Our own impression is, that this Rheea fibre, like flax and cotton, might soon create for itself in this country an entirely distinct, highly valued, and nationally important branch of manufacture; that it might supersede not only pure hemp, but cotton and flax also, for many purposes and fabrics, thus establishing a new home-industry, providing a new variety of employment for our people, giving us greater independence as regards raw materials, and producing for us at the same time new articles of commercial interchange with the world at large. The economical history of the long-famed Chinese grass cloth, which is made from this fibre alone, goes far to justify these anticipations.

To supersede the coarser hemp which Russia sends us for the manufacture of ropes, India offers us what is called Bon Rheea, or Jungle Rheea, which Dr. Royle considers to be only a wild form of the snowy nettle, though possibly it may be another species. This plant grows wild and common in many places among the hills and forests, and is also cultivated largely by some of the hill tribes. Its fibre has been proved, in ropes, to be stronger than that of the best Petersburgh hemp, or than that of any other fibrous plant grown in India, with the exception of the common hemp grown at Kote Kangra, on the Himalayas, to which allusion has already been made. It would not be difficult either for the East India Company or for private mercantile agents, travelling among the people, to induce the natives of the provinces in which this wild plant most abounds to prepare it in any quantity for the market.

Dr. Royle mentions at least half a dozen other Indian nettles, some of them possessed of most formidable stinging properties, of 6 to 4. That is to say, that where 5 rupees are now paid for bullock carriage, 3 rupees only would be paid for carts; and where the bullocks took 6 days the carts would take but 4; such, at least, is the estimate deduced from information given by the best informed local traders and carriers.' (Culture and Commerce of Cotton, p. 402.) *We quote again, for the sake of comparison with the Rheea fibre, the numbers given in a preceding page. Similar untwisted strands (selvages) of the several fibres broke with

lbs.

Wild Rheen (Assam)

Hemp from Kote Kangra bore 400 lbs. without breaking. (P. 375.)

which are more or less extensively employed for the production of strong and durable fibres. But for an account of these we must refer the reader to the work itself. Of immediately available fibres, the growth of our Indian possessions, we have shown that there exists a great abundance, and that of others which in a few years may become important in Indian and British markets and manufactories, a still greater number is placed within our easy reach. There is no reason to despond, therefore, as to the final result of even prolonged hostilities with Northern Europe, in so far as the supply of raw fibrous materials for our looms and rope-yards is concerned. There is hope rather, that if sufficiently prolonged, they may in this sense be productive of great and permanent good, both to India and to ourselves. gencies like the present by awakening inquiry discover dormant riches-by prompting to exertion, develope neglected resources and give new employment to idle and impoverished populations - by rousing governments they stimulate to the improvement of old, and the creation of new facilities for transit-by calling forth ingenuity and thoughtfulness on every hand, they overcome what had been regarded as great difficulties, and thus in the end not only replace scarcity by abundance, but permanently cheapen what before had always been comparatively dear, and render future scarcities impossible.

Emer

For pecuniary and other efforts to be made in the way of encouragement in India, present circumstances are peculiarly favourable. The prices of fibrous materials are unusually high, and if the war be continued they are likely to remain so for an indefinite period. And even should peace favour us by its happy return, still the withdrawal of money advances on the part of British merchants will prevent the return of Russian produce to its usual prices for some years. According to the united testimony of numerous Indian authorities similar advances of English capital, judiciously made, would, in the interval, fill our markets with the numerous raw materials of Eastern growth. The political consequences of such a change would be most important, and even more durable than its immediate commercial effect. The present war has interrupted the peculiar commercial relations which had existed for three centuries between Great Britain and Russia, and its result will probably be to bring into the market of Europe an abundant and economical substitute for the natural produce of Russia, the growth of our own dominions, stimulated by freedom of trade and by the progress of India in facilities of communication and the production of wealth.

ART. III.-Souvenirs Contemporains d'Histoire et de Littérature. By M. VILLEMAIN, Membre de l'Institut. 2 vols. 2 vols. Paris: 1854 and 1855.

No

To book has of late made a greater sensation in French society than M. Villemain's Souvenirs. Many reasons will account for this interest: the public were naturally curious for a work, which was to break a silence of several years; the men who during the last quarter of a century had taken a part in the politics of their country, were anxious to obtain information upon the period immediately preceding that of their own activity; whilst to those of an older date, the name of M. de Narbonne (the hero of M. Villemain's first volume) promised a memorial of their own times; lastly, the mass, included in the term general readers,' were instinctively assured of the satisfaction in store for it from this remarkable publication. But to make our readers fully aware of the various bearings of the volumes now before us, it will be as well to recall summarily to their memories the principal occurrences of M. Villemain's

career.

