How far this may be supposed to interfere with | of apoplectic tendency as belongs to almost every Enthe so-called "Monroe doctrine," and how far that doctrine would be worth the price of war, we throw out as a juicy nut for the political wiseacres to crack their teeth withal! By a pleasant circumbendibus, we pounce again upon the Paris papers. We find there, that the agreeable fish-story of Agassiz and the Californian has found its way to the other side of the water, and, naturally enough, has excited the wonderment of the quidnuncs in the world of science. The reader knows of the story, doubtless; how a certain Californian (an odd nativity for scientific discovery !), wishing to tempt his appetite with a broiled fish to his breakfast, threw his line, baited with shrimp, into a bay of that country of golden sands. He presently took, one after the other, a male and female fish their appearance does not seem particularly to have attracted his attention. He threw his line again, and again, and again. But luck was gone. He bethought himself of changing his bait; and, naturally enough for a fisherman (though most unnatural in any one else than a fisherman or a Californian), he sliced a fragment from the stomach of one of his victims. The wound revealed a nest of some twenty lively little fishes, within the parent fish; and on being thrown into the water, they swam (says the graphic and truthful Californian) as if they had spent their lives in the sea." The odd thing about it was the fact, that no fish ever heard of in nature, except this California fish, caught by a Mr. Jackson (a name for generals), ever produced young before, in any other way than by dropping spawn in the water. But, as we said, the story is setting the Paris naturalists agog; and Mr. Jackson may congratulate himself in having given currency to a triumphant hoax, or to a most discouraging discovery. For already, in France and in Belgium, articles had been signed for the formation of a great company to rear fish, and stock preserves, by protecting vivifying spawn; but if the fish are to change their tactics, the shares in the new corporation must fall. If the stock had been offered at the New York "board," we should be compelled to regard the whole affair as a fabrication, and M. Agassiz himself as writing-in the interest of the "bears." A NOTABLE death belongs to the French news, since last we bethumbed the Paris files in the interest of our readers. It is that of the strange old man, the Abbé Lammenais. The record of it will have already fallen under the eye even of American readers. He was a strange French compound of saint and sinner; being full of humanity, and yet ignoring the laws upon which society rests; indulging in grand conceptions about faith and immortality, and yet (as we ordinarily use language) thoroughly irreligious and infidel; he was intensely intellectual, and yet, at times, in his long life, sensual-to a crime. glish squire who has no dislike of mottled beef and Cambridge ale-to wit, a pleasant rosiness of face. But, as he sat on the Bench of the Court-room, after delivering an impressive charge, he was observed to nod, and gradually to sink: the servitors of the court ran to his assistance, and removed his heavy wig; but he was too far gone to speak, and by the time they had fairly carried him out of the court, he was dead. It was an English death. And now, for contrast, as our theme is gloomy, we will look at a French death. Maître (we will call him by that name) was a gardener to a gentleman's establishment, not far away from Paris. He had a strange love for flowers and trees, and tended them as gently as a mother would tend a child. But he conceived a strange, and a truly French desire, to discover the secret principle by which plants grew. It was not enough for him that the showers and sunshine, and the earth he put about his plants, made them luxurious and fruitful; but he watched for hours together the unfolding of a bud, and traced, so far as he was able, the little fibres leading from root to blossom. The old man in the story of Picciola made the flower a companion; but our gardener made his all subjects for dissection. At length he wearied of the unavailing pursuit, wrote a line of explanation upon the gravel walk, and hung himself upon a tree of his garden. The line he wrote might be written by many at dying; it was, "I can not find it out!" But what is a man, hanging on a tree, stone dead, to the thought that crowds on one as the tidings come in from the banks of the Danube? They say that poor Turgot, the party to the Soulé duel, is still suffering excruciatingly, and that the surgeon dispatched from Paris has not succeeded in extracting the ball. But what is a solitary Turgot to the thousands who will be howling soon with the strange pains of splintered bones, or lost limbs, or deep sword-cuts? How the sight of even what provident humanity is doing brings home to one the ills, more frightful