his concubine, who will fill its mind with falsehoods and teach it to hate and despise its mother. Such things are not possibilities merely and dreams; they are stern realities; and the law gives her no redress. All who are in middle life remember what happened, when a prime minister was prosecuted for adul tery. The facts are so public, that it avails not to suppress names. Lord Melbourne, an elderly gentleman of high accomplishments, was fond of the company of a very intelligent lady, the Hon. Mrs. Norton, young enough perhaps to be his daughter. Mr. Norton became jealous, having been worked upon (as some said) by Tory politicians; an explanation which received plausibility from the indecent and inhuman triumph of certain Tory journals, as soon as it was announced that Mr. Norton had called the prime minister into court as an adulterer. The jury acquitted Lord Melbourne. Was not then Mrs. Norton's reputation left unstained? Not wholly. For the hostile counsel had inveighed maliciously on certain ambiguous facts, which ought to have been explained and were not. Mrs. Norton asked leave to explain them, and was not permitted, because she was not a party to the suit! It was a question (forsooth) between the two men only: she had no business with it! Mr. Norton, having tried to fix on his wife this dreadful stigma, and failed, did not love her the more for it, and apparently hated her. Having ejected her from his house, he refused to allow her to see her children. She pleaded for leave to see them only once in six months, and in the presence of a person appointed by her husband; this was refused her. She brought the question into court, but in vain: her husband's inexorable refusal was pronounced legal. The matter was treated in the House of Lords,-and no wonder, since the prime minister and a lady with the title Honorable were concerned,and an eccentric legal peer of vast powers and experience expatiated on the injustice with which Mrs. Norton was treated. But after a vehement speech all on that side, he wound up by saying, that our law is so consistently and monstrously unjust to women, that it is not worth while to give a fraction of justice in one particular case: he

therefore gave his voice against her. We claim that men with a better heart than that peer will do to women the justice about which he prated.

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In the matter of children, when the quarrel of parents is severe, some compromise is evidently needed. In no two cases would the same compromise be the best. Sometimes the mother might have the control until the age of 14, and the father after that age: but the compromise should in each case be settled, under the guidance of general principles, by an impartial court. divorce which stigmatized one parent would ordinarily withdraw the children from that parent's control; as, when drunkenness or felony occasioned divorce. It does not belong to these pages to define what ought to be enacted, but to protest against the extreme and obvious injustice of the existing law. Since the Divorce Court has been established, such an injustice as refusing, to a lady whose reputation was at stake, leave to explain what was obscure (we believe) would not be allowed: but English law has much yet to do, before it can pretend that this injustice is a thing of past days.

It is not necessary here fully to open, what is meant by saying that "a man's claims over his wife's person (now jus tified by the law) are extreme and monstrous." It suffices to press, that our judges still maintain, that a man has a right to lock his wife up, if he fears she will run away from him; and that, at no distant time, judges pronounced that he might chastise her moderately with a moderately thick stick. Recent judges have overruled this, without any new legislation. Such things give a painful idea of the uncertainty, as well as injustice of our law. Until the marriage laws are made more just, it is morally impossible to carry out legal severity against those who set them at naught, even when the result is profligacy most pernicious and most dangerous to the State. As our rugged climate, and the toil needed to supply our more elaborate wants of body and mind, put a vast chasm between our condition and that of the Polynesian savages; so the frightful pestilence, which in our constitutions is generated by profligacy, becomes an additional and overwhelming necessity

for State interference against moral corruptions. The topic can here be only alluded to, not dilated on. But inasmuch as no pestilence will confine it self to that class of the community in whose filth or vice it springs up; neither will this pestilence, if allowed to be unchecked, spare the innocent, but will spread its miseries further and wider still. The necessity of checking such a flood of evil is a new argument for divesting honorable marriage of every gratuitous burden and every injustice. F. W. NEWMAN.

Translated from the French for THE ECLECTIC.

THE LAST AMATI.

THE fortune, the renown, the glory of a man often depends on the street that he takes in leaving his house. A thousand facts more or less dramatic in history, prove the truth of this observation.

Baillot, who was decorated with the title of the Cæsar of Violins, in distinction from that Nestor of instrumentmakers, Alexandre Boucher, surnamed the Alexander of Violins, was perfectly convinced that good-luck of every kind depends on the chance of a road, and he had his reasons for thinking so.

