Like an eagle's nest
                   Hangs on the crest
                   Of purple Apennine;

while in the distance gleams the castle-crowned
rock of Monaco. In a brief space a religious
service is ended. Now, slowly and
reverently, a bier is raised and borne on the shoulders
"of eight sailors of the Vladimir, the
Russian steam-frigate which is to convey the
mortal remains to their native land. A barge is
moored alongside the shore; an ottoman stands
in the centre, covered with ample draperies of
white satin, over which are showered masses
of white roses, lilies, and orange-blossom. The
signal is given, the bier quits the soil of
France. Hark! from castle and fort, from
land and sea, from English yacht and Italian
frigate, from French and Russian war-ships,
simultaneously thunders forth the royal salute;
the last honours are paid to the royal dead
by the country where his last hours were
passed. Gently, almost noiselessly, the mournful
bark floats over the calm waters with
its burden. The only sounds that break the
stillness of the scene are the distant beatings
of the muffled drums, the subdued tones
of the Dead March, and the dull sullen
liooming of the minute-guns. Suddenly peal
upon our ears the magnificent strains of the
Russian hymn, and a second bark slowly
approaches! All eyes are turned in sorrowful
sympathy, all heads are uncovered, as the
emperor passes, accompanied by his surviving
sons.

We moor our boat to a little jetty in the
narrowest part of the harbour, and await the
solemn spectacle.

A long line of French and Russian troops,
with bands playing the funeral march. Then,
detachments of the marine of both nations,
each accompanied by appropriate music. A
battery of French artillery follow, and close
the military part of the procession. The funeral
car next comes in sight, drawn by eight white
horses, caparisoned with crimson velvet and
white plumes: the pall held by the mourners on
horseback. They are the Emperor Alexander,
the Grand Duke, now Czarevitch, with his
young brothers Vladimir, Alexis, Sergius, and
Paul, and the Prince of Denmark, brother to
the betrothed of the early dead. The
representatives of the nations and the rulers of the
old world and the new follow, and the whole is
closed by the Russian and French families
resident in Nice. Slowly the long cortége
winds its way down the hill, and at length
readies the water's brink. Here, a
temporary altar has been erected, canopied by
a baldacchino of crimson silk and gold. The
bier being deposited on the altar, the priests
read the burial service. Follow, the
dignitaries of the church, the chiefs of the army, the
navy, the representatives of the Emperor Napoleon,
of the sovereigns of England, Austria,
Denmark, Prussia, Spain, of the United States.
The Vladimir receives on board, with her
yards manned, the bearers and their charge.
As the bier touches the Russian deck, another
thundering salute is fired, and so sails to his last
home the ill-fated heir of all the Russias.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THE GREAT FROST OF 1814.

THAT was a tremendous frost which old
chroniclers mention when many of the grim men in
mail who were besieging Paris in Edward the
Third's time fell from their horses frozen to death.
It was reasonably cold in 1402, when the Baltic
was frozen firm all the way from Pomerania to
Denmark. It was severe in 1544, when all
the wine in Flanders had to be sold in blocks.
It was pinching sharp in 1594, when the
Scheldt bore loaded waggons, and the element
of water seemed, by winter's alchemy,
transformed to earth. It was a terrible winter when
Charles the Tenth, all buff and steel, crossed
the Little Belt on the ice, with his cuirassiers,
fantassins, artillery, and suttlers' carts, bent
on ravaging Denmark with fire and sword.

England, too, has once or twice in nearly
every century had her visitations of hard
weather. In the reign of James the First,
the Thames was frozen, and the men who knew
Shakespeare danced round the bonfires and
tossed off canary in the drinking-booths. In
1684, the last year of Charles the Second, the
frost lasted two months; forest trees, even oaks,
split; and birds perished in great numbers; the
ice between Southwark and Thames-street was
eleven inches thick; as many as forty coaches
plied on the Thames, and the men who had
survived the Great Fire and the Plague revelled,
drank, and disported to their hearts' content
and to the especial enjoyment of worthy
gossiping Mr. Pepys. In 1710, George
the First's time, our excellent ancestors in
cocked-hats enjoyed themselves after their
simple-hearted fashion, and roasted oxen whole
at a fair on the Thames; and in 1740 (George
the Second) they and their sons had still
severer weather, and nine weeks' frost, when the
Thames again became a firm highway, and more
dances were danced, more oxen were roasted
whole, and more handbills were printed in the
booths on the ice. In 1789 (in George the
Third's reign), the Thames was passable opposite
the Custom House for nearly two months;
and in 1795 there was a ten weeks' frost, with
only the intermission of one day's thaw.

But the frost of 1814, though lasting nearly
sixty days, is perhaps more interesting to us
than its predecessors, from, the variety of its
incidents, the completeness with which they
have been recorded, and from its having come
into collision with a civilisation so closely
resembling our own. Science has not yet discovered
to what strange movement southward of the
great standing army of polar icebergs we are
indebted for these severe seasons, or whether
we owe it to conflicts between aerial currents and
irregular cycles of telluric influence. The earth
moves always at its regulated distance from the