pepper, nearly one hundred thousand pounds; raisins, the same; silk-manufactures, nearly a quarter of a million; spirits (rum and brandy), upwards of two millions and a quarter; sugar (unrefined, refined, and molasses), upwards of five millions and a half; tallow, about seventy-six thousand pounds; tea, nearly five millions and a half; tobacco and snuff, over five millions and a quarter; wine, nearly one million and three-quarters; and wood and timber, nearly six hundred thousand pounds. Having disposed of the chief productive articles in the British tariff, many of them-as butter, cheese, corn, meal, flour, silk-manufactures, and timber-suffering under a strictly protective duty; and some-as spirits, wine, tobacco, and snuff-producing revenue based, to some extent, upon national vices-I may glance leisurely over some of the inferior producing articles, and also some of the exemptions.

Almonds, both Jordan and the paste of, are taxed; bitter almonds and aloes are free. Arrow-root, tapioca, and all that family of products, pay fourpence-halfpenny the hundredweight; but arsenic and sanguis draconis are free. The appetite of the infant is fruitful to the public revenue; the Cockney Borgia may work under the licence of free-trade. Figs are a nice and fruitful source of revenue; jalap and castor-oil are nasty, but free. Biscuit and bread are saddled with a duty; caviare and senna are perfectly unfettered. Dates and wine are heavily taxed, but salted cucumbers and logwood extract are totally unburdened. Apples, pears, cherries, plums, boys' marbles, and toys of all kinds, sail in under a duty; but rose-water, tobacco-pipes, and sausages are free. Cries of 'Shame!' from the combined youth of the country against the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Why don't he hit one of his own size?

Malt is absolutely prohibited to be importeda great boon to the farmers-but juniper-berries, angelica root, and gin materials generally come in without any financial or legal restriction. Manure is perfectly free; soap, plain or scented, and wash-balls, are certainly not. Pickles preserved in vinegar are a source of revenue; vegetables preserved in salt are free. Two anomalies present themselves, alluded to before, in passing: port wine is taxed, but the raw material, according to popular report-logwood extract-is free. Bread is taxed; but the raw material-also according to popular report, potatoes, alum, and plaster-of-Paris-is free. Our French protective blockade is very strong. It taxes lace, silk, wine, clocks, china, with many other articles, even to musical-boxes. In these latter amusing toys, the assessment is very minute and exact. Threepence a tune, played upon a cylinder of four inches in length; but if upwards of four inches, the country wants eightpence. Accompaniments are extra, even to the extent of half-a-crown. Burgundy wine is taxed, Burgundy pitch is free. Out of a list of nearly fifty seeds, only one is taxed, and that is the unfortunate caraway. Turtle is free, but rice is taxed.

The British possessions, in most cases, are allowed to import goods into the mother-country at a considerable reduction of duty, often reaching 50 per centum, if the productions imported are of native growth. Diamonds, lobsters, bullion, and fresh fish of British taking may be landed without report or entry-a privilege accorded to no other goods. Whatever duties there may be amongst the 460 customs' taxed articles, that annoy the young, the old, the feeble, and the strong, it must be a comfort to all to know that one article is gloriously and notoriously free. This is not corn, for that staple necessary of life still pays a juggling duty of one shilling the quarter, equal on the present price to 24 per cent. -another protective boon still granted to the farmers

it is divi divi.* Like the old woman who, when snatched from a fearful fire, was found hugging something she had saved from the general wreck, which turned out to be a worthless hearth-broom, the British tax-payer, and professed free-trader, amidst the mass of useless, unproductive-when compared with the cost of collection-protective, restrictive, and immoral duties, may congratulate himself that divi divi is free.

The analysis of the British tariff stands thus: It produces one-third of the national income. This third is nearly all collected, from twenty-one articles of general consumption; 439 articles-which, with the twenty-one, make up the 460, the whole number taxed

produce about six hundred thousand pounds, which affords an average of fourteen hundred and thirty pounds each. To pursue the analysis a little further, there are sixty articles that bring less than two hundred pounds each; fifty-three not more than one hundred pounds each; thirty-six not more than twenty pounds each; and thirteen, only five pounds each and under. The persons employed in the collection of excise and customs' duties, on the 1st of January 1857, numbered 5449.

