BALZAC.

PORTRAIT DU PÈRE GRANDET.

Au physique, c'était un homme de cinq pieds, trapu, carré, ayant des mollets de douze pouces de circonférence, des rotules noueuses, et de larges épaules. Son visage était rond, tanné, marqué de petite-vérole. Son menton était droit, ses lèvres sans sinuosités, et ses dents blanches. Ses yeux avaient l'expression calme et dévoratrice que le vulgaire accorde au basilic. Son front, plein de rides transversales, ne manquait pas de protubérances significatives. Ses cheveux jaunâtres et grisonnants étaient blanc et or, disaient quelques jeunes gens, qui ne connaissaient pas la gravité d'une plaisanterie faite sur M. Grandet. Son nez, gros par le bout, supportait une loupe veinée que le vulgaire disait, non sans raison, pleine de malice. En somme, sa figure annonçait une finesse dangereuse, une probité sans chaleur, et l'égoïsme d'un homme habitué à concentrer ses sentiments dans la jouissance de l'avarice, et sur le seul être qui lui fut réellement de quelque chose-sa fille unique. Attitude, manières, démarche, tout en lui, d'ailleurs, attestait cette croyance en soi que donne l'habitude d'avoir toujours réussi dans ses affaires. Aussi, quoique de mœurs faciles et molles en apparence. M. Grandet avait-il un caractère de bronze. Toujours vêtu de la même manière, qui le voyait aujourd'hui, le voyait tel qu'il était depuis 1791. Il avait de forts souliers à cordons de cuir, des bas de laine drapés ; portait une culotte courte de drap marron, à boucles d'argent; un gilet de velours à raies alternativement jaunes et puce, boutonné carrément; un large habit marron à grand pans, une cravate blanche et un chapeau de quaker. Ses gants, aussi solides que ceux des gendarmes, lui duraient vingt mois, et, pour les conserver propres, il les posait sur le bord de son chapeau à la même place, par un geste méthodique. Saumur ne savait rien de plus sur ce personnage.

MR. THACKERAY'S LECTURES.

If Mr. Thackeray treated the memory of George III. with more lenity than might have been anticipated by all his hearers, he certainly made amends for the unexpected clemency by the discourse which he delivered last night on the subject of George IV.

In surveying the career of the so-called "first gentleman of Europe," the lecturer professed his inability to discover any single cause for respect, or any claim to the title once bestowed by the population of this kingdom. He could not even regard the last of the Georges as a man" in any sense. He could find a coat, a

waistcoat, and divers well-made articles of clothing, but behind these habiliments there was literally-nothing. When the Prince came into the world on the 12th of August, 1762, he was received with every testimonial of idolatry, and the spirit of adulation pursued him to the end of his career. The beauty of his face was patent to all eyes, his proficiency in every species of accomplishment was everywhere extolled, even his supremacy as a classical scholar was loudly proclaimed. No individual had ever been pourtrayed in such a variety of costumes,-in short, there was scarcely a sort of dress in which he was not exhibited. A populous district or an army was not a more expensive article to maintain than this superb Prince of Wales, who was always taking money from the nation, and always flinging it away.

As the child is father to the man, so did George IV., in Mr. Thackeray's opinion, give earnest of his future eminence by the invention of a peculiarly large and inconvenient shoe-buckle. As for his friendships, they merely bore witness to the fickleness and frivolity of his character. The only associates after his own heart were parasites and persons engaged in the most ignoble pursuits; and though Fox, Pítt, and Sheridan sat at his table in his earlier days, his intimacy with those great men was but the freak of a moment, and they must have felt in his presence they were only associating with a person in every respect their inferior. However, good and bad, all his friends were dropped in turn, and the favourite of the day was forgotten on the morrow.

The reputed kindness of George IV. to the servants of his household Mr. Thackeray willingly conceded, with the remark that this one small virtue comprised all his goodness, and that it was counterbalanced by his heartless conduct to Brummel, when that unlucky beau-the Prince's superior-fell from his fashionable eminence.

