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ments which the stoicism of the Republicans of Paraguay was not born to resist. At this yielding moment a partisan of the Doctor stood up. "Gentlemen," he exclaimed, "why should we waste our time here? The Carai (Lord) Francia wishes to be absolute; he ought to be absolute, and I say" (and here he struck the table with his whole force) "he shall be absolute." The feelings of a patriot orator have seldom been expressed with so much candour; but the meaning has been implied in every speech of partisanship and place-hunting within the memory of man.

The Colonel. Napoleon might have envied the Paraguayan the ease with which the transaction was completed. The troops, the debate, the partisan, and the decision, were exactly the counterparts of his own memorable scene with the chamber of "Five Hundred." The conclusion was the same; Napoleon was appointed first consul for ten years; Francia, dictator for three. Of course no man supposes that either first consuls or dictators intend to abdicate, whether at the end of three years or ten. Napoleon continued to chain his riotous republicans, until the chain was riveted on himself along with them. Francia held his dictatorship until he was released from the pains of supremacy by the great release which settles all questions of human power. He was a daring, stern, and vigorous being; fortunately for Paraguay, placed in a position which, suffering no absolutism but his own, saved it from the turbulence of democracy. For two-and-twenty years neither war nor massacre disturbed the provinces under his rule; while Buenos Ayres, within its sight, has been the seat of perpetual revolution; and while the vast and noble provinces to the north, abounding with all the advantages of a luxuriant soil, and in the very position for secure empire, have been torn by perpetual civil or foreign war; have been depopulated by massacre, tortured with faction, and broken down by the miseries of popular power, until they look back with gratitude even to the sullen, selfish, and dreary despotism of Spain. Spain, if she gave them nothing else, had given them peace, and sheltered them from that greatest calamity of nations, power in the hands of irresponsible chiefs, of a bigoted priesthood, and an insubordinate, rash, and ignorant people.

The Rector. "Memoirs of a Prisoner of State."-Since the close of the French war in 1815, Italy has been tormented by a succession of conspiracies. The principle of those has been Jacobinism, but the pretext freedom. The licentious, the idle, and the ambitious, have been severally appealed to, by a promise of pleasure without purchase, wealth without toil, and power without limit. The higher orders have been appealed to by the temptation of office in a general union of all the States, under one national Government; the populace have been stimulated by the national dislike to Austria; and the pride of every rank has been excited by the prospect of restoring Italy to the rank which it once held as the mistress of the world.

The Colonel. This memoir of Alexander Andryane gives the detail of some of the proceedings of the leading conspirators, as connected with the subject of the volume. Alexander Andryane, a young Frenchman, had but just commenced his career in Napoleon's army, when Waterloo put an end to the French army, and to his hope of being a Field Marshal.

A young Frenchman at that period must either be a soldier or a conspirator. Regular industry was out of the question. France, for a quarter of a century, had lived by disturbing mankind. The spirit. survived when the flesh was powerless; and every man who felt that he had faculties above the rank of a perruquier decided that his destiny was to overturn kingdoms.

The Doctor. Andryane, on his arrival at Geneva, found himself surrounded by fugitives from Italy. It is equally melancholy and amusing at this distance of time to see the pretext which those men regarded as sufficient for authorizing a general war throughout Europe. One of their bugbears was the Holy Alliance, which they asserted to be formed for the express purpose of destroying all the liberties of Europe. Another of their terrors was for the French charter. We have long since seen how harmlessly the Holy Alliance has fallen into dust; and, on the other hand, how quietly the success of the Revolution made to preserve the charter has given over France to the monarchy of the bayonet. The grand objection to all this termagant love of liberty amongst foreigners is, that, while it was furious under Francis of Austria and Louis of France, it was perfectly tame under Napoleon; that, while it loftily talked treason under mild sovereigns, it either held its tongue, or sank into the grossest adulation under the most undisguised and lawless tyranny of the modern world. At Geneva, the young Frenchman unluckily became acquainted with an Italian fugitive, who, under the high-sounding name of Michael Angelo Buonarotti, taught Italian and music. The teacher taught conspiracy also, and to his lessons the Frenchman finally owed his incarceration.

