RUSTIC NOBILITY.

BY THE EDITOR.

EMILLE LABOCAGE was the only son of an old gentleman of the middle class of French citizens, who were of the vast family of the "Nobodies" before the Reign of Terror, and thus escaped extinction in the moral whirlwind that partially cleared the atmosphere of France from the accumulated dust of ages of misrule, and left the true gold of human excellence to peep out here and there, in the national character of a land of tyrants and slaves.

The old man was still young, and therefore capable of ready adaptation to the new order of things, when it became no longer treasonable to prate of liberty, under the empire. At that period, Frenchmen began dimly to perceive that personal freedom, and independence from the insane domination of either ignorant majorities or vicious monarchs, were among things possible; although, from the excesses committed by the masses, suddenly and unnaturally transformed from a condition little above that of serfs to that of a sovereign and irresponsible mob, France still believed in the paradox that the only sufficient security for popular freedom was to be found in the principle of absolutism, secured