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mother to Rome, and his presence was the reach England through France, risking all signal for effervescence. So far did this proceed, that the papal government ordered him from the city, and the only friend who stood up for him was the envoy of Russia; we all know how Louis Napoleon repaid this act of kindness in the Crimea.

the consequences of the rupture of her ban. She had already secured a passport through the kindness of an English nobleman, and the only chance of getting her son off was under the disguise of a footman.

They reached France, where a sentence When the Italian revolution broke out in of death awaited them, and passed their first Modena, the two brothers joined the insur-night at Cannes. What reminiscences were rectionists. Their relations were in a horri-connected with that place for Hortense! At ble state of suspense about them, and suc- Cannes it was that Napoleon landed on his ceeded in getting them removed from the return from Elba: from Cannes he started staff of General Menotti; but they joined the with a handful of troops on his march to insurgents as volunteers. So soon as Hor- Paris, which city he reached at the head of tense heard that the Austrians were on the an army. Labédoyère and Ney had joined march, she started in search of her sons, him there, and paid bitterly for yielding to determined to save them or to die. She ar- their enthusiasm. What guarantee had rived at Pesaro, after undergoing countless Hortense that the same fate did not await difficulties, and found her sons there; but her and her son ? And yet she passed one of them lay a corpse in a village inn. boldly on. She had been a friend to Louis But Hortense had no time to bewail him: Philippe's mother, and thought that gratishe must save the last joy left her. With tude might still exist in the world. Louis Napoleon she proceeded to Ancona, It was a melancholy pilgrimage that Horresolved to embark for Corfu, and throw tense undertook. She showed her son Fonherself on the mercy of the English. But tainebleau, which had been the scene of her that chance had to be given up, for Louis Napoleon had scarce reached Ancona ere he was attacked by small-pox, and brought to death's door. Here was a position: the Austrians were within two days' march, and Hortense could not remove her darling son under a week, said the physicians. But she did not lose her presence of mind: she sent his baggage aboard, and resolved to spread the report that he had followed. In the mean while she kept her son in the innermost apartments, and watched over him herself.

father's greatest triumph and greatest humiliation. Leaning on her son's arm, and wearing a thick veil lest any one should recognize her, the queen surveyed the appointments of the rooms, which were just the same as the imperial family had left them. What a reminiscence must it have been for Hortense when she entered the little chapel in which the mighty Napoleon had held the son, on whose arm she now leaned, over the baptismal font! Could the poor deserted widow believe that this son was once again to perpetuate the glories of Napoleonistic France? Perhaps so; for what will not mothers believe of their sons, though the latter rarely carry out the Alnaschar visions which every parent forms of her child?

But she had a fearful week to pass through the Austrian commander-in-chief took up his head-quarters in her palazzo, and malicious fate decreed that his sleeping apartment was next to that in which Louis Well, the pair arrived in Paris, and HorNapoleon lay in the fever phantasms of the tense's first care was to apprise Louis Philsmall-pox. Whenever he coughed his head ippe of her arrival. What a fearful fright was concealed under blankets, and if he the poor old gentleman was in at the news! spoke it must be in a whisper, through fear of He could not crush the evil in the bud : he arousing the suspicions of the Austrian, who had not the heart to cut heads off: he was had solely been prevented paying his re- altogether too jolly a monarch to deal with spects to the duchess because he was led to a pair of conspirators such as he assumed believe that she was the patient. At length Hortense and her son to be. And such, the physician declared Louis Napoleon in a perhaps, they were, but it is impossible to fit condition to move, and Hortense made a say. Mamma behaved with the utmost promighty resolve. In the determination to priety, and her son was most unfortunately save her son, she decided that she would taken ill just at the moment. It was im

possible to turn them out of France, but | paratively happy, for all the first society of whenever they could make it convenient, the land welcomed them. Had Hortense and so on. The king of course saw the wished it, she might have been again a Duchess of St. Leu, and, with his tongue in his cheek, debited the most pleasant compliments. It is easy to imagine the agreeable way in which he accosted the fugitive. "Lord bless you," or the French equivalent "I know what exile is, and it wont depend on me if yours is not alleviated." Of course he assured the queen that the sentence of exile against the Napoleons lay like a stone on his heart, and he magnanimously added, that the time was not far distant when the mere idea of banishment would be unknown in his kingdom.