In January, 1811, Baillot had strayed into one of the most populous and least salubrious streets of the Faubourg Saint Marceau. In the middle of the Rue Mouffetard, threading his way through a labyrinth of hackney-coaches, carts, and drays, crossing in every direction, stunned by the oaths of the drivers, the crack of their whips, the neighing of horses and clamor of passengers, he threw himself heedlessly between two vehicles passing in opposite directions. By agility and daring he cleared the dangerous straight, and reached the other side of the street; but this success cost him dear, like all successes in this world-a piece of iron projecting from a dray had caught one of his coat-tails, and Baillot, hardly out of the ambulant Thermopyle, from which he had come off cheaper than the Spartan Leonidas, was apprised by an honest vendor of rabbit-skins, that, in order to be quite in the fashion of the Faubourg Saint Marceau, i.e., en Carmagnole, he

had only to sacrifice his remaining coattail.

However much of a philosopher we may be, and however free from prejudices on the subject of dress, it is unpleasant, even in the Faubourg Saint Marceau, to be walking in a costume that has no name in any language.

The musician, coat-tail in hand, and escorted by a squadron of little urchins, gravely advanced in streets unknown, even to the Parisians, seeking to escape the hail of witticisms, and looking intently for a tailor's sign. But this was useless trouble, for tailors and shoemakers were scarce then in the Faubourg Saint Marceau. Baillot would willingly have cried, not like the king of England, "My kingdom for a horse!" but, "A concert for a needleful of silk!"

Baillot was thus in great perplexity, when he espied in a narrow, repulsive, and solitary street, a shop, the dirty front of which was panoplied with old rags, its worm-eaten shelves offering heaps of old iron, wrecks of ancient pottery, a thousand nameless utensils, and a complete museum of boots and shoes from the soulier à la poulaine of Charles VI., to the escarpins of the Marquis de l'Eil de Boeuf, and to the turned-down café-au-lait colored boots of the dandies of the Directory. In this bazaar of the decrepid elegance of our ancestors, a woman, still young, was sewing, amid three children, whose health had not suffered apparently from the mephitic vapors of the street or musty shop. Never oasis, never grove of palms and nopals, appeared more delightful to the gaze of the traveller, bewildered in the burning sands of the Sahara, than the crazy establishment of this merchant of Carlovingian knickknacks, to the unfortunate musician, who still grasped, not the flute of Pan, but the tail of his frock-coat.

Baillot intrepidly entered the smokebegrimed shop.

"Mon Dieu, madame!" he said, in that harmonious voice which was his when not leading his orchestra, "I have just met with a little accident; a vehicle passing has caught my coat, and I would like to find some one who could give it a stitch for me. Will you have the kindness to direct me?" And accompanying these words with a grace

ful bow, Baillot showed the unfortunate proof of his exordium.

"I could hardly direct you to any one for this little job," replied the young woman, repressing her mirth, "but if you do not require too much skill in the workmanship-"

"Oh, Mon Dieu, no, nothing more than a stitch just strong enough to hold it in place until I find a carriage."

"Oh, if that be all, sir, I can offer you my services, and will do it no worse than I can help. Take off your coat, sir, and sit here; it will soon be ready." Such willingness rejoiced the musician's heart: this woman's voice possessed for his ear the melody of an Eolian harp, and no fantasia of Beethoven's, no cantata of Mozart's, no majestic recitative of Glück's, could have charmed him so much at this moment.

The children, on a sign from their mother, drew up a venerable arm-chair, whose unequal feet supported, in rickety majesty, a tapestried back-piece, on which some aristocratic hand, contemporaneous with Madame de Pompadour, had retraced the pretty fable de la Fontaine, entitled the Fox with his tail cut off. Human malignity was not guilty of this point-blank allusion, but chance is often a great mystifier.

The musician cast himself at his own risk and peril into this chair, which had thus received into its arms full many an aching spine. But its long-suffering nature did not hold good against this new assault, and a significant crack betrayed its decrepitude. Recalled to circumspection by fear of a fall, the musician retrenched himself in such sobriety of motion and gesture, that an antiquary of this quarter of the Jardin des Plantes might have compared him to one of those royal mummies, which are discovered from time to time in the sands about the pyramid of Ghizeh. Behold, then, Baillot installed in his shirt-sleeves in the centenary arm-chair, like a Roman senator at the approach of the Gauls, and allowing only his eyes to wander curiously over this Capharnaum, on objects the most surprised to find themselves together, a poetry of chaos, burlesque mosaic of fashion's revolution, the history of everything and the history of nothing.

