will do justice to the absurd pretensions of those who conceive themselves to be the worthy descendants of the Amuraths and Suleimans of old.

All countries are not prepared to enjoy the benefits of constitutional government. It requires a certain training and experience-a stern education in the lessons of self-control and self-sacrifice. It will be seen

from what we have said of the demoralised social condition of Romania, and above all from the prominent egotism, selfishness, cupidity, and want of principle, that it was the country least of all adapted for such a refinement of civilisation. The system has as yet been attended by nothing but successive intrigues, hostilities, and political disorganisation. The Boyards monopolised at the outset all parliamentary power, and established a real oligarchy. Intestine struggles were inaugurated from the first day, and have ever since kept growing in intensity. It is utterly impossible in a nation of place-hunters, just like modern Greece, ever to get the opposition to work with the executive-measures are never regarded as such, or taken on their own merits-it suffices to be out of office to be in the opposition, and no further idea of the public weal is entertained than that of getting into office again. It is a question if such is not a very common error of constitutional governments. But in Romania this is carried to a disgraceful extent. For four years no budget has been voted, all public works have been in consequence suspended, credit sacrificed, and business interrupted, all because the opposition wish to hoist the executive out of power.

In 1851 a project was discussed for putting Moldo-Walachia under the sovereignty of Austria-a project objectionable in one sense, owing to the unprogressive character of the Austrian government, but wise in another, as presenting the best shield that could be opposed to Russian and Turkish encroachments. It is questionable if it would not have been better than the Prussian domination, which has turned up with the wheel of time in the person of a Hohenzollern, Prussia being so far removed geographically from the Lower Danube. The union of the two Principalities under an hereditary chief found, however, most favour with the people. But both projects met with opposition from various quarters; the latter from the Porte, who was supported from jealousy by Austria, and from the mistaken political dread of weakening Turkey, by England.

The Romanians proceeded, notwithstanding, with the election of Couza, the descendant of a Greek merchant of Trebisond, but a naturalised Romanian, commandant of the Moldavian militia, and some time prefect of Galatz; and ultimately the protecting power confirmed the will of the people for union in the person of an almost unknown Boyard of the second order, on the 6th of September, 1859. The position of the new prince was anything but satisfactory. He was, it is true, the first chief of the united Principalities, but he had two capitals, two assemblies, and two ministries to rule; in fact, two different states, each with two opposed parties. There is no doubt that Prince Couza did his best to conciliate and amalgamate parties; he was ever travelling, moving about, working to the utmost of his power and strength; but need it be said with what results? Without a new system and an improved morality, an angel would fail in Greece or in Romania. The prince has fallen, and an Oct.-VOL. CXXXVIII. NO. DL.

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hereditary foreign prince has succeeded to the throne. The task before him is immense, but it is not insuperable. To the last the faults of Prince Couza were that nothing was done to revive the credit of the country, and the loans were too onerous for the people to bear. A factious hostility still suspended all public works, especially railroads. The peasants refused to pay for the concession of lands, which they claimed as their own; tobacco, which the Romanian prefers to bread, was too heavily taxed; and the mistrust of foreigners was upheld by the ever-dominant Greek-like duplicity. These errors, in the position of the country, can be easily rectified by a prince of western European origin.

It will be a far more difficult task to train the Romanian up to a wise and legitimate idea of what a constitutional government is. His ideas upon that subject are not so much those of a student of a De Lolme, as those of the most uneducated demagogues of all countries, who look upon constitutional rule as everything for themselves. It will require to reform manners, to proscribe venality, to extirpate corruption, punish extortioners, limit divorces, reconstitute the family, reorganise all things, courts of justice, army, public instruction, even to the clergy, introduce respect for the laws, and keep down rebellion. The Romanians themselves are fully aware that all these reforms are wanted before their country can be extricated from its false and fallen condition. They look around among themselves, and they admit that their own native princes are exhausted in the struggle. They then look abroad, and they select for the herculean task a foreign prince, but they have little or no faith in his success; they know their own vicious propensities; every one wishes to see his neighbour reformed, none care to reform themselves. Will other nations have more confidence in the success of Prince Charles of Hohenzollern? If the protecting powers will give him encouragement to act with a strong hand, and aid him against the rapacity of Turkey, the influence of Russia, and the insurrectionary tendencies of his own people, there may still be some hope for the regeneration of Romania.

