the air may never go quite out of fashion.

In a very amusing collection of anecdotes, entitled, _Fetes et Souvenirs
du Congres Vienne, par le Comte A. de la Garde_, there is a good story
told of one of these capricious visitations of Fortune, which came,--where
Fortune does not often play her more amiable tricks,--to a miserable poet,
releasing him at once from poverty and his jaded muse. We regret to be
obliged to tell the story from memory. We ought to have preserved the
book, if only out of gratitude--for it was the most pleasant travelling
companion, the best fellowship for a diligence or a steam-boat, we
remember to have encountered. But the market price of the small
paper-bound volumes (such was the shape in which it came to us) was so
little--it being one of those editions which the journalists on the
Continent often print to distribute gratis to the subscribers to their
journal--that no pains were taken to preserve it. Very absurd! We print
books so cheap, that the book loses half its value: it is bought and not
read; or read once, and thrown aside, or destroyed.

Poor Dubois was one of that unhappy class, which we are given to
understand is dying out of Europe, (we hope for the sake of suffering
humanity that this is true); of that class, which we in England used to
call Grub Street poets. He _flourished_ at the time of the Empire, and had
been flourishing during the whole of the eventful period that preceded the
elevation of Napoleon. Poor Dubois had alternately applauded and satirised
all parties, and written songs for all sentiments; but had extracted very
little either of praise or pocket-money from any of the reigning powers,
whether republican or imperial. He was quite in despair. Still young in
years, but with worn-out rhymes, he was lamenting one day to his sister
his melancholy and hopeless fate. This damsel was in the service of
Pauline the sister of Napoleon. "Write me a sonnet," said she, "about
Pauline, and about beauty, and let me try what I can do." A beautiful
sonnet, and a sonnet about beauty, are two very different things. Dubois
made nothing of his task, but did it out of hand: his sister took the
sonnet with her.

It was not long before she had an opportunity, in her capacity of _femme
de chambre_, of speaking to Pauline about her brother the poet. She
produced her sonnet about beauty. Pauline did not exactly read it; no one
but the writer, and a few afflicted friends, and those heroic sou