Hortense listened to all this somewhat in the fashion of a spendthrift who has taken a bill for discount to a Jew who holds his mortgage deeds, and yet she believed his promises. And the only result she obtained was that Louis Napoleon would be permitted to remain in France if he would change his name, but not a word about the owing money. But this Louis Napoleon thought a little too much: he at once agreed with his mother that the sooner they left France, for their honor and safety the better.

queen—that of fashion—but she had a stern resolve, which she was determined to follow. She would not compromise her son in any way: and she was in the right, for the Duchess of Berry was at that period in Bath, and could not believe but that a Napoleon must be intriguing in behalf of her son. So great however, was the excitement her public appearance aroused among the crowned heads, that Hortense resolved to return to her pleasant Arenenberg. For this purpose she asked leave to pass through France, which was granted, and the couple visited most of the spots memorable in Napoleon's history.

At Arenenberg, Hortense rested from her sufferings, and spent a few comparatively happy years. Here she wrote the affecting account of her travels through Italy, France, and England, from which we have derived most of the previous details. In 1837, Hortense, the flower of the Napoleonides, died, wearied of her life, her misfortunes, and the exile in which she pined away. She bowed her head and went home to the great dead—

In England the mother and son were com- to Napoleon and Josephine.

THE boa constrictor in the Museum of Natu- | phagus, it formed a kind of interior mould of ral History in Paris, resolving at last to follow this long portion of the digestive tube. the example of its English brother, has swallowed its blanket.

It appears that the boa, which is a very fine specimen, nearly eleven feet long, had eaten a large rabbit on the 22d August, and that a similar meal generally is sufficient for several days; on this occasion, however, we presume the rabbit was exceedingly tender, and that

"Increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on;"

it did not prove so, for on the 25th the blanket was gone twenty-six days after, on the 20th ultimo, the keeper perceived that the reptile was making great attempts to vomit, and that this strange indigestible meal was on its return journey; he held it, therefore, as soon as projected from the mouth; and the boa, seeing, as it were, his intention, wound itself round the branch placed in its cage, to obtain a proper "purchase," and was rid of it in seven or eight minutes.

M. Duméril, who has reported the circumstance to the Academy of Sciences, concludes from a minute examination of the blanket, which has been placed in alcohol, and is now publicly exhibited, that its widest part rested in the sac of the stomach, while one extremity extended to the pyloric region, as to it adheres a small portion of the fur of the rabbit previously swallowed, on which the action of the gastric juice had commenced to show itself. The other extremity was lodged in the œsophagus.

The boa has quite recovered from the effects of its strange meal.-London Weekly Review.

MONSTER PHOTOGRAPHIC LENS.-Perhaps the largest lens in the world has just been com pleted by Mr. Dallmeyer for the government establishment at South Kensington. It is a triple achromatic combination of sixty inches focal length, for the production of pictures three feet square. It consists of three combinationsthe front and back being of six and eight inches diameter respectively, whilst the diameter of the central or negative combination is four inches in so-diameter.-London Weekly Review.

The blanket thus recovered was spindleshaped, nearly five feet long, and rather over four inches in diameter in its widest part; having undergone the great pressure of the

