sailors, and they learned with amazement that four transatlantic expeditions, bearing forty thousand men, had been armed in her ports. The first, composed of sixteen vessels and an army of twenty-two thousand men, was destined to recover St. Domingo. The second was ordered to retake possession of the Isle of France and Reunion, which were in the hands of the British. The third was designed to recapture Guadaloupe from the mulattoes, while the fourth was to occupy Martinique and Santa Lucia, the only two islands in the West Indies which possess vast and commodious harbours, suited for vessels of war. Admiral Villaret confirmed M. de Jonnès in his rank, and so soon as they landed at Martinique he was appointed to the staff of General Devrigny. But he was not, could not, be happy: he felt that he was risking his life for what, after all, was a trifle; and the Damocles's sword he saw perpetually hanging over his careless comrades, rendered him still more melancholy.

The colony having been formally handed over to the French, it was absolutely necessary that the event should be commemorated by a Te Deum in a stifling church. Several soldiers fell down in a state of asphyxia, and had to be carried out, but not a verse or grain of incense was spared in consequence. But the heat was not the only danger: the terrible storms of rain drenched the troops, and laid the foundation of many a fever. Many, too, exposed themselves to the night air, for the town was crowded, and our author, in his search for shelter, met with the following curious adventure:

I was looking about for a roof to shelter me, when, on passing the church of St. Louis, a group of ladies, seated at their door, seemed to me a favourable occasion to ask for a night's lodging. I explained, in a respectful manner, that I should have to remain in the open air, unless some charitable soul came to my relief. I found a great degree of commiseration for my critical situation, but it was very difficult to render me any assistance. Not one of the ladies would venture to introduce me to her husband as a guest she had picked up in the street, while the widows did not dare decide on giving a night's lodging to an officer of the Grenadiers. At length, after a long examination of this grave affair, a lady, guided by a blessed inspiration, fancied she could procure me a bed at her mother's house. A few minutes later, we entered a very large house, whose interior, dimly lighted by hanging lamps, offered me the strangest tableau. On the floor were sleeping some forty girls, of all shades, from jet black to pale white. They had placed their clothes under their heads to serve as pillows: they were sleeping a sleep agitated by the reminiscences of the day, and displayed, as they smiled, two rows of pearly teeth, which were not the least of their perfections. It was difficult to know where to step in this parterre of damsels, and with some difficulty we reached a winding stair, which led us to the first floor, where the jalousies allowed the passage of a delicious breeze. Here twenty fair sleepers were lying two and two on beds, formed of a single cotton mattress laid on the floor. They were the great ladies and charming maidens I had admired in the morning during the Te Deum, but they were a hundredfold more ravishing in the simplicity of their night toilet. I must confess, though, that I saw nothing; in the first place, because I had been advised not to look, and, secondly, because I was quite dazzled. A few steps higher was a closet, in which a pretty little girl of eight or nine was sleeping: her mamma awoke her with a kiss, and sent her off to grandmamma, who would take care of her. The bed was then remade, and my amiable conductress wished me good night, exhorting me not to dream of my neighbours. Conquered by mental and bodily fatigue I slept soundly: still it seemed to me that some one crept into my bed, and even whispered caressing words in my ear: but I had fallen

into a state of lethargy, and nothing restored me to a consciousness of the outer world.

Here we must discreetly pause; those who would know the mot de l'énigme we must refer to the work itself: we may merely add that, changing the sex, there is a very similar scene in the life-history of one Parson Adams. But M. de Jonnès decided on avoiding all such perils, by the advice of the inspector-general of hospitals, Savarési, who told him that the army incurred the same danger here as it did in Egypt, when those who were attacked by the plague were so almost immediately after leaving an orgie or a tender rendez-vous. The yellow fever, according to our author's showing, is even more universal than the plague, and equally contagious. But the French soldiers generally were not so circumspect as our author, and the fever soon began making terrific ravages. One of the most fearful instances was that of a young French actress, who was attacked and died on the stage in presence of the audience. Still this had no effect on the frivolous French, and it was not till the fever sought them in their own homes that they began too late to listen to the warnings of the surgeons. Among the many frightful instances quoted by our author we transfer one to our pages, which is equal in ghastly horror to the revelations in "Defoe's History of the Great Plague:"

