weight of his eighty-five years, serge hose, a kind of long black gown or cassock of the most common stuff, a coarse weatherbeaten hat, shoes with thick soles, a single chair, an iron candlestick upon which was left a remnant of the tallow that had lighted his dying moments, the straw mattress on which he slept and on which he expired,— such is the inventory of all the property that belonged to St. Vincent de Paul, the confessor to the king-such were the treasures most carefully preserved at St. Lazare, in the very room where the Christian philosopher resigned his soul to his God.

Those extensive charities, that beneficence towards the needy, which distinguished the house of St. Lazare, caused its ruin. In July, 1789, a great dearth prevailed at Paris. The registers of the market prove that the house of St. Lazare, in order to enable the magistrates to lower the price of bread, had placed at the disposal of the municipality five thousand quarters of wheat, at twelve livres less than the current price. This act of beneficence, when made public, drew towards the hospital the attention of the populace, that stupid portion of the population of Paris, who can never devise any better expedient for making bread cheap than hanging the bakers. They conceived that when the price of bread rose it was the fault of the wealthy establishments, which forestalled, for their sole benefit, all the grain in France. What, then must be the stores of a house opulent enough to feed eight thousand poor every day! St. Lazare must evidently have monopolized all the corn in France. It was, of course, the cause of the famine in Paris. This crime called for the vengeance of the mob; and accordingly the mob posted off for St. Lazare.

That crowd of men, women, and children which form what, under such circumstances, is called the mob, is something very terrible, and sometimes, too, very sublime. The moment a cry of death or destruction is raised, they spring from nobody knows where from cellars, nay, perhaps, from common sewers, for they are frightfully pale and filthy. They were just the same one hundred and fifty years ago as at the present day. Thus, when the Cardinal de Retz, in his account of the troubles of the Fronde, exhibits his Parisian in rags, insolent, ferocious, generous, laughing death in the face, fierce as a tiger, enthusiastic without aim and without cause,

careless of the morrow, I cannot help asking myself if the co-adjutor is not relating circumstances which have occurred within these few months.

It was in the night, between the 13th and 14th of July, that the house of St. Lazare was suddenly surrounded by a mob, armed with muskets, pikes, and hatchets. The government, in alarm, sent to the spot a regiment of the French Guards, with orders to repel force by force. On the one hand, the reckless fury of the armed populace; on the other, the martial air of the troops, the decided step of the soldiers, and the cheerfulness with which they set out on this commission, authorised the anticipation of a dreadful carnage. Nothing of the sort took place. The Guards joined the mob which they were sent to disperse, and the populace, supported by a regiment on the assistance of which they had not reckoned, presently commenced the attack of the hos pital. The wretches rushed upon that house filled with infirm persons and children, amidst shouts of fury and war, as to the assault of a fortress defended by soldiers and artillery. Their threats, their tremendous hurrahs, were intermingled with the sound of axes hewing at the large doors and the discharges of musketry. The barriers were broken down, and the assailants poured into the hospital.

At the extremity of the first court was the house of correction. Four young men of family were confined in it, in order that they might be saved from the contamination of a prison. Cowering in the darkest

corner of their habitation, they trembled with affright, not doubting that the wretches who came with swords in their hands and blasphemies on their lips, intended to murder them. Their door was broken open with hatchets. "Liberty, comrades! liberty!" shouted the conquerors, entering the place of their confinement. The four youths looked at each other, not daring to believe their senses. "Make haste! get you gone!" continued one of the mob;

we are come to release you." The prisoners, who seemed to dread their deliverers as much as their keepers, betook themselves to flight without further ceremony.

After this achievement the mob proceeded to the dwellings of the insane, which they had the barbarity to throw open. We shall presently see what was the consequence of their liberation.