than pestilence, which one ambitious man is pouring out on Europe! Look at these hospital wagons; how coolly the paragraphist talks of them, as if no son or brother might be jolted in them over the bogs of Servia! These wagons are designed to carry the wounded from the field of battle, and the sick and disabled upon the march, until they can be deposited in hospital. They are upon four wheels, arranged to turn in the shortest possible space, and are furnished with springs of unusual length, strength, and elasticity. The bodies are divided into four horizontal compartments, 6 feet long by 2 feet in breadth and depth; each compartment is fitted with a movable stretcher, carefully webbed and pillowed, on which the severely wounded will be raised from the field of battle and placed, thus reclining in a compartment for removal. The compartments are amply The mild and genial Sergeant Talfourd, too, whose name, many years ago, gained an almost Greek lus-ventilated and protected by Venetian shutters from tre by the authorship of Ion, has fallen among the dead ones, from his bench in the Justice Court. The summer past he was traveling, with the rational joyousness of a healthful old man, among the wateringplaces of Germany, attended by a pleasant-faced son. And people who read books of worth, pointed him out as the author of a glowing and severe English tragedy. In England, too, up to a very much later date, he seemed well; and only showed such token the sun and night air, and over all is a waterproof cover, supported on light hoops of wood. A door closes these compartments behind, which, as it is necessarily deep and large, can be converted into a table whereon wounds may be conveniently dressed. In front of one wagon body is a capacious locker designed to carry water casks, surgical instruments, and drugs, and on it are seats capable of holding six men, whose wounds do not prevent them trav eling in a sitting posture; these seats are provided with guards to support the wounded if faint. over a victory in the Baltic, as we once shouted over one of Aboukir? And will news-reading mothers name their new-born sons "Charley Napier," as the matrons of our frisk days called therr children "Horatio" or "Bronte ?" But, like the whole world of news-writers now A FRENCH provincial paper brings in the story of two young fellows of Bretagne, who, to escape the hazard of conscription and foreign service, married latterly a couple of old girls, aged respectively sev-a-days, our pen runs insensibly to war; whereas enty-seven and eighty. The happy pairs are said to have made a bridal promenade to the neighboring village, returning the same day to pass the honeymoon in their native town! our good readers will be looking here for a relief to the paper-talk of battles. And they shall have it; first, in a little resumé of a French stage-piece, which is just now attracting attention in the chief theatre of Paris, and which is the work of Madame de Girardin, wife of the famous journalist. But all are not so fortunate (we do not speak of husbands, but of conscripts). Many a way-side home, in the far provinces of France, is this year feeling a blight which comes closer to the heart and No story at all belongs to it; but its interest dethe fears of the cottagers than the famine or a fever. pends wholly on its graceful language and renderThe lot which governs French army enrollment takes ing of Gesling, and upon that nice psychologic no cognizance of only sons, or of dependent widow-power so peculiar to the lady-writer. Its title may ed mothers; and the recruiting sergeants are not be rendered, "Joy is fearful." given to sentimental tendencies, or to any weakness for distressed parents. Here and there some strong case, in which the agony is very bitter, makes itself heard as far as the willing ears of the tender-hearted Empress, and by her voice the sorrow is turned into gladness. But these are exceptional; and the fumes of wine and pipes, with a roistering Vive la France! gives a short-lived courage to many a parting whose memory will bring up the first tears on days of battle. EVERY body, long ago, will have read and digested the speeches in the British Parliament, in connection with the Royal declaration of war; but we want to put on the record of our Gossiping columns a fragment of the Earl of Derby's speech, where he says, "No human being imagines that this war can be brought to a close at the end of six months. No human being supposes that the call now made upon the Parliament (of a doubled income-tax) will be sufficient even for a tenth part of the expenditure that will be incurred by the country." And from the debate in the House of Commons, let us drop on record also, this little whimsey from the observations of Mr. Bright: "Give us seven years," says he, "of this infatuated struggle, and let America have the same period of peace, and she would show us where the balance of power lay, and whether England