that of Louis XIV. “L'Etat, c'est moi;" but Napoleon was not less energetic in limiting the source of government to his individual person, and identifying himself with the State, of which he, too, assumed to be the type, the spirit, and the concentration. In the Memorial de Sainte Héléne, (vol. i. part 2, page 274, Lond. 1823,) Las Cases states, "Il (l'Empereur) disoit qu'il eût pu, à lui seul, être considéré comme la véritable constitution de l'Empire." And again (p. 345), when assured by an English colonel (now Sir W. S. Keating, as I learned from that officer), of the unimpaired attachment of the inhabitants of the Isle of France, he observed, "Cela prouve que les habitans de l'Isle de France sont demeurés Français: je suis la patrie.... ils l'aiment, et on l'a blessée en moi."

In pursuing this very imperfect sketch of so pregnant a subject, one so susceptible of a larger scale and deeper inquiry, I could not fail to reflect how often the averments of historians, the recital of travellers, the inventions of industry and speculations of philosophers, have been branded as mendacious, derided as visionary, or spurned as illusive, of which time has evinced the truth, and experience testified the utility. Herodotus, though defended, rather strangely indeed, by H. Estienne (Apologie d'Hérodote,

1566, 8vo.), was long reputed the father of fable; and the wonders of Archimedes, until verified by Buffon, pronounced impracticable. Without stopping to examine how far Friar Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Copernicus, Kepler, or Galileo, with many others, lay under similar impeachments or worse, or to estimate the amount of truth or paradox in the theories of Mandeville, Malthus, and McCulloch, we may say, that nearly all the conquests of art and improvements of science that have signalised modern times, have had to contend against distrust or ridicule. But too wide a field of descant would here open for us; and I shall, therefore, conclude with one corroborative and pointed instance :-In a letter dated 29th Aug. 1748, to Colonel, afterwards Marshal Conway, from Horace Walpole, this shrewd observer of man, after some humorous anticipations of future discoveries, adds, "I have seen a little book of a Marquis of Worcester, which he calls a Century of Inventions, where he has set down a hundred machines to do impossibilities with:" and yet this little book of the Marquis (the renowned Glamorgan of Irish history), exhibits the germ, or, at least, a traceable adumbration of the most important of modern discoveries-the steam-engine!

During the period between Philippe Auguste and the erection of the Hôtel de Cluny, the old palace was gradually ruined, and part of its site occupied by houses and streets; but we may be convinced that the ruins continued to harbour people of the same character as those who frequented it in John de Hauteville's time, by the circumstance that the street which immediately faced the chief part of the ancient building was dignified by the name of Cut-Throat Street (Rue Coupegueule).* When the Sorbonne was founded, the throats of its inmates were defended by two great gates, from which circumstance the street by degrees changed its name to Rue des deux Portes, and it is now simply known as the Rue de Sorbonne.

Frequent accidental discoveries still occur to prove that much of this part of Paris is built upon the subterranean vaults and passages which were attached to the Roman palace, and these passages have in some instances been traced outwardly to a great distance; but the falling in of the superstructures, and other accidents, have rendered it impossible to explore them internally. While the palace itself gradually disappeared to make way for other buildings, the vast and massive vaults were not easily destroyed, and they are now all that remains, with the exception of the wall of one side of the Hôtel, which is Roman. The most remarkable piece of pure Roman building now visible, is the fine hall of the baths, with its immediate appendages, which has been preserved by the circumstance of its having been applied to uses less respectable, it is true, than those to which it served in the days of its glory.

Architrenius, lib. IV.

A beautiful view of the interior of this massive hall is given in the noble work by M. du Sommerard, Les Arts au Moyen Age. Beneath it are still seen the great vaulted cells which "form," as M. du Sommerard observes, "the centre of a subterranean city, whose ways, formerly open, have been shut up by a succession and variety of accidents." To the book just mentioned we must refer our readers for a further account of the remains of the Roman palace. We believe that M. Albert Lenoir has prepared a most able survey of them, which it is to be hoped will soon see the light.

The Hôtel de Cluny itself, built much on the plan of the older colleges of our universities, with two courts and a dead wall towards the street, is a beautiful specimen of old domestic architecture. Externally, the hôtel is chiefly remarkable for its turrets and richly-ornamented lucarne windows. The interior sculptures and ornaments of the chapel, as well as its exterior (which, with its elegant octagonal turret, forms the most prominent object in our plate), with a part of the lucarnes and of the balustrade to the right, are admirable specimens of the florid Gothic style of architecture. The other parts, as the great lucarne and the balustrade to the left, and the ornaments at the head of the entrance gateway (now almost demolished), although built but a few years later, exhibit the influence of the Italian style which then began to take root, and which is now distinguished as the style of the renaissance. The apartments, which do not retain entirely their original character, represent to us the internal

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arrangement of an ancient noble mansion. Internally, as well as externally, the chapel is the most interesting part of the building. Its vault is supported entirely by a single and elegant central column. The original painted glass, and many of its other accessories, disappeared during the troubled times of the great revolution; but it is still richly ornamented. In the 'Dictionnaire Historique de la Ville de Paris," published so late as the year 1779, by a bookseller who inhabited the Hôtel de Cluny, we have the following description of the chapel, then entire:"A round [octagonal] pillar rising in the middle sustains the vault, which is covered with sculptures, and of which all the rays spring from this pillar. Against the walls are placed in groups, in the manner of mausolea, the figures of the whole family of Jacques d'Amboise and that of the Cardinal. Most of them are on their knees, in the costume of the age, very singular and well carved. The altar is placed against the wall towards the garden, which opens in the middle to a projecting half turret, closed in by a large window, whose glass, tolerably well painted, gives but a dim light. Within the turret, before the altar, is a group of four figures, as large as life, representing the holy Virgin holding the body of Jesus Christ, detached from the cross and supported by her knees. These figures are by a good hand and very well designed for the time. Here are still to be seen, as in every part of the hôtel, an infinite number of shields with the armorial bearings of Clermont [Chaumont], and many shells and pilgrims' staffs, in allusion to the surname of Jacques," and its patron St. James.