At this moment some of the municipal

officers, having sought out the leaders of the mob, inquired what they wanted. "We want bread," cried one of the conquerors. "You shall have it," replied the officers, "come along with us to the refectory." The refectory was an immense gallery, with coved ceiling, adorned with pictures, and running the whole length of the edifice. Three lines of benches and tables afforded accommodation for more than six hundred persons in this magnificent dining-room. The rabble hurried thither, and in a moment every table was surrounded by men and women, crowding, shoving, thrusting, calling to one another, singing, laughing, affecting the haughty manners and consequential tone of the wealthy with their servants. They were supplied with wine, and all the readycooked victuals in the house were set before them. Some degree of order was restored, and the repast was prolonged about threequarters of an hour in perfect tranquillity.

When they were preparing to retire, money was distributed among them, and this liberality raised their satisfaction to the highest pitch. Thus the hospital was saved with but a trifling sacrifice; and, excepting the escape of the four youths, after whom the house was not likely to fret any more than they were to fret after it, and the expulsion of the maniacs, who it was hoped would soon return to their dwellings, no mischief had been done.

At this juncture, there came from the Palais Royal a party of well dressed men, who mingled with the crowd, and harangued the different groupes as they were quitting the refectory. "What, my friends," such was the language they held, "have you come hither to receive alms for the day, and to perish of want on the morrow! The Lazarists must deliver up to us the corn stowed away in their granaries and in their secret cellars. You have suffered yourselves to be bamboozled by priests, whose aim it is to starve the people that they may the more easily enslave them. Those few pieces of money which they have given you are nothing to them: the superstition of the dying and the missionaries whom they send out to Peru, bring them in every year immense sums which are locked up in their coffers."

At these absurd representations a dull murmur pervaded the crowd: shouts were raised; the contagion of fury began to spread; the mob howled with its thousand

voices; and the crash of general destruction ensued. The windows and furniture were dashed in pieces. A scramble took place for articles of the smallest value. Here might be seen a man bending under the weight of bed or bedding; another came up and pushed him down: the possession of a sheet or a coverlet was contested by a group of women, like that of a standard in a field of battle: utensils of copper and earthenware were dashed one against another, and clashed with pikes, muskets, and swords. The revolutionary shout of Vive la liberté ! was mingled with blasphemies, jovial songs, and exclamations of anger. What the plunderers could not carry off, they broke. Eleven hundred doors and sixteen hundred windows were demolished. A prodigious fire was kindled with the fragments in the middle of the great court. The statue of St. Vincent de Paul was overthrown; the head was struck off, raised upon the end of a pike, carried in triumph to Paris, and thrown into the basin of the Palais Royal. The refectory, where just before the crowd were quietly seated, was transformed into a scene of havoc and devastation: tables and benches lay in shivers, elegant basso-relievos were shattered by the sword; and, in the exercise of its fury on those mutilated images, the mob seemed to indicate the treatment reserved for the

living objects of its vengeance. Fifty paintings, masterpieces of the first artists of Italy and France, hung in tatters or were trodden under foot by the multitude. The library was pillaged, and manuscripts sent from Borneo, Algiers, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, were consigned to the flames.

St. Lazare possessed a most valuable cabinet of philosophical apparatus. Franklin, Buffon, Durand, Montgolfier, had there made experiments in their respective sciences with instruments brought from China and the East. The instruction of the young missionaries who were destined for the study of the literature of China had been the object of the expenditure incurred in the formation of this cabinet. The first of the mob who broke into it, having laid hold of a Leyden jar, which, no doubt, he supposed to be silver, received an electric shock of such violence as to knock him down. Those who followed him, deterred by his fall and fright, durst not penetrate into the cabinet, which would thus have escaped the ravages of the mob, had not a brazier, more courageous or more greedy

than his comrades, entered for the purpose of securing all the copper which they were about to give up so easily. As his boldness was attended with no unpleasant result, in a moment the machines, tubes, and apparatus of all kinds, were broken, thrown out of the windows, and committed to the flames. The banditti, after setting fire to the hospital, then poured into the gardens, tore up the trees, and penetrated into a retired enclosure where a number of sheep were grazing. These they slaughtered, as if determined not to be outdone in ferocity by the wolves themselves.