With these facts and figures before him, the intelligent reader may go away a duller, but a wiser man. He will see on one side of the national balance-sheet the right-hand, or credit side-glory, heroism, and brilliant expenditure; on the other side-the lefthand, or debit side-mean, money-grubbing, and, in some cases, oppressive collection of income. He will find, upon glancing through the British tariff, that notwithstanding our press and platform songs of triumph, we know little more of pure, practical freetrade than Archimedes did of the steam-engine.

POUDRE ROSÉ.

IN THREE CHAPTERS.

I.

A DARK wintry day, in the year of grace 1839, was closing upon the final scene of one of those tragedies of real life which would be affecting, were they not, in France at least, of such everyday occurrence. Eugène Beaudésert, the direct representative of a long line of courtiers, warriors, diplomatists, commencing with the Merovingian kings, and now for some time schoolmaster in Lyon, was dying in a mean apartment au troisième of a house in an obscure street of that wealthy and splendid city; not, however, of want, of physical destitution, as the wine, cordials, and various tempting delicacies by his bedside, the heaped-up blazing fagots on the hearth, the presence of an unexceptionable nurse, and, above all, of M. Vermont, a physician of eminence, whose minutes were Napoleons, fully testified. Nor, still judging by its surroundings, ought unsatisfied soulcravings, hunger of the spirit, to have been felt at that death-bed, since two ministers to spiritual needs, one officious, the other official, were in attendance there. The first, a stout, somewhat rustic-looking man, past middle age, at the entrance of the Abbé Morlaix, the famous preacher at the Church of the Assumption, had hastily returned his balm for hurt minds, Plato's Divine Dialogue, to his pocket, and shrunk back to a corner of the room where the fire-blaze revealed him with but fitful indistinctness. I, however, from knowing Jules Delpech so well, can easily identify, through the flashing gloom, that large head, fairly developed intellectually, and that face every way ordinary save for a pair of glittering gray eyes; which, from under cover of the pent-house brows, pierce to a very long way off

further, deeper, indeed, than it is desirable to The pod of the Casalpinia coriaria, used in tanning and dyeing.

follow, even in imagination. The countenance withal has not what is usually termed a malignant expression. The most timid person, a girl, would hardly be scared at confronting it upon a lonely road in the evening of such another dark day as this; for plainly, vividly, as that unblest, bastard wisdom called cunning, caution, timidity, are written thereon for dullest eyes to read; there is also a certain air of bonhomie, assumed it may be-but, if so, habitually assumed-which does much to neutralise the vulpine craftiness of aspect which familiar observers were wont to say faithfully mirrored Jules Delpech's vulpine, crafty soul. A rash judgment, let us hope, in submission to the divine injunction of charity-the charity that thinketh no evil, believeth no evil, with which M. Morlaix, a few minutes since, just before the arrival of the physician, rebuked the moribund's glare of rage, called forth by a somewhat eulogistic allusion to Madame la Baronne de Vautpré; the personage albeit to whom Eugène Beaudésert is indebted for the lay and clerical ministrations which console, or embitter-for there is no interpreting the changeful lights and shadows which flit across that constrainedly calm white face-these last supreme moments of parting life.

There was no warning of how few those moments were in the suave tones of Dr Vermont as he felt the pulse and looked steadily into the eyes of his patient. He merely observed, addressing the nurse, that M. Beaudésert must be kept as quiet as possible; and then turned away with a slight gesture to the abbé, who followed him to the door, where a few whispered words passed between them. The look and manner of the abbé, as he again turned towards the sick man, revealed, clearly as speech, the significance of those whispered words; and Jules Delpech starting up, hurriedly embraced, and bade his friend adieu, as if for a brief time only, pressed one of the cold hands of a girl sitting by the head of the bed, in both his own, softly suggested hope and courage, and glided from the apartment. The nurse, at a sign from the abbé, did the same, and then the reverend gentleman requested the girl to permit him to speak for a few minutes with her father alone. The answer was an outburst of convulsive grief-passionate exclamations of refusal, which the abbé could only partially calm by consenting that she should remain whilst he administered the last rites of his church to the now avowedly dying sufferer; whose thoughts, whilst fully comprehending, as he seemed to do, the abbe's meaning and purpose, were nevertheless-if one might judge by the feeble demonstrations permitted by his fast-failing strength-with his child, with the earthly future of that young life; and but slightly impressed by the imminence of his own death, and the judgment to follow, announced by the symbolic ceremonial, and the solemn words of the priest.

