money and other light valuables were gone; but the assassin appeared to have disdained to take any other part of his property, for his mule was quietly cropping the scanty grass a short distance off, and the little portmanteau was still strapped on the crupper pad. A remarkable as well as unaccountable circumstance attending this catastrophe was, that a roughly - fashioned wooden cross had been placed in the clasped hands of the murdered merchant. The most prompt and diligent steps were taken, under the direction of the authorities, for the discovery of the assassin, but without effect.

Seven months afterwards, on the eve of the festival of San Hilarion, in the month of October, a dealer-who had been to Barcelona to dispose of a large quantity of Segovia wool, and who was on his way to Murcia with a considerable sum of money in his possession—was robbed and murdered near the Coll de Balaguer; and about the middle of the following year, Don Andres Escoriasa, a manufacturer of firearms, was found dead at the same place.

as the dog-rose, into a garden, has a tendency to make the flowers double, because enough of cellular tissue is produced to convert the stamens into petals. Leaves and branches are frequently transformed into spines and thorns. Indeed thorns are regarded as leaf-buds which have been rendered abortive by some accidental stoppage of the sap, which prevents the addition of cellular tissue to form perfect leaves. Branches which also take their origin from leaf-buds may be arrested at a certain stage of their growth, so as to form spines instead of perfect branches; and such spines not unfrequently give birth to new leaf-buds and leaves, as may be seen in the common hedge-thorn. We see, therefore,' says Dr Lindley, in winding up this curious subject, that there is not only a continuous uninterrupted passage from the leaves to the bracts, from bracts to calyx, from calyx to corolla, from corolla to stamens, and from stamens to pistil-from which circumstance alone the origin of all these organs might have been referred to the leaves-but there is also a continuous tendency to revert to the form of the leaf.' The preceding is a rapid glance at the leading principles of morphology, which, when thoroughly understood, exhibit the whole plan of vegetable growth in the utmost simplicity and uniformity. Increase of substance, in whatever part, is but cellular development; multiplicity of form and organisation, mere modification of the leaf. Or we may regard the leaf as the individual, and the entire plant as an assemblage of individuals-each set being modified according to the functions they have to perform. There is certainly nothing more incredible in the statement of these modifications, than there is in the well-known morphosis of the frog from the tadpole, or of the butterfly from the successive stages of caterpillar and chrysalis. The drone, working-bee, and queen-bec, differ in structure according to the functions they are destined to execute; yet they can be transformed into each other, In January 1831, the dead body of a person named proving that they are but modifications of one common form. So it is with the leaves of plants; one set admi-juice at Tortosa, was discovered at El Coll de Balaguer. Nervas y Alaves, who had been selling a lot of liquorice nisters to the process of growth, another to defence, and a third to the functions of reproduction-each assuming a form suitable to its appointed office. Nature is never prodigal of her resources: by the slightest modifications of one great design, she can produce a thousand different results; and thus it is that in creation we find the greatest variety with the utmost simplicity, and in time the most gigantic results from movements all but imper

ceptible.

EL COLL DE BALAGUER.

A MODERN CATALONIAN STORY.

THE road from Barcelona to Valencia passes over the skirt of a cordillera, or mountain ridge, known by the name of El Coll de Balaguer. This road is edged by the sea on one side and the Coll on the other; and at one point especially, where there is an elbow or short turn, there are several enormous blocks of stone, which appear to have become detached from the main rock, and to have lodged in situations exactly suitable for the concealment of banditti, and affording facilities for pouncing upon the unsuspecting traveller from the narrow passages by which they are separated.

