which was reserved for young vagabonds. At the end of the fifth day, Beaumarchais was almost forced to leave the prison against his will. The memoir which he addressed to the king from St. Lazare is curious, as disclosing a state of affairs as embarrassing for Louis XVI. as for himself. On his leaving prison, M. de Calonne wrote to him to state that the king held him exculpated, and would seize with pleasure occasions to confer this Le Barbier de Seville was represented on the small theatre of Trianon, the Queen playing the part of Rosina, the Count d'Artois (afterwards Charles X.) that of Figaro, M. de Vaudreuil, Almaviva. By an order of the king, Beaumarchais not long after received 800,000 livres by way of indemnity for his flotte marchande, which, in addition to two sums previously received, formed a total of 2,275,625 livres. The years of 1784 and 1785 were the most | arrest of Beaumarchais, and, adding insult brilliant portions of Beaumarchais' career. to rigor, ordered that a man of fifty-three Though Figaro had been some time written, should be conducted to the prison of St. Lazare, yet the king was opposed to its being acted. The author was now enabled to force it on the stage despite the opposition of the monarch. It had a run of sixty-eight nights. The money taken for the first representation amounted to 6511 livres; the money taken for the sixty-eight representations amounted to 5483 livres. In the eight months between the 27th of April, 1784, and the 10th of January, 1785, the piece had produced (without counting the fiftieth representation which on him marks of his good will. Soon after had been given to the poor on the proposition of Beaumarchais) a gross receipt of 346,197 livres, of which there remained to the actors a nett benefice of 293,755 livres, with the exception of the portion dedicated to the author Beaumarchais, which amounted to 41,199 livres. The account of the representation of the piece will be found recorded in every periodical, in all the letters and memoirs of the time. People went to the theatre early in the morning, the greatest ladies Previous to the period of which we are dining in the actresses' dressing-rooms in now speaking, Mirabeau and Beaumarchais order to secure places. Bachaumont tells us had not been acquainted. One day, says blue ribbons were elbowed by Savoyards, and Gudin, Mirabeau called on Beaumarchais. La Harpe, that three persons were killed. The conversation was lively, animated, and If we are to believe an unpublished letter of spirituelle. At length, Mirabeau inconsidBeaumarchais, he was present at all this ex-erately asked for a loan of 12,000 francs. citement. He sat at the back of a loge Beaumarchais refused with playful gayety. grille, between two abbés, with whom he had Nothing is "easier than for you to lend the dined at a jovial repast. He maliciously money," replied the count. "No doubt of said the presence of these two abbés was ne- it," rejoined Beaumarchais; "but as I must cessary, that they might administer to him quarrel with you the day when your note of if necessary des secours très spirituels. In hand would fall due, I may as well break the midst of this brilliant success, another with you now, and save my money. misfortune fell on Beaumarchais. Sicard Beaumarchais had been concerned in a criticized the Marriage of Figaro severely, speculation to supply Paris with water. and was aided, it is said, in this labor by the Mirabeau was chosen to write a pamphlet Count de Provence, who had written some against this scheme. Beaumarchais punof the critiques. Beaumarchais answered the gently replied, when Mirabeau rejoined, reattacks with great energy, and the Count de viving all the old calumnies. To this diaProvence, feeling himself personally wounded, tribe Beaumarchais made no answer; but it complained to his brother, Louis XVI., of the may not be amiss to state that in 1790, a insolence of Beaumarchais, and artfully in- year before the death of the great orator, sinuated that the offence of the author of the two men were reconciled. M. de Lométhe Marriage of Figaro consisted not in nie gives at length the letters that passed beusing the words l'insecte vil de la nuit, but in tween them. Even an epitome of them it is using the words "lions et tigres," which de- beyond our space to afford. signated, as he alleged, the king and the queen. Louis XVI. was already irritated against Beaumarchais. The immense success of a comedy which had been represented against his will - a success which "disquieted him as a king, and scandalized him as a Christian,”. to use the words of M. de Loménie rendered him disposed to credit the most improbable accusations against the author. Without quitting the card-table at which he was seated, the monarch wrote in pencil on the seven of spades an order for the In February, 1787, at the moment when Beaumarchais was occupied with the first representation of the opera of Tarare, a pamphlet appeared entituled Mémoire sur une question d'adultère, de seduction, et de diffamation pour le Sieur Kornman contre la dame Kornman, le Sieur de Jossan, le Sieur de Beaumarchais, et M. Lenoir. Beaumarchais, after having investigated the