should be required than what may be found in the union of clusters, we have hundreds of thousands of stars, not to say millions, contained in very compressed parts of the Milky Way. Many of these immense regions may well occasion the siderial motions we are required to account for; and a similarity in the direction of their motions will want no illustration."

This latter alternative can scarcely ever be demonstrated by any telescope; because it can only afford negative evidence against the existence of a great central orb; and such negative evidence could never be decisive, unless we were acquainted with the actual extent of the universe, which in this remote corner is, we may assume, impossible. The other alternative may be within the scope of Lord Rosse's telescope, if in penetrating into the profound infinitude of space it can command a view of the actual centre of creation, and the evidence will be equally positive, although not equally satisfactory, whether the central orb be opake or luminous. If opake, it may observe the occultation or re-appearance-not of stars of any defined magnitude, however small, for it must lie far beyond them-but of the far distant nebulæ occupying the remotest skirts of the universe. Without some happy concurrence of events, ages of vigilant observation must elapse before some future generation of men could be assured of the existence of such a body thus opake, and therefore, probably, invisible. It might, however, happen to be visible.

Ten thousand universes, consisting of millions of millions of suns revolving around it in

their immeasurable orbit, might shed such a lustre on its expansive disk, as to yield us an imperfect and twilight view of this stupendous orb. But if this orb is luminous-if it pours around on every side unceasing streams of light, heat, and electricity, it would not be too extravagant a hope that this allefficient telescope will bring us into acquaintance with so vast a mass of matter-equal in magnitude, or, at least, equal in gravity, to all the other bodies of the universe, attracting them all, and controlling all their movements. But whether this instrument, the most powerful that has yet been contrived and constructed by the inge nuity of man, will, or will not accomplish all the important tasks we have assigned it, of this we may be assured, that it will lead us much farther than we have yet advanced in the knowledge of the immensity of the creation; and that every step it leads us will still more highly exalt our loftiest conceptions of the Deity. When we fill our minds with such contemplations, and then shrink back upon ourselves, with what contempt do we regard our wretched party feuds, and still more wretched sectarian bickerings. The earth we inhabit appears but an atom of dust in the mighty temple which God has erected for his own glory, --and with redoubled glory consecrated to the happiness of beings, unnumbered and innumerable. If we know not the immensity of his works, how little have we learned of the allwise, the all-good, the omnipotent, eternal, and infinite Creator!

A. C.

k

I TOOK out my degree in 1836, at Paris, and then resided in the Rue Corneille, in an establishment solely appropriated to students; one of those hotels with well-staircases, lighted below from the street, higher up by borrowed lights, and at the top by a sky-light. There were forty chambers in it, furnished in the way students' apartments usually

are.

What do young people require more than they boast of? A bed, some chairs, a chest of drawers, a glass and a table. No sooner is the sky clear than the student opens his windowbut in this street he has no fair neighbour to make love to. In front, the Odeon, long since shut up, opposes to his view its walls, already dark with time, the narrow windows of its boxes, and its enormous slate roof. I was not rich enough to have a handsome apartment, or even to have one all to myself. Juste and I had a twobedded one between us, and on the fifth floor too.

On this side of the staircase there was but our chamber, and another small one occupied by Z. Marcas. Juste and I remained nearly six months in utter ignorance of this vicinage; the old woman who acted as our servant, had certainly told us, that this small chamber was occupied, but, she added, we would not be troubled, the person being exceedingly quiet. In fact, during six months we never once met our neighbour, and we heard no sound from his apartment, notwithstanding the thinness of the partition which separated us, which was one of those lath-and-plaster ones so common in the houses of Paris.