An old colonel of Engineers, a man much esteemed as officer and savant, had brought with him to Martinique his wife, who was very young and very pretty. A numerous and gallant court continually surrounded this lady with pressing attentions. I only knew her through my official visits, and from having remarked, like every one else, her white shoulders, her magnificent bust, her laughing mouth, and the brilliancy of her complexion. One evening I was told she had been taken ill, and it was feared she was attacked by yellow fever. Pressing engagements prevented me calling that evening, but the next morning, before dawn, while passing the house, I called in to inquire. The stairs and passages were deserted, and no one replied to my shouts in a house where more than thirty servants were kept. A long suite of apartments, into which I penetrated, was equally desolate; they led me into a distant room, where, on a bed stained with blood, I saw with unexpressible horror a human creature, abandoned like an unclean being, motionless and icy as a corpse, and whose body, half naked, was tinged of that saffron hue which is the livery of death. It was the lady who on the previous evening had been the object of so much admiration, and whom everybody, beginning with the husband, had deserted when contagion began to be apprehended. Surmounting the repugnance which the sight of the bed occasioned, I approached to see whether the life still remained. The pulse no longer beat, not a breath passed the lips, and I was about to retire, when, by a sudden inspiration, I laid my hand on the heart; it seemed to me as if a gentle beating might still be felt. I immediately sent for Savarési, but when his orders were to be carried out we found that all the servants were intoxicated. On the colonel's departure they had broken into the cellar, and shut themselves up to drink there, leaving their unhappy mistress in agony, and ourselves without the necessary assistance to save her from death. There was no time for delay, and in a second we were prepared to begin the most horrible operations imaginable. We carried the body, entirely stripped of clothing, into another room, the bedchamber being so infected as to bring our hearts into our mouths. We plunged it into a bath of boiling water, and while I kept the head up Savarési pumped a strong jet of cold water over it. The spine, the chest, and the region round the heart were taken in turn. I trembled in all my limbs; my legs bent beneath me, and I could scarce stand, when my worthy friend exclaimed: "Courage! the warmth is returning; she is saved!" In fact, by con

tinuing our efforts we put a stop to the coma, the circulation was re-established, slowly and almost imperceptibly at first, until at length a respiration evinced to us the return of life. Mustard foot-baths, burning like fire, reproduced the cerebral action, recognition, and the feeling of pain. was forced to take the most active part in these operations, and turn my hand to everything. I am sure that if I had been made to act as hangman, I should not have suffered more. I wrapped the poor lady in a blanket, as you do with the drowned, and the doctor shouted to me to be rougher still. When I saw her eyes opened, which I had firmly believed closed for ever, I uttered a shout of joy. The same evening she was out of danger; a week later she was cured, and started for France in an American ship. I never heard of her again; she is, probably, still alive, for at the period of that terrible catastrophe she was quite young, and the beauty of her youth shone through the veil of death.

The fearful scourge did not cease till it had carried off three-fourths of the troops at Martinique. When the war with England recommenced, the island was only held by eight hundred men, of whom one-fourth were constantly in hospital, and the only reward our author obtained for his constant exertions was, that he became chief of the staff. This was but a poor return for all the suffering he endured by the death of all he loved best in life. His generous patron, General Devrigny, had died in his arms of yellow fever, while his most intimate friend, Savarési, had been forced into resigning his appointment by the malice of his enemies. And even when he was beginning to grow accustomed to his lot, his resignation was shattered by the terrible news that the young girl he had so fondly loved, and who, although married to another, was still so dear to him in memory, had drowned herself in her despair. It was, perhaps, fortunate then that Admiral Villaret afforded him some distraction by sending him to Paris on a special mission, to beg for reinforcements, which, with great difficulty, were obtained. But while the French were preparing for war, Sir Samuel Hood was playing them a most abominable trick by fortifying the Diamond rock right in their teeth. How the French must have reviled the perfidious leopard, when they found him shutting their door with a double lock. At times the saying is true, "Fas est et ab hoste doceri ;" and hence we may be allowed to quote the description our author gives of this fortification, which was certainly one of the most wondrous achievements ever effected by our sailors:

The

In the month of January, 1804, during the period when the sea is usually calm, detachments of English sailors were landed on the Diamond rock. dangerous landing on a ridge upon its eastern side was facilitated by a species of floating pier. The rock was hollowed out by mining, and a redoubt formed, only accessible by a very steep slope, intended as the last refuge of the garrison. In front, at a lower level, were two circular batteries armed with 24-pounder guns. Entrenchments defended the entrance to several lateral caverns, which could only be approached by paths running along the face of the rock. The magazines were placed here. The only road leading to the top of the rock started from the large cavern: it was intersected half way up by a platform, on which a gun of heavy calibre was mounted to enfilade the approaches. Rope ladders attached to iron grapplings allowed the sailors to reach the summit of the Diamond from this point. But it was such a fearful enterprise that a French officer who had been the first to escalade this rock, at the capture of the Diamond in 1806, during the heat of combat, could not venture a few months later to try the same path. The greatest merit of these daring and complicated works was the watch established at the summit of the rock. There was a signal-mast there, and, remarkable enough, two 18-pounder guns.

