he had not touched before. Two: I now know Riderhood to have been previously taken up for being concerned in the robbery of an unlucky seaman, to whom some such poison had been given.

how much of it false-that had its likeness to mine. I had been a seaman too. So we got to be confidential together, and the more easily yet, because he and every one on board had known by general rumor what I was making the voyage to England for. By such degrees and means he came to the knowledge of my uneasiness of mind, and of its setting at that time in the direction of desiring to see and form some judgment of my allotted wife, before she could possibly know me for myself; also to try Mrs. Boffin and give her a glad surprise. So the plot was made out of our getting common sailors' dresses (as he was able to guide me about London), and throwing ourselves in Bella Wilfer's neighborhood, and trying to put ourselves in her way, and doing whatever chance might favor on the spot, and seeing what came of it. If nothing came of it I should be no worse off, and there would merely be a short delay in my presenting myself to Lightwood. I have all these facts right? Yes. They are all accurate-containing a suit of his clothes. I had no change ly right.

"It is my conviction that we can not have gone a mile from that shop before we came to the wall, the dark doorway, the flight of stairs, and the room. The night was particularly dark, and it rained hard. As I think the circumstances back I hear the rain splashing on the stone pavement of the passage, which was not under cover. The room overlooked the river, or a dock, or a creek, and the tide was out. Being possessed of the time down to that point, I know by the hour that it must have been about low water; but while the coffee was getting ready I drew back the curtain (a dark-brown curtain), and, looking out, knew by the kind of reflection below, of the few neighboring lights, that they were reflected in tidal mud.

"He had carried under his arm a canvas bag,

of under-clothes with me, as I was to buy slops. "His advantage in all this was, that for a 'You are very wet, Mr. Harmon'-I can hear time I was to be lost. It might be for a day or him saying-and I am quite dry under this for two days, but I must be lost sight of on land-good water-proof coat. Put on these clothes of ing, or there would be recognition, anticipation, mine. You may find on trying them that they and failure. Therefore, I disembarked with my valise in my hand-as Potterson the steward and Mr. Jacob Kibble my fellow-passenger afterward remembered-and waited for him in the dark by that very Limehouse Church which is now behind me.

will answer your purpose to-morrow, as well as the slops you mean to buy, or better. While you change, I'll hurry the hot coffee.' When he came back I had his clothes on, and there was a black man with him, wearing a linen jacket, like a steward, who put the smoking coffee on the table in a tray and never looked at me. I am so far literal and exact? Literal and exact,

"As I had always shunned the port of London, I only knew the church through his pointing out its spire from on board. Perhaps II am certain. might recall, if it were any good to try, the way by which I went to it alone from the river; but how we two went from it to Riderhood's shop I don't know-any more than I know what turns we took and doubles we made after we left it. The way was purposely confused no doubt.

"But let me go on thinking the facts out, and avoid confusing them with my speculations. Whether he took me by a straight way or a crooked way what is that to the purpose now? Steady, John Harmon.

"Now I pass to sick and deranged impressions; they are so strong, that I rely upon them; but there are spaces between them that I know nothing about, and they are not pervaded by any idea of time.

