the galleries, also, by a confusion of terms, called "tribunes," opened to the public. These are vast enough, and are divided and subdivided into various compartments. There are the reserved tribunes, generally filled with gaily-dressed ladies; and the tribunes for the national guards on duty; and the tribune for the numerous reporters of the thousand and one journals of Republican Paris; and the tribune reserved for the delegates of the clubs, that are thus quasi recognised as authorized component parts of the state, and as acknowledged controllers of the doings of the Assembly,-it has been set apart for them by the authority of the autocratic ex-minister of the interior and his acolytes; and the clubs of moderate opinions have in vain protested that it is filled, by the preference of privilege, by those of ultra and anarchist tendencies; and the diplomatic tribune, which is as scantily incommodious as possible; and the tribunes, which occupy nearly one whole story, for the public at large, and for the delectation of those zealous idle patriots, who will spend hours at the door in order to enter in time, and give their sanction to the proceedings of their delegates and servants, the representatives of the people. Tricolor banners and flags, and pikes, and other republican emblems, are grouped, as ornaments, in every interval where they can be stuck up. There is no mistaking the place in which we find ourselves.

The benches are filled with the representatives. Almost all the famous nine hundred are assembled. The tribunes are crowded. The president is in his fauteuil, and already ringing his bell for order. He has scarcely any other task to perform; he ought to be elected for the untiring strength of his arm, and the no less untiring strength of his lungs. The representatives not seated are rushing hither and thither, and talking in groups, and collecting on either side of the bureau below, or forming noisy knots in passages behind the benches; it is more difficult to get them into their places, and, when at last the work is effected, to keep them there, than to drive a herd of wild colts. There are many who seem to possess a flea-like nature; they are eternally hopping about, and fix only to bite with animosity. The National Assembly seems to have adopted the old political divisions of the quondam Chamber of Deputies. The conservatives of a republican regime, the moderates, as they are called, the suspected and denounced of the out-and-out Republicans, have chiefly taken their seats on the benches of the right wing of the amphitheatre; these are the men of the opinions of the droite, as the vague French parliamentary designation has it. The opinions then go shading off through all the nuances of the droite, to the more neutral tints of centre droite, centre and centre gauche, and thus to the blacker colours of gauche and extreme gauche, and all the ultra-radical tendencies thereto belonging.

This shading process is not followed up with the same accurate nicety of gradually dissolving colours in the National Assembly as in the old Chamber of Deputies; some of the colours have not yet declared themselves, they will only come out in the heat of the fire; others, from want of experience, have not found their proper places in the gradations of tint; others seem to refuse to amalgamate, and remain blotches upon the canvas; but, generally speaking, the tinting process is more or less observed as of old. No colours, however, more decidedly take their proper place than the dark ones-the

deep black-or, in other words, the extreme gauche. There, upon the uttermost top benches to the left, sit the representatives of the violent, ultra-republican, and extreme communist principles. From taste and purpose they have no faith but in the old traditions, the old forms, and the old manners of the first republic; they are never content but when they can return to thein in dress, tone, gesture, and word. They are the admiring imitators of that burlesque tyranny and bloody buffoonery, called the Revolution of '93. They dream but of the return of the days of the Convention; and they, too, must have their montagne; they sit, consequently, upon the "mountain" benches of the extreme left. It is from the mountain that come thundering down the chief roars of interruption which Jupiter President is in vain able to control with his own little thunder, and the lightning of his bell: from thence come the denunciations of the rest of the assembly as reactionaire, as contre-revolutionaire, as "dishonouring the Republic one and indivisible." Thence come the parbleus and other gentle oaths, for which it was at first supposed that citoyen Caussidière had alone the privilege: thence come the violent attack and coarse abuse, after the old Republican fashion: thence comes the allons donc, and other such apostrophes, that figure in the journals. There it is that, upon delicate questions, the running about commences for the collection of a sufficient number of names demanding the vote by division: it is the tactics of the party to fix upon those they call "reactionary" as marked men ; they demand that their names should be printed in the " Moniteur," that the true Republic may know its enemies. This policy is based upon a system of intimidation which, already, more than once, has attained its ends. There it was that, upon that topmost bench, throned, not long ago, like a demon upon a mountain height, that spirit of evil, that never rose but in the midst of the tumult and storm, to fly to the tribune, and increase the tempest by every word that could be found to envenom, to aggravate, and to exasperate; that dark man, with the discontented air and the lowering eyes, who conspired to overthrow the Assembly, and seize upon the reins of power to institute his new government of terror-the only means of government that his party can acknowledge. But he is no longer there: the place of Barbès is empty: he sits within the prison walls of the fortress of Vincennes. His acolytes are still there, however, and still dream that they may one day play the part of the new Marats, Robespierres, and St. Justs, of a new republic of their choice. The ministers and the members of the Executive Government have, either designedly or without malice prepense as it may be, chosen their seats upon the lowest benches of the extreme left. The latter, however, seldom honour the Assembly with their presence; they are too busy upon affairs of state, or, naughty opposition journals say of some, in billiard-playing and smoking.

