count, who had full confidence in his valet, and ing with the lance, now assisting the artillery, felt assured that he was in no way concerned now superintending the various military enin the matter, derived but little satisfaction gines for heaving masses of stone or wood; from this account, which only served to throw but during the period above-mentioned he a fresh veil of mystery over the transaction; was lost to all sense of royal glory, and had and it was only some time afterwards, and given himself up entirely to hunting and all after long investigation, that he succeeded in sorts of pleasures. discovering the real facts of the case.

Beautte, the jeweller, had a secret understanding with one of the servants of the hotel at which the Comte de Saint-Cricq lodged in Geneva. This man, taking advantage of the hurried preparations for the count's departure, contrived to slip the casket unperceived into one of his portmanteaus, and the ingenious jeweller had thus succeeded in making the Director-General of Customs one of the most successful smugglers in the kingdom!

THE TRUE HISTORY OF AGNES SOREL.
BY R. H. HORNE, Author of "ORION," ETC.

A

GNES SOREL was born in 1409, at the village of Fromenteau, in Touraine. Her father was the Seigneur de St. Gérand, a gentleman attached to the house of the Count de Clermont. At the age of fifteen, she was placed as maid of honor to Isabel of Lorraine, duchess of Anjou, and accompanied this princess when she went to Paris, in 1431.

At this period, Agnes Sorel was considered to be the most beautiful woman of her day. Her conversation and wit were equal to her beauty. In the "Histoire des Favorites" she is said to have been noble-minded, full of generosity, with sweetness of manners, and sincerity of heart. The same writer adds that every body fell in love with her, from the king to the humblest officers. Charles VII. became passionately attached to her; and in order to insure her constant presence at court, he placed her as maid of honor to the queen. The amour was conducted with secrecy; but the fact became manifest by the favors which the king lavished upon the relations of Agnes, while she herself lived in great magnificence amidst a very poor court. She was fond of splendor, and has been quaintly described by Monstrelet as "having enjoyed all the pleasures of life, in wearing rich clothes, furred robes, and golden chains of precious stones, and whatever else she desired." When she visited Paris, in attendance upon the queen, the splendor and expense of Agnes were so excessive that the people murmured greatly; whereupon the proud beauty exclaimed against the Parisians as churls.

He was recalled by Agnes to a sense of what was due to his kingdom. She told him, one day, says Brantome, that when she was a girl, an astrologer had predicted that she would be loved by one of the most valiant kings of Christendom; that when His Majesty Charles VII. had done her this honor, she thought, of course, he was the valiant king who had been predicted; but now, finding he was so weak, and had so little care as to what became of himself and his affairs, she saw that she had made a mistake, and that this valiant prince could not be Charles, but the King of England. Saying these words, Agnes rose, and bowing reverentially to the king, asked leave to retire to the court of the English king, since the prophecy pointed at him. Charles," she said, "was about to lose his crown, and Henry to unite it to his By this rebuke the king was much affected. He gave up his hunting, left his gardens for the field of battle, and succeeded in driving the English out of France. This circumstance occasioned Francis I. to make the following verses, which, it is said, he wrote under a portrait of Agnes:—

"Plus de louange et d'honneur tu mérite,
La cause étant de France recouvrer,
Que ce que peut dedans un cloître ouvrer,
Close nonnain, ou bien devot hermite."

The king lavished gifts and honors upon Agnes. He built a château for her at Loches; he gave her, besides the comté de Penthievre, in Bretagne, the lordships of Roche Servière, of Issoudun, in Berri, and the Château de Beauté, at the extremity of the wood of Vincennes, that she might be, as he said, “in deed and in name the Queen of Beauty." It is be lieved that she never made a bad use of her influence with the king for any political purpo ses or unkind private feelings; nevertheless, the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XI.) conceived an implacable jealousy against her, and carried his resentment so far, on one occasion, as to give her a blow.

She retired, in 1445, to Loches, and for nearly five years declined appearing at court; but the king's love for her still continued, and he took many journeys into Touraine to visit her. But eventually the queen, who had never forgotten her noble counsels to the king, which had roused him from his lethargy, persuaded her to return to court.

During the time that the English were actually in possession of a great part of France, it was in vain that the queen (Mary of Anjou) endeavored to rouse her husband from his lethargy. That the king was not deficient in energy and physical courage, is evident from the manner in which he signalized himself on various occasions. At the siege of Montereau in 1437, (according to the Chronicle de Charles VII. par M. Alain Chartier, Nevers, 1594,) he rushed to the assault, now thrust-pair decayed churches.