"I had drank some coffee, when to my sense of sight he began to swell immensely, and something urged me to rush at him. We had a struggle near the door. He got from me, through my not knowing where to strike, in the whirling round of the room, and the flashing of flames "When we stopped at Riderhood's, and he of fire between us. I dropped down. Lying asked that scoundrel a question or two, purport- helpless on the ground, I was turned over by a ing to refer only to the lodging-houses in which foot. I was dragged by the neck into a corner. there was accommodation for us had I the least I heard men speak together. I was turned over suspicion of him? None. Certainly none until by other feet. I saw a figure like myself lying afterward when I held the clew. I think he dressed in my clothes on a bed. What might must have got from Riderhood in a paper the have been, for any thing I knew, a silence of drug, or whatever it was, that afterward stupe- days, weeks, months, years, was broken by a viofied me, but I am far from sure. All I felt safe lent wrestling of men all over the room. The in charging on him to-night was old companion- figure like myself was assailed, and my valise ship in villainy between them. Their undis- was in its hand. I was trodden upon and fallen guised intimacy, and the character I now know over. I heard a noise of blows, and thought it Riderhood to bear, made that not at all adven- was a wood-cutter cutting down a tree. I could turous. But I am not clear about the drug. not have said that my name was John Harmon Thinking out the circumstances on which I found I could not have thought it—I didn't know it my suspicion, they are only two. One: I re--but when I heard the blows, I thought of the member his changing a small folded paper from wood-cutter and his axe, and had some dead idea one pocket to another after we came out, which that I was lying in a forest.

VOL. XXX.-No. 177 -C c

I staid at home. I asked you if you were not | you know how I am situated at home. I must well, because you look so white."

"Do I? I have had a busy evening." She was on a low ottoman before the fire, with a little shining jewel of a table, and her book and her work, beside her. Ah! what a different life the late John Harmon's, if it had been his happy privilege to take his place upon that ottoman, and draw his arm about that waist, and say, "I hope the time has been long without me? What a Home Goddess you look, my darling!"

But the present John Rokesmith, far removed from the late John Harmon, remained standing at a distance. A little distance in respect of space, but a great distance in respect of separation.

“Mr. Rokesmith," said Bella, taking up her work, and inspecting it all round the corners, "I wanted to say something to you when I could have the opportunity, as an explanation why I was rude to you the other day. You have no right to think ill of me, Sir."

The sharp little way in which she darted a look at him, half sensitively injured, and half pettishly, would have been very much admired by the late John Harmon.

"You don't know how well I think of you, Miss Wilfer."

"Truly you must have a very high opinion of me, Mr. Rokesmith, when you believe that in prosperity I neglect and forget my old home." "Do I believe so?"

speak to you for myself, since there is no one about me whom I could ask to do so. It is not generous in you, it is not honorable in you, to conduct yourself toward me as you do."

"Is it ungenerous or dishonorable to be devoted to you; fascinated by you?" "Preposterous!" said Bella.

The late John Harmon might have thought it rather a contemptuous and lofty word of repudiation.

"I now feel obliged to go on," pursued the Secretary, "though it were only in self-explanation and self-defense. I hope, Miss Wilfer, that it is not unpardonable-even in me—to make an honest declaration of an honest devotion to you." "An honest declaration!" repeated Bella, with emphasis.

"Is it otherwise?"

"I must request, Sir," said Bella, taking refuge in a touch of timely resentment, "that I may not be questioned. You must excuse me if I decline to be cross-examined."

"Oh, Miss Wilfer, this is hardly charitable. I ask you nothing but what your own emphasis suggests. However, I waive even that question. But what I have declared I take my stand by. I can not recall the avowal of my earnest and deep attachment to you, and I do not recall it." "I reject it, Sir," said Bella.

"I should be blind and deaf if I were not prepared for the reply. Forgive my offense, for it carries its punishment with it."

"You did, Sir, at any rate," returned Bella. "What punishment ?" asked Bella. "I took the liberty of reminding you of a lit- "Is my present endurance none? But extle omission into which you had fallen-insens-cuse me; I did not mean to cross-examine you ibly and naturally fallen. It was no more than again." that."

"And I beg leave to ask you, Mr. Rokesmith," said Bella, "why you took that liberty?—I hope there is no offense in the phrase; it is your own, remember."

"Because I am truly, deeply, profoundly interested in you, Miss Wilfer. Because I wish to see you always at your best. Because I-shall I go on ?"

