ground of its special applicability to a pe- | had declared himself convinced, rose in riod gone by, or to any other. The following is Sir Archibald's sketch of Lord George Bentinck, the type of his party: "Born of the ducal house of Portland, he inherited from his long line of ancestors [it happens that the founder of his family was a mere adventurer under William III.] the genuine Whig principles by which they have always been distinguished. Early in life he was for three years private secretary to Mr. Canning, who was married to a sister of the Duchess of Portland; and under his tuition he combined with the old principles of the family, the wie philanthropic views so eloquently supported by that brilliant Parliamentary leader."-P. 296. The great Protectionist leader seems to have been a cross between a Whig and a Canningite. The following view of his shortcomings is just: "He was, comparatively speaking, incxperienced in debate, was little skilled in oratory and was by no means gifted by nature with the physical qualities which are generally so powerful in ruling popular assemblies. His person was tall, his figure fine, and his air commanding; but his voice was shrill and feeble, and when be began to speak, he generally labored under what was to his auditors a painful hesitation in expression."-P. 297. his place, and recklessly repeated them, without caring to offer another argument, or another circumstance in their support. We turn to Sir A. Alison's narrative of the French Revolution of February, 1848. The incidents are recorded with a good deal of graphic power; they are, we believe, at least as faithful as those which have lately been published by Lord Normanby, and are drawn from the French writings which have appeared on the subject during the last ten years. After detional Guard in thrusting themselves bescribing the insidious conduct of the Natween the mob and the regulars, somewhat as armed mediators, with a view at once of supporting the Revolution, and of obviating a direct collision, the author tells us : "In this extremity a council was hastily summoned in the King's Cabinet, in the Tuileries, which the Queen was invited to attend. M. Guizot was, from a feeling of delicacy, absent. The first words she uttered were: If M. Guizot has the slightest feeling of devotion to the King and to France, he will not remain an hour longer in power- he is ruining the King' Madame,' replied M. Duchâtel, M. Guizot is determined, like all his colleagues, to defend to the last extremity, if necessary, the King and the monarchy; but he has no intention, any more than ourselves, of forcing himself on the 'Do not say such things,' interrupted the King, 'if M. Guizot knew I desire nothing more than that he should know,' resumed the Queen. His 'I would say that to himself: I esteem him sufficiently for that: he is a man of honor, and will understand me.' "P. 726. Sir Archibald's eulogy is, however, carried far beyond justice. Thus, he writes of Lord George: sym "Free from prejudices, his large mind pathized with all classes of the realm. courage and constancy were never surpassed by man. He valued life only as a means of fulfilling duty; and truly may it be said of him, that he feared nothing but God."-P. 296. Crown.' M. Duchâtel then went for M. Guizot. proposed the transmission of a message to the Chambers, conceding Parliamentary Archibald represents the King as unwilling Reform. When M. Guizot arrived, Sir to accept his resignation: "I would rather abdicate,' said he. 'You can not do that, my friend,' replied the Queen; 'you belong to France, not to yourself.' 'True, replied the King, 'I am more to be pitied than my ministers-I can not resign.' To describe a man who had sat in Par-In his absence the Duke of Montpensier liament during twenty years, and who during seventeen of those twenty had been known simply as a Steward of the Jockey Club, as "valuing life only for the means of fulfilling public duty," is too absurd to call for the slightest comment. Moreover, independently of the manner in which all but the three last years of Lord George Bentinck's life were wasted, he was by no means the noble-minded man which he is described. When Sir Robert Peel had given to the calumnies brought against him by Lord George a refutation which satisfied Lord John Russell and the Whig leaders in opposition, Bentinck, instead of withdrawing accusations, of the falsity of which every other speaker At length policy seemed to triumph over friendship, and the King himself suggested a resignation: you believe, my dear President, that the Cabi"Then turning to M. Guizot, he said: 'Do net is in a situation to make head against the storm, and to triumph over it?' 