eated by the government of Louis Philippe, and had been cast
out from the country over which he should have ruled. In England he
devoted himself to the manufacture of fireworks and explosive shells;
and while he obtained the commendation of the authorities at Woolwich
for his ingeniously-contrived obuses, aroused the ire of the
inhabitants of Camberwell, who could not sleep because of the
continuous explosion of concussion-shells on his premises. They
summoned him before the magistrates as a nuisance, and he transferred
his establishment to Chelsea. Here the emissaries, or supposed
emissaries, of the French king, pursued him. An attempt was made to
shoot him, and he made it a pretext for leaving a country where his
life was not safe, and retired to Delft, in Holland, where he died in
very humble circumstances, on the 10th of August, 1844.

AUGUSTUS MEVES--_SOI-DISANT_ LOUIS XVII. OF FRANCE.

Bloomsbury has been equally honoured with Camberwell and Chelsea in
providing a home for a pretended dauphin of France, and for a dauphin
whose pretensions are not allowed to lapse, although he has himself
sunk into the grave, but are persistently presented before the public
at recurring intervals by his sons. The story which he told, and which
they continue to tell, is a curious jumble of the inventions which
preceded it--a sort of literary patchwork, without design or pattern,
and a flimsy covering either for self-conceit or imposture.

In this case the tale is, that, about September, 1793, Tom Paine, who
was then a member of the National Convention, wrote to England to a
Mrs. Carpenter to bring to Paris a deaf and dumb boy for a certain
purpose. Deaf and dumb boys are not easily procurable, and ladies,
when entrusted with mysterious missions, have an inveterate habit of
communicating them to their personal friends. Mrs. Carpenter knew a Mrs.
Meves, a music teacher, and hastened to inform her of the strange
instructions which she had received from France, and the pair set out
to find a child to suit the requirements of Paine. They failed, and
Mrs. Meves in her chagrin told her husband of their failure. That
worthy, who was then resident in Bloomsbury Square, had a son,
supposed to be illegitimate, living in his house. The lad had been
born in 1785, was about the age required, was in delicate health, and
a burden to his father, and there was no apparent reason why he should
not occupy the precarious position intended for