"You take advantage of a hasty word of mine," said Bella, with a little sting of self-reproach, "to make me seem-I don't know what. I spoke without consideration when I used it. If that was bad, I am sorry; but you repeat it after consideration, and that seems to me to be at least no better. For the rest, I beg it may be understood, Mr. Rokesmith, that there is an end of this between us, now and forever." "Now and forever," he repeated. "Yes. I appeal to you, Sir," proceeded Bella with increasing spirit, "not to pursue me. I appeal to you not to take advantage of your poThe late John Harmon, looking at the proud | sition in this house to make my position in it face with the downcast eyes, and at the quick breathing as it stirred the fall of bright brown hair over the beautiful neck, would probably have remained silent.

"No, Sir," returned Bella, with a burning face, "you have said more than enough. I beg that you will not go on. If you have any generosity, any honor, you will say no more."

distressing and disagreeable. I appeal to you
to discontinue your habit of making your mis-
placed attentions as plain to Mrs. Boffin as to me."
66
"Have I done so ?"

"I should think you have," replied Bella. "In any case it is not your fault if you have

"I wish to speak to you, Sir," said Bella, "once for all, and I don't know how to do it. I have sat here all this evening, wishing to speak | not, Mr. Rokesmith."

to you, and determining to speak to you, and "I hope you are wrong in that impression. feeling that I must. I beg for a moment's time." I should be very sorry to have justified it. I He remained silent, and she remained with think I have not. For the future there is no her face averted, sometimes making a slight apprehension. It is all over." movement as if she would turn and speak. At length she did so.

"I am much relieved to hear it," said Bella. "I have far other views in life, and why should

"You know how I am situated here, Sir, and you waste your own?"

"I would rather not be asked," said Bella, such a Dragon!" Then she got up and looked haughtily looking down.

"This mean and cruel disadvantage," said over him, lightening his labor with the dirge, the Secretary.

cient and powerful family. It requires the suc-
cessive efforts of a great many "progenitors" to
produce such a marvel as this Honorable. In
the very first chapter we read of "the Berkeley
influence,"
,” “the witch of Berkeley,” “the cus-
toms of the Berkeleys-their duties and privi-
leges," "value of the Berkeley estates," "strength
and antiquity of the Castle," and, finally, of the
practice of "Lynch law" by the Berkeleys. It
might be expected that they would leave this
practice to the "dirty Yankees ;" but great men
have their weaknesses-as a French writer once
remarked, "most men are mortal." Not only
this, but in this very first chapter we are intro-
duced to a Prince of Wales and to several dukes.
This is only a foretaste of what is to follow, how-
The book is full of the best company;
titles gleam on every page; and if what Mr.
Berkeley has to tell of his friends the princes,
royal dukes, earls, counts, barons, and other
high and mighty "nobility and gentry" is of
the dullest, and often not of the most decent,
that is perhaps because these personages were
in truth neither brilliant nor decorous.

ever.

The book opens with "Mary Oldacre, my nurse," and the remarkable incident that she handed him, one day, "the keys of the Shrubbery Gate of the Castle." "It is impossible," he tells us, "to express the affection with which, at this age and long subsequently, I regarded this most faithful and attached servant." Turning over the page, we are informed farther that she and her husband now "share the sleep of eternal peace," whatever that may mean; and our author adds, "I do not remember what is their epitaph." Much as he loved them, he evidently did not trouble himself about a gravestone for them.

this brutality: "He slipped his right foot back out of the stirrup, and kept it in readiness on the flank of his horse; then, manoeuvring to make the man pass on that side, he launched the toe of his heavy boot against the pit of the man's stomach with such force that the latter [the man, not his stomach, Mr. Berkeley means] went down like a shot." Then he searched his victim's bag, and "was extremely disappointed to find in it nothing but rabbits."

"The Prince of Wales and his royal brothers" were frequent visitors to the Castle, where they amused themselves by making sport of the other visitors. One “Jeremiah Hawkins, Esq., of the Haws," a Gloucestershire Squire, was among these, and the Duke of Clarence thus "drew him out:"

66

"Well, my good friend," the Duke said, after dinner, “do you ever wear breeches and topboots?"