The queen appears to have felt no jealousy, but to have had a regard for her. It seems, also, that Agnes had become very popular, partly from her beauty and wit, partly because she was considered in a great measure, to have saved France, and partly because she distributed large sums in alms to the poor, and to re

After the taking of Rouen, and the entire expulsion of the English from France, the king took up his winter-quarters in the Abbey of Jumiège. Agnes hastened to the Château de Masnal la Belle, a league distant from this abbey, for the purpose of warning the king of a conspiracy. The king only laughed at the intelligence; but the death of Agnes Sorel, which immediately followed, gives some grounds for crediting the truth of the information which she communicated. At this place Agnes, still beautiful, and in perfect health, was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which carried her off. It is believed that she was poisoned. Some affirm that it was effected by direction of the Dauphin; others accuse Jacques Cœur, the king's goldsmith (as the master of the treasury was then called), and others attribute it to female jealousy.

same view, but nearly the whole account is copied verbatim from Monstrelet, without acknowledgment.

The heart and intestines of Agnes were buried at Jumiège. Her body was placed in the centre of the choir of the collegiate church of the Château de Loches, which she had greatly enriched.

Her tomb was in existence at Loches, in 1792. It was of black marble. The figure of Agnes was in white marble; her head resting upon a lozenge, supported by angels, and two lambs were at her feet.

The writer of the life of Agnes Sorel in the "Biographie Universelle," having access to printed books and MSS. of French history which are not in the public libraries of this country, the following statements are taken from that work: the writer does not give his authorities.

The canons of the church pretended to be scandalized at having the tomb of Agnes placed in their choir, and begged permission of Louis XI. to have it removed. "I consent," replied the king, "provided you give up all you have received from her bounty."

The poets of the day were profuse in their praises of the memory of Agnes. One of the most memorable of these is a poem by Baïf, printed at Paris in 1573. In 1789 the library of the chapter of Loches possessed a manuscript containing nearly a thousand Latin sonnets in praise of Agnes, all acrostics, and made by a canon of that city.

The account given of her death by Monstrelet is to the following effect: Agnes was suddenly attacked by a dysentery which could not be cured. She lingered long, and employed the time in prayer and repentance; she often, as he relates, called upon Mary Magdalen, who had also been a sinner, and upon God and the blessed Virgin for aid. After receiving the sacrament, she desired the book of prayers to be brought her, in which she had written with her own hand the verses of St. Barnard, and these she repeated. She then made many gifts, which were put down in writing: and these, including alms and the payment of her servants, amounted to 60,000 crowns. The fair Agnes, the once proud beauty, perceiving her end approaching, and now feeling a disgust to life proportioned to the fulness of her Agnes Sorel had three daughters by Charles past enjoyment of all its gayeties, vanities, and VII., who all received dowries, and were marpleasures, said to the Lord de la Tremouille ried at the expense of the crown. They reand others, and in the presence of all her dam-ceived the title of daughters of France, the sels, that our insecure and worldly life was but a foul ordure. She then requested her confessor to give her absolution, according to a form she herself dictated, with which he complied. After this, she uttered a loud shriek, and gave up the ghost. She died on Monday, the 9th day of February, 1449, about six o'clock in the afternoon, in the fortieth year of her age.

A marble bust of her was long preserved at the Château de Chinon, and is now placed in the Muséum des Augustins.

name given at that time to the natural daughters of the kings. An account of the noble families into which they married, together with the honors bestowed upon the brother of Agnes, will be found in Moreri's "Dictionnaire Historique."

From the London Examiner.

PROSPECTS OF AFRICAN COLONIZATION.
FRICA has never been propitious to Eu-

This account, though bearing every appear-AF

ropean settlement or colonization, but quite the contrary. The last founded state of the Anglo-American Union, of about two years' growth, is alone, at this moment, worth more than all that has been effected by the European race in Africa in two-and-twenty centuries. The most respectable product of African colonization is a Cape boor, and this is certainly not a finished specimen of humanity. Assuredly, for the last three hundred years, Africa has done nothing for the nations of Europe but seduce them into crime, folly, and

ance of probability, is yet open to some
doubts, from the manifestation of a tendency,
on the part of Monstrelet, to give a coloring to
the event, and to the character of Agnes
Sorel. He even attempts to throw a doubt
upon her having been the king's mistress,
treating the fact as a mere scandal. He says
that the affection of the king was attributable
to her good sense, her wit, her agreeable man-
ners, and gayety, quite as much as to her
beauty. This was, no doubt, the case; but it
hardly helps the argument of the historian.
Monstrelet finds it difficult, however, to dis-extravagance.
pose of the children that she had by the king:
he admits that Agnes had a daughter which
she said was the king's, but that he denied it.
The compilation by Denys Codefroy takes the

