the island legislature according
to his good pleasure, doles out to the Queen a yearly allowance of a
thousand pounds, puts her in duress in her own house, if her conduct
displeases him, and will not allow her to see strangers, except by his
permission. Few will believe that zeal for the honor of the Catholic
Church prompted Louis Philippe to inflict so disproportioned a
punishment. That the island is the best victualling-station in the South
Pacific is a far greater sin, and one for which there could be in
covetous eyes no adequate punishment, except that seizure which is so
modestly termed a protectorate.

* * * * *

Pass now from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. There is the little rocky
island of St. Paul, situated in the same latitude as Cape Town and
Melbourne; and, planted with singular accuracy equidistant from the two,
it is the only place of shelter in the long route between them. Its
harbor, if harbor it may be called, is the most secure, the most
secluded, and the most romantic, perhaps, in the whole world. St. Paul
is of volcanic origin. It is, indeed, little more than an extinct
crater with a narrow rim of land around it to separate it from the sea.
Through this rim the waters of the great Indian Ocean have cut a
channel. The crater has thus become a beautiful salt lake, a mile in
diameter, clear, deep, almost circular, and from whose border, on every
side, rise the old volcanic walls draped in verdure. The strait
connecting it with the sea is but three hundred feet wide, and at high
tide ten feet deep,--thus affording an easy passage for small vessels
into this most delightful seclusion; and no doubt the strait might be so
deepened as to float the largest ships. St. Paul is not at present much
frequented. But in a sea which is every year becoming more populous with
the commerce of every nation, who shall tell what such a central station
may become? Its title was somewhat uncertain. England thought she held
it as a dependency of Mauritius. But in 1847 the governor of Bourbon,
with a happy audacity, took possession of it, as an outpost of his own
island, and planted a little French colony of fishermen. We have not
heard that the assumption has been disputed.

* * * * *

No doubt, most of our readers may have observed in the daily prints
occasional allusions to the French War in Cochin China. Probably few
have understood the full meaning of t