Meanwhile it grew dark, and the theatre of this hideous drama was lighted only by the reddish flame of the conflagration. The fury of the victors increasing with their ravages, they began to thirst for hu man blood. "A la lanterne with the forestallers!" was the cry. This preliminary to murder warned the Lazarist priests that it was high time to seek safety in flight. Most of them escaped by getting over the outer wall, pursued by the cries of women and children, who pointed out their black cassocks to the armed men that were in quest of them.

A confessional, found in the oratory of the superior of the establishment, was brought to the bonfire made with the furniture. The wretches had not damaged this article, designing, no doubt, to give a greater degree of solemnity to their autoda-fe. It was borne by a party of men with bare arms, who placed it in the midst of the red-hot ashes; and it was just beginning to blaze, when the door was violently thrown open, and out rushed two Iriests, crying for mercy, and begging their lives. "Burn them! burn them !" shouted some. Others insisted that they should be tried and executed on the spot.

At this moment the general attention was diverted by another incident, equally unexpected. The French Guards assembled round the fire perceived a priest crawling along the gutters, with the intention of gaining the roofs of the neighbouring houses. The soldiers seized their muskets; the priest heard the balls whiz about his ears; dizzy with fright he fell, and rolling down the roof, there seemed to be no other chance for him than to be dashed in pieces on the pavement of the courtyard, when an iron hook caught his cassock, and held him suspended for some minutes on the lofty summit of the building. In

VOL. I.

this perilous situation some of the French Guards had the barbarity to fire at him again; while others, running up stairs, and getting out at the garret windows, released the unfortunate man, and carried him down to the middle of the court-yard. Pale with fright, and borne upon the shoulders of the soldiers, he was there greeted with shouts of joy and plaudits by the multitude.

What was to be done with the three prisoners? The mob had found in the lofts a few sacks of flour, necessary for the supply of the establishment. These they had seized and put into a cart to be taken to Paris as evidence of the conspiracy of St. Lazare. One of the rabble made a motion that the three forestalling priests should be placed in the same vehicle. This proposal, being approved, saved the lives of the victims. They were hoisted into the cart with the flour, and the populace, harnessing themselves to it, dragged it by torch-light with shouts of triumph to the rotunda of the corn-market.

But this nocturnal procession had drawn away only the least dangerous portion of the conquerors: the plunderers, the men familiar with outrage and with crime, had staid behind, watching for their prey, hoping that under favour of the night and the conflagration, an opportunity of gratifying their wishes might present itself. Accordingly scenes of riot and of bloodshed were justly anticipated, when a voice burst forth from the obstreperous crowd: "To the Sisters of Charity!" Thunders of applause hailed this atrocious proposal. The mob rushed towards the habitation of the Sisters. This was a retreat afforded by the hospital to one hundred female orphans between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two years. Some of them were eminently beautiful; indeed, the institution gave the more readily an asylum to such whose personal charms and poverty would have exposed them in the world to the greater temptations.

The anguish of these poor girls, and of the young nuns who superintended their education, during the work of pillage, may be more easily conceived than described. What had they not to fear from an attack of the lawless and licentious rabble! In the chapel where they had assembled to solicit the protection of their patron, St. Vincent de Paul, they heard the blasphemies, the obscene language, and the threats, addressed to them; and in this dreadful

C

state of suspense they were kept for nine tedious hours.

All at once the doors were burst open: a multitude of ragged wretches rushed in, with shouts of fury, and seeing these young females, weeping, lamenting, and crowding, at the foot of the altar, around their teachers, they paused for a moment, affected by this touching spectacle of modesty and distress but possibly this emotion might have been but momentary, had not a man of majestic stature, and of bold and commanding aspect, grasping a pistol in one hand and a hatchet in the other, advanced to the further extremity of the chapel. Standing on the steps of the altar, "Ladies," said he, "fear no insult!"-"Bravo!" responded the mob, "that's well said!"

