Louis the Sixteenth at the scaffold. According
to report,

Le general n'avait de Mars que la biere.

But what a change now! All day long, on the
marble tables at every café door in summer,
you see glass jugs full of the amber-coloured
beer of Strasbourg. Beer of the Teuton has
all but driven away the Celtic raspberry syrup
and water, of former years. The change has
come on Paris, as changes of diet do come
upon a nation. They are fashions. They are
not founded on deductions of the judgment.
They originate, no one knows why; they lead,
no one knows where. They may save thousands,
or kill thousands—no one heeds. The
fresh creamy beer may be better than the
clogging syrup, but it is headier and more
bilious, and we very much doubt whether
it is so wholesome in so hot a climate, and
among a people who take so much less
exercise for its own sake, than we Englishmen
do. In Paris, this German beer always tastes
to us less digestible, and more heavy, apoplectic,
and clogging, than in England. Howbeit,
change must come. The planets are in the
Liberal interest; the sea ebbs and flows;
raspberry syrup had its day.

THE BABES IN THE CLOUDS.
AN AMERICAN TRUE STORY.

JUST ten years ago, there suddenly burst
upon the western world, a magnificent stranger
from foreign parts, " with all his travelling
glories on." It was the great comet of 1858,
on the grand tour of the universe.

It seemed strange that petty human life could
go on as usual, with its eating and drinking,
toiling, trafficking, and pleasuring, while that
"flaming minister," on his billion-leagued
circuit, was preaching the wonders of infinite
immensity and power, and the nothingness of
earth. But science has robbed celestial
apparitions of their old portentous significance.
The comet no longer runs his kindling race,
like Vich- Alpine's henchman, with his fiery
cross, announcing war and disaster,

      Herald of battle, fate, and fear.
He is on his own business; not ours.

Under the tail of this particular comet doubtless
many a tale of love was told—in the light
of his swift splendours many a tender look
exchanged. The astronomer coolly swept the
starry field with his glass, unawed by the
irregular night-guard patrolling the heavens, and
the robber and murderer disdained the awful
witness. He left us as he found us—joined
to our mortal idols—wise in our own conceit,
weak, and worldly, and wicked, but no
castaways of the universe after all.

We remember that comet-summer, not so
much for its great astronomical event, as for two
singular incidents that more neatly touched
our human sympathies, which will grovel in
poor earthly affairs, even within sight of the
most august celestial phenomena.

One pleasant Saturday afternoon during the
comet's appearance, an aëronaut, after a
prosperous voyage, descended upon a farm in the
neighbourhood of a large market town, in one
of the western states. He was soon surrounded
by a curious group of the farmer's family and
labourers, all asking eager questions about the
voyage and the management of the balloon.
That, secured by an anchor and a rope in the
hand of the aëronaut, its car but a foot or two
above the ground, was swaying lazily backward
and forward in the evening air. It was a good deal
out of wind, and was a sleepy and innocent
monster in the eyes of the farmer, who, with the
owner's permission, led it up to his house, where,
as he said, he could " hitch it" to his fence.
But before he thus secured it, his three
children, aged respectively ten, eight, and three,
begged him to lift them " into that big basket,"
that they might sit on "those pretty red
cushions." While the attention of the
aëronaut was diverted by more curious questioners
from a neighbouring farm, this rash father
lifted his darlings one by one into the car.
Chubby little Johnny proved the " ounce too
much" for the aërial camel, and brought him
to the ground; and then, unluckily, not the baby,
but the eldest hope of the family, was lifted out.
The relief was too great for the monster. The
volatile creature's spirits rose at once, he
jerked his halter out of the farmer's hand, and
with a wild bound mounted into the air! Vain
was the aëronaut's anchor. It caught for a
moment in a fence, but it tore away, and was
off, dangling uselessly after the runaway
balloon, which so swifty and steadily rose that in a
few minutes those two little white faces peering
over the edge of the car grew indistinct, and
those piteous cries of "Papa!" "Mamma!" grew
faint and fainter, up in the air.

When distance and twilight mists had
swallowed up voices and faces, and nothing
could be seen but that dark cruel shape, sailing
triumphantly away, with its precious booty,
like an aërial privateer, the poor father sank
down helpless and speechless; but the mother,
frantic with grief, still stretched her yearning
arms toward the inexorable heavens, and called
wildly up into the unanswering void.

The aëronaut strove to console the wretched
parents with assurances that the balloon would
descend within thirty miles of the town, and that
all might be well with the children, provided it
did not come down in water, or in deep woods. In
the event of its descending in a favourable spot,
there was but one danger to be apprehended;
he thought that the elder child might step out,
leaving the younger in the balloon. Then, it
might again rise, and continue its voyage.

"Ah no," replied the mother, " Jennie would
never stir from the car, without Johnnie in her
arms!"

The balloon passed directly over the market
town, and the children seeing many people in
the streets, stretched out their hands and cried
loudly for help. But the villagers though they
saw the bright little heads, heard no call.