HOME-MADE GAS.-A SIMPLE PROCESS. than from the one hundred and fifty or two A VALUABLE improvement in the manu- hundred feet of gas, of which it is the repfacture of gas, involving, indeed, a new idea, resentative. When the oil has been properly has recently been made known in London prepared and purified from all deleterious by Mr. Leslie, already the author of several substances, Mr. Leslie proposes that it new contrivances in that branch of industry, should be conveyed up to London, or wherand the inventor of the powerful gas-burner ever else it may be needed, to be converted which goes by his name. It has hitherto into gas. These works need only consist of been the custom in the manufacture of gas a few retorts and a gas-holder or two, all the from coal and other bituminous substances complicated machinery now needed for the to subject them to the process of destructive purification being rendered unnecessary. The distillation at a high temperature, by which retort being heated to redness, a little of the means a large quantity of permanent gas is oil is allowed to flow into it, when instantly evolved, which is then subsequently purified. it is converted into permanent gas, and carThis necessitates the carriage up to the ried through a pipe into the gas-holder of the metropolitan gas-works of immense quan- ordinary construction, from which the illutities of useless material, in addition to the minating gas is supplied to the mains as real gas making constituent of the coal, and heretofore. also renders it necessary for the companies to have large and expensive works in the heart of London, where the process of purification, with its concomitant evil of half poisoning the neighborhood by the sickening odor with which they are surrounded, is obliged to be carried on.

The patentee calculates that a ton of good coal will yield one hundred and sixty-eight gallons of the hydro-carbon fluid. Now one hundred and sixty-eight gallons is almost exactly one cubic yard, and as each gallon is estimated to yield almost instantaneously one hundred and twenty-eight cubic feet of gas, we have thus twenty-one thousand five hundred and four cubic feet of gas from one hundred and sixty-eight gallons, the material for the production of which only occupying the space of one cubic yard.

Mr. Leslie's plan is to divide the process of gas-making into two distinct branches. The first operation is to be carried on at the collieries, where coal is cheap, labor plentiful, and an acre or two more or less covered by the works of little consequence. Here In one experiment which Mr. Leslie exthe refuse coal, which is now completely hibited a short time since, two and a half wasted at the pit's mouth, is to be submitted pounds of Boghead coal were placed in a reto distillation at a low temperature in re-tort, which was kept revolving over a slow volving cylinders, heated externally by a fire. The revolution of the retorts causes the small lumps of coal to be constantly kept in motion, and prevents one portion becoming hotter than any other.

Thus all the products are distilled off in a liquid state, and are condensed in suitable vessels, which are kept cool by water. Care is taken to keep down the temperature of the rotating retort to as low a point as practicable, in order to prevent the production of gas, which will not condense, the object being to obtain only fluid hydro carbon-oils by the first process of distillation. The oils so obtained may then be submitted to purification from the nitrogenous and sulphur compounds which are so fruitful a source of complaint when they find their way into illuminating gas; and we need scarcely say that it is far easier to remove all the nitrogen and sulphur from a gallon of this oil

fire, at a temperature scarcely exceeding that of melting lead. Owing to the low temperature and the rotation of the retort, no gas was produced, but the constituents were all evolved in the liquid form. In a short time the two and a half pounds of coal had yielded one and a half pints of hydro-carbon fluid, leaving three-fourths of a pound of coke in the retort. When the flow of oil ceased, it was conveyed to a red-hot iron retort, into which the fluid was poured by means of a funnel. Immediately, as if by magic, the gas-holder, which was in connection with the retort, began to rise, and within a minute and a half twenty-five cubic feet of gas had come into the holder. The luminosity of this gas was then subjected to accurate measurement by means of a photometer. Those of our readers who are acquainted with the technicalities of gas-testing will understand what brilliancy and value

it possessed when we state that it equalled into one or more red-hot retorts, connected twenty sperm candles when burning at the with a gas-holder of the proper size. rate of only four feet per hour.

This progress promises to effect a complete revolution in the manufacture of gas. It will be brought up to the customers in a highly condensed and purified form. This can be stowed away in any quantity for future use, and can be sold for private consumption, and for the supply of smal villages, gentlemen's seats, railway stations, shipping, or other purposes, where it is preferred to make gas on the spot as it is wanted. All that would then be needed for the immediate production of ten, fifty, a thousand, or a million cubic feet of gas would be to draw off the proper quantity of fluid, and allow it to drop

The manipulation is so easy, and the necessary apparatus so simple, that there would really be no reason why every private family should not make their own gas. As it grew dusk it would only be necessary to tell the kitchen maid to put a small iron bottle in the fire, and when this was red-hot, the master, instead of turning the gas on at the main, as at present, would have to pour half a pint or a pint of oil into the retort, when his gas-holder will be filled with enough gas for the night's consumption, at a mere nominal expense, and of a purity and brilliancy hitherto unattainable.

