ised story, instigates him to the murder
of Buckingham, who is at Portsmouth fitting out an armament for the
relief of La Rochelle, then besieged by Richelieu. She escapes to
France, but there falls into the hands of her deadly enemy,
D'Artagnan, and of her first husband, Athos, otherwise Count de la
Fere. Her punishment is one of the last and most striking scenes in
the book, which concludes with the capture of La Rochelle, leaving
D'Artagnan a lieutenant of mousquetaires, and, to all appearance, on
the high-road to further preferment. Some account of his future
fortune is promised us by Monsieur Dumas; and, however alarming a
continuation to a book in eight volumes may sound, we cannot help
wishing he may keep his promise. There is less occasion to be alarmed
at the length of a six or eight volume book from his hands, than at
that of a three volume one from those of many other writers; and
moreover one must take into account the ingenuity of French
publishers, who manage to have the type spread out over the largest
possible amount of white paper. The system of putting little in a
page, and diminishing that little by the interpolation of huge and
apparently objectless blank spaces, has reached its height in Paris;
and, although an imposition on the public, it perhaps renders a book
lighter and pleasanter to read. Light reading and pleasant reading
Monsieur Dumas' romance assuredly is; and we can wish our readers no
better pastime, during the long evenings of this wintry season, than
the perusal of the feats and fortunes of the _Trois Mousquetaires_.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART XV.

"Have I not in my time heard lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"
SHAKSPEARE.

Valenciennes was now captured. The sagacity of my friend, the French
engineer, had not been deceived. The explosion of the three great
mines, an operation from its magnitude almost new to war, and in its
effects irresistible, had thrown open the fortress. The garrison had
done their work gallantly, and the result was a capitulation, hastened
by the outcry of the famishing inhabitants. I hastened to the quarters
of my regimen