VOL III-NO. IIL-26

The Romans were the first European settlers in Africa; it was at their very door, and they held it for eight centuries. Now, there is not left in it hardly a trace of Roman civili

zation; certainly fewer, at all events, than the
Arabs have left in Spain. The Vandal occu-
pation of Mediterranean Africa lasted only
half a century. We should not have known
that Vandals had ever set their feet on the
Continent but for the written records of civi-
lized men.
There is nothing Vandal there,
unless Vandalism in the abstract. The Dutch
came next, in order of time, in another portion
of Africa, and we have already alluded to the
indistinct "spoor" which they have left behind
them after an occupation of a hundred and
fifty years.

The English have settled in two different quarters of the African continent, one of them within eight degrees of the equatorial line, and the other some thirty-four south of it. The first costs us civil establishments, forts, garrisons, and squadrons included (for out of Africa and its people comes the supposed necessity for the squadron), a good million a year. The most valuable article we get from tropical Africa is the oil of a certain palm, which contributes largely towards an excise duty of about a million and a half a year, levied on what has been justly called a second necessary of life-to wit, soap.

North America. The local revenue of Alge ria is half a million sterling; but the annual cost of the experiment to France amounts to eight times as much as the revenue; and it has been computed that the whole charge to the French nation, from first to last (it goes on at the same rate), has been sixty million pounds. This is without exception the most monstrous attempt at colonization that has ever been made by man. If war should unfortunately arise with any maritime power, the matter will be still worse. At least one hundred thousand of the flower of the French army will then be worse than lost to France. For, pent up as it will be in a narrow strip of eighty miles broad along the shore of the Mediterranean, it may be blockaded from the sea by any superior naval power; and assuredly will be so, from the side of the desert, by a native one. To hold Algeria is to cripple France.

What, then, is the cause of the fatality which has thus ever attended African colonization by Europeans? In tropical Africa, the heat and insalubrity, and consequently the total unfitness for European life, are causes quite sufficient to account for the failure; and the failure has been eminent with French, Dutch, English, and Danes. But this will not account for want of success in temperate Africa, whe ther beyond the northern or southern tropie. The climate of this last, especially, is very

same as their own, ought not to be hurtful to the constitutions of southern Europeans.

We have been in possession of the southern promontory of Africa for above fifty years. In this time, besides its conquest twice over from a European power, and in addition to fleets and armies, it has cost us, in mere self-good; and that of the first being nearly the defence against savages, three million pounds, while at this moment we are engaged in the same kind of defence, with the tolerable certainty of incurring another million. No one will venture to say that this sum alone does not far exceed the value of the fee simple and Sovereignty of the southern promontory of Africa. What we get from it consists chiefly in some purgative aloes, a little indifferent wool, and a good deal of execrable wine, on the importation of which we pay a virtual bounty! As for our subjects in this part of the African continent, they amount to about two hundred thousand, and are composed of Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Malays, Hottentots, Bushmen, Gaikas, Tambookies, Amagarkas, Zulas, and Amazulas, speaking a very Babel of African, Asiatic, and European tongues, perilous to delicate organic structures even to listen to.

Now for French African colonization. If we have not been very wise ourselves, our neighbors, who have never been eminently happy in their attempts at colonization, have been much less so. They have been in possession of an immense territory in Algeria for twenty years, and have now about fifty thousand colonists there, with an army which has generally not been less than one hundred thousand, so that every colonist requires two soldiers to keep his throat from being cut, and his property from being robbed or stolen. This is about ten times the regular army that protects twenty-eight millions of AngloAmericans from nearly all the savages of

Drought, and the intermixture of deserts and wastes of sand with fertile lands, after the manner of a chess-board, without the regularity, is, of course, unpropitious to coloni zation, but cannot prevent its advancement, as we see by the progress of our Australian col onies. These causes, however, combined with the character of the native or congenial inha bitants of the country, have been quite sufficient to prove insuperable obstacles to a pros perous colonization. A nomad and wandering population has in fact been generated. incapable either of advancement or amalgamation, having just a sufficient knowledge of the arts to be dangerous neighbors, not capable of be ing driven to a distance from the settlers, nor likely to be destroyed by gunpowder or brandy. The lion and shepherd recede before the white man in southern Africa, but not the Caffir.