While the artist is absorbed in reflec

tions suggested by these relics of so many generations, the young woman works quickly and skilfully, her needle fairly flying. If Baillot from time to time asks her a question about some rare object in this antiquarian museum, she replies tersely, politely, without taking her eyes off her work, and with her brief answers makes sensible and just reflections. The artist listens, pleased, and still more interested, when to his question, whether these three children form all her family, she replies that she has also three younger ones.

"Is it possible? And have you no other means than the profits, very small, I should suppose, of this establishment ?"

"Ah, sir, my husband works at his trade as a joiner, and I with my needle. In good years, we earn enough between us to make the two ends meet, but when bread is so dear and our trade is dull, as at this time, we have hard work to raise our family." Then, as if she feared she might be led to say more than she wished on this point, she immediately resumed: "Do not be too impatient, sir; the work is nearly done, and you will have your coat in a few minutes." The artist understood this modest reserve of poverty, and silently continued with his eyes his journey round the shop.

Ten minutes had hardly passed, when the seamstress rose, and shaking off with gentle care the shreds of cloth and thread that stuck to her, handed to Baillot his coat so neatly mended, that it would have been difficult for a tailor to have concealed with more art the unfortunate lesion.

"In truth, madame, you have a fairy talent, and I cannot be too grateful,” he added, putting his hand in his pocket, "for your skill and your most amiable courtesy."

"Nothing, sir. I am happy to have been able to render you this little service," and as Baillot seemed disposed to insist-"You would disoblige me, sir," with an accent of wounded dignity, and withdrawing a few paces. "Must we not help one another ?" she added. Baillot was tempted to exclaim with Molière,

"Where the deuce is disinterestedness going to perch?"

The musician was obliged to yield to his hostess, but his ingenious liberality caught sight of a violin hanging from the ceiling, where it seemed to have been placed on purpose to serve the designs of a multitude of spiders, whose webs extending on all sides, in capricious arabesques, from the instrument as a centre, formed a diaphanous cover for it.

"At least, madame, you will not refuse to sell me that old violin; I am a musician, and indulge the fancy of making a collection of the instruments of my profession in all their varieties."

"Ah, as for that, sir, I become merchant again, and wish no better than to sell," answered the young woman, smil ing.

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This violin, which we found here in purchasing the stock, is, many persons have told me, an object of value."

"That would not surprise me, madame. The fate of instruments sometimes resembles that of men; the greater their worth, the more they are exposed to extinction in obscurity and dust. How much for this violin ?"

"Just fifty cents, sir," replied the vender, who, during Baillot's philosophical reflection, had had time to take down the instrument, and to dust it with the corner of her apron.

"Very well, here are five francs." And as the poor woman sought in the bottom of her pockets some change to return him, Baillot hastened to say,

"What you will not allow me to offer you as a slight compensation for the time you have spent for me, you will not prevent me from giving your children to buy them some spice cakes." And without awaiting an answer, the artist, armed with his violin, left the indigent shop, and quickly disappeared in the crooked little streets of the Faubourg Saint Marceau, streets that he now threaded proud as a peacock, and leaving behind him the contrite mien of that fox upon whose effigy he had been seated.

A more attentive examination of his purchase such as he could make while walking in the street-convinced Baillot that the instrument which he had at first considered a mere relic, might have a far higher value in the eyes of an archæologist, of an amateur, or an artist. NEW SERIES-VOL. VI. No. 4.

The brown hue of this violin attested its old age; but when, with the back of his forefinger, Baillot lightly tapped the sides of this cavernous body, it rendered a sound mellow as the dream of a spirit that might wake by the restoration of its sounding-board and strings, after more than a century of slumber. The ovoid form of its keys, the whimsical arch of its bow, struck him forcibly; but a still livelier feeling absorbed him, when, through the dirt encrusted on its handle, he perceived microscopic paintings of a precious finish that could have only been bestowed by the magic pencils of the Tintoret or Čarrachi.