CHRISTINE; OR, COMMON-PLACE PEOPLE.

BY JANET ROBERTSON.

I.

It is justly remarked by a celebrated metaphysical French writer, that if there is a class of people in the world more pernicious than another to the happiness of their fellow-creatures, it is the class denominated les gens médiocres. The decidedly ugly almost always yield unqualified admiration to the beautiful; the positively stupid regard splendid talent as an ignorant Indian may be supposed to worship the sun, the influence of whose rays he feels, though he cannot comprehend or explain them; but persons of middling pretensions, whether physical or mental, are commonly possessed with a mean jealousy towards those whose superiority promises them distinction. Thence we continually see people of secondrate intellect condense all their limited powers of mind in a system of low cunning, by which they try to reduce every one to their own level—a sinister cast of character which often acts most fatally on the happiness of the gifted individual whom fate has placed within its reach. The evil offices proceeding from this envious disposition can only be surmounted by the powerful impulse of natural genius, aided by a certain combination of circumstances, that rouses the oppressed object to shake off by a strong effort the leaden weight by which he, or she, is crushed into the grovelling track of those earthworms of humanity.

There is an iron energy in the masculine mind that renders it less likely to be paralysed by this malignant influence. Man goes abroad in the world, and struggles with his fellow-men on a wide and open field of action; but for the woman of talent the case is very different; she revolves within a narrow sphere, and her greatest foes are often close at hand, ready to shed the mildew on the opening flower, and extinguish the spark of genius ere it kindles to a flame.

It is an almost unerring rule that where the intellectual capacity is greatest there exists likewise the most acute sensibility; those powers of imagination which grace and ornament the bright moments of life also deepen those of despondency and grief, laying the possessor open to the attacks of the covert enemy, who, under the mask of mediocrity, is always much more dangerous than one of higher powers. He, however much he may fear and hate in the spirit of rivalry, nevertheless cannot fail to appreciate what he so well understands. But woman's greatest foe is woman, whose evil feelings are not generally confined to herself, but are exerted on those of the other sex over whom her craft has obtained an influence; therefore, however insignificant the reptile be, let the eagle intellect beware its sting, nor ever forget that the fatal viper of Amyclea was the smallest of all serpents. Pertinent to the above observations will be found the following little history of one of those sensitive plants of genius, who by a train of adverse circumstances was thrown into the power, and nearly wrecked on the quicksands and under-currents spread around her by the cunning and malevolence of les gens médiocres.

Christina Drummond, the mother of my heroine, was the youngest of a family of several sons and daughters, and found herself an orphan at an early age, left almost alone, her sisters being already married—rather poorly-and her brothers dispersed in the army and navy, the professions in former days generally selected in Scotland for the ill-provided descendants of ancestors who had originally held a certain position in their native country. In a cheap boarding-school-where Christina's small portion had obliged her friends to place her as an assistant—she seemed destined to consume her days; but she was young, and in early life disadvantages are felt comparatively lightly. It is true that the gentle and sensitive girl bloomed less vividly, and laughed less merrily than formerly, representing an apt type of some rare and delicate plant removed from the rich parterre in which it had been carefully tended, into a cold and meagre earth, where it droops and degenerates, though it still lives on. But thus to die was not her fate, for a revivifying sun-in the shape of an old rich man from India-unexpectedly shone out on the frost-nipped flower, and soon transplanted it from its ungenial soil to the sheltered and decorated garden of gay life. It is true that Mr. Douglas-the gentleman in question—-was nearly sixty, and Christina only eighteen, but he was polished and intellectual, and besides being a handsome man for his age, was the head of his house, having since his return home succeeded to the hereditary entailed property, and was in consequence the possessor of a large fortune. He met with her at her sister's in Edinburgh, during the Christmas holidays, was struck with her graceful and gentle manners, and charmed by the sweet voice with which she sang her plaintive native melodies. In short, he thought her just suited to be an amiable and attentive wife to an old man, and money being no object with him, he made her an offer of marriage. So far was Christina from even dreaming of a refusal, that she could hardly believe it possible such good fortune should be hers; she had formed no early attachment, and her ideas of her own attractions were but humble. She was, besides, depressed and harassed with anxieties about the future, and shrank from the vulgar quarrels and jealousies so constantly recurring among the set with whom she was doomed to pass so much of her time. Thankfully and joyfully, then, she accepted Mr. Douglas's proposal, and soon found herself installed the mistress of a fine house in Charlotte-square, with a handsome carriage and plenty of servants at her command. Some months of infinite pleasure and contentment followed her marriage; her husband was kind and attentive, her connexions and friends adulating, and she likewise became a person of some consequence in the fashionable world, where before she was unknown, or, if accidentally seen, passed carelessly by, or shoved aside as a nobody. Now, therefore, her state was comparatively one of bliss; but there is no rose without a thorn, so poor Christina was soon doomed to be pierced by hers, for her husband quickly began to show symptoms of jealousy. Her improved looks and gayer spirits rendered her an object much more attractive than he had at first considered her, and the kindly gentleness of her nature expanding in consequence of the easy position in which she found herself placed, her society became universally courted.

