What he might have verbally declared was prevented by the cessation of Miss Hammercloth's sonata, and the warning finger held up by Mrs. Nibbletit, who, having made what is called "a clean breast of it," rose, and once more mingled with the company, leaving Grimshaw in a state which the agonised Titan, had forty vultures been preying on his liver instead of one, need not particularly have envied.

Grimshaw was another example to be added to the many the world has known of those who look forward to the fruition of their hopes in the coming-off of some particular event, forgetting that nothing ever comes to pass in the manner expected. The safest plan, under all circumstances, is to look out for the worst-a species of moral hedging, which, if it reverses our anticipations, lands us safely on the other side. Of all the occurrences in life, a dinner-party most abounds in disappointments, and indigestion, if the dinner itself should happen to be a good one-which nine times out of ten is not the case-is the least of the many evils to which the diner-out is exposed. On the present occasion, Grimshaw was especially unlucky, and Fortune, who owed him amends for what befel him at Fogo's Christmas party, shamefully belied her character. They who accuse the Goddess of fickleness are in the habit of making a great mistake. She can be constant enough when mischief is a-foot; and the poet who praised her for coming "with both hands full," ought in justice to have stated the nature of her teeming gifts.

Grimshaw had been annoyed all dinner-time by a talkative sentimentalist on one side, and a cold formal English Miss on the other; he had been coldly looked upon, after dinner, by her to whom (for the fiftieth time) his manly heart was devoted; he had been the target for the insolence of an ungrateful, vindictive boy; and at the moment when he hoped to have propitiated an ally he had received the dreadful tidings that an assured lover of the Past, and a possible one of the Present, stood between him and happiness. Of what use now were those magic tones on which he had relied for touching Arabella's inmost feelings? He might warble "a Temple to Friendship" for ever! No Laura survived in Arabella to "take away love" from the atelier of the sculptor Grimshaw. His place, the place he fondly trusted to have occupied, was bespoken. One man had already been in possession, perhaps was so still -and, if not, possession was threatened by another--that other the Being he most detested, the arrogant, the impertinent, the hateful Tippy!

Instead, therefore, of pressing forward to eclipse the rest-a dead certainty, in his opinion, if he began to vocalise-Grimshaw moodily kept aloof, and even when Arabella herself (who perceived by his manner, when talking to her aunt, that she had been mistaken) came up and expressed a hope that he would favour them with a song, he coldly answered that he feared he could not gratify her wishes.

"You can sing, I know," said Arabella, her memory reverting to the evening service in Hendon church.

"I could once, Miss Hardback," replied Grimshaw, in a husky tone, and giving a look that was meant to be intensely reproachful-“ but voices, like" he was going to say "affections," mentally substituted "sympathies," and ended with "remoter-that is to say, deeper organs, are not always under control."

Arabella thought Grimshaw a very odd person, but could only draw one conclusion from this enigmatical speech, and said:

"I suppose, then, Mr. Manners, you mean to plead the fashionable excuse, a cold!"

"It is here, Miss Hardback!" returned Grimshaw, smiting his bosom gloomily.

"On your chest? That being the case, you are quite right not to strain your throat. I must ask you, then," she said, turning to Mr. Albert Billson, who stood close by, "to gratify us once more.' "With pleasure, Miss Hardback," was the reply. be? The Stirrup Cup,' or the 'Mocking Bird?"" "You tempt me to ask for both.”

"What shall it

Grimshaw was doubtful what to do. Should he stay any longer, or go at once? While he hesitated, his glance encountered that of Madame Girouette, who had resumed her place near her impassible daughter. She smiled graciously, and he was drawn towards her.

"How like you men of fashion!" said the sentimental lady. "I heard Miss Hardback ask you to sing, but you aristocratic gentlemen throw all the burden upon us."

"We are-as it were-justified," replied the fluttered Grimshaw, bowing gallantly, and secretly desiring to mortify Arabella, who, he fancied, was observing him-"perfectly justified-when the result-if I may be allowed the expression-is so exquisite. But does not your— accomplished daughter-enter the lists as well as yourself ?"

"Elise never sings in mixed society. Accustomed as you must be to the recherché, you can quite understand that. By-the-by, Mr. Manners," continued Madame Girouette, affecting to lower her voice-" does it strike you that Elise resembles somebody you must know very well?" Grimshaw looked at the young lady with the puzzled air that one always has when this kind of question is put.

