comrades, picked off on the previous march. We are not told that the crime was brought home to the perpetrators, or visited upon them. If it was, Mr. Borrer makes no mention of the fact, but passes on, as if the burning of a few villages were a trifle scarce worth notice. How were the Kabyles to distinguish between the acts of the private soldier and of the epauleted chief? Their submission had just been accepted, and friendly words spoken to them: their sheikh rode beside the gray-haired leader of the Christians, and marked the apparent subordination of the white-faced soldiery. Suddenly a gross violation occurred of the amicable understanding so recently come to. How persuade them that the submissive and disciplined soldiers they saw around them would venture such breach of faith without the sanction or connivance of their commander ? The offence is that of an insignificant sentinal, but the dirt falls upon the beard of Bugeaud; and confidence in the promises of the lying European is thoroughly and for ever destroyed.

A colony, whose mode of acquisition and of government, up to the present time, reflects so little credit upon French arms and administrators, ought certainly to yield pecuniary results or advantages of some kind, which, in a mercenary point of view, might balance the account. France surely did not place her reputation for humanity and justice in the hands of Marshal Bugeaud and of others of his stamp, without anticipating some sort of compensation for its probable deterioration. Such expectations have hitherto been wholly unfulfilled; and we really see little chance of their probable or speedy realisation. The colony is as unpromising, as the colonists are inapt to improve it. The fact is, the work of colonisation has not begun. The French are utterly at a loss how to set about it. All kinds of systems have been proposed. Bugeaud has had his--that of military colonisation, which he maintained,

with characteristic stubbornness, in the teeth of public opinion, of the French government, of common sense, and even of possibility. He proposed to take, during ten years, one hundred and twenty thousand recruits from the conscription, and to settle them in Africa, with their wives. He estimated the expense of this scheme at twelve millions sterling. His opponents stated its probable cost at four times that sum. Whichever estimate was correct, it is not worth while examining the plan, which for a moment was entertained by a government commission, but has since been completely abandoned. It presupposes an extraordinary and arbitrary stretch of power on the part of the government that should adopt such a system of compulsory colonisation. We are surprised to find Mr. Borrer inclined to favour the exploded plan. General Lamoricière (the terrible Bour-à-boi of the Arabs,*) proposed to give premiums to agriculturists settling in Algeria, at the rate of twenty-five per cent. of their expenses of clearing, irrigation, construction, and plantation. But M. Lamoricière --a very practical man indeed, with his sabre in his fist, and at the head of his Zouaves-is a shallow theorist in matters of colonisation. The staff of surveyors, valuers, and referees essential to carry out his project, would alone have been a heavy additional charge on the unprofitable colony. "M. Lamoricière," says M. Desjobert, "was one of the warmest advocates of the occupation of Bougie," (a seaport of Kabylie,) “and partly directed, in 1833, that fatal expedition." (Fatal, M. Desjobert means, by reason of its subsequent cost in men and money. The town was taken by a small force on the 29th September, 1833.) "The soldiers were then told that their mission was agricultural rather than military, that they would have to handle the pick and the spade more frequently than the musket. The unfortunates have certainly handled pick and spade ; but

