happiness of our contemporaries, that were we (quod Deus avertat!) to put a stop to our accustomed issues of "Prout paper," forgeries would instantly get into circulation; a false paper-currency would be attempted; there would arise feudo-Prouts and evdo-prophets: but they would deceive no one, much less the elect. Every one knows how that great German chemist, Farina of Cologne, is constantly obliged to caution the public in the envelope of his long glass bottles, against all spurious distillations of his wonderful water: "Rowland," of Hatton Garden, has found more than one "Oliver" vending a counterfeit "incomparable Macassar;" and our friend Bob Olden writes to us from Cork to be