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abomination is clearly before me now, despite the long vista of years. through which it is seen. The fœtid stench of that murky chamber is again present. I see a face livid as that of a corpse: stark want, fierce licentiousness, contempt of consequence, covetousness of crime, scorn of hope, are written upon it in the stern, strait characters of despair. He had fallen back upon the bench from which he rose, and thrown open the narrow, foul casement to catch a breath of the livid air. O world, world! manifold as are thy forms of misery, spare us sight of that from which wild need has driven the soft, sweet charities, or in which a life of vice has smothered all sense of sin and shame! After awhile he resumed.

"We now concluded that the worst of our difficulty was over; but we had miscalculated our undertaking. True, the tree had been uprooted, and it was but the tender flower that bloomed beneath which remained to be disposed of; but that was covered by the most impenetrable of all shields-the triple brass of a mother's love. I will not recount the fruitless attempts that we made to destroy the infant heir of; that which succeeded shall be told. I would bring these confessions to an end. You have no doubt heard that it was while witnessing the performance of a party of jugglers the child lost its life. That catastrophe was not of my contrivance, though I acted a prominent part in it. I was leader of the band of mimes, and in that capacity brought about the explosion, in the noise and confusion of which Charles struck the heir of from the nurse's arms, and helped himself to wealth and wide domains through the blood of his brother's son.

"Soon after the tragedy, Charles returned to Italy, as it was understood; in the first place having made arrangement that for my share in it I should be paid an annuity of £1,000 through his banker. This I continued to receive for several years; but at last my craving for play did its office, and in the pressure for money to bring to the gaming table, I disposed of the chance of my annuity to one of those transmuters of probabilities always to be found at such places, ready to give a thousand per cent. under its value for anything. With this I visited Paris, where I met my old confederate desperately lavishing his thousands where formerly he was compelled to limit his stake to a Louis. He was losing ruinously, and in the gall of rage he reproached me with doing that in which he himself was madly engaged. We parted foes, and on arriving in England it was intimated to me that in future my annuity would not be forthcoming.

"It was at this crisis that a circumstance, learned by accident, caused me to visit Thames Ditton. I had no idea who the gentleman might be that occupied the cottage to which I desired access— my business was with the lady. How my errand sped need not be told. I need, moreover, scarcely recall to your recollection that, subsequent to that interview at your suburban retreat, Caroline became the rallying point of the society, under the name of the fraternité d'Argus, which attracted so much curiosity and interest during your visit to Paris. I will not allude to your connexion with her, now; the day may come when my knowledge of that, and more, shall be

revealed; haply, when the disclosure may be one of worth. Here my story ends, for the present at least. I am grateful to you for the aid afforded me at a time when instant succour was the measure by which alone the value could be rated. My need is still extreme, but I will not trespass further on the liberality of one who owes me so little. I shall make immediate application where I have the right to demand assistance; should it be refused-should it, I say, be denied —then I will, as the last resource, go to you with news proper to be bartered for money, first"-and the Jew bissed the words as if a serpent spoke-" first having my revenge."

As I entered Long's, on my return from this singular interview, the hall porter said there was a gentleman waiting for me in the coffee-room. At first I did not know my visitor, but his voice announced him. It was Panton Ridsdale, whom I had not seen since I left Oxford; still the same tranquil-looking fellow, who, at the university, scorned to stretch out his arm for champagne if there was ginger-beer at his elbow.

"Cousin Hyde," he began, after the true fashion of your epic, in medios res, and with accents full of melody, "I've heard horrid things about my brother; he's starving somewhere in the Isle of Wight, after trying to rob somebody's house. Your mother told me; saw her at Brighton, yesterday, complaining of being left alone by her brother, who set off abruptly for Cowes. It can't be that Lancelot has broken into your uncle's? Shocking! eh?"

