ately practical branches, but they understand all about diseases and insect plagues and the remedies for them. Of merely mechanical woodcraft they are masters. In the Black Forest especially, Captain Walker, with all his Indian experience, marvelled at the adroitness with which they managed to bring down great trees, so that in their fall they should not injure the saplings. Then they have certain tools in use, simple enough in appearance, but which are exceedingly useful in their practised hands, and which might be adopted with ad krempe, for instance, something between an adze and a pickaxe, is one which lays fast hold of the trunks and exerts an extraordinary leverage; and by the aid of the krempe and a rope or two Captain Walker has seen half a dozen men do such work as they use elephants for in India. Forstdirektor, who fills the post of commander-in-chief. The appointments are fairly remunerated as remuneration goes in Germany; and they are so eagerly sought after that candidates will remain on their probation for years at their own cost, or with moderate and precarious pay, in the hope of being regularly enrolled in the corps at last. In Austria things are on a somewhat different footing. The Austrian forests are magnificent-so magnificent, indeed, that the people have been in the way of taking liberties with them, just like our own Indian subjects, and the forests management has been neg-vantage in England or in India. The lected. Now they have changed all that, and the State is doing its best to repair the consequences of its negligence. But as yet the Austrian forest service is comparatively in its infancy, and the pay is very indifferent. We may give an idea of what the system is when fairly organized by taking Hanover as an illustration. In Hanover the staff consists of the forest director and over-forest master; 20 forest masters in charge of divisions, who constitute a council of management; 112 over-foresters in charge of districts; 403 assistant foresters; 343 under-foresters, besides occasional labourers, who are employed as their services are wanted. A check is established on the finances by appointing a cash-keeper to each district; the gross income is estimated approximately at £300,000, while the expenditure amounts to 128,000. Even in North Germany it is only comparatively recently that many of the forests have been worked to the best advantage. They had been hampered with troublesome rights of common and servitudes, which gave communities and private persons a claim to take liberties with the wood, while much damage was done by exercising the rights of grazing out of place and season. It has been the more recent policy of the Government to buy up all these rights, dealing very liberally with the people, and Captain Walker points out that measures of this kind are absolutely necessary in India. But even after acquiring these rights the Government do all in their power to make the forest lands generally useful. Where the growth of the trees places them beyond the reach of injury, cattle are freely admitted, and in all cases where it is practicable the woods are thrown open for recreation. As for the foresters, even in the lower ranks, they are highly educated in their special line. They are not only at home in the more immedi We shall not trouble our readers with the valuable technical information Captain Walker collected as to methods of rotation, clearing, cutting, sowing, planting out, &c. What is of more general interest is his account of his visit to the Prince Furstenberg's forest at Rippoldau in the Grand Duchy of Baden. The forest is opened up in all directions by a regular system of roads arranged in two classes. The first of these is twice the width of the other and carefully constructed with solid masonry, wooden bridges, &c. But most curious are the "Riesen," or slips, down which the timber is shot to the streams, and the artificial modes of floating the interminable rafts. The slips at Rippoldau are about six feet wide, and pieces of wood or rollers are placed along them at intervals of a couple of feet. The trough is formed of smooth timber stripped of its bark, so that there shall be little friction on the stems as they glide down it. Where the curve is too sharp the slip is disposed at something approaching a right angle; and the trunk which has been shot so far is turned by means of the krempe, and then launched forward on a fresh start. Three hundred stems can be sent down one of those slips in a single day. As for the mode of floating the timber, that must be seen to be believed, as Captain Walker remarks. The little mountain stream is cleared of its boulders, and its bed prepared with pieces of cross-timber as the " Riesen " are. The water is dammed back in reservoirs, and, strange to say, the floating takes place when the stream is unusually low. The floss or float consists of stems of full-grown trees loosely knotted together at the ends by ropes of bark, and the length of the whole float is frequently 2,000 feet. "My first impression," says Captain Walker, "when I saw the float lying zigzag in the bed of a mountain stream, was that it was simply impossible that they could ever be floated, still less steered down the stream with all its windings and over the locks and rocks which occurred pretty frequently." The front consists of two or three stems abreast, with a prow formed like the bow of a whale boat. "When all is ready, the water from above is let loose, and the raft or rafts which have hitherto been lying in the bed of the stream, which has probably not more than a foot of water in it, begins to float a little, but it is not let go until about two-thirds of the water has passed. . . . . When let go it