it, and proceeds to crack the eggs for the omelets.
Everything he has done with, he flings below, so
that the falling may show the distance, and
increase your sense of the danger he is in. You
see with horror, the time the white shells take
to swirl and swirl, till they smash on the planks
of the long transept below. Now he splashes
down water, now a pot-lid rings like a bad
penny on the floor, and rolls to the feet of an
injured-looking policeman, who looks at Blondin
as if he were only waiting till he comes down, to
take him up.

The black smoke volumes out—I see the fire
blazing—from time to time, Blondin stands on
the rope and sways round the frying-pan. His
manner is the manner of an anxious cook, and
of nothing else; he is neither alarmed nor
hurried; but the spectators hold their breath.

"I tell you what it is, sir," says the M.P. for
the Stilton Hundreds to the M.P. for Rottenborough,
"the suspense is sustained too long; the
horror defeats itself; all but the height has been
done before—at Vauxhall and other places, in
my youth; but just look at him now! standing
on the rope and putting out the omelet; it really
makes me giddy."

Blondin has finished his torturing cooking;
now he lowers down a tray, on which are a
well-cooked omelet and some bottles of beer
or wine, he lowers it with jerks, and the almost
footman receives it, and hands it down the
outside rows of the House of Commons off duty.
The boys can with difficulty keep their fingers
off, and the gentlemen and ladies are hardly
repressed from snatching by the skimming haste
and superficial celerity of the waiter.

There is something coming, more trying to
the nerves than the somersault, the walking in
the sack, or the lying on the rope and fanning
himself with one hand. Blondin has to take up
his pole, turn, and then re-strap and lift up that
fifty pounds' weight of lighted stove, with its
swinging stew-pans, bellows and all. Surely it
is almost impossible that he can rise and keep
his balance, with that weight oscillating on his
back! To think of all those eyes turned towards
him now with anxious, yet unpitying stare.
Such, surely, were the eyes that ringed the
Colosseum when we early Britons, blue with
paint, beat out each other's brains with bronze
axes to amuse the dandies and wantons of Rome
—the wicked.

He staggers! No, he is safe. He has risen
on one knee, has carefully got astride of the
rope. He has stooped down and strapped on his
stove; he has smiled to his wife in the balcony;
he has taken off his hat and bowed, to acknowledge
his thanks for the applause; he has
slowly risen, with the heavy weight dragging
him backward, and has risen erect and safe upon
the rope. Now he passes up the rope, stove
and all, and bows safely from the little red shelf
near his dressing-room.

The band storms out "God save the Queen,"
the black sea breaks up and pulverises into
atoms, decantering down the various passages
leading to the railway station. I hear no
expressions of pity nor anxiety; but the hon.
member for Rottenborough says to some
M.P., "The suspense was too protracted.—Will
you be down at the House to-night?"

Others are saying that what we have just seen,
painful as it, is, is nothing to what Blondin will
do. He is going to walk, in the grounds, on a
rope fifty feet higher, and pass through the
playing fountains. He will walk the rope on
stilts, with his feet in baskets; he will carry a
man over on his back; some one says he will
actually wheel his wife over in a scarlet and gold
wheelbarrow.

"Of course he'll break his neck one of these
days.—My dear, have you got the opera-glass?"
says Lady Fantwiddle, as she passes to her
carriage.

I leave the Palace, fully persuaded of one thing,
and that is, that if M. Blondin wants to make a
very great success indeed, he should carry over
a baby on his back. That would be an
admirable excitement, and would bring all the
fashionable mothers in London to see him.
We have all enjoyed the Chinese juggler, who
let a friend fling knives at his face; we have all
rejoiced to see the Alhambra champion break his
back, and Leotard fly through the air. But
Blondin rope-dancing with a baby in his arms
would be, "Let me assure you, my dear Lady
Fantwiddle, perfectly irresistible."

           THE LAST LEWISES.

              THE HEADLESS.

IN the gaudy relic-room of the Louvre, near
the window, is a white round table, engraved
all over curiously with a sort of map or projection.
Not far off is exposed a little satin slipper
creased, soiled, and very tiny. Holiday folk
do not much regard these curiosities, being
wholly engrossed with the fineries and the table
services, the body linen, and, most precious of
all, that poor battered St. Helena hat. But the
geographical table was engraved by the fingers
of Louis Capet, sometime King of France, and
the tiny slipper belonged to that ill-fated Widow
Capet, Marie Antoinette. When did she wear
that soiled slipper last? At the Versailles
dance? At the palace window when she faced
the mob howling below?

Upon a worn sou-piece of the period, is about
the best likeness of Lewis the Desired. From
that coin looks out upon us, the round bulb-
shaped face, sloped away to where it sprouts in
the tie-wig, the large nose, the fat hanging
double chin, the aimiable fatuity, the gentle
inanity. We can read his whole life and all its
sorrowful adventures on the one-sou piece—his
delights, his lockmaking, his joys and trials, and
his weaknesses. Alack! as we put it by in
the drawer, we see that such a face was not the
face for the crisis. Perhaps another with sterner
lines and less florid cheeks would have fared no
better. The family estates had come down to
him, ruinously mortgaged, rack-rented, harried,
wasted, burnt up, and here at last were the
tenants at bay, and proceedings in court, and a
bloody foreclosure.