king. He was compelled to yield, and early in April 1784 the first public performance of this celebrated comedy took place. It is one of the great events of the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the play has been termed "The lever of the Revolution." All Paris from dawn of day was hurrying towards the Théâtre Français; ladies of highest rank passing in early with the actresses, and dining in the boxes to make sure of their places. Towards the afternoon, grands seigneurs and officers of the Court mingled with the crowd-for no carriages could approach-all striving to get nearer the entrances. The usual guard driven from their post by the pressure of the people; the iron railings torn down; the doors forced in, women screaming, fainting, and others actually stifled-never had any play so roused public curiosity. It was a brilliant cast, and the actors were themselves excited by the enthusiasm of the audience. Préville gave up Figaro to Dazincourt, but took the small part of Brid'oison. Molé was Almaviva; Mdlle. Sainval, the Countess. The charming Mdlle. Contat played Suzanne, and Mdlle. Olivier, Chérubin. The popularity of 'Figaro' was undiminished on its one-hundredth night-a wonderful run in those days. The whole of Beaumarchais' share of the profits, amounting to twelve or thirteen thousand pounds, was devoted to charitable purposes. Space will not allow of following Beaumarchais to the end of his career with any detailed account of his acts, his numerous lawsuits, and his many useful projects. His popularity seemed, indeed, to have attained its full height with the production of 'Figaro.' His opera of Tarare' was but lightly esteemed; his play of 'La Mère coupable' was more successful.

In 1787 he bought a portion of the ground, which, as a boulevard, now bears his name, and engaged the architect Lenoir to build him a house. It was ready for occupation in 1791, and with its fine gardens was long an object of curiosity to all who visited Paristhere being nothing in the capital to compare with it in singularity of design, solidity of construction and lavish decoration.

Beaumarchais was, in truth, but very mildly revolutionary in his principles. The Convention accused him of carrying on a secret correspondence with Louis XVI., and of conspiring against the Republic. He was then in Holland, but returned as soon as possible, and boldly addressed a memorial to the Convention. It was most remarkable for its audacity. He mocked openly at Marat, as "un petit homme au nez busqué et à la mine effroyable." "The vexations of the old régime," he said, "were mere trifles compared with the horrors of these times of frightful disorder called liberty." And doubtless he would have lost his head, but that he had in Holland sixty thousand rifles which the revolutionary government were anxious to get possession of for the use of the army. Beaumarchais was despatched to obtain them.

They were seized by the English. The Convention then placed him on the list of emigrants. His house was searched; his wife and daughter imprisoned, while he, ignorant of their fate, distressed and anxious, was living in poverty in Holland. But the death of Robespierre released his family from prison, and from the guillotine to which they were destined. Under the Directory Beaumarchais returned to France to find himself nearly ruined. But even then, undismayed by misfortune, he set about retrieving his losses; married his daughter to a young officer, M. de la Rue, and became enthusiastic for Bonaparte. He was now rather deaf; but active, cheerful, and busy as ever, and his affairs were again prospering. One morning, however, on the 18th of May, 1799, he did not summon his servant at his usual early hour, and when, after some delay, his room was entered he was found dead in his bed, having apparently passed away quietly in his sleep. Thus tranquilly ended the stormy career of one of the most singularly gifted of the celebrated characters of the eighteenth century.

Poor Miss Brackenthorpe.

BY LADY LINDSAY (OF BALCARRES).

Ir was an hour after the table-d'hôte dinner, but still too soon to go to bed, too early even for the "early-to-bed-early-to-rise" members of three distinct walking parties, who were conversing in the long low salle of the small hotel at G- It was twilight, yet of a dual kind. Outside the open windows, the summer sky had deepened into lovely grey tints, with a broad streak of tender green where the redgold sunset had but lately faded away; the mighty range of mountains had lost all detail of form, and was massed in purple, almost violet shadows, the jagged outlines standing grandly out against the pallid sky. Indoors, the semi-darkness was made visible by the yellow flicker of half-a-dozen miserable oil-lamps, that seemed to throw curious shadows on ceiling and walls, and to bring into startling prominence the defects of everybody's face and features. Yet in this fitful light the group of English travellers was conversing pleasantly, nay, merrily enough.

The first walking party consisted of four people: Mr. and Mrs. Grey, who were a young couple; the middle-aged and Reverend Timothy Browne; and a relation of Mr. Grey, an elderly spinster, who owned the name of Brackenthorpe. This lady was known to everyone as "poor Miss Brackenthorpe," the exact reason why, 'tis hard to tell. She was not good-looking, but neither was she especially the reverse; she was not blessed with remarkable talents, but we are not all born clever; she was certainly far from rich, but in this particular, she was not unlike a good many of her neighbours. Yet she was never spoken of amongst her friends and acquaintances except as "poor Miss Brackenthorpe."

