ideal of genteel discourse and elegant manners. The graceful abandon of each performer was irresistible. I have seen nothing like it in any actor or actress of any other nation. If the French language be peculiarly fitted for conversation, the French are the peculiar people who know how to use it. By them is it intermingled with shrugs, and gestures, numberless movements of body, turns of the eye, plays of the features, and varyings of the voice. In the representation I have just seen, it was but one among these half a dozen avenues of thought. The combination was extremely expressive, and I left my box, not only with a new and keener appreciation of the genius of Moliere, but likewise with a livelier feeling of the charms of French conversations upon the French stage.

J. J. J.

THE PREMIER'S STORY.*

You have doubtless heard, my friends, of the Isle of France, and that it lies in the Indian Ocean? I have been there; and it is in that island that the scene is laid of the events which I am now to have the honor to recount to you, and of which I was an eye and an ear witness.

I do not know whether, according to the rules on these occasions, I am at liberty to indulge in so much egotism as to inform you how and why I went there? It is, however, so soon told, that I will trust to the indulgence of my auditors. I went to the Isle of France from the kingdom, or rather republic, of that name, for two reasons. First, because I judged it better,-seeing that the guillotine became every day more and more indiscriminating between the deserving and undeserving, that I should leave France and keep my head on my shoulders, than remain and have it separated. I was, besides, allowed to possess a very handsome neck, and I could not bear the idea of having it divided by that contrivance, ingenious as it was, and humane as it was said to be. Secondly, I went to the Isle of

This story may be said to have been almost literally transcribed from the lips of M. de Villele, the narrator, who was minister of Charles X. at the time, 1827, and for some years before.

France in preference to all the other places on the globe which contended in my mind for the honor of receiving me, because I had some small property there which had been left me by a relation :→ a recommendation which no other spot in the civilized world presented to me.

There went passenger in the same ship with me, a young man of my own age and rank in life, between whom and myself, long before the voyage ended, there were formed the closest friendship and confidence that ever existed. All the great friendships that you read of in history, sacred or profane-Jonathan and David, Damon and Pythias, Nisus and Euryalus, Brutus and Cassius, and the rest whose names I do not remember-were nothing compared to that which we entertained for each other.

own.

The young man was going out, too, on an errand similar to my One of his relations had died in the island, and, as it was reported at home, had left a large property, of which he was made the principal heir. He was going out to seek for the estate, without any very poignant grief at the decease of his uncle, whom he had never seen, but with a high respect for his memory, from the report of his good qualities, heightened in no small degree by the affectionate care which he was said to have taken of his nephew by his testament.

We carried letters to the same merchants, and on our arrival continued as inseparable friends as on shipboard. We lived under the same roof, visited the same hospitable people, and each made the other's affairs entirely his own.

We had not been many weeks in the island, before my good friend discovered that the prospects of his succession were far from being as brilliant as report at a distance had made them. The amount had been magnified nineteen times beyond the truth; and the old gentleman had, with the advice and assistance of an expert notary, made a testament which all the procureurs and advocates on the island were now engaged in explaining at the expense of the estate, or rather of his heir. The funds, it is true, were in the hands of the tribunal, and therefore safe from embezzlement. But the able and contradictory contestations of the learned advocates of the different legatees, as well as his own, were soon ordered to be paid out of the proceeds, while the rest was held subject to the decision to be thereafter pronounced. In return, however, the lawyers all promised with one voice, each his own client, that the affair should be speedily terminated in his favor, though they would not venture to predict the precise time when. In the mean time arguments still more able and conclusive were again written and submitted on all sides.

When the cause had reached this point, my friend, who had studied

the civil law somewhat in France, and was of course conversant in such matters, declared to me at once that it would be a question for posterity; and finding his situation beginning to border on the des. perate, he was concluding to betake himself to some other pursuit ; and if he could not find employment that suited him in the peaceful walks of life, to distinguish himself by deeds in arms. At the very moment that he was ready to decide on quitting the island never to return to it, that is, not until his lawsuit was ended-he saw and became deeply enamoured of a beautiful girl, the daughter and only child of a planter of some wealth on the island; in fact, the richest planter in it. For fear, however, I may give you ideas too extravagant of his opulence, I must apprise you that there was not an individual among them that you would not smile to hear called rich in Paris.

Whether young men in the desperate circumstances of my friend are naturally inclined to fall desperately in love, particularly with heiresses, I cannot take upon myself to decide. I must, however, affirm, in bare justice to the lady, that her beauty alone was sufficient to make the most unfortunate young man in the world forget his own poverty while he gazed upon her. When my hero first saw her, he forgot for the moment the death of his relation, his unlucky testa. ment, and his lawsuit. If he had been the richest proprietor on the island, or indeed sole owner of it, he could not have been more indifferent to the state of his own affairs. He would perhaps have been incapable of a light impression. It would have required an extraordinary shock to rouse his heart from the lethargy which his ill-fortune in the world was bringing by degrees upon it. But I will not stop to philosophize at this stage of my history.