it was to dig in that immense cemetery which, each day, swallows up their comrades. Already, in 1836, General d'Erlon, ex-governor of Algiers, demanded the evacuation of Bougie, which had devoured in three years, three thousand men and seven millions of francs." The demand was not complied with, and Bougie has continued to consume more than its quota of the six thousand men at which M. Desjobert estimates the average annual loss, by disease alone, of the African army. Bougie has not flourished under the tricolor. In former times a city of great riches and importance, it still contained several thousand inhabitants when taken by the French. At the period of Mr. Borrer's visit, it reckoned a population of five hundred, exclusive of the garrison of twelve hundred men. To return, however, to the systems of colonisation. When the generals had had their say, it was the turn of the commissions; the commission of Africa, that of the Chamber of Deputies, &c. There was no lack of projects; but none of them answered. The colonial policy of the Orleans government was eminently shortsighted. This is strikingly shown in Mr. Borrer's 14th chapter, "A Word upon the Colony." Of the fertile plain of the Metidja, containing about a million and a half acres of arable and pasture land, a very small portion is cultivated. The French found a garden; they have made a desert. "Before the French occupation, vast tracts which now lie waste, sacrificed to palmetta and squills were cultivated by the Arabs, who grew far more corn than was required for their own consumption; whereas, now they grow barely sufficient: the consequence of which is, that the price of corn is enormous in Algiers at present." Land is cheap enough, but labour is dear, because the necessaries of life are so. Instead of making Algiers a free port, protection to French manufactures is the order of the day, and this has driven Arab commence to Tunis and Morocco. Rivalry with Englandthe feverish desire for colonies and for the supremacy of the seas-must unquestionably be ranked amongst the motives of the tenacious retention of such an expensive possession as

Algeria. And now the odious English cottons are an obstacle to the prosperity of the colony. To sell a few more bales of French calicoes and crates of French hardware, the wise men at Paris put an effectual check upon the progress of African agriculture. Here, if anywhere, free-trade might be introduced with advantage; in common necessaries at any rate, and for a few years, till the country became peopled, and the colonists had overcome the first difficulties of their position. It would make very little difference to Rouen and Lyons, whilst to the settlers it would practically work more good than would have been done them by M. Lamoricière's subvention, supposing this to have been adopted, and that the heavily-taxed agriculturist of France-in many parts of which country land pays but two and a half or three per cent.-had consented to pay additional imposts for the benefit of the agriculturists of Algeria. In the beginning, the notion of the French government was, that its new conquest would colonise itself unassisted; that there would be a natural and steady flow of emigrants from the mother country. In any case this expectation would probably have proved fallacious-at least it would never have been realised to the extent anticipated; but the small encouragement given to such emigration, rendered it utterly abortive. The "stream" of settlers proved a mere dribble. Security and justice, Mr. Thiers said, were all that France owed her colony. Even these two things were not obtained, in the full sense of the words. The centralisation system weighed upon Algeria. Everything was referred to Paris. Hence interminable correspondence and delays innumerable. În the year 1846, Mr. Borrer says, twenty-four thousand despatches were received by the civil administration from the chief bureau in the French capital, in exchange for twenty-eight thousand sent. Instead of imparting all possible celerity to the administrative forms requisite to the establishment of emigrants, these must often wait a year or more before they are put in possession of the land granted. Meanwhile they expend their resources, and are enervated by idleness and disease. The climate of

North Africa is ill-adapted to French constitutions. M. Desjobert has already told us the average loss of the army, and General Duvivier, in his Solution de la Question d'Algérie, fully corroborated his statements. "A man," said the general, "whose constitution is not in harmony with the climate of Africa, never adapts himself to it; he suffers, wastes away, and dies. The expression, that a mass of men who have been for some time in Africa have become inured to the climate, is inexact. They have not become inured to it; they have been decimated by death. The climate is a great sieve, which allows a rapid passage to everything that is not of a certain force." Supposing 100,000 men sent from France to Algeria for six years' service. At the end of that time, their loss by disease alone, at the rate of six per cent.-proved by M. Desjobert to be the annual average-would amount to upwards of 30,000, or to more than three-tenths of the whole. The emigrants fare no better. "They look for milk and honey," says Borrer: "they find palmetta and disease. The villages scattered about the Sahel or Massif of Algiers (a high ground at the back of the city, forming a rampart between the Metidja and the Mediterranean) are, with one or two exceptions, a type of desolation. Perched upon the most arid spots, distant from water, the poor tenants lie sweltering between sun and sirocco." A Mississippi swamp must be as eligible "squatting" ground as this-Arabs instead of alligators, and the Algerine fever in place of Yellow Jack. "At the gates of Algiers, in the villages of the Sahel," said the " Algérie" newspaper of the 22d December, 1845, "the colonists desert, driven away by hunger. If any remain, it is because they have no strength to move. In the plain of the Matidja, the misery and desolation are greater still. At Fondouck, in the last five months, 120 persons have died, out of a population of 280." The reporter to the Commission of the French budget of 1837 (Monsieur Bignon) admitted that "the results of the colonisation are almost negative." He could not obtain, he said, an estimate of the agricultural population. At the same

period, an Algiers newspaper (La France Algérienne) estimated the European agriculturists at 7000, twothirds of whom were mere marketgardeners.

