window overlooking the street, whence he could contemplate the tragical spectacle as from a tribune.

Meantime, Derrick Carver, pushing aside Father Josfrid, marched up to the stake, and after embracing it tenderly, knelt down, and in tones of the utmost fervour prayed for strength and heavenly grace that he might by his death glorify the Saviour's holy name, ratify his Gospel, comfort the hearts of the weary, confirm his Church, and convert such as were to be converted. He further prayed for support during the grievous torments to which he was about to be subjected, offering himself up as a willing sacrifice and burnt-offering, and concluded by imploring that the blessing of the Word, of which the realm was at present unhappily deprived, might be once more vouchsafed to it. This prayer, uttered aloud and with great earnestness, produced a profound impression on all who heard it.

Seeing this, and anxious to efface the impression, Father Josfrid advanced towards him, and said,

"Wretched man, thy last hour is arrived; but there is yet time to save thy soul if thou wilt recant thine heresies, and return to the Church thou hast abandoned, but which is willing to receive thee."

"Hence with thee, tempter!" cried Carver, rising to his feet. "Wert thou to offer me all the riches of earth I would not become an idolater."

Thus rebuked, Father Josfrid withdrew, and his place was taken by two rough-looking men, one of whom rudely ordered the prisoner to make ready.

Upon this, Carver proceeded to divest himself of a portion of his apparel, and while he was thus employed, several persons among the crowd called out to him for a memorial, upon which he threw his garments amongst them, and they were instantly seized upon by a hundred eager hands, and rent in pieces, the fragments being carefully preserved by those who were fortunate enough to secure them.

As he was taking off his doublet, the sacred volume which had been the solace of his long imprisonment, and which he had kept about him to this moment, fell to the ground; seeing which, Captain Brand, who was standing by, picked it up, and with a look of disdain tossed it into the tar-barrel near the stake.

The two rough-looking men, who had remained near the prisoner, now took hold of him, and raising him in their arms, set him within the barrel. Thus disposed, Carver's first business was to take up the Bible, and after pressing his lips to it, he threw it amidst the crowd.

Greatly enraged by the act, Captain Brand called out in a furious voice to the person who had secured the prize to restore it instantly on pain of death, whereupon it was flung back, and was subsequently consigned to the flames.

A heavy chain was then passed around Carver's body and made fast to the stake. Left to himself for a moment, the martyr then called out in a loud voice, "Farewell, dear brethren, farewell! Our Church is encompassed about by deadly enemies, who seek its destruction, and it is for the restoration of that Church that my blood is this day freely poured forth. It will not be shed in vain. Comfort ye amid your troubles, and remain steadfast in your faith! Happier days shall soon dawn upon you. Farewell, O, farewell!"

No sooner had he concluded this valediction, which was responded to by loud lamentations from the majority of the assemblage, than the men began to heap fagots around him, filling the barrel with dry gorse and brushwood.

Before the pile, which was heaped up to his shoulders, could be lighted, the martyr exclaimed, "Blessed are they who die in the Lord. Thrice blessed are they who die in the Lord's cause. Fear not them that kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul. He that shall lose his life for my sake shall find it, saith our blessed Saviour, in the which hope I die. Again, dear brethren, I bid you farewell!"

"A truce to thy blasphemy!" cried Brand, seizing a torch and applying it to the pile.

Fast and fierce burnt the fire, and quickly mounted the flame, but, to judge from the serene expression of his countenance, it might have been as innocuous to the martyr as was the blaze of the burning fiery furnace to the three Israelites. Not a groan escaped Derrick Carver, and his last words were, "I go to obtain my reward."

Captain Brand was as good as his word. A rare bonfire was seen that day at Lewes. Fagots and brushwood were heaped upon the pile till the flames rose up higher than the upper windows of the old hostel, and the heat was so great, that those nearest the blazing mass drew back half scorched.

When the fire had burnt out, all that remained was a heap of ashes, in the midst of which stood a charred stake with an iron chain attached to it.

Such was the martyrdom of Derrick Carver.

His memory is not forgotten in Lewes; and on the fifth of November in each year, a great torchlight procession, composed of men in fantastic garbs and with blackened visages, and dragging blazing tar-barrels after them, parades the High-street, while an enormous bonfire is lighted opposite the Star Inn, on the exact spot where Derrick Carver perished, into which, when at its highest, various effigies are cast. A more extraordinary spectacle than is presented by this commemoration of the Marian persecutions in Lewes it has never been our lot to witness.

