S.—I shudder at the contemplation of the consequences of Parr’s abominable example. Well had it been for posterity if some one had killed the cent-sexagenarian at the outset of his wicked career.

K.—Horrible! that would have been Parr-icide!

DUELLING.

N.—Apropos of duelling. I hear that General F—rn—r is dead. He was the most celebrated, or, I ought to say, the most notorious duellist in France—at a time, too, when duelling was most the rage. He had been a great favourite of Napoleon’s. Having the command of a regiment, upon—I forget what occasion—he led it with such extraordinary bravery to the attack, yet, at the same time, conducted its movements with so total a want of skill and discretion, that, without attaining any good result, his men were nearly all cut to pieces, and he himself narrowly escaped with his life. As a reward for his gallantry, his Imperial master promoted him to the rank of general; but, to mark his sense of F—rn—r’s total want of “the better part of valour,” he never after entrusted him with a command. So fatal was his skill in duelling, that, when I knew him in Paris, he was under an interdiction of the police ever to fight again. The terms of one of the duels in which he had been engaged were, that the parties should fire at eight paces, and that they should alternately advance two paces till the fire of one or both of them should take deadly effect. According to this arrangement, the last advance brought the muzzle of his pistol close to his adversary’s breast—he had twice already wounded him slightly, and received one shot himself—he fired, and his adversary fell dead at his feet! This piece of butchery—for as such it must be stigmatized—having been perpetrated under sanction of the articles of the meeting, passed over without receiving any severe notice. No wonder he was an unhappy man. I met him one day at dinner. On that occasion he was boisterous in his mirth, without appearing to be gay.—Suddenly he rose and left the room. Half an hour afterwards we found him in a small boudoir at the farther end of the apartment, stretched on a sofa—writhing, groaning, and gnashing his teeth: I thought of Richard in the tent scene. I once heard him say—(I must give part of his expression in his own words, for terrible as they are, they are, at the same time, so simple, that they would lose their force in translation)—”J’ai la bras fatal! if I fire at a mark ten to one I miss it: I never miss a man.” His look and tone, as he uttered this, were as of one who should speak of an attendant demon, from whose dominion he had no power of escape.

R.—I once was witness to an instance of apathy on the part of a father—your talking of duelling reminds me of it—which is perhaps without a parallel. Walking one day beyond the Barrière de Clichy, I saw several persons assembled at a little distance from the roadside. Two gentlemen had just taken their ground—you know that these affairs are not always conducted with the same privacy on the Continent as in England—and received their pistols from the hands of their seconds. They fired at the same instant. One of the combatants, a line young man of about five-and-twenty, received his adversary’s shot in his forehead: it pierced his brain. He sprang nearly his own height from the ground, and fell dead. He was immediately carried home to his father’s house, which was at no great distance from the spot, and I went along with the crowd. He was an only son, mind you, but (so it was said) a mauvais sujet of the last degree—indeed the very quarrel which led to the duel had occurred in a gaming-house of which he was a regular frequenter. The body, which I followed into the courtyard of his father’s house, was placed on the stones. The father was sent for;—a scene was naturally to be expected;—and a scene to be remembered there was. The old gentleman came out, looked calmly upon the dead body of his son, deliberately took a pinch of snuff, tapped down the lid of the box, and, saying nothing in the world more than—Enfin!—walked in again.

S.—Père Sensible!

Ibid.

POLITICAL CHANGES

Presumptuous was the wish so patriotically conceived, and so repeatedly extolled, of that pious churchman, who exclaimed, with reference to the constitution of his native country, now no more existing as an independent state, “Esto perpetua!” The ancients, indeed, to secure what might be humanely termed a perpetuity to their laws and edicts, had them graven on brass. But what is the perpetuity even of brass itself, when opposed to the irresistible advance of Time? Even in the very infancy of the world, this question might have been answered, as it was, some few thousand years after its creation, by Old Simonides:

“Who so bold To uphold What the Lindian sage16 has told? Who will dare To compare Works of man, that fleeting are, With the smooth perennial flow Of swift rivers, or the glow Of the eternal sun, or light Of the golden orb of night? Spring renews The floweret’s hues With his sweet refreshing dews; Ocean wide Bids his tide With returning current glide; The sculptured tomb is but a toy Man may fashion, man destroy— Eternity in stone or brass? Go, go! who said it was an ass.”

Fragm. 10. BRUNCK, _ Analect_, tom. i. p. 122.

(From a striking paper entitled “Correction, Melioration, Reformation, Revolution,” in Blackwood’s Magazine.)

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 486, April 23, 1831

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