remaining cold and unperturbed though the restoration of the electrical equilithe current sweeping along its surface brium. This is accomplished through the would, if interrupted, tear its way through agency of storms. They are the scavensolid stone, and melt the most refractory gers of the sky. They come in mercy, metals like wax. Protected by this happy not in wrath. With his broad wings, the contrivance, a thunder-stroke has been tempest-phantom scours the air of its seen to fall upon a powder dépôt at noxious charge; and, grim as he may be Glogau, in Silesia, and though the build-in feature, appalling as he is in action, ing appeared to be bathed in fire, and the sentinel on guard was deprived of his senses for a time, the deadly compound within was untouched. A continuous rod of copper, three quarters of an inch in diameter, and duly rooted in some moist locality, would probably suffice to carry away harmlessly the heaviest flash which ever alighted upon this globe.

non

But when the black clouds which come rushing to battle have discharged their bolts, and the voice of the thunder has ceased to be heard, who can say that a storm is a foul and mischievous phenomea wanton breach of nature's peace a nuisance and a flaw in the fair policy of creation? In truth, it is any thing but that! The electricity of the globe must be regulated like every other variable force. Evaporation is the chief cause of disturbance, and when this process advances too rapidly, as it does during the intense heats of summer, a state of unnatural excitement, involving many subtle and ill-understood consequences, is superinduced in the air and earth. Were the conditions which prelude a tempest to be prolonged for any considerable period still worse, were the physical discomforts and mental oppression which are felt at such seasons to continue augmenting for weeks together-men would soon be flung into a fever, or probably driven to the verge of madness. The remedy lies in

fatal as he sometimes is in his flings, yet, in the main, he is ever good and beneficent in design. All the fierce lunges which the lightning makes at the earth are in truth little more than friendly exchanges of the two fluids. When this has been accomplished, see what a transformation ensues! The sun shines forth with softened splendor, as if his beams were filtered through a cooler atmosphere. The stifling heat is gone. The sicklied air has recovered its healthful spring, and now plays in gladsome zephyr, or dances in balmy breeze. The foliage glistens with golden drops, and the landscape, freshened by the rich shadows for which it was athirst, laughs at the dread Presence now fading on the horizon from whose lips "leapt the live thunder," and from whose hand came the gleaming shaft, but from whose lap also descended the soothing, fertilizing rain. Nature has lifted her drooping head, and, shaking the moisture from her forest tresses, smiles, as beauty does through its bridal tears, to see her fair world blessed and regenerated by the storm. After the tempest, peace. So come so rage-so pass the calamities of life. Black and sulphureous as the cloud may look whilst it hovers aloft, they who can wisely interpret. its functions, know that it is ladened with light, and that its mission is to restore the violated harmonies of earth and heaven.

DARING FEAT.-On the 12th, a workman named THE PRESERVATION OF BUILDINGS.-The PrinceJames Matthews, performed the intrepid feat of as- Consort has caused a pamphlet to be printed for cending to the summit of the cathedral spire of Salis- private circulation for the purpose of affording inforbury, for the purpose of oiling the vane, which is at mation as to the invention of M. Kuhlmann for an altitude of 404 feet from the ground. The feat hardening the surface of stone buildings by saturatwas witnessed by a large number of persons, anding them with flint in solution. The effect of this was accomplished by means of small iron handles which are firmly fixed to the exterior of the spire. Before descending he mounted the cross above the vane, and at that dizzy hight stood upright upon it.

process is to harden the most porous stone as to render it perfectly impervious to moisture, and consequently to protect it from the effects of the atmospheric influence.

rank as the most high-principled, selfsacrificing, and best-conducted, as well as most unfortunate of queens. The first edition of their book was speedily exhausted; and such is the inherent attraction of the subject, that we are tempted to recapitulate and reëxamine the principal events of a life which has all the interest of a novel, although it influenced the destinies of Europe and (no solitary example) was embittered by a throne.

IN Sir Walter Scott's younger days, as | boldly lay claim for their heroine to take he states in one of his prefaces, the guilt or innocence of Mary Queen of Scots was a constant subject of angry controversy, and a reflection on her character in the hearing of one of her avowed partisans was held to justify a challenge. A similar though less durable conflict of opinion has existed in France touching the reputation of Marie Antoinette ;t and we remember the time when it would have been extremely dangerous to question her conjugal fidelity within the precincts of the Faubourg St. Germain. Both of these illustrious ladies were cradled in royalty: both were beauties and coquettes: both were unequally mated: both were suspected and calumniated; and both perished on the scaffold. But the parallel ceases at the most important point. The verdict of history has proved decidedly unfavorable to Mary Stuart, whilst the name and memory of Marie Antoinette came out brighter and brighter from the ordeal of every fresh inquiry.

