nd worn over an under pair of white
linen. They are slashed up the outside of each leg, for greater
convenience in riding, and studded with rows of silver buttons.]

[Footnote 8: The lariat, or riata, as it is indifferently called in
California and Mexico, is precisely the same as the lasso of South
America.]

* * * * *

FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE FOR JULY.

LEDRU ROLLIN.

Ledru Rollin is now in his forty-fourth or forty-fifth year,
having been born in 1806 or 1807. He is the grandson of the famous
_Prestidigateur_, or Conjurer Comus, who, about four or five-and-forty
years ago, was in the acme of his fame. During the Consulate, and a
considerable portion of the Empire, Comus traveled from one department
of France to the other, and is even known to have extended his
journeys beyond the Rhine and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the
Rhone and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurers of his day he was
the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting
that Corsican conjurer who ruled for so many years the destinies
of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we
have learned that the Charleses, the Alexanders, even the Robert
Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of
the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains
proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it
was found he had left to his descendants a very ample--indeed, for
France, a very large fortune. Of the descendants in a right line, his
grandson, Ledru Rollin, was his favorite, and to him the old man left
the bulk of his fortune, which, during the minority of Ledru Rollin,
grew to a sum amounting to nearly, if not fully, L4,000 per annum.

The scholastic education of the young man who was to inherit this
considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the reign of
Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended the throne _il
commencait a faire sur droit_, as they phrase it in the _pays Latin_.
Neither during the reign of Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in
the exact and physical sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and
substantial education. Though the Roman poets and historians are
tolerably well studied and taught, yet little attention is paid to
Greek literature. The physical and exact sciences are unquestionably
admirably taught at the Polytechnique and other schools; but neither
at the College of St. Barbe, nor of