when Mazarin returned to France, he enabled him to be useful to his family.

His

Colbert's father was not forgotten by his son; he was created a baron, and placed in a situation suitable to his abilities. mother's father, Henri Passort, was made privy-councillor. The latter afterwards drew up that famous civil code known under the name of the code of 1667. To one of his brothers he gave several appointments; procured a lieutenancy in the regiment of Navarre for the second; caused the third to be appointed director of sea-prizes; and for his fourth brother, who was an abbé, he obtained a benefice worth six thousand livres. Thus Colbert, now a great man at court, shewed himself not unmindful of his relatives, and these were worthy of his esteem. The following extract from a letter written by Colbert to his patron the cardinal, proves also that he had not obliged one who was ungrateful for his favours:

'I entreat,' he says, 'that your Highness will not think me insensible to the many favours that you have lavished on me and my family, and that, by your permitting a public acknowledgment of them, I may be allowed to offer the only kind of return for them it is in my power to make.'

Colbert, created Marquis de Croissy, continued to give such proofs of rare merit and conscientiousness in all affairs confided to him by the cardinal, that the latter, when dying, said to Louis XIV.: 'I owe everything to you, sire; but I think that I acquit myself in some degree to your majesty in giving you Colbert.'

Louis XIV. appreciated Colbert's merit so highly, that in 1661 he created him comptroller-general of finance. At this era, France carried on no regular trade but that of some of its provinces with the capital, and even this trade was confined to the produce of the soil. France was still ignorant of her own resources and the mine of wealth that national industry can open. The principal roads were impassable; Colbert had them repaired, and also opened new ones. The junction of the two seas by which France is bounded, had before been proposed under Louis XIII.; Colbert had it put into execution by Riquet. He projected the Canal de Bourgogne, and established a general insurance-office for the benefit of maritime towns. He founded a chamber of commerce, where the most skilful merchants were called upon to discuss the sources of national prosperity; and not trusting to his own judgment, he addressed himself to every European court for information, not merely as to the branches of commerce, but as to the means of making that commerce flourishing. By a skilful stroke of policy, he taught the nobility that trade might be engaged in without losing caste. Nantes, St Malo, and Bordeaux are still inhabited by merchants who belong to the noblest families of their respective provinces. At this period, the English and Dutch divided between them the empire of the sea. Colbert, who had learned how much power lay in the trade between

the two worlds, disputed this empire with them. Dunkirk was in the possession of the English; he redeemed it, in 1662, from Charles II. at an expense of five million livres. The two India companies were established; a colony was sent out from Rochelle to people Cayenne; a second took possession of Canada, and laid the foundation of Quebec; a third settled in Madagascar; the same month, sixty-five large ships sailed from St Malo. The seas were infested by the corsairs of Algiers, of Tunis, and of Tripoli; the French vessels pursued the pirates, and stormed their strongholds, so that they could never afterwards see the French flag without terror. The harbours of Brest, Toulon, and Rochefort were opened, and those of Havre and Dunkirk fortified. Naval schools were established; and more than a hundred ships-of-the-line, with sixty thousand sailors, commanded by D'Estrée, Tourville, Jean-Bart, and Forbin,. gave to the French flag, hitherto unknown upon the seas, a brilliant triumph.

It was this able minister who established glass-works in the Faubourg St Antoine, which article had previously been purchased in Venice at enormous prices. In 1667, he founded, in another part of Paris, the celebrated Gobelins manufactory-an establishment in which was produced the most beautiful tapestries, and which remains till this day as one of the greatest wonders in the French metropolis.

In short, you cannot go a small distance in Paris without finding a trace of the great Colbert. The observatory, the beautiful garden of the Tuileries, laid out by Lenôtre, the triumphal-arch of St Martin's Gate, that of the Rue St Denis, that benevolent and noble institution, the Hôtel of the Invalids, many of the quays and boulevards, and several other things which we forget, attest the genius which shed such brilliancy and glory upon the age of Louis XIV.; and it is only unfortunate that that monarch, by his desire for military conquest, failed to realise for France the solid benefits of Colbert's peaceful policy. Nothing was beyond the range of this great and noble intellect-not even agriculture. Remembering the axiom of Sully, the friend and minister of Henri IV.-'Pasturage and tillage are the two nurses of the state'—he encouraged the breeding of cattle, and rendered land more easy of acquisition.

In the midst of so many labours, the fine arts, the fair dream of his early years, were not forgotten. In 1664, he founded the Academy of Painting, Architecture, and Sculpture, and the French Academy at Rome; and was also greatly instrumental in the establishment of the Academy of Science; and that of Inscriptions took its rise from an assembly held in his own house, for the purpose of furnishing designs and devices for the king's medals.

It was not until the 6th September 1683 that Colbert, who might have said with Corneille, 'I owe all my renown to myself,' terminated, at the age of sixty-four, a career no less useful than brilliant.

He left nine children, six sons and three daughters. His three daughters married the dukes of Chevereux, Aignau, and Mortemar. Such was the end of the illustrious Colbert, once a woollen-draper's apprentice, and whose first step to distinction was an act of honour and honesty.

HAPPY FAMILIES OF ANIMALS.

IN walking through London, we may occasionally observe a crowd of persons collected round a large cage, containing a variety of animals usually considered as opposite and irreconcilable in their natures such as cats, pigeons, mice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, owls, canary birds, and other small creatures. The men who exhibit these collections of animals call them Happy Families, from the perfectly good temper and joyous happiness in which they appear to dwell together.

