room, a smaller reception-room, and a very small, but very exquisite, boudoir-yet to tell you who were there would read like Colburn's list of authors, added to a paragraph of noble diners-out from the Morning Post.

The largest lion of the evening certainly was the new Persian Ambassador, a man six feet in his slippers; a height which, with his peaked calpack, of a foot and a half, superadded, keeps him very much among the chandeliers. The principal article of his dress does not diminish the effect of his eminence-a long white shawl worn like a cloak, and completely enveloping him from beard to toe. From the twisted shawl around his waist glitters a dagger's hilt, lump'd with diamonds, and diamonds, in most dazzling profusion, almost cover his breast. I never saw so many together except in a cabinet of regalia. Close behind this steeple of shawl and gem, keeps like a short shadow when the sun is high, his Excellency's secretary, a dwarfishly small man, dressed also in cashmere and calpack, and of a most ill-favoured and bow-stringish countenance and mien. The master and man seem chosen for contrast, the countenance of the ambassador expressing nothing but serene good nature. The ambassador talks too, and the secretary is dumb.

Theodore Hook stood bolt upright against a mirror door, looking like two Theodore Hooks trying to see which was taller. The one with his face to me looked like the incarnation of the John Bull newspaper, (of which he is editor,) for which expression, he was indebted to a very red face, and a very round subject for a buttoned-up coat; while the Hook with his back to me looked like an author, for which he was indebted to an exclusive view of his cranium. I dare say Mr. Hook would agree with me that he was seen, on the whole, at a most enviable advantage. It is so seldom we look beyond the man, at the author.

I have rarely seen a greater contrast in person and expression than between Hook and Bulwer, who stood near him.

Both

were talking to ladies-one bald, burly, upright, and with a face of immoveable gravity, the other slight, with a profusion of curling hair, restless in his movements, and of a countenance which lights up with a sudden inward illumination. Hook's partner in the conversation looked into his face with a ready prepared smile for what he was going to say -Bulwer's listened with an interest complete, but without effort. Hook was suffering from what I think is the common curse of a reputation for wit-the expectation of the listener had out-run the performance.

Henry Bulwer, whose diplomatic promotion goes on much faster than can be pleasing to Lady Chevely," has just received his appointment to Paris-the object of his first

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wishes. He stood near his brother, talking to a very beautiful and celebrated woman, and I thought, spite of her Ladyship's description, I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a more gentlemanly and elegant exterior.

Hayward, the translator, sat talking to a Dowager Duchess; Fonblanque stood with his sombre visage against the wall, while his beautiful wife sang to the tall Persian; Morier, author of Hajji Baba, glided about with his fine, shining head, and mirth loving countenance, and diplomatists and authors, dandies, dames, and demoiselles, all people "of mark," circulated to and fro, listened to the music a little, and looked up at the Ambassador a great deal.

Late in the evening came in his Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, and I wondered, as I had done many times before, when in company with one of these royal brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously observed towards them. Whereever he moved in the crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and by giving way much more than for any one else, left a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to a listening audience. A more embarrassed manner and a more hesitating mode of speech than the Duke's I cannot conceive. He is evidently gêné to the last degree with this burdensome deference, and one would think that in the society of highly cultivated and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket when the footmen leaves him at the door, and hear no more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There was great curiosity to know whether the Duke would think it etiquettical to speak to the Persian, as in consequence of the difference between the Shah and the British envoy the tall minister is not received at the court of St. James. Lady Stepney introduced them, however, and then the Duke again must have felt his rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward enough, at any time, to converse with a foreigner who has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but what with the Duke's hesitating and difficult utterance, the silence and attention of the listening guests, and the Persian's deference and complete inability to comprehend a syllable, the scene was quite painful.

There was some of the most exquisite amateur singing I ever heard after the company had thinned off a little, and the fashionable song of the day was sung, by a most beautiful woman, in a way to move half the company to tears. It is called "Ruth," and is a kind of recitative of the passage in Scripture "Where thou goest I will go," &c. You will probably find it in the last importation of music.

Lover sang some of his delicious songs in his own delightful manner, and, by the way, he is talking of going to the United States to try there his profession of miniature painter. He is clever at everything, and will be no small acquisition both to the arts in that diffi cult line, and to society.