It is unnecessary to multiply proofs; and we will here conclude this imperfect sketch of Franco-African colonisation, of its crimes, its errors, and its cost, by extracting a rather remarkable passage from a writer we have more than once referred to, and who, although perhaps disposed to view things in Algeria upon the black side, is yet deserving of credit, as well by his position as by reason of his painstaking research and, so far as we have verified them, accurate statistics.

"The colonists cannot deny," says Monsieur Desjobert in his Algérie en 1846, "and they admit:

"1°. That Europe alone maintains the 200,000 Europeans in Algeria. In 1846 we are compelled to repeat what General Bernard, minister of war, said in 1838: Algeria resembles a naked rock, which it is necessary to supply with everything, except air and water.'

"29. That so long as we remain in this precarious situation, a naval war, by interrupting the communications, would compromise the safety of our army. In 1846 we repeat M. Thiers' words, uttered in 1837: 'If war surprises you in the state of indicision in which you are, I say that the disgraceful evacuation of Africa will be inevitable.'

"M. Thiers did not speak the whole truth when he talked of evacuation. In such an extremity, evacuation would be impossible. Our army would perish of misery, and its remnant would fall into the hands of the enemy."

Another enemy than the Arabs is here evidently pointed at; that possible foe is now a friend to France, and we trust will long remain so. But on many accounts the sentences we haye just quoted are significant, as proceeding from the pen of a French deputy. They need no comment, and we shall offer none. We wait with interest to see if France's African colony prospers better under the Republic of 1848 than it did under the Monarchy of 1830.

AND my father pushed aside his books. O young reader, whoever thou art,or reader, at least, who hast been young-canst thou not remember some time, when, with thy wild troubles and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard, stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the threshold of home-come back to the four quiet walls, wherein thine elders sit in peace--and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before thee in the path of the passions-the generation of thy parents-(not so many years, perchance, remote from thine own)-how immovably far off, in its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks. That tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded thee have merged-the occupations that they have found sufficing for their happiness, by the fireside-in the armchair and corner appropriated to eachhow strangely they contrast thine own feverish excitement! And they make room for thee, and bid thee welcome, and then resettle to their hushed pursuits, as if nothing had happened! Nothing had happened! while in thy heart, perhaps, the whole world seems to have shot from its axis, all the elements to be at war! And you sit down, crushed by that quiet happiness which you can share no more,and smile mechanically, and look into the fire; and, ten to one, you say nothing till the time comes for bed, and you take up your candle, and creep miserably to your lonely room.

Now, if in a stage coach in the depth of winter, when three passengers are warm and snug, a fourth, all besnowed and frozen, descends from the outside and takes place amongst them, straightway all the three passengers shift their places, uneasily pull up their cloak collars, re-arrange their "comforters," feel indignantly a sensible loss of caloric-the intruder has

at least made a sensation. But if you had all the snows of the Grampians in your heart, you might enter unnoticed; take care not to tread on the toes of your opposite neighbour, and not a soul is disturbed, not a "comforter" stirs an inch! I had not slept a wink, I had not even laid down all that night--the night in which I had said farewell to Fanny Trevanionand the next morning, when the sun rose, I wandered out-where I know not. I have a dim recollection of long, gray, solitary streets--of the river, that seemed flowing in dull silence, away, far away, into some invisible eternity-trees and turf, and the gay voices of children. I must have gone from one end of the great Babel to the other; but my memory only became clear and distinct when I knocked, somewhere before noon, at the door of my father's house, and, passing heavily up the stairs, came into the drawing-room, which was the rendezvous of the little family, for, since we had been in London, my father had ceased to have his study apart, and contented himself with what he called a "corner"-a corner wide enough to contain two tables and a dumb waitter, with chairs à discretion all littered with books. On the opposite side of this capacious corner sat my uncle, now nearly convalescent, and he was jotting down, in his stiff military hand, certain figures in a little red accountbook--for you know already that my uncle Roland was, in his expenses, the most methodical of men.

