our youth but as an hour
Of joy--or torture; one, serene, at ease,
May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye,
Thinking, 'He loved me well!'--clasp hands, and so pass by.

THE TEARS OF OYSTERS.

Glancing round this anatomical workshop (the oyster), we find, amongst
other things, some preparations shewing the nature of pearls. Examine
them, and we find that there are dark and dingy pearls, just as there
are handsome and ugly men; the dark pearl being found on the dark
shell of the fish, the white brilliant one upon the smooth inside
shell. Going further in the search, we find that the smooth,
glittering lining, upon which the fish moves, is known as the _nacre_,
and that it is produced by a portion of the animal called the
_mantle_; and, for explanation's sake, we may add that gourmands
practically know the mantle as the beard of the oyster. When living in
its glossy house, should any foreign substance find its way through
the shell to disturb the smoothness so essential to its ease, the fish
coats the offending substance with nacre, and a pearl is thus formed.
The pearl is, in fact, a little globe of the smooth, glossy substance
yielded by the oyster's beard; yielded ordinarily to smooth the narrow
home to which his nature binds him, but yielded in round drops, real
pearly tears, if he is hurt. When a beauty glides among a throng of
her admirers, her hair clustering with pearls, she little thinks that
her ornaments are products of pain and diseased action, endured by the
most unpoetical of shell-fish.--_Leisure Hours._

'ROBESPIERRE.'

In our recent notice of Robespierre, it was mentioned that, at the
period of his capture in the Hotel de Ville, he was shot in the jaw by
a pistol fired by one of the gendarmes. Various correspondents point
to the discrepancy between this account and that given by Thiers, and
some other authorities, who represent that Robespierre fired the
pistol himself, in the attempt to commit self-destruction. In our
account of the affair, we have preferred holding to Larmartine
(_History of the Girondists_), not only in consequence of his being
the latest and most graphic authority on the subject, but because his
statement seems to be verified by the appearance of the half-signed
document which it was our fortune to see in Paris in 1849.

The following is Lamartine's statement:--'The door soon yielded to the
blows given by the soldiers with the but-end of thei