Between the years 1828 and 1831, several robberies and assassinations had been perpetrated close to this spot; and six rude crosses, erected within a very short distance of each other, were sad mementos of the fact. All these murders had been accompanied by circumstances marked by a singular similarity. The first victim who perished in this dreaded neighbourhood was a rich merchant, who was travelling from Lérida to Tortosa. It was supposed that, having had occasion to transact business in places out of the direct road, he had branched off, and had joined the Barcelona route near the Coll de Balaguer. He was seen one afternoon riding along on his mule in that direction, and early on the following morning a mendicant friar found his dead body, bathed in blood. A bullet had struck him in the forehead, just between the eyes. His

In February 1830, a pedlar named Zoannofer, who had been selling his wares in different parts of the country, commencing his traffic in Navarre and ending in Catalonia, when on his road from Barcelona to Tortosa, in order to return to the north by one of the passage-boats which ascend the Ebro, was also killed by a bullet near the fatal spot; and eight days before the festival of Todos los Santos, or All-Saints, in the same year, Antonio P. Dirba, a contrabandista, and also a great sportsman, who had that very morning succeeded in smuggling a cargo of French tobacco on that part of the coast, was assassinated, evidently without having had an opportunity of defending himself; for the trabuco loaded, and lying beside his corpse. or blunderbuss, with which he was armed, was still

These six victims had all been rifled of their money aim by a single bullet. Moreover, each was found with alone, and all had been mortally struck with equal good a rough wooden cross fixed in his lifeless hands.

The Coll de Balaguer became, as may naturally be supposed, the terror of travellers, as well as of the surwaylayings; and few persons had the hardihood to travel rounding country, in consequence of these murderous by that route, unless they were numerously and stoutly accompanied. Many whose affairs called them from Barcelona to Tortosa and Valencia, diverged from the high road, and willingly encountered the toil and inconvenience of making a circuit of several leagues over rugged paths, regaining that high road at a safe distance from the dreaded Coll de Balaguer.

Some goat-herds, who had occasionally conducted their flocks to browse upon the mountain herbage near the spot, declared that they had found some faded flowers which had been deposited by an unknown hand at the foot of each of the six wooden crosses which marked the burial places of the murdered travellers, and they went so far as to add, that at sunset they had more than once descried a tall figure enveloped in a cloak gliding along until it arrived close to the crosses, when it sank on its knees, and appeared absorbed in prayer; but that upon their approach, it suddenly vanished. They also imagined that they had occasionally heard doleful groans and sobs, apparently proceeding from some person in grief or suffering, at the foot of the Coll. Under these mysterious circumstances, he would have been a bold man who would venture to pass that spot alone after nightfall.

A few years antecedent to these startling events, a person named Venceslas Uriarte took up his residence in the environs of Tortosa. He was not a Catalonian, and his previous history was unknown in those parts. It was rumoured, however, that before the revolution of 1822, when the Inquisition was abolished, he had been alcayde, or jailer, in some prison belonging to that dread tribunal. According to his own account, he had

served in what was called the Army of the Faith, a body of implacable fanatics, who hesitated at no means, however astute or cruel, to endeavour to perpetuate a system which had been for ages the bane of domestic felicity, the curb to rising intelligence, and the fosterer of the most evil passions.

That baleful system having at length been resisted in the most determined manner by the mass of the Spanish people, the majority of its agents and abettors had either fallen in the various encounters between the constitutional forces and those of the Army of the Faith, or had emigrated to France, Italy, and other countries, whilst considerable numbers dispersed themselves in various parts of Spain, where they were generally regarded with suspicion and hatred, not unmingled with fear, in spite of their prostrate position; for they bore the indelible stamp of beings who had been in the habit of perpetrating crimes of the very deepest dye, either in the dungeons of the Inquisition, where none but the monsters in human form who tortured their victims in secret could hear their shrieks for mercy; or in districts which the Army of the Faith had held under its domination, persecuting and castigating those whose words, actions, or even looks, could be so distorted or misinterpreted as to be made the groundwork of a suspicion. This Venceslas Uriarte's habits were expensive; but the source whence he drew his pecuniary supplies was unknown; and although he practised all the outward forms of religion with scrupulous exactitude, and had, on that account, gained a certain reputation for piety in some quarters, he was generally looked upon as a dangerous person. Strange and ominous expressions, fearfully indicating that he was familiar with crime, escaped his lips in unguarded moments; and he gave way occasionally to the most furious bursts of passion in altercations with his associates, his vengeful glances causing the bystanders to tremble lest he should put an end to the dispute in some violent and tragical manner. Nor were their fears groundless, although the fatal blow might not be struck in their presence. The following instances are characteristic of the man :

