With the most sanguinary hopes that the Anniversary and Town will persecute an inquiry into this dreadful action, I will conclude my repeal to the pathetic reader; and if by such a misrepresentation of fax, I have been enabled to awaken an apathy for the children of the late Mr. Tudge, who are left in the most desultory state, I shall feel the satisfaction of having exorcised my pen in the cause of Malevolence, and soothed the inflictions of indignant Misery.

D. J. RAMSBOTTOM.

P. S. The Publisher requests me to state that the present Number is published from the MS. found in Mr. Tudge's pocket, and one more number will be soon forthcoming, containing his inhuman papers.

THACKERAY IN PARIS.

A recent writer has given some amusing particulars of his Paris life, and his subsequent interest in the city, where he had many friends and was known to a wide circle of readers. "He lived,” says this writer, "in Paris 'over the water,' and

is not long since, in strolling about the Latin Quarter with the best of companions, that we visited his lodgings, Thackeray inquiring after those who were already forgotten-unknown. Those who may wish to learn his early Parisian life and associations should turn to the story of Philip on his Way through the World.' Many incidents in that narrative are reminiscences of his own youthful literary struggles whilst living modestly in this city. Latterly, fortune and fame enabled the author of 'Vanity Fair' to visit imperial Paris in imperial style, and Mr. Thackeray put up generally at the Hôtel de Bristol, in the Place Vendôme. Never was increase of fortune more gracefully worn or more generously employed. The struggling artist and small man of letters whom he was sure to find at home or abroad, was pretty safe to be assisted if he learned their wants. I know of many a kind act. One morning, on entering Mr. Thackeray's bedroom in Paris, I found him placing some napoleons in a pill-box, on the lid of

which was written, 'One to be taken occasionally.' 'What are you doing?' said I. 'Well,' he replied, 'there is an old person here who says she is very ill and in distress, and I strongly suspect that this is the sort of medicine she wants. Dr. Thackeray intends to leave it with her himself. Let us walk out together.' Thackeray used to say that he came to Paris for a holiday, and to revive his recollections of French cooking. But he generally worked here, especially when editing the 'Cornhill Magazine.'

''

Thackeray's affection for Paris, however, appears to have been founded upon no relish for the gayeties of the French metropolis, and certainly not upon any liking for French institutions. His papers on this subject are generally criticisms upon political, social, and literary failings of the French, written in a severe spirit which savors more of the confident judgment of youth than of the calm spirit of the citizen of the world. The reactionary rule of Louis Philippe, the Government of July, and the boasted Charter of 1830, were the objects of his especial dislike; nor was he less unsparing in his views of French morals as exemplified in their law courts, and in the novels of such writers as Madame Dudevant. The truth is, that at this period Paris was, in the eyes of the artstudent, simply the Paradise of young painters. Possessed of a good fortune said to have amounted on his coming of age in 1832 to £20,000 — the young Englishman passed his days in the Louvre, his evenings with his French artist acquaintances, of whom his preface to Louis Marvy's sketches gives so pleasant a glimpse ; or sometimes in his quiet lodgings in the Quartier Latin, in dashing off for some English or foreign paper his enthusiastic notices of the Paris Exhibition, or a criticism on French writers, or a story of French artist life, or an account of some great cause célèbre then stirring the Parisian world. This was doubtless the happiest period of his life. In one of these papers he describes minutely the life of the art-student in Paris, and records his impressions of it at the time.

“To account (he says) for the superiority over England —

which, I think, as regards art, is incontestable — it must be remembered that the painter's trade, in France, is a very good one; better appreciated, better understood, and, generally, far better paid than with us. There are a dozen excellent schools in which a lad may enter here, and, under the eye of a practiced master, learn the apprenticeship of his art at an expense of about ten pounds a year. In England there is no school except the 'Academy,' unless the student can afford to pay a very large sum, and place himself under the tuition of some particular artist. Here, a young man for his ten pounds has all sorts of accessory instruction, models, etc.; and has further, and for nothing, numberless incitements to study his profession which are not to be found in England; the streets are filled with picture shops, the people themselves are pictures walking about; the churches, theatres, eating-houses, concert-rooms, are covered with pictures; Nature itself is inclined more kindly to him, for the sky is a thousand times more bright and beautiful, and the sun shines for the greater part of the year. Add to this incitements more selfish, but quite as powerful: a French artist is paid very handsomely ; for five hundred a year is much where all are poor; and has a rank in society rather above his merits than below them, being caressed by hosts and hostesses in places where titles are laughed at, and a baron is thought of no more account than a banker's clerk.