The inhabitant of northern Africa, whether Arabian or Numidian, is, in relation to an European colony, only a more formidable Caffir, from greater numbers and superior skill. Heretofore, a garrison of five thousand men at the most has been sufficient to profect the Cape colony, although six thousand miles distant from England. The territory of Algeria, of about the same extent, requires about twenty times that number, although within a day's sail of France. Arab and Numidian seem to be alike untamable both by position and by race. The Arabs (and it shows they were capable of better things) were a civilized

and industrious people while in the fair re-expect when I set up for a critic! What augions of Spain; driven from it, they have de- thor ever lived that did not fly into a passion generated into little more than predatory shep- -even with his own father, if his father preherds, or freebooters; but they are only the sumed to say-Cut out!' Pacem imploro—” more formidable to civilized men on this very account.

What, then, will be the fate of the French and English colonies in temperate Africa? We confess we can hardly venture to predict. Assuredly, neither north nor south Africa will ever give birth to a great or flourishing community, such as North America has done, and as Australia and New Zealand will certainly do. The Caffirs may possibly be driven to a distance, after a long course of trouble and expense; but the Arabs and Kabyles are as inexpungable as the wandering tribes of Arabia Petræa or Tartary. With them, neither expulsion, nor extermination, nor amalgamation is practicable. Very likely France and England will get heartily tired of paying yearly millions for their unavailable deserts, and there is no knowing what they may be driven to do in such an extremity. At all events, we may safely assert that France would have saved sixty millions of pounds, and the interminable prospect of a proportional annual expenditure, had she confined herself to the town and fortress of Algiers; and England would have been richer and wiser, had she kept within the bounds of the original Dutch colony. The best thing we ourselves can do with our extra-tropical Africa, is to leave the colonists to govern, and also to defend themselves from all but enemies by sea: that the French, unfortunately, cannot do.

I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal. Cut it out!" Stops the action, sir!" said my father, dogmatically.

66

66

"Action! But a novel is not a drama." No, it is a great deal longer-twenty times as long, I dare say,” replied Mr. Caxton with a sigh.

Mrs. Caxton.-"My dear Austin, I am sure Pisistratus did not mean to offend you, and I have no doubt he will take your

Pisistratus, (hastily.)-" Advice for the future, certainly. I will quicken the action and-" "Go on with the Novel," whispered Roland, looking up from his eternal account-book. "We have lost £200 by our barley!"

Therewith I plunged my pen into the ink, and my thoughts into the "Fair Shadowland."

CHAPTER II.

"HALT!" cried a voice; and not a little surprised was Leonard when the stranger who had accosted him the preceding evening got into the chaise.

"Well," said Richard, "I am not the sort of man you expected, eh! Take time to recover yourself." And with these words Richard drew forth a book from his pocket, threw himself back, and began to read. Leonard stole many a glance at the acute, hardy, handsome face of his companion, and gradually recognized a family likeness to poor John, in whom, despite age and infirmity, the traces of no common share of physical beauty were still evident. And, with that quick link in ideas which mathematical aptitude bestows, the young student at once conjectured that he saw before him his uncle Richard. He had the discretion, however, to leave that gentleman free to choose his own time for introducing himself, and silently revolved the new thoughts produced by the novelty of his situation. Mr. Richard read with notable quickness-sometimes cutting the leaves of the book with his penknife, sometimes tearing them open with his forefinger, sometimes skipping whole pages altogether. Thus he galloped to the end of the volumeflung it aside-lighted his cigar, and began to talk.

He put many questions to Leonard relative to his rearing, and especially to the mode by which he had acquired his education; and Leonard, confirmed in the idea that he was replying to a kinsman, answered frankly.

Richard did not think it strange that Leonard should have acquired so much instruction with so little direct tuition. Richard Avenel himself had been tutor to himself. He had lived too long with our go-ahead brethren, who stride the world on the other side the Atlantic with the seven-leagued boots of the Giantkiller, not to have caught their glorious fever "Well, sir-well! I think my Discourse for reading. But it was for a reading wholly upon Knowledge has much to do with the sub- different from that which was familiar to Leonject-is vitally essential to the subject; does ard. The books he read must be new; to not stop the action-only explains and eluci-read old books would have seemed to him godates the action. And I am astonished, sir, that you, a scholar, and a cultivator of knowledge-"

"There-there!" cried my father, deprecatingly ; “ I yield—I yield. What better could I

ing back in the world. He fancied that new books necessarily contained new ideas—a common mistake-and our lucky adventurer was the man of his day.

Tired with talking, he at length chucked the

book he had run through to Leonard, and, taking out a pocket-book and pencil, amused himself with calculations on some detail of his business, after which he fell into an absorbed train of thought-part pecuniary, part ambitious.