Some one having asked him how it was that, being so excellent a shot, he so seldom went out for a day's sport, his reply was-To find a hare, it is necessary to undergo fatigue. Then, if you shoot it, you must run some little distance to pick it up; and you must afterwards walk a long way if you wish to sell it. "Tis much better to wait for a man; he comes of his own accord; and when you have killed him, all you have to do is to ransack his alforjas' [saddle-bags.]

Three days after this absurd contention between Venceslas Uriarte and poor Antonio P. Dirba, the latter was found lying dead, with a rude wooden cross in his stiffened hands, near the Coll de Balaguer.

During Lent, in the year 1832, a troop of strolling players had been performing with great success at Tarragona one of those Autos Sacramentales, or sacred plays, which excite great interest among the Spanish people; inasmuch as they are living representations, displayed with great exactness, aided by scenic illusions, of some of the most remarkable and exciting events recorded in the sacred writings; the martyrdom of saints being frequently represented on the stage apparently in all their horrible reality. The auto sacramental which the company had enacted with so much éclat at Tarragona was, The Beheading of St John the Baptist; and in the hope of meeting with equal good fortune at Tortosa, they departed early one morning from Tarragona by the high road which passes by the Coll de Balaguer.

The baggage, wardrobe, and other theatrical equipments of the company, were laden upon several mules; but the actor, one Fernando Garcia, who performed the part of St John, preferred to carry one part of his costume himself.

Fernando Garcia was a short man, which was a main point for the effective representation of the principal character in the auto sacramental; for, in order to give an appearance of reality to the scene of the beheading of St John the Baptist, a bonetillo, or leathern skull-cap, was placed on the head of the actor of low stature, and upon the said skull-cap there was fixed, by means of a spring, a false head imitating nature; and the actor's dress or raiment was so arranged as to reach above, and cover his own head, leaving visible only the false one, which being struck off by the executioner on the stage, and placed apparently bleeding on a dish, or charger, produced a startling and exciting effect upon the spectators.

Now, Fernando Garcia could not make up his mind to confide this precious cabeza, or head, which was so essential an instrument of his theatrical success, to the care of a muleteer; for it was not merely well modelled, light in point of materials-the features being painted so as to imitate nature to perfection, with real hair parted over the forehead, and hanging gracefully over the back part of the neck-but it had glass eyes, which were constantly in motion by means of an internal spring, which was acted upon by the pressure of the said imitation-head on the skull-cap surmounting the actor's real one.

One day, however, he went to shoot wild-fowl in company with Antonio P. Dirba, the contrabandista, So little Fernando thought that the safer way of to Los Alfaques, which are a cluster of small islands conveying this all-important piece of mechanism was or banks near the mouth of the Ebro, thickly over- to make himself a head taller on his journey, by ingraftgrown with tall reeds, and which afford shelter to ing it on his own pate, as he was wont to do on the great numbers of wild ducks and flamingoes. At stage; and accordingly, in this guise, and mounted on a the close of their day's sport, they entered a fisher- hired horse, he wended his way towards Tortosa, with man's hut in search of refreshment; but all they could the rest of the company. obtain was a salad, cut into very small pieces, and, as is the custom in Catalonia, swimming in a profusion of liquid called caldo, composed of water, oil, and vinegar. Antonio, in helping his companion to some caldo, used rather clumsily the roughly-fashioned wooden spoon which the fisherman had produced; for though he seemed to be ladling out the caldo, he in reality transferred scarcely any to his companion's plate; and Venceslas insisted that he had turned the spoon the wrong way upwards, and that he was stupidly trying to take up the caldo with the convex side of the spoon. Antonio maintained that he was using the hollow part, and out of this trifling matter a most violent quarrel arose. And yet, as is the case with regard to many other serious quarrels, the origin thereof was not only insignificant, but groundless; for a person who accidentally came into the fisherman's hut, and to whom the matter was referred, declared, on the first glance at the object in dispute, that both sides of the spoon were alike; that is, nearly flat.