'Sire,' replied M. Guizot, when the King proposes such a question, he himself answers it. The Cabinet may be in a condition to gain the victory in the streets, but it can not conquer at the same time the royal family and the crown. To throw a doubt on its support in the Tuileries is to destroy it in the exercise of its power. The Cabinet has no alterative but to retire.' The King then consulted his ministers for a few minutes as to who should be sent for to construct a new ministry, and Count Molé was mentioned. He, then, shedding tears, embraced his ministers, who were not less affected. How happy you are,' said the King: 'you depart with honor; I remain with shame!' Sir A. Alison thus sketches one of the most determinating incidents of the Revo lution : "A small detachment, armed with sabers and pikes, broke off from the main body on the Boulevards, and moved towards the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, occupied by M. Guizot, in front of which a battalion of infantry was stationed, in consequence of its having been attacked the preceding evening. The crowd halted at the line of bayonets which barred the street, and the horse of the Commander reared and fell backwards in the line, which closed and surrounded its chief. At this moment, when the battalion was standing with loaded pieces in their hands, a shot was discharged by Lagrange at the soldiers, and they, deeming themselves attacked, replied by a volley which killed or wounded fifty men.' The manner in which the mob availed themselves of this incident is well described: "Hardly had the unhappy persons who were killen or wounded fallen, than as many of them as it could contain were placed in a large wagon, apparently brought up with the crowd for the occasion. On it they were skillfully arranged with artistic talent for theatrical effect, the bloody wounds being carefully exposed to view, and the whole surmounted by a female figure half-naked, who had fallen in the fray. When the hideous mass was thoroughly arranged, the cry was 'To the National, and thither they went, surrounded by a crowd every instant increasing, and in the highest state of excitement." When they reached the doors of the Réforme, Sir A. Alison says: "There the crowd was harangued by the leaders, who represented them as the bodies of those who had fallen under a cruel and vindic tive tyranny. No one suspected what was the truth, that the conflict had been got up, without a thought of its victims, to add to the excitement and fury of the people. From the office of the Réforme the procession continued | its course all night by torchlight through Paris, surrounded by a dense crowd, in a frantic state of excitement, shouting and howling aloud, and spreading consternation and the thirst for vengeance wherever they went.” The King of the French would have made head against the Revolution but for the timidity of his own counsels. Paris had been given up to the military, and (under himself) Marshal Bugeaud was the only depositary of power in Paris. The success of the troops on the last night of the insurrection is thus told: "The orders were to advance rapidly forward, and destroy all the barricades on their passage, and await further orders when they had reached the point to which they were ordered to advance. Such was the vigor employed in the movements, that by seven the whole columns had reached their points of destination, except the second, which was a little behind. Twenty-five thousand men, who had advanced in the four columns, had done the whole, and had done it by the mere force of an advance, without firing a shot. The barricades had all been surmounted and leveled, the important posts occupied, Paris was militarily won, the victory gained, the horrors of revolution arrested. The result, however, was just the converse of the saying, that the darkest hour is next the dawn; and the illusion of victory vanished in an instant: "At this moment, Marshal Bugeaud received an order, signed by Thiers and Odillon Barrot, to cease the combat and withdraw the troops. He at first refused to obey it unless accompanied by an order under the sign-manual of de Nemours, compelled submission.”—P. 734. the King; but soon one, signed by the Duke withdrawal of the troops, was, of course, The advice of the new ministers for the fatal towards a sort of Asiatic mob, who would construe every concession into fear. The conflict of counsels is happily described by Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, where he designs Astutio for M. Guizot, at the moment of his critical advice to the King: "A Hydra, sire, a Hercules demands, So, if not Hercules, assume his vizard:' The advice is good, the Vandal wrings his hands, Kicks out the sage and rushes to a wizard; The wizard waves his wand, disarms the sentry, And wondrous man, enchants the mob— with entry!" We prefer the account of this tragedy by Sir A. Alison to the account by Lord Normanby; and we are truly glad to part from our author with a word of eulogy. We fear however, that that these incidental gleams of interest will not materi | ally affect the general credit of his history; and that the opinion of the literary world already is, that Sir Archibald has by no means added to his repute by his Continuation of the History of Europe. From Tait's Magazine. MARRIAGE AND THE AMONG the ethical commonplaces never done with is the relation of marriage to "the romance of life." It is really a very simple matter, if approached with a little reserve of experience and with complete intellectual as well as moral sincerity. I am reminded of it by seeing a passage from the remains of a deceased gentleman, in whom what was wanting was the experience, not the sincerity. The passage is as follows: arm and lordly presence. Nor do we see that the giants, dragons, and other monsters of the old romance, are in themselves one whit more interesting than the obstacles