Here was a pleasant passage in recitative. The first part of it was indifferent to me, for whether Mr. Lancelot Ridsdale had taken to burglary or the highway, was no affair of mine; but Mr. Thomas Longueville Lyster's insular excursion was by no means a matter to be trifled with. Because, I had too much delicacy to tell an old gentleman that he was making a fool of himself, I was to be a consenting party to my own undoing. Out of regard to Madame de Beauplan's fine feelings, rents and domains, to the tune of six thousand pounds of annual income (not to speak of stocks, consols, and divers and sundry other securities) were to be allowed quietly to slip through my fingers! Looking full into the benevolent face of my philosophic relative, I proceeded to make a demonstration in my own favour.

"Cousin Panton," I observed, "your intelligence is remarkably dreadful; what a frightful catastrophe it would be if your brother should be hanged, and my uncle married! Surely we cannot contemplate anything so awful without an effort to avert it! Shall we not instantly set off? No? Not worth travelling all night for? I read your answer in your shrug. Well, nine o'clock to-morrow, morning, then. Breakfast with me: there's good coaching into Hants from the Cellar, Jack Peer and the Nimrod; won't that do? Remember, it's an errand of Christian charity."

Twenty years since, travelling on the Southampton road was supposed to be as near perfection as human locomotion might attain: they took you through-from office to office-in seven hours: now they carry you in three when the atmospheric principle comes into work, they'll

remove you from Falmouth to Berwick-upon-Tweed in forty minutes. But vast as the obligations are which those who travel by land owe to steam, they are nothing in comparison to the debts of those who occupy their business in the great waters. If steam enable you to achieve ashore in one hour a distance that formerly required ten, afloat it permits you to reckon as certain upon a passage from port to port; which to our fathers was an affair of mere luck, or sheer chance medley. E. g.: Having reached Southampton, and duly refreshed and slept, next morning, as soon as the tide began to fall, we embarked in a clipping little cutter, which we had chartered for Cowes. With wind and water fair, the voyage down to Calshot Castle was done handsomely enough; but once clear of the land, a brisk breeze from E.S.E., and the ebb tumbling over the Brambles, set us bodily to leeward, shaping our course, broadside on, for the Needles. There was about as much chance of our making Cowes as Constantinople; but by dint of incredible care, and luffing for the dear life, we managed, at the end of six hours and a half, to bring up in the little harbour of Yarmouth; grateful that it was not abreast the isle of Portland.

Within the haven rode as vicious-looking a fleet as ever floated on brine. It consisted of schooners, luggers, yawls, and every class of small craft suited to wicked purposes; for Yarmouth was, at this period, the head-quarters of channel-smuggling. Before the invention of the Preventive Service, its port was the sure asylum of the free trader, and its streets the recognised marts for his contraband combustibles. In those days its quay was as rollicking, rakehelly a rendezvous as you should fall in with in a twelve months' cruize; where now the grim warder keeps watch-an antique bombardier, who relates to the listener (when, haply, he catches one) gaunt episodes from the Peninsular war and the war in Flanders, wherein the speaker deported himself, according to his own account, like another Amadis de Gaul.

This digression has afforded time for the buxom serving lass to put our dinner on table-a single dish, but a cate for the gods where its materials may be had in perfection, as at the Wight. It was simply a boiled fowl stuffed with oysters-the fish inserted previous to the cooking-a condiment, when rightly concocted, to cheat death of its prey. The room in which we regaled was a spacious chamber, with profusely ornamented roof and walls of wainscot.

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The hostel, formerly a monastery, had been the temporary prison of Charles previous to his confinement in Hurst Castle, after his liberation from Carisbrook.

As soon as we had done justice to our meal-that is to say, as soon as we had swept off every vestige of it (a process common with justice) -we became aware that another party was cultivating good cheer in an adjoining room, from which a thin partition alone divided us; and as, from time to time, snatches of their discourse reached our ears, it became evident that the wassaillers belonged to the class of cavaliers who made the town their resort for business as well as for pleasure. Store of mirth they had beyond doubt; and, whatever the character of the wit, the laughter, at all events, was genuine.

Presently there arose a demand for music, and without any of the indisposition to vocalise which Horace tells us was usual with singers in private companies in his day (and which remains as Flaccus left it), a clear, hearty voice gave out a song to the following intent, amid the cheers and chorus of the society.