End of the Sixth Book.

THE RUSSIAN MAGNA CHARTA.

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Ar the commencement of the nineteenth century there was erected in St. Petersburg, at the back of the Summer Garden, on the right bank of the Fontanka Canal, and among the ugly monotonous exercising houses," a gigantic red-painted nightmare in stone, surrounded by a walled moat and commanded by armed bastions-it was the Michailow Palace which the Czar Paul I. erected in the course of a few years, and painted red because his mistress, the Princess Gagarin, was wearing gloves of that colour on the day when the painting of the palace was discussed. In the last weeks of the eighteenth century the strange edifice was completed, and inhabited by the Czar, who regarded with disgust the Winter Palace, as well as all the other residences of his mother, Catharine. Never in history had there been any instance of mother and son hating each other so fervently. On February 7, 1801, an imperial carriage drove up to the door of this palace, and in it were seated General Diebitsch, father of the future general of that name, a "nutcracker face," and a lad of thirteen, who within a few years would become one of the most prominent men of the age, but who now, "with a perfect edifice of powder and pomade on his head, and stuffed into a light green dragoon uniform, which was opposed to the natural dimensions of his person," looked like a caricature of a miniature soldier of old Fritz. The boy, Prince Eugene of Würtemberg, brother's son of Paul's second consort Dorothea, a Russianised Maria Fedorowna, noticed, as the carriage rolled through the frowning gates of the palace, that the hand of his governor and companion Diebitsch trembled and turned icy cold, and he fancied the old man was whispering a prayer: "Severe lord, do not eat me." Such were the feelings with which men approached the Autocrat of all the Russias, even when, like old Diebitsch, they might count themselves among his favourites. The old nutcracker could tell plenty of anecdotes about the Czar's whimsies. After leaving the Prussian service for the Russian, he was appointed colonel à la suite, then suddenly banished to Siberia, but surprised at Twer by his appointment as general. Hence recalled to the steps of the altar, he was harshly ordered to kneel down, but, instead of receiving the expected death-stroke, was dubbed a Count of Malta. This Maltese grand-master rat was one of the best fed and longest tailed of all the rats that rattled about in Paul's brain-pan.

The new comers passed through several halls and ante-chambers to the "eventful" folded doors, whose opening, accompanied by Diebitsch's startled ejaculation, "Well, God be merciful to us!" displayed the Czar to the Suabian lad. Of middle height and thin, Paul had a dirty yellow, or rather earthy face, with small eyes, African blubber-lip, and short, flattened, broad nose: he was a thorough Bashkir, the beau ideal of Calmuck beauty. Add to this the scarecrow old Prussian dress, the antediluvian cut of the uniform, the sword thrust through the coat-tail, the plastered hair, the long tail, the strange gestures, and hoarse jackal's voice,

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and all this formed a phantasmagoric, repulsive, and uncanny object. The young prince suddenly summoned to the Russian court by his aunt's husband, by advancing towards the Czar with all the coolness of his rustic education at Karlsruhe, in Silesia, at once made the conquest of the redoubtable tyrant, who, after a short conversation with the boy, leapt up from his chair, nodded graciously to Diebitsch, and threw "kiss hands" to the prince, with the words, "My young gentleman, I am glad to form your acquaintance. Wait a moment, I will announce you to the empress." The Czarina Maria, "an imposing lady of forty years of age, of lofty stature and majestic appearance," said, after looking at her nephew, "Il a l'air bien nourrï." To which the Czar, "C'est un joli garçon." The young prince now thought it time to air his French, but Paul interrupted him with the hasty question, “Did you learn to speak French so well at home?" "Of a Frenchman, your majesty." " Well, you will learn Russian soon." "It is difficult." "How do you know that ?" "From my Russian teacher." "Now, that is famous," cried the Czar, clapping his hands, and turning to his consort. Really, many of our hobble-de-hoys have made the grand tour, and not brought so much back with them as this boy knows." "Your majesty," I here remarked (so the prince tells us), is quite mistaken. I could not pass an examination, but I will study diligently, and perhaps correct my defects." "Bravo, bravo!" the Czar cried again, and laughed almost convulsively. He repeated his "C'est excellent" a countless number of times; he seized the boy's hands, shook them violently, then turned to the empress with strange gestures, laughed again with all his might, struck his chest several times as if self-satisfied, and exclaimed, "Savez vous, que ce petit drôle a fait ma conquête ?" kissed his hand once more to the prince, and went off humming a tune. The Czarina looked with amazement at his humming majesty. "What new whim is this?" she probably thought, but was far from expecting the full extent of this new whim.