And now, whilst the abbé is fulfilling his appointed function, I may briefly pass in review the previous and determining incidents of the life-career thus prematurely closing; closing prematurely, there can be no question, as far as life is reckoned by length of days, for it was no longer ago than the autumn of 1803, that the birth of Eugène Beaudésert, the firstborn of a distinguished general of that name, and Estelle, his wife, née Bresson, a rich heiress of Paris, was celebrated in that city with much pomp and éclat. Clouds quickly overgrew and darkened the brilliant future that seemed to await the child. General Beaudésert was killed at Marengo; and his widow, to whom, by the provisions of the ante-nuptial contract, her whole fortune reverted, soon married again, became the mother of a numerous family, and gradually so estranged from her first-born, that after his tenth birthday, she never again beheld him, and died without expressing a wish to do so. It is

probable that this unnatural feeling was excited and confirmed by the civilly contemptuous treatment which the plebeian wife of General Beaudésert had met with from her husband's family; one of that section of the Quartier St Germain, which, always with an arrière-pensée, capitulated with the Consulate and the Empire for the profitable honours, illegitimate as they might be, and, of course, were, with which it was the weakness of the Man of Destiny to always eagerly reward such condescendence. Madame la Baronne de Vautpré, General Beaudésert's widowed and childless sister, had especially never been at pains to conceal her disdain of her brother's ignoble alliance; and no sooner was it ascertained that ci-devant Madame Beaudésert, née Bresson, evinced a decided dislike of her son Eugène, than Madame la Baronne became his active partisan and patroness; and an arrangement was finally come to by which the guardianship of the last male scion of the ancient house of Beaudésert was legally transferred from the roturier mother to the aristocratic aunt. Madame de Vautpré discharged her new selfimposed duties, everybody agreed, in the most liberal, exemplary manner. Eugène Beaudésert's education was conducted by the first masters; his purse was supplied without stint or grudge; and he had but just completed his eighteenth year, when Madame la Baronne obtained the high favour and honour of a commission in the Garde Royale for her fortunate nephew. But, as most of us know, or have heard, blood is stronger than water, especially that which wells up from the mighty arteries which nourish and sustain the common life of a people; and Eugène's precociously manifested tastes, antipathies, predilections-all clearly traceable to his maternal originproved to be diametrically opposed to the tastes, antipathies, predilections of the long line of Beaudésert celebrities dating from the Merovingian kings; not one of whom, that unfilial descendant of a noble race sneeringly remarked, could be justly accused of having stained his scutcheon by doing anything useful or helpful to mankind. As examples of the young man's shocking heterodoxy in matters ancestral and armorial, I may instance his proclaimed opinion, that there were in the world men as capable of governing France as Louis le Désiré-an extravagance which cost him his Garde Royale epaulets; that Napoleon was at least equal as a general to the great Condé; and that to have created 'a connoisseur in dry bones'otherwise Cuvier the comparative anatomist-a baron, was not a detestable desecration by Bonaparte of that order of nobility! That atrocities like these should so frequently sully the lips of her nephew and heir, was naturally a source of disquiet to Madame de Vautpré; but, to do that lady simple justice, she was far too right-minded and sensible a person to take au sérieux the froth-follies which flow so copiously from the lips of vain and volatile youth; and she more than once took occasion to observe in his hearing, that so long as her nephew did nothing in derogation of his high lineage, whatever he might think or say, would not affect his present or future position as far as she had control over it. Eugène Beaudésert was in his twentieth year, when Madame la Baronne felt or fancied that it might be expedient to at once clearly define what it was that to do, or to leave undone, would fatally compromise the young man's future. She did so in the mild impassive manner natural to her, after placing in his hand a draft on Lafitte for the large sum he had just intimated an immediate and pressing occasion for.