is exceedingly curious to see the forward part dart off at the rate of five or six miles an hour, and the several pieces or links which have been lying zigzag and more or less high and dry, gradually uncoil themselves and follow in its wake, till the whole dashes along apparently uncontrolled." Strange to say, sometimes when the decline is steep, the raft travels faster than the water, but if the stoppages are not too frequent, it can do its fifty miles in a day. When it arrives at the Kinzig it is broken up and formed into those large rafts which are familiar to all travellers on the Rhine. In short, these reports of Captain Walker's will be found to combine entertainment with instruction, and had we more space to devote to them, we should invite our readers to accompany him on his excursions in the Scotch and English forests. From The Pall Mall Gazette. THE FOURTH OF SEPTEMBER. THE Fourth of September is a disheartening anniversary for Frenchmen. It recalls an opportunity in some respects greatly used but in others greatly missed; and, unfortunately, in so far as it was used, it has to all appearance left no result behind it, while, in so far as it was missed, it already fills a page of French history and may fill many more. The Revolution which took the place of the Empire was in part a military and in part a political act. The citizens of Paris found themselves without a Government at the moment when the only barrier between the German troops and the capital had been hopelessly overthrown. They took as their leaders the men who first offered themselves; and, as was natural, the men who first offered themselves who, for that matter, were bound to first offer themselves were the Deputies for Paris. The Government formed by them had at all events the merit of appreciating the immediate need. It christened itself the Government of National Defence, and before long its members submitted without resistance to the leadership of the only man who had any clear conception of the duties which that title implied. A writer in the Saturday Review, who has studied the evidence given by the French generals before a Committee of the Assembly, says that though it is evident that M. Gambetta gave a variety of orders that were foolish, and based on a wrong appreciation of circumstances, it must still be remembered that M. Gambetta organized and conducted the campaign because there was nobody else to do it. "None of the generals believed that they could do any real good, and the schemes which each formed for doing the little good he thought possible often seemed absurd to others of their number. It was because there was one civilian who really believed in success, who formed such plans as he could, and insisted to the utmost of his power on having them tried, that France did make a four months' fight after Sedan." It is the great demerit of the French Royalists that they have shown a conspicuous incapacity for realizing this fact. They behaved admirably during the war. They set themselves to carry out M. Gambetta's orders, and they fought as heartily for the Republic which they hated as though it had been the particular Monarchy of their affections. But when the war was over, they had not magnanimity enough to remember the military side of M. Gambetta's work. They boasted, with reason, of their own zeal during the four months' resistance; they were not backward in setting up claims to the confidence of their countrymen founded on their share in that resistance; but they forget that but for M. Gambetta there would have been no resistance to share. This was why we qualified just now the statement that the opportunity which was used has left no result behind it. Military results it has not, for France was more completely beaten in January 1871, than in September, 1870. disliked him, said, "This Beaumarchais have been your ruin. However, out of conis not a poisoner: he is too droll;" and, sideration for your weakness, I allow you the again, "I persist in my belief that so gay violin and the flute, but on the express condia man cannot be of the Locusta family." tion that you never play on either till after There were innumerable occasions when, supper on working days, and never in the daytime; without hoping against hope, without and that you do not disturb the repose of our neighbours nor my own. congeniality combined with hardihood, without glowing, electrical sympathy · compelling energy, he would have been lost; when, like Charles Surface, he kept his spirits because he could not afford to part with them. All we are told of his education is, that he was sent to the College (Anglicè school) of Alfort; that, though an apt scholar, he gave slight indication of capacity, and that he was apprenticed to his father, with the view of succeeding to the business, at thirteen. This is the precise age of Cherubin, the precocious page whose heart beats at the rustling of a petticoat; and it is a plausible speculation of the biographers, that the page was copied from the life. Some verses composed by Beaumarchais at the period have been preserved, fully justifying the appellation of polisson, which is indiscriminately applied by himself to both copy and original. With an excessive fondness for music, which made him neglect his trade, he is said to have united other less innocent tastes, and his father .as 66 The conditions were signed by the culprit with the deepest sense of humiliation and apparently in good faith; for, in less than two years he had obtained that celebrity in his profession which was the utmost extent of the father's wishes or expectations in his behalf. In December, 1753, he addressed a letter (his first appearance in print) to the editor of the Mercure," in