"Positively, I never can take a breakfast! Everything very tempting, though. But then, want of sleep! Ah! I can't get over that."

By this time, I knew better than to contradict my friend, and I suffered his remarks, therefore, to pass unchallenged. In due time, we went to the concert. Several songs by distinguished artists were sung, the chief burden of them being the pleasures of summer, bright, sunny days, golden dawns, and glorious eves. These appropriate subjects and the heat of the room made me' sigh for some shady retreat under a leafy canopy, such as had charmed my eye during our saunter of the previous evening. The concert came to an end.

"Do you know," said my friend, when we found ourselves in the open air, "I don't much care for music ?" "Not on a hot day, perhaps," I replied.

"No, sir, it is not that; but I have turned the occasion to some profit." "I am glad of it."

"Yes, sir; I shall write an article for the Medico-Chirurgical Observer, I am convinced that vocalization injures the larynx. I can prove it. The demonstration became quite painful at last, but I sat it out."

"Then we may bless our stars that we are not singers ?"

"We may, indeed! A fatal gift." "I will wait to see you in type," I remarked, in the expectation of closing a discussion which began to appal me.

"Dr. Brambleton, if he be a doctor," said the boy.

"Thank you," said my friend to his informant; then, turning to me, he added, "A most remarkable man, I am sure!"

"An empiric," I suggested. "I saw his gout specifics, and a column of his testimonials in to-day's paper." I laughed slightly, then exclaimed, "Only one more infallible cure for gout!"

Mr. Stowell looked very grave, and the boy, who lingered to hear our remarks, ran off, cackling a good imitation of "quack, quack" as he went along.

"That's all prejudice," said Stowell. "He, Dr. B., may be a benefactor of his race. I say he may be ; but I am certain of this-I felt some singular twinges in my big toe while we were on the Great Slaughterton, and I have not been entirely free from them since."

"You are not a gouty subject?"

"I can't say what I may come to. I should very much like some talk with Dr. Brambleton."

"Nonsense, my dear sir."

"I am only curious to hear what he would say. I could tell in a minute whether he was a pretender."

Mr. Stowell now labored under an itching desire to call in Dr. Brambleton, and I continued to combat his folly, as I conceived it. Nothing else for the remainder of the day was talked about except various human ailments, their propagation, and the means of their eradication. It was impossible to turn the conversation. into any other channel. I was so worn out at last that my replies became shorter and less courteous. I grew dogmatic in my turn, and backed my objections with more force as I plunged into topics out of my

and abused my ignorance. I retort

VOL. XVIII.-34

ed by ridiculing his credulity. We got so personal in our remarks that it was a relief when bedtime came; and we retired to our respective chambers in no very pleasant mood.

That night, a thunder-storm broke over the town. The storm was succeeded by a sudden fall in the temperature, and the air became as cold as it is sometimes in the early spring. A sharp easterly wind was blowing when I arose the following morning. Before I left my chamber, I heard Mr. Stowell in altercation with our landlord.

"I told you I was in infirm health," said Stowell.

"You did, sir,” replied the landlord.

"Then, how could you put me in a room with an easterly aspect ?" "Why did you not choose the other room ?"

partly for a walk, and partly to ma sure of the time of arrival of the " u train. I did not return to my lo ings until just in time to take aw my luggage.

1

In the sitting-room, I found Stowell and Dr. Brambleton. Stowell was sitting on a chair, w his bare feet on what I took to be electric battery, but which resemb a coal-scuttle. He held a wire in hands, and on his head he wore cap encircled, as I supposed, w magnets.

"Good-day," I said, in a concili ing tone, as I was on the wing, a my fancy was tickled at the ridi lous appearance of my friend.

"Don't think any more of it," plied Mr. Stowell. "My tem emanated from gout! My first tack, I assure you."

"A most decided case !" chim

to take care of themselves."

At this I opened my door, and rushed into our sitting-room.

"Mr. Stowell," I exclaimed, “I am not accustomed to have ungenerous reflections cast upon me. The choice was your own; but you have before expressed a wish to be rid of me, and I reciprocate the sentiment. My room is at your service; I shall not inflict my society on you any longer, and I shall seek more genial companionship than I have found in a confirmed valetudinarian."

Without waiting for an answer, I hurried out of the house, breakfasted at a hotel, conned the newspaper, and proceeded to the railroad depot,

it like a Job."

"A speedy recovery!" I answer "You are in good hands, I hope

"Excellent," said Mr. Stowell. have the fullest confidence."

"He knows where he is, sir," I in the doctor slyly. "But I stake my reputation on a cure.”