that beset the manfully the duties of his life, and to carry out modern true knight in his struggles to perform the noble spirit of that vow which he has solemnly taken at the altar, to love, comfort, honor, and keep in sickness and in health the woman who has put her youth, her beauty, her life, and happiness into his hands.” Now the design of this style of comment, and the moral spirit of it, is noble, but one fears the tendency may not be so good, because there is in it an unintentional shirking of the fact. Nobody that reads such moral criticism can be fully satisfied with it. The experienced mind will see that there is something dropped; the most inexperienced will have a presentiment of a note of interrogation to be set up some day. What then, is the real truth in this "The romance of life gone! when with the humblest and most sordid cares of life are intimately associated the calm delights, the settled bliss of home; when upon duties, in themselves perhaps often wearisome and uninteresting, hang the prosperity and the happiness of wife and children; when there is no mean hope, because there is no hope in which regard for others does not largely mingle-no base fear, because suffering and distress can not affect self alone; when the selfishness which turns honest industry to greed, and noble ambition to egotistical lust of power, is exorcised; when life be-most-unnecessarily-fussed-about question comes a perpetual exercise of duties which are of marriage and romance? Simply thisdelights, and delights which are duties. Once that, as a complaint, the popular saying romance meant chivalry; and the hero of ro- that with marriage the romance of life is mance was one who did his knightly devoirs, over, is base, but that, as an approximate and was true and loyal to God and his lady-love. statement of fact, it must be accepted. If with us it has come to mean the sensual fan- A moralist who wants a text for a homily, cies of nerveless boys, and the sickly reveries of girls for whose higher faculties society can find or a rhetorician who seeks a pretext for no employment, it is only another instance in a flourish, or a prig who is fumbling for which the present is not so much wiser and some nice distinction to stand upon, grander than the past, as its flatterers are fond so that he may look over others' heads of imagining. To us it appears that where the capacity for generous devotion, for manly cour-nification upon the word age, for steadfast faith and love, exists, there exists the main element of romance, and that where the circumstances of life are most favorable for the development of the qualities in action, they are romantic circumstances whether the person displaying them be, like Alton Locke, a tailor, or like King Arthur, a man of stalwart either of these may put his own sig"romance," and forthwith be wise, eloquent, or superior, to his heart's content; but when any reasonable, common mortal, neither base of heart nor crotchety of brain, says that "with marriage the romance of life is over," he means two things-1st, That the mystery and anticipation (and it is those elements which are the soul of "romance") of the sweetest of human relationships are over when the relationship is an accomplished fact; 2d, That in the conventional model of connubial life there are circumstances of sordidness and vulgar familiarity which interfere with every individual ideal, and are felt to be accidental and not necessary, though one may not see his way to stripping them off. Can either of these clauses be fairly challenged? 66 ary method of married life that the spring blossoms and summer flowers of emotion are rudely brushed away at once, instead of giving place by degrees to the hazy, golden tints of autumn, and the gray solemnities of winter. I shall not go into this subject. It is not merely that Strephon now sees Sylvia in curl-papers, and Sylvia wakes to find Strephon snoring; from shocks like these "affection recovers itself, (I quote the beautiful words of a friend of mine,) shaking with pleasant laughter, like a bowed osier." But the vulgar sense of possession takes the place of the solicitude and tremblings of unguaranteed affection, and both parties presume upon the "certainty" of the situation. Whether there should be any sort of Domestic Tribunal which might take cognizance of misconduct on either side, or what other means might be devisable for holding the rod over the latent devil of self, I will not now discuss. But, as things go, romance "does not exist in the wedlock of the million, nor can it. I am bound to say that I think the passage quoted from Mr. Brimley's papers (like similar passages which have become very rife of late years) is empty verbiage. Married life has its own proper interests and delights, but of them "romance" forms no part. This should not involve any accusation. When Channing at sixty-was asked which was the happiest age, he said "sixty." There is no doubt that goodness like his can make almost any condition, as well as any age, happy; but no sincere mind, however saturated with poetry, can pretend that "the romance of life" survives adolescence. It is true that in late middle age there is a sort of Indian The statement that with marriage the summer of the affections which repeats the romance of existence is