Leonard found the book interesting; it was one of the numerous works, half-statistic, halfdeclamatory, relating to the condition of the working-classes, which peculiarly distinguish our century, and ought to bind together rich and poor, by proving the grave attention which modern society bestows upon all that can affect the welfare of the last.

"Dull stuff-theory-claptrap," said Richard, rousing himself from his reverie at last: "it can't interest you."

chaise, and touched their hats. Richard returned the salutation with a nod-a nod less gracious than condescending. The chaise turned rapidly to the left, and stopped before a smart lodge, very new, very white, adorned with two Doric columns in stucco, and flanked by a large pair of gates. "Hollo!" cried the postboy, and cracked his whip.

Two children were playing before the lodge. and some clothes were hanging out to dry on the shrubs and pales round the neat little building.

"Hang those brats! they are actually playing," growled Dick. "As I live, the jade has been washing again! Stop, boy." During this soliloquy, a good-looking young woman had rushed from the door-slapped the children, as "All books interest me, I think," said Leon-catching sight of the chaise, they ran towards ard, "and this especially; for it relates to the working-class, and I am one of them."

the house-opened the gates, and, dropping a curtsey to the ground, seemed to wish that she could drop into it altogether, so frightened and so trembling seemed she to shrink from the wrathful face which the master now put out of the window.

"Did I tell you, or did I not," said Dick, "that I would not have these horrid disreputa ble clubs of yours playing just before my lodge

Please, sir-"

"You were yesterday, but you mayn't be tomorrow," answered Richard good-humoredly, and patting him on the shoulder. "You see, my lad, that it is the middle class which ought to govern the country. What the book says about the ignorance of country magistrates is very good; but the man writes pretty considerable trash when he wants to regulate the num-gates?" ber of hours a free-born boy should work at a factory-only ten hours a-day-pooh! and so lose two to the nation! Labor is wealth: and if we could get men to work twenty-four hours a-day, we should be just twice as rich. If the march of civilization is to proceed," continued Richard, loftily, "men, and boys too, must not lie a-bed doing nothing all night, sir." Then with a complacent tone-" We shall get to the twenty-four hours at last; and, by gad, we must, or we shan't flog the Europeans as we do now."

On arriving at the inn at which Richard had first made acquaintance with Mr. Dale, the coach by which he had intended to perform the rest of the journey was found to be full. Richard continued to perform the journey in post chaises, not without some grumbling at the expense, and incessant orders to the postboys to make the best of the way. "Slow country this, in spite of all its brag," said he-"very slow. Time is money-they know that in the States; for why, they are all men of business there. Always slow in a country where a parcel of lazy idle lords, and dukes, and baronets, seem to think time is pleasure.'

Towards evening the chaise approached the confines of a very large town, and Richard began to grow fidgety. His easy cavalier air was abandoned. He withdrew his legs from the window, out of which they had been luxuriously dangling; pulled down his waistcoat; buckled more tightly his stock: it was clear that he was resuming the decorous dignity that belongs to state. He was like a monarch who, after travelling happy and incognito, returns to his capital. Leonard divined at once, that they were nearing their journey's end.

Humble foot-passengers now looked at the

"Don't answer me. And did I tell you, or did I not, that the next time I saw you making a drying-ground of my lilacs, you should go out, neck and crop-"

"Oh, please, sir-"

"You leave my lodge next Saturday: drive on, boy. The ingratitude and insolence of those common people are disgraceful to human nature," muttered Richard, with an accent of the bitterest misanthropy.

The chaise wheeled along the smoothest and freshest of gravel roads, and through fields of the finest land, in the highest state of culti vation. Rapid as was Leonard's survey, his rural eye detected the signs of a master in the art agronomial. Hitherto he had considered the Squire's model farm as the nearest approach to good husbandry he had seen: for Jackeymo's finer skill was developed rather on the minute scale of market-gardening than what can fairly be called husbandry. But the Squire's farm was degraded by many old fash ioned notions, and concessions to the whim of the eye, which would not be found in model farms now-a-days,-large tangled hedgerows, which, though they constitute one of the beauties most picturesque in old England, make sad deductions from produce; great trees, overshadowing the corn, and harboring the birds; little patches of rough sward left to waste; and angles of woodland running into fields, exposing them to rabbits, and blocking out the sun. These and such like blots on a gentleman's agriculture, common-sense and Giacomo had made clear to the acute comprehension of Leonard. No such faults were perceptible in Richard Avenel's domain. The fields lay in broad divisions, the hedges were clipped and