have entered the city, and I have concealed you here, until a party of my own guards can convey you to the Bastile, which is impregnable. Sire! do you hear me?" The hapless monarch threw an unmeaning glance at the constable, and muttering, "I am very cold," again relapsed into silence.

"Still senseless," remarked the Constable; " and yet in this poor witless creature is comprised all my power. Fortunately, the woman has not recognised him."

As Dame Bourdichon re-appeared, carrying some wood, with which she speedily raised a fire from the embers, the King 'eft his seat, and crouched down on a settle under the spacious chimney, still wrapping his mantle closely. round him. Whilst he was thus occupied, some fresh cries resounded from the street.

"At last, they are here;" cried D'Armagnac, as he hear his name pronounced amidst the tumult. Open that loor, woman-they are my friends who come this way." Being assured there was no great danger to be dreaded, Dame Bourdichon opened the door, and directly afterwards, upon a signal from D'Armagnac, a party of his guards entered, headed by Dupuy, who started with surprise upon seeing the Constable.

"We have no time for explanation, Dupuy," cried D'Armagnac hastily. "Give me a sword; and tell mewhere is the dauphin Charles?”

“Duchâtel has saved him, sire," replied Dupuy," he is in safety at the Bastile." Then, lowering his voice he added," and the King, what has become of him?"

"He is also preserved," replied D'Armagnac in the same tone, directing his eyes towards the chimney place, where the monarch still remained cowering over the fire. "Silence-all may yet be well."

"It is necessary that the soldiers should see you, my lord," continued Dupuy. They begin to mistrust your absence."

“Do they defend the posts with success ?" asked D'Armagnac.

"Those at the Châtelet are all slaughtered, sire; and the prison doors thrown open; but the Genoese archers, at the Louvre, have repulsed every attack."

"I will go and join them, Dupuy-I leave the King in your hands; conduct him to the Bastile, where he will be secure. You will find me at the Louvre, if I can reach it. A few of your archers will accompany me thither, with a guide who can lead us away from the Bourguignian sentinels."

"Ho! Master Bourdichon!" cried the Dame, as she heard the last part of the Constable's speech, to her husband, who from fear had remained upon the stairs for the last half hour. "The Constable requires a guide, and you

must serve him."

"Thou here!" exclaimed D'Armagnac, as Bourdichon crept forward. "Where are the keys of the Porte St. Germain which I entrusted to you ?" The bourgeois was unable to reply, but his wife came to his assistance. 66 My lord," she exclaimed, "they burnt the gate and were going to put him on the top of the fire, when he managed to escape. He will serve as a good guide, for he knows all the Bourguignian positions." Archers," cried the Constable, place that man amongst you, and if he betrays us cut his throat. Dupuy-you have received my orders. The King must be preserved, or he must die. Forwards."

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Bourdichon opened the small door, and the constable with his guard passed through. A few archers remained with Dupuy, and these, with the King and Dame Bourdichon, were now left occupiers of the apartment.

As soon as they were gone, Dupuy advanced towards the King, and whispered to him, unheard by the rest,

"Will monseigneur accompany us to the Bastile ?” "You need not trouble yourself to disturb that old man," said Dame Bourdichon. "He is warm there, and does not need to be moved."

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Silence, woman," replied Dupuy, offering his arm to the King. The monarch stared at him with the same. vacant gaze, and was about to take it, when a loud tumult arose in the street, amidst which the watchword "Bourgogne" was plainly audible.

"The Bourguignions!” cried Dupuy, running to the window. "The Constable has not been perceived by them; but they have closed the way to the Bastile." They have perceived us," cried an archer," and are coming this way."

"Then is there but one chance left," thought Dupuy. "They will recognise the King, and bear him off. "Archers," he continued, aloud, we must attack them. D'Armagnac and victory!"

Thus speaking, he rushed out, followed by his guards; and the next instant a fearful struggle in the street proved that they had come in collision with their enemies. The noise and cries increased, but, in the middle of all this tumult, the poor King remained motionless upon the settle, covering his face with his hands, and rocking backwards and forwards in childish apathy. The strife went on, and so near the dwelling, that the partizans and lances of the soldiers continually beat against the window; and when the uproar appeared at its highest, the alarm of Dame Bourdichon was raised to the extreme of terror, by another violent knocking at the door.

"Holy Mother!” cried the Dame, scarcely able to speak for fear. "Who is there ?" "Open quickly," cried a voice. "We are friends-it is I-Perinet Leclerc." ALBERT.

THE VILLAGE BUDGET."

BY THE PARISH SCHOOLMASTER.