would retain her vaunted supremacy of industry, and on the seas." Let the reader put these things in his pigeonhole, and when a twelvemonth has gone by, we will call them to his mind again; and so measure the foresight of the statesmen of England. The scene opens with a family in deep affliction; a son is supposed to have been lost at sea; the mother is utterly subdued; a sister, of natural liveliness, is clouded by grief; a young girl, the affianced of the drowned one, is endeavoring to recall, by a drawing, some trace of the features of the lost lover. Even the old domestic of the family is unmanned by his kind-hearted sympathy, and the whole scene is triste to the last degree. The feeling of the reader (and, à fortiori, of the spectator, on the boards of the Theatre Français) is painfully subdued to the mournful spirit of the piece. With French extravagance (and, we may add, with French infidelity), the mother is buoyed up by no hope, either social or Christian; the young life of the daughter seems clouded by a grief as dark as crime; the affianced girl is wilder, and less reasonable in her lament, than either parent or sister. A brother, who is more moderate in his expressions of sorrow, gives token (in true French spirit) of a wish to supply the place of the shipwrecked one, in the affections of the affianced; but is repelled with scorn. Thus matters stand, when the old gray-haired domestic (whose part is the best one of the play), talking with himself, as he busies himself about the salon, indulges in the chimera that perhaps the boy is not lost; and he paints to himself how joyous a thing it would be, if only the story of the shipwreck were to prove untrue; and if it should appear that his young master were really safe; and if he were to come back again, in the old way, with what a quiet pleasure he would shake him by the hand' again. When the old man recovers, the young sailor explains to him how a complication of strange reverses have given rise to the story, and delayed his return. He inquires eagerly about the family; but the old man, now fairly himself again, and remem bering how joy had nearly been the death of him, contrived a system of cautious manœuvres by which the recovery of the lost son, and brother, and lover shall be brought to the knowledge of the sorrowing friends. No sooner said than done. The boy does appear! But so far from quiet, the old man trembles, There are those of us who remember, long ago, cries, and would have fallen to the floor but for the when England was at war; and when the slow-help of the lost one, who has come suddenly to life sailing ships, with weeks between their arrivals (as there are now only hours), brought the eagerlysought for news of Wellesley's marches on the Peninsula, and of the swoop of Nelson's great fleet. There are those who can recall (when school-jackets were not yet cast off, nor the Columbian classbook abandoned) how caps were tossed high in the air, and a boyish "hurra!" rung out, when news came that the Trafalgar fight was a glorious victory! We are curious to see, and to compare, the war-tidings of our age with those which came over when the wee days of tops and marbles made us joyful. There are other elements now blended in the great bulk of what makes our nationality; and Celtic, and maybe Slavic blood, has crept into the veins of American school-boys: will they shout The whole art and design of the piece lies in the strange nicety with which Madame de Girardin has painted the action of an unexpected joy upon the varying temperaments, first of the simple old domestic, and then of the sister, the betrothed girl, and, lastly, the incredulous and broken-hearted mother. The sister finds the old white-haired domestic, who had been so crest-fallen, chirruping and singing at his work. Amazed at the change, she demands indignantly an explanation, and guesses it before it is complete. The brother has been cautioned; and even when he overhears his sister's glad expressions of delight, of her desire to meet him again, he hesitates to approach. Even when he has come from his hiding-place, and is fairly in her view, he seems to dread some terrible explosion of feeling. The Guardsman, like a sensible man, contrasted favorably the new alliance with his dull service at the doors of the Royal barracks; and in due time the parties were joined in marriage. Nothing could be happier than their wedded lot for a six-month. After that time the health of the bride failed: they journeyed to a milder region; where, after a few months of lingering illness, the young wife died; leaving to her husband the whole of her vast property. He, with rare disinterestedness, at once alienated a large portion of it in favor of some charitable foundation in which his deceased wife had, once upon a time, expressed deep concern. But the girl, with a natural and healthful outburst of joy (which we are sure must "bring down" Returning to England, to look after the