Towards evening, however, he found himself alone. He had loitered on the road, and, like all loiterers, he was exposed to inconvenience. The weather was chilly, and in order to ward off its uncomfortable effects, he covered his face, and even his eyes, with his capa, or cloak; and trusting to the intelligence and surefootedness of his horse, he beguiled the time by thinking of the plaudits which would be showered down upon him at Tortosa, when he should personate to the life the saint whose counterfeit head overtopped his own, without feeling any ill effects from the cold against which he had so snugly sheltered himself from top to toe. Suddenly-just at the turn of the road at the Coll de Balaguer, that fatal spot where so many mysterious murders and robberies had been committed-a shot was fired from behind one of the enormous blocks of stone already described. The actor's horse reared, and threw his double-headed and muffled-up rider, who, whilst struggling to disencumber himself from the folds of his cloak, was terrified beyond measure at seeing a man

Guizot now acknowledged himself to be the unknown friend, and five years afterwards Mademoiselle de Meulan became his wife. They were married in the April of 1812; and though the lady was, as we have seen, fourteen years older than her husband, their union was the happiest possible. Madame Guizot is said, from the purity and severity of her moral nature, to have exerted a powerful influence on her husband's spiritual culture. In a humbler way than this too she was of great assistance to him. Thus, the translation of Gibbon,* which, during the first year of their marriage, appeared under his auspices, and with his valuable notes, was revised and corrected by her; and she relieved him likewise in great part from the labour of editing the 'Annals of Education.'

origin of the epithet, 'Man of Ghent,' applied to Guizot by his political opponents, and with which every reader of newspapers is familiar.

During the first five years of the second restoration, Guizot filled, with little intermission, various semi-official posts of respectability indeed, but of slender importance. Such influence as he possessed (and though not a deputy, it was considerable), he exerted to liberalise the successive ministries under which he served. It was during this period that the small knot of thoughtful politicians of which Royer-Collard, Camille Jordan, and Guizot were the heads, received the nickname of 'Doctrinaires.' The meaning of the word doctrinaire,' in its present extensive application, it would be difficult or impossible to explain; but its origin, as a party designation, may be stated for the benefit of those of our readers who have heard the term used without being able to attach to it any idea. The 'doctrinaires' were, before the revolution of '89, a French Catholic community, which had various colleges for the instruction of young persons. Royer-Collard had been educated in one of these. This philosopher's speeches in the Chamber of Deputies were for the most part of an abstract and rather pedantic kind, teeming with phrases more suited to the schools than to that political arena. One of his favourite expressions was 'doctrine,' and as this word dropped from him one day, an ultra-royalist wag seized the opportunity to exclaim, 'Ah! there go the doctrinaires.'

The year 1812 was altogether a remarkable one in Guizot's hitherto tranquil career. In the course of it, his friends Baron Pasquier and M. de Fontanes attempted to introduce him to political life by soliciting for him the post of auditor to the imperial council of state. Muret, Duke of Bassans, to whom the application was made, directed him to draw up a state-paper as a specimen of his ability. The subject was to be an exchange, then talked of by Napoleon, between Great Britain and France of their respective prisoners of war. But the emperor, it was well known, was insincere in making the proposal, as he deemed the support of the French prisoners a burden to Great Britain, while he himself was, at the time, in no want of soldiers. A In the February of 1820, the assassination of the Duke suspicion of this insincerity was too prominent in Gui- de Berri produced an anti-liberal reaction. The Decazes zot's performance: he did not seem a fit man for minis- ministry was forced to resign, and with its fall Guizot terial purposes, and the application remained without lost the situation which had been created for him in the effect. M. de Fontanes procured him, however, the preceding year, of Director of the Municipal Adminisprofessorship of modern history in the Paris Faculty of trations of France.' He now resumed the duties of his Letters, afterwards the scene of some of his noblest chair, which had meanwhile, we suppose, been performed triumphs. This situation brought him into contact by deputy, and endeavoured to make up for the loss of with his colleague Royer-Collard, the well-known pro- his official income by renewed and strenuous literary fessor of philosophy, to whom Guizot in every way owes labour. 'After the fall of M. Decazes,' says a writer in much. They formed a friendship which promised to be the Revue des Deux Mondes, 'the interior of M. Guizot's lasting, and indeed it did last for a long period. Un-house long presented a curious spectacle. His brotherhappily, after the revolution of July, it was dissolved by political differences.

