This is the last phase of society, the epoch of general association: the epoch which shall unite materialism and immaterialism, and put an end to the long contest between the flesh and the spirit.

At this epoch it becomes a duty as much to decorate the person as to ornate the mind; as much to gratify the senses, as to elevate the soul.

Happy and delightful period! when the sage shall retire to meditate with equal fervor on the flow of a garment, or the force of an opinion-when society shall be assorted according to its capacities, and every member of it pleased according to his passions!

I still remember being seated one morning, with a lady of my acquaintance, when the door suddenly opened, and a young man with a long beard and a bare neck, and a little kind of petticoat on, tramped into the room at much the same kind of pace that children use in playing at soldiers.

This was the first genuine St. Simonian I had seen, and I sat in quiet curiosity as to what was to happen.

The young gentleman was an apostle, and, as one of the best looking among his brethren, sent by the Father Enfantin to convert my

pretty acquaintance. The object of the visit made it still more interesting to me.

The apostle sat down, and put himself as much as possible in the position of a man who is sitting for his picture.

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"Sir," said the lady, "I have read most of your pamphlets; they are very well written.—I have seen your high priest, he is a very fine looking man. I have little property to lose, and people tell me I have considerable talent. We agree then, entirely, as to every one resigning his property and being paid according to his capacity; there are only one or two little matters on which I wish to acquire further information.

"I hear that we are to have no husbands; that we are to feel no affection for our children; and that, in order to destroy houses of ill-fame, a most laudable project, you intend to make every one fit to go into them."

"Madam, permit me ! I will explain to you our doctrine. We consider families, as you rightly observe, to be an antiquated invention; all parental affection will cease as soon as you establish a more free and more promiscuous intercourse between the sexes. Mothers will not know the fathers of their children; children will not know their own progenitors, and from

this happy incertitude will arise a general affection-for what man will know whether his enemy is not his own son or his own father?

"But do not mistake us-we do not forbid constancy, we only do not preach it. If you, madam, are of a constant nature, you will only go on changing till you find a gentleman of a constant nature also.

"Different people have different constitutions. The business of the Father is to assort his disciples together, to suit their connexion to their disposition. Some men can be constant for a year;—the man that can be constant for a year, should be united to the woman, if such a woman is to be found, who can be so long constant. There should be marriages for months, weeks, and days, and then people would go on happily for the months, weeks, and days that they cohabited together.

"But children, when not accepted by society, are a tie upon the roving dispositionsthat is, upon the natural pleasures of the parents. This is a crucifixion of the flesh cruelty and a slavery inconsistent with the age of intelligence and gratification in which we live. We say to parents then- the community shall have charge of your children.'

"Such are our ideas, madam, ideas so sim

ple, so natural, so excellent, so moral, that it always surprises me when any one can be found to differ from them. Such are our ideas: after all but precur

but ideas of the man are

sory in respect to the

woman.

She, the woman, will herself shortly appear. Madam, you are very beautiful and charming-why will not be the woman ?”

you

"Sir, you are exceedingly obliging, I will give the matter my serious consideration-How is the Father?"

“The Father, madam, is very busy at the present moment. In the first place, he is occupied with the difference of brother Bazard; in the next, he wishes exceedingly that his collar, (here the apostle touched a part of his vest) should if possible be rendered more graceful."

Such was the language, of this picturesque philosopher whose aspect was certainly far more convincing than his eloquence.

Let me now turn to St. Simon!

In 1825, perishing from hunger, in a garret, died this extraordinary man, related to the famous Duke, whose Memoirs we are acquainted with-uncle to the Count de St. Simon, late minister in Sweden, and descended from the Dukes de Vermandois, peers of Charlemagne.

Mahomet could not boast of a life more full of action and adventure.

In 1760 he entered, at the age of seventeen, into the military service, and served five campaigns in America, with the rank of colonel. "Descartes," he says in his works, "was a soldier before he was a philosopher :-he was brave in the field, and daring in his studies."

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This quotation he wished to be applied to himself. But the constitution of America struck him more forcibly than the war which secured it. "I was not born," he remarks, “to be a great captain, my mind was framed for a different species of activity;" and though he so far retained the habits of a camp, as to have been known throughout life as much for a duellist as a philanthropist, he soon gave up the career of arms and devoted himself to-what he conceived the cause of perfection and civilization.

The revolution of America struck him in the same manner that it struck Paine :-as the commencement of an era in which the energies and destinies of the human race were to take a new developement; and separating himself from the subversive system of the revolution of 89, he directed all his thoughts to the