'You were conversing for some time, I noticed, at the ball the other evening, with the Count and Mademoiselle de Cevennes; what, frankly now, is your impression, Eugène, of the young lady?'

'My impression of Mademoiselle de Cevennes !

Frankly, then, no impression at all-except, ma foi, the vague one of a perfectly well-dressed commonplace young person, nowise distinguishable from the crowd of perfectly well-dressed common-place young persons we met there.'

'I have reason to believe,' continued Madame de Vautpré, that the proposal of an alliance by marriage of the Beaudésert and Cevennes families would be favourably entertained by Monsieur le Comte de Cevennes.'

'Plait-il, madame!' exclaimed the startled nephew, flushing scarlet.

'In other, though scarcely plainer words,' resumed Madame de Vautpré, 'that were Eugène Beaudésert to become a suitor for the hand of Louise de Cevennes, he would not be exposed to the mortification of a refusal.'

'You must be jesting, madame,' rejoined the nephew with some temper. What have I done, that it should be proposed to wed me with such an incarnation of ugliness, ill-temper, and Satanic pride, as Mademoiselle de Cevennes ?'

'That is your vague impression of the lady, is it? It is not a flattering one, at all events; and do not fear, Eugène, that I shall ever urge you to blaspheme the holy sacrament of marriage'-I should here state that it had been for some time whispered in certain circles that Madame la Baronne de Vautpré was growing terribly devout-by uniting yourself indissolubly with a woman you could not love or esteem; however'

Ma chère tante, interrupted Eugène, seizing Madame de Vautpre's hand, and kissing it with fervour-' you are so good.'

'It is well, at the same time, to remind you, Eugène,' continued Madame la Baronne, with her usual calm smile and quiet evenness of voice, that I expect from you a similar abnegation of selfish feeling in the affair of marriage-which is to say that you will never think of uniting yourself with a person whom I could not love or esteem! Above and before all, Eugène-and here the speaker's earnestness lent almost tragic force and depth to Madame de Vautpre's mild, steadfast look, and tranquil measured tones-'do not fail to bear constantly in mind that to follow your father's unhappy example, by contracting a mésalliance, would be simply and definitively to pronounce irrevocable sentence upon yourself-not merely of immediate separation between you and me, but of the forfeiture of your else assured inheritance of the large possessions, which are, as you are aware, at my absolute disposal.'

'My dear madam,' Eugène managed to enunciate without much stanmering, and with an affectation of unconcern with which his changing colour and altogether discomfited aspect did not harmonise, 'you do not imagine, you do not suppose, that I-that youthat'

"I suppose nothing, imagine nothing, Eugène,' interrupted the stately baronne, locking her écritoire, and rising to terminate the interview; I merely state as a fact to be carefully borne in mind, that were you so insane as to contract a discreditable marriage-and by discreditable marriage I mean one that I could not sanction you from that moment would be my nephew in name only, assuredly in nothing more. Do you return to dine? No; well, I shall be sure to meet you at Madame Morny's. Adieu.'

An indifferent passer-by would have been struck by the extreme disquietude evinced by Eugène Beaudésert as he left his aunt's splendid mansion; but in life's careless April-time the clouds pass swiftly; and one little hour had scarcely elapsed since Madame de Vautpre's words had fallen so ominously upon his ear, when they were remembered only as the casual expression of a hasty resolve, which could

never be carried out; for was not he, Eugène Beaudésert, the only living being through whom the name, the glory, and the greatness of the Beaudéserts could be preserved, and continued for the admiration and reverence of unborn ages! That great irreversible fact would necessarily outweigh all minor considerations, when poised in so very ancestral a mind as that of Madame de Vautpré, who had, besides, displayed such Christian kindness in relation to that abominable Mademoiselle de Cevennes-the young lady that had graciously, it seemed, intimatedthe amiable Gorgon!-that she would not refuse him the blessing of her hand, should he venture to solicit the precious gift. Ugh!

