sins, the confessional was empty! No solemn ceremonies, or sacrifices of the mass,-day and night the altar was deserted, night and day the church was mute! They still repaired mechanically thither; as if they had hoped that God, in his infinite mercy, would work a miracle in their favour, and that there might rise up before them, at the altar, and clad in the sacred stole, some one of those venerable men who slept the sleep of eternity within a few paces of its foot. Alas! vainly did they light the tapers and deck the altar with the freshest flowers of the season; -the altar was still lonely, and still the church was mute!

Yet, in spite of all their sufferings, there was not one of those nuns who would have purchased back the enjoyment of all the blessings she had lost, at the price of abandoning the dilapidated walls of her ruined monastery. There was so much consolation in suffering together! It is said that a happiness which we cannot communicate becomes almost a burthen; but an evil which is shared is near akin to happiness. And then, by what a host of ties were these sainted women bound to the dwelling in which were centered all their joys and all their sorrows-all their full memories of the past, as all their slender hopes for the future. There was not a foot of ground in all that solitude, not a tree in the garden, not a pillar in the cloisters, not a picture on the walls, but had a claim upon their memory-and, it might be, on their tears. There had they prayed, and slept, and loved for half a century,and all the life of these women was reckoned in those three words. There, too, awaited them, in the repose of the grave, those of the sisters who had gone before.

Towards the close of autumn, 1709, and just about the hour when the nuns had risen for matins, strange sounds arose upon their ears, advancing in the direction of the abbey. The noise was like the dull and measured tread of a body of horsemen, mingled with the motion of wheels, as of many carriages. With a vague presentiment of coming

evil, the sisters clung together, and were about to enter the chapel, when' an old servitor of the abbey, breathless with speed, and blanched by fear, stood before them. He approached the abbess, to whom he spoke long in whispers. While listening to his narrative, the brow of the abbess retained its wonted serenity:-only, when turning towards the nuns, she raised her voice to address them, her words, though full of gentleness and calm, betrayed the deep emotion that shook her within.

"My daughters!" she said, "follow me into the great hall, where Monseigneur, the lieutenant-general of police, waits to communicate an order from the king. We will render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's."

A deep terror fell upon the hearts of the nuns, but they moved onward. The day had, by this time, begun to dawn; and they could see that the inner courts were filled with detachments of French and Swiss guards. The abbey seemed metamorphosed into a fortress. Trembling and bewildered, the sisters entered, with downcast eyes, the grand hall of the chapter. It had once been the most splendid, as it was the largest, in the convent; and was adorned with portraits of the abbesses, and with paintings by Philippe de Champagne. But since the ravages of time had become apparent on the disjointed windowframes and worm-eaten oak panels, it had been shut up, till a rude soldiery forced its doors, and drove thence the night-birds that had taken up their abode within. At the extremity of the chamber, on a raised platform-amid the glare of torches whose light fell on the pale faces of the abbesses, which had slept, for many a year, on their canvass couches and in their blackened frames-surrounded by an imposing military array-stood Monseigneur de Voyer d'Argenson. He made a sign to the nuns to be seated; and, unfolding a parchment, sealed with the arms of France," I am here," he said, “to execute a measure of severity. You have disobeyed the king, and he is not to be braved with impunity. Still, his majesty has remembered mercy. Hear the decree issued by the king

in council." Then he read that fierce decree, dictated by the Jesuits, which expelled the nuns from their monastery, and ordered that, after their departure, the buildings should be rased to the ground, and their site surrendered to the plough. By the terms of this edict, the very grave was robbed of its right of sanctuary, and the bones buried in the cemetery were ordered to be disinterred. From the 29th day of October, 1709, the famous community of Port-Royaldes-Champs was no more!

The reading of these latter directions was answered by a long deep groan; and then a silence, as of death, fell on the hall. It seemed the last sigh of the old abbey; and the blood curdled in the veins of D'Argenson himself. It was almost as if the nuns had passed, suddenly and at once, from life into death-so pale and inanimate was every face, and so motionless every frame. Between that audience of flesh and blood, seated in the worm-eaten stalls of the chapter, and that other audience in effigy depending from the cracked walls of the hall, there appeared no other difference than that which exists between painting and statuary. At length, a voice arose, as from the depth of a tomb-it was the abbess who spoke. Monseigneur," she said, "I and my daughters are ready. When must these things be?" "On the instant," was the reply. "You are twenty-three nuns, and at the convent gate stand twenty-three carriages, which will convey you to twenty-three different monasteries, where you will end your days. You have an hour for preparations and farewells." So saying, D'Argenson abruptly departed.

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My children," said the abbess,

with a voice which rose clear and distinct above all the sobbing," follow me." The nuns obeyed mechanically-the result of monastic training-resumed their ranks, and issued from the grand hall. They traversed the courts, in procession, amid a crowd of soldiers, who made way for them with respectful commiseration, until they reached the church. There, the sisters knelt down; and, the gates being closed, the abbess, with a voice yet full of majesty and power, gave forth the first verse of the 109th psalm, and the whole community took up the next, in chorus. The song, at first, was faint and faltering -shaken by anguish and stayed by tears; but, as the swelling basses of the organ rose to the vaulted roof, flooding the soul with its vague and mysterious melodies, the spirits of the nuns revived; and their last hymn still echoed through the cloisters, when D'Argenson, irritated by the non-execution of his orders, directed that the doors should be forced.

D'Argenson's rude soldiers sprang into the choir, as if they had been entering a town taken by storm, and carried off the nuns by main force from their stalls to the carriages which waited for their reception. The very next day the work of destruction commenced; and the venerable monastery was levelled to the ground. The rustic inhabitants of the adjoining districts knelt weeping on the nuns' path, imploring their blessing, strove hard for fragments of the veils which had been torn off the heads of the religieuses by the savage soldiery, and treasured them as precious relics. Thus was perpetrated this ever-infamous act of savage and relentless barbarity.