in-law, M. Devaines, prefect of the Nievre, had been, like himself, deprived of his situation, and he returned In 1813 he was occupied with the duties of his chair: to Paris with his wife and two nieces, one of whom he published also his 'Lives of the French Poets during M. Guizot afterwards married. On one side you saw the age of Louis XIV.,' a first volume only, which has had Madame Guizot and her nieces slitting up, re-making, no successor. In 1814, after so protracted a separation, and annotating Le Tourneur's translation of Shakhe paid a visit to his mother at Nismes, and while there, speare; on the other, M. Guizot was busied with his the first restoration of the Bourbons occurred, an event researches into the history of France; further on, a few with which Guizot's entry into public life begins. On young men, docile pupils of the master, were ferreting, returning to Paris, he was recommended by his friend with the aid of a lexicon, in the barbarous Latin of OrRoyer-Collard to the minister of the interior, the Abbé dericus Vitalis; others were translating the Memoirs of de Montesquiou, who appointed him his chief secretary, Clarendon or the Eikon-Basilike of Charles I., laboria subordinate, but, in Guizot's hands, an influential post. ously erecting, stone by stone, that great edifice, the Along with Royer-Collard, he framed the severe law Collection of Memoirs relating to the English Revoagainst the press, which was presented by M. de Mon- lution, which bears on its front the signature of M. tesquiou to the Chamber of 1814, and he was made one Guizot.' An interesting peep into a literary workshop. of the royal censors. When Napoleon came back from The fruits of this industry were speedily given to the Elba, Guizot did not resign his situation; but he was, world. In 1821 appeared a new edition of Rollin and however, dismissed by Carnot, the new minister of the Le Tourneur's now amended and annotated translation interior. This was in May 1815. A few days afterwards, of Shakspeare; in both of which enterprises, though when it was perceived that the great European powers Guizot bore away the honour, his wife had the principal would not treat with Napoleon, whose fall, sooner or share. The researches mentioned in the passage just later, was therefore inevitable, Guizot was despatched quoted, were for his lectures on the history of repreby the constitutional royalists to Ghent, where Louis sentative government in France, delivered during the XVIII. then resided, to plead with that monarch the winter of 1821-2. In 1822, an event took place which cause of the charter, and point out the necessity of re-made him more dependent than ever on his literary moving from his council M. de Blacas, the leader of the exertions. He had found time, in the course of 1821, for stiff-necked unyielding royalists of the old régime. His the composition of a long political pamphlet, in which expedition was a successful one. On his return to France, his favourite doctrine of liberty, in alliance with order, after the battle of Waterloo, Louis XVIII. dismissed M. was powerfully and elaborately developed. The new de Blacas, and promised, in the proclamation of Cambrai, ministry disliked his love of freedom, although it was a more faithful adherence to the charter. This is the united with a respect for established institutions. They feared, above all, his influence as a teacher on the rising generation, and accordingly suspended him from the functions of his professorship.

*By the way, few persons (even though professed bibliographers) are aware that a considerable portion of this translation was executed by Louis XVI. when dauphin. It was completed 'by various hands;' and being the French version of Gibbon in

general use, has had a number of editors, from Monsieur (or rather Madame) Guizot downwards.

For several years after this occurrence Guizot remained a stranger to politics. His sensible and far-seeing turn of mind kept him from lending his aid to any of