NO. III.-A LEGEND OF THE GLEN.-CHAP. I.

"The wind is up; hark! how it howls! Methinks, Till now, I never heard a sound so dreary."-BLAIR. Ir was a dark and stormy night in November, 17—; the wind was howling most dismally among the bare branches of the trees, singing, as it were, a requiem over the departed glories of their fallen leaves. It went and came in fitful gusts, blowing at one moment with the fierceness of a hurricane; and at another subsiding into a gentle murmur, that sighed over hill and dale with a plaintive sort of music. It was a night of intense darkness, and as the upturned eye of the weary traveller gazed wistfully upon the darkened sky, there was no ray of light to guide him on his way-no, not even the flickering of the pale stars. There was no pleasure in being abroad in such an evening—at least, so thought the inmates of that tavern of good cheer-the pride and glory of our village, the Cross Keys. A cheerful fire was blazing right merrily on the kitchen hearth, shedding its beams of light over dusky rafters and joists, and revealing more clearly than would the blaze of noon-day, the innumerable nooks and corners of that ancient apartment. Snugly ensconced in his huge arm-chair, his short dumpy legs stretched out to their full length before the fire, reclined old Tom Moss, the landlord, enjoying all the comforts of a pipe of tobacco; while ever and anon, as he puffed the wreaths of smoke away, would he raise a bowl of steaming punch to his lips, and partake of its contents with exceeding relish. And there too was his own sonsie, bustling good wife, the labours of the day ended, sitting by the fireside, nodding and nearly

was a loveliness of expression in her beautiful features, that at once charmed and entranced the beholders; and which, joined to the sparkling sweetness of her blue eyes, and the sunny brightness of her hair, that fell down her shoulders with a most becoming witchery, might well make her appear as less the creature of reality than the creation of a poet's fancy. But there she sat, ever and anon looking with a sort of timidity at the motions of her gloomy companion seemingly afraid to attract his notice by the slightest movement on her part. At length, with a slight faltering in her voice, she ventured to say :

"Charles, my dear Charles, you are strangely altered; tell me how in any way I have given cause of offence? It is not three days since I left my home at your request, and that too in the silence of midnight, to cast myself into your arms, and then you gladly received me. Why, now that I have become your wife, have you so suddenly altered your whole bearing towards me?"

"You will learn soon enough," was the haughty reply of her husband, as he continued pacing up and down. A tear glistened in the eye of the lovely wife, as she heard this gruff reply, and felt its bitter poignancy-it was so different from what she expected.

"Where do you intend going?" she timidly inquired, conquering by a strong effort her anguish for a moment. "Ever since our marriage have we been travelling the least frequented roads, seeming to shun every town of considerable size, still travelling on I know not where, and yet you conceal your reason for so doing. Tell me, dear Charles, I pray you, the purpose you have in view, in not returning to D. as you promised, to ask my father's forgiveness ?"

At this appeal, her husband stood still before her, bestowing a look of such mingled fierceness and hatred on her, as made her tremble in dread of his reply.

"You will, perhaps, learn all too soon," he said, with peculiar emphasis; but know this now, that though I won you for my bride with honied words of love, even as I breathed these words, I hated you with a stronger hatred than even words can tell. My passion was of another sort -a nobler sort than love-and even now I have it revenge!"

The bitterness of expression with which these words were uttered, plainly showed they were meant to wound as deeply as words might wound; and to add if possible to their cruelty, he bestowed a look of such hatred and scorn upon her as made her shrink from his gaze, as she would from that of some savage monster.

"Think you," he continued, still gazing stedfastly on her, "think you that I could bend to seek your father's forgiveness-his forgiveness! when my whole aim has been but how to pain him most? Little did you think, when I strove to get you in my power, that I was your father's most deadly enemy, his sworn inveterate foe, and that I only sought your love as a means of gratifying my own revenge, and plunging the arrow of resentment with a greater force into his bosom."

As he made this cruel and callous announcement, his wife's heaving bosom and quivering lip showed how deeply she felt its bitterness. She sat for a brief space weeping in silence, but suddenly becoming fired with a glow of resentment at his unnatural conduct, she started from her seat, and exclaimed with a wild sort of energy :"And canst thou, darest thou glory in such a scheme of deep malignity? For myself I care not; but that thou shouldst have laid such a plot, to wound through me the feelings of one who I am certain never unjustly treated you, speaks the baseness of your heart-the utter worthlessness of your soul."

