"Every one," says Sauval, in a curious page of his _Antiquities_, "during two years found these coaches so convenient that auditors and masters of _comptes_, counsellors of the Chatelet and of the court, made no scruple to use them to go to the Chatelet or to the palace, and this caused the price to be raised one sou; even the Duke of Enghien [Footnote 48] has travelled in them. But what do I say? The king, when passing the summer at Saint-Germain, whither he had consented that these coaches should come, went in one of them, for his amusement, from the old castle, where he was staying, to the new one to visit the queen-mother. Notwithstanding this great fashion, these coaches were so despised three or four years after their establishment that no one would make use of them, and their ill success was attributed to the death of Pascal, the celebrated mathematician; it is said that he was the inventor of them, as well as the leader of the enterprise; it is moreover assured that he had made their horoscope and given them to the publicunder a certain constellation whose bad influences he knew how to turn aside." [Footnote 48: Henri-Jules de Bourbon-Condé, son of the great Condé.] We can give no description of this ancient omnibus; no drawing or engraving of it is believed to exist; but it is probable that it resembled the coaches represented in the paintings of Van der Meulan and Martin. It is impossible to attribute to any other cause than that of the arbitrary choice of passengers, the failure of an undertaking which appeared to possess every element of success. The people who _needed_ the cheap coach were debarred from the use of it; the tired artisan returning from his hard day's work; the jaded soldier hurrying to his barrack before the beat of the tattoo that recalled him had ceased; the pale seamstress with her bundle; each was refused the five sous lift, and had to foot the weary way; while the aristocracy and rich middle class enjoyed the ride, not as a social want, but as a fashionable diversion, and tired of it after a time, as fashionable people even now tire of everything fashionable. It was reserved for the marvellous nineteenth century, so fruitful in good works, to endow us with the true omnibus, that is, a carriage for the use of every one indiscriminately, in which the gentleman and the laborer, the rich man and the poor man can ride side by side. This really _popular_ conveyance has now become in all highly civilized communities so veritable a _necessity_ and habit that it can never again fall and be forgotten like its faulty forerunner, or the omnibus of two hundred years ago. ---------- New Publications. TRAVELS IN THE EAST-INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. By Albert S. Brickmose, M.A. With Illustrations. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 553. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1869.