"Please your Greece," replied Jerry, "I seldom wears ony thing else."

"I hear you are not afraid of water," continued the sportive "Royal Highness;" "do you ever wash your feet ?"

"Sometimes in summer, please your Greece, when it's hot!" was Squire Hawkins's honest reply.

When Mr. Berkeley's father died there was a quarrel about the succession between two of the brothers, which was carried to the House of Peers, and in the course of it the history of "Miss Tudor"-the name by which the mother of these hopefuls was known during a part of her life at the Castle-was pretty thoroughly published. It was decided that she was not legally married to Lord Berkeley till after her fourth son was born. Of one of his brothers, Colonel Berkeley, he says that he has no virtues and all the vices. He preferred the most disHer reputable society, and traveled the country as an amateur actor. Some of the other brothers appear to have been no better than this one. Mr. Berkeley relates that after his mother's death, when his sister, Lady Mary Berkeley, desired to live in "the old house in Spring Gardens," she was driven out of it, because her brother, Colonel Berkeley, insisted on bringing his mistress to the house.

The Honorable Mr. Berkeley tells us that his mother was the daughter of a petty tradesman, and for many years his father's mistress. sister Susan was also, at one time, "living under the protection of a man able to maintain her." He adds: "There is reason to believe that she, in addition, received a considerable sum of money from Lord Berkeley (the writer's father), for placing her sister in his hands." One of Mr. Berkeley's earliest recollections, he tells us, is of an attempt at something very like forgery, practiced under his father's roof, by "the heads of the family." An "extraordinary instrument, made to hold two pens, connected, but at some distance from each other, by a brass rod," was used in these attempts; one was dry, the other the operators charged with ink; and then, holding the dry one in their hands, passed it carefully over some signatures or writ-rooks on the heads of contemplative Dons, as ing, on an old paper or parchment, anxiously observing if the marks made by the inked pen corresponded with those they traced with the dry one."

The father practiced summary Lynch law upon his estates. Riding along a public path one day he met "a fellow" carrying what the lord suspected, for some reason, to be a well-filled game-bag. Whereupon he coolly perpetrated

Young Berkeley was early taught boxing by his elder brothers, who thought it fine sport to make him fight the stable-boys or to pick a quarrel with street boys or men. His brother Moreton, when at college, instead of studying, kept a pack of hounds, and in spring kept a gun in his room, and with small charges "dropped the old

they walked unsuspiciously beneath the trees of Corpus." Boxing, horse-racing, and hunting were held in greater honor among the young Berkeleys than books or study; and of schooling the writer of this book appears to have received but a moderate quantity. He became an officer in "the Guards" when he was scarcely more than a boy; and appears, from his own accounts, to have passed the remainder of his life either in

"That is a fine horse you're on, Mr. Gunter," said Lord Alvanley to one of them one day.

"Yes he is, my lord," replied the pastry

Parliament-where, as he mentions with great | pride, he on all occasions voted as his brother desired him to-and in the Kunting field, where he became a doughty hunter of foxes, and a ready promoter of quarrels among his fellow-cook; "but he is so hot I can't hold him.” hunters. The two volumes of his autobiography contain here and there a few traits of English life which possess a little interest.

Mr. Berkeley relates that the Duke of St. Alban's, on going out for a day's shooting, tied his left eye up with a black silk handkerchief, saying, "I hear you have a lot of game, so I am blinding my eye to avoid the trouble of having to shut it so often when I fire." The late Lord Rokeby "went to Greenwich behind a pair of posters," and on returning was upset by the postboy, who was drunk. The next time he went the same road he noticed that the same postboy had the horses in charge. "Now mind, my good fellow," said the noble lord, “you had your jollification last time; it's my turn now, so I shall get drunk, and you must keep sober."