which he laid claim to the invention of a new escapement for watches, stolen from him by one Sieur Lepante, and concluded by proposing to refer the question to the Academy. The affair having made noise enough to attract the attention of the Comte de Saint-Florentin, a high official, two Commissioners were named for the purpose by the Academy; and their decision was not merely that the invention belonged to Beaumarchais, but that, for watches, it was at the same time the most perfect yet hit upon and the most difficult of execution. In the course of the year following, June 16, 1755, he alludes to this and other mechanical improvements in terms showing that he had obtained some illustrious customers by his ingenuity : — By these means I make watches as flat as they are called for, flatter than have hitherto their goodness. The first of these simplified been made, without in any respect diminishing watches is in the hands of the King. His Majesty has had it for a year, and is quite satisfied with it. strove in vain to subdue his turn for dissipation and extravagance. In one of the numerous diatribes levelled at him in the height of his celebrity, he is described turned out of house and home at eighteen, and forming one of a strolling party of jugglers. That he was banished from the paternal roof is true, but this was no more than a temporary and provisional expedient for the reformation of within these few days, of presenting a watch I have also had the honour, his morals and his ways. He was re- to Madame de Pompadour of this new conceived by friends with the connivance of the family, and when it was thought that a sufficiently impressive lesson had been conveyed he was taken back, upon conditions which show that the profligate sons of those days could not resist paternal rule with impunity. One of them ran thus: struction, the smallest ever made; it is only four lines and a half in diameter, and twothirds of a line in thickness between the plates. This letter is signed Caron fils, Horloger du Roi. In a preceding letter, July, 1754, he says that the King has ordered a facsimile of the watch made for Madame de Pompadour, and that all the lords were 4. You will give up your unlucky music following the example, each eager to be altogether, and (above all) the company of served first. Till his twenty-fourth year, young people. I will tolerate neither. Both he was content with his prosperous busi 66 The King ness as a watchmaker, and it was an inci- | Letters of Montesquieu : dent connected with it that led to his of France has no mines of gold, like the throwing it up and turning courtier, in King of Spain, his neighbour; but he the hope of contending for the prizes of has more wealth, for he draws it from the love and ambition with his customers. vanity of his subjects, more inexhaustiHe had one main requisite for success ble than mines. He has been seen unon an arena where so much depended on dertaking or sustaining great wars, havthe favour of the fair. "No sooner diding no other funds than titles of honour Beaumarchais appear at Versailles, than for sale; and, by a prodigy of human the women were struck by his lofty pride, his troops were paid, his fortified stature, his well-proportioned figure, the places supplied, his fleets equipped." regularity of his features, his clear and Ingenuity was racked to invent offices or animated complexion, his confident look; sinecures carrying rank or title; and the by that commanding air which seemed to existing ones were multiplied at will. raise him above all around, and, above There were sixteen contrôleurs clercs all, by that involuntary ardour which when Beaumarchais joined the band, glowed in him at the sight of them." A with whom he did not remain long. His shade of coxcombry did no harm and predecessor added to the obligation that there was something more than a shade, may be inferred from a sentence in one of his later pamphlets: Si j'étais un fat, s'ensuit-il que j'étais un ogre? It was not, however, to any of the great ladies that he was indebted for the first step in his advancement. The wife of one of the minor functionaries - contrôleur clerc d'office de la maison du roi, which corresponds pretty nearly with deputy clerk of the royal kitchen - hav-| ing seen him at Versailles, called at his shop in Paris under the pretence of bringing a watch to repair. She was a handsome woman of about thirty, with an old and infirm husband. They came to an understanding at a glance. The young artist requested permission to be personally the bearer of the watch when repaired. The favourable impression was rapidly improved; and the husband after complacently sanctioning their intimacy for some months, was induced to make over his office, in consideration of an annuity, to Beaumarchais, who was formally installed in it by royal brevet of November 9, 1755. already conferred by dying soon afterwards, and before the expiration of the prescribed year of mourning the widow bestowed her hand on the young Caron, who, three months after the marriage, at the beginning of 1757, assumed the name of de Beaumarchais in right of a fief belonging to his wife. What was the nature of the fief, whether it had any local existence or was a fief of pure phantasy, his biographers are confessedly unable to declare; and he must have winced at the sarcasm of his fellest adversary, Goëzman: "The Sieur Caron borrowed from one of his wives the name of Beaumarchais, which he lent to one of his sisters.” His clerkship did not confer nobility, a privilege restricted to the more highlypriced offices; and it was not until 1761, that he became regularly entitled to the coveted prefix de by the purchase for 85,ooo francs of the nominal charge of secrétaire