Our chamber, seven feet high, was covered with a common looking blue paper,spotted with flowers. The painted

floor was innocent of the lustre of the polisher. At our bedsides we had but a poor patchwork of listen. The chimney was so low, and smoked so, that we were obliged to get a "wolf's mouth" made at our own expense. Our beds were small painted wooden ones, of the kind used in schools. The chimney-piece was never graced with more than two brass candlesticks, with or without candles, our two pipes, tobacco, loose, or in a bag, and the little heaps of ashes which our visitors deposited, or we ourselves accumulated, from our cigars. Two calico curtains ran on iron rods over the window, on each side of which, two small book-cases were fastened up with holdfasts; book-cases of cherrytree-wood, well known to all those who have flané in the "Quartier Latin" of Parisand on these we deposited the few books necesary for our studies. ink in the ink-bottle had the unchanging feature of being like the coagulated lava in the mouth of a volcano. Every ink-bottle may now-a-days become a Vesuvius! the twisted pens served to clear the tubes of our pipes; while contrary to the laws of credit, paper was even scarcer with us than cash.

The

How could it be expected that young people could be satisfied with the accommodation furnished in such quarters. Hence it is, the students study in the coffee-houses, at the theatre, in the walks of the Luxembourg, with grisettes, every where, (even in the lawschool,) except in their hideous chambers-hideous, if the matter be to study there charming, if only to chat and smoke. See a cloth laid upon that table, and an unpremeditated dinner sent in by the best restaurateur of the neighbourhood-four covers and two friends;

get this view of the interior lithographed, and where's the ascetic could refrain from smiling.

We thought only of amusing ourselves, nor is the reason one very difficult of explanation. Juste and I saw no opening in the two professions our parents had constrained us to adopt. There were a hundred barristers, a hundred physicians for one chance. The crowd blocked up these two paths, which seemed to lead to fortune, and which are two arenas where the combatants contend and sacrifice each other, not with naked limbs or fire-arms, but by intrigue and slander, by dismal labours, by campaigns in the domain of intelligence, as destructive as those of Italy were to the republican soldiers. Now-a-days, when all is a contest of the understanding, one must acquire the endurance to sit forty-eight hours consecutively on a chair before a table, as a general sat two days in his saddle on horseback. The crowd of candidates has caused the profession of medicine to be subdivided into categories; there is the literary physician, the professorial physician, the political physi cian, and the military physician; four different ways of being a physician! four sections already full. As to the fifth division, that of doctors who dispense medicines, there is a concourse of competitors, and they combat by the strokes of infamous placards on the walls of Paris. In all the courts there are almost as many lawyers as causes. The lawyer has been thrown back upon journalism, upon politics, and upon literature. In short, the State, stormed for the lowest offices in the magistracy, has ended by requiring a property qualification in the candidates. The sugar-loaf head of a rich grocer's son shall be preferred to the square cranium of a young man of talent, if penny less. Putting forth every exertion, displaying every energy, a young person starting from Zero may find himself at the end of ten years, below the point of departure. In this age, talent requires the good luck which ensures success to incapacity: nay more! should it lack the base qualities which recommend cringing mediocrity, it will never meet advancement.

If we could have duly estimated our epoch, we should also have appreciated ourselves, and so preferred the

leisure of thought, to exertion without object; indifference and enjoyment, to vain labours, calculated to waste our ardour, and exhaust the vigour of our understanding. We had analysed the social state in joyous mood, smoking and promenading, and arriving at the same result, our reflections,our dissertations, were not the less discreet or less profound.

Whilst observing the helotism to which youth is condemned, we were amazed at the besotted indifference of power to every thing intellectual, to the nind, to the imagination. What looks Juste and I often exchanged on reading the journals, on learning political events, on running over the Debates of the Chambers, on discussing the conduct of a Court, whose voluntary ig norance could only be compared to the dulness of its courtiers, or to the me diocrity of the men who formed a hedge round the new throne without genius or capacity, without science or fame, without power or greatness! We looked upon all these things as a spectacle, and lamented over them without adopting any course.

