bright lying on the turf. I picked it up. It proved to be a rosewood sandwich-box, well filled, which some of the party had dropped in their haste. Delight filled my whole being, and I proposed to Berthe an instant demolition of its contents. She would not consent, however. "There was no knowing," she said, "how long we may be detained on the island, and we had better reserve our supplies." How I admired her selfdenial, and cursed her economy! I had nothing for it but to submit, and place the box in my pocket. We reached the ruin. Night had now begun to fall, and I busied myself in making a couch of dried grass and ferns, on which Berthe might lie. We were well sheltered in the angle of two walls, so topped with ivy that it almost formed a roof. I was fortunately a smoker, and generally carried allumettes in my pocket. With the aid of these, and some dry sticks and withered grass, I managed to make a bright flame in the old fireplace, which had not been warmed for centuries, and the clear red blaze gave us new spirits. The sandwich-box was placed carefully away in a crevice of the wall by Berthe's desire, to be withdrawn only in the greatest extremity. She, wearied by the excitement of the day's events, soon forgot all her perils in slumber on her bed of ferns, while I, wretch that I was, sat brooding by the fire, tortured as no man was ever tortured before.

Hour after hour passed, and still I sat there at the mercy of the fiend. Hunger unappeasable, devouring hunger, racked me like a cutting wind. I now, for the first time, began to realize that stage of starvation at which men will eat their own limbs. A horrid attraction drew my eyes every now and then upon the crevice where the sandwich-box lay, and as often I endeavored to subdue the base inclinations which I felt rising within me. Another hour passed, and I felt as if I was going mad. Visions of delicious banquets, such as shipwrecked sailors see in their death agonies, flitted before me. My brain whirled, and I scarce knew what I did. I looked at Berthe. She was fast asleep. I stamped heavily on the ground, but the hollow echoes did not wake her. There was nothing to fear from her. Obeying an impulse as irresistible as a stream of lava, I rose softly, and stole to the crevice where the sandwichbox lay concealed. "One would never be missed, andand-" I took the box from the wall, and opened it. At the sight of food my impulse flared up uncontrollably. I lost all command of myself, and, before I could even reflect, I was devouring it all, with the fury of a wild animal. I had eaten it all.

Remorse was just taking possession of me, when I heard a slight rustling sound behind me. I turned, and saw Berthe sitting up on her fern-leaf couch, gazing at me with eyes filled with indignation and scorn. She did not speak, but her glance was more killing than anything she could have uttered. Flinging down the box, which I still held, and imploring a wild curse on myself, I rushed out of the ruin, and spent the remainder of the night wandering distractedly about the island, and meditating suicide. The first gray of dawn saw a man battling with the foam that still, though in a less degree, crested the rocky bridge. It was Raoul, laden with some refreshments for Berthe. Though the sea had greatly subsided, there was still some peril in the passage, and I prayed devoutly that some gigantic billow might sweep him off. He passed in safety, however, and entered the ruin. I dared not follow. In a short time he emerged with Berthe leaning on his arm, and they crossed the chasm without ever bestowing even a glance on me. I followed, and sought my father's house, in a state bordering on insanity.

A few months after this the news reached me that Raoul and Berthe were to be married immediately. I had lived in entire seclusion up to this period; but I could not witness the consummation of my misery. My poor father happening to die at this time, I came into possession of what was, for a single man, a competence. The day that beheld my rival leading Berthe to the altar in our village church, saw me speeding as fast as four horses could carry me to Paris, for which point I resolved to set out on an epicurean tour. In the course of my travels it was my intention to devote myself to a minute analysis and comparison of the dietaries of different nations. I was not entirely actuated by a motive of research in this resolution; my melancholy weakness was still as strong as ever, and I hoped to cast over it a semi-intellectual veil, which I trusted would, even to myself, soften down its grossness, and deprive it of some of those horrible features which made me so often detest myself.

For four years I travelled incessantly; and there probably does not live a man whose palate has gone through more vicissitudes of taste. I have eaten of the glutinous bird's nest soup of the Chinese; and pledged many a bearded Cossack of the Don in draughts of his favorite train oil. I have dived into the conglomerate of the Spanish olla podrida, and overcome my disgust at the appearance of a Scotch haggis. I have eaten sausages at Bologna, cheese at Parma, and Maccaroni at

Naples. The Ortolans of Southern France, and the succulent Reed-birds of America, have one and all delectated my palate with their fragrant juices. Among the Camanche Indians I have banqueted in the woods off the muffle of the moose, and in the prairie fed full upon the buffalo hump. I have plunged my hand into a pillauf with a pacha of three tails, and eaten a kabob with a Bedoween of the desert. I have dined on roasted kid at the foot of Mount Athos, and eaten stewed lampreys at Rome until I fancied myself a Lepidus. Among the Esquimaux, whale blubber, reindeer steaks, and the liver of the walrus, came not amiss to me. The honest richness of the English roast beef and plum pudding has satiated me; and in Ireland-poverty-stricken Ireland—I have made a hearty meal, in the half-covered hut of a peasant, with his gladly proffered "potatoes and point." In short, after having ransacked every pleasure of the table, I returned, satiated, but not satisfied. My palate was weary, but my appetite never flagged; and I sought my paternal estate, determined, since I was fit for no other task, to deliver myself up wholly and entirely to eating.

