The Duke of Alençon watched anxiously from his window, which dominated the outer court of the Louvre, for the appearance of that form, enveloped in his cloak; and when he saw La Mole pass unchallenged the gate leading without, he turned away from the window with an exclamation of satisfaction. A minute afterwards the agents of the Queen-mother entered his apartment. THE SCOTTISH HARVEST. The approach of winter is always a serious time. When the fields are cleared, and the produce of our harvest has been gathered into the yard and the barn, we begin to hold a general count and reckoning with the earth, and to calculate what amount of augmented riches we have drawn from the bosom of the soil. When the investigation proves satisfactory, the result is but slightly recorded. Our ancestors, with just piety and gratitude, were accustomed to set apart whole days for thanksgiving to the Almighty Being who had blessed the labours of the year; we--to our shame be it said--have departed from the reverent usage. We take a good season as if it were no more than our appointed due--a bad one comes upon us with all the terrors of a panic. But there are seasons frequently occurring which vary between the one and the other extreme; and these are they which give rise to the most discussion. It is unfortunately the tactics, if not the interest, of one great party in the nation, to magnify every season of scarcity into a famine for the purpose of promoting their own cherished theories. A bad August and an indifferent September are subjects of intense interest to your thorough-paced corn-law repealer; not that we believe the man has an absolute abstract joy in the prospect of coming scarcity--we acquit him of that--but he sees, or thinks he sees, a combination of events which, erelong, must realize his darling theory, and his sagacity, as a speculative politician, is at stake. Therefore, he is always ready, upon the slightest apprehension of failure, to demand, with most turbulent threat, the immediate opening of the ports, in the hope that, once opened, they may never be closed again.