case of Madame Kornman, became satisfied that she was an oppressed and injured woman, and procured a revocation of the lettre de cachet Amidst a which her husband had obtained against her. ter, a greater number of masses. Further, he advised Madame Kornman to pre-occupations and inquietude of every kind, appeal to the tribunals to save her children's says M. de Loménie, towards the close of fortune. A young advocate of the name of his second volume, Beaumarchais found time Bergasse was employed in Kornman's case, to dedicate to the two great passions which and he it was who composed the Mémoire occupied his life- the theatre and commerwhich we have just mentioned; a memoir cial speculation. which circulated by thousands, and which He finished La Mère Coupable in 1791, gave rise to hundreds of pamphlets pro et and about the same period contracted to supcontra. The style of Bergasse was turgid, ply the government with 60,000 musketsbut it was earnest and emphatic. His taste contract which ruined his fortunes, and was was none of the best, but he was personal, the canker-worm of his subsequent life. confident, used strong epithets, and intro- While using every effort to obtain the musduced a great many extraneous topics to sea-kets, he was denounced by the ex-Capuchin Bon the flavor of his factum. Beaumarchais Chabot. On the 10th August, the mob susproceeded against the advocate for calumny, pecting complicity with Louis XVI., broke and gained his suit. But there is a vitality, into his house and searched for the arms. indeed an imraortality, in slander, which Thirteen days afterwards, i.e. on the 23rd, causes it to survive the occasion; and though being sixty years of age and deaf, he was the Parliament pronounced in Beaumarchais' sent to the prison of L'Abbaye. Here he favor on the 2nd of April, 1789, directing remained till the 30th, a few hours before the suppression of Bergasse's Memoir, and the massacres of the 2nd September. He the payment by him of a thousand livres as cost and damages, yet some of Bergasse's imputations lived in the memories and thoughts of men during the progress of the Revolution, and affected the popularity, if they did not tarnish the repute of Beaumarchais. It was the singular destiny of Beaumarchais never to do good without its bringing him poignant suffering. "Je n'ai jamais rien fait de bien," he says, qui ne m'ait causé des angoisses, et je ne dois tous mes succès, le dirai-je, qu'à des sottises." owed his release to the magnanimity of Manuel, who thus nobly revenged himself for some stinging criticisms. Escaped from prison and death, Beaumarchais hid himself some miles from Paris, whence he proceeded to seek an interview with the ministers. The men in authority gave him his passport for Holland. On his arrival, he did not find the promised money. The Convention had now succeeded to the Legislative Assembly, and in the Convention Beaumarchais was accused of combining against the government. While Beaumarchais was for two years From London, Beaumarchais wrote a defence struggling with Bergasse, he was writing of himself, distributing 600 copies. The anand preparing for the stage his opera of Ta-swer by the Convention to the defence was, rare, first produced on the 8th of June, that Beaumarchais was permitted to choose 1787; an opera which has been played between a sequestration of his property, and within a few years. He was also dabbling the starting a second time to obtain the musin the expensive recreation of brick and mor- kets. While things were in this lamentable tar, having purchased from the Municipality, position, his property was seized, his family near the Bastille, a site for a splendid man- sent to prison, and he himself was consion. This mansion was built in magnifi- demned also to prison by the Comite de Sacent style, and sumptuously furnished with lut Public (whose agent he was) as an emiprecious woods and marbles brought from gre. His difficulties were now great, and Italy at great expense. In the study of they became overwhelming when he found Beaumarchais there was a secretaire valued himself an emigrant in the free town at 30,000 francs. In this luxurious abode of Hamburg. For some three-and-twenty he received some of the most remarkable months between 1793 and 1795, Beaumarmen of his time, the Duke d'Orleans, Mir- chais contrived to save his muskets from the abeau, Sieyes, &c. From this stately dwel- Dutch; but they were at length seized and ling, which is now called the Boulevard sold by the English government. So overBeaumarchais, the owner of it witnessed the whelming and entangled were the series of taking of the Bastille. He exhibited no de- misfortunes in which he was now enmeshed, sire to mingle in the fray, or to become dep- that he was in utter despair. "I ask myuty for his district. He limited his efforts self," says he, in a letter to his wife, to the preserving of order, and to saving "whether I am not a madman or a fool, so from the enraged multitude disarmed sol- difficult is it to fathom the depth of my misdiers. He remained in Paris during the fortunes. Where are you?" he passionately progress of the Revolution, and in June, writes to his