gave the Museum his collection of insects from the coast of Barbary. In November of the same year, a collection was received from the Low Countries; and that of precious stones was removed from the Mint to the Museum. In February, 1797, the Minister procured the African birds, which had served for the drawings of Levaillant's celebrated work. In 1798, the collection formed by Brocheton in Guyana, and the numerous objects of animated and vegetable nature collected under the tropics by Captain Baudin and his indefatigable associates, filled the hot-houses and the galleries of the Museum.

The government manifested the most unceasing and lively concern for the establishment, and did everything in its power to promote its interests; but penury repressed their noble rage," and rendered it impossible to furnish the necessary funds for the arrangement of the collections, the repairs of the buildings, the payment of the salaries, and the nourishment of the animals. These last-named gentry were indeed placed under very trying circumstances; and, shortly after this period, it was even deemed necessary to authorize M. Delauney, Superintendent of the Menagerie, to kill the least

valuable of them, in order to provide food for the remainder. Hen Pen herself was never in a greater scrape.

The face of things, however, speedily changed. The events of November, 1799, by displacing and concentrating power,established a new order of things, whose chief by degrees rendered himself absolute, and by his astonishing achievements cast a dazzling lustre on the nation, and suddenly created great resources. The extraordinary man who was placed at the head of affairs felt that his power could not be secured by victory alone, and that, having made himself formidable abroad, it was necessary to gain admiration at home by favouring the progress of knowledge, by encouraging the arts and sciences, and by erecting monuments which should contribute to the glory and prosperity of the "great nation."

But, the proceedings of Buonaparte in the bird and beetle line being less generally known than his floating at Tilsit, or his sinking at Waterloo, their narration will afford materials for another article, which, however, must be postponed till next month. We shall then bring down the history of this magnificent establishment to the present times, and conclude by a description of its existing state.

I Do not care a farthing about any man, woman, or child, in the world. You think that I am joking, Jemmy; but you are mistaken. What! you look at me again with those honest eyes of yours staring with wonder, and making a demi-pathetic, demi-angry appeal for an exception in your favour. Well, Jemmy, I do care about you, my honest fellow, so uncork the other bottle.

Did you ever see me out of humour in your life for the tenth part of a second?-Never, so help me, God!-Did you ever hear me speak ill of another? I might, perhaps, have cracked a joke -indeed, I have cracked a good many such in my time at a man's expense behind his back; but never have I said anything which I would not say to his face, or what I would not take from him with treble hardness of recoil, if it so pleased him to return it; but real bona fide evil-speaking was never uttered by me. I never quar

relled with any one. You are going to put me in mind of my duel with Captain Maxwell. I acknowledge I fought it, and fired three shots. What then? Could I avoid it? I was no more angry with him, when I sent the message, than I was at the moment of my birth. Duelling is an absurd custom of the country, which I must comply with when occasion requires. The occasion had turned up, and I fought of course. Never was I happier than when I felt the blood trickling over my shoulders-for the wise laws of honour were satisfied, and I was rid of the cursed trouble. I was sick of the puppyism of punctilio, and the booby legislation of the seconds, and was glad to escape from it by a scratch. I made it up with Maxwell, who was an honest, though a hot-headed and obstinate man-and you know I was executor to his will. Indeed, he dined with me the very day-week after the duel. Yet, spite of this equanimity,

I repeat it, that I do not care for any human being on earth, (the present company always excepted,) more than I care for one of those filberts which you are cracking with such laudable assiduity.

Yes it is true-I have borne myself towards my family unexceptionably, as the world has it. I married off my sisters, sent my brothers to the colleges, and did what was fair for my mother. But I shall not be hypocrite enough to pretend to high motives for so doing, My father's death left them entirely to me, and what could I do with them? Turn them out? That would be absurd, and just as absurd to retain them at home without treating them properly. They were my family. My own comforts would have been materially invaded by any other line of conduct. I therefore executed the filial and fraternal affections in a manner which will be a fine topic of panegyric for my obituary. God help the idiots who write such things! They to talk of motives, and feelings, and the impulses that sway the human heart! They, whose highest ambition it is to furnish provender, at so much a line, for magazine or newspaper. Yet from them shall I receive the tribute of a tear. The world shall be informed in due time, and I care not how soon, that "DIED at his house, &c. &c. a gentleman, exemplary in every relation of life, whether we consider him as a son, a brother, a friend, or a citizen. His heart," and so on to the end of the fiddle faddle. The winding up of my family affairs, you know, is, that I have got rid of them all; that I pay the good people a visit once a-month, and ask them to a humdrum dinner on my birth-day, which you are perhaps aware occurs but once a-year. I am alone. I feel that I am alone.