And wishing the patient and d tor a final adieu, I departed, rejoic in my deliverance from both qua and quacked. I should distingu myself in Alpine climbing while. der the stimulus imparted by freed regained; but experience will ma me wary of a travelling compani until I have tested his congenial of disposition.

ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, Baronne de Holstein-Staël, the most remarkable female writer of our century, was born at Paris on the 22d April, 1766. At that time her father was very far removed from the high position he was one day to occupy, being simply a clerk in Thelluson's bank. Mme. Necker herself undertook the education of her daughter--a task for which she was singularly unfitted, being cold and stern by nature, and a pedant to boot.

M. Necker was much more loved by his child, and he understood her disposition better. He liked to draw her out and make her talk, and for that purpose he used playfully to tease her: she invariably met him with that mixture of gaiety and tenderness which characterized their intercourse. Deeply grateful for his affection, Anne put the utmost goodwill in the execution of his slightest wish. When only ten years old, she was so struck by the admiration he showed for Gibbon the historian, that the idea occurred to her to marry him, and thereby secure to her father the constant presence of one whose conversation he so much appreciated. Undismayed by Gibbon's repulsive ugliness, the child actually made

the proposal to him herself. W makes the comical incident mo curious is the fact that her moth had been, when little more than child, Gibbon's first love. It w said of Anne Necker that she ha always been young, and yet ha never been a child. Her favor pastime was fashioning doll kings a queens, and making them act trag dies of which she improvised the v rious parts. This innocent amuseme was at last forbidden by her Calvi istic mother, but Anne used to hi herself and carry on her dramat little games in secret.

In her mother's salon, Anne ear made the acquaintance of some the clever men of the day-among others, Grimm, Marmontel, and t Abbé Raynal. At the age of ninete her intellectual faculties had becon developed in the highest degree, b so much to the detriment of h health as to cause the greatest alar to her parents. The famous D Tronchin was called in, and ordere the young invalid to be taken to th country, where the mind should I fallow, and the time hitherto devote to study be spent in the open ai No prescription could have bee more unwelcome to Mme. Necke

for it involved a relaxation, or rather a complete abandonment, of the severe régime she had adopted for her daughter. As it turned out, this was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of hardening into a learned prodigy, Anne's moral nature was allowed to put forth its full luxuriance. Her father came constantly to St. Ouen, and in the charms of his daughter's society he sought rest from the cares of the ministry. In this pleasant retreat he and Anne learned, if possible, to love each other better. M. Necker was not, however, a foolishly fond parent; his tenderness never obscured his judgment; and Anne declared herself that his eye, so far from being blinded by affection, was quicker to detect her faults than her merits. “He unmasked all affectation in me," she writes; "from living with him, I came to believe that people could see clearly into my heart."

Anne made her entrée into society at an early age, and immediately assumed there the position her talents merited. As the daughter of a powerful minister, and a future heiress, it was supposed she would marry at once, but it was not so. Mlle. Necker attained the in those days comparatively mature age of twenty before she gave her hand to the Baron de StaëlHolstein, ambassador from the court of Sweden.

Immediately after her marriage, the Baronne de Staël was presented at court. On this occasion she acquired a character for eccentricity by omitting one of the innumerable court courtesies; but what stamped her irrevocably as an oddity was that, going a few days later to visit the Duchesse de Polignac, the young baroness walked into the room without her head-dress-she had dropped it in the carriage. Those who were inclined to laugh at her, however, soon

desisted, seeing that she was herself the first to relate her misdemeanors, and to laugh at them.

But a great event was at hand which was to turn the current of Mme. de Staël's thoughts into other channels: the French Revolution broke out. The daughter of the minister who was the immediate cause of that volcanic eruption was not likely to remain a cool spectator of the national upheaving. Misled by her own enthusiasm for the laws and constitution of England, and still more by the ephemeral homage paid to Necker, who had made his. cause triumphant in the king's cabinet, Mme. de Staël honestly believed that the dawn of true political liberty was at hand; but this short-lived chimera was changed to horror when. she realized the true motives, the aim and object, of the demagogues. The arrest of Louis XVI. and the queen at Varennes filled her with regret, the sincerity of which it is im, possible to doubt when we read her account of this event in the Considérations sur la Révolution Française.

Her knowledge of the men who were the prime motors of these momentous changes enabled her to foresee the terrible catastrophe of the roth of August. With great courage and clear-sightedness, Mme. de Staël drew up a plan of escape for the royal captives. M. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the king's ministers, gives the details of this scheme, which, its author forwarded with a letter to M. de Montmorin, one of his colleagues in the ministry. Her idea was to convey the royal family to the coast of Normandy, whence they were to sail for England. Whether the plan was practicable or not, was never tested; M. de Montmorin knew too well that it was utterly useless to place it before the king.

The murder of the king and queen