The repulsive idea thus suggested quickly gave place to another and very different one-that of cette jeune et charmante Adrienne, whom it would be impossible not to love, were her father, instead of being a capitaine de dragons en retraite, a Paris shopkeeper. At that moment, the church-clocks chimed half-past two, reminding the young dreamer that by the time he had reached the jeweller's, and received in exchange for his munificent aunt's draft the superb necklace upon which Adrienne Champfort had set her heart, it would be as much as he could do to reach Clichy by the hour he had appointed to be there. This was decisive; and by three o'clock, Eugène Beaudésert, with the necklace-a trifle, which cost him five thousand francs, no more-safe in his pocket, was rattling gaily along the road leading to the modest dwelling of his beautiful fiancée, and then onwards, downwards, to marriage, remorse, ruin, despair-finally, to the dark room au troisième in the Rue du Bac, Lyon, where the Abbé Morlaix is even now administering the viaticum to the heir of all the Beaudéserts! An old, sad story, of which I need only further give the headings of the chapters intervening between the bridal and the burial.

Madame la Baronne de Vautpré was informed of the marriage of Eugène Beaudésert with Adrienne Champfort by a long and eloquent letter from the bridegroom; to which an immediate answer was returned, enclosing a draft for ten thousand francs, and briefly stating that Madame de Vautpré wished Monsieur and Madame Beaudésert happiness, in the state of life they had chosen for themselves; but, as Monsieur Beaudésert had been timely and emphatically warned would be the case, Madame de Vautpré no longer looked upon that gentleman as her nephew, or as one possessing the slightest further claim upon her.

It was all in vain, as the ten thousand francs, and at last the costly ornaments which he had lavished upon Adrienne, melted away, that the alarmed and anxious husband and father-two daughters, Adrienne and Clarisse, were born to him during the first three years of wedded life-put in practice every expedient, every art he was master of, to change his aunt's inexorable decision; Madame de Vautpré was impassible as marble, and as smooth and polished also; her words and manner, in the personal interviews which her nephew contrived to force upon her, whilst clearly expressive of unswerving resolve, never betraying the slightest irritation or anger.

Thus, step by step, poverty came upon the rash couple; the poverty, armed with serpent stings, that treads upon the heels of reckless self-gratification, and which, but for Captain Champfort's pension-a rather considerable one for his position, he being an inferior member of the Legion of Honour-would soon have been destitution; for Eugène Beaudesert, with all his wordy disdain of birth-privileges, persisted in keeping himself fiercely aloof from the contamination of useful employments, and none other were obtainable. And did the blind god that had lured them to such a pass, remain to gild the ruin

been fostered, exaggerated by the education, if it can be called one, she has received, chiefly from her grandmother; an honest, simple-minded native of Provence, who has peopled the child's mind with the thousand-and-one legends of fairies, demons, witchcharms, potent alike for good and evil, received as gospel-truth in that part of France; and in which her grand-daughter believes as firmly as in the ogre-like instincts of the dreaded relative to whose abhorred companionship or custody her father's last commands have doomed her. Childhood's common dreams, it may be said. Yes, but will they, as such illusions usually do, exhale and pass away in the expanding light of reason, or remain hidden, latent in the mind of Adrienne Beaudésert, till, under stimulating conditions, they start into fatal life and activity? This is the yet unsolved enigma of the story of the Poudre Rosé.

AN EVIL SEEMINGLY WITHOUT A REMEDY.

women.