Here, then, I have spent my days, rarely stirring out, and seeking to compensate for variety of occupation by vicissitudes of food. My cook is bound, under a large penalty, to furnish me with a fresh dish every day of a novel character; and, with no eye to control my appetite, and no conventional rules to interfere with my comfort, I spend my days in designing future combinations of food which shall render my name immortal. This life, however, has at length wearied me, and I long for a release. The death most consonant to my character would be death by satiety. I have determined on the experiment, and have made all the necessary arrangements. I write this at my last banquet. A table shaped like a crescent surrounds me, laden with every luxury that I could purchase for money. I am provisioned for weeks-wines, fruit, game, poultry, jellies, sweetmeats, all lie within my grasp, until that grasp becomes powerless with repletion. Then calling on the shades of Apicius, Heliogabalus, and Maximin to receive my soul after crossing the Stygian Gulf, I will yield up my spirit, and with it all those earthly crosses which have made life so miserable.

THE GREAT SURPLUS IN THE TREASURY.

FINANCIAL PROSPECTS UNDER THE NEW ADMINISTRATION.

THE 4th of March next will complete twelve years since the Whig party, borne into power through the strength of popular distress and the dissatisfaction created by it, entered upon the new administration, flushed with success, high in hope, and with the firm determination to carry out to their utmost limits the principles put forth at the election, and which were supposed to have been triumphantly sustained by the people in their verdict in favor of General Harrison. It is true that the lamented Clay and the honored Webster, the brilliant leaders of the oft-beaten Whigs, had both been set aside for the supposed "availability" of comparatively a man of straw; but those distinguished men were confessedly the guides of the new government. The principles which they had supported, and of which their great powers had sounded every depth and developed every consequence, the people had apparently adopted by an immense majority; and the eagerly assembled Cabinet, confident in its strength, lost no time in calling an extra session of Congress to make real the theories with which the people had been allured. In the words of Webster, 66 a new set of books were to be opened." That extra session assembled June 1, 1841, and it found in operation the present independent treasury plan of finance of the Federal Government, amid a paper currency issued by suspended banks in all parts of the country, at every shade of depreciation from 5 to 20 per cent. discount, as compared with the constitutional coin. These rates of depreciation for broken bank money had been by adroit politicians confounded with the rates of internal exchanges, and their deplorable condition was attributed to the want of a National Bank. That this derangement of the currency existed coeval with the independent treasury was alleged to be the fault of the latter, and it was promptly repealed by a large party vote. The land revenues were next divided among the several States, a bankrupt law enacted, the goods which had been admitted free since 1832, under the compromise tariff of Mr. Clay, were without notice charged with 20 per cent. suddenly. The outstanding treasury notes were funded in a stock that was to have been the

basis of a new bank; and the most extraordinary and sudden changes were made, regardless of vested rights or the interests of the commercial world. The consequence was such a stagnation of trade as to cut off the main source of the government revenue, the customs, while the land revenues had been given away; and the administration suddenly found itself without the means of carrying on the Government. That party which had, during the canvass, charged the administration with contracting an unnecessary debt, not only found itself under the necessity of borrowing, but unable to borrow. The growing discredit was fatal to the National Bank project, and none was perfected. Every principle which had been at issue in the canvass failed in the execution, and the Whig party was overthrown through the abortive attempt to carry those principles into execution, while the commercial and industrial interests suffered terribly in the attempt. When we reflect upon the high-wrought delusions of those days, and compare them with the present complete and final overthrow of the party which indulged in them, we cannot but congrat ulate ourselves that the commercial principles, striven for by the Democracy, have so vindicated their inherent soundness.

The returning prosperity of the country and the gradual working clear of the debris of the old speculative years, once more restored the public mind to its clear perception. The bankrupt law was repealed. The land revenues resumed by the Government aided its credit; commerce, accommodating itself to the higher taxes imposed by the tariff of 1842, resumed its buoyancy, swelling the Government revenues; and the independent treasury plan of finance, being restored, so established its position as to be unassailable. The election of Mr. Polk once more unmistakably reversed the sentence of the people assumed at the previous election, to have been in favor of protection, and the tariff of 1846 settled the question of "protection for protection"-a tariff for revenue only, with the incidental protection that home-manufactured goods, competing with those imported, might derive from a revenue tariff, became the recognized principle; and so well has that principle worked, that the greatest political evil now rising in the horizon, is a surplus revenue over and above the large expenditures of an extravagant Government. It is to be remarked that the Whig party, which came into power once more under the flag of General Taylor in 1849, did not repeat the errors of 1841. No attempt whatever has been made to disturb the financial or commercial policy of the Government.