The Barrister. Foreigners have a native passion for conspiracy, which would keep the world in perpetual disturbance, except for another native passion, which happily operates as its antidote. This passion is a love of being talked of. Conspiracies were the hourly work of Paris during Napoleon's reign; but no conspirator could keep his own secret, while there was an ear on earth to listen to him, or a tongue to acknowledge that he was made for a second Brutus. The police, of course, exercised their ears and tongues too, and the result was that the self-applauding men of change were seized in the height of determinations to be renowned, and sent to mature them in some of the eight crowded bastiles which Napoleon had established in place of the empty one which the Revolution had pulled down. Old Michael Angelo would do nothing without an apparatus of conspiracy, letters, seals, signets, and ciphers, sufficient to have supplied the bureau of a Secretary of State, and more than sufficient to make his unlucky emissary an object of punishment in the most unsuspicious period of Europe.

The Rector. The volume is instructive, if it were only for its moral, to all amateur dabblers in revolutions. Andryane wildly embarked in the system; and began by making secret journeys to France, for the purpose of administering to the activity of change in his own country. But there he found that nothing could be done. In fact, the French were sick of having their blood shed and their property plundered. The recollections of Jacobinism were too fresh in their abhorrence to be obliterated by the young eloquence of M. Andryane, and he returned with

out bringing back either a new constitution of robbery or the head of a king. His next experiment was on the Italian side of the Alps. For Milan he accordingly set out, in December, 1822. The weather was dreadful:-the Alps, in winter, are a kingdom of snow, swept by perpetual storms. In the passage of the St. Gothard his life was in serious hazard, but he had nearly lost the packet containing all his credentials to the Italian revolutionists. Yet he was to be disastrous in everything. The packet was fished up for him, from the spot where it had fallen, halfway down a precipice. It was palpably his fate to live a dozen years in an Austrian gaol-and fate is irresistible. He put the packet into his bosom, and from that hour was marked for the dungeon.

The Colonel. But why did the Frenchman remain in Milan, the very focus of Austrian police, where he had nothing to do but to be arrested? The hare might as well have gone to feed among the hounds.

The Doctor. The reason was a characteristic one. He wished to amuse himself with the Milanese gaiety, and La Scala was the largest opera-house in Europe; what more unauswerable reason could be given? Accordingly he went to La Scala, and the next day his bell rang, and a gentleman in a brown coat, of a sinister and cadaverous visage, followed by several gendarmes, walked into his chamber. "I am come," said this personage, "sent by the customs, to search whether you have not contraband goods in your possession.' "I am not a merchant," was the helpless reply. But Signor Bolza, the police functionary, was not made to hear replies; he proceeded to search, and at his first step discovered the whole packet of letters, seals, and ciphers, under the seat of the sofa where this foolish maker of revolutions had just thrown it. Of course he was carried off to the bureau of the police, identified, and sent to a dungeon.

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The Colonel. In the detail of this simple transmission of himself into the hands of law, nothing could be less circumspect or more childish than his conduct. But his adventure has the value of supplying a few touches of life inside prison-walls. To reach his allotted cell his way led through the kitchen, where he saw three cooks in white jackets preparing dinner for the numerous prisoners. "You see," said Bolza, "his Majesty takes care that you should live well here," pointing to the shelves furnished with pans; and, moreover, you have here the first cook of Milan, the famous Cisalpino; you will find yourself very well off." The Frenchman, probably in no very high appetite at the moment, merely replied, "That he did not know that the Emperor treated his prisoners so well." This was answered by the rough, but rational apophthegm, "When a man has on a stone jacket, what has he better to amuse himself with than eating?" The remark came from a burly man with a horse-laugh, whom the policeman introduced next moment as the head gaoler. They passed on; a low corridor led them to a small court surrounded with a high wall. In the court the gaoler opened a small door studded with iron. "May I trouble you to enter ?" said Bolza. He entered: the door closed behind him with a fearful sound. His next reflection, at least, is natural :-" May Heaven recompense me one day for the intense anguish which fell upon my heart at that moment!"

The Barrister. Such moments are doubtless miserable. But what have men to expect who deal in revolutions? They must be prepared to value their own lives at least as little they do those of others. The manufacturer of gunpowder must lay his account with being now and then scorched-lucky if he is not blown up. The man who distils poison for public use must expect now and then to inhale the fumes of his own furnace. If M. Andryane and his tribe of giddy regenerators of countries which had no want of them, and of rights which the people were unfit to use, had been at the head of the multitude instead of being enclosed in a Milanese dungeon; the lives, not of a few enthusiasts, but of thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands, of honest men, would have been bleeding away in the shock of pike and bayonet, the dagger of the Italian peasant and the grapeshot of the Austrian cannoneer.

