Falls but a drop from rested oar,
We mark it dimpling to the core.

Again, out 'neath a crimson sky,
    With flashings of a ruby tide,
In white relief those seagulls fly,
    Then a deep purple falleth wide,
The boys, enwrapt, repress their glee,
Hushed to unconscious poetry.

And, floating through the vivid maze,
    That looks as liquid as the sea,
We think of ancient sacred days,
    Of Jordan and of Galilee:
It broodeth like an Angel's wing!
Draw in thy oars! the boys must sing.

They choose, boy like, no plaintive hymn,
    Nor suit the hour with quaint old song,
But, just aware of feelings dim,
    Relieve them with a carol strong—
That floods, as with a storm of mirth,
The purple air, and sea, and earth.

Oh happy age! With quick rebound
    Their very sighs come laughing back,
They catch their oars, 'mid jocund sound
    The boat turns, dancing on its track:
One whirl of motion, song and glee,
Till we stand laughing on the quay.

PERPLEXING PARISIANS.

An orator may be made, we are told; but
a poet is born a poet. We hear also of born
actors, born painters, born engineers, and
others; but we have not yet heard of a born
policeman. Yet that phenomenon is not an
unlikely form of nature's efforts. Distinction
in the police career is not to be attained
without peculiar and considerable talent,
combined with great corporeal capability—if not of
sudden exertion of strength, certainly of
endurance. If some achieve policemanship, whilst
on others policemanship is forced, we may
assume, without great effort, that a gifted few
are born policemen.

Such, at least, appears to have been the case
with Canler, Ancien Chef de Sûreté. Although
in sufficiently poor circumstances to sharpen his
wits, he was not driven into the force by necessity;
nor had he committed any peccadillo
which, subjecting him to the censure of the
police, thereby rendered him its slave. He came
into the world on the 4th of April, 1797, an
enfant de troupe, or child of his regiment. In
1801, his father, holding the rank of sergeant,
was made provisional director of the military
prison at Namur; which office he retained six
years. As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.
The jailer's son never forgot the impressions
received during his prison childhood. His youth
was spent as a drummer and soldier, mixing him
up with episodes of Napoleon's triumph, decline,
and fall. After Waterloo, he married Mademoiselle
Denisot, an egg-merchant's daughter,
and soon afterwards got his discharge from the
army, without a sou in his pocket, and with no
trade to follow.

Accident, like Newton's apple, decided the
object on which his talents were to be employed.
He tried to work as a paper-stainer, but found
the occupation incompatible. One day, when
going along the Rue St. Sebastian, he observed
a crowd before a house. A lodger had
discovered a thief in his room, who threatened him
with a formidable knife, upon which the said
lodger made his escape, double-locking the
robber in.

This was the decisive moment of Canler's
career. Rising equal to the occasion, he took
the lead. He listened at the door. All was silent.
He burst open the door. The cage was empty,
the bird apparently flown. By intuition, he
thought of the chimney, tore a bunch of straw
out of a mattress, set fire to it, and was rewarded
by the surrender of the thief; who went to the
assizes, and was condemned to seven years' hard
labour.

This adventure prompted the idea of devoting
his life to the pursuit of malefactors. His offers
of service were accepted (1829); promotion
came in due time, concluding with his retirement
in November, 1851. The natural consequence
of his leisure is a volume of memoirs,
written, he says, neither from the desire of
celebrity, nor to make a market of the curiosity
of the public; but through the wish to spread
a knowledge of facts, which has been acquired
by long practical experience; through the hope
of saving weak-minded persons, by showing
them vice as it is—ugly, low, ignoble, repulsive—
with the belief, in short, that he is
fulfilling a duty to society, by describing events in
which he has been an actor or a witness, as a
warning to the rising generation. His sole
object is to caution honest folk against the
tricks of malefactors, and to prove to the latter
that, sooner or later, their machinations are
sure to be found out.

A preliminary word on the French police, as an
institution, may be useful. The préfet of police
can order individuals, without trial, to leave
Paris summarily or within twenty-four hours;
and he can set at liberty convicted prisoners
as a reward to other criminals who have given
valuable information. He can arrest, at one
haul, a score or two of ill-reputed persons, on
the chance of catching some real offender; can
keep them while he wants them; can set them at
liberty at his pleasure. He can spy out the most
trifling actions of anybody, without exception,
the highest as well as the lowest of the land, and
can act as seems good to him in consequence.
If he guesses that any new branch of criminal
art or immorality is started, he can set on a
secret agent, with liberal pay, for the gratification
of his own personal curiosity. He can
cause people's rooms to be searched for political
papers, in order to obtain possession of private
documents whose existence inconveniences his
protégés. It is not surprising that, with these and
other powers, police functionaries (who began,
some without a sou, others with debts) should
have acquired, in six or seven years, fortunes of
from fifteen to five-and-twenty thousand pounds.

It was the police, diverted from their proper
employment and occupied with fulfilling the