My politics-what then? I am, externally at least, a Tory, à toute outrance, because my father and my grandfather (and I cannot trace my genealogy any higher) were so before me. Besides, I think every gentleman should be a Tory; there is an easiness, a suavity of mind, engendered by Toryism, which it is vain for you to expect from fretful Whiggery, or bawling Radicalism, and such should be a strong distinctive feature in every gentleman's character. And I admit, that, in my youth, I did many queer things, and said many violent and

nonsensical matters. But that fervour is gone. I am still outside the same; but inside how different! I laugh to scorn the nonsense I hear vented about me in the clubs which I frequent. The zeal about nothings, the bustle about stuff, the fears and the precautions against fancied dangers, the indignation against writings which no decent man thinks of reading, or against speeches which are but the essence of stupidity; in short, the whole tempest in a tea-pot appears to me to be ineffably ludicrous. I join now and then, nay very often, in these discussions; why should not I? Am I not possessed of the undoubted liberties of a Briton, invested with the full privilege of talking nonsense? And, if any of my associates laugh inside at me, why, I think them quite right.

But I have dirtied my fingers with ink, you say, and daubed other people's faces with them. I admit it. My pen has been guilty of various political jeux d'esprit, but let me whisper it, Jemmy, on both sides. Don't start, it is not worth while. My Tory quizzes I am suspected of; suspected I say, for I am not such a goose as to let them be any more than mere matters of suspicion; but of quizzes against Tories I am no more thought guilty than I am of petty larceny. Yet such is the case. I write with no ill feeling; public men or people who thrust themselves before the public in any way, I just look on as phantoms of the imagination, as things to throw off common-places about. You know how I assassinated Jack ****, in the song which you transcribed for me; how it spread in thousands, to his great annoyance. Well, on Wednesday last, he and I supped tete-a-tete, and a jocular fellow he is. It was an accidental rencounter-he was sulky at first, but I laughed and sung him into good humour. When the second bottle had loosened his tongue, he looked at me most sympathetically, and said, May I ask you a

question?-A thousand, I replied, provided you do not expect me to answer them.-Ah, he cried, it was a shame for you to abuse me the way you did, and all for nothing; but, hang it, let bygones be bygones-You are too pleasant a fellow to quarrel with. I told him he appeared to be under a mistake-He shook his head-emp

tied his bottle, and we staggered home in great concord. In point of fact, men of sense think not of such things, and mingle freely in society as if they never occurred. Why then should I be supposed to have any feeling whatever, whether of anger or pleasure about them?

My friends? Where are they? Ay, Jemmy, I do understand what that pressure of my hand means. But where is the other? Nowhere! Acquaintances I have in hundreds boon companions in dozens-fellows to whom I make myself as agreeable as I can, and whose society gives me pleasure. There's Jack Meggot-the best joker in the world-Will Thomson -an unexceptionable ten-bottle-man -John Mortimer, a singer of most renowned social qualities-there's but what need I enlarge the catalogue? You know the men I mean. I live with them, and that right gaily, but would one of them crack a joke the less, drink a glass the less, sing a song the less, if I died before morning? Not one-nor do I blame them, for, if they were ingulfed in Tartarus, I should just go through my usual daily round-keep moving in the same monotonous tread-mill of life, with other companions to help me through, as steadily as I do now. The friends of my boyhood are gone-ay-allall gone! I have lost the old familiar faces, and shall not try for others to replace them. I am now happy with a mail-coach companion, whom ⚫ I never saw before, and never will see again. My cronies come like shadows, so depart. Do you remember the story of Abon Hassen, in some of the Oriental tales? He was squandering a fine property on some hollow friends, when he was advised to try their friendship by pretending poverty, and asking their assistance. It was refused, and he determined never to see them more-never to make a friend-nay, not even an acquaintance; but to sit, according to the custom of the East, by the way-side, and invite to his board the three first passers-by, with whom he spent the night in festive debauchery, making it a rule never to ask the same persons a second time. My life is almost the same-true it is that I know the exterior conformation, and the peculiar habits of those with whom I associate, but our hearts are ignorant

