Next to him observe that crafty-looking man, that is M. Dupin, the elder, the bosom friend of Louis Philippe, and the best turn-coat of Europe. He who stands by M. Guizot is Montalivet, late Minister of the Home Department, present Minister of Instruction, and who would not object to be Ministre du Pot de Chambre, provided he was only a Minister."- "But what are they chatting about?" said I, somewhat irreverently." They are consulting," answered Asmodeus, "the best means of preventing Odilon Barrot, Mauguin, and Lamarque from overthrowing the present Administration. The Duke has proposed to make them Peers of France, in order to take them from the Chamber of Deputies, and therefore Thiers has put himself into the rage proper to a man who admires le juste milieu, and has declared this project dangerous: first, because the proposed Peers would, probably, not accept the honour; and secondly, because, if they did accept it, it would be an admission on the part of the present Administration that the Opposition had almost conquered the juste milieu. The little orator, you perceive, has succeeded, and all the assembly are of his opinion." At this moment entered Casimir Perier. He was received with great eagerness. Asmodeus told me that he had brought the original of the letter he had just written to Metternich. It was read en comité, and all present approved the political principles it contained. I next saw coming in a gentleman, tall and of a yellowish complexion; with a cast in his eye. I inquired. who he was, and Asmodeus told me that he was M. Barthe, the Minister of Justice. As soon as he was seated, I remarked that all the members collected around him, and were listening with great attention to what he was saying. "And what is he speaking of?" said I. "Why, he is repeating the examination of the principal persons arrested for the conspiracy of Notre Dame. Have you seen how markedly Guizot and Perier are struck by his narration? Well, the proceedure does not promise a favourable result for the present Administration.

We now spurred on our horses, and entered the garden of the Tuileries dear-remembered garden of assignations and hopes-of meetings, of quarrels, of reconciliations! Never, till youth itself be forgotten, shall I forget thee!

I turned, with a sigh, to contemplate the interior of the Tuileries. I saw that beautiful apartment which had been inhabited by Marie Antoinette, Josephine, Marie Louise, the Duchesse d'Angoulême, and of which the Queen of the French is now the possessor. Here, in the drawing-room which opens on the gardens, the Queen was with her girls, and her two younger sons. She was reading a pious Italian

book, “La Manna dell' anima;" Princess Marie, who is destined to be the wife of all the new-created kings, was writing a letter, and Asmodeus told me that it was addressed to General Beilliard, and turned on the projected marriage with King Leopold; Princess Clementine was embroidering, and Princess Louise was making up linen for the poor. The Dukes de Monpensier and D'Aumale were playing at draughts, and both dressed as Gardes Nationales. After this, Asmodeus showed me the former habitation of Madame de Barry, now the residence of the sister of Louis Philippe. She was very busy in

casting up accounts, and in making notes for the curtailing the emoluments of those who are employed about the Court. She had in her hands the bill of M. Paër, of the last musical concert, and had reduced it almost to half the sum usually given. Mon Dieu! if I could but get her for my housekeeper!

"Now," said Asmodeus to me, "you will see Louis Philippe." I turned, and beheld a man, with a respectable father-of-a-family look, sitting by a table with a bald-headed gentleman, and poring very attentively over an architectural design.

"The bald-headed gentleman is M. Fontaine, the architect: they are concerting a plan for a Royal Bazaar. His Majesty has a great turn for such projects: in fact, between you and me, his character has been mistaken-he only looks on the Crown as a great commercial speculation. He has at once the soul and the civility of a taxgatherer; and if he loses the Throne, give him a patent for building shops on a new plan, with a certain gain, and he will be at once the happiest and most popular man in the kingdom."

2

By these remarks it was easy to perceive that Asmodeus was no lover of the Citizen King; but who knows whether the satire of the Devil was not the best compliment the Monarch could receive? I settle not these points.. I wish to keep well with a Government that could banish one from the Rocher de Cancale. And I would fain not share with Lady Morgan the honours of an interdict.

