CURRENT LITERATURE.
Random Recollections of Courts and Society. By " Cosmopolitan." (Ward and Downey.)—" Cosmopolitan" has nothing to say about our own Court, but he has a good many stories to tell, not a few of them considerably scandalous, about the Courts of the Con- tinent, especially about Spain in the days of Queen Isabella, and France when Louis Napoleon was Prince-President and Emperor. One distinguished person, who was a notable figure in Madrid, and became still more notable in Paris, Eugenie de Montijo, is described at full length. " She dropped the Amazon and became the inyenue," is the writer's expression for the change which came over her when she left Spain for France. She had been dis- appointed, it was said, of the hand of the Due d'Ossuna, the first of Spanish grandees, and accepted instead the Imperial Crown, which a gipsy soothsayer had prophesied for her at a time when Soulouque was the only available Emperor who could give it her. Queen Isabella is another prominent figure in " Cosmopolitan's " Recollections. If they are accurate, we ought to think better of her and worse of Espartero, who seems to have behaved even worse than did Louis Philippe and M. Guizot. We hear also much about Victor Emmanuel, and something about Cavour and other statesmen of the revolutionary era of 1848. Among less exalted personages may be mentioned the danseuse Cerito, Rachel, Sarah Bernhardt, Meyerbeer, and other celebrities, dramatic and musical. The concluding story of the volume may be quoted. It leaves what may be called a good taste in the mouth,—more, certainly, than can be said of most of the others. The Emperor-King William had been persuaded to barn mineral oil instead of vegetable in the lamps of his private apartments (he was too economical to employ wax, which was limited to the state rooms). One day he found everything enveloped in stifling smoke. The lamps had been turned down, he was told, when he inquired the cause, and mineral oil lamps could not be turned down without this result. " Well," he replied, " let the old burners be put back again. When we were very poor, and I was only a little boy, my mother invariably lowered our lamp when it was not wanted ; I have always done so in remembrance of her, and I never mean to do anything else."
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