My father's face was more benign than usual, for, before him lay a proof the first proof of his first work-his one work--the Great Book! Yes! it had positively found a press. And the first proof of your first work-ask any author what that is! My mother was out, with the faithful Mrs. Primmins, shopping or marketing no doubt; so, while the brothers were thus engaged, it was natural that my entrance should not make as much noise as if it had been a bomb, or a singer, or a clap of thunder, or the last great novel of

the season," or anything else that made a noise in those days. For what makes a noise now? Now, when the most astonishing thing of all is in our easy familiarity with things astounding--when we say, listlessly, "Another revolution at Paris," or, "By the bye, there is the deuce to do at Vienna!" when De Joinville is catching fish in the ponds at Claremont, and you hardly turn back to look at Metternich on the pier at Brigh

ton!

My uncle nodded, and growled indistinctly; my father—

"Put aside his books! you have told us that already."

Sir, you are very much mistaken, he did not put aside his books, for he was not engaged in them--he was reading his proof. And he smiled, and he pointed to it (the proof I mean) pathetically, and with a kind of humour, as much as to say "What can you expect, Pisistratus? - my new baby! in short clothes or long primer, which is all the same thing

I took a chair between the two, and looked first at one, then at the other, and-heaven forgive me!-I felt a rebellious, ungrateful spite against both. The bitterness of my soul must have been deep indeed to have overflowed in that direction, but it did. The grief of youth is an abominable egotist, and that is the truth. I got up from the chair, and walked towards the window; it was open, and outside the window was Mrs. Primmins' canary, in its cage. London air had agreed

with it, and it was singing lustily. Now when the canary saw me standing opposite to its cage, and regarding it seriously, and, I have no doubt with a very sombre aspect, the creature stopped short, and hung its head on one side, looking at me obliquely and suspiciously Finding that I did it no harm, it began to hazard a few broken notes, timidly and interrogatively, as it were, pausing between each; and, at length, as I made no reply, it evidently thought it had solved the doubt, and ascertained that I was more to be pitied than feared-for it stole gradually into so soft and silvery a strain that, I verily believe, it did it on purpose to comfort me !-me, its old friend, whom it had unjustly suspected. Never did any music touch me so home as did that long, plaintive cadence. And when the bird ceased, it perched itself close to the bars of the cage, and looked at me steadily with its bright, intelligent eyes. I felt mine water, and I turned back and stood in the centre of the room, irresolute what to do, where to go. My father had done with the proof, and was deep in his folios. Roland had clasped his red account-book, restored it to his pocket, wiped his pen carefully, and now watched me from under his great beetle brows. Suddenly he rose, and, stamping on the hearth with his cork leg exclaimed, "Look up from those cursed books, brother Austin! What is there in that lad's face? Construe that, if you can !”

"Oh! I see-he has been getting into some scrape, and you are angry! Fie! young blood will have its way, Austin-it will. I don't blame that it is only when--come here, Sisty! Zounds! man, come here."

My father gently brushed off the captain's hand, and, advancing towards me, opened his arms. The next moment I was sobbing on his breast.

"But what is the matter?" cried

young dog. Luckily you have got an uncle who has more than he knows what to do with. How much ?-fifty? -a hundred ? two hundred? How can I write the cheque, if you'll not speak ?”

Hush, brother! it is no money you can give that will set this right. My poor boy! have I guessed truly? Did I guess truly the other evening, when"

"Yes, sir, yes! I have been so wretched. But I am better now-I can tell you all."

My uncle moved slowly towards