The Doctor. But a moment, if possible, more anxious was at hand. The prisoners had been declared guilty of high treason, and the order for their execution was hourly expected from Vienna. At length it was known that despatches from the imperial court had arrived. At midnight the state prisoners were summoned from their cells, put into carriages, and conveyed under an escort of cavalry to the Palace of Justice. The suspense now became bitter. Andryane's expressions are perhaps the same which would pass from the lips of many a bolder spirit-" In a few minutes I shall know how many hours of life are allotted to me. I shall meet death face to face. All uncertainty will cease: the agony of suspense will be over. Before this day's sun shall have shone through these windows my sentence will have been pronounced. Yet what terrible moments still remain for me! My poor brother! my poor sister! but no, I will see them no more; I will spare them that agony." This language is frightful, but it is natural. And I should not think it an injudicious study for any of those aspiring geniuses who disdain honest bread and profess the trade of revolution.

The Colonel. The scene of terror came to its height when the secretary to the commission began to read the sentences. Count Confalioneri's name was first; he was "condemned to death;" the secretary paused, as with an intention to overwhelm the unfortunate man; but then added-"The capital punishment, by the inexhaustible clemency of his majesty, has been commuted to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Spielberg." Andryane received a similar sentence; the others were condemned to imprisonment for terms of years.

The Barrister. The rigour of the Austrian government in its conduct to the Italian insurgents would be unworthy of civilized society, if those men had merely deluded themselves with dreams of political perfection, or national restoration. It is not in England that the generous enthusiasm for public freedom should be arraigned. But the Italian passion was for furious and desperate subversion; their model was France in her days of republicanism. A Jacobin revolution would have been the inevitable fruit of their triumph; plunder and bloodshed in Italy, and conspiracy and convulsion in every other region of Europe, would have been the purchase of a popular despotism, more sullen and sweeping than the sternest excesses of monarchy. Europe may well rejoice that the flame was extinguished even in the dungeon, which would have

lighted her funeral pyre. But at the late coronation of the Emperor at Milan an amnesty has been published which has thrown open all the state prisons of Austrian Italy. This is now merciful, and therefore wise.

The Doctor. "Counter Irritation."-This is a volume from the pen of Dr. Granville, known as a physician in distinguished London practice, and as the author of the ablest and most interesting work on the "Spas of Germany." Its purpose is, to establish by evident facts the use of strong counter-irritants in all that large and torturing class of disease which arises from morbid affections of the nervous and muscular system, and of the circulation.

The Rector. The growing advance in simplifying medical applications constitutes one of the happiest signs of improvement in public knowledge. Year by year, the dreadful operations of surgery are diminishing in number; and with equal science and success those hazardous medicines which must have always enfeebled the interior structure of the human frame, and probably often destroyed life, are superseded by external and simple remedies. The diseases of the nerves and muscles are proverbially so agonizing, that any sure and successful treatment of them would be among the most invaluable services to thousands.

The Doctor. The case given as occurring in the author's own instance is one of the most remarkable in the volume. He had attended the King's levee in July, 1837, and, from being forced by the crowd close to an open window, while the heat of the apartment was excessive, contracted almost instantly what is termed a violent cold. He spent a restless and painful night, and on rising in the morning, suffered severe pain in the region of the heart. This was followed by such hazardous symptoms, that he directed a quantity of blood to be taken from him. This relieved the breathing, but the pain of the heart continued intense. Conceiving that inflammation was in dangerous progress, he at length applied a strong ammoniated embrocation to his back and breast. This he kept on till he felt them glow ;-as they burned, the internal torture died away. In an hour after, the pain had totally gone, and never returned. The Doctor was enabled to go out within an hour after and follow his usual avocations. The Bishop of Chichester, who had been standing near him at the levee, had returned home, "ill of an inflammatory cold," as was said, and expired on the Sunday after. "I have no hesitation,' says Dr. Granville, "in stating that I attribute my safety not so much to the bleeding as to the counter-irritant I employed on the occasion, endowed with such instantaneous and energetic power." Delicacy alone has evidently prevented him from saying that, if the Bishop had adopted the same course, the life of that valuable individual might have been preserved to the world.

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The Barrister. So large a share of human suffering is unquestionably connected with the nervous system, and so narrow a knowledge of that system has been hitherto attainable, that any hope of discovery ought to excite the strongest interest of the philosopher and the philanthropist. The dispiriting pains of the head-ache, the stings of the tooth-ache, the gaspings of the asthma, the tortures of the ticdoloureux, and a hundred

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