When that low Anthony Stew came in, he knew me (before I could speak almost); he gave a quick glance at the table, and then without another word showed me out, in spite of all my uniform, to his dirty little justice-room. With such a man, I should think it wrong to go into his ribaldry only he said this, at last; "Davy, thou thief, we will withdraw them, because we cannot execute them; now thou art in Royal Service. Five there are, if I remember. Does your conscience plead to more?" "My conscience pleads to none, your Worship. Perjured scoundrels all of them. Five was the number, I do believe. Alas! what may we come to?" 66 Nay, your Worship, God forbid! What food have I had since breakfast-time?" And so I won the last word of him. After this provision for my good repute, and defiance of magisterial scandal on behalf of Bunny, my next act was one of pure generosity towards an ancient enemy. Poor Sandy Macraw had a very hard fight to maintain himself and his numerous and still increasing family. Sometimes they did not taste so much as a rind of bacon for months together, but lived on barley-bread and dog-fish, or such stuff as he could not sell, with oatmeal cakes for a noble treat every other Sunday. What did I do but impart to him, under document drawn by Berkrolles, that licence to fish off and on Sker Point which my courage had well established, with authority to him and covenant by him to attack and scare all poachers; the whole to be void upon my return, if so I should think prop er. boat went twice as fast as Sandy's and was far more handy, so that this bargain was fair and generous, and did honour to all concerned. The next and last thing, before starting, was to provide for poor Bardie herself. For I feared that Hezekiah, or some other unprincipled fellow, might trump up a case, and get hold of her, and sell, or by other means turn into money my little pet, to the loss of my rights, and perhaps her own undoing. Resolved as I was to stop all chances of villany of that kind, I went direct to Colonel Lougher and to Lady Bluett. Here I made the cleanest breast that was ever scooped out almost. I may declare that I kept in nothing, except about painting the boat, and one or two infinite trifles of that sort, which it would have been a downright impertinence to dwell upon. Nevertheless Colonel Lougher said that some blame might attach to me in spite of all pure intentions. But Lady Bluett said no, no. She would not hear of it for a moment. The only thing that surprised her was Llewellyn's thorough unselfishness, and chival rous devotion to a child who was nothing to him. She was a bewitching little dear; no one who saw her could doubt that; still it showed a very soft side to a wonderfully gallant character, when through all modesty it appeared what womanly tenderness there had been. And this proved how entirely right her opinion had been from the very first, and what a mistake the good Colonel had made, in declining to let her even argue. Llewel "My dear Eleanor, my dear Eleanor," cried the Colonel, with his eyes wide open, and his white hand spread to her; I am surprised to hear you say so. But we cannot go into that question now. lyn begged for my opinion. Yours, my dear (as you have proved), is of course more valuable; still I thought that it was mine "To be sure it was, dear Henry. Yours is what was asked for. My rule is never to interrupt you, but to listen silently." "To be sure, Eleanor, to be sure! And we always agree in the end, my dear. But so far as I can judge at present, Llewellyn, although with the very best meaning "And a display of the greatest valour. Come, Colonel, even by his own account And not only this, but I put him in funds to replace all his tackle, by enabling him to sell his boat. For I went so far as to lease him my own, at a moderate yearly rental, upon condition that he should keep her in thorough repair and as good as new. And for the further validity (as the Yes, my dear, great valour, no doubt, lease said) of this agreement, two years' coupled with very sound discretion. Yet rent became due at once, and was paid when I come to consider the whole, I really from the price of the other boat. My do think that your hero might have en 66 ment tered more fully into these particulars of him in a shy glance or two, and letting about the boat. Of course he had no mo- her long eyelashes fall, and crossing her tive, and it was simply an error of judg-feet with one shoulder towards him, for him to begin with her. He vowed he never had such a pupil; instead of learning, she wanted to know the reason why of everything. Why had A two legs and Perceiving a pause, I made my bow; for the very last thing I could desire would be to sow a controversy between the gentleman and lady, whom of all the county I esteemed the most and loved the best. And I knew that if I caused dissension in a pair so well united, each would think the less of me, when they came to make it up together. Moreover, my object was attained. Their attention was drawn to the child again: the Colonel, as the nearest magistrate, was put in legal charge of her: I was now quit of all concealment and Lady Bluett had promised to see to the poor thing's education, if ever she should need any. "Henry, there was no error at all. What could he do when they would not even listen to him about the name of the ship? If they would not listen about aa girdle, while B had two stomachs and no ship, is it likely they would listen about a leg at all? C was the moon, from the boat? And a very small atom of a boat! shape of it. It was no good to tell her The thing is too ridiculous." that C was the cat; a cat had four legs and C had none: and as for D being a dog, she would fetch dear Dutch, if he would not believe her, and show him what a dog was like. And then perceiving how patient he was, and understanding his goodness, the poor little fatherless soul jumped up on his knee, and demanded a play with him. He did not know how to play very well, because he was an ancient bachelor; but entering into her sad luck, from knowledge of her history, he did the very best thing (as I thought) that ever had been done to her. He put her on a stool between his knees, and through the gloss of her hair he poured such very beautiful and true stories, that one could almost see her mind (like the bud of a primrose) opening. She pushed up her little hands and tossed her thick hair out of the hearing way, and then, being absorbed in some adventures like her own almost, round she turned and laid her eyes upon his furrowed yet beaming face, and her delicate elbows on his knees, and drank in every word, with sighs, and short breath, and a tear or two. This I hoped with all my heart that she would do, and quickly too. And indeed she was growing at such a pace after that long illness, also getting so wonderfully clever about almost everything, and full of remarks that might never strike a grown man till he thought of them, that the only way or chance I saw of taking the genius out of her, was to begia her education. Forgetting just now a good deal of my own, and being so full of artillery, I got Master Berkrolles to make the first start, and show her the way to the alphabet. Our Bunny now could spell "cat" and "dog," and could make a good shot at some other words, and enjoyed a laugh at the children (head and shoulders over her) whenever they went amiss, and she from the master's face was sure of it. But Bardie had never been to school; for I thought it below her rank so much; and now I contrived for our great schoolmaster to come to my cottage, and there begin. It must have made the very gravest man, ever cut from a block of wood, laugh to behold Master Roger, and her. He with his natural dignity and wellfounded sense of learning, and continual craving for a perfect form of discipline; yet unable to conceal his great wonder at her ways: she on her side taking measure Although, from one point of view, I did not like to be superseded so, especially in my own department, as might be said, of story-telling, yet I put small feelings away, and all the jaundice of jealousy. If I were bound to go wherever Government might order me, for the safety of our native land, and with moderate pay accruing, also with a high position, and good hopes of raising it, the least I could do was to thank the Lord for sending those two poor children a man, so wise, and accomplished, and kind-hearted, bound over to look after them. And yet I would almost as lief have committed them into the hands of Mother Jones, who could scarcely vie with me. But they promised never to forget me; and the night before I went away, I carried Bardie back to Sker, and saw that Black Evan was dying. From The Spectator. hated; and who, if he had scruples of any kind, had none which stood in the way of governing en grand seigneur, as a despot released from the moral obligations of mankind. It was expedient to punish as well as dismiss him. There were errors in THERE never was a story so characteristic of France as that revealed in the trial of M. Janvier de la Motte, whilom Prefect of the Eure. It might have been told by Sully, or still better by the Abbé his accounts, expenditures which either Soulavie, and all historians would have were defalