From The Pall Mall Gazette. RUSSIA, PRUSSIA, AND THE POLES. Itime it is stated that the Count declared the Baltic provinces "would be of no use THE newspapers of Russia and Prussia, to Germany, and only bring on her the which up to the beginning of the present eternal hostility of Russia," adding, with a war were never tired of repeating that the characteristic touch of sarcasm, that "the Polish nationality is a political nuisance the Baltic barons would probably not like the extirpation of which would be a benefit to Prussian Constitution with Lettish and the world, seem now to think that the Esthonian electors." As to Poland, the Poles may be of some use after all. A Gazette reports Count Bismarck to have short time ago we published an analysis observed that Germany would go hand in of a remarkable article in the Moscow Ga- hand with Russia. These reassuring statezette which recommended Russia to seek ments do not, however, seem to meet with the assistance of the Poles for its protec- much credit in the Russian press, which is tion against Prussia; and since then sev- pretty unanimous in demanding more maeral Berlin papers have seriously main- terial guarantees for the protection of tained that the only real friend of the Russia from German aggression. Sudelmi Poles in Europe is Germany, and that it is Wiestnik, a paper the general tone of which to her alone that they must look for the is very friendly to Germany, proposes that recovery of their independence. If we are Russia should be compensated for Prussia's to believe the Berlin correspondent of the acquisitions by the cession to her of Memel Kray, a Polish paper published at Cracow, and the right bank of the Niemen — a sugCount Bismarck wishes to persuade the gestion which has raised a storm of indig Poles that he holds the same view. This nation in the German press. A Hamburg correspondent quotes a conversation be- journal, the Borsenhalle, expresses itself tween the Count and a Pole of Galicia, in very strongly on this proposal, declaring which the former is represented as having that it would be impossible for Germany stated that a war between Russia and to cede an inch of German soil to any forPrussia is only a question of time; that eign Power. To this the Moscow Gazette "after securing her position on the Rhine, retorts that the only reason why Russia Prussia must take up the cause of the Bal- refrains from asking for any such acquisitic provinces;" and that, "in order to be tions is that she does not wish to give an free to labour at her internal development, example of a policy of conquest, which Prussia must re-establish Poland as a sepa- should now be given up by all civilized rate State between herself and Russia." nations. This is certainly quite a new According to a letter in the St. Petersburg sentiment for a Russian paper, and is the Gazette, however, Count Bismarck tells the more creditable to the Moscow Gazette, as Russians a very different story. The Ga it is only a few months ago that it pubzette of the 8th inst. publishes, from a lished the famous articles of General Fasource whose trustworthiness it guaran- dieyeff, openly urging Russia to make war tees, a report of a conversation between on Austria as a preliminary to the acquisithe Count and "a Russian citizen." This tion of Constantinople. EFFECTS OF THE POISON OF HEMP. PROFES- | seconds. These periods became longer and SOR H. C. WOOD describes in the Proceedings more frequent, accompanied by an oppressive of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and intense feeling of impending death. Even vol. xi., No. 82, the effects of extract of hemp the next day, after a night's sleep, these paroxon the system. The dose taken was an ounce ysms returned, and were attended with partial and a half of the powdered leaves, heated with anaesthesia. The plants from which the extract hot alcohol, and evaporated, making from 20 was made were grown in Kentucky, and were to 30 grains of the poison. No effect was felt of the same kind as that so largely used in for about two hours and a half, when the mind India for producing a sort of intoxication. This was suddenly thrown into a trance-like state, Indian hemp has been thought to differ from the which was followed by great hilarity, and the plant grown in Europe for the sake of its fibre, appearance of alcoholic intoxication. The pulse but Prof. Wood believes them to be of the same then reached 120, and afterwards increased to species; but the summers in England are not 136, and spells of partial oblivion and uncon- sufficiently warm to produce any quantity of the sciousness succeeded, apparently of enormous peculiar resinous body in which resides the narduration, but in reality lasting at first not many cotic and intoxicating property. