the Place Carrousel. The rout was complete; the terror,
the confusion, and the yelling of the wounded were horrible. The havoc was
increased by a party of the defenders of the palace, who descended into
the court and fell with desperation on the fugitives. I felt that now was
my time to escape, and darted behind one of the buttresses of a royal
_porte cachere_, to let the crowd pass me. The skirmishing continued at
intervals, and an officer in the uniform of the Royal Guard was struck
down by a shot close to my feet. As he rolled over, I recognised his
features. He was my young friend Lafontaine! With an inconceivable shudder
I looked on his pale countenance, and with the thought that he was killed
was mingled the thought of the misery which the tidings would bring to
fond ears in England. But as I drew the body within the shelter of the
gate, I found that he still breathed; he opened his eyes, and I had the
happiness, after waiting in suspense till the dusk covered our movements,
of conveying him to my hotel.

Of the remaining events of this most calamitous day, I know but what all
the world knows. It broke down the monarchy. It was the last struggle in
which a possibility existed of saving the throne. The gentlest of the
Bourbons was within sight of the scaffold. He had now only to retrieve his
character for personal virtue by laying down his head patiently under the
blade of the guillotine. His royal character was gone beyond hope, and all
henceforth was to be the trial of the legislature and the nation. Even
that trial was to be immediate, comprehensive, and condign. No people in
the history of rebellion ever suffered, so keenly or so rapidly, the
vengeance which belongs to national crimes. The saturnalia was followed by
massacre. A new and darker spirit of ferocity displayed itself, in a
darker and more degraded form, from hour to hour, until the democracy was
extinguished. Like the Scripture miracle of the demoniac--the spirits
which had once exhibited the shape of man, were transmitted into the shape
of the brute; and even the swine ran down by instinct, and perished in the
waters.

* * * * *

CEYLON[12]

[12] CEYLON, AND ITS CAPABILITIES. BY J.W. Bennett, Esq. F.L.S.
London Allen: 1843. With Plain and Coloured Illustrations. 4to.

There is in the science and process of colonization, as in every complex
act of man, a secret philosophy--which is first suspected t