IF we examine closely the records of the past, we shall find that the principal source of the public morality, or vice, springs in most cases from the acts or institutions of the government; and this was especially remarkable at the commencement of the seventeenth century, in France. The youth of Louis XIII.; the feebleness of his character, even in advanced age; his incapacity, and that of his regent mother, gave rise to all kinds of imperfections, and opened the career to excesses of feudality, and all sorts of lawless ambitions. Evil, departing from this centre, spread amongst all classes of people: the organization of the clergy affected the position of the laity; and the intrigues of the Count de Soissons, Condé, and others, favoured the general corruption. Things stood thus when, one fine spring morning, two horsemen in military attire were slowly traversing one of the large tracts of forest land which then stretched between Compiègne and Beauvais. [_At this point search the British Museum, and get up the costumes from pictures. The "low countries" is effective._] THE PSEUDO-GRAPHIC, OR WEAK BOZ-AND-WATER. Any one whom business or pleasure has taken across Hungerford Bridge may have observed, on the right hand, as he reached the Lambeth side of the river, a curious tumbledown-looking counting-house, something between a travelling caravan and the city barge, elevated on some rickety piles, with a rusty balcony projecting from its river front, and without any visible means of access or egress, except down the chimney, or along a rotten row of spouts, barely fastened to its decaying woodwork. It is a dismal, melancholy place. The glass has been untouched for years, and is coated with dirt, although through it may be seen files of old dust-covered papers, hanging amidst festooned cobwebs and corroded inkstands, with stumps of pens still sticking in the holes. Everything tells of broken hearts and ruined fortunes; of homes made desolate by misplaced confidence, and long, long lawsuits, which outlived those who started them, and were left—with nothing else, to the poor and struggling heirs! It was a miserable November evening: the passengers were glooming through the haze of the feeble lights, choked by the river fog, like dim spectres; and a melancholy drip fell, in measured plashings, from every penthouse and coping, as two figures slowly pursued their way towards this dreary place, through some of the old and tortuous streets that lie between the York Road and the river side. [_The heroes (as the case may be) being thus introduced, the author can go ahead with his plot, if he has one._] [Illustration] THE TOPOGRAPHICAL, OR TRANSATLANTIC.