"I think," he said, oracularly, "I do see a-as it were—a like

"To Lady Adeline! I knew you must. She has been taken for her more than once at the Opera and the flower shows."

Poor Grimshaw had not the slightest idea who was meant by Lady Adeline, but he felt that he was in for a supposed aristocratic connexion, and could not resist the temptation of keeping up the delusion, so he replied:

Exactly. The very image!"

Elise," said Madame Girouette, in the same audible whisper, "Mr. Manners tells me you are the very image of his cousin, Lady Adeline."

The statue bent her head with a nearer approach to condescension than she had yet shown, and her pleased mamma went on:

"Lady Adeline is very beautiful, though some, I believe, prefer her sister, Lady Evelyn? Which do you admire most, Mr. Manners? I should like to have your opinion. That, with me, would quite decide the question."

Grimshaw was thinking how he should extricate himself from the horns of this dilemma, when he felt something tugging at his coat-tails. Looking round, he beheld the Limb performing that operation.

"What do you want, you little whelp ?" said Grimshaw, angrily. "I want you," said the boy; "you'd better come. Somebody here knows you! He says your name ain't Manners.” Grimshaw apologised to Madame Girouette.

Would she excuse him for a moment? and followed the Limb into the next room.

"You're a funny little fellow," said Grimshaw, trying to propitiate his juvenile tormentor, when they were out of earshot of the card-players. "What do you mean by what you said just now?"

"I mean what I did say," replied the Limb, sturdily. "Your name ain't Manners. It's Grim-something. If you don't give me half a sov. I'll blow on you to my granpa, and he'll kick you out of the house for coming here under false pretences. I'm not a fool-so hand out!" Grimshaw looked quickly round, and then said: "You'll promise to hold your tongue if I give you the money?"

"Honour bright," said the Limb, grinning.

"Here it is, then," said Grimshaw, producing the glittering coin, which the Limb eagerly clutched, and then thrust his clenched hand in his pocket.

"Remember!" said Grimshaw.

Grimshaw's presence of mind was so utterly routed that, forgetting to take leave of anybody, and seeming to think that his only chance of safety consisted in flight, he hurried out of the room and asked a servant if his carriage had come. The obsequious waiter, whom he had so often noticed, was standing in the hall, and greeted Grimshaw with even more than the customary smile.

"Allow me to help you with your cloak, sir. You don't remember me, but I've seen you scores of times, Mr. G. I go out a good deal in my way, and shall be proud and happy to be recommended. Please to accept my card, sir.”

So saying, he thrust into Grimshaw's passive hand a piece of pasteboard bearing the following inscription:

"Richard Sleeky, Beadle of the Stock Exchange, Myrtle-street, Highbury. Dinner and Evening Parties attended. Dinners attended, and Attendants provided."

In return for this document, and scarcely knowing what he was doing, Grimshaw deposited a five-shilling piece in the Beadle-waiter's outstretched palm, as he opened the door of the cab into which Grimshaw plunged. At a later hour of the night, while Grimshaw was tossing on a sleepless bed, he suddenly exclaimed:

"That infernal Beadle must have told the boy!"

TILSIT AND ERFURT.

"GENERALS, colonels, officers, and men," Napoleon wrote on March 1, 1807, from Osterode to his brother Joseph, "have not had their clothes off for two months, and I myself have not pulled off my boots for a fortnight. Up to our knees in snow and mud, without bread, without wine, without spirits, living on potatoes and meat, we have made long marches and counter-marches without rest and relief, fighting at the bayonet's point, and very often in a shower of bullets." When a man

does his day's work in that way, and is at the same time a Napoleon, he is sure to manage something. Among others, a peace at Tilsit, which was a very fine specimen of Napoleonic handicraft. And yet it was a mistake, like everything half finished. For Napoleon in his position should have annihilated Prussia instead of humiliating and bullying her, as he unquestionably could have done, and dame History would not have saturated her pocket-handkerchief with tears if he had.