Mr. Douglas was subject to attacks of gout, which required the greatest care and attention lest it might prove fatal; he therefore was often

obliged to keep himself warm and quiet at home, which of course rendered him unable to accompany his young and admired wife to the many gay scenes where her presence was earnestly solicited. Instead of forbidding her to go out without him, he adopted the part of being morose and fretful, without assigning any cause for his discomposure, thus allowing to ferment in secret a temper naturally difficult and irritable, becoming every day more intractable by increasing infirmity and the galling consciousness that he was "mated, not matched." The affectionate Christina could not at first imagine what was the matter, and tried by every possible means to soothe and conciliate him; then, as the truth dawned upon her mind, she feigned that her situation-for she was in the way of becoming a mother-rendered visiting disagreeable and fatiguing. It was all the same thing; if she avoided displeasing him in one way, she roused his suspicions in another, and made him attribute to deceitful and interested motives her endeavours to please him. She was scoffed at and turned into ridicule in presence of their mutual acquaintances, and in private desired "not to grin and show her teeth to the fellows!" nor "to sing her love-lorn ditties to her sentimental friends." In short, nothing she could do, or leave undone, succeeded in giving satisfaction to her domestic tyrant, and the suspicion and irritability of the old man grew so intolerable as almost to make her regret the uncomfortable boardingschool which she had renounced to take possession of her apparently brilliant, yet in reality wounding, position.

The pure and warm heart, however, always finds comfort somewhere, and Christina found hers in the near prospect of the birth of her child, so she bore with unshaken equanimity her husband's variations of temper, studying to avoid doing or saying anything that might chance to irritate him, and conscious of being guiltless of intentional offence, busied herself in preparation for her approaching confinement. At last the happy moment arrived, she became the mother of a fine boy, and in the delightful task of nursing him forgot or disregarded all the petty annoyances inflicted by his father. In this respect, however, her situation improved considerably, for Mr. Douglas, proud and happy in having a son to inherit his name and fortune, became milder and more attached to the amiable woman whom fate had given him as a partner. His jealousy was almost forgotten in seeing the manner in which she devoted herself to her infant, or if remembered, it was only shown, by way of a variety, in reference to this new tie, in which, he insinuated, she forgot the stronger one that ought to bind her to him. At such, or similar, speeches Christina only smiled as she played with and caressed her darling, or hushed him to sleep on her bosom, thanking Heaven mentally that her husband had at last found so inoffensive a channel in which to discharge the stream of ill humour that she now so plainly perceived must flow in some direction, little dreaming how this concentration of affection on her child would tell upon the happiness of after life.

Three years passed over, during which time the old man's health visibly declined; and when at last he was summoned suddenly hence, his gentle wife scarce knew whether to be glad that his sufferings and her trials had ceased, or to be sorry at the loss of a husband who had left her in a state of affluence, besides having appointed her one of the guardians to her boy, whose dawning mind and endearing smiles promised to gild