of one another. They vibrate not together; they are ready to enter into the same communication, with any passer-by. Nay, perhaps, Hassan's plan was more social. He was relieved from inquiries as to the character of his table-mates. Be they fair, be they foul, they were nothing to him. I am tormented out of my life by such punctilios as I daily must submit to. I wonder you keep company says a friend-friend! well, no matter-with R. He is a scoundrelhe is suspected of having cheated fifteen years ago at play, he drinks ale, he fought shy in a duel business, he is a Whig-a Radical, a Muggletonian, a jumper, a moderate man, a Jacobin; he asked twice for soup, he wrote a libel, his father was a low attorney, nobody knows him in good society, &c. &c. &c. Why, what is it to me? I care not whether he broke every commandment in the decalogue, provided he be a pleasant fellow, and that I am not mixed up with his offences. But the world will so mix me up in spite of myself. Burns used to say, the best company he was ever in was the company of professed blackguards. Perhaps he was right. I dare not try.

My early companions I did care for, and where are they? Poor Tom Benson, he was my class-fellow at school; we occupied the same rooms in college, we shared our studies, our amusements, our flirtations, our follies, our dissipations together. A more honourable or upright creature never existed. Well, sir, he had an uncle, lieutenant-colonel of a cavalry regiment, and at his request Tom bought a cornetcy in the corps. I remember the grand-looking fellow strutting about in the full splendour of his yet unspotted regimentals, the cynosure of the bright eyes of the country town in which he resided. He came to London, and then joined his regiment. All was well for a while; but he had always an unfortunate itch for play. In our little circle it did him no great harm; but his new companions played high, and far too skilfully for Tomperhaps there was roguery, or perhaps there was not-I never inquired. At all events, he lost all his ready-money. He then drew liberally on his family; he lost that too; in short, poor Tom at last staked his commission, and lost it with the rest. This, of course, could

not be concealed from the uncle, who gave him a severe lecture, but procured him a commission in an infantry regiment destined for Spain. He was to join it without delay; but the infatuated fellow again risked himself, and lost the infantry commission also. He now was ashamed or afraid to face his uncle, and enlisted (for he was a splendid looking young man, who was instantly accepted,) as a private soldier in the twenty-sixth foot. I suppose that he found his habits were too refined and too firmly fixed to allow him to be satisfied with the scanty pay, and coarse food, and low company, of an infantry soldier. It is certain, that he deserted in a fortnight after enlistment. The measure of poor Tom's degradation was not yet filled up. He had not a farthing when he left the twenty-sixth. He went to his uncle's at an hour when he knew that he would not be at home, and was with difficulty admitted by the servant, who recognized him. He persuaded him at last that he meant to throw himself on the mercy of his uncle, and the man, who loved him,-everybody of all degrees who knew him loved him,-consented to his admission. I am almost ashamed to go on. He broke open his uncle's escritoire, and took from it whatever money it contained-a hundred pounds or thereabouts-and slunk out of the house. Heavens! what were my feelings when I heard this—when I saw him proclaimed in the newspapers as a deserter, and a thief! A thief! Tom Benson a thief! I could not credit the intelligence of my eyes or my ears. He whom I knew only five months before-for so brief had his career been-would have turned with scorn and disgust from any action de viating a hair's-breadth from the highest honour. How he spent the next six months of his life, I know not; but about the end of that period a letter was left at my door by a messenger, who immediately disappeared. It was from him. It was couched in terms of the most abject self-condemnation, and the bitterest remorse. He declared he was a ruined man in character, in fortune, in happiness, in everything, and conjured me, for the sake of former friendship, to let him have five guineas, which he said would take him to a place of safety. From the description of the messenger, who, Tom told me in his note, would return in an hour,

I guessed it was himself. When the time came, which he had put off to a moment of almost complete darkness. I opened the door to his fearful rap. It was he-I knew him at a glance, as the lamp flashed over his face-and, uncertain as was the light, it was bright enough to let me see that he was squalid, and in rags; that a fearful and ferocious suspicion, which spoke volumes, as to the life he had lately led, lurked in his side-looking eyes; those eyes that a year before spoke nothing but joy and courage, and that a premature grayness had covered with pie-bald patches the once glossy black locks which straggled over his unwashed face, or through his tattered hat.

