punish her, it having been proved that she had only gone to matins. “Such had been the fate of that beauteous girl! The earth already covered her, before she had even seen the light. That stealthy walk along the dreary street, amid the cold and pelting rain, was all the experience she had earned to the grave, of the world she had longed so ardently to see; and, when the _seminariste_ thought on the story of her life, and compared it with his own, he felt that he no longer had a right to complain. He had spent his childhood at least amid fresh air and free exercise wholesome to the body, and also amid the rude kindness and overwhelming affection wholesome to the mind; while the poor child whose dying grasp he almost fancied that he could still feel, had never been allowed to roam beyond the gloomy precincts of her prison-house. With her innocence and loveliness, she had been suffered to grow like some rank weed which springs amid the crevice of the pavement stone of the foul jail-yard, and struggles but in vain to catch a gleam of sunshine or a breath of air, until, wearied with the effort, it sinks back dead into the crevice from which it sprung. “This event made a great impression upon M. de Talleyrand, and sobered him for some time after its occurrence. He took to studying more diligently than hitherto, and shone among his competitors as brilliantly as he had already done at Louis le Grand. His speeches at the conferences which were held every month at Saint Sulpice, were judged to be masterpieces of reasoning and logic, and were thought worthy of being preserved among the records of the _seminaire_—an immense honour for so young a man. He was now seventeen: it was judged advisable that he should go to finish his theological studies ‘_en Sorbonne_,’ and it was during the short interval which elapsed between leaving the _seminaire_ and entering the _Sorbonne_, that he first lodged at home. Note this when ye talk of the ‘good old times:’—the Prince de Talleyrand was seventeen years of age _before he had slept a single night beneath his father’s roof_! Well might Jean Jacques thunder forth his maledictions upon the fine ladies, the ‘_marâtres sans entrailles_’ of his day!” My friend here paused, to my great sorrow, with all the self-complacency of a professed lion exhibitor, to descant upon the beauty of the landscape as seen from the point at which we had arrived. Of course there were the well-known wonders familiar to all natural-beauty-hunters ever since the world began—the seeing into so many departments—the commanding a view of so many parishes, but which always worry me to death. “What is that ruin?” said I, pointing to a pile of rubbish which lay close at hand.