should dare the effort and the rocks? There was one chance, and that was attended with such awful risk, and seemed so mere a chance, that few would have ventured to recommend its adoption. The rockets called Carter's Rockets had never been tried in that neighbourhood before; but the principal coastguard station at Penzance, some ten miles off, possessed three of them. By order of the Inspecting-Commander these were produced; and he left his residence at Penzance, whither he had returned the preceding night, on this Sunday morning, resolved to make trial

of them.

The inventor of these rockets had never contemplated their being fired from a boat, for which they seemed in no way adapted; and the directions for their use were explicit in desiring the person who fired them to remain at a distance of full fifty feet, in order to secure himself from the danger of the great back fire from them.

It was to be apprehended that the inevitable vicinity to the back fire to which a person firing one of these rockets in a boat must submit, might make the experiment a fatal one. But Cape Cornwall, the nearest point to the Brissons, is a good mile from them; therefore nothing could be done from the shore, and the apparently desperate resource of using the rockets from a boat was the only one that remained for that day; and who could say what another day and night might work on the starving unsheltered beings on the rock, even should the state of the sea the next day allow of getting close to the Brissons?

It was a novel and perilous undertaking, but the effort was to be made.

The midday sun, which alternately disappeared in black clouds and flashed strong lights through sudden gaps, gleamed out strongly on several boats taking their ways from different points of the bay towards the Brissons. From Sennen Cove came three well-manned fishing boats and a coastguard crew; the Sylvia's boat was fast making for the scene of action; meanwhile from Pen

three miles north-east of Cape Cornwall, the Inspecting-Commander was approaching in the boat of that station.

Bursts of cheers saluted the boats as one by one they stayed their course as near the rocks as they could venture; Cape Cornwall, black with an ant-hill swarm of huddled human beings, seemed to shout with one mighty voice; and the cliffs and hollows round the bay echoed it back twofold. Then there was a great silence. The sky, black and gloomy again, seemed to add by its sombre shadow to the misgivings that were in every heart. All watched breathlessly.

The Pendeen boat, from which the rocket was to be fired, was cleared of her crew, who were ordered into one of the fishing boats, one man remaining in her. A gallant fellow, the Penzance gunner, had volunteered to fire the rockets; but as he had not had more experience in them than any one else present, which was simply none, his assistance was only accepted in making the arrangements for fixing the apparatus in the boat, and the InspectingCommander resolved that only one man should be exposed to the danger the experiment involved, and that that should be he who planned it. He himself remained alone in the boat, which was towed by one of the others into the position he wished. His preparations were soon completed.

A gentleman having much amateur skill afterwards painted this scene, and had his work presented to the chief actor in it, through a mutual friend. In his picture, the man in the rocketboat was represented with one foot well over her side, prepared, as he really was, to plunge into the sea in case of fire. Some little time later this picture was placed, in order to have some trifling injury remedied, in the hands of an inland artist. He quietly set to work to paint the leg back into the boat, explaining, on inquiry, that he did so "because it took from the repose of the picture!" But there was no repose round the Brissons on that Sunday morning; so the rocket-firer held

were, and trust to the boats near for rescuing him from peril of water, if so he might save himself from peril of fire.

The rocket was fired. From the shore, a sheet of flame was seen round the boat and its occupant; but it cleared away and he was safe. The aim, in spite of the tossing of the waves was true; the line passed over the Little Brisson, but, unfortunately, cut by a sharp jutting rock, fell back short into the sea. A second rocket must be tried. There were but three; should these fail, there was no hope. Or, should the next rocket prove damaged and burst? Certain death that, surely, to the firer! No matter; it must be tried. Very soon another hissed through the air; the rope lay across the rock beside the man; and, while the crowd on shore thundered out rejoicings, the woman clasped her hands as if in thanksgiving. The sun in that triumphant moment burst gloriously out from the blackness, and glowed full upon the Brissons and the rescuing boats, to which all eyes were turned.

The man fastened the rope round his wife's waist; she hesitated. They had come down to a level ridge of the rock, not more than twelve feet above the sea; but still it was a frightful leap, and into those boiling foam wreaths ! She looked down at the great surges; they seemed to talk together-at length courage had come to her and she was ready. They bade each other a loving farewell --a hopeful one no doubt, but it was for ever.

With the rope round her, one end of it in her husband's hand and the other in one of the boats, she plunged into the sea. And, at that fatal moment, three monster billows, one after the other, surged along, and it seemed as if all there would be lost. From the Cape the boats seemed to have sunk. "They are gone!" was groaned through all the multitude; women shrieked and wept; perhaps there were some strong men whose eyes swam in tears.