The old story that Mr. Elliston, when he represented George IV. at the mimic coronation enacted at Drury-lane, actually took himself for the monarch whose rank he assumed, was told by Mr. Thackeray with the supplementary comment, that the belief of the real personage that he had anything to do with the glorious deeds performed during his Regency was equally absurd. He might indeed have been possessed of the bravery inherent in the House of Brunswick, and displayed in such an eminent degree by his predecessors, but the fact could never be proved by a being who passed his existence wrapped up in swaddling-clothes, and his weeping interviews with his ministers on the subject of the Catholic Emancipation Bill contrasted unfavourably with the manly resistance of his father on a similar occasion.

Mr. Thackeray did not omit the opportunity for reflecting on the great change in manners and morals that has taken place since the decease of George IV. Many a man now old had indulged during youth in the vices of gaming, drinking, and swearing to a

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degree that would now create amazement, and the decline of the 99 ring was one of the changes that show the improvement of the age within the last twenty-five years. The former prevalence of vices now obsolete was illustrated by several amusing anecdotes.

Utterly denying the claim of George IV. to be termed the "first gentleman of Europe," Mr. Thackeray devoted the latter part of his lecture to a comment on a few personages who might be regarded as the real gentlemen of the period. These were Sir Walter Scott, Robert Southey, Bishop Heber, and Lord Collingwood, whose moral virtues he extolled in connexion with their intellectual greatness. As a final contrast he drew a comparison between the first party given by the Prince in London-described by the magazines of the day as the ne plus ultra of magnificence-with a ceremony that took place in the same year, namely, the retirement of Washington from public life in the presence of the United States' Congress. A compliment to the present sovereign, as possessed of the virtues in which George IV. was so lamentably deficient, concluded the discourse, and Mr. Thackeray retired amid loud acclamations.-Times.

JULES JANIN.

LE GAMIN DE PARIS.

A peine réveillé, le gamin de Paris devient la proie des deux passions qui font sa vie, la faim et la liberté. Il faut qu'il mange, il faut qu'il sorte. Il est bien vîte habillé, une blouse en fait l'affaire. Quand il a plongé ses mains et sa tête dans l'eau froide comme un joyeux caniche, sa toilette est faite pour tout le jour. Son père ne s'en inquiète guère, car le père a été jadis un gamin de Paris, et il sait comment cela s'élève : mais sa mère, en sa qualité de Parisienne et de mère, est jalouse de la beauté de son fils; elle a toujours pour lui une chemise blanche, un coup de peigne, un baiser, quelque menue monnaie; et puis, "Adieu, mon fils, te voilà lâché.' Entendez-vous déjà son petit joyeux cri! "O eh! O eh!" Et à ce cri soudain tous les échos répètent: "O eh! O eh!" Car c'est là l'instinct du gamin de se réunir, de marcher en troupe serrée. Chemin faisant, rien n'empêche que le gamin n'entre dans une école. La leçon est commencée, le maître est entré en explication, mais déjà le gamin a tout compris : c'est la plus vive, la plus rapide et la plus sincère intelligence de ce monde. Rien ne l'étonne; il apprend si vite, qu'il a l'air de se souvenir. Dans leur argot, ils ont un mot qui résume pour eux toutes les sciences: quand ils ont dit, "Connu, connu!" ils ont tout dit. Vous leur parlez de Charlemagne et de Louis XIV.: connu, connu! vous leur expliquez que deux et deux font quatre: connu, connu! coLiment c'est la terre

qui tourne, et non pas le soleil: connu, connu. . . . Une fois à l'armée, le gamin de Paris s'y distingue autant par la vivacité de son esprit que par son courage; c'est lui qui est chargé de tous les bons mots de l'armée. Il trouve à lui tout seul ces réparties plaisantes, ces improvisations hardies qui charmaient tant l'empereur. "Je vois ce que c'est," disait un jour à l'empereur un de ces gamins, "tu veux de la gloire, eh bien! l'on t'en fichera!"-Alors le gamin de Paris changeait de nom, il s'appelait le Parisien. Il en est du Parisien comme du vin de Champagne; vous en rencontrez sous toutes longitudes et toutes les latitudes, sur la terre, sous la terre, sur la mer. Du Parisien viennent tous les récits, tous les contes, toutes les merveilles. Il vit dans tous les climats, il s'accommode de toutes les nourritures et de toutes les fortunes . . . Il a une patience à toute épreuve, une imprévoyance complète des choses humaines, un certain sentiment de la probité et du devoir qui ne l'abandonne jamais; tel est le fond du caractère de ce singulier personnage, auquel on ne saurait rien comparer dans les autres pays de l'Europe.