accomthe house), says, "Venez donc, je n'ai pas peur !" plishment of this scheme of benevolence, he chanced, The communication of the joyful change is, how-in the autumn of 18-, to be present at the great ever, conveyed to the other parties with minute yacht race off Cowes, in which the America won and fearful caution. The reader, or spectator, is such glorious laurels. The winning yacht was unkept in constant anxiety lest it may break too sud-derstood to be for sale; the gentleman who serves denly; scenes pass, all tending, by insensible gradations, toward the denouement, which, with strange artistic skill, is put far away. And when, finally, the whole truth is borne down to the heart of the desolate mother, and the son himself appears, and rushes forward, and is clasped in her arms, and kissed over and over with frantic joy, the whole house (say the journals) is in uproar, with clapping hands, and with the sobs of the women. We have noted and sketched the piece to show on how frail and attenuated a thread is hung even a successful drama, and how French histrionic art will equip even the commonest emotions with an interest that absorbs attention. AND now we add to this a little drama of our own, and with it we close our budget for the month. We say, a drama of our own, since it has never before, to our knowledge, been rendered in type; and yet its facts are all substantially true. A wealthy nobleman of England, who had an only son, grown to manhood, was living, not five years ago, upon a magnificent country estate, on the borders of the manufacturing town of There was scandal attaching to the life of the old man; and it was said that one, who was not his wife, and who lived at his villa, exercised too great an influence over his actions, and prevented full confidence between the father and the son. However this may be, the son, who was possessed of most rare manly beauty, left his father's estate, went up to London, and being utterly without resources, enlisted as a private in the Household Guards of the Queen. His appearance and his acquirements (for he was possessed of a University education) soon attracted attention. The matter was talked of, even by those in high position about the Court; and soon the handsome young guardsman became an object of general curiosity. Among those who heard this mention of the discarded son, was an amiable girl, the daughter and heiress of a noble house. She was attracted by his story; and the sight of his manly graces, not concealed even by the humble uniform he wore, made entire conquest of her affections. Under the circumstances, the initiative could come only from the lady; but interest was too strong for the intervention of any ordinary laws of etiquette or propriety; and the young Guardsman was given to understand that the heart of a high-born lady, whose wealth was equal to her rank, was at his disposal. as the hero of this bit of story was desirous of revisiting again the scenes of his wife's illness and death. He loved the sea; he admired the staunch little American vessel; and he bought the yacht. Some months after, she lay moored in the Southampton waters, fully equipped for a trip to the Mediterranean. The owner was about setting sail, when he received special advices from London, desiring his immediate presence. He hurried up to town, and learned from his solicitor that his father had died under distressing circumstances two nights before. The son and father had not met since the angry parting three years previous. The person through whom the estrangement had arisen was understood to be still an occupant of the paternal mansion; and to be in virtual, and perhaps legal, possession of the greater part of the estate. The son had no desire for greater wealth than he now possessed: and the circumstance only of some mystery attaching to the death of his father, induced him to revisit his old home. He arrived before the funeral ceremony: a sight of what remained of his father, revealed, with fearful force, the reasons for the mysterious communications respecting his death. The face was horribly disfigured, and the jaw and skull shattered by a pistol-ball. It appeared that the old gentleman, always proud of his fine person and countenance (which the son had inherited in a double degree), had been seized with the small-pox; and, shocked and humiliated by the terrific change it had wrought in his features, he had, in a moment of frenzy, put an end to his life. Of the elegance which marked him as a descendant of a long line of aristocratic fathers, nothing was visible now, in the narrow coffin, but the fair and delicate hand. The son took the hand and kissed it; then hurried back to London, and thence to his yacht in the bay of Southampton. In a week he was at sea. A fever overtook him; and soon the disease which he had gained from a touch of the father's hand. The crew gave him such treatment as they could; but the exposure, and the lack of medical