wife; where do you live? 1791, we find him seriously petitioning to what is the name you go by? who are your obtain, in favor of the faithful of his quar-true friends, and who ought I to call mine? the horrid guillotine would, for me, be preferable to my terrible state." In July, 1796, the name of Beaumarchais was struck off the list of emigrants, and he was allowed to return to Paris. But his wife, sister, and daughter were then in a wretched state." On leaving a prison in which they were so nearly doomed to death, they found all the property of Beaumarchais sequestered, and his debtors clamorous to discharge their engagements, contracted under a sound currency, in depreciated assignats. Thus ruined and overwhelmed by no fault of his own, Beaumarchais could scarcely pay the window-taxes on his large house. There were, indeed, strange times between 1794 and 1796. We learn, from the letters and accounts of Beaumarchais' sister, Julia, that, in the depreciated assignats, sugar sold at 100 francs the pound, potatoes at 200 francs the bushel, pomade at 25 francs the ounce, &c. Without the hope of saving my daughter, His career was singularly chequered and agitated, but not more agitated than the his tory and fortunes of his country at this epoch. He mixed with all classes of Frenchmen, from the highest to the lowest, and he possessed in a greater degree than any man of his time the peculiarities, qualities, and talents of that vivacious, clever, and mobile people of France, once our bravest and bit terest enemies, now our firm allies. It has been truly said that Beaumarchais lived in the Palace, in the Court, in the Coulisses, and in the Exchange; and he imbibed the spirit of each, and turned it to the best aocount in the comedies, memoirs, factums, verses, and letters, with which he has enriched the language. Had he not lived so much at Court in early life, it is possible his tableaux might have been wanting in that airy grace and lightness, that careless gayety, that suppleness and finesse, so characteristic of the ancienne Cour. In the walks of com merce and the Exchange-among the FerThough Beaumarchais had acquired while miers Generaux, Financiers, Fournisseurs, at Hamburg the friendship of Talleyrand and Intendants, he obtained that clearness, and Baron Louis, and albeit he was aware of view, that method and lucid order, that of the state of his affairs at Paris, still he neatness and point which the daily handling was glad to return to his native city. of large affairs always improves and some Amidst all his troubles and misfortunes, and times supplies. His art in managing, drap at a time when he had passed the grand cli-ing, and coloring characters - his style so macteric, having attained the ripe age of sharp and pointed- he owes partly to the sixty-five, we find him entering into all the peculiar conformation of his mind, partly to theatrical and literary topics of the day with his intimacy with the drama, his large aothe eagerness and vivacity of youth. On quaintance with human life in all its phases, the 4 Pluviose, an VI., i.e., in January, 1798, a commission, appointed by the Directory, declared that the State was indebted to Beaumarchais in a sum of 997,875 francs. This sum would have placed him in a position to satisfy the most importunate of his creditors, and to pass the remainder of his life in tranquility-if by a singular fatality ― which rendered his last days miserablethe Directory had not named a new commission, which came to a directly opposite conclusion from the first. Far from making the State his debtor, the new commission declared Beaumarchais to be debtor to the State in the sum of 500,000 francs. It was in struggling against the decision of this printer and publisher without being bred to committee that the last days of Beaumar- the trade- that he entered on operations chais were consumed. After passing a happy of commerce, banking, exchange, finance, evening with his family and a few chosen and navigation without being merchant, friends, on the 17th of May, he was found banker, and cambist-that he wrote judicial dead in his bed on the morning of the 18th of memoirs and factums without being an avoMay, 1799. He died of an apoplectic seizure, cat, an avoue, or even a notaire-and verses, produced by the agitation and anxiety of his songs, and comedies without being a professed latter years, and the strange injustice by author or litterateur. What was he then? which he was deprived by two governments A dangerous man? Certainly he was in this, of the greatest portion of his fortune. that he was a persecuted citizen a man whom society and his fellows wronged and misinterpreted. He was the first to call himself by this name of persecuted citizen, in Such was the end of Beaumarchais. His life embraces the better part of the eighteenth century, and his works represent its spirit. and his long familiarity with the business 1774, as is well said by M. St. Marc Girar-sented. What have the French become din; and from that moment opinion appears since? What are they now? The present to have rallied round him, and to have made generation of Frenchmen, like too many his cause the cause of the struggling