position of a suppliant. But the captain replied only by a glance of ironical compassion. It was now his turn to remain silent.

"Nay then,' cried Charney, in a sort of frenzy, since it must needs be sacrificed, it shall die by no hand but mine!'

"I forbid you to touch it!' exclaimed the commandant; and extending his cane before Charney, as if to create a barrier between the prisoner and his idol, he renewed his orders to Ludovico, who seizing the stem was about to uproot it from the earth.

"The count, startled into submission, stood like an image of despair. "Near the bottom of the stem, below the lowest branches, where the sap had got power to circulate, a single flower, fresh and brilliant, had just expanded! Already all the others were drooping, withered on their stalks; but this single one retained its beauty, as yet uncrushed by the rude hand of the jailer. Springing in the midst of a little tuft of leaves, whose verdure threw out in contrast the vivid colour of its petals, the flower seemed to turn imploringly towards its master. He even fancied its last perfumes were exhaling towards him; and as the tears rose in his eyes, seemed to see the beloved object enlarge, disappear, and at last bloom out anew. The human being and the flower, so strangely attached to each other, were interchanging an eternal farewell!

'If at that moment, when so many human passions were called into action by the existence of a humble vegetable, a stranger could have entered unprepared the prison-court of Fenestrella, where the sky shed a sombre and saddening reflection, the aspect of the officers of justice invested in their tricolored scarfs,-of the commandant, issuing his ruthless orders in a tone of authority,—would naturally have seemed to announce some frightful execution, of which Ludovico was the executioner, and Charney the victim, whose sentence of death had just been recited to him. And see, they come !-strangers are entering the court,-two strangers, the one an aide-de-camp of General Menon, the other a page of the Empress Josephine. The dust with which their uniforms are covered attests with what speed they have performed their journey to the fortress; yet a minute more, and they had been too late!

"At the noise produced by their arrival Ludovico raising his head relaxed his grasp of Picciola, and confronted Charney face to face. Both the jailer and the prisoner were pale as death.

"The commandant had now received from the hands of the aide-de-camp an order, the perusal of which seemed to strike him with astonishment; but after taking a turn or two in the court-yard, to compare in his mind the order of today with that of the day preceding, he assumed a more courteous demeanour, and approaching the Count de Charney placed in his hands the missive of General Menon. Trembling with emotion the prisoner read as follows:

His Majesty, the emperor and king, deputes me, sir, to inform you that he grants the petition forwarded to him by the prisoner Charney, now under your custody in the fortress of Fenestrella, relative to a plant growing among the stones of one of its pavements. Such as are likely to be

injurious to the flower must be instantly removed; for which purpose you are requested to consult the wishes and convenience of your prisoner.' "Long live the Emperor!' cried Ludovico.

Long live the Emperor!' murmured another voice, which seemed to issue from the adjoining wall (the voice of the bereaved old father, Girardi); and while all this was proceeding, the commandant stood leaning upon his cane, by way of keeping himself in countenance. The two officers of justice completely puzzled were trying in vain to connect the new turn of affairs with the plot which their imagination had created; while the aide-de-camp and page secretly wondered what could be the motive of the haste which had been so urgently recommended to them. The latter now addressed Charney, to inform him that the letter contained a postcript in the hand-writing of the Empress; and the count turning over the page read aloud as follows:

"I earnestly recommend Monsieur the Count de Charney to the good offices of Captain Morand; to whom I shall feel personally obliged for any acts of kindness by which he may be enabled to alleviate the situation of his prisoner. Josephine.'

" Long live the Empress!' cried Ludovico. Charney said not a word. His feelings could not be satisfied with less than raising to his lips the precious signature of his benefactress. The letter, held for some minutes in silence before his eyes, served to conceal his face from the curiosity of the spectators."

And all this pathos about a flower! for we pray you, gentle reader, impute not any of the prisoner's gratitude to Josephine's postscript; it was her preservation of Picciola that rendered her his benefactress, and made her signature so precious. The pathos is therefore altogether about a flower; and is it not something astonishing that the French public, whose sensibilities have for years required to awaken them the strong stimulus of the novels before alluded to, and of such dramas as La Tour de Nesle, Marie Tudor, Le Roi s'amuse, &c., now melt and thrill for the life and death of a prisoner's flower? But to our mind it is more than astonishing; it is auspicious, indicative of a more healthful state of the French mind. As we read Picciola we feel that the revolutionary fever has abated; that the blood is circling more temperately in the national veins; that the incessant oscillations of action and reaction are over; and that the nation, under the steady rule of Louis Philippe, is settling down into tranquillity. In short we strongly incline to hail the appearance and popularity of this fanciful and really moral tale, as a harbinger of the return of peace and prosperity to France, and, if to France, to Europe.

ARTICLE V.

Commercial Relations with Turkey.

