VARIETIES. 203 



A LI BEAU, THF. FRENCH ASSASSIN. The trial of Alibeau, before 

 the French Court of Peers, commenced on the 8th and terminated on 

 the 9th instant. It caused little interest in Paris. There was no 

 crowd in or about the court ; and had not the prefect of police, Gis- 

 quet, foolishly prohibited the publication in the newspapers of Ali- 

 beau's violent and assassin-like speech in his own defence, there would 

 not have been the least excitement on the occasion. The prohibition 

 was withdrawn a few hours after it had been announced to the even- 

 ing newspapers ; but the Carlist journals alone thought fit to give the 

 speech entire. It was a wild rhapsody against the treachery and 

 tyranny of Louis Philip, mixed up with a vain and egotistical eulogy 

 of himself and his motives, and a vehement repudiation of the reports 

 derogatory to his personal honour and the respectability of his family. 

 His counsel took the same course, admitting that his client's life was 

 forfeited, but anxious to defend his " honour." 



Alibeau was beheaded on a scaffold erected in the Place St. 

 Jacques, on Monday morning, the llth. He arrived at two minutes 

 before five, and by four minutes past five he was guillotined. He 

 was perfectly calm and collected. All he said to the soldiery, of 

 whom there were several thousands, and to the few other persons 

 about the scaffold at that early hour, was, " Adieu mes braves!" The 

 only regret he expressed, from the hour of his arrest to his last mi- 

 nute of life, was that he had failed to kill the king. 



MR. D. W. HARVEY AND THE MEN OF SOUTHWARK. Mr. Harvey 

 wrote a very good and honest letter to his constituents at the begin- 

 ing of the month, expressing his sorrow that the unsatisfactory con- 

 duct of the king's ministers did not permit him to give conscientiously 

 that support to them which he regarded as necessary to the tenure 

 of his place as their representative in parliament. Whether or not 

 Mr. Harvey was judicious in writing such a letter, or whether, as 

 others think, he was wily, we stop not to consider. We are glad at 

 any rate that the men of South wark have retained him. On the 

 appearance of his letter of resignation two candidates took the field, 

 the brother of Alderman Wood, Mr. Benjamin Wood, and Mr. 

 Sheriff Salomons. Now both are liberals, both perhaps equally 

 entitled on the grounds of political principle to the favour of reform- 

 ers ; but certainly the polite and fascinating Sheriff has forgotten 

 his manners in putting himself forward as the opponent of the man 

 who so liberally retired to ensure Mr. Harvey's election, particularly 

 when he knew that he could not take his seat. Parties must not 

 split their interests. 



VARIETIES. 



Aurora Borealis. Though the origin pearance in our latitudes, at which times 



of Auroras is generally ascribed to elec- the sun's rays would be tangents to the 



tricity in a rarefied atmosphere, yet the poles of the earth, were they not disturbed 



following ingenious hypothesis, from a by the refractive power of the atmosphere, 



writer in a late number of the " Philoso- By this refraction, it is obvious that the 



phical Magazine," is worthy of notice : rays will extend to a certain point beyond 



"It is generally at. or near the time of the the pole, on the side opposite to the'sun, 



equinoxes that these lights make their ap- when they must of course fall on the im- 