attention, gave to the disease strange force; and when the vessel cast anchor before Gibraltar, not a vestige remained of the manly beauty which had given a romance to his life. Was it "a visiting of the sins of the fathers upon the children?" At any rate, the old moral we may whip at the end is made fearfully true: That noble blood does not guard a man from suffering or shame; and that our mortal sorrows cut through the thickest shields of gold. As Editor's Drawer. S we write, it is May; but when what we write and select from our stores of "things new and old" shall come before our readers, it will be the "leafy month of June ;" June, the fairest of all the "sister-seasons." It is strange, but it is true, that the brightness, the joyousness, the very life of nature, to many a one under whose eyes these words will fall, will prove any thing but joyous. What of the bereaved? -what of the suffering ?-what of the dead? Byron has well expressed, what thousands have felt, in his lines (as immortal as any thing that ever came from his undying pen) upon the death in battle, at the ensanguined field of Waterloo, of "the young, the gallant Howard :"— "But when I stood beneath the fresh green tree, That living waved where thou didst cease to live, I turned from all she brought to those she could not bring." This is the perfection of pathos; and how many a bereaved parent-how many, who only a short year ago, saw around them father, mother, sister, brother, child-will call these lines to mind as records of their own thoughts, when they remember those who saw the last year's foliage in its tender green, and the expanding, perfect bud! Verily, "We all do fade as a leaf." Say not that these reflections are untimely; that they are morbid-a "death's head at a wedding feast." There is many a sad heart, that the spells of the spring-time can arouse no more: "As many a bosom knows and feels, On the cold monumental stone." COR. "Was any attempt made to resuscitate him ?" WIT. "Yes." COR. "How ?" WIT. "We sarched his pockets!" COR. "I mean, did you try to bring him to ?" COR. "Did you ever suspect the deceased of mental alienation?" WIT. "Yes, the whole village suspected him." COR. "Why?" WIT. "'Cause he ailinated one of the Squire's pigs." COR. "You misunderstand me. I allude to mental aberration." WIT. WIT. "I believe they belonged to Squire Waters!" COR. "P'shaw! I mean, was he mad?" COR. "What! devoid of reason?" Oh, he had no reason to drown hisself, as I knows of." COR. "That will do, sir. (To the Jury): Gentlemen, you have heard the evidence, and will consider your verdict." FOREMAN. "Your worship, we are all of one mind." COR. "Well, what is it?" 44 We don't mind what; we're agreeable to any thing your worship pleases." COR. "No, gentlemen: I have no right to dictate: you had better consult together." FOREMAN. "We have, your worship, afore we came, and we are all unanimous." COR. "I am happy to hear it, gentlemen. (To the clerk) Mr. Clerk, take down the verdict. Now then, gentlemen." FOREMAN." Why then, your worship, it's 'Justifiable Suicide;' but begs to recommend to mercy, and hopes we shall be allowed our expenses !" Lest this scene should be thought to be exaggerated, the journalist affirms its truth to the letter, in every particular, THE ensuing anecdote of Charles Lamb has never appeared in any English sketches or aneodotes of his life, but it is pronounced to be entirely COR. "How often have you been in company authentic: with him?" WIT. "Only once." Сов. 64 Do you call that intimately?" WIT. "Yes; for he were drunk, and I were werry drunk, and that made us like two brothers." COR. "Who recognized the body?" WIT. "Jack Adams." COR. " How did he recognize him?" "At a dinner-table one evening, a sea-faring guest was describing a terrific naval engagement, of which he was spectator, on board a British manof-war. 'While I was watching the effects of the galling fire upon the masts and rigging,' said he, there came a cannon ball, which took off both legs from a poor sailor who was in the shrouds. He fell toward the deck, but at that moment another WIT. "By standing on his body, to let the water cannon ball whizzed over us, which, strange to say, run out!" COR. "I mean how did he know him?" WIT. "By his plush jacket." COR. "Any thing else?" WIT. "No; his face was so swelled his mother him!' wouldn't ha' know'd him." COR. "Then how did you know him?" WIT. "'Cause I warn't his mother!" (Applause in the Court.) COR. "What do you consider the cause of his death?" WIT. "Drownding, in course." 