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. LIFE'S PHILOSOPHY. A LITTLE maiden, frank and fair, And chubby feet that wandered bare,— I bade the bairn come one day, I bade her tell the reason why, O ye who court the thinker's mood. More of Life's "quiddit "? STAGES OF LIFE. LAYD in my quiet bed, in study as I were, I saw within my troubled head, a heape of thoughtes appere: And eury thought did shew so liuely in myne eyes, That now I sighed, and then I smilde, as cause of thought dyd ryse. I saw the lytle boy in thought, how oft that he Did wish yf God, to scape the rod, a tall yongman to be. The yongman eke that feles his bones with paines opprest, How he would be a rich olde man, to lyue and lye at rest. The rich oldman that sees his end draw on THE lenger lyfe, the more offence : The shorter lyfe, lesse count I fynde : Come gentle death, the ebbe of care, The ebbe of care, the flood of lyfe, The flood of lyfe, the ioyfull fare, The ioyfull fare, the end of strife. The end of strife, that thing wishe I: Wherefore come death, and let me dye. Tottel's Miscellany, 1557. From the Contemporary Review. PAST SIEGES OF PARIS. France-the prowess displayed by Eudes in defending Paris against the fierce onslaughts of the Normans for four successive years prepared the way for the establishment of the dynasty, which was destined to give to France such kings as Louis le Gros, Philippe Auguste, Saint Louis, Philippe le Bel, Louis XI., and Henry IV., the real founders of French unity. The unification of France and its formation into a separate nationality com "PARIS," says Montaigne, "a mon cœur dèz mon enfance, et m'en est advenu comme des choses excellentes. Plus j'ay vu depuis d'autres belles villes, plus la beauté de celle cy peult et gaigne sur mon affection. Je l'ayme tendrement jusques à ses verrues et à ses tâches. Je ne suis François que par cette grande cité, grande en peuples, grande en félicité de son assiette, mais surtout grande et incom- menced at the siege of Paris by the Northparable en variété et diversité de commodités, la gloire de la France, et l'un des plus nobles ornements du monde. Dieu en chasse loing nos divisions." One would have hardly expected the sober Montaigne to have felt the witchery of Paris to this affectionate extent more than three centuries ago. Yet the city has ever possessed a strange fascination for its guests and indwellers, and that since the days of the Emperor Julian. This is no moment, however, for discussing from an æsthetic point of view the attractions and beauties of the capital, which are indisputable she is now en toilette de guerre, ready to launch and to receive the thunderbolt of war, and subject to perils and privations which come but rarely in their lives on any cities, and which some, like our own capital, have never known, and perhaps will never know. It seems more suitable to the crisis to endeavour to see what figure she makes in history at the different periods at which a calamity like that she has now to endure has fallen upon her. A review of the past sieges of Paris will moreover place us in contact with some of the most salient points of the history of France, at moments when her fortunes were being cast anew into the crucible of destiny. Leaving aside the attack on the Celtic island Lutetia by Labienus, the lieutenant of Cæsar, and the assaults of Frankish, Burgundian, and other Teutonic invaders, the first siege of Paris which we have to notice was as historically significant as any; since it was owing to the energy and valour displayed therein by Eudes Capet, Comte de Paris and Duke of France, that the Capetian race became distinguished above all the other noble families of men. The nation then first clearly became conscious of its call to a separate national existence. The unwieldy empire of the Carlovingian dynasty, of which France was a mere dependent member, was already in decay and going to pieces. The last Carlovingian Emperor, Charles le Gros, was engaged too much in Italian politics, and his attention too much distracted by the demands upon it of the other constituent parts of his empire, to take sufficient care for this portion of his dominions which were year by year overrun and ravaged by the Northmen, and the necessity of a national and local dynasty for the protection of its interests became daily more evident. Years had passed by since Charlemagne, with prophetic misgiving, beheld the first Danish fleet, and had a strange suspicion that the sons and grandsons of these sea-pirates would take terrible revenge on the nations of the West and South for the interminable warfare which he had carried on against the worshippers of Odin. Since then the fearless and ferocious Danish Jarls had carried terror with their dragon prows and their black sails into every part of the Carlovingian empire where the rivers were navigable to their keels. They had