I have driven in the Park several days, admiring the Queen on horseback, and observing the changes in the fashions of driving, equipages, &c., &c. Her Majesty seems to me to ride very securely and fearlessly, though it is no wonder that in a country where every body rides, there should be bolder and better horsewomen. Miss Quen

tin, one of the maids of honour, said to be the best female equestrian in England, "takes the courage out" of the Queen's horse every morning before the ride-so she is secured against one class of accidents. I met the royal party yesterday in full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row, and the two grooms who ride ahead, had brief time to do their

work of making the crowd of carriages give way. On came the Queen upon a dun coloured, highly groomed horse, with her Prime Minister on one side of her and Lord Byron upon the other, her cortege of maids of honour, and ladies and lords in waiting, checking their more spirited horses, and preserving always a slight distance between themselves and her Majesty. Victoria's round plump figure, looks extremely well in her dark green riding-dress, but I thought the man's hat unbecoming. Her profile is not sufficiently good for that trying style, and the cloth riding-cap is so much prettier, that I wonder she does not remember that "nice customs curtsy to great Queens," and wear what suits her. She rode with her mouth open, and looked exhilarated with the exerLord Melbourne, it struck me, was the only person in her party whose face had not the constrained look of consciousness of observation.

cise.

I observe that the "crack men" ride without martin-gals, and that the best turn outs are driven without a check-rein. The outstretched neck, which is the consequence, has a sort of Arab or blood look, probably the object of the change; but the drooping head when the horse is walking or standing seems to me ugly and out of taste. All the new carriages are built near the ground. The low park-phaeton, light as a child's plaything, and drawn by a pair of ponies, is the fashionable equipage. I saw the prettiest thing conceivable of this kind yesterday in the park-a lady driving a pair of small cream-coloured horses of great beauty, with her two children in the phaeton, and two grooms behind, mounted on cream coloured saddle horses, all four of the animals of the finest shape and action. The new street cabs (precisely the old fashioned sedan chair suspended between

Of the above, 116 are published daily, 14 tri-weekly, 39 semi-weekly, and 991 once a

week. The remainder are issued semimonthly, monthly, and quarterly-principally magazines and reviews. Many of the daily papers also issue tri-weeklies, semi-weeklies, and weeklies. Thirty-eight are in the German language, four in the French, and one in the Spanish. Several of the New Orleans papers are printed in French and English.

Why are London females unhappy at three quarters past seven? Because the mails leave at eight.

At a feast of animals, who sits at the head of the table? The cow-because she calves.

THE HUGUENOT DAUGHTER.

BY HANNAH DORSET.

THE Atlantic waves were sparkling under a sun of almost tropical brilliancy, and breaking over the beach of a wild and singularly beautiful island, whose aspect was that of nature, fair and stainless as in the morning of the creation, when, unsullied by traces of man or crime, she seemed good in the eyes of the Creator. Beyond the silvery beach rose an elevated plain, covered with the richest variety of foliage. Vines, in their graceful wanderings, hung their dark tresses, gemmed with clusters of scarlet and purple berries, on the branches of lofty trees, among whose leafy bowers birds of resplendent plumage filled the air with sounds of mirth and liberty. Groves of palmetto, with their column-like stems and arching leaves, formed those natural temples which first gave to man the model of the proudest edifices of art.

Such was the shore which presented itself to the anxious eyes of a group of persons assembled on the deck of a small vessel, which was approaching it without attracting either the gaze of curiosity, or the welcome of expectation. The stately deer, that lifted up its

VOL. I.

head as the bark drew nearer and nearer, turned away with the indifference of animals "unacquainted with man.' No eye beheld that humble vessel, as it floated towards the shore, save His who had watched it on its perilous voyage, and guided it in safety to the hemisphere destined to become, in after ages, the resting place of the weary and heavy laden, and the home of religious liberty. At the helm stood the commander, earnestly gazing on the coast towards which they were rapidly approaching; a man apparently of fifty years, with the countenance of one who had thought and suffered much, and spite of his fixed brow and compressed lip, the varying hues of his cheek betrayed the emotion that agitated his breast. He stood aloof from the group, plunged in deep, but not unpleasing thought, interrupted at last by a gentle touch and a voice of thrilling sweetness, whose first whisper lit up his features with fondness and delight.

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Joy! my daughter; we shall quit this prison in which you have languished for so many tedious weeks; we shall taste again the fresh air of the woods, and look upon the green of the forest shades, and among them we may commune with our God, undisturbed by persecution, unharmed by tyranny. Here man's

D

spirit shall be free as his limbs, and worship the Father even as his own word commands, in spirit and in truth. Oh! my child! the hour is coming when our footsteps shall be traced to this shore, and our wanderings shared by many of our outraged countrymen. How joyfully we shall hail them, with the loud assurance that here is the Spirit of the Lord, and here also is liberty."