To see that fair and fragile being, whose looks pro

claimed her the soul of gentleness, thus roused into ire by the cruel dastardly taunts of him who should have been her best protector, and giving vent to her feelings of abhorrence with so much energy, her face suffused with a glow of indignant feeling, and her bright eyes sparkling with animation, was a sight of touching interest. Even her husband, despite the cold sarcastic look he assumed, felt surprised. No sooner had she given vent to this burst of indignation, than the thought that she was now the wedded wife of him who was the cause of all her misery, produced a revulsion of feeling in her bosom; and she sank on her seat, overwhelmed with anguish.

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Alas, poor girl!" said he, with a sneering smile, and a hypocritical modulation of voice, "hadst thou been other than the daughter of my greatest enemy, I might perchance have pitied thee. How pretty thou lookest when in a slight passion! I could not have conceived-really I could notthat you would have looked half so beautiful!"

She was in no mood to reply to his bitter taunts; her ire had passed away with her first burst of indignation, and now her only task was to weep.

"What! no more theatrical exclamations ?" continued he, in a tone of mock surprise. "Dear me, how romantic you look! I declare these tears become you exceedingly. What! and do you grow pale too? Why then the heat of the room must be oppressive-and now that I think of it, we had much better continue our journey-the air no doubt will revive you."

He stepped across the room, and rang the bell with considerable violence.

"Your lady desires to proceed on her journey," said he, as his servant appeared in obedience to the summons of the bell," and therefore you must make all haste in having the chaise ready; and remember," continued he, lowering his voice to a whisper, so that his wife might not hear his secret instructions," remember you take the road we came here by-the one leading through the glen, just below the village-and-”

The incomplete sentence was perfectly understood by him to whom it was addressed, who in return immediately gave a nod of assent, accompanied by a smile of peculiar meaning, and disappeared.

In a very short time, he returned to say the chaise was ready waiting; on hearing which announcement his master turned to the lady, and bowing with mock humility, offered his arm.

"Permit me, madam, to see you to the carriage."

"I'll follow," was the brief reply from his sobbing wife, as she drew her cloak around her. What a moment of dread and anguish was that to her! She would have given all she possessed to have been once more beneath a father's protection and mistress of her own actions; but to add to the anguish which her husband's cruel language had created in her bosom, dark forebodings began to arise in her mind, and the mocking tone of civility in which his last words were uttered, seemed to sound in her ears like those of an executioner calling on his trembling victim. It was thoughts such as these that made her shudder and tremble with dread, as she followed her husband from the inn. The night was still dark and stormy, and she stood in the doorway hesitatingly and afraid; and as her husband assisted her into the carriage, she bestowed on him a look of such entreaty and alarm, as made old Tom, (who of course was standing near by, to see his guests safely away,) seize the opportunity of saying, while the gentleman was talking to his servant," Ill would it become me to say onything, but as ye seem vera distressed, jist say the word, an' I'll dae my endeavour to help ye."

"Take that for thy pains, presumptuous meddling fool," said the husband, laying him prostrate on the earth by one

blow. In a moment, the stranger was in the carriage, and long before Tom had recovered his senses, or indeed was raised from the ground, the vehicle was rattling along at a furious pace, and had left the village far behind.

THE LITERARY WORLD.

"Our LIBRARY TABLE."

THE poet-traveller, Lamartine, when standing beside the last home of a Greek hero, exclaimed, "What's Agamemnon to me?" In like manner, throwing down the dozen newspaper columns-enough to satisfy even "Até, Mother of Debate," we say, "What's Sir Robert Peel and his Income Tax to us ?" They may have produced a sort of lull in the literary as well as the commercial world; but a re-action is already perceptible, and authors and publishers are rushing inter medias res, to get out their books for the season, lest they be left till summer, when, as poor Goldy said—a new book is like "pork in the dog-days."

*

The head-line to this paper may remind the reader of a piece of harmless conceit in a Magazine, of which we may have already spoken out somewhat too plainly to please those who are greedy of all sorts of praise; no matter how polluted the source whence it flows, all being fish that comes into their "critical" net. The fantastic trick to which we allude, is the wood-cut of the Editor's Library Table, in Ainsworth's Magazine, which may be all very well in its way, though it would be a dangerous display to the assessors of the Income Tax; and judging from Mr. Ainsworth's productions, we did not give him credit for possessing so many square yards of book-knowledge. However, a large library is an intellectual luxury, which it would be better for the public if every author possessed. Only think of poor Goldy's library, when his relative from the country called upon him, with the expectation of seeing a fine collection of books, and found-what!-an odd volume of Buffon's Natural History! Then, poor Colton used to boast that he wrote his Lacon upon a little threelegged deal table; and we have seen a poor devil of an author" writing upon an empty clothes-trunk, in a back attic in one of the intellectual courts of Fleet Street. Jack Sheppard too had his library table-the carpenter's bench -and our pungent contemporary Punch has figured his library table, Judy and all, as a pleasantry upon that in the Harrow Road-doubtless thinking "if Oxford have its sausage, why not Cambridge have its tart?"-and now come we to "Our Library Table."