and dis- among ourselves, care little for the past, uncontented people. He was the man from less in so far as it can minister to the present whose exposure of judges first arose the cry If, however, some pupil of the people, some of "Plus de venalite de charges." His was poet of the people, some writer of the people, the first voice-his were the first words in or some dramatist of the people, were to rise print, to clamor for publicity in legal pro- up in 1856, possessing the talents of Beau ceedings, and for confrontation of witnesses marchais, and being, like him,-mutin, equivalent to our cross-examination, with a railleur, mechant. patient et courageux, view to the interests of justice and of truth. possessing, like Beaumarchais, a style preg His was the voice which, by "frappant juste nant, sharp, and bitter, and a génie souple et fort," destroyed the Parlement Maupeou. et fertile qui suffisait à tout, what revelations In the Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais might he not make, what new characters paints the French nation as it existed just might he not draw, in which hypocrisy, perantecedent to the French Revolution. The jury, fraud, and lying, cheating in commerce, social edifice was quite undermined, the on the Exchange, and at cards, and forsweardomestic virtues were altogether sapped. So in Figaro, the valet cheats his master, the husband his wife, the wife her husband; the judge is venal, the churchman is a sly gobetween, a knave and a hypocrite; the peasant speaks of rights and duties, whilst the fool of quality insults his mother, and is a libertine and a debauchee. Court and town alike applauded, for this was the true reflection, these were the very manners, morals, and essential spirit of the time. Such was Paris-such was France at the time the Marriage of Figaro was first repre MUMMIES PYRAMIDS.-The Egyptians fondly | conceived (reader, pity them, and praise God that thou art better informed) that the soul even after death, like a grateful guest, dwelt in the body so long as the same was kept swept and garnished, but finally forsook it, and sought out a new body, if once the corpse was either carelessly neglected, or despitefully abused; and therefore to woo the soul to constant residence in their bodies (at least-wise to give it no wilful distaste, or cause of alienation) they were so prodigiously expensive, both in embalming their dead, and erecting stately places for their mon uments. ing in public and private, might be charged not on Parlements, not on talons rouges, not on the vieille Cour, but on a new generation of politicians and maitres fripons, who have nearly all the vices, little of the grace and talent, and less of the gayety of the race that witnessed the first representations of Le Barbier de Sevilla and Le Marriage de Figaro. It would then be found that the sins of outworn monarchies may be committed with aggravation, and in a new fashion, in a new empire. present, they are rather ancient than ruinous; and though weather-beaten in their tops, have lively looks under a gray head, likely to abide these many years in the same condition, as being too great for any throat to swallow whole, and too hard for any teeth to bite asunder. - Ful ler's Palestine. p. 83. LUXURY IN DRESS. - If God were in love with fashions, he were never better served than in this age; for our world is like a pageant, where every man's apparel is better than himself. Once Christ said that soft clothing is in the The long lasting of these pyramids, is not the kings' courts; but now it is crept into every least of admiration belonging unto them. They house. Then the rich glutton jetted in purple were born the first, and do live the last, of all every day; but now the poor unthrift jets as the seven wonders in the world. Strange, that brave as the glutton, with so many circum in three thousand years and upwards, no avari- stances about him, that if ye could see how cious prince was found to destroy them, to make Pride would walk herself, if she did wear ap profit of their marble and rich materials; no parel, she would even go like many in the streets; humorous or spiteful prince offered to overthrow for she could not go braver, nor look stouter, them, merely to get a greater name for his pee- nor mince finer, nor set on more laces, nor make vishness in confounding, than their pride in first larger cuts, nor carry more trappings about her, founding them; no zelote-reformer (whilst Egypt than our ruffians and wantons do at this day. was Christian) demolished them under the no- How far are these fashions altered from those tion of Pagan monuments. But, surviving such leather coats which God made in Paradise! If casualties, strange, that after so long continu- their bodies did change forms so often as, their ance, they have not fallen like Copy-holds, into apparel changeth fashions, they should have the hand of the Grand Signior (as Lord of the more shapes than they have fingers and toes. Manor) for want of repairing. Yea, at the-Henry Smith's Sermons. DCXXXV. LIVING AGE. VOL. XIV. 14 From Household Words. the forms in which the drug is preserved, has an extremely bitter taste, and smells like