Partial as Madame Campan may have been to her beloved mistress, there is an air of sincerity in her statements which could not fail to make way with posterity. The most material have been confirmed by the unimpeachable testimony of the Count de la Marck; whilst the indications discoverable in the memoirs and correspondence of her most respectable cotemporaries almost all point in the same direction. The case for the defence has been completed by MM. de Goncourt; who profess to have resorted to every accessible source of information, and now

We shall confine ourselves almost exclusively to her personal history, on which we hope to throw fresh light from sources which have escaped the search, or not fallen under the observation, of MM. de Goncourt. But judging from the success of recent contributions to retrospective literature of a more familiar kind, we should not despair of a favorable reception were we to do no more than bring together the scattered and highly interesting traits which are already known to the curious in French memoirs.

Marie Antoinette, the daughter of Francis the First, Emperor of Germany, and the famous Maria-Theresa, was born November 2d, 1755; "the day," says Madame Campan, "of the earthquake of Lisbon; and this catastrophe, which seemed to mark with a fatal stamp the epoch of her nativity, without being a motive for superstitious fear, had nevertheless made an impression on the mind of the princess." This is strange, for the earthquake took place the day before, namely, November 1st. The Empress, anxious for a son, had made a bet of two ducats with the Duc de Tarozka that she should have a daughter. After the announcement of the event, the loser was discovered in a brown study by Metastasio, who inquired the cause. "Imagine + See a fine portrait of this beautiful but unfor- my embarrassment," exclaimed the Duke; tunate Queen in the last, May, number of the "I have a wager of two ducats with the Eclectic, with a brief biographical sketch. The present more elaborate article concerning this re-bed of a prince, and lo, it is a princess." Empress that she would be brought to nowned personage justifies its insertion here.EDITOR OF THE ECLECTIC.

Vie de Marie Antoinette. Par EDOUARD et

JULES DE GONCOURT. Deuxième Edition. Revue
et augmentée de Documents inédits et de Pièces
tirées des Archives de l'Empire. Paris. 1859.

"Well, then," replied Metastasio, "you

have lost and must pay." "Pay, but how | tableaux vivants got up for their edifica

Early in 1769 the proposed union had become a constant topic of diplomatic correspondence, and a painter, Ducreux, was sent from Paris to paint the portrait of the future queen of France for Louis Quinze. It seems to have been deemed satisfactory by this practiced judge of female charms, for the preliminary contract was signed on the sixteenth July, and the final ratifications were exchanged on the seventeenth of January, 1770. The customary fêtes, ceremonies, and preparations for the departure of the bride, occupied some months. On the seventeenth of April, she signed a formal renunciation of her hereditary rights, paternal and maternal, in a full council of ministers, and confirmed by an oath administered at the altar. After attending the Belvidere fetes, which lasted nine days, she started on the twenty-sixth for France, carrying with her a copy of the ominous injunction addressed by Maria Theresa to her children :

actors were dimissed, and an ecclesiastic, | nections at Vienna, and his fidelity was the Abbé Vermond, was named in their unquestionable. place. This man has been accused of exercising a mischievous influence on the manners, modes of thinking, disposition, and conduct of Marie Antoinette at the most trying epoch of her life; and his own character has consequently been subjected to the most searching scrutiny. But we have been unable to arrive at any safe and definite conclusion regarding him. Madame Campan, whose suspicions may have been sharpened by jealousy, describes him as a cold, insolent, indiscreet, and mocking sceptic, who, both by precept and example, inculcated a contempt for forms and conventional distinctions, from which it is as difficult to dissociate the idea of royalty as to comprehend Crambo's abstraction of a Lord Mayor without the gold chain and other ensigns of dignity. The son of a village surgeon, the Abbé (she says) was wont, in the hight of his favor, to receive bishops and ministers in his bath, remarking at the same time that the Abbé Dubois, whose position he affected, was a fool; because a man like him should make cardinals and refuse to be one.

His mode of gaining admission to the private circle of the imperial family

does credit to his tact. Soon after his arrival the empress, meeting him at her daughter's, inquired if he had formed any acquaintance at Vienna. "Not one, Madame," was the reply. "The apartment of the archduchess and the hotel of the French ambassador are the only places in which a man honored with the care of the princess's education should be seen." A month later he gave the same answer to the same question, and the day following he received a command to attend the family circle every evening.

Unless his description be entirely false, the Abbé Vermond was extremely ill qualified for his post. But the Count de la Marck, who subsequently saw a good deal of him at the hôtel of the Comte de Mercy, (the Austrian ambassador at Paris,) speaks of him as an honest, well-intentioned man of moderate abilities, devotedly attached to the Queen, and says that, although she employed him to copy her letters, she had a low opinion of his capacity. His importance, according to his high authority, was mainly derived from his being the principal medium of unofficial communication between the Queen and her con

VOL XLVIII.—NO. II.