I had that he asked,-perhaps more in a paper in my hand. I put it into his. I had barely time to say "O Tom!" when he caught my hand, kissed it with burning lips, exclaimed "Don't speak to me-I am a wretch !" and, bursting from the grasp with which I wished to detain him, fled with the speed of an arrow down the street, and vanished into a lane. Pursuit was hopeless. Many years elapsed, and I heard not of him-no one heard of him. But about two years ago I was at a coffee-house in the Strand, when an officer of what they called the Patriots of South America, staggered into the room. He was very drunk. His tawdry and tarnished uniform proclaimed the service to which he belonged, and all doubt on the subject was removed by his conversation. It was nothing but a tissue of curses on Bolivar and his associates, who, he asserted, had seduced him from his country, ruined his prospects, robbed him, cheated him, and insulted him. How true these reproaches might have been I knew not, nor do I care, but a thought struck me that Tom might have been of this army, and I inquired, as, indeed, I did of everybody coming from a foreign country, if he knew anything of a man of the name of Benson. "Do you?"— stammered out the drunken patriot"I do," was my reply." Do you care about him?" again asked the officer. "I did-I do," again I retorted. "Why then," said he " take a short stick in your hand, and step across to Valparaiso, there you will find him two feet under ground, snugly wrapt up in a blanket. I was his sexton myself,

and had not time to dig him a deeper grave, and no way of getting a stouter coffin. It will just do all as well. Poor fellow, it was all the clothes he had for many a day before." I was shocked at the recital, but Holmes was too much intoxicated to pursue the subject any farther. I called on him in the morning, and learned that Benson had joined as a private soldier in this desperate service, under the name of Maberly-that he speedily rose to a command-was distinguished for doing desperate actions, in which he seemed quite reckless of life-had, however, been treated with considerable ingratitude-never was paid a dollar-had lost his baggage-was compelled to part with almost all his wearing apparel for subsistence, and had just made his way to the sea-side, purposing to escape to Jamaica, when he sunk, overcome by hunger and fatigue. He kept the secret of his name till the last moment, when he confided it, and a part of his unhappy history, to Holmes. Such was the end of Benson, a man born to high expectations, of cultivated mind, considerable genius, generous heart, and honourable purposes.

Jack Dallas I became acquainted with at Brazen Nose. There was a time that I thought I would have died for him-and, I believe, that his feelings towards me were equally warm. Ten years ago we were the Damon and Pythias-the Pylades and Orestes of our day. Yet I lost him by a jest. He was wooing most desperately a very pretty girl, equal to him in rank, but rather meagre in the purse. He kept it, however, a profound secret from his friends. By accident I found it out, and when I next saw him, I began to quiz him. He was surprised at the discovery, and very sore at the quizzing. He answered so testily, that I proceeded to annoy him. He became more and more sour, I more and more vexatious in my jokes. It was quite wrong on my part; but God knows I meant nothing by it. I did not know that he had just parted with his father, who had refused all consent to the match, adding injurious insinuations about the mercenary motives of the young lady. Dallas had been defending her, but in vain; and then, while in this mood, did I choose him as the butt of my silly witticisms. At last something I said—some mere piece of nonsense-nettled him so much, that VOL. XIV.

he made a blow at me. I arrested his arm, and cried, Jack, you would have been very sorry had you put your intentions into effect." He coloured as if ashamed of his violence, but remained sullen and silent for a moment, and then left the room. We never have spoke since. He shortly after went abroad, and we were thus kept from meeting and explaining. On his return, we joined different coteries, and were of different sides in politics. In fact, I did not see him for nearly seven years until last Monday, when he passed me, with his wife -a different person from his early passion, the girl on account of whom we quarrelled-leaning on his arm. I looked at him, but he bent down his eyes, pretending to speak to Mrs Dallas. So be it.

Then there was my brother-my own poor brother, one year younger than myself. The verdict-commonly a matter of course-must have been true in his case. What an inward revolution that must have been, which could have bent that gay and free spirit, that joyous and buoyant soul, to think of self-destruction. But I cannot speak of poor Arthur. These were my chief friends, and I lost the last of them about ten years ago; and since that time I know no one, the present company excepted, for whom I care a farthing. Perhaps, if they had lived with me as long as my other companions, I would have been as careless about them, as I am about Will Thomson, Jack Megget, or my younger brothers. I am often inclined to think, that my feelings towards them are but warmed by the remembered fervour of boyhood, and made romantic by distance of time. I am pretty sure, indeed, that it is so. And, if we could call up Benson innocent from the mould of South America

Could restore poor, dear Arthurmake Dallas forget his folly-and let them live together again in my society, I should be speedily indifferent about them too. My mind is as if slumbering, quite wrapped up in itself, and never wakes but to act a part. I rise in the morning, to eat, drink, talkto say what I do not think, to advocate questions which I care not forto join companions whom I value not, to indulge in sensual pleasures which I despise-to waste my hours in trifling amusements, or more trifling business, and to retire to my bed perfectly indifferent as to whether I am ever again S