A topographic furor appears to be raging among the London publishers; the success of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's Ireland having probably given the cue for this line of publication. We noticed Mr. Cyrus Redding's England at its outset; how he proceeds in his Expeditions through Cornwall and Lancashire we have not time to examine; but he is, doubtless, as busy in counting the pilchards in one district as the factory spindles in the other. By-andby we may take a peep at the counties complete; though we confess that we were somewhat startled at the zigzag "cornice" of an Anglo-Norman arch in Cornwall, No. 1. Such another mésalliance would call up John Carter from his resting-place, throw the Council-room at Somerset

The portion of the Miser's Daughter, in this number, is too lengthy; and why introduce" the Folly" on the Thames, from a print by no means rare, but engraved in the Mirror, many years since? The sub-editorial articles border on common-place, and the space occupied by criticism might be much more advantageously filled-with all Mr. Ainsworth's "embarrassment of wealth," as he, for the first time, translates a well-known French phrase, for the benefit of his English readers.

House, on a Thursday night, into perturbation, and lead to "a call" of the Society of Antiquaries.

Dr. Beattie's coxcombical Castles and Abbeys has never tempted us through the second number, wherein we recognised some dull common-place information about Eltham Palace and St. Alban's Abbey. The wood-cuts in this work are pretty bits of the picturesque, and we wish they were in better company than the prose they illustrate. The third novelty of this class is a work to be entitled The Environs of London, from the metropolitan establishment of Messrs. Blackwood. Judging from the specimen of this work, it will be written in a very light, jaunty, readable style, and we opine, by the author of "The World in London," in Blackwood's Magazine. There is an inviting freshness in the opening pages, and a poetic vivacity of manner, that is likely to render the work acceptable to dipping readers, at the same time that historical and topographical facts will not cramp the author's springy" style. The cuts are really picturesque: that of Chelsea, from the River, is most effectively broken with light and shade, and is very artistical. The name of the author is John Fisher Murray, and the first number is to comprise an Excursion to Richmond by the Thames, to our minds a bolder hazard than a passage across the Atlantic. The failure of Mr. Mackay's never-enough-to-be-quoted Thames and its Tributaries-fine paper, cuts, and all,—leads us to anticipate no startling success for this new enterprise. Time was, when, as John Reeve sung—

"We all went to Richmond by water;" but steam by land and water has caused the Thames, from Chelsea upwards, to become almost a "silent highway." Talking of Richmond, the proprietors of the Castle Tavern announce in the Quarterly Review, suites of rooms for summer-parties,-a good idea, for this house is the most aristocratic establishment in Richmond; less civic than the Star and Garter, with its casino-like appointments, its excellent cartes de cuisine et des vins, and its delightful associations of wedding parties, bachelors' dinners, family re-unions, and hob-nobbing over the choicest bins of Ellis's cellars, and the classic prospect of the vale of the Thames from one of the tavern-windows-all fog and water, as Lord Byron provokingly called this Tempé of the Londoners.

As we are at Richmond, let us say a word or two on Walpole's pet pasteboard Strawberry Hill, which appears to have lost some of its attraction by the recent atrocity at Roehampton; if it be true that persons in carriages visited this blood-stained spot. For the character of those whom wealth should have refined, we hope this statement is false; though such curiosity may be one of the anomalous features of the English débris.

The

Almost every journal has its small-talk about Strawberry Hill, some of which has, doubtless, made the “dealers” of Wardour Street smile at your virtuosi on paper. Times, in the hard, dry way of its City article, has contained several notices of Walpole's folly, and "the heaps of odds and ends, the trumpery, toys, and tatters of antiquated affectation-the sweepings of a broker's stall,” with which Strawberry abounds. But some allowance ought surely to be made for the facility of collection in our day, compared with that in Walpole's time. Besides, no man ever made a large assemblage, without having some rubbish—as foil, or rather, experience. Well do we remember the sincere regret of a dealer in curiosities, at the death of Sir Walter Stirling, which was indeed a loss; seeing that Sir Walter, good easy man, purchased such articles as few persons with better judgment would look at; and the sale of the collection in Pall Mall proved the sincerity of the broker's gratitude. Walpole's effects will, of course, have a better fate; though, were the "view" to