THERE is one evil under the sun without a remedy, and that is the power of what is called Fashion over In some mysterious way, it comes to be understood that the correct thing for ladies this winter is to carry an amount of inflated dress round the lower part of their persons, which will make them from ten to twelve feet in circumference. Implicitly they submit to have themselves so dressed, as if it were some supernal decree which it was futile to try to resist, let the consequences be never so inconvenient to themselves and the society of which they form a part. The resulting contour of the figure is, in the first place, ridiculous; in the second place, immoral, because false. It involves waste, to the distress of those who have to pay the milliners' bills, and to the offence of God, who tells us that not merely our superfluities, but much of our ordinary means, should be bestowed upon those who want. Finally, it creates danger, for a dress sweeping wide of the person is apt to catch fire, and often does so, with the most tragical effects. Not a month before we write, two daughters of a noble house, had their dresses thus ignited, and, as the arrangement is favourable to combustion, they were so severely burned that they only survived a few days. Yet the inconvenience, the ridiculousness, the immoral falsity, the sinful waste, and the frightful danger, while on all hands acknowledged, are wholly unavailing to abate one inch of the evil. The mysterious decree has gone forth-we,' say the ladies, cannot be singular' -the evil, consequently, great as it is, must be endured.

It is important to observe regarding the subserviency to these mysterious decrees, that there is no progressive improvement. One year, it is one absurdity; another year, another. Balloon-sleeves now-mud-trailing skirts then. Here, invisible bonnets, exposing the head to colds, and the complexion to injury; there, wasp-waists, destroying the play of the organs of circulation and digestion. Always some enormity, and no one better than another, or more partially exemplified. Reasoning on the part of the other sex is wholly in vain to effect any correctionof what use, indeed, is reason, with people who admit the absurdity of their conduct, but say they cannot help it?

with the reasoners is expected for those who confess themselves below the power of reason. We lately thought of writing a powerful paper on the custom of typifying everything silly and foolish under the phrase 'an old woman.' It seemed to us unfair, on the part of our sex, to pay such court to women while they were young, pleased to listen for hours perhaps to their prattle, professing compliance with their faintest wishes; idolising, deifying them; yet, after all, turning away from them in their maturer years, when, if anything, they had become wiser and more solid. But a little reflection upon the conduct of women in respect to dress has obliged us to give up our intended article. Our design was, we believe, amiable and gallant-for, be it known, we are extremely kind to women, and great favourites with them-but we now see the position was indefensible. Young women, judged by their conduct in this important part of the economy of life, are evidently no better than old women-not a bit more able to resist weak impulses. They may be described as only old women with the gloss of youth in their favour, the latter peculiarity being alone that which brings them. the deference which is denied to their seniors. Now, of course, this gloss of youth being a mere external accident, and no proper ground of esteem, whatever it may be of passionate admiration, we must needs admit that the claims of women to respect are equal at all times of their life; and there is no injustice whatever in arraigning them in age for qualities which ought equally to be condemned in them at every period.

No-the proverb must still hold its sway-men of weak tastes and apprehensions must still submit to be called old women, and old women must submit to have such men likened to them-but surely not for ever. There is a progress in most things in this fair world; and we may therefore hope that a moiety of the human race-a most interesting one, and invested with great influence, for good or evil, over the other moiety-is not to be left from age to age to doll-dressing, gossip, and the chronicling of smallbeer. The brain of woman, though not so powerful as that of man, is composed of the same elements, and equally capable of an indefinite improvement. The occasion which women have for rational accomplishments and skill in serious affairs is, if not so great as that of men, very great nevertheless; why should they not know something of business, and so save themselves from becoming the victims of Western Banks and other traps? Why should they not take an intelligent concern in the making of laws by which they are to be affected as wives and mothers? Why should they not be somewhat informed in physiology and the laws of health, and so save themselves and their offspring from much of what is now suffered in disease, sickly uselessness, and premature death? They have these things in their power, and by such, and the general cultivation of their minds-above all, of their reasoning powersthey might make their young and old days alike respectable, thus extinguishing the ignominy conferred upon them in this proverbial reference to 'old women,' or rather, as we think we have shewn, to women generally. In no other way that we can think of is there to be an end to this imputation on the sex.

It often is impressed on us that the ordinary women of the world lose an immense portion of the happiness placed by Providence in their power, from want of a right apprehension of their capacities, as well as duties. When a lady of the middle rank has an independent provision, or a father or husband to provide for her, she is generally a very idle person. She reads a little in a literature that gives her no intellectual advance; works at some utterly useless texture-a laborious idleness; or plays indifferently