liquorice. As a medicine it acts, in very small doses, as a tonic, and in rather larger quantities it is given as a stimulant to the nervous system. True Angostura bark has a finer texture than the other, is darker-colored, aromatio, IN Ceylon and several districts of India pungent, and less bitter. The bark of the grows a moderate-sized tree, with thick shin-nux vomica tree has very much the twisted ing leaves, and a short crooked stem. In the appearance of pieces of dried horn. fruit season it is readily recognized by Powdered nux vomica, which is one of its rich orange-colored berries about as large as golden pippins: the rind is hard and smooth, and covers a white soft pulp, the favorite food of many kinds of birds, within which are the flat round seeds, not an inch in diameter, ash-gray in color, and covered with very minute silky hairs. The Ger- Its very peculiar and extraordinarily enermans fancy they can discover a resemblance getic effects, when taken in a poisonous quanin them to gray eyes, and call them Crows'-tity, have excited the interest of physioloeyes, but the likeness is purely imaginary, gists, and hecatombs of cats, and dogs, and The tree is the Strychnos nux-vomica, and mice, and guinea-pigs have been sacrificed in the seed is the deadly poison nut. The lat- their researches. In 1809, Majendie and ter was early used as a medicine by the Hin- Delille read a paper before the French Instidoos, and its nature and properties under- tution on the result of their experiments on stood by Oriental doctors, long before it was animals. Ten grains taken internally killed known to foreign nations. Dog-killer and a dog in forty-five minutes, and a grain and Fish-scale, are two of its Arabic names. It a-half thrust into a wound, killed another is stated that at present the natives of Hin- in seven minutes. The symptoms were, in dostan often take it for many months con- every case, of the usual character. The antinuously, in much the same way as an opi-imal, a few minutes after the introduction um-eater eats opium. They commence with of the poison, becomes agitated, and tumtaking the eighth of a nut a-day and gradu-bles; in a short time it is seized with stiffally increase their allowance to an entire ness and starting of the limbs, which innut, which would be about twenty grains. If they eat it directly before or after food, no unpleasant effects are produced; but, if they neglect this precaution, spasms result. The bark of the tree, as well as the seeds, is poisonous; and its resemblance to Angostura or Cusparia bark, a tonic medicine imported from South America, led to the most unfortunate results at the beginning of this century on the Continent. In 1804, Dr. Rambach, a physician at Hamburg, noticed The action of the poison appears to be althat a certain species of Angostura bark most entirely confined to the spinal cord and acted as a powerful poison; an order was the nerves of which it is the centre. Stanconsequently issued forbidding the use of the nius found that the removal of the brain in drug. In spite, however, of this injunction, frogs, did not interfere with the effects of it managed to find its way into Germany, the poison; and Eumert's experiments lead and did so much harm, and created such to the same conclusion; he found that if alarm, that, in 1815, the governments of the spinal cord be destroyed after the sympBavaria, Austria, Baden, and Wurtemburg toms have come on, the convulsions cease inordered all the Angostura bark in the pos- stantaneously, although the circulation consession of the chemists to be seized, and phy-tinues for some minutes. In man, however, sicians at the same time were desired not to there is occasionally stupor, while in other prescribe it. An investigation was insti- instances the sensibility is heightened, and tuted, and it turned out, that a quantity of the faculties are unnaturally acute. a bark had been imported from the East into England, that not being saleable, it was sent to Holland, and as there appeared no greater likelihood of selling it there, it was mixed with, and passed off as Angostura bark. For many years botanists were at fault as to the tree which yielded this false Angostura bark, but in 1837, Dr. O'Shaughnessy, in Calcutta, clearly established its identity with that of the nux vomica tree. crease until a violent general spasm ensues, in which the head is bent back, the limbs are extended and rigid, the spine stiffened, and respiration checked by the fixing of the chest. An interval of ease follows, and then another paroxysm comes on, and another and another, till the animal perishes, suffocated or exhausted. Tetanus or locked jaw is the only disease that produces similar effects, but never proves so rapidly fatal. A difference of opinion has existed as to the post-mortem effects of the poison. This is most satisfactorily explained by M. BrownSéguard in the course of his recent most interesting experiments. He has noticed that if a dog be killed after one convulsion, when there has been no prolonged muscular exertion, eight days will elapse before putrefaction is established; if, on the other hand, the animal endure thirty or forty convul |