The man, having laid his pistol and the hatchet upon the altar, left the chapel, followed by the whole of the rabble.

And who, think you, was this man of noble demeanour, though disordered dress, whom you are, perhaps, surprized to find in such a scene of riot? It was one of the maniacs whom the people had set at li berty; and who was possessed with the idea that he was the Grand Signor of Constantinople.

The populace, who had retired in obedience to his commanding tone and gesture, were already proposing to return to the chapel, when the national guard, having at length assembled, came up to extinguish the fire and to protect the Sisters.

My Aunt Mary is a maiden lady ofbut I must not gratify my readers with her age, as that is a secret-yet, I can inform them that she talks of twenty years ago as her girlish days, and styles her youngest niece, a girl of seventeen, a mere child. However, it is entirely her own fault that she has attained such an age without entering into the state of matrimony. She has had many excellent offers, but, preferring a life of what she terms independence, resolves to live and die an old maid. "What a choice!" methinks I hear some of my fair readers exclaim: but if they will take the trouble to follow me whilst I trace her character, they will find many estimable points, although she may have formed one erroneous opinion.

At the death of a married sister, my Aunt Mary took up her residence with her widowed brother-in-law, to superintend his household affairs and the education of his children; and he could not have made choice of a person better fitted for the task. She is neatness and economy personified, and her arrangement of his domestic concerns is the admiration of every one who visits his house: not one thing is to be seen out of place; not a particle of dust soils the polished surface of her furniture; and not a thread lies on the carpet, though she may have been many hours busily at work.

Her garden is arranged with equal care and precision: not a weed is to be seen in the path or on the beds; not a shrub is untrimmed, or a dead leaf withering on the stalk, for she makes it a rule to take a morning and evening walk around it, to see that every part of it is in order. She encourages her nephews to work in it, assuring them that such employment is conducive to health, and, as she has some knowledge of botany, frequently amuses them with a dissertation on the various properties of each plant. Show her a flower, and she examines it minutely, to ascertain to what class, order, and genus, it belongs; and then follows a scientific description of the manner in which its seed is formed, ripened, and propagated. She has a fund of anecdote, and although it must be confessed that she frequently, through a failure of memory, relates the same tale to the

same person more than once, yet there is so much energy in her manner and variety in her gesture, for she acts as well as tells her stories, that the second and even the third edition does not fail to amuse.

But though her memory in this instance is treacherous, it is exceedingly good on most other occasions: she remembers the exact hour when any thing of the least importance occurred, and scarcely a day passes but she recollects that, at this time five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, such an event happened. Indeed, she is the almanack to the whole family, and if they want to know when Easter or Whitsuntide will arrive, when the sun or moon rises and sets, or what is the day of the month, Aunt Mary is applied to, and never unsuccessfully.

In her dress, my Aunt Mary studies neatness without peculiarity: she likes to follow the fashions of the day as far as her ideas of propriety permit, but when they are indelicate or gaudy, which we are sorry to say is too frequently the case, she not only refuses to follow them herself, but positively forbids her nieces doing so either, and she talks, with a sigh, of her youthful days, when young maidens were modest, domesticated, and happy, making good wives and careful mothers.

In her religious duties she is very strict. She is a member of the established religion of her country, but is neither bigotted to her own opinions, nor prejudiced against others. She summons her servants, nephews, and nieces, every morning and evening, to family prayer, and always insists upon their attending some place of worship on the sabbath, even at an inconvenience to herself. It is her practice to make her Bible her study some portion of each day, and her other hours devoted to reading are spent in perusing works of amusement and instruction. Those pe

riodicals of the last century, the Rambler, the Spectator, the Guardian, the Tatler, &c., are among her favourite works, as they are descriptive of the manners and customs of her youth. These she recommends to her nieces as far more worthy of their perusal than the "nonsense," as she terms it, of the circulating library. Yet she does not wholly reject works of fiction. The pro