Juste, whom no one came to seek, and who went to seek no one, was, at five-and-twenty, a professed politician, a man of wonderful aptness in seizing upon the remote relations between present and future events. He told me in 1821, what would happen, and what has happened; the assassinations, the conspiracies, the reign of the Jews, the restraint upon the motions of France, the dearth of intelligence in the upper classes, and the abundance of talent in the lower, where the most gallant courage lies extinguished under the ashes of the cigar! What was he to do? His family was desi rous he should become a physician. To be a physician; would not this be to wait twenty years in expectation of practice? Well, he is a physician; but he has left France he is in Asia. At this moment he perhaps falls exhausted with fatigue in the desert: he dies, it may be under the wounds of a barbarian horde; or he is perhaps the prime minister of some Indian prince. An active life was my forte. Enlarged from college at twenty years of age, I was interdicted from entering the army except as a common soldier, and wearied with the sad perspective which the life of a lawyer presents, I learned

the profession of a sailor. I am now about to follow the example of Juste, to abandon France. I am setting out to where one may direct his course according to his own wishes.

Our resolutions and our reflections were a long time fluctuating. Marcas, our neighbour, was, in many respects, the guide who led us along the verge of the precipice, or of the torrent, and who made us sound it, and who pointed out to us what our destinies would be, if we allowed ourselves to fall in. He warned us against the compact which poverty will often make with necessity, and which hope will sometimes sanction; and how, by accepting a precarious position, our energies become chained and fettered, and life but a drudgery, with no relief save in death.

Our first meeting with Marcas was merely accidental. Upon returning from our colleges before dinner time we always went up to our chamber, and remained there a little, waiting for each other, to ascertain if any thing had occurred to change our plans for the evening. One day at four o'clock, Juste saw Marcas on the stairs, and I had met him in the street. It was then the month of November, and Marcas had no cloak; he wore thick soled shoes, a blue outside coat buttoned up to the throat, with a square collar, which gave his bust a still more military appearance, from his wearing a black cravat. This costume had nothing extraordinary about it; but it was in perfect harmony with the air and physiognomy of the man. My first impression upon seeing him was neither that of surprise nor astonishment, nor sadness, nor interest, nor yet pity; but a curiosity partaking of all these sentiments. He walked slowly with a step which indicated a deep melancholy, the head inclined forward, but not bent down in the manner of those who are conscious of guilt. His large and compact head which appeared to contain the treasures necessary for an aspirant of the first order, was, as it were, surcharged with thought, it sunk under the weight of a moral grief; but there was not the least trait of remorse in his features. As to his face, it may be described in a word. According to a popular theory, each human countenance has its resemblance in an animal. The animal of Marcas was the lion.

His hair resembled a mane; his nose was short, flattened, large, and divided at the end like that of the lion; his forehead was parted like a lion's, by a deep furrow into two powerful lobes. In short, his hairy cheek bones, which the lankness of his jaws rendered still more prominent; his capacious mouth, and his hollow cheeks, were moved, by the action of strong muscles, and tinged by a complexion of a tawny yellow. This almost terrible countenance seemed irradiated by two brilliant lights, two black eyes; but of infinite softness, tranquil, profound, full of reflection. If the expression be permissible, his eyes were humiliated.

Marcas was apprehensive of regarding any one, less on his own account, than for the sake of those upon whom he might happen to cast his fascinating glance: he possessed a power he was not desirous of exercising; he spared the passers-by, he shrunk from being remarked. It was not modesty, but resignation-not christian resignation which implies charity, but the resignation taught by reason, a colder light, that often chills the very soul it brightens. That look could at certain moments flash forth lightning. That mouth indicated the vehicle of a voice of thunder; it much resembled Mirabeau's.

"I have just seen in the street, a remarkable man," said I to Juste, on entering our chamber.

"That must be our neighbour," replied Juste, who at once described the man I had just met. "He is exactly what I should have anticipated, from his recluse habits."

"What humiliation and what greatness!"

"The one follows from the other." "How many ruined prospects! how many abortive plans!"