666 'No,' replied the naval Munchausen; 'he couldn't swim, of course, and he sank before assistance could be rendered him.' "It was a sad, sad loss!' said Lamb, musingly if he could have been picked up, what an ornament to society he might have become !'" "NEVER say dye !" would seem to be the maxim of the fond wife who writes the ensuing lines. But, punning apart, there are touches of pathos in them which dispel the thought of humorous fancy : A WIFE'S PETITION TO HER HUSBAND NOT TO DYE HIS HAIR. OH! touch not with cosmetic art One of those silver hairs! Thy cherished image in my heart No other plumage wears. Thy dark-gray locks are dear, my love, As part of that sweet time, When my fingers fondly through them wove, They were not all of sable hue With honey'd word and look; Her childhood's home forsook. They mind me of those by-gone days, To charm the evening hour; I've seen my children's rosy hands Play in their wavy mass, | slides, preferring the banisters for a mode of conveyance, and disdaining danger and the stair; down which the Mother is fondly carried smiling in her strong husband's arms, as he steps steadily step by step, and followed by the monthly nurse, on the day when the medical man has pronounced that the charming patient may go down stairs; up which John lurks to bed, yawning, with a sputtering tallow candle, and to gather up before sunrise the boots which are awaiting him in the passages; that stair, up or down which babies are carried, old people are helped, guests are marshaled to the ball, the parson walks to the christening, the doctor to the sick-room, and the undertaker's men to the upper floor; what a memento of Life, Death, and Vanity it is, that arch and stair, if you choose to consider it, and sit on the landing, looking up and down! The doctor will come up to us, too, for the last time there, my friend in motley. The nurse will look in at the curtains, and you take no notice; and then she will fling open the window for a little, and let in the air. Your comedy and mine will have been played then, and we shall be removed, O how far, from the trumpets, and the shouting, and the posture making!". "However much you may be mourned, your widow will like to have her weeds neatly made; the cook will send or come up to ask about dinner: the survivors will soon bear to look at your picture over the mantle-piece, which will presently be deposed from the place of honor, to make way for the portrait of the son who reigns. "Which of the dead are most tenderly and passionately deplored? The death of a child occasions a passion of grief and frantic tears, such as your end, brother reader, will never inspire. The death of an infant which scarce knew you, which a week's absence from you would have caused to forget you, will strike you down more than the loss of your closest friend or your first-born son; a man grown like yourself, with children of his own. We may be harsh and stern with Judah and Simeon; our love and pity gush out for Benjamin, the little one. And if you are old, as some reader of this may be, or shall be-old and rich, or old and poor-you may one day be thinking for yourself: These people are very good round about me; but they won't grieve too much when I am gone. I am very rich, and they want my inheritance; or very poor, and Which, I they are tired of supporting me.' wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, To-morrow, success or failure won't "WHEN found, make a note of," was the advice matter much: and the sun will rise, and all the of that "dear good man," Captain Cuttle. We myriads of mankind go to their work or their followed it instinctively, in depositing in our reser-pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turvoir the following thoughts, suggested by a second-moil."" floor hall and stair-case of a London dwelling, where a coffin, containing the deceased occupant of the house has been placed by the undertaker. If the scene should be remembered by the reader, he will not be the less gratified that it is again newly called to his recollection; and it may induce some who have not yet done so to peruse Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," from which it is taken : Ten thousand mem'ries to them cling- No locks, though black as raven's wing, When DEATH shall take our souls, my love, Where kindred spirits blissful rove, I fear I should not know thee, love, If, in that radiant sphere, MARY. A WELL-KNOWN penurious character invited a friend to dinner, and had provided only two small mutton chops. Upon removing the cover, he said: "My friend, we have a Lenten entertainment; you see your dinner before you!" Taking the two chops upon his own plate, his friend replied: "Yes, I do-but where is your dinner?" SOME years ago the following conversation actually took place between a lawyer and his client in a certain city of "Down-East:" LAWYER. "What's the name of the other party, sir?" CLIENT. "Name? let me see; I declare, it has escaped my mind.” LAWYER. "What does it sound like?" "That staircase, by which young master stealthily ascends, having left his boots in the hall and let himself in after dawn from a jolly night at the club; down which Miss comes rustling in fresh ribbons and spreading muslins, brilliant and beautiful, and prepared for conquest and ball; or master Tommy | then?" LAWYER. "Like something to take? Like what, |