He paused, and sought in his daughter's countenance for the signs of the exultation which filled his heart, but his own fell, as he perceived on her lovely face, a far deeper despondency than that which had overshadowed it when the shores of France were fading from her view. "How is this, Eléonor?" asked her disappointed father; "Have you no pleasure in the thought of landing?"

"This ship," murmured Eléonor, half unconscious of the feelings she betrayed, "this ship is part of France; while in it I cannot think myself for ever separated from that land of beauty." A shower of tears fell from her eyes, but dashing them hastily away she exclaimed, "Dearest father! pardon me. Thy country shall be my country, for thy God is my God.

Thou art all that can endear my lot, and if it be cast on these shores, it is well, since such must be the will of Him who ordereth all things aright."

The vessel had now come as near to the beach as it could without danger, and its crew landed by means of the small boat which carried them successively over the surf. Laudonniere, the commander, came last, and, as his foot touched the beach, the "Gloria in excelsis" burst from his lips, and every voice joined in that sublime anthem, which proclaims the very spirit of Christianity in those beautiful words, "On earth peace, good will towards

men."

But mingled with deep thankfulness for dangers escaped, was a deep anxiety about those that probably awaited them on this unknown coast, which cast a shade over every face; but the high trust in Heaven that had led them from the sunny plains of vine-clad France, from the hearths of their fathers and the graves of their kindred, to the depths of an American forest, still supported them, and stilled the beatings of their hearts, as many an undefined shape of danger floated before their imaginations. The trembling mothers, who, on touching the shore which told how far they were from their homes, had shed irrepressible tears as they clasped their infants to their bosoms, dried them after the first gush of feeling, and gathered round Laudonniere, who, kneeling in the midst of them, offered up the prayer of one whose thankfulness of heart rises in eloquent words to Heaven.

It was indeed a sight for angels to look down on. Those hoary headed men, leaning on the sons they had followed to a new world; those shrinking forms, their bright eyes dimmed by tears as thoughts of home rush upon their

hearts, each mother unconsciously pressing close to her the infant group, whose wondering faces seem to ask an explanation of the emotion they did not share what did they all on that uninhabited island, where the exile might have expiated his crimes to his country by loneliness and fear? But they, the guiltless, what did they there? It is their chosen dwelling-place; for in its primeval forests, its untrodden solitudes, they may offer the pure and free worship of their souls to God.

With that presentiment of evil, which in sagacious minds amounts to prescience, Admiral De Coligny discerned, as early as the year 1562, that France would soon cease to be a safe home for the followers of the reformed religion. Neither Catherine de Medicis nor her weak and treacherous son had dissembled so well as to elude his penetration. In the dark hatred of the house of Guise, and the superstitious faith of Catherine in the predictions of an obscure professor of a science, which at that day exercised a far greater ascendancy over the minds of the great than the oracles of holy writ, he foresaw the horror and confusion that would inevitably fill the kingdom; and the political reasons for the enmity of the crown towards the Huguenots, gave a colouring to his fears, which urged him to seek an asylum for his ill fated brethren, ere the cloud that was then lowering should burst over their heads. It was with hope and confidence that he turned his eyes towards the world which the daring Genoese had made known to Europe. The splendid description of the coast of that great western continent, the specimens of gold and pearl, of rare and aromatic plants, and of every variety of wealth, which the earlier adventurers had displayed to the court of Spain, had already laid the foundation of colonies from that country, and it was without much difficulty that De Coligny succeeded so far as to effect a French settlement under the direction of Jean Ribault on the island now called St. Helena, on the southern coast of Carolina, a few degrees north of the tropic of Cancer. The golden expectations which led them to an unknown shore, by fancy painted as a paradise, where the means of supporting existence would be spontaneous as delicious, prevented their carrying with them either the instruments of labour or a necessary supply of provisions. After a short time they became discontented. The island afforded neither gold nor silver, and even had it poured forth all these treasures at their feet, they would have availed them nothing, since the soil, though fertile beyond their hopes, required cultivation before it could yield them food; and the miserable settlers, exasperated by disappointment and privation, put to sea in the same vessel in which they had before crossed the ocean. After suffering the most horrible extremities of hunger, they were taken up by an English ship, and returned to France

