GEORGE, THIRD EARL OF ORFORD, THE SPORTSMAN 213

ONE OF THE HEROES OF FROISSART.

SIR RICHARD BULKELEY, KT., OF BEAUMARIS

COLONEL MONTGOMERY AND CAPTAIN MACNAMARA

217

THE GREAT LAW SUIT BETWEEN THE TALBOTS AND

ANECDOTES

OF

THE ARISTOCRACY.

FONTHILL ABBEY.

WHEN the young heart beats with excitement, enchanted by the ever-popular Arabian Nightswhen older eyes pore with delight over the exaggerated romances which the troubadours of Provence brought into fashion in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,—and when we compare the style of life which can alone have given birth to such productions with that which we now see general around us, where material improvements command a constantly increasing portion of public attention, and theories which are not to save or to make money are despised, it is not wonderful if we should exclaim, that the age of romance is gone for ever!

VOL. II.

B

And yet it is not so. The bulk of mankind have been forced to form their views, and to carry them into action more according to one stiff model; but even still we will ever find some wild exceptions, some characters in whom the savage of nature still holds rule, and which refuse to bend before that monotonous tyrant, custom. View the 66 souslieutenant d'artillerie" without friends, without interest, determining at Toulon that he will command; the young general at Marengo resolved to beat the Austrians, though none of his movements were according "to the regular rules of war;" the powerful emperor destroying the finest army Europe had ever seen, that he might sleep in the Kremlin, rich in its Eastern traditions; the exile of Elba overthrowing a victorious monarch in a few days, in order that a few months should behold himself pining to death on St. Helena,-is not that romance? Alexander of Russia was said to be eccentric; but was he not romantic too? And that fine veteran who earned such glory at the period to which we are alluding, Lynedoch, who has only just departed from among us,-was there no romance in his career, who found victory amid the strife of battles, where he only sought for that death which should permit him to rejoin the beloved wife who had been his companion for half his life?

The love of wealth, and the daring speculations to which that passion gives rise in ardent temperaments, though proceeding from no very romantic source, may yet lead to changes of fortune that are quite as extraordinary as anything we meet with in romance. The man of humble birth, but of great energy and prompt judgment, suddenly starts up from his state of nothingness, and seems to emulate the torrent, which, gathering to itself the thousand rills and streams in its onward course, at last swells into a mighty river. Then again we shall see the same spirit that led to a success so wonderful as to astound feebler minds, carrying its possessor a step too far-only a single stepand down goes the whole of the stupendous fabric. In this respect at least, Beckford, who looked upon trade with such intense scorn, might yet very aptly be compared to the Railway King, as Hudson was called in the days of his glory—either of them built up a colossal structure, though of different orders, as different as the massive Doric from the rich Corinthian, by a system of hazard which astonished every one; and each, after a thousand hair-breadth escapes, made one false step, and sank at once into ruin no less complete and wonderful than his rise had been. As regards the latter there is a coincidence well worthy of being remembered amongst these freaks of fortune. From being

the owner of a small shop in one of the minor gates-that is, streets-of York, Hudson, by a singular union of skill and intrepidity, came to be the possessor of so much wealth that he was enabled to purchase from the Duke of Devonshire his noble seat of Londesborough. The first in rank and the first in opulence, the noble from the west end of the metropolis, and the merchant from the wrong side of Temple Bar,-aristocraticè, -were alike the invited guests at the table of the Railway King, all paying homage in his person to the deity of Fortune. But while the humble Yorkist was thus sailing before the wind, the amiable and talented Lord Albert Conyngham, who had embarked upon the same voyage of speculation, met with nothing but storms and shipwreck. To drop all metaphor, while Hudson was making a fortune by railways, his lordship was losing one, and was forced to seek a temporary refuge abroad. But again the wheel of Fortune went round. Hudson's schemes burst on the sudden, like the soap-bubbles blown by some idle schoolboy; he was at once stript of his borrowed plumage, while Lord Albert-the ruined Lord Albert-having inherited a large fortune from Mr. Denison, purchased the princely seat of Londesborough, and taking a new title from it, became Lord Londesborough.