Ledru Rollin is now in his forty-fourth or forty-fifth year, having been born in 1806 or 1807. He is the grandson of the famous _Prestidigateur_, or Conjurer Comus, who, about four or five-and-forty years ago, was in the acme of his fame. During the Consulate, and a considerable portion of the Empire, Comus traveled from one department of France to the other, and is even known to have extended his journeys beyond the Rhine and the Moselle on one side, and beyond the Rhône and Garonne on the other. Of all the conjurors of his day he was the most famous and the most successful, always, of course, excepting that Corsican conjuror who ruled for so many years the destinies of France. From those who have seen that famous trickster, we have learned that the Charleses, the Alexandres, even the Robert-Houdins, were children compared with the magical wonder-worker of the past generation. The fame of Comus was enormous, and his gains proportionate; and when he had shuffled off this mortal coil it was found he had left to his descendants a very ample--indeed, for France a very large fortune. Of the descendants in a right line, his grandson, Ledru Rollin, was his favorite, and to him the old man left the bulk of his fortune, which, during the minority of Ledru Rollin, grew to a sum amounting to nearly, if not fully, £4000 per annum of our money. The scholastic education of the young man who was to inherit this considerable fortune, was nearly completed during the reign of Louis XVIII., and shortly after Charles X. ascended the throne _il commençait à faire sur droit_, as they phrase it in the _pays Latin_. Neither during the reign of Louis XVIII., nor indeed now, unless in the exact and physical sciences, does Paris afford a very solid and substantial education. Though the Roman poets and historians are tolerably well studied and taught, yet little attention is paid to Greek literature. The physical and exact sciences are unquestionably admirably taught at the Polytechnique and other schools; but neither at the College of St. Barbe, nor of Henry IV., can a pupil be so well grounded in the rudiments and humanities as in our grammar and public schools. A studious, painstaking, and docile youth, will, no doubt, learn a great deal, no matter where he has been placed in pupilage; but we have heard from a contemporary of M. Rollin, that he was not particularly distinguished either for his industry or his docility in early life. The earliest days of the reign of Charles X. saw M. Ledru Rollin an _étudiant en droit_ in Paris. Though the schools of law had been re-established during the Consulate pretty much after the fashion in which they existed in the time of Louis XIV., yet the application of the _alumni_ was fitful and desultory, and perhaps there were no two classes in France, at the commencement of 1825, who were more imbued with the Voltarian philosophy, and the doctrines and principles of Rosseau, than the _élèves_ of the schools of law and medicine.