The ornaments

of former days are now replaced by a beautiful collection of every description of church furniture, gathered from the spoils of some of the richest abbeys in France, stalls, chairs, balustrades, pannels, coffers, most exquisitely carved in wood and ivory, with an infinite variety of smaller articles, crowd the room, most of them belonging to the same age which gave birth to the chapel itself.

It would take many pages of our Magazine to give a bare enumeration of the articles of antiquity which fill

this and the other apartments occupied by M. du Sommerard. Even the doors have once belonged to castles and palaces. That of the room known as the Chamber of Francis the First, exquisitely carved, came from the castle of Anet, the residence of the famous Diane de Poitiers, the mistress of Henry II. A splendid chess-board and men in the window of this room, made partly of the clearest rock crystal, is said to have been the same that, according to Joinville, was presented in Syria to Saint Louis by the celebrated Prince of the Assassins, known by the title of the Old Man of the Mountains. A beautiful ivory octagonal coffer, in the same room, of the 13th century, was also sculptured in Palestine. Among the contents of this chamber is a remarkably fine collection of ancient arms, and of articles in wrought-iron and steel. large portion of the chamber is occupied by the magnificent bed of Francis I. This Chamber of Francis I. is pointed out by tradition as the room where that monarch surprised Marie, the widow of Louis XII. and sister of Henry VIII. of England, in company with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; and it was thence he led them into the adjoining chapel to solemnize the marriage which he forced upon them.

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The rooms and galleries adjoining are equally crowded with precious monuments of art, and of public as well as domestic life and manners. In the dining-room are heaps of plates, and bottles, and glasses-of pots, and pans, and knives and forks, of every conceivable form and use; many of them grotesque in the extreme.

In 1535, the Hôtel de Cluny, then in the possession of the Guises of Lorraine, was for a short time the residence of James V. of Scotland and his new consort. During the seventeenth century, the respectability of its tenants declined rapidly; and in the century following we have already seen it occupied by a bookseller. During the revolution, the tribunal of the section Marat met within its walls, and the astronomer Lalande, who also resided here, transformed the central turret into an observatory. We understand that the present Government contemplate the purchase and restoration of this and the other two ancient hotels

IN the further prosecution of my proposed plan respecting Almanacs, the next person who claims notice is JOHN PARTRIDGE. He resided in Hen

rietta-street, Covent Garden; and published an Almanac, intituled "Annus Mirabilis," which does not differ materially from the before-mentioned; a copy of one for 1688 being bound up with the same. In this the Calendar contains nothing prophetic; but we have a copy of another, published by the same author, for the following year, and intituled Merlinus Liberatus," which abounds with poetic effusions, judicial astrology, and bitter invective directed against the late King, Popish tyranny, and poor John Gadbury.

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The humorous attack of Dean Swift, under the name of Bickerstaff, upon this Almanac-maker, is well known; both by the amusement which the public derived from the controversy, and the perpetuation of the assumed surname in the Tatler.

An Almanac still continues to be published under the same title, with the name of John Partridge affixed for its author; so that, although the Dean stopped the mouth of Partridge, the Stationers' Company, under whose

direction the Almanac was published, found another Partridge as good a prophet as his predecessor; nor have we been without one to this day.

In proof of the truth of the Dean's assertion, respecting their observations and predictions applying to any time or place, one or two extracts from Partridge's Almanac for 1690 may be quoted::

"The end of this month, or beginning of the next, will undoubtedly give violence and violent actions, and perhaps private murder and such like." — January.

"A Lawyer or Clergyman, preferred for his parts or learning."-May.

"Here is news from all parts, and various discourses according to your men that you converse with, but in general it is a month of noise,-you will see about what when it comes."-November.

"I doubt not but we shall have our annual pretended Astrologer cant with with Popery and the Prince of Wales last this government this year, as they did year."-December.

In this way did these adepts of cunbut for no one thing were they more ning and artifice dupe their customers; distinguished than their abuse of each other, and that in no very measured terms. Take a specimen from Mr. Partridge, to his honest reader, in his Almanac for 1690:

"I will now acquaint my countreymen with the reason of my difference with J. Gadbury, that the world may see I am blameless in the quarrel. The ground of

our difference I know not, and would de

sire him to tell that; but when I was beyond sea, and he (as well as some others) thought they should never see me more, he wrote a Book against me, which he called a reply; so full of Malice, ill Language, Lies, and malicious expressions almost impossible to be believed; or, that a Villain should be so ungentile to a man in tribulation, that never gave him the least occasion imaginable: if I did, let him speak, and I will both hear and answer; and remain a goad in his side while I am JOHN PAR

TRIDGE.'

Mr. John Aubrey has given a list of his works, and from the same authority we are informed, that when he