In order to raise them to such an elevation, very daring and clever manœuvres were requisite. The commodore had succeeded by bringing his vessel as near as possible to the rock, and then having fastened grappling irons in various cavities cut in the rock, he had succeeded in raising the guns by means of blocks and winding tackle. Watchmen were stationed at the summit to advise the cruisers of any vessels preparing to leave port, and a garrison of artillery and marines occupied the lower batteries, lodging in the casemates communicating with them.

M. de Jonnès affects a sneer as to the utility of these works, and says that a cruising brig would have answered the same purpose; but the fact remains that the French could only take the Diamond rock by the display of an enormous force, consisting of two vessels, armed with 150 guns and 2600 men, after M. de Jonnès had incurred imminent peril in trying to escalade it with half a dozen boats' crews.

And here we are forced to stop, for our author from this point condescends to generalities. Although he gives us an account of the expedition to St. Domingo, when the French were beaten off by General Prevost, he does not tell us how the French were driven in succession from all the West India Islands, or how he himself returned home. All this he prefers to veil in wonderful mystery, and hence we can only assume that he does not like to describe the downfal of the French dominion. Nor can we say how he has spent the remainder of his long and certainly useful life, but we presume, from the fact of his being a member of the Institute, that he is one of those who have deserved well of their country. At any rate, we feel grateful for the revelations he has made, and we believe that our readers will agree with us that they could hardly have been spared. We can well afford to forgive any effusion of spleen, or any premature boasting, when we find so much useful detail about a period of our history long devoted to obscurity as M. de Jonnès presents to us. English writers would have been too generous to bring up again the glories of our navy during the old war, and we can only feel grateful to our French ally and quondam enemy for giving us occasion to recal to our readers' memories the gallant deeds which our forefathers achieved. At the same time we trust we have been enabled to furnish a faithful picture of French bravery, and to show that circumstances, which we trust will never occur again, compelled us to display our maritime superiority; and, while the French nation reaped such an ample crop of laurels on the fields of Marengo and Austerlitz, we believe they are too generous to begrudge us the triumphs of the Nile and Trafalgar. At any rate, they must blame their own compatriot for giving us occasion to call attention once more to the maritime triumphs of our own country.

WHO IS SANE?

BY EDWARD P. ROWSELL.

So serious are the consequences of authoritatively pronouncing a person to be insane, that, undoubtedly, such a step should be the result only of most perfect and painful conviction. To confine a man's person and seize his property are formidable proceedings, and if the unfortunate be not a lunatic at their commencement he assuredly will be at their conclusion. But while we can readily join the general outcry against a hasty decision on such a point as a man's sanity, we do not hesitate to say that the number of lunatics in the world is greatly understated. Reader, insane men and women are round and about you in every direction. They do not howl and scream, they need no strait-waistcoats or confinement, but they require, nevertheless, to be treated as lunatics both for their own and other people's good.

There is, perhaps, no law the fulfilment of which can be traced with such terrible distinctness as that which visits upon the children the sins of their fathers. Of course the denunciation is not to be understood literally. It would not be true that upon every child of a family descended the curse of a broken constitution, either mental or bodily, the infirmity or the vice of one or both of its parents. The statement, like others of its character, is a general statement, and so viewed, is it not indeed incontrovertible? Stand forth, miserable infant, rendered an object of horror even now by disease, and doomed to perpetual wretchedness during a mercifully short life through the profligacy or folly of thy father or thy mother. The same pangs which thy father's vice entailed upon him, torture thee though thou knowest nothing of the errors which marked his career. Stand forth, poor, weak, shivering child, upon whom consumption has already begun its work, and say, “Behold in me the result of my mother's frivolity, vanity, or indifference!" The world knows how some particular disease, or infirmity, or defect, seems to have laid its unyielding clutch upon some particular family. During all remembrance it has had its eyes, so to speak, on this devoted race, selecting now the strongest, now the weakest member, but always implacable and ever unsatisfied. And minor evils equally with greater may be traced from parent to child. We can read a tale in this boy's lacklustre eye. It bespeaks a feebleness of mind--just as does his slight frame-of body, which must have a painful explanation. Yes, we find that his father passed prematurely to the grave, not simply ruined his own health and peace, but imparted perpetual weakness and pain to the poor infant on whose face he just looked ere he died. The vice revelled in, the passion indulged, had raised a torturing fiend who would not be content with the misery and death of one victim. Another, and another, and another must gasp and groan as part of the penalty of this man's transgression. The sorrow must wind its way downwards from generation to generation, and when even the memory of the originator of the evil will have departed, that evil may still flourish among his illstarred descendants.

Oct.-VOL. CXIV. NO. CCCCLIV.