ing with the puffs that were wafted towards the car as we lifted again over hill and dale. Sounds now reached us which were either those of a waterfall or the waves on the seashore-and then another noise was heard which drew forth the inquiry, "What was that?" to which I replied, "Don't be alarmed, gentlemen, it is the clapping of the valve-I am letting off gas; it is time we should know where we are exactly, as it is well nigh time to finish our voyage-discretion being the better part of valour.

"Please to take up ballast according to my instructions; and look below, dark as it is, yon hill can be seen a few hundred feet down, and farther on we appear to have a valley which will admirably suit our purpose to alight in. Be ready, as I direct, to put out sand, and keep well within the car when the grapnel takes the soil. Look out, we are dipping now-a nice open field is just under us; the iron trails, and we have her well under command. Steady, she brings up handsomely, and is now fast. We can shout for assistance, but a distant clock strikes ten, and I doubt if we shall get any. Try, however, a cheer altogether, and if no one comes we must try a night in the car." This last resolve was about to be put into execution when I commenced to let off gas, and soon we were able to leave the basket and circulate our blood somewhat. It was piercingly cold, and we rigged up the car for turning in again, when Mr. Murray volunteered to strike out for a farmhouse. During his absence, Mr Powell was most indefatigable in helping me to exhaust and secure the balloon. By-and-by a friendly voice greeted us, and we made the acquaintance of Mr. George Bragg, of Gunstone Mills, near Crediton. By that amiable gentleman we were conducted down lanes and over stiles and gates until we reached the Mill, and made acquaintance with the good wife, daughters and household. Nor did we protest against the heaps of wood and coals that were generously hurled on the fire, for we needed a fillip to the inner man, and right willingly did we range ourselves within the family circle and recount our travels, not declining a refreshing cup of tea with Devonshire cream, and other creature-comforts. Our own little hamper, by no means exhausted, was examined out of curiosity. We produced a bottle of ice which had been water when we ascended. Here was a sufficient commentary as to our miniature Arctic proceedings in England, and at early morn when we sallied forth to inspect the balloon it was white with frost, so that this enjoyable test trip had a wintry and pictorial finish suited in every respect to the occasion.

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

BY LADY JACKSON.

NINE years had elapsed since, in 1751, the project for establishing a military college in Paris had received the sanction of Louis XV. Roused from his accustomed apathy by the novelty of the scheme, the king had examined, with some show of interest, the designs prepared for the building by the architect Soufflot; had fixed at five hundred the number of students for whom accommodation should be provided, and named the celebrated banker, Pâris-Duvernay-who supplied funds for the undertaking intendant, or director, of the proposed "École Royale Militaire." Here, apparently, the king's interest in the project ended. For no further heed did he give to its development; no inquiry did he make respecting the progress of the vast edifice while in course of erection in the Champ de Mars, and it never occurred to him, it would seem, that it was expedient to inspect it—no solicitation having hitherto prevailed on him to do so. In 1760 the building and its interior arrangements were nearly complete, and applications for the admission of students already numerous. Not only, however, was there no regular system of military education yet organised, but the institution seemed destined to disappoint wholly the hopes it had originally raised, and to be cut short from the very outset in its expected career of usefulness by the culpable indifference of its accredited royal founder.

Pâris-Duvernay, conjointly with his three brothers, had been intimately connected for full half a century with the administration of the financial affairs of the Government, and already had done the State some service. He was now verging towards his eightieth year; and, as the crowning work of his life, had set his heart on realising for France this grand idea of a national military college— a fitting pendant, both in its objects and in the structure itself, to its neighbour, the Hôtel des Invalides. But since first projected, war had been declared. France, as the ally of Maria Theresa, was now engaged in that calamitous seven years' struggle to wrest Silesia from Frederick II. The indolent Louis, immersed in vicious pleasures, scarcely concerned himself at all with the affairs of his kingdom. Madame de Pompadour was in failing health, her time and thoughts, too, fully occupied with the reverses of the unpopular war, of which both the burden and the blame were laid upon her. The bigotry of narrow religious views prevented both the queen

(Marie Leczinska) and the Dauphin from countenancing any scheme, however useful or laudable, originated by Madame de Pompadour and her friends. The aged Pâris-Duvernay was, naturally, much disheartened by this indifference of royalty towards the prosperous working out of a noble undertaking. Truly, l'ancien régime was already greatly shorn of its former prestige by the spread of the subversive opinions of the new philosophy in the salons. But to the mass of his subjects, Louis XV. was still the powerful monarch, the "Well-beloved." His visit, therefore, to the now completed "École Royale Militaire," was looked forward to as the crowning of the edifice, as it were, and in the eyes of the people almost its consecration.