Two or three instances of the perforation of lead by insects have recently been brought under the notice of French naturalists. In one case, as happened in the Crimea during the Russian war, the balls in several packets of cartridges had been rendered utterly useless; and in the other, sheets of lead one-sixth of an inch thick, covering a wooden post, have been bored by the insect in its endeavors to quit its imprisonment in the wood, where it had been deposited in its larval state.

The eminent naturalist, M. Milne Edwards, has presented a most interesting report on this subject to the Academy, from which it appears that the delinquent in the case of the ball-cartridges is the Sirex gigas, a large species of hymenopterous insect, having four membranous wings like the bee, and living in the interior of old trees or logs of wood, whence, having undergone its changes, it makes its way to fulfil the end of its existence ere it dies.

M. Duméril, on the occasion of a similar circumstance in 1857, stated that these perforations were made by the ovipositor of the females, an instrument supplied them for the purpose of boring holes in which to deposit their eggs. M. M. Edwards proves this statement to be erroneous, for in some instances the male insect, which is not thus furnished, has committed the depredations; and furthermore, whenever one has been caught in flagrante delicto, the head has always been presented to the part being gnawed. This action is due to the mandibles, therefore; and M. M. Edwards thinks that the same is the case with the coleopterous gnawing insects.

It is not always the desire of liberty which leads to this action, as sometimes the outsides of similar bodies have been treated in the same manner. In a note recently published by Dr. Berti, curious observations are made on some leaden pipes perforated by the Apate humeralis. It would appear, owing to the instinct of the

insect being at fault, in mistaking the metal for wood, in which its eggs are ordinarily depos ited.

The history of insects offers us many examples of the kind. We would refer to the charming book by Kirby and Spence, for proof of this. M. Edwards cites as another example, that some flies, deceived by the fœtid odor of certain plants (Arum muscivorum, Lin.), laid their eggs in the cups of the flowers instead of depositing them in bodies in a state of putrefaction, as their instincts lead them generally to do.-London Weekly Review.

"IN the interests of international courtesy and honor," writes a correspondent who professes to have published tales, "do I call your attention to a recent instance of a bad, gone-by fashion of translation, and this in no less classical and doctrinary a periodical than the Revue des Deur Mondes. There M. Forgues professes to introduce the strange American snake-romance of Dr. Holmes, Elsie Venner.' Our French readers are hereby warned that the deed is done in the most arbitrary fashion of outline. It is not merely that episodical scenes (such as some of the humorous ones, which appear tedious on this side of the Atlantic) are sacrificed and concentrated: important incidents are omitted or slurred over, and characters are thrown to a faint and vaporous distance, which, in the original, stand out as essential supports to the principal figure. I will but instance that of the negress, faithful unto death to the fearful and melancholy semi-human creature she watches over. In these days, when invention is so scarce, it is not fair that one so thoroughly peculiar and rivetting as that of the novel in question should be thus tampered with in a publication of such authority.”—Athenæum.

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POETRY.-The Old Couple, 594. At the Roadside, 594. How We'll Break the Blockade, 628. A L'Hotel des Trois Empereurs, 628. The Triumphs of Owen, 628. Will you Buy me then as now? 629. "I am Old and Blind," 629.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Philadelphia built upon Gold, 635. Hugh Miller's Works, 642. Lady Morgan's Autobiography, 642. Dental Hospital, 642. Journal of Adolphe

Schlagintweit, 644.

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Lectures on the English Language. By George P, Marsh. First Series.
What! crave ye wine, when ye have NILUS to drink of? Fourth Edition.

New York; Charles Scribner.

Revised and Enlarged

Bigelow Monument. Ceremonies at its Dedication, Worcester, Mass., 19 April, 1861.

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