mounted the Rhine and the Moselle up to Cologne and Trèves. They had devastated Nantes and ascended the Loire, and the districts of the Garonne also knew them too well. The Seine had for years before their last great siege been a common highway for the Danish rovers. The monks of the great abbey Jamieges had habitually been in the habit of hoarding up a store of treasure from their revenues to buy off the merciless ravages with Danegelt, as they passed under their towers; and Rouen had been sacked again light by excavations, and the discovery of and again by the fierce Vikings. Many skeletons under the soil in good preservawere the tales told of the deeds of daring tion, evidently of bodies buried in haste, and ferocity done on Frankish ground by made it presumable that these were the such men as Jarl Osker, Regner Lodbrok, victims of some one of the many Danish Biorn Ironsides, his son, and Hastings, inroads up the Seine. The merciless amid the fierce laughter of the wild Northmen, with cold-blooded calculation, seamen over the mead, when the wild slew men, women, and children on their light of the blazing logs turned to a way, in order to paralyze resistance with ruddier hue the weather-beaten faces of the terror they struck into the populathe listeners, as they sat at their long tions. They strung up the bodies of tables in winter in the fir-built halls of Den- labourers on the trees by the side of the mark and Norway. On one such occasion Seine in batches of six, seven, and a dozen Regner Lodbrok boasted before Red Eric, at a time, and slew so many of the inhabthe Ober-king, of his having mounted the itants that the Seine rolled down shoals Seine and put Paris to ransom; and upon of corpses, and the islands of the river Eric's expressing some doubts as to the were white with the bones of the natives truth of his story, he sent two of his men who had fallen beneath their battle-axes, out of the hall to bring in before the and were swept along by the current of drinkers the iron bar of the gate of Paris, the river till they were caught on the and a carved larchen rafter of St. Ger- shores of the many eyots which rise from main-des-Prés, which he had carried off on the bosom of the Seine. It was Charles his last visit. Indeed, under the effete the Bald, who himself had not ventured to Carlovingian rule the defences of the island attack the Danes from his strong position city had fallen into rnin, and Paris was no at St. Denis, during the capture of Paris more than an open city, from which the in 861, and was even fain to buy off their priests, soldiers, and inhabitants fled at retreat by a payment of heavy Danegeld, news of the approach of the invaders. In who restored the defences of Paris. the faubourgs, indeed, the strong, castellated monasteries were more capable of resisting attack than the city itself. On the north side was the monastery of St. Germain-l'Auxerrois, and the yet stronger monastery of St. Denis, from which, however, the monks fled on more than one occasion, carrying off with them to Rheims the body of St. Denis. On the south side there was the once powerful monastery of St. Germain-des-Prés, where Clovis and Clotilde lay buried, whose effigies were on each side the portal of the church. There were also the no less celebrated convents of St. Victor and St. Geneviève. The Faubourg St. Germain, at that time, was the most remarkable part of the environs of Paris, containing not only those great monasteries, visible from afar, but the great hall of the Roman Palais des Thermes, then still standing, and the vasta ruina, as it was called later, of the Roman amphitheatre, also rising to a lofty height. During the past year the substructures of this vast edifice, which had been great tower known afterwards as Le forgotten for centuries, were brought to Grand Châtelet, had to withstand, too, Charles the Bald rebuilt the two bridges which the Danes had broken down, and which, being constructed on strong piles, prevented the ascent of their galleys up the Seine, and from so assaulting the island city on its east side, and he repaired and fortified anew the towers on the borders of the river. The two bridges of Charles the Bald, uniting the city to the northern and southern banks, were fortified further by towers, as têtes des ponts on the farther side from the city, and were in later times known as the Petit Pont and the Pont au Change. These bridges and towers of Charles the Bald did good service in the celebrated four years' siege of the city by the Danes in 885, under Sigurd or Siegfried, in the days of Charles the Fat. Many were the assaults made by their galleys and their fire-ships on the Pons Pictus, as the Petit Pont was called by the old monkish chroniclers, in order to destroy it and surround the island city. The outer towers of the bridges and the |