It happened about this time that Mesdames de France, the king's four daughters, in order to enliven a little the monotonous life to which the depravity of one parent, and rigid piety of the other, so largely condemned them, were accustomed to give weekly amateur concerts in their own private apartments. Mesdames were not women of much culture; their early education had been neglected. But a fondness for music enabled them to while away pleasantly much of the time that otherwise would have hung very heavily on their hands. Some scandal, however, the result of jealousy and envy, had become current in the virtuous court of Louis XV., with reference to the familiar intimacy to which the princesses had admitted "a certain interesting personage," the director of their soirées musicales. "Did not Madame Victoire," it was playfully, yet maliciously whispered, “admire the spirituel and handsome musician even more than the lively ditties he composed and sang to his guitar, for her and her sisters' amusement?" The "interesting personage" alluded to was a young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age; of lofty stature; finely proportioned figure; regular features, and expressive and animated countenance. There was a certain distinction too in his manners, while in his air of command and marked indifference to the disdain evinced by envious courtiers towards the "upstart bourgeois," as they termed him, might be traced a consciousness of towering above them in mental endowments as much as in personal advantages and height. But the belles of the Court smiled on him, though the gentlemen frowned; the ill-feeling of the latter being not a little increased by the witty sallies and piquant epigrams which, in the irrepressible gaiety of his temper, he was wont to indulge in at their expense. Though passionately fond of music-playing the harp, the clavecin, and the flute with considerable skill-he was not a professional musician. Neither for his services as director of the amateur concerts, nor for his music lessons to the princesses, did he receive or require any payment. He had, indeed, other and more.

VOL. LXI.

N

ambitious objects in view which, aided by his great influence with Mesdames, he probably hoped eventually to attain. As yet, however, he had asked nothing of them.

On this young man, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Pâris-Duvernay cast his eyes, as likely to bring about the muchdesired royal visit to the Ecole Militaire. He was not then acquainted with him, but had gathered from others that apart from the musical proficiency which had gained the favour of Mesdames, he possessed energy, perseverance, and talent; was ambitious of making a name, of acquiring wealth, and enjoying the social advantages of position and opulence. These were aims with which Duvernay could readily sympathise. He was willing liberally to aid one who, as he clearly perceived, had also the will and the ability to aid himself. An introduction took place, when Duvernay, to stimulate Beaumarchais' efforts to induce Mesdames to visit the École Militaire, promised him "son cœur, son secours et son crédit." Beaumarchais, who was remarkable for his frankness, at once explained to Mesdames the nature of the favour he had undertaken to solicit from them, and the advantages opened up by it to him. And very readily they granted it-and the more so as it enabled them while doing, what rarely fell in their way, a public service, at the same time to advance the private interests of their protégé. The princesses, who had requested Beaumarchais to attend them, were received by the aged intendant with great distinction. Flattered by his deferential attentions, and charmed with all they saw and heard— especially admiring the elegant staircase, with its finely carved statues -Mesdames gave so glowing a report of the fine edifice they had visited, that the king's curiosity was roused. Here was the promise of a new sensation. Forthwith, Pâris-Duvernay is informed that his majesty proposes to inspect the new École Royale Militaire; and the visit is paid with a good deal of pomp and ceremony. did this famous institution become a stepping-stone to the fame and fortune of Beaumarchais, though, on the other hand, his connection with the celebrated financier was equally the cause of those endless legal proceedings and other troubles arising out of them, which harassed him to the end of his days-fully justifying his assumption of the motto, "Ma vie est un combat."

Thus

Such advancement as Beaumarchais had already made on that upward path he was so anxious to climb, was due to his own talents alone. His progress might probably have been greater had the powers of his mind been less versatile. Like his own Figaro, "he was apt at all things," and might have achieved distinction in almost any pursuit to which he had chosen to give undivided attention. His

*Destroyed at the Revolution.

most elaborate and most trustworthy biographer, M. de Loménie, has said that "to have had full scope for the exercise of his brilliant faculties and the attainment of the full measure of his ambition; to have figured in the history of his country with honour and éclat instead of the mere noisy agitation with which the chequered course of his career was actually marked, all that Beaumarchais needed was to have come into the world some fifty or sixty years later." He is of opinion that his bourgeois origin was an invincible obstacle to his acquirement of those honours and distinctions which, in an age less punctilious on the question of birth, would have been conferred on one so eminently gifted. Yet, looking at his career as a whole, one is tempted to think that the times were particularly suited to the development of a character such as his. For unless he had been endowed with a mind very differently constituted from that which he so conspicuously exhibited throughout life, it is doubtful whether at any other period, or under different circumstances, his course would have been other than adventurous and romantic. As one who had known him from childhood to old age, and who thoroughly appreciated all that was noble and excellent in his character, said of him, "Avec le cœur d'un honnête homme il a toujours eu le ton d'un bohémien." The frequent checks and vicissitudes he encountered were often due far less to the prejudices of the age, or even to the calumny which beset him on all sides, than to his own restless temperament, his audacity, his keen caustic wit and unsparing use of it against the many abuses of power then prevalent; as well as to his want of discretion and a little, no doubt, to envy of the facility with which he acquired wealth, his rather ostentatious display of opulence, and his love of celebrity.

Pierre-Augustin Caron was born in 1732 at Paris, in the Rue St. Denis. His family was originally Protestant; of that stern sect, the Calvinists of Brie, who resisted all the arguments of Bossuet to convert or pervert them, and defied all the cruelties of the dragonnades to drive them into acceptance of "the King's religion." His father, André Charles Caron, was a watchmaker, a man of superior scientific attainments, and some literary culture. Desirous of establishing himself as maître-horloger in Paris, he was compelled to abjure Protestantism, for only those who were of the flock of the faithful could then (the infamous period of the Regency) be received as members of any of the professional or trading corporations of the capital. Of a family of six children, Pierre-Augustin was the only son. Contrary to a theory accepted by many, that men endowed with a genius for comic delineation are in their youth moody, dreamy, even morose, the childhood of young Caron was bright, joyous and happy. He was remarkably lively; full of espièglerie, the spoiled