By

What is it that produces such a harmony among different natures? Kindness. The animals, individually, are treated with great kindness by their proprietors, and trained, by the prospect of little rewards, to conduct themselves meekly towards each other. this mode of treatment, birds may be trained to perform very remarkable feats; and we shall mention a case in which a boy was enabled to excite in a strong degree the affections of these animals.

Francesco Michelo was the only son of a carpenter, who resided at Tempio, a town in the island of Sardinia; he had two sisters younger than himself, and had only attained his tenth year, when a fire, which broke out in the house of his father, reduced it to ashes, and consumed the unfortunate carpenter in the ruins. Totally ruined by this frightful event, the whole family were left destitute, and forced to implore the charity of strangers, in order to supply the urgent necessities of each succeeding day.

At length, tired of his vain attempts to support his indigent parent by the extorted kindness of others, and grieved at seeing her and his sisters pining in want before his eyes, necessity and tenderness conspired to urge him to exertion and ingenuity. He made with laths, and with some little difficulty, a cage of considerable dimensions, and furnished it with every requisite for the reception of birds; and when spring returned, he proceeded to the woods in the vicinity of Tempio, and set himself industriously to secure their nests of young. As he was skilful at the task, and of great activity, it was not long before he became tolerably successful: he climbed from tree to tree, and seldom returned without his cage being well stored with chaffinches, linnets, black-birds, wrens, ring-doves, and pigeons.

Every week Francesco and his sisters carried their little favourites to the market of Sussari, and generally disposed of those which were most attractive and beautiful.

The object of their desires was to be able to support their helpless parent; but still, all the assistance they were able to procure for her was far from being adequate to supply her numerous wants. In this dilemma Francesco conceived a new and original method of increasing his gains; necessity is the mother of invention, and he meditated no less a project than to train a young Angora cat to live harmlessly in the midst of his favourite songsters. Such is the force of habit, such the power of education, that, by slow degrees, he taught the mortal enemy of his winged pets to live, to drink, to eat, and to sleep in the midst of his little charges, without once attempting to devour or injure them. The cat, whom he called Bianca, suffered the little birds to play all manner of tricks with her; and never did she extend her talons, or offer to hurt her companions.

He went even further: for, not content with teaching them merely to live in peace and happiness together, he instructed the cat and the little birds to play a kind of game, in which each had to learn its own part: and after some little trouble in training, each performed with readiness the particular duty assigned to it. Puss was instructed to curl herself into a circle, with her head between her paws, and appear buried in sleep: the cage was then opened, and the little tricksy birds rushed out upon her, and endeavoured to awaken her by repeated strokes of their beaks; then dividing into two parties, they attacked her head and her whiskers, without the gentle animal once appearing to take the least notice of their gambols. At other times she would seat herself in the middle of the cage, and begin to smooth her fur, and purr with great gentleness and satisfaction; the birds would sometimes even settle on her back, or sit like a crown upon her head, chirruping and singing as if in all the security of a shady wood.

The sight of a sleek and beautiful cat seated calmly in the midst of a cage of birds, was so new and unexpected, that when Francesco produced them at the fair of Sussari, he was surrounded instantly by a crowd of admiring spectators. Their astonishment scarcely knew any bound when they heard him call each feathered favourite by its name, and saw it fly towards him with alacrity, till all were perched contentedly on his head, his arms, and his fingers.

Delighted with his ingenuity, the spectators rewarded him liberally; and Francesco returned in the evening with his little heart swelling with joy, to lay before his mother a sum of money which would suffice to support her for many months.

This ingenious boy next trained some young partridges, one of which became exceedingly attached to him. This partridge, which he called Rosoletta, on one occasion brought back to him a beautiful goldfinch, that had escaped from its cage, and was lost in an

adjoining garden. Francesco was in despair at the loss, because it was a good performer, and he had promised him to the daughter of a lady from whom he had received much kindness. On the sixth morning after the goldfinch had escaped, Rosoletta, the tame and intelligent partridge, was seen chasing the truant bird before her, along the top of the linden-trees towards home. Rosoletta led the way by little and little before him, and at length getting him home, seated him in apparent disgrace in a corner of the aviary, whilst she flew from side to side in triumph for her success.

Francesco was now happy and contented, since by his own industry and exertions he was enabled to support his mother and sisters. Unfortunately, however, in the midst of all his happiness, he was suddenly torn from them by a very grievous accident. He was one evening engaged in gathering a species of mushroom very common in the southern countries of Europe; but not having sufficient discrimination to separate those which are nutritious from those that are poisonous, he ate of them to excess, and died in a few days, along with his youngest sister, in spite of every remedy which skill could apply. During the three days of Francesco's illness, his birds flew incessantly round and round his bed! some lying sadly upon his pillow, others flitting backwards and forwards above his head, a few uttering brief but plaintive cries, and all taking scarcely any nourishment.

The death of Francesco shewed in a remarkable manner what affections may be excited in animals by a course of gentle treatment. Francesco's birds appeared to be sensible of the loss of a benefactor; but none of his feathered favourites manifested on his decease such real and disconsolate grief as Rosoletta. When poor Francesco was placed in his coffin, she flew round and round it, and at last perched upon the lid. In vain they several times removed her; she still returned, and even persisted in accompanying the funeral procession to the place of graves. During his interment she sat upon an adjoining cypress, to watch where they laid the remains of her friend; and when the crowd had departed, she forsook the spot no more, except to return to the cottage of his mother for her accustomed food. While she lived, she came daily to perch and to sleep. upon the turret of an adjoining chapel which looked upon his grave; and here she lived, and here she died, about four months after the death of her beloved master.