And

Thus preoccupied, Baillot, who was walking at random, raised his eyes to reconnoitre, and beheld himself on the frontiers of the Faubourg St. Germain, in the Rue Mazarine. There, almost in front of a tennis-court (the last remaining in Paris, where, under Henri II., there were more than a hundred of them), our artist's eye fell on the obscure shop of a musical instrument-maker, "Fairy luck," said he, "if I should get. my violin dressed up again in this other cavern. In fact, I risk no great things, and an invalid fiddle must feel quite at home in this venerable chiaro-oscuro. If all that glitters is not gold, so all that looks dull is not lead. Behind the cobwebs of this shop glows, perhaps, a spark of Stradivarian genius." without further deliberation, he entered. In the front part of the shop some flutes were strung along, five or six old, spavined mandolins, a number of church serpents, the black leather of which was peeling off in shreds, two pairs of cymbals, dating back, doubtless, to the triumphal entry of the ambassadors of the king of Siam into Paris toward the end of the seventeenth century, three contrabasses, and many bassos, viols, guitars, and violins. The back of the shop, lighted day and night by a sepulchral lamp, was furnished, moreover, with a large and long oaken counter, dating by its color of ebony, its sculpture, and majestic arrangement, to the reign of Francis I., an epoch so dear to the fine arts.

"It is written," thought Baillot in passing the threshold, "that I am vowed all this day to antiquities. Hollo! some one," he called, after

31

several steps without seeing a living soul.

"What does the gentleman wish ?" said a tall lad, who suddenly rose like a spectre inside the counter, holding in his arms a dog that barked doubtless the same question at the visitor so bold as to enter this Thebaid.

"I desire,” replied the musician, "to have this instrument repaired." And Baillot raised his violin high enough for the youth encamped like a picket in the counter, and who seemed to have no idea of moving, to be fully edified on the reason of the unwonted entry of a customer into this atrium of Terpsichore.

"I see what it is," said the young man. "I will call M. Crépinel. Take a seat, if you please, sir."

"And where, then?" asked Baillot, who looking around him saw not the ghost of a chair.

"Here, sir; here." And the tall youth, without leaving the counter from which he seemed to be inseparable, pointed to the artist half-a-dozen stools covered with red Utrecht velvet, arranged like soldiers, port arms, on the left of the shop, opposite the immense counter. B. took a seat, and the youth began to shout, "Monsieur Crépinel, Monsieur Crépinel, to the shop, if you please!"

After waiting some moments, no one having answered, the young man, on a gesture of impatience from the visitor, called louder than the first time, "Monsieur Crépinel, Monsieur Crépinel, to the shop, if you please!"

"If, as appearances would indicate, the instrument-maker is as deaf as a post, it must be confessed that I have made a bright hit in my choice of a workman," thought Baillot; then he added aloud: "It seems to me that instead of making yourself hoarse in calling to M. Crépinel, you ought to go and find him."

"I should long ago have done what you advise, sir, had not Mlle. Cecile, my patron's daughter, who has gone to spend the day out with her mother, charged me not to leave her pet Mirza, who has had the fancy to litter deunr the counter five pretty pups, as you see here." And the ingenuous youth exhibited, one after the other, the five proofs of Mirza's fecundity, to the great despite of this canine mother, who made known

her disapprobation by a subdued and prolonged growl.

"You see, sir," resumed the young man, "that it is hardly possible for me to leave Mirza, who will not leave her little ones. I must obey my orders as she obeys her nature. Monsieur Crépinel, Monsieur Crépinel, to the shop, if you please."

This cry, periodically uttered by Mir za's guardian, at last rendered Baillot impatient.

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Since you are riveted there by your countersign, and your appeals to the master are lost in the air," said Baillot, "I will return at a more opportune moment;" and he rose to depart.

"Do not move," the tall youth has tened to say, placing with a mysterious air his index and middle fingers on his mouth. "I see what it is; M. Crépinel is playing his game of chess with our neighbor the armorer. He is hard to beat at that game, is my patron. He is the pupil of that famous M. Danican who had so fine a reputation as chess-player and composer of music some thirty or forty years ago under the name of Philidor. But if M. Crépinel has the passion for chess, he is a still greater enthusiast in his art, as you shall judge, sir, for I am going in quest of him; it will only be a moment."

The tall youth in fact left his station at the counter, set the slut down with a paternal care, took one of those long iron bars that serve to close shop-fronts from under the counter, shouldered it like a gun, and advanced, picking his steps, through the windings of the backshop encumbered with old lutes and old harps. He was absent a few minutes, and returned with an air of triumph, still armed with his iron bar, but bearing, by excess of solicitude, Mirza under his left arm. "M. Crépinel is coming," said he, in a low voice, and seating himself again inside his counter.

Hardly had he spoken, when a little bald man, dry as catgut, his body enveloped in a green leather apron clasped round his loins by a copper lyre, appeared before the counter. Some sounds, struck by his slippers from the dismantled harps and lutes upon the floor, had apprised the musician's practised ear of the approach of this high-priest of harmony. "I thought the house was on fire,