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It is written, "Woe to the land whose king is a child ;" and it ought to be written, Triple woe to the land whose emperor is a madman." Russia experienced this most painfully during the madly tyrannical reign of Paul, a man who from childhood had displayed traces of imbecility, and who, when he came of age, should by rights have been placed in a strait-waistcoat. But the "right of birth," of legitimacy, is one of those holy phantoms before which the stupidity and cowardice of nations fall down and worship. The legitimacy of the son of Catharine II.? To speak of such a thing is an absurdity. Still, the poor mad Czar was convinced of it, and was confirmed in this conviction by the fact that, "from his youth up, he had been a horror to his mother." It is very probable, too, that Paul's fanatic wish to behave as the legitimate son of Peter III., who was so foully murdered at Ropscha, strengthened and developed his natural tendency to insanity. Apart from this tendency, when grand-duke he displayed other dark traits of character: pride and passion, lasciviousness, and a perfect fury for playing at soldiers. At the same time, in his calmer hours, he knew how to behave very amiably, and make his entourage believe that a "chivalrous impulse to action" animated him, though this chivalry in reality only existed in the phantasms of a sickly, excited imagination. Thus, while grand-duke, he tried

to play the part of Hamlet towards his detested mother, and as Czar, fostered the notion of the Maltese grand-masterdom. All his acts of government bore the stamp of a capricious tyranny, or of point-blank insanity. In his unbounded fury to overthrow all the arrangements and the entire policy of his mother and predecessor, he succeeded within a very short period in throwing the internal condition of Russia and her external relations into a hopeless state of confusion. Even abroad the conviction was entertained much sooner than in Russia that this maniac must cease to rule. The new autocrat of France was, of course, of a different opinion, because he had good grounds for believing that he would be able to guide the Czar's folly in the leading-strings of his own cunning. It is true that Paul ascended the throne with well-meant views and principles, but his adventurous spirit ruined everything from the outset. A hurried anxiety to correct the faults of yesterday—thus a clever and merciful judge, Prince Eugene of Würtemberg, passes sentence on this reign-produced to-day more lamentable results, and heaped up to-morrow such a mass of contradictions that they must have led to the most awful embarrassments had they not disappeared of themselves on the following day. Countless banishments to Siberia, passed without justice or trial, and just as capriciously revoked; sudden dismissals from the service, and equally sudden marks of favour; tyrannical punishments and arbitrary promotions; a purposeless departure from the traditions of the foreign policy of Russia; a violent breach with England, which brought the Russian landowners to fury, and the Russian merchants to despair; a hasty swallowing of the bait of a French alliance, and at the same time the most brutal persecution of everything Jacobinic, ie. French, even down to round hats-of a verity, there was not even method in this madness of Paul's reign.

The details of this Czar's sins of omission and commission trenched on the coarsest brutality or the most utter imbecility. Of the first, a scholar of the cathedral school at Riga witnessed a specimen when Paul visited that town shortly after his accession. At an early hour, the four regiments forming the garrison were drawn up on the glacis to be inspected by the Czar. (On the previous evening the poor soldiers had been obliged to dip their uniforms in water and dry them on their bodies before a slow fire the whole night, so that not a crease might be visible.) The Czar, accompanied by the Grand-Dukes Alexander and Constantine, walked along the ranks, dealing blows and thrusts right and left with his cane. Near the spot where our witness was standing, the Czar dashed in a wretched soldier's teeth and cut his face to pieces. The ill-used man fell senseless, and a cry of horror escaped from the scholar. A citizen seized him, and hurled him behind the crowd, with the words, "Accursed boy, do you want to ruin us all?" The boy, carried home senseless, told his father the next day the frightful occurrence. The latter replied in a faint, trembling voice, "For God's sake, boy, hold your tongue, or else we shall all be sent to Siberia to-day." Here is another sketch to prove the Czaric imbecility. The colonel of a Guard regiment had in his

* Memoiren des Herzogs Eugen von Würtemberg. 1862.

† C. von Martens. Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben eines alten Offiziers.