"Seven leagues of ruins! obelisks, palaces, towers, the ruins of Palmyra in the desert," said Juste, laughing.

We called our neighbour "the ruins of Palmyra." When we went out to dine at the dismal restaurant of La rue de la Harpe, where we were boarded, we asked the name of number 37, and then learned the singular name of Z. Marcas. Like children, as we were, we repeated more than a hundred times, and with the most varied inflexions, jocose or melancholy, this

name, of which the pronounciation added to our amusement. Juste sometimes hit the utterance of the Z like a rocket going off, and having launched forth the first syllable of the name brilliantly, he imitated a fall by the indistinct brevity with which he pronounced the last.

"But where or how does he live?" Between this question, and the harmless "espionage" which curiosity prompts, there passed but the interval requisite for the execution of our design. Instead of amusing ourselves, we returned to our quarters, provided each with a romance, and began to read, listening in the meanwhile. We heard, in the total silence of our garret, the equable and soft sound produced by the breathing of a man asleep.

"He is asleep," said I to Juste, being the first to observe this fact.

"And at seven o'clock!" replied the Doctor. Such was the sirname I had given to Juste, who called me the Chancellor.

"It argues great unhappiness to sleep as long as our neighbour," said I, mounting, at the same time, our chest of drawers with a large knife, in the handle of which there was a corkscrew. I cut a round hole in the top of the partition about the size of à five sous piece; but had not dreamt there would be no light, and when I applied my eye to the aperture, all was darkness. At about one o'clock, having finished our romances, we were about to undress ourselves, when we heard a noise in our neighbour's apartment; he got up, detonated a phosphoric" allumette," and lit his candle. I again mounted the chest of drawers, and saw Marcas at his table copying pleadings. His apartment was by onehalf less than ours; the bed stood in a recess beside the door: for, the corridor terminating here, the space it would otherwise have occupied was thrown into his closet; but the ground upon which the house was built had been cut up, and the party-wall formed a trapezium at the side of his garret. There was no fire-place, but instead, a small white delf stove, spotted with green, of which the funnel was carried out through the roof. The window contrived in the trapezium had paltry red curtains. An arm-chair, a table, and a wretched bed-side table, composed the furniture. The paper on

evident no one but a domestic had occupied this chamber, until Marcas came to it.

"What have you discovered?" inquired the Doctor, as he perceived me dismounting.

"Look for yourself," replied I.

The following morning, at nine o'clock, Marcas was in bed. He had breakfasted off a Boulogna sausage. We saw upon a plate, amidst crumbs of bread, the remains of this dish, an old acquaintance of ours. Marcas was asleep, and did not awaken until near eleven o'clock. He resumed the copying he had been at during the night, which lay upon the table. On going out we asked the rent of this apartment, and were informed fifteen francs per month. In a few days we were fully aware of the kind of life passed by Z. Marcas. He copied law papers, doubtless, at so much a sheet, for a scrivener who lived in La rue de la Saint Chapelle. After sleeping from six to ten, he got up and resumed his labours, writing until three o'clock. He then went out to take his copies home before dinner, and dined in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, at Miserais, a dinner for nine sous, and returned to bed at six o'clock. It was proved to us that Marcas did not utter fifteen sentences in the month-he did not even say a word to himself in his wretched garret.

6

"Most certainly the ruins of Palmyra' are terribly silent," exclaimed Juste.

Was

This silence in a man whose exterior was so imposing, had something deeply significant. Sometimes on meeting him, we exchanged looks full of meaning on both sides, but which were not followed by any protocol. Impercep tibly this man became the object of our particular admiration, without our being able to explain the cause. it those manners secretly simple?— that monastic regularity that hermetical frugality-that mechanical labour, which permitted the mind to remain neuter, or to range abroad, and which declared the expectation of some happy event, or some part determined upon in life? After having wandered a long time in "the ruins of Palmyra," we lost sight of them, we were so young! Then came the carnival that Parisian carnival, which