Hurrah for the sea! the wild, the free!

And the life a mariner leads;

What joy of earth can match his mirth
That over the blue wave speeds?
Oh! the bliss to feel the gallant keel

Through the white foam cleave its way;
As it bounds in pride on the waters wide,
And sweeps o'er the surges gay!

Morn comes o'er the waves, from the coral caves,
Her soft breath stirring the seas;

And glittering bright, in her golden light,
Are the ripples that dance to the breeze.
The waters glow, and the glad winds blow,
And the good boat gathers way;
Hurrah! to ride on the sparkling tide,
And bound o'er the surges gay!

They may boast the strain of the woodland train,
The charm of the sylvan cheer;

They may tell of the race, the joys of the chace,
And the hunter's boon career;

But what is the sound of horse and hound

To the lay that the billows sing?

Or the bravest speed of the fleetest steed,
To a flight on the tempest's wing!

Then hurrah for the sea, the wild, the free,
And the merry mariner's life!

In storm or shine there's bliss on the brine,

And the wave with joy is rife.

Let the hush'd wind sleep; on the startled deep

Let the storm and the lightning play;

Oh! still be our home on the ocean foam,

Our path o'er the waters gay!

After "glasses round"-the custom among merry-makers of their class, wherewith to fill up the intervals of their minstrelsy-another took up the chant, and sang the following characteristic carol, with which the New Year is welcomed in by groups of the youths and maidens of Yarmouth; a practice, I believe, peculiar to that place.

Wassail, wassail* to our town;

The cup is white, and the ale is brown.
The cup is made of the ashen tree,
And so is the ale of the good barley.
Little maid, little maid, turn the pin,
Open the door, and let me come in :
God be here, and God be there,
I wish you all a happy New Year!

The Saxon term for "health" to you.

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According to the accounts given by various authorities, these laws were exceedingly severe; they have by degrees, however, been repealed; and, although the legislature has given protection to the preservers of deer, hares, pheasants, &c., the chase of the fox is alone countenanced by sufferance, and supported by by-laws framed and acknowledged by the admirers of the sport. These laws refer chiefly to the lines of demarcation which divide one fox-hunting country from another; or, in other words, what covers a master of hounds shall enter to draw for a fox, without trespassing upon lands within the acknowledged boundary of the country hunted by another established pack of hounds, a transgression beyond which is considered by the hunting world dishonourable and unsportsman-like.

If a huntsman pursues his fox beyond his own country, he has a right to endeavour to kill him, even if he should enter a favourite cover of another hunt; if he goes to ground in a strange country, he may be bolted by a terrier, but not by digging, as no spade nor substitute for a spade must be used-in fact, the ground must not be broken; he may be washed out, in case of his going into a drain leading from a pond, where the water can be let into the drain by a sluice; he may be also bolted from a drain by inserting a lighted whisp of straw at one end of it. The "New Sporting Magazine" records an instance of a fox being bolted from a drain by a person blowing at one end of it the horn of the guard of a mail coach, which happened to come up at the time when the fox went to ground.*

A fox is a most nervous and timid animal, particularly when coming in contact with anything in the shape of an enemy; and I have known him bolted more than once in my life by ferrets.

It is well known that in this country the absolute and undisputed right in landed property extends "usque ad coelum," and that a person is undoubtedly at liberty, by the law of the land, to do what he likes with his own; but, although by this enactment it is legally in his power to determine whom he shall permit to hunt his covers, the by-laws of fox-hunting have decided quite differently, as the right of drawing those covers would, without the least doubt, belong to that hunt which had, without interruption, been in the acknowledged habit of hunting that country, within the limits of which these covers might be situated. If it were not for this, what confusion would ensue! Upon every slight misunderstanding, or coldness between neighbouring gentlemen, there would be some pretence or other for allowing their covers to be drawn by another master of hounds; no acknowledged boundary would be kept up, and when the sportsmen left the kennel in the morning, it would be a matter of uncertainty

* Vide New Sport. Mag., vol. ii. p. 95.

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