The Devil proceeded to descant on the royal ménage, when turning round he perceived me very unequivocally yawning. He had lived too long with the aristocracy not to be well bred, and he immediately proposed to me a change of scene: the wine, however, had made me drowsy, and I proposed a return to London in order to let the newspapers know what was really going on at the Metropolis of Europe. The Devil consented, and telling our steeds to be steady for once in a way, we set off in an easy canter. The Devil fell into a profound silence -it lasted so long that I was surprised at it, despite of my own drowsiness. "What are you thinking of, my friend?" said I.—“ I was thinking," quoth Asmodeus, "of the Lord Chancellor."—" Better now than later," said I; "he would be delighted if he knew who was so honouring him."—" I was thinking," resumed the Devil, disregarding my remark, "how desirable it would be for France to possess such a man! the misfortune of France is that her men of reflection are not men of action-her men of action are not men of reflection. Had she possessed one who was both, and who, as great a man as Harry Brougham, was also as profound an actor, and had he been thrown uppermost as he undoubtedly would, France now would have sprung up from her revolution on the wings of her proper eagle. He would apparently have spurned the juste milieu-he would have marched at the head of the mouvement. But he would have restrained while he appeared to have encouraged, and won confidence for principles while he was guiding those principles into legitimate channels."

"Doubtless," said I," but Harry Brougham has pretty nearly the same part to play at home !"

"Not at all," rejoined Asmodeus quickly; "do you not perceive that in England he is chained by the fetters of his vocation? With

all his versatility, Lord Brougham cannot be Prime Minister and Lord Chancellor both. His law reforms, and his law hearings, and his woolsack, and his replies to Lord Dudley give him enough to do. Pity that he was ever a lawyer-he ought to be your Prime Minister at this moment. He, at least, would not have been wavering between six Peers and thirty. The Reform would have been gained ere this, and England-" Here, having had enough of Reform from human lips, I fell fast asleep, and when I woke it was broad noon on the next day, and I was in my own bed-room in Street.

O Novelty! Mother of all our delights-the bright-eyed-the fresh-breathing-the seraph-winged!-Morning of the soul-wishes are the birds that hymn thee-hopes are the dews that sparkle beneath thy tread-where thou walkest, all things are eloquent with gladness, and life's air is quaffed as an elixir. What is love without thee?what ambition?-what social conviviality?-what even solitary aspirings?the first of anything how delightful-the repetition how palling! Thee do I hunt with an eager heart through an existence that I feel is not fated to endure long. Come when it will, the last day shall find me prepared, and I will walk with a bold step across that bridge which conducts me at least to a world hitherto untried! in truth, a man must indeed be an adorer of novelty when he rides out in the nights of January with the Devil for a companion!

While I was thus musing and sipping my coffee, Asmodeus entered the room. I greeted him with joy. "And what news?" cried I, throwing down the papers which I had just taken up in despair.

"Why, I find," said Asmodeus-(" have you any cigars here? ah! thank you, they're all the fashion not only in Regent Street above, but in Pandemonium below, ever since James the First flattered our national pride by attributing the invention of tobacco to us")-why, I find some one-not you of course, you have been too busy-has been putting our adventures into a Magazine, and I have been asking the world what they think of us." chair nearer

"Ah! that must be interesting," said I, drawing my

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my visitor's, for I dare say the reader has lived long enough to know that anything about oneself is interesting:-and that is the charm of notoriety.

"Why, they say that my re-appearance is not new."

"A discovery, few re-appearances are! But what does that signify? -you appear after a new fashion-surely that is novelty enough in the world. We will make the adventures new before we part, and, by-the-by, you shall introduce me au plutôt to the Fairies, since you insinuate they still exist. It will be pleasant to spend one of these frosty nights among the green knolls of the pigmy gentles. The Magazine what sort of a thing is that?"

"Oh, an old friend with a new face. It proposes to fill up a certain vacuum in English literature, and aims at the design of the Encyclopedists of France, leaving out their infidelity and so forth— to keep up philosophically with the mouvement, and to fight the old opinions with the new. It takes a modest name, but has more aims and more intentions than it puts forth."

"May it prosper!" said I, disinterestedly; " doubtless it deserves

it and what else is there stirring in the great Republic of Literature?"

66

Marry!" returned the Devil," you are growing so good that there are very few books now published that a Devil can read. I remember the time when every Novel smacked of the stews-when a Play was villainy made pleasant-and every doctrinal controversy was brimfull of envy, malice, and the inhumanities of hatred. Now all is smooth, civil, and oily. Your Novelists moralize, and your Plays fast on a meagre double entendre. As to controversy there's an end of it-except in politics. This growing decency is not peculiar to England-it extends all over Europe. Manners wear petticoats, and are ladylike exceedingly. Yet, you are not a bit better for it we have just as large a proportion of you below. Why is this? I don't understand it. Nor does your conversation in this respect reflect the modest colours of your literature. Men talk just as naughtily after dinner-Divines and ladies abuse each other just as vehemently as ever. In jesting, the most popular jokes are still the least delicate, and yet the moment you see in a book anything the least resembling what you are all talking, laughing, chuckling, and hugging yourselves about every day in the week, you set up your backs at it, and call the author all the names you can think of. In fact all men have two suits of character-the every-day suit and the Sunday suit. And the best of you are much deeper hypocrites than the world is aware of."