SYDNEY SMITH.

HE BUILDS HIS HOUSE.

A diner-out, a wit, and a popular preacher, I was suddenly caught up by the Archbishop of York, and transported to my living in Yorkshire, where there had not been a resident clergyman for a hundred and fifty years. Fresh from London, not knowing a turnip from a carrot, I was compelled to farm three hundred acres, and without capital to build a parsonage-house.

I asked and obtained three years' leave from the archbishop, in order to effect an exchange, if possible; and fixed myself meantime at a small village two miles from York, in which was a fine old house of the time of Queen Elizabeth, where resided the last of the squires with his lady, who looked as if she had walked straight out of the ark, or had been the wife of Enoch. He was a perfect specimen of the Trullibers of old; he smoked, hunted, drank beer at his door with his grooms and dogs, and spelt over the county paper on Sundays.

At first, he heard I was a Jacobin and a dangerous fellow, and turned aside as I passed: but at length, when he found the peace of the village undisturbed, harvests much as usual, Juno and Ponto uninjured, he first bowed, then called, and at last reached such a pitch of confidence that he used to bring the papers, that I might explain the difficult words to him; actually discovered that I had made a joke, laughed till I thought he would have died of convulsions, and ended by inviting me to see his dogs.

All my efforts for an exchange having failed, I asked and obtained from my friend the archbishop another year to build in. And I then set my shoulder to the wheel in good earnest; sent for an architect; he produced plans which would have ruined me. I made him my bow: "You build for glory, sir; I for use." I returned him his plans, with five-and-twenty pounds, and sat down in my thinking-chair; and in a few hours Mrs. Sydney and I concocted a plan which has produced what I call the model of parsonage-houses.

I then took to horse, to provide bricks and timber; was advised to make my own bricks of my own clay; of course, when the kiln was opened, all bad; mounted my horse again, and in twenty-four hours had bought thousands of bricks and tons of timber. Was advised by neighbouring gentlemen to employ oxen; bought four: Tug and Lug, Haul and Crawl; but Tug and Lug took to fainting, and required buckets of sal volatile, and Haul and Crawl to lie down in the mud. So I did as I ought to have done at first-took the advice of the farmer instead of the gentleman; sold my oxen, bought a team of horses, and at last, in spite of a frost which delayed me six weeks, in spite of walls running down with wet, in spite of the advice and remonstrances of friends who predicted our death, in spite of an infant six months old, who had never been out of the house, I landed my family in my new house nine months after laying the first stone, on the 20th of March; and performed my promise to the letter to the archbishop, by issuing forth at midnight with a lantern to meet the last cart, with the cook and the cat, which had stuck in the mud, and fairly established myself and them before twelve o'clock at night in the new parsonage house; a feat, taking ignorance, inexperience, and poverty into consideration, requiring, I can assure you, no small degree of energy.

It made me a very poor man for many years, but I never repented it. I turned schoolmaster, to educate my son, as I could not afford to send him to school. Mrs. Sydney turned schoolmistress, to educate my girls, as I could not afford a governess. I turned a farmer, as I could not let my land. A man-servant was too expensive; so I caught up a little garden-girl, made like a mile-stone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals; Bunch became the best butler in the country.

I had little furniture, so I bought a cart-load of deals; took a carpenter (who came to me for parish relief), called Jack Robinson, with a face like a full-moon, into my service, established him in a barn, and said, "Jack, furnish my house." You see the result.

At last it was suggested that a carriage was much wanted in the establishment. After diligent search, I discovered in the back settlements of a York coach-maker an ancient green chariot, supposed to have been the earliest invention of the kind. I brought it home in triumph to my admiring family. Being somewhat