Such

For if ever there were a thing worthy of annihilation, it was the Prussia of 1806, which had been brought so low by the worst of all governments, that of mediocrities, that any man possessed of ordinary common sense can only look with satisfaction on the downfal of this abortion of stupidity and pride. How they had boasted about the "glorious army," and being the "first military state in the world." Of course no account need be taken of the people: there were Junkers for officers and passive slaves for soldiers, who at their bivouac fires of October 14 sang comic songs about dying for the fatherland. Von Rüchel, however, marched into the open at Jena with the firm conviction of proving, by means of the highly-valued Prussian tactics, to Monsieur Bonaparte that the said monsieur was a second-rate general, and when the arch braggart's attention was drawn to the fact that French columns were threatening his flanks, he snorted out: "A Prussian general does not look either to the right or left: I shall go straight on and thrash the enemy;" that is to say, be beaten to a fine tune. they were, and such they would have remained, had not Napoleon showed them who was master. It is no paradox to assert that the Emperor of the French was the benefactor of Prussia. For if the pigtail of the Junkers had not been so rudely cut off, they would have gone on wearing it into the twentieth century. We can easily understand, too, that Napoleon, after all that had occurred, deeply despised Prussia and Germany. Besides the majority of princes, who ever behaved humbly to every foreign power that allowed them to wield the plaything of sovereignty, all ranks and classes had their full share in the shame which had fallen on the nation. The savans and literati first of all. These German wanderers in the clouds still saw in Napoleon, who ought by this time to have been judged as what he really was, a species of new Messiah: thus, for instance, Hegel, who was his unbounded admirer. The first, indeed the only, nameworthy journal of Germany at that day, the Allgemeine, trumpeted with full cheeks the glory of the conqueror of Germany. Here is a specimen : "The Emperor of the French guides, with all-surveying glances, the immeasurable business of the state and war, and forces his way into everything with an omnipotence which we can only be amazed at but not com

prehend." In Berlin, the French officers were disgusted at the "contemptible manner" in which they were flattered.

The war had in the mean while moved to Poland and East Prussia. At his head-quarters of Posen, the Emperor of the French accepted the homage of the Elector of Saxony and the Saxon dukes, and made them his confederate vassals. Charles Augustus of Weimar was forced with a bleeding heart to condescend to become one, or at least to be called so. The Elector Frederick Augustus became one with a heart overflowing with gratitude. The continuation of the war began with gloomy auspices for Prussia. Driven back into a corner of her territory, and threatened not only by the French, but also by the Poles, who revolted on the approach of the latter, she had a force of twenty-five thousand men at her disposal. The one hundred and eighty thousand Russians, with whom Alexander promised to hasten to the assistance of his friend Frederick William, remained a promise. For, in the first place, only sixty thousand Russians, under Bennigsen's command, had reached Prussia, while the remainder of the Russian force, fifty-five thousand men, were a long way behind, under Buxhöwden. The war, besides, was not to the liking of the Russian aristocrats, who did not see why they should fight for these Prussians, on whom they looked down with sovereign contempt since the battle of Jena, while the Russian officers and soldiers behaved much worse in Prussia or a friendly country than the French did, and displayed such a Mongolian brutality, as if they were still benighted savages. We mean it literally when we say that the Russian soldiers, wherever they set their foot, converted the country into a desert. This was, in reality, the sole profit which Prussia derived in 1806 and 1807 from the Czaric friendship.

The whole conduct of the war was a failure from the beginning. The Russian generals would not do anything material for Prussia. This was especially the case with Bennigsen, who, as a foreigner, had a double motive to support the repugnance of the Russian aristocracy to the Prussian alliance. Still, he must do something, if he, one of the murderers of Paul I., did not wish to ruin himself entirely with Alexander, who, at that time, meant the war seriously, as he hoped to conquer the Emperor of the French in spite of the experience he had gained at Austerlitz. What he first did for this object would seem incredible if it were not avouched. While Bennigsen would not serve under Buxhöwden, or Buxhöwden under Bennigsen, and as, moreover, the Russian aristocracy would not have liked the supreme command given to a foreigner, the king selected a native, Kamensky, an invalid in his sixty-sixth year, and at the same time a lunatic, who tried to emulate Suwarrow, but really played what he was-the fool. On reaching the scene of action, this highly successful field-marshal babbled: "I will go to Silesia to attack the foe in the rear." A perfect folly as matters stood. When Prince Eugene of Würtemberg presented himself to the field-marshal, the "little thin man, merely dressed in a shirt and nightcap," rushed at him, and cried with all his might, "Prince Würtembergsky! cousin de sa Majesté l'Empereur, Plemennik Mariä Feodorownä (nephew of Maria Feodorowna). Altesse sérénissime! Young blood! Molodez (excellent lad), padi sjuda (come here)." Then he drove about for some days en grand tenue -i. e. "in a peasant's sheepskin coat, with a small sword buckled over it, and a dirty cloth wound round his head"-to the different corps

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