"The life of the young artist here is the easiest, merriest, dirtiest existence possible. He comes to Paris, probably at sixteen, from his province; his parents settle forty pounds a year on him, and pay his master; he establishes himself in the Pays Latin, or in the new quarter of Nôtre Dame de Lorette (which is quite peopled with painters): he arrives at his atelier at a tolerably early hour, and labors among a score of companions as merry and poor as himself. Each gentleman has his favorite tobacco-pipe, and the pictures are painted in the midst of a cloud of smoke, and a din of puns and choice French slang, and a roar of choruses, of which no one can form an idea who has not been present at such an assembly.”

In another paper he discourses enthusiastically of the French school of painting as exemplified in a picture in the Exhibition by Carel Dujardin, as follows:

"A horseman is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. 'O matutini rores auræque salubres!' in what a wonderful way has the artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs ('the breath of Nature blowing free,' as the Corn-law man sings) blowing free over the heath. Silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year; you can do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away a certain pleasing, dreaming feeling of awe and musing; the other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast privilege of the landscape-painter; he does not address you with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own."

Mr. Thackeray was in Paris in March, 1836, at the time of th execution of Fieschi and Lacénaire, upon which subject he wrote some remarks in one of his anonymous papers which it is interesting to compare with the more advanced views in favor of the abolition of the punishment of death which are familiar to the readers of his subsequent article, "On Going to see a Man Hanged." He did not witness the execution either of Fieschi or Lacénaire, though he made unsuccessful attempts to be present at both events.

The day for Fieschi's death was purposely kept secret; and he was executed at a remote quarter of the town. But the scene on the morning when his execution did not take place was never forgotten by the young English artist.

It was carnival time, and the rumor had pretty generally been carried abroad, that the culprit was to die on that day. A friend who accompanied Thackeray came many miles through the mud and dark, in order to be "in at the death.” They set out before light, floundering through the muddy Champs Elysées, where were many others upon the same errand. They passed by the Concert of Musard, then held in the Rue St. Honoré; and round this, in the wet, a number of coaches were collected: the ball was just up; and a crowd of people, in hideous masquerade, drunk, tired, dirty, dressed in horrible old frippery and daubed with filthy rouge, were trooping out of the place; tipsy women and men, shrieking, jabbering, gesticulating, as French will do; parties swaggering, staggering forward, arm in arm, reeling to and fro across the street, and yelling songs in chorus. Hundreds of these were bound for the show, and the two friends thought themselves lucky in finding a vehicle to the execution place, at the Barrière d'Enfer. As they crossed the river, and entered the Rue d'Enfer, crowds of students, black workmen, and more drunken devils, from more carnival balls, were filling it; and on the grand place there were thousands of these assembled, looking out for Fieschi and his cortége. They waited, but no throatcutting that morning; no august spectacle of satisfied justice; and the eager spectators were obliged to return, disappointed of the expected breakfast of blood. "It would" (says Mr. Thackeray) "have been a fine scene, that execution, could it but have taken place in the midst of the mad mountebanks and tipsy strumpets who had flocked so far to witness it, wishing to wind up the delights of their carnival by a bonne-bouche of a murder."

The other attempt was equally unfortunate. The same friend accompanied him, but they arrived too late on the ground to be present at the execution of Lacénaire and his comate in murder, Avril. But as they came to the spot (a gloomy round space, within the barrier-three roads led to it-and, outside, they saw the wine-shops and restaurateurs of the barrier looking gay and inviting), they only found in the midst of