du roi. Ironically referring to this transaction in 1773, he writes: "I must take time to consider whether I ought not to be offended at seeing you thus rummaging in the archives of my family, and Behold him now released from the recalling my ancient origin which was degrading trammels of a mechanical trade, almost forgotten. Are you aware that I with his foot on the rong-a very low can lay claim already to twenty (twelve) one, we must allow of the ladder of years of nobility: that this nobility is Court preferment. The succeeding rongs honestly mine, in good parchment, sealed were not attained or attainable by merit; with the great seal of yellow wax that it they were a mere matter of money like is not, like that of many, uncertain and the first. The explanation may be col-oral; and that no one could contest it lected from a passage in the "Persian with me, for I have the receipt (j'en ai la quittance)?" Well may M. de Loménie | you that I am very unskilful." Then tak exclaim that this j'en ai la quittance says more in its comic insolence than hundreds of books on the degradation of the aristocratic principle in France. ing the watch, he opened it, and holding it high up under pretence of examining it, let it drop. Then, with a low bow, "I warned you, Monsieur, of my extreme clumsiness.' To set the princesses against him, they were told that he was on bad terms with his father. Finding himself coldly received, and suspecting the cause, he hurried to Paris for his father, brought him to Versailles, and contrived, in showing him over the palace and grounds, to fall in repeatedly with the princesses. Their curiosity was excited, and when, leaving the old man in the ante-chamber, he came to pay his respects, one of them asked him with whom he had been walking about all day. "With my father." The reaction was complete; the father was presented on the instant, and produced the happiest effect by a burst of honest enthusiasm in favour of his Grandison son. To regain, as a gentleman by purchase, the familiar approach to royalty and royal favourites which had been permitted to the watchmaker, might have proved impracticable even for the happy audacity of Beaumarchais without one of those opportune incidents of which he was wont to make so adroit a use through life. Diderot writes in 1760: "I was invited last week by the Count Ogniski to hear a performance on the harp. I was not acquainted with this instrument." It grew into fashion by its novelty, and Beaumarchais not only learnt to play upon it, but introduced an improvement in the pedals and acquired so much reputation by his skill that Mesdames de France, the daughters of Louis XV., commanded his attendance. Pleased by his The owner of the watch made no atappearance and address, they began tempt to push matters to extremity. But taking lessons from him, and he speedily the Chevalier des C. (the full name is supbecame the manager and principal per- pressed) forced a duel on Beaumarchais, former in a family concert given every which ended fatally, and impressed him week by the princesses to the King, the with a lasting feeling of regret. They Dauphin, the queen Marie Leczinska, fought on horseback, without seconds, and their suite. With admirable tact he under the walls of the park of Meudon. adapted his manners to his company, and Beaumarchais plunged his sword into the was soon placed upon the easiest footing breast of his adversary, who fell, but on of familiarity. On one occasion the King, seeing him on the ground with the blood eager to hear him play and not wishing bubbling from the wound, he dismounted to derange the circle, pushed his own and tried to stanch it with his handkerchair towards him and forced him to take chief. "Save yourself," cried the wounded it. On another, the Dauphin, after a man, save yourself, Monsieur de Beauconversation of some length, in which marchais; you are lost if you are seen, Beaumarchais affected an excessive frank- if it is known that you have taken my ness, said of him, "He is the only man life."-"You must have help, and I go who speaks truth to me." It need hardly to seek it." Beaumarchais remounts his be added that the ladies of the Court were horse, gallops to the village of Meudon, not behindhand in giving a flattering re- procures a surgeon, tells him where to ception to the handsome amateur musician find the wounded man, puts him in the on whom royal eyes beamed favour and track, and returns to Paris to consider royal lips heaped praise; or that he imme- what is to be done. The wound was dediately became the marked object of envy, clared fatal; but the Chevalier generously scandal, and impertinence. A fine gentle- refused to declare by whom it had been man who had undertaken to disconcert the inflicted. During the eight days which minion of Mesdames, came up to him in intervened between the duel and his the centre of a numerous group, just after death, his friends and relatives could exhe had left the princesses' apartment in tort no answer from him but this: -“I full dress, and producing a very handsome have my deserts: I challenged, to please watch, said: Monsieur, as you are people for whom I have no esteem, an skilled in watch-making, have the good-honourable man who had given me no ness, I beg, to examine my watch, which is out of order."-" Monsieur," coolly replied Beaumarchais, "since I left off this business I have become very unskilful in it."-"Ah, Monsieur, do not refuse me this favour."—" Be it so, but I forewarn 66 66 offence." Whilst it was still uncertain whether the secret would be discovered and the family call for vengeance, Beaumarchais demanded the protection of Mesdames, to whom he communicated the whole of the details. They told the |