SENATE.

Ir men could only refrain from thrusting their pettinesses forward to public notice, they might run a chance of escaping observation,_or subsiding in quiet contempt. But when they will pitchfork forth their

niaiseries, and claim inspection, they must be prepared for the judicial fiat of the critic, who is himself condemned, "si nocens absolvitur." Here is the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer (how inspiriting is that

little prefix!) forwarding a trumpery amatory effusion, about a fortnight since, to the government journals, and soliciting insertion, which of course it obtained; for who would fall out with a man, who has been fortunate in life, about such a trifle; though, unquestionably, had he sent it to the London Magazine, it should have been consigned at once to the Balaam-box. Laid on the political shelf, his itch for notoriety still survives; and now that his speeches are no longer reported, he tries hard to keep his ground as a ballad-monger. During his official career, he was wont to perpetrate the same silliness from time to time; and, in addition to mantua-maker contributions to the annuals, some very blank verses from his treasury pen, perpetrated upon the occasion of a visit to Cambridge, found their way into his hack journals. With these I shall not meddle, not meaning to soil more than one page of the London with his very eccentric scrawl. Here it is:

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Now, this is what we used to call at Cambridge, very fine oysters." Winter has been always hitherto personified as a crouching old man, clad in furs, retreating at the approach of Spring. Mount-Jack-daw makes him "all t'other." He flings his "bolts" like an Achilles. Fustian, and fiddle-de-dee! How sadly, too, he mangles the mild advent of Spring, that delicious epoch which poets love to sing, metamorphosing the

green-vested virgin" into a stalwart myrmidon, with his "beaming shield" (meaning, of course, Spring Rice all the while). A basket of primroses would have been more germane to the matter.

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linnet, what mean these warm gleams of pleasure" resting on the sorrowing breast." I presume that the sun shines on the outer frame of a beggar, as well as a beggarly lord. The two last lines are sheer, arrant, downright nonsense, and quite superfluous, seeing that you have already adverted to the "dawn of hope arising o'er tearful eyes"- the only visible test of the disappearance of grief.

"Like some faint glimmering star I found thee,

With sorrow's shroud of mist around thee;
Or, like some tender blighted flower,
Its brilliance nipped in wintry hour."

Here is a Limerick bull, with a vengeance! The flower is tender and brilliant at one and the same time. I

infer that my Lord Monteagle presented the lady with a tulip as a gage d'amour ! Only think of Mountscarecrow exciting a tender sentiment in any petticoated human being! The idea is monstrous; and therefore, as a matter of course, I take it that the whole thing is imaginary—a deceit which is quite permissible in a poet, but that here it creates the ridiculous impression that any married lady could possibly have selected Monteagle for her cavaliere servente! The consummation of niaiserie is in the following couplet : "Or like a bird on leafless tree,

Reft of all vocal minstrelsy.'

[And fiddle, diddle, diddle, dee!] Bravo, Monteagle! Your little bird can now console itself with instrumental music, since you take so much pains to prove that it is only deprived of "vocal!" I shall stake my critical acumen against your poetical powers (Ossa to a wart!) that, if the feathered songster could sing no better than yourself, the lowest "birdfancier" in St. Giles's would not even take it as a gift. To wire-draw out the metaphor-a thing quite in your way you are yourself a bird, but of a different feather-a very complete jackdaw; and only just see how easy it is to pluck you! With the few remaining lines of namby-pambyism, I shall not afflict my readers, a single pill, in such matters, constituting more than a dose. I shall conclude by advising my Lord Monteagle and

Those who are uninitiated in the slang of the Jockey-Club, should be informed that "steeple-chase" means "course au clocher;" and that, as to "gentlemen riders," some translate the phrase by the words " gentilhommes ruinés;" others, " gentilhommes ridés" (wrinkled), which they all are, to a jockey! The business about to be transacted consisted in crossing a marsh, three ditches full of mud, and a cabbage-gardento improve the race of horses! Five gentilhommes ridés entered the lists; and on a given signal the struggle commenced. It is unnecessary to state that all Paris was there-that is to say, a few petty stock-brokers, half a dozen subscribers to the Opera, and a handful of attorneys' clerks. The fairer portion of the human species was represented by several pedestrians from the Académie Royale de Musique, and a few equestrians from the Circus, upon piebald horses. The beginning of the race was as insignificant as it well

could be. Three horses out of five refused to gallop, the miserable devils labouring under articular paralysis. The two others did their best to imitate a gallop, but mistook for it a slow canter. A brilliant idea suggested itself to one of the riders, and was hailed with enthusiasm. It consisted in entering the first cabaret they met, and calling for five bottles of eau-de-vie, three pounds of sugar, and two flaggons of rum, with which they made the quadrupeds drunk! Half-an-hour afterwards, the five brutes, Chip of the Old Block being the favourite, were found to be in the most desirable condition for plying their legs with advantage. The signal was again given. For the first few minutes, all went on wonderfully well. The five animals performed miracles. The marsh was already passed without the slightest accident. The ditches disappeared like so many shadows. There remained but the cabbage-garden. This, said the horse-dealers, and the proprietors of stands,' was the difficult point of the course. The cursed cabbage-stalks arose like an insurmountable Charybdis-chose infranchissable! The first gentlemanrider fell upon his back-the second on his belly-the third upon his head

the fourth on his ride side-the fifth on his left! The brilliant success of this steeple chase determined the Jockey Club to appoint another for the ensuing week. After this, who shall dare deny that the race of horses is ameliorated for all eternity?