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whither bound, my lad?” and a man caught hold I of Crossbones by the shoulder. Crossbones went as red as fire, and didn’t know which way to look, but he said, very sheepishly, “Oh, nowhere par- ticular,” and was in a great hurry to be off. But the stranger was evidently not in a hurry, and turning to us, he said, “Servant, young gentlemen; schoolmates of Ned’s, I expect: I’m his father.” How we all stared at him and each other, you may fancy. Here was a man with a red face, dressed in blue pilot cloth, calling himself Cross- bones’ father. No daggers, nor pistols, nor banners, nor boots, nor red legs, nor brass helmets. There was the smell of rum about him, it is true, so strong that I was obliged to pull out my pocket- handkerchief and pretend to blow my nose, as he talked to us, but not a sign of the gunpowder.

Still we all felt, as appeared afterwards on comparing notes, that these things might admit of explanation, and that matters might turn out better than they looked; so when Crossbones’ father said to him, “Ned, mayhap these young gents would like to have a look at the little craft,” we jumped at the proposal, and eagerly followed him down to the pier. We couldn’t talk, we were in such a state of expectation, and so not one word was said until Croesbones’ father led the w ay on board a small sloop, rather larger than an ordinary fishing smack, with a big number 15 on the sail, and which I supposed must be a kind of captain’s boat to the Blue Blazer. But no sooner were we well on board, than Calomel gave a long whistle, and then caught me such a slap on the back as nearly choked me: “It isn’t a pirate, but a pilot,” says he. And so it was. Crossbones’ father was very kind to us; gave us biscuit and rum (which made us very ill after- wards), and did all he could to amuse us: but nothing could change the horrid fact of his being a quiet, respectable, seafaring man.

Crossbones wouldn’t go ashore with us; he told me afterwards that he couldn’t have stood our chaff: but I was so sorry for him, that, before I left, I said to him, “Crossbones, what made you tell us those confounded yarns?”

“Well,” he said, “when I first went to Mac’s I’d been so long in the middle of Yorkshire, that I didn’t know the difference between a pilot and a pirate, and I thought my father was one. And when I heard from the book about pirates, I made up what I thought sounded best.”

“But about the three watches, and the guns and pistols, Crossbones?”

“Well, then,” said Crossbones, irritably, “what did Calomel brag in that way for? I wasn’t going to be beaten by him.”

Next half, Crossbones, from one cause or another, had about twenty fights with different fellows, and pirates went a good deal out of fashion. C. P. William.

WEEK, [Oorownt 29, 1859.

YOUNG FRANCE.

The study of modern France is not only an interesting, but a useful study for us in these British islands. There is hardly a mistake we might have made that France has not made for us; hardly an error in social, political, or moral

science that she has not plunged into neck- deep, so that by watching her we may know what to avoid. The faults and shortcomings of France are more directly applicable to us than we think, but are, unluckily for Frenchmen, less evident to themselves than is easily conceivable. Setting aside the question of religion (which is too grave not to be treated by itself alone), there are in almost all the other questions that bear upon a man’s moral and social condition, differences be- tween an Englishman and a Frenchman that it can- not be uninteresting for us to study.

But before undertaking to examine the French of modern France, it should be premised that France is the only European country where two diametrically opposite types are to be found of the same race. The animal classed by science as dating from “before” or “after” the Flood, is scarcely of more radically different structure than is the Frenchman who dates from before or after the Revolution of ’89 — *93, which is his Deluge. He is, up to 1780, a totally antagonistic creature to what he becomes after 1790; and what will sound strange to English “liberal ” ears, he is far less unlike a “true Briton ” in his former than in his latter stage.

Agriculture, education, health, marriage, respect for or disdain of individual freedom, — all these are points curious to examine in a comparison in- stituted between the two races and between the natives of the same country at different periods. Now, with education, for instance, let us take an English boy and a French one, and a French boy before and after the Revolution.

It has been propounded that donkeys and post- boys never die, but only pass into some “other and better ” state by a mysterious process of transi- tion no mortal was ever witness to. An ingenious American author has paralleled this assertion by the declaration that no French “boy ” ever existed. Any one who has long inhabited France will in- stantaneously agree with him. When the small biped which in other lands is called a baby (and really is one) is put into short-clothes, in France, a little old man the more is added to the commu- nity, but of a “boy ” there is absolutely no trace. We will take him in the higher ranks:

A nursery-maid neither leaves him nor plays with him, but only watches lest he play too much! and mounts a lynx-like guard upon the purity of the poor little fellow’s vestments. A rent or stain upon his ridiculously costly frock is a fault over which French mothers lament, so that the boys who ought, in the course of time and nature, to be one day men, pass from babyhood to boy- hood, with undeveloped muscles, strong nervous sensibilities, and fine unspoiled clothes I They have not “played” too much! Heaven help them! Nor do they ever do so; for this is one of the French mother’s greatest pre-occupations, and when, the nursery-maid being set aside, the “mamma ” comes into play, the leading-strings that were of softer texture for the toddling infant, are only of ruder material for the boy — there is the only difference — but from the leading-strings he is not to escape; never will escape, if the ideal of French education could be attained.