The members of the second company were brother and sister, a strong "lang-leggit" pair of Aberdonians; whilst the third walking party consisted of nobody but himself. He was a young, good-looking "party" on a solitary excursion through Switzerland; he had ascended most of the high peaks, and crossed the most dangerous passes, and, having but few new worlds left to conquer in those parts, he was "doing" Switzerland for the last time, he said. He had a favourite guide, a native of some remote village of the Grisons, who followed him like his shadow (literally following, though he was called the guide), and loved him like a brother; at least that was the young

Englishman's own version of their relations, as he pointed with a lazy gesture over his shoulder to the porch of the hotel, which was visible through one of the open windows, and where two or three guides, his own included, stood smoking their pipes, and arguing noisily in their horrible Swiss-German.

"Awful muffs these guides, as a rule," quoth the young man, stretching himself out in the tortuous combination of wickerwork, creaking white wood and leather straps that was by courtesy misnamed an easy-chair, and looking the while with defiant eyes at the great chain of violet mountains his ten toes had so successfully overcome. Miss Brackenthorpe paused in her tatting to glance up at him; he was a young giant, a noble specimen of youthful manhood, she thought, unconsciously judging as many dames and damosels had doubtless judged before. He was brown altogether except his eyes, which were brilliant and blue like sapphires as he sat staring at the landscape; his hair was light brown, thick and curly; his beard was dark brown, dense and silken; his complexion was tanned to a warm ruddy brown; and his limbs, glorious in their strength and beauty of proportion, were cased in garments of an indistinct brown hue. Poor Miss Brackenthorpe admired him vastly: she immediately classed him in her ardent mind as nothing less than a demigod. She gave a little sigh as her errant eyes returned to her tatting; she was a great tatter, and tatting was to her what smoking is to some of us, or what drinking, or whist, or shopping, or intellectual conversation is to others. She could tat at breakfast or during supper, in the train or on the mountains; it was a harmless pursuit and one easily carried about; it interfered with no one's happiness.

And yet young Mrs. Grey had said that very morning to her husband:

"It positively gets on my nerves, John; the old thing reminds me of one of the Fates, you know. It is just as if she were always weaving her own shroud, you know."

"Yes, my dear, but the Fates really didn't"

"No, of course not; but I feel it all the same, you know."

From whence it will be seen that young Mrs. Grey was of a sensitive nature, if not always strictly accurate in her classical allusions. Yet, except for the fact that she possessed two pale grey orbs that were altogether her own, Miss Brackenthorpe was not unlike one of the Fates, after all. She was tall and angular, slightly bowed in figure, with thin wisps of hair straying over her weary forehead. It was difficult to guess at her age; probably no one took the trouble to guess much; she was a dreamy, solitary creature who seemed to have wandered with feeble, uncertain feet from girlhood into middle life without any intervening womanhood at all.

There was a curious mixture of youth and age about her; the features were worn and old, the smile was young and fresh; the figure had lost what roundness of form it might have formerly possessed, but every movement and trick of manner was hesitating, shy, and almost childlike.

As for Miss Brackenthorpe's influence on pretty blooming Mrs. Grey, it will perhaps be scarcely credited that the former was a decided thorn in the side of this prosperous young matron, yet so it was. Poor Miss Brackenthorpe, like many others of her kind, had no tact, nay, she was strangely deficient in that quality, being unfortunately gifted with the fatal talent of saying the wrong thing at every opportunity.

When John Grey had called upon her one evening late in July, and announced his intention of taking his wife for an easy walkingtrip through the prettiest scenery in Switzerland, poor Miss Brackenthorpe had suddenly brightened up.

"How very very delicious!" she had said, in hushed enthusiastic tones. "How I wish you would take me too, John! I am a very economical traveller; I wonder if I couldn't join you!"

"I daresay you could," was John's curt rejoinder, and then he had walked to the window and looked out, and sucked the top of his cane, whilst Miss Brackenthorpe sat blissfully dreaming dreams, and planning plans of pleasure. Her lodging seemed so close and hot; the July sun poured in upon the faded carpet, on the stuffy woollen chairs, and on the gaudy paper flowers that decorated the fire-stove, and which were the only summer flowers she had expected to see; whilst Switzerland was a cool, delightful Paradise on earth, the home of the Alpine rose and the Edelweiss; there, were green pastures and gurgling streams

"What else could I do, my dear?" argued poor John an hour afterwards, in answer to his wife's reproaches; "there was absolutely nothing else to say."

"My dear John! you might surely have invented some excuse. Well, as it is, our trip is spoilt, and there is only one thing to be done, you know."

"What?"

"We must counterbalance her. Poor Miss Brackenthorpe must have a make-weight, a companion, you know-a man, of course-we must be four, you know. But a young man won't do, because you never will talk to poor Miss Brackenthorpe yourself, John, you know, and of course I can't be left to talk to her. We must find a middleaged, respectable, steady man."

"We had better advertise for a butler, my dear, or else for one of the keepers of a lunatic asylum."

VOL. LXI.

P