Various - Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 15, August, 1851

Following the living, dark stream, as closely as the heat, dust, and strange odors would allow me, I arrived, at length, near to the Temple of Saman. The edifice, of which I caught a distant glimpse, was half concealed beneath the heavy, luxuriant foliage of cocoa-nut topes, arekas, plantains, and banyan trees. An ocean of human heads filled up the space around the building, from which proceeded the well-known sounds of the reed and the tom-tom. Gay flags fluttered from the four corners, and the lofty pinnacle in the centre; wreaths of flowers, plaited leaves and ribbons of many colors, waved jauntily from roof to door; while round the pillars of the walls and door posts clustered rich bunches of most tempting fruit.

Close by this busy scene, another group was forming under a large and lofty Pandahl , or open bungalow. Forcing my way to one corner of the shed, I found a company of Indian jugglers consisting of two men, a girl, and a child of perhaps three years. The men were habited in strange uncouth dresses, with large strings of heavy black beads round their necks; the girl was simply and neatly clad in white, with silver bangles and anklets, and a necklace of native diamonds. It would be impossible to detail all their extraordinary performances, which far exceeded any thing I had ever read of their art. The quantity of iron and brass ware which they contrived to swallow was truly marvelous; ten-penny nails, clasp-knives, gimlets, were all treated as so many items of pastry or confectionary, and I could but picture to myself the havoc a dozen of these cormorants would commit in an ironmonger's shop. Not the least remarkable of their feats was that of producing a sheet of water upon the sand close at our feet; and, after conjuring upon its clear surface half-a-dozen young ducks and geese, suddenly causing it to freeze in such a solid mass as to allow of our walking across it without causing so much as a crack in its crystal body. One more feat I must relate; which was that of suspending the girl while seated on a sort of ottoman, to the ridge-pole of the shed; and, at a given signal, removing the rope by which she hung, leaving her still suspended in the air – not with a regular apparatus, such as is used by the performers of a similar trick in London and Paris, but apparently with no apparatus at all! For, to my exceeding amazement, a sword was given to me, as the only European of the company, and I was told to cut and slash as much as I pleased above and around the girl. After some hesitation, I hacked and hewed the air in every direction, around and close to the suspended maiden with a vigor which would inevitably cut asunder any means of support; yet there she swung unmoved, without any sort of apparent agent of suspension except the air itself! Snake-charming and dancing completed the entertainment. When I left the place it was night.

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Turenne was a marshal of France, and a distinguished military leader in the reign of Louis XIV. He marched an invading army into the Palatinate, a province of Germany, on the Rhine, and spread devastation every where around him. From the top of his castle at Manheim, the Elector of the Palatinate, at one time saw two of his cities and twenty five of his villages in flames.

Some one repeated, to Maria Louisa, this remark of Napoleon. She did not understand its meaning, and went to Talleyrand, inquiring, "What does that mean, Monsieur, an old granny , what does it mean?" "It means," the accomplished courtier replied, with one of his most profound bows, "it means a venerable sage."

Rodolph of Hapsburg, was a gentleman, who by his own energies had elevated himself to the imperial throne of Germany; and became the founder of the house of Hapsburg. He was the ancestor to whom the Austrian kings looked back with the loftiest pride.

Napoleon, at St. Helena, gave the following graphic and most discriminating sketch of the character of Madame de Staël. "She was a woman of considerable talent and great ambition; but so extremely intriguing and restless, as to give rise to the observation, that she would throw her friends into the sea, that, at the moment of drowning, she might have an opportunity of saving them. Shortly after my return from the conquest of Italy, I was accosted by her in a large company, though at that time I avoided going out much in public. She followed me every where, and stuck so close that I could not shake her off. At last she asked me, 'Who is at this moment the first woman in the world?' intending to pay a compliment to me, and thinking that I would return it. I looked at her, and replied, 'She, madame, who has borne the greatest number of children,' an answer which greatly confused her." From this hour she became the unrelenting enemy of Napoleon.

"Few persons," said Mirabeau, "comprehend the power of my ugliness." "If you would form an idea of my looks," he wrote to a lady who had never seen him, "you must imagine a tiger who has had the small-pox." "The life of Mirabeau," says Sydney Smith, "should embrace all the talents and all the vices, every merit and every defect, every glory and every disgrace. He was student, voluptuary, soldier, prisoner, author, diplomatist, exile, pauper, courtier, democrat, orator, statesman, traitor. He has seen more, suffered more, learned more, felt more, done more, than any man of his own or any other age."

Talleyrand, one of the most distinguished diplomatists, was afterward elevated by the Emperor Napoleon to be Grand Chamberlain of the Empire. He was celebrated for his witticisms. One day Mirabeau was recounting the qualities which, in those difficult times, one should possess to be minister of state. He was evidently describing his own character, when, to the great mirth of all present, Talleyrand archly interrupted him with the inquiry, " He should also be pitted with the small-pox, should he not? "

Continued from the July Number.