But see! they are there to-day, and who does not know that sharp but intellectual-looking face, those now pinched and withered but noble features? It is the poet-statesman Lamartine. He has fallen in popular favour since he has identified himself with the cause of the obnoxious ex-minister of the interior; but he will be listened to with respectful attention when he appears in the tribune, and, however weak in moments of passiveness, he will look again the hero when his spirit mounts with the storm, and he becomes the man of

the moment.-Look at that stout man with the full face, the nose raised aloft and the insolent air, sitting by him: his hand is always in his waistcoat, his head is tossed back with an air of indignation. It is this same ex-minister, and now by the grace of his colleague, member of the Executive Government, Ledru-Rollin, the first cause of all the ill-will, the mistrust, the confusion, and the party anger, that, after the first few quieter weeks of its birth, nursed the new Republic into its present crippled form. He is fallen into the disfavour of his old friends the anarchists; he is still obnoxious to the moderate majority; he has been supported alone by his miscalculating colleague. But when, on rare occasions, he mounts the tribune, he will still attempt to overawe the Assembly, and impose his dictatorship by his airs of insolent disdain; but he is not exempt from the attacks of clamour, tumult, and interruption, continually arising from the disorderly representatives.-There is Marie, also, with his mild gentlemanly air, which is not without an undercurrent look mixed of suspicion and inquisitiveness;-and Garnier Pagès with his resolute, but not ill-intentioned air;—and Arago with his fine old intelligent head, and straightforward look, but with a restless and almost reckless manner.-Marrast, also, is there sometimes, with his bold but discontented expression.-That ugly, sharp-faced man yonder, with the frizzled head of air, is Cremieux, who has been lately obliged to retire from the ministry of justice on account of his slight deviations from correctness of memory.-That heavybrowed stolid-looking man, who is often in the tribune, amidst every mark of mistrust and opposition, is Flocon, the minister of commerce; he openly avows his ultra-republican principles, and is no little suspected of complicity in the plot of the 15th of May.— But, see! a servant of the Assembly brings a stool to the tribune! a dwarfish, boyish-looking little man, with a round sensual face, advances, and hoists himself up to a visible height to address the Assembly with violent gesture and fulminating but hesitating declamation. It is Louis Blanc, the désorganisateur de travail. But his day is gone, he is scarcely listened to, and almost hooted by the Assembly; he has escaped, by the fear of an insurrection of the working classes, from the accusation of being the accomplice of his "noble friend" citoyen Albert, in the conspiracy against the sovereign Assembly; and the Assembly cannot yet pardon itself its own weakness and tergiversation. He is succeeded by a fine-looking young man, who contradicts his Utopian doctrines, and is received with applause. This is the type of the intelligent of the working classes: it is Peupin the ouvrier. There, and there again, in the Assembly are other workmen, most of them well chosen for their moderate principles, by the suffrages of their class.-That greasylooking, long-haired man, however, is another of low birth, but of perfectly different opinions; it is the frantic Pierre Leroux, the soidisant philosopher, and maddest of communists, and social anarchists; he has been but just elected in Paris; the distracted-looking, bearded man, with long haggard face, by his side is Lagrange, the assassin of the 23rd of February. That quiet, good-looking man upon that upper bench is Astoin, the portefaix, common porter, and popular poet of Marseilles; he is dressed, however, in ordinary and even gentlemanly attire; he has not yet risen to give evidence of that intelligence he is supposed to possess.