The young lady, who so unexpectedly became the object of my friend's adoration, had the longest train of admirers of any lady on the island. In fact, all the young gentlemen it contained were at her heels; while she, by being in no hurry to make a choice among them, seemed to be very difficult to please. To be sure, if one could have trusted the reports that circulated constantly, the young lady chose every day a new favorite and discarded the old ones! It is possible she may have seen cause to change her mind very often. At all events, the whole island, where you know there were few people, and still fewer events to occupy their lively imaginations, found its chief amusement in marrying and unmarrying single people, among whom this belle came in for a most plentiful supply of hus. bands!

My friend, who had heard the young lady often spoken of in this way, and described as the perfection of beauty and the ne plus ultra of riches, used to smile at the exaggeration of the simple Islanders

to pity their taste in beauty, and laugh at their ideas of wealth! He was far from dreaming of what was about to befal him, when he accepted the invitation of a planter to his house one evening, and on his arrival found assembled a gay party of young ladies and gentlemen, amusing themselves alternately with what was called dancing, and supposed to be singing. In Paris they would be called by very different names, if we except two or three that leaped more carefully, and as many more that had the most delightful voices on earth but sang tunes that were in fashion in the time of king Da. gobert At the moment he entered the apartment, the young lady I have mentioned was singing, in the voice of an angel, an air that had just found its way to that island, after being twenty years for gotten at Paris. He recollected to have heard his mother sing it, when he was a boy of five years of age, to a niece who wished to hear one of the tunes that were in fashion when her aunt was a young woman.

Still, with such a voice, the songs of the Savoyard minstrels, which are hooted at by our chimney-sweeps, would have appeared divine; and he joined as warmly in the applause as the rest when the song was finished. He did more; for though this was the first time he had ever beheld her, he fell instantly and irretrievably in love, at least as soon as he had learnt who it was that had so divine a voice, and so heavenly a face and form.

I wish, my dear Vicomte, I could borrow a description from you, to convey to you some idea of the delicate symmetry of her form, the sweet expression of her countenance, the sparkling brilliancy of her eye, which exactly matched her jet-black hair-of her ripe, melt ing lips, evidently made to be kissed-of that rich, dark, glowing complexion, which blended the transparency of the blonde with the bright, sunny tints of the loveliest brunette. But I despair of giv ing you an adequate conception of her charms, and therefore you must rest content with being informed that she was universally admitted to be the handsomest woman in the "world!" Whether that was understood to mean "the Island," I do not know; but I assure you the people there had good reason to believe it was true, if they used it in its most extensive signification.

The lady soon detected his ardent glances of admiration, and with some symptoms of confusion turned her head; but it was to ask of the hostess "Who was that stranger who stared at her so impertinently?" Luckily my friend did not hear it, or it might have changed the resolution which he formed at that moment to become her husband. He had something of the Frenchman in him, both of gallantry and vanity; and if there are any other amiable traits for which our na. tion is justly celebrated, I shall expect you to give my hero credit

for his proper share of them. He had at least one, which is im portant in love as well as in war and politics. He had a courage, tempered with discretion, sometimes called assurance, which some have found a very good substitute for all the great talents and qualities in the world.

He had also one advantage over nearly all his rivals, he was of European birth; and among the French Creoles of that island a native of France may assume the same superiority that the kingdom itself, which he is supposed to represent, enjoys over that islet. In his own mind at least that relative rank is incontestibly settled.

I cannot say whether my friend, as I have described him, was very perfect in the "Art of Love ;" but he was a man capable of profiting by his own experience. He had been engaged—as who has not?-in some trifling affairs of the heart before he left his own country; and the result of them had led him to adopt, as his first maxim, "never to take the first refusal;" as his second, "to consider the second and third as of no more consequence;" and his third, "not to consider any certain number as final and conclusive while his passion lasted." In my opinion, Messieurs, such a person, of inferior talents for pleasing at the commencement, may be a very dangerous man among the fair sex in the long run; nature has formed them with hearts so tender.

But he did not stop to anticipate rejections. He resolved to win the prize, which appeared to offer so many irresistible temptations'; to encounter all the dangers, submit to all the toils, which human nature was capable of sustaining. The father had been pointed out to him at the same time he had inquired who the daughter was; and he now approached him, and entered into a conversation upon the different beauties in the room. "There was one above all," he affrmed, "there present, who was not only the handsomest woman he had seen on the Island, but he had never seen one in France, among the most celebrated belles, that could compare with her. Nor in any other part of Europe," he added. That was a safe assertion however, as he had never set his foot upon the soil of any other kingdom, state, or principality in that continent. In all these praises of her beauty, Messieurs, I will be the guaranty for his sincerity; as it was natural that she should appear more beautiful to him, being present, than those other beauties of whom his recollection was obscured by the lapse of time, and the immense distance which separated them. Any sensible man in his place would have preferred her, as matters then stood, to all the beauties of France put to. gether.

The father, who suspected that all this transporting admiration was excited by his own beautiful daughter, wished to be certain;