Born in Paris at the end of 1791, the first recollections of Abel François Villemain did not, as was the case with too many of his older contemporaries, revert to the revolutionary saturnalia with such vivacity as to make him identify despotism with security, or offer up hymns to the subtle Cæsar whose victory over anarchy was the death-blow of freedom. When the boy whose fame was to be so precocious, began to receive the first impression of public events, the liberator had already grown into a tyrant, and the hero of the 18th Brumaire was far advanced upon that fearful path where each step, if indeed it led to glory, cost the blood of the thousands who were to have been the rising generation of France. The amount of oppression against which M. Villemain was to rebel became manifest years later, and, after his intelligence had been from boyhood to early youth gradually hoarding up treasures of antipathy against the system which hoped in silence and darkness to stifle France, his twentieth year was destined to witness that monstrous and most wilfully incurred calamity-the Russian campaign of 1812.

From this early epoch of M. Villemain's life, dates also the first dawning of his fame. In 1811, M. de Fontanes, then Grand-Master of the University, named him Professor of Rhetoric at the Collège Charlemagne, and the Parisian youth, so little disposed to respect, bowed-awestruck as may be said

by his superiority-to the lessons of this boy of nineteen. The following year, the Academie Française proposed for its prize essay the panegyric of Montaigne, and the youthful Professor gave for a time his whole attention to what is to this day accounted one of the most elegant compositions in the French language. He gained the prize, but, in our opinion, it is needless to add the fact, vastly vaunted by some biographers, namely, that the famous Éloge de Montaigne was written in a week. Two years after the Panegyric of Montaigne, the Academy, by the proposal of an Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Criticism,' furnished M. Villemain with a subject that really seemed made on purpose for him. The highest distinction was his for the second time, and he may be fairly said, in the early days of the Restoration, to have been the literary idol of the hour.

But, if his academic fame could go no further, there was another point on which both the adversaries and partisans of M. Villemain were less assured. To what party, or rather to what nuance (for slight variations of tints were counted then), to what nuance of party did he belong? A short time sufficed to show. In 1816 the prize of eloquence was again awarded to the writer of the Essay on Montaigne, for a Panegyric on Montesquieu; and it has been said of M. Villemain, that in youth he was as surely the perpetual laureate of the Academy as he has since become officially its perpetual secretary. The Eloge de Montesquieu, however, was more than a literary achievement, and from this time forward no doubt any longer existed of the political opinion to which M. Villemain belonged. The moderate liberals, the men at whose head stood Royer Collard, felt that a new champion was added to their ranks, and their influence rewarded him with the Professorship of Eloquence at the Sorbonne.

With this nomination began the real and active influence of M. Villemain upon the literature of France. To have a notion of what enthusiasm, grounded upon personal esteem and unlimited admiration, may arrive at, it will suffice to talk with any of the men who at the period of these celebrated lessons were just expanding into intellectual life. From all parts of the country, from towns and provinces, crowds flocked to listen. The young Professor was enabled, by a combination of qualities peculiar to himself, to wield almost unexampled authority over the public mind, and whilst the French youth hailed in him the courageous liberal who denounced as a crime every exclusion of foreign literature and of original genius, the most pedantic of the classical school could not choose but admire a correct

ness of diction, a loftiness of style, that at once proclaimed him a disciple of the greatest writers of the siècle de Louis XIV.

M. Villemain is the first literary critic of modern France,her first æsthetiker, to use a German term, -and his earliest years, as we have shown, were devoted (especially between 1814 and 1825), to raising the art whereby the creations of genius are analysed and explained to the student to the height of a philosophical science. From 1825, after the death of Louis XVIII, to the fall of the monarchy in 1830, another aspect is observable in M. Villemain's teaching, as in that of most of his colleagues of the Sorbonne. France,' says the eloquent Professor in a chapter of his Souvenirs, was already in possession of a vast number of Reforms, obtained in the midst of those controversies, whether speculative or practical, which are the moral life of nations. In ten years of Represen*tative Government (incomplete in the outset), she had reco'vered from the greatest disasters that the fatal necessities of the 'spirit of conquest ever entailed upon a country, and she had arrived at a very high degree of well-being and liberty combined. There was in France at this moment (1826-1829) considerable happiness with less security; much material prosperity and a singular agitation of the public mind."

This is the very state of all others which most favours the absorption by the political spirit of whatever the realm of Intellect contains. Poetry, eloquence,-whether of the schools or the bar,-art of all kinds, the stage, and society itself, become the conductors of opposition as surely as parliamentary debates. Allusions are seized hold of at every turn, and often even denounced or applauded, as the case may be, where they were wholly unintended. In the history of all nations such epochs have served to bring out tenfold the natural talent; to increase tenfold the merited influence of those teachers whose office it is to awaken in the attentive youth around them the deep and genuine sense of the sublime. At such periods there mingles with the study of the great achievements and great thoughts of the past, a sort of present life, which animates and inspires both master and disciple; and he who before was but the priest of a Hero-worship, conceives the hope of becoming a hero himself! To be doing is man's natural impulse, and by as much as he is the more active, by so much is he the healthier and the better. Reduce a noble intelligence to the mere duty of recording dead events, of commenting upon words without application to his own immediate sphere of existence, you interest the brain only, and draw forth the qualities which are after all but necessary to the composition of a clever and methodical archivist; but imbue