Here and there you see among the representatives the clerical dress: there is the Bishop of Orleans, the supporter of peace and charity, spite of the objurgations of the ultra and anti-Christian party; there, are other clergy of note and talent. The strange white robe of the eloquent Dominican monk, the Père Lacordaire, has disappeared: he has retired in disgust before the tumultuous nature of the National Assembly. Old Beranger, the poet, too, is gone with his long grey hair and fine intelligent head: the disorder was too much for the stout-hearted but aged man. But there are others upon whom our eyes may wander with interest.-The head of that young man who gets into the tribune cannot fail of attracting attention; it is the living repetition of a world-known face; it is Napoleon Bonaparte again in features, if not in genius; it is his nephew, the son of Jerome. Men look to him, they scarce know why themselves, in these times of general confusion and mistrust, when they seek a leading staff in the first phantom they can grasp, be it but a name, the lustre of which shines with only a faint reflected glory. Many of the old liberal opposition there are yonder; they who were once the gauche, have now become the droite of the Republic.-Little bull-headed, versatile, impatient Thiers has just taken his seat. The men of well-known talent do not fail also.There is Tocqueville, the man of the committee-rooms, with his practical experience;-and Leon Faucher, also, the sensible and clever economist, whose words are always words of reason, foresight, and sound practical judgment.-There is Victor Hugo, the poet, too, with his heavy forehead and little eyes, looking as if he thought that his genius must rule the world.-The ancient legitimists are also in tolerable force: among the number are Berryer, with his dominating and convincing talent of oratory; and young de Falloux, with his energy and ready sense.-The comic orators are also not wanting to complete the ensemble of the dramatis persona of a nation's drama: they are in good number.-That burly man with the stentorian voice, who twists, and turns, and jumps with both legs in the air in the tribune, is a M. Freslon; he seems eager to take the part of clown to the circus.

But the Flâneur has not space to sketch the hundredth part of all the portraits that present themselves; he must close his sketchbook, although unwilling to leave untraced all the interesting and exciting varied physiognomies that he sees around him. He closes it with the conviction, with which he took it up, that the amalgamation that forms the composition of the Assembly is collected, in many cases, of the soundest ingredients. Why, then, do they mix so ill, and simmer together so confusedly? Some reason might be found in the desire of each Frenchman to attitudinize even in an exclamation or a cry. A cause might have been alleged, also, in the waspishness of suspicion, left by the betrayal of the 15th May, had not the pli of tumult been taken long before that memorable occasion. But, be it what it may, scarcely any conglomeration of men ever met on popular reunion, in the annals of history, that showed so little of peace, and calm, and dignity, so much of coarse confusion and insensate riot. With such elements, with such a commencement, what may be the future destinies of the French National Assembly?

Paris, June, 1848.

THE WIDOW OUT-MANŒUVRED.

BY MRS. FRANK ELLIOTT.

WITH AN ILLUSTRATION BY LEECH.

"THIS is comfort! how I do enjoy this!" said Mrs. Sparrow with enthusiasm to her dear friend, Mrs. Tufton.

"So do I," that lady replied, as she slowly sipped her Madeira.

It was her second glass, the hour was two o'clock, P.M., the scene the dining-room in Tufton Lodge; the fat butler had retired, the Misses and the Masters Tufton had strolled away, the half-demolished luncheon lay upon the table, and the friends lingered over it, reluctant to depart.

Mrs. Tufton (a woman of a stately presence and majestic port) was apt to be a little frosty in the morning, and not unfrequently appeared at the breakfast-table with something like a wintry cloud upon ber brow. As the day advanced she thawed; two was with her a genial hour, her mutton-chop and her Madeira operated like sunshine. Mrs. Sparrow perceived, and gladly recognised their vivifying influence; her own breast glowed with the most ardent friendship; she listened to Mrs. Tufton's copious family details with lively sympathy, with breathless interest, rarely interrupting them except to exclaim with emotion, "Go on, go on, my dear love; to be sure, how it does put me in mind of old times."

Of these "old times," to which Mrs. Sparrow so feelingly alluded, we profess entire ignorance. We deal but with the present; and present times, with Mrs. Tufton, meant an easy fortune, an easy carriage, an easy husband, well disciplined children and domestics. With Mrs. Sparrow they signified ninety pounds a year, a small ill-furnished bedroom in a cheap boarding-house in Queen Square, Bath, some few tender memories of the late Lieutenant Sparrow, his miniature set in pinchbeck and worn upon her bosom, a fertile brain to devise, a ready wit to execute such stratagems as are legitimate in love, or war, or widowhood.

"Go on, go on; tell me more about Soph.'s engagement. I do so love to listen to you," resumed little Mrs. Sparrow. She was, it must be confessed, small of stature; her great soul was locked up in a very little casket.

Without any great stretch of charity (by the way, the least elastic substance upon record), we may infer that Mrs. Sparrow spoke with tolerable sincerity. For two mortal hours she had listened to the history of Soph.'s engagement, unvaried by the slightest admixture of any relieving topic, and to her immortal credit be it spoken, had not throughout that period uttered one single yawn.

"Really," said Mrs. Tufton, "it's refreshing," (and she did n't mean the Madeira, though she paused to sip,) "it's positively quite refreshing to see the interest you take in our dear Soph.; and certainly," she resumed, after another gentle pause and another gentle sip, "it will be pleasant to have Soph. settled."

"So nice!" exclaimed the widow. "So early!" responded the mother.

"Only seventeen-'sweet seventeen !'" observed Mrs. Sparrow. "And a half," rejoined Mrs. Tufton, who, in virtue of her daughter's