gone may be theme of earlier years with variations; taken as an accusation, if you please. It but that, like the " romance " of youthmay be taken to mean that there is so time, is sui generis, and will have its own much that is sordid and base in the custom-time, and place, and conditions. With regard to the former, it amounts simply to saying that you can not experience a first realization twice over. Is it disputed that there is a charm, a freshness, a romance," about the early stages of love | which can not survive a certain point? Dispute it if you please-you only rob Peter to pay Paul! What is the good of taking so much bliss away from courtship and laying it on to wedlock? There is the bliss, a fact confessed by all men and all women in all ages, a bliss peculiar to "love's young dream," and conventionally known as 66 the romance of life." With realization it vanishes. If you choose to carry it over to the account of wedlock, you do something quite arbitrary. The thing that is, is: and, as the American writer says about the opening passages in Maud: 66 What's the use of screaming at the calm facts of the universe ?" 66 But wedlock has its own peculiar bliss." Ah! pardon me! That is another proposition. It is what the popular doctrine, that the romance of life" passes away after marriage, does not at all deny. It is quite incontestable, and brings us to the second of the above clauses. From the Quarterly Review. PHENOMENA AND CAUSES OF SHIPWRECKS.* A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewelsAll scattered in the bottom of the sea. Strange to say, these dismal finger-posts to marine disasters are generally found grouped around the sites of lighthouses. If we analyze the chart for the year 1857, we perceive at a glance the relative dangers of the three sea-boards of triangular England, and that a fatal preeminence is given to the east coast. Out of a total of 1143 wrecks and casualties which took place in this year, no less than 600, or more than one half, occurred between Dungeness and Pentland Frith. Along this perilous sea, beset with sands, shoals, and rocky headlands, no less than 150,000 vessels pass annually, the greater part ill-constructed, deeply-laden colliers, such as we see in the Pool, and wonder how they manage to survive a gale of wind. The south coast, extending from Dungeness to the Land's End, is comparatively safe, only 84 wrecks having taken place in 1847, whilst from the Land's End to Greenock, where the influence of the Atlantic gales is most sensibly felt, the numbers rise again to 286, and the Irish coast contributes a total of 173. THERE is no nobler or more national | Ireland are shown fringed with dots-the sight in our island than to behold the sites of wrecks, collisions, and other disprocession of stately vessels as they pass asters. From this we perceive how all the in panoramic pride along our shores, or dangerous headlands and sandbanks of the navigate the great arterial streams of coast are strewn with commerce, to witness the deeply laden "A thousand fearful wrecks, Indiaman warped out of the docks, or to see the emigrant-ship speeding with bellying sails down Blackwell Reach, watched by many weeping eyes, and the depository of many aching hearts. It would, however, spoil the enjoyment of the least interested spectator if the vail could be lifted from the dark future; if that gal. lant Indiaman could be shown him broadside on among the breakers; or that stately vessel with bulwarks fringed with tearful groups, looking so sadly to the receding shore, were pictured to him foundering in mid-ocean-gone to swell the numbers of the dismal fleet that yearly sails and is never heard of more. Sadder still would be his reflection if another passing ship could be shown him, destined perhaps to circle the globe in safety, and when within sight of the white cliffs of Albion, full of joyful hearts, suddenly, in the dark and stormy night, fated to be dashed to atoms, like the Reliance and Conqueror, on a foreign strand. If such dramatic contrasts as these could be witnessed, we should without doubt strain every nerve to prevent their recurrence. As it is, the sad tale of disasters at sea comes to us weakened by the lapse of time and the distance of the scene of the catastrophe: instead of having the harrowing sight before our eyes, we have only statistics which raise no emotion, and even rarely arrest attention. In connection with these annual returns there is published a fearful-looking map termed a wreck chart, in which the shores of Great Britain and * An Abstract of the Returns made to the Lords of the Committee of Privy Council for Trade, of Wrecks of the United Kingdom. from January 1st to the 31st of December, 1857. London: 1858. and Casualties which occurred on and near the Coasts If we take a more extended view of these disastrous occurrences by opening the wreck chart attached to the evidence of the select committee on harbors of refuge, given in 1857, containing the casualties of five years, from 1852 to 1856, both inclusive, we shall be the better able to analyze their causes. Within collisions took place, being an average of this period no less than 5128 wrecks and 1025 a year. According to the evidence of Captain Washington, R.N., the scientific and indefatigable Hydrographer of |