the object, and concludes his remarks, made in a tone of dignified and chastened indignation, with the following striking passage:—“The steamer thus placed at my disposal has made me more enemies than _Antony_ and _Monte-Christo_, which is saying not a little. It was in 1823 or 1824, I believe, that Sir Walter Scott, being then in bad health, expressed a wish to make a voyage to Italy. The English admiralty placed its finest frigate at the disposal of the author of _Ivanhoe_; and England applauded, and the two houses of parliament applauded, and the very newspapers clapped their hands approvingly. And it was well done; for, for the first time perhaps, the flag with the three leopards was saluted in every port of the Mediterranean by the enthusiastic acclamations of the people. Were those acclamations for the flag, or for the man of genius it sheltered? for the unknown captain of the frigate, whose name I never heard, or for Sir Walter Scott? True, I may be told that I am not Sir Walter Scott; but to this I reply, that it is the great misfortune of living men in France not to know what they are, so long as they _are_ living.” How very good is this quiet assertion of merit and anticipation of posthumous appreciation by an ungrateful country. “The steamer,” continues the possible future rival of Scott, “was granted me—be it as a matter of favour, or as an act of justice; and Government consented to expend for me some sixteen thousand francs’ worth of coal. It is right the world should know that this voyage, which caused such an outcry, cost the Government sixteen thousand francs. Just half what it cost me!” A paltry eight hundred napoleons! Can France regret it, when applied to the service of her brightest literary ornament? Let her read the _Véloce_, and take shame for her shabbiness. Astride upon his fiery charger, the giant commenced his cruise. Need we say that all eyes were upon him as he boarded the steamer, and that he took by assault the hearts of the entire ship’s company, whom he seized an early opportunity to convince that his skill was as great with the fowling-piece as with the pen. “The Véloce was surrounded by a flock of sea-fowl; on approaching the vessel, desirous to give our future companions a specimen of my dexterity, I fired my two barrels at a brace of gulls, both of which fell. The yawl pulled to pick them up; and, after this brilliant feat, we proceeded triumphantly to the steamer.” This is the first and least considerable of a series of “brilliant feats” of the same kind, recorded by M. Dumas of himself in the pages of _Le Véloce_. At Tangiers, his first landing-place in Africa, he goes out shooting, and encounters an Arab, the first he has seen. This meeting furnishes a chapter—a sort of parody of scenes in Scott and Cooper, the parts of Robin Hood and Leatherstocking by M. Alexandre Dumas. He has just shot a small bird, when the Arab appears and doubts his having killed it on the wing.