to report the miserable end of their expedition,

Spite of their disastrous story, others were found daring enough to embark for the same coast; and two years after, René de Laudonniere, whose religious enthusiasm and determined spirit shrunk not from any prospect of danger or difficulty, raised a band of Protestants, who, wearied with the reproach their faith brought on them, and charmed with the idea of religious freedom in a land where they might expect to be lords of the soil, lent a willing ear to Laudonniere. Disgust with his own country gave a brilliant colouring to his description of a clime which had for him and his followers all the magnificence of the unknown. A project so vast as sailing for America, required in those days many months of deliberation and preparation; but the object of René's deepest solicitude was his daughter. To leave her in France where the horizon was daily growing darker and darker, was not to be thought of; but he dreaded the reluctance she would express or feel at quitting the elegant and luxurious home in which fortune had placed her.

He dreaded lest a life of ease and safety should have unfitted her mind for a step so bold and hazardous as the one he was about to propose to her. The wives and daughters of his friends had shared their misfortunes, they had nothing to leave behind, but Eléonor had much to relinquish. She had not felt, as he had, the unkindness and ingratitude of the great, the insolence of rank and power, and all the stings which a lofty mind, born in low estate, must feel in a country where the people were hardly considered by the aristocracy as beings of the same species with themselves.

At her mother's death, Eléonor was adopted by a Protestant lady of distinction, whose life was wholly passed in acts of devotion and charity. Upon the young Eléonor she bestowed more education than usually fell to the lot of women at that time. Indeed every Protestant possessed a wonderful advantage over the children of the Romish Church, whose priesthood keeps locked up from their eyes the book of knowledge.

The Bible tends strongly to enlarge the understanding, refine the taste, and furnish materials for thought. The professors of an unpopular religion are proverbially more attached to it than those whose creed enjoys the broad sunshine of public favour, and Eléonor's mind became early tinctured with its sublimity. Her thoughts were all high and solemn. She walked on earth as though she belonged not to it, and abstracted from its vanities as well as its vices, she seemed the very person to be as happy in the wilds of America, as in the fertile plains of Languedoc. And so she was during the lifetime of her patroness; but at her death her daughter took Eléonor home with her, and there the world burst on the startled vision of the recluse.

The young countess was of a very different disposition from her mother, and, freed from all restraint, she indulged in every dissipation and every folly. What a contrast to the severe simplicity of Eléonor's life! She shrunk in horror from the new sights and sounds that everywhere awaited her, and devoted herself with increasing interest to her religious duties. The gradations of rank, so scrupulously attended to in France, prevented her ever mingling in the brilliant crowds that assembled at the Hotel de C; but in the boudoir of the countess, or small circles of her friends, Eléonor soon caught the spirit of society. She was at first pained, then amused, then, spite of herself, pleased. The grace and ease of the ladies, the chivalric courage of the men, their deferential homage to woman, their bland and gentle courtesy, the splendour of their costume, their graceful games, all possessed charms for the eye of eighteen, and Eléonor soon began to feel that killing apathy, that deadness of the affections and wandering of the thoughts, so fatal to the spiritual minded. Her religious exercises were still faithfully performed, but the unhallowed images that floated before her mind's eye, made them an unaccepted sacrifice. The offering was laid upon the altar, but no fire descended to kindle it into flame. She wept and struggled to bring her heart back to its former pure and sacred joys. She sang the hymns that were wont to lift her above this world; but still the brilliant airs that had lapt her prisoned soul in an unsanctified Elysium, thrilled upon her ear, and when she called upon her memory for holy melodies, they rose to her lips in mockery of the attempt. But by degrees these struggles declined. The song, the dance, the tournament, became a source of delight and expectation, though, true to her early feelings, she sometimes acknowledged, with sighs, that this broad and flowery path possessed not the charms that she had found in the narrow and unornamented one. Her mind was in this state when she received the first intimation of René's design. In the disgust it excited, she perceived the force of the chains that bound her to earth. But her's was no common mind. She did not attempt to persuade herself that it was possible to reconcile the love of the world with that of Heaven; she saw her danger, saw the means of escape, and, trampling upon the temptations which urged her to remain, she set out to join her father at the seaport from which he was to embark, and, with an unvarying cheek and steady voice, declared her willingness to follow him to the deserts of the new world.

Profiting by the sad experience of the former settlers, René and his little band immediately applied themselves to labour. They chose a favourable site for their dwelling, which cost them little trouble to construct. The light palmetto was easily felled, and its fan-like foliage required only ingenuity to be twisted