WITHIN a few months England has been plunged from the height of commercial prosperity and confidence into the extreme of depression. It would seem as if our redundance of wealth and buoyancy of enterprize were destined to experience these periodical visitations as a sequel to their epochs of most brilliant display.

Whilst deeply lamenting the sufferings inflicted by this revolution yet on its course, we feel perfect reliance on the elasticity of the national industry. It is grounded on the assurance that the evil has not arisen from overproduction at home, and that all the export-markets are rather insufficiently supplied than encumbered with our goods. The trade to a great extent must change hands, and be conducted more with British capital; but the wants of foreign countries will rapidly operate in producing an adjustment, which must restore to full activity the labour of most of the manufacturing districts.

We hope this may be accompanied with more stability in private fortunes, and better safeguards for maintaining commercial property at its true value, in the exercise of that superior skill, resource and genius for trade which have made the rest of the world the tributaries of our countrymen.

Happily nations best know their own wants and capabilities, and thrive by following those pursuits for which by soil, climate, situation and peculiar disposition they are respectively calculated. Holland became one of the richest states in Europe by her fisheries, pasturage and carrying trade, to all which England unites agriculture and manufactures. Turkey differs essentially from both these countries, yet the simple mechanism of her system presents some features not uninteresting at the present moment, and it may be said that she "has chosen her role."

This was well described and her interests elucidated by Namik Pacha, the Sultan's ambassador, when on a visit to Manchester a few years back. "Ours is not a manufactu

"ring country," said His Excellency, "and we have no preten"sion to compete with the science and capital of England. "But our fertile territory and happy climate enable us to fur"nish you with many of the materials which you require. "These and our other agricultural products we are content "to raise, and receive whatever you can supply cheapest and "best suited for us in return." In these observations there was much good sense, and the best vindication of Turkey from the charge of want of inclination for mechanical arts or address in their exercise. The English know also from their own experience that it is not merited in one instance. Our dining-rooms are furnished with carpets from Anatolia, which frequently combine economy and comfort in use with elegance of pattern; while the beauty and durability of the dye and softness of their texture are only equalled by the Persian, which surpass them in delicacy and costliness. The Turks never attained to the art of making woollen cloths except of the very coarsest kind; but other branches of manufacture are shown to be in activity in the country from the increased importation there of cotton-twist, where it is entirely used, while the native looms have gone to decay which were employed in producing particular goods now superseded by ours. Among these are the Angora shalloons, which we have driven out of the market without rivalling their excellence.

Ignorance and contempt for commerce are assigned as the causes of the Turks' first opening their ports with so much. facility to Europeans. Their deficiency in the knowledge of navigation might be asserted with better foundation: they never regained their maritime grandeur as a power after their defeat at Lepanto by the united fleets of Christendom. Fighting, rather than skill in the management of vessels, distinguished those times, and nautical astronomy was in its infancy. As the Turks were a recent inland people they found the Genoese and Venetians already in possession of the maritime commerce of the Mediterranean. Even could they have equalled their expertness, (which neither their habits nor range of education permitted), their vessels must have met with a hostile reception on every Christian shore. They found foreigners to visit them and offer an exchange of commodities,

and fell behind to engage only in coasting voyages between their own ports as far as Egypt, which till within some years past were chiefly made by Turkish craft. Commerce among their own people is a general and honourable profession. Many of its usages, such as are common to all Eastern nations, they possessed, and must have adopted others which they found existing in the new territories where they settled. They succeeded to a great portion of the empire of the caliphs, and their commercial laws were engrafted on the religious code they had already received from the Arabs. Their mode of traffic, like many other customs in those regions, has undergone little change till the present time, when the spirit of adventure is beginning to extend to the Turkish merchants who share the trade with England.

We are content to judge by facts of the sound policy which dictated the earliest capitulations between Soleyman the Magnificent and Francis I., the model of the rest, and which continue to be the Magna Charta of foreign privileges and trade. During three hundred years these institutes have been respected by the successors of the ninth Sultan, distinguished for his learning and capacity, courted by one of the first monarchs of Christendom and feared by the rest. Under the beneficial operation of these laws for all native subjects, the evils of anarchy and despotism in the worst times have been mitigated, and other causes of decay stayed in their course: to them are owing the wealth and security which the Greeks and other merchants of the country have attained and continue to enjoy. We might act more wisely in following the example of the East, than in denying its every claim to discernment. At the time when nascent industry and the faculties of man, scarcely emancipated from serfage, were struggling in the West of Europe against barbarous legislation, forging every shackle that ignorance or prejudice could devise, trade was allowed to flow in Turkey through its natural channels. It sprang up free born. But the Porte did more, "it guaranteed "to the foreigner the safeguard of his own laws, and these ex"ercised by a functionary of his own nation. When he first "sets his foot on the territory of the Sultan, he is greeted by "the title of Mousafir, or guest,-you are welcome; remain