The morning looked fine, and so I proposed a stroll. Asmodeus, who seemed not himself to be always free from ennui, agreed to the proposition with considerable avidity. We had scarce got into the street before we met the Bishop of London. I had some slight acquaintance with his Lordship he joined us, and the Devil, with great politeness, offered him his arm. I pass over our conversation, lest the good Bishop should regret his familiarity with my companion. But what can a Bishop expect from a Reformer? "I know not," said the Devil, as we now tête-à-tête entered the Green Park, "what I should more observe in you English, than your half-andhalfness. You are so bold and so timid-so lavish and so economical. You order a New Palace slap dash-and just when it's finished, you think it would be better to let it go to ruin. But really you have no grounds for such niggardly conduct in the case of this splendid edifice," and the Devil, putting on his spectacles, peered at the pile of Pimlico which stood majestically before us. "How grand!" ejaculated Asmodeus; "what a noble simplicity!-here are no crowded ornaments, no paltry figures, no overladen imagery-all is simple and striking-then the building is so lofty and so commandingyou may see it all over London. Ah, your architects study the sublime! And what a beautiful idea that round thing at the topthe crown or rather nightcap of the whole; it looks just as if you had first put up the house, and were now going to put it out! Doubtless a moral is ingeniously meant-something about Time destroying the noblest edifices. And indeed that would be very emblematicfor I hear the palace was not intended to last.

'All that's bright must fade.'

'Tis a pretty idea making ephemera in brick and mortar-poetical !"

"Pooh!" said I, patriotically, for Buckingham Palace, as the reader well knows, is a sore point with us:-" Pooh! the Palace is a very fine Palace, and Mr. Nash says it will be quite another thing when it comes to have its gold gates (mosaic gold) put on. But indeed we shall probably let it stay as it is. The nation can't spend any more money upon objects of show."

"That is exactly it," returned the Devil, in his d-d sententious way; "you make a sacrifice to Extravagance, that you may leave it unfinished-a monument of Folly!"

While we were thus conversing, the Duke of Wellington drove by in his carriage.

"Now," quoth the Devil, “I am curious to know what that man thinks of human nature. Between you and me, I suspect that he heartily despises it. One thing he must despise, and that is Popular Opinion. No man ever saw it through so many varieties. Adored to-day, hissed to-morrow-now worshipped with huzzas, now pelted with brickbats-now receiving a magnificent house from the public bounty, and now seeing its windows smashed by the public indignation. Can that man respect those who are all idolaters at one hour, all execrators the next? Impossible! for he must know himself to have been always the same!-the same when hissed, the same when huzzaed! And he has only, therefore, the choice, whether he shall despise in his fellow-subjects the want of consistency, or the want of penetration."

"Signor Don Asmodeus, you talk very well for a Spanish Devil, but you are not profound enough for an Englishman. The people are all very right-when the man served their cause (or they fancied he did), they were grateful-when he impeded it, they were indignant. Voilà, a very simple way of viewing the case."

"It is not saying much for mankind, when your best apology for them is insisting on the naturalness of being selfish," said the Devil. "Nonsense!" said I. "Tell me one thing-will the Duke of Wellington ever be Prime Minister again?" "Possibly; in a reformed Parliament."

"Ha! ha!"

"I'm very serious. Re-action may follow Reform-the absurdity is, to suppose that it can precede it."

"That's true enough," said I, and I fell into a reverie; "for my friends are Whigs-God bless and God help them!"

"Observe that old gentleman in his green carriage," quoth the Devil; "he is J, the wit of a former age. He has become deaf, in order not to hear the dull things of his successors. Poor J-! It is a curious sight, and full of interest, the spectacle of a superannuated jester!-it is like the skeleton of a butterfly! There is one thing that seems strange to me in the nature of wit-it fluctuates. A man, very witty in one age, is thought either very vulgar or very dull in the next; it is because wit depends upon the tone of the times, and thus becomes, in the vein of its persiflage, in fashion or out. Poor J! I remember being behind his elbow some hundred or two years ago, when a tax was laid on hair-powder and tea. J–