Here is a really good story of John and Charles Kemble, who sat one night in the pit of Covent Garden Theatre, listening to a play. Charles Kemble remarked to his brother, in the course of the evening,

"I really think this the very best play for representation Shakspeare ever wrote.”

No sooner had he made this remark than a huge, red-headed, broad-shouldered Irishman, who sat immediately behind him, leant forward and tapped him on the shoulder to secure his attention.

"I think, Sir," he observed, with a strong brogue, "ye said it was one Shakspeare what wraught that play. It was not Shakspeare, Sir, but me friend, Linnard M‘Nally, what wraught that play."

"Oh, Sir," replied Charles Kemble, coolly, "very well."

A short time after this the Irishman tapped him on the shoulder again.

"Do ye belave, Sir," he demanded, "that it was me friend Linnard M'Nally what wraught that play?"

"Why the deuce don't you ice him then?" politely rejoined his lordship.

The same nobleman described a day's sport with Mr. Berkeley's hounds in the neighborhood of town: "The melon and asparagus beds were very heavy-up to our hocks in glass all day; and all Berkeley wanted was a landing-net to get his deer out of the water."

The present Bishop of Oxford, Wilberforce, is called by the wicked "Soapy Sam," and Mr. Berkeley tells the following story of him, which shows that the nickname is not amiss. The Bishop was sitting in a first-class car, where all the seats were full but one in front of him, upon which he had stretched his legs. A gentleman in search of a place asked the bishop if the seat in front of him was occupied, who replied that it was. The gentleman was obliged to accept an uncomfortable seat in a second-class car; but, straying into the first-class during the journey, was disgusted to find the bishop's legs still in possession.

"My lord," he exclaimed, indignantly, "at least I expected the truth from you! You told me the seat was taken."

"I did not, Sir," replied the bishop. "You asked me if the seat was occupied, and with much sincerity I replied in the affirmative."

This was pretty sharp practice for a bishop. The story reminds our author of a retort by Thesiger, the present Lord Chelmsford. Going down St. James's Street, one day, he passed a stranger, who turned, and said, with a look of pleased recognition, "Mr. Birch, I believe?" "If you believe that," replied Thesiger, "you'll believe any thing."

A bosom friend of the Berkeley's, we are told, was Lord William Lennox, a nobleman of somewhat odd habits. When an opera box was lent him, he let it out for money to a stranger; when he was intrusted by Lord Segrave with money

"Oh yes, certainly, Sir-if you say so," was to pay for a dinner, he pocketed the sum dethe peaceable answer.

For a while he remained unmolested, but at last he felt the heavy finger once more upon him. "Your friend what sits on your left hand," exclaimed the Irishman, “don't look as if he belaved it was me friend Linnard M'Nally what wraught that play!"

This was too much for the brothers; they rose together and left the house, not deeming it either pleasant or safe to stay in such belligerent society. Who the man was they never knew, says Mr. Berkeley; but the friend whom he was so determined to pass off as the greatest dramatic genius of every age and country was an obscure song-writer and playwright. In the former line he deserves remembrance only as the author of "The Lass of Richmond Hill."

The Gunters-celebrated pastry-cooks of London-were fond of fox-hunting.

signed to reward the waiters; when he was presented with a purse of money to bring a certain lady to Berkeley Castle in good style, he sent her down in the coach and kept the money. All this was done simply and only for amusement, we are repeatedly assured; and "in spite of this reckless determination to have his fun, there was no one whom Lord Segrave desired to have about him more than he did William Lennox." Truly there is no accounting for tastes.

Mr. Berkeley tells us that he had a quarrel with Dr. Maginn, the cause being a young lady to whom Maginn was said to have made infamous proposals. In the course of this quarrel, our author relates that he thrashed Mr. Fraser, the publisher of Fraser's Magazine, and fought a duel with Maginn. Mr. Dalrymple, afterward Earl of Stair, is another of the charming people to whom this autobiography introduces us. This