"I recommend you, my dear children, to set apart two days of every year to prepare for death, last of your life." as if you were sure that those two days were the

On the seventh of May she reached an island on the Rhine, near Strasburg, where she was received in a richly furnished pavilion constructed for the purpose, and divided into two compartments, one for the Austrians and the other for the French. Before quitting the Austrian side she was stripped to the skin and attired from top to toe in French habiliments, "in order," so ran the regulation, "that she might retain nothing of a country which was her's no longer." She was accordingly undressed and dressed, and then ceremoniously handed over to the ladies and gentlemen of the new court which had been formed for her, beginning with Madame la Comtesse de Noailles, her chief lady in waiting.

At this point MM. de Goncourt pause to describe the face and figure of their heroine, who had not yet completed her fifteenth year, and gave little more than the promise of her matured beauty. But her expressive features, her exquisite complexion, her clear blue eyes, the rich tresses of her light brown hair, the animation of her whole person, and her winning

15

grace of manner, won all hearts, and qu'elle est jolie, notre Dauphine," was the exulting cry of the peasantry whenever they got a glimpse of her on the route.*

siastically exclaimed, "I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult," he forgot that the first insult had been perpetrated, and the ground laid for the most galling of the rest, without a solitary protest amongst this "nation of gallant men." But the "age of chivalry" was over, and that of "sophists, economists, calculators" had not arrived.

When one of her ladies in waiting asked her what she thought of the favorite, she replied by one well-chosen word "charmante." It is also related that she naïvely asked Madame de Noailles what was Madame du Barry's peculiar function at the court? "She amuses the King." "Then I declare myself her rival."

Her first meeting with the royal family of France, including her intended husband, was at the bridge of Berne, some leagues from Compiègne. She there alighted from her carriage; and, followed by her ladies, is led by her "chevalier d'honneur" and the first equerry to the King, at whose feet she throws herself. He raises her, kisses her, and presents her to the Dauphin, who does likewise. They then proceed to the château of Compiègne where she is obliged to undergo another set of presentations. The night before the nuptial benediction was passed at the Château de la Muette; and here at supper the King The marriage was solemnized in the was guilty of the incorceivable weakness chapel of Versailles, on the forenoon of and indecency of suffering Madame du the sixteenth of May. As soon as it was Barry to seat herself at Marie Antoinette's over, the bride hurried to her own aparttable. Nothing can more forcibly illus-ment, and without waiting to lay aside trate the depth of sensuality and self- her robes, wrote to her mother, “Enfin indulgence which this monarch must have me voilà Dauphine de France." reached, or the debasing thraldom in which this abandoned woman held him, or the state of morals which could render such an outrage possible even in a despotic monarchy where public opinion still found vent in pasquinades. When Burke enthu

* The degree and character of her beauty have been much disputed. Lord Holland, (Foreign Reminiscences,) who saw her the year before her death, says that it consisted exclusively in a fair skin, a straight person, and a stately air. MM. de Goncourt are too enthusiastic to inspire confidence on this point. One of their ablest critics, M. F. Barrère,

quotes the following as the most accurate description of her on her arrival in France. "Her figure was low (petite) but perfectly proportioned; her arms were well-formed and of dazzling whiteness; her hands potelées, her fingers tapering, her nails tran: sparent and rose-colored, her feet charming." As she grew and filled out," adds M. Barrère, her feet and hands remained equally irreproachable, but her figure lost somewhat of its symmetry and her bust became too prominent. Her face was an oval a little elongated; her eyes were blue, soft, and animated; her neck possibly a little too long, but admirably set; the forehead too round (bombe) and not sufficiently shaded by the hair. The mode of dressing the hair which the French ladies adopted under the Empire, would have become her to admiration, and the fair banded on the brow would have made her a regular beauty." The portaits which are very numerous, and were taken at various and long distant periods, from the brilliant rising to the gloomy setting of her sun, naturally differ widely; but they leave no doubt of her having been endowed with personal charms more than sufficient to pass for beauty on a throno.

The

ceremony was hardly ended, when the sky was darkened by clouds, the rain fell in torrents, and the crowd which filled the gardens were driven home. The bad weather continuing, the fireworks were not let off, the illuminations failed, and the people, deprived of their anticipated fete, began to talk of omens and give vent to presentiments. The fêtes at Paris concluded still more inauspiciously. Through the mismanagement of the municipal authorities, who insisted on superseding the regular police for the occasion, the crowd got jammed in the Place Louis Quinze, (now Place de la Concorde,) and a furious conflict had already commenced between those who wished to come in and those who were struggling to get out, when the scaffolding around the statue, on which the ornamented lamps were hung, caught fire. The alarm spread: the efforts to escape grew frenzied: the strong trampled down the weak: the firemen dashed to the spot with their engines over every obstacle; and when the confusion ceased, the outlets and much of the open space were found heaped with the dying and the dead. The number of the sufferers was reduced as low as possible in the official reports, but according to the Gazette de France, 132 dead bodies were collected and buried in the cemetery of the Madeleine.