That alarm soon passed-the boats re

appeared, and were greeted with joyful cheers. The woman was being carefully drawn into the Sylvia's boat, in what condition the far-off watchers could not know, but they feared. And justly;

was.

the violence of the waves had been too much for her, worn and weakened as she She breathed still, but that was all. The cord round her waist had tightened terribly; the knot, probably, too tightly secured by a trembling hand, had dragged in the great strain on the rope during the struggle with those strong billows, so that not daring to sever it with a knife, the Sylvia's commander had to use his teeth to loosen it. Life was still in her then, he thought; but the matter was already hopeless. The crew made every effort possible they could to revive her; they covered her with their own clothes, and left nothing untried of the small means they had to restore warmth and animation. But in vain; they lifted her dead from the boat to the shore she had looked at so wistfully through so many painful hours. She sleeps peacefully in a Cornish churchyard, within sight of the sea that brought her death.

Better fortune awaited the attempt to save her husband. He leaped in a favourable moment; the waves battled more languidly with him; and he was drawn into another boat in full consciousness, though faint and feeble from exhaustion, and landed in safety soon to recover his former strength.

How his rescuers were received on their return, may well be imagined. That 12th of January will not soon be forgotten on that coast, and a deep, though sad interest will long cling round the lonely Brissons.

Not very long afterwards, the remaining rocket was tried at Penzance for experiment, with the usual precautions. It proved a spoilt one, and burst. What the result must have been had the second rocket failed on that stormy Sunday, and this been made use of, may be felt and shuddered at.

Ir was twelve years since I had seen Paris, where at one time I had spent, almost continuously, nearly twelve years of my life, comprising those when impressions are keenest and memory is most retentive; whilst from thence till the period of my last visit, not a year had passed without my seeing it again, so that my acquaintance with it had been, up to that time, practically an uninterrupted one. I spent but a very few days there on this occasion; but I never spoke to an Englishman whilst I was there, and the frank and intimate relations which I had kept up there, or which, by means of other similar ones, I was able to form, gave me abundant means of insight, whilst, as it so happened, either those relations themselves or the other purposes of my visit carried me far and wide in almost all directions throughout the city, so that I was able more than once to tell of, or to show to my Parisian friends, streets and public improvements of which they were yet ignorant.

I suppose the first thing which one must mention in speaking of Paris are these same public improvements, or what are called such. My first impression, a selfish one, I confess at once, was one of intense disgust. I found myself almost

a stranger in the very quarters I knew best, looking in vain for old streets, bewildered by new boulevards, clambering over perpetual rubbish heaps. Talk of the nuisance of London stoppages when the pavements are taken up in the autumn for gas or water, or sewerage purposes! Why, it is a mere trifle to Paris, in those quarters where the houses themselves are being taken down on all sides, and, whilst one is painfully occupied with one's feet in stumbling over rubbish, one has the further chance of being knocked down by falling materials. So tiresome became this wilderness of never finished street-novelty, that the old Faubourg St. Germain, which I used to hate, grew quite pleasant to me, from the simple fact of having been mostly left untouched. There, at all events, I knew whence I came and whither I was going.

I said that this first impression was, no doubt, a selfish one. The next one was, no doubt, satisfaction at seeing the broad avenues for light and air, which have been cut through some of the darkest and most unhealthy quarters, the pleasant green squares so thronged with people, the completion of certain really great public works, such as the Louvre, the clearing of the Hôtel de Ville, of the tower of St. Jacques de la

Boucherie, and most useful of all, the Halles. But after a certain number of peregrinations it became only too obvious. that the public salubrity was in general only a secondary consideration in what had been done. Clear as day-light shone out one idea, which must have stood at all times first and foremost in the mind of the ruler to hinder popular revolution. There is a show-Paris, the Paris of the Rue de Rivoli, the Champs Elysées, the Chaussée d'Antin, whither strangers flock, where all the dearer amusements are concentrated. Let this be treated as a piece of ornament, a sort of jewel for the world's pleasures; lavish treasure upon it, keep it wide and airy from end to end, and, at the same time, keep employed there, by perpetual changes and reconstructions, as large a portion as possible of the working population, away from their homes in the dangerous quarters. Through those dangerous quarters again drive right and left broad straight streets and boulevards— straight, that the cannon may sweep them; broad, that there be space to shell a house at the first bullet that speeds from its windows. Plant on all sides your barracks, each a fort in itself; insulate your public buildings, that they too may be turned into forts. Among the very best for such purposes are theatres, so handy for receiving and marshalling whole bodies of men. Raise these, too, in the dangerous quarters: two huge, hideous ones on the quays fronting each other will not be too many. Is Paris safe? No, not yet. So, to amuse the badauds, of course, we will have a gunboat stationed on the Seine, always ready to shell the city from its great water-way.

population, Paris is just what it was. I had heard a great deal of the imperial cleanliness of Paris,-of Paris being a cleaner city now than London. My feet and my nose soon undeceived me of any delusions I might have entertained in this respect. Travel out of the showParis, with its wide streets and gutters tucked under the foot-pavements, and you will find just what you were accustomed to in the days of Louis-Philippe. Sometimes even the old single surface gutter in the middle still subsists. Where it has been replaced it has been replaced only by the double surface side-gutters, the most admirably adapted of all devices for splashing the foot-passenger from head to foot. The extravagant multiplication of bonnes-fontaines seems only to stimulate the inveterate propensity of Parisian house-wives to pour out all mentionable slops, and chuck forth all mentionable refuse, into the public way, of which the public scavengers, as of old, proceed afterwards with their brooms gently to stimulate the course, and diffuse the perfume. In short, the peculiar smell of Paris sewerage, entirely distinct from London, is quite the same as it was; still, through whole quarters, in the driest weather, a street of moderate width consists simply of a very narrow strip of dry stones in the middle with a broad expanse of wet ones on either side. Other streets, equally broad, remain wet in such weather from side to side; some are never dry for a week in the twelvemonth. In short, allowing for the much drier climate, the artificial, avoidable filthiness of Paris (always excepting the show-quarters) appeared to me still immeasurably greater than that of London.

Having convinced myself by ocular experience that sanitary considerations ranked as a very secondary motive in Paris improvements, that narrow streets and splashy gutters and filth were very little thought of wherever they might be deemed politically harmless, I had no difficulty in believing what I was assured of, but was not able to verify for myself, that in many of the

show-quarters themselves, sanitary considerations for the interior had been entirely overlooked, every building regulation of the municipal law set at nought,-kitchens placed in situations where by their heat they would most actively develop germs of disease from other sources, and the like. Nor should it ever be overlooked that, the greater width of the public ways narrowing always the disposable area for building, the builder seeks his profit in height; and those who know the painful diseases which are entailed on the poor population of Paris by the necessity of toiling to the upmost flats of their lofty houses, can never look with complacency on the frightful height of the new erections. Indeed the more than uselessness of many of the alterations in the showquarters was most painful. It is not only money thrown away, but a worse thing substituted for a better. Quiet, healthy streets, with many a garden scattered among them, are to pieces; houses, not only perfectly solid and well-built, but in themselves beautiful and charac

teristic, often almost new, are pulled down to make streets twice as broad, with houses twice as high, and, like many of the public buildings of the present day, hideously ugly in their stony magnificence. Over and above the political idea, it is impossible not to trace here the vulgar ambition of the parvenu, who would fain leave no memorial behind him of what has preceded him, and recommence all history from the date of his rule. A certain grand vulgarity, if I may so call it, appears to me, indeed, characteristic of most of the works of the imperial rule. Imposing as is the completed Louvre, artists will tell you how far superior were the details of the original plans of the seventeenth century. The imperial want of taste is notoriously even greater than that of Louis-Philippe himself. The enlightened love of art possessed by the Orleans princes, which gave them a Scheffer for a teacher and a friend, has given way to an imperial partiality for dead game and semi-dirty genre subjects. Yet the tasteless and but

slightly-literate ruler, by his practical qualities, may exercise some reflex action upon art, as well as history. His capacity for construing Cæsar may be but slight; but, in the great work of translating the Commentaries, he will not be satisfied till he has thoroughly understood every detail, local or practical. Models of every Roman engine of war have been constructed and experimented upon; the archæological problem of the Roman galley has been solved; nay, it is said that nothing but a representation of the many millions which the experiment would cost has stopped him from verifying, for a mere whim, the tale of the last Punic war, as to the ropes made of the Carthaginian matrons' hair.

No doubt it is this practical temper of the third Napoleon's mind which has enabled him to preserve his wonderful tenure of power. He has sought to occupy, to enrich, to amuse his people. He has succeeded to a great extent. You hear, at Paris, great complaints of the stagnation of trade; yet I never saw anywhere such outward appearances of prosperity. To the last I remained amazed, almost stupefied, at the activity of public communications in Paris, the throngs of people, the throngs of carriages. Whole classes, it is evident, now ride that walked formerly." On two occasions, I saw blouses in carriages, and worn by perfectly sober, steady men, evidently going about their business. "What is not done now," I asked a friend, "with the money that used not to be spent on coach-hire?" "It is not put by," he replied. Much the same answer was given me by others to whom I spoke on the subject. The general opinion seems to be, not that people are much richer, but that they spend more. Beneath such habits lies evidently a sense of abiding insecurity. "Let us eat and drink." ... And, indeed, the wine-shops were evidently thronged, far above anything that I had ever known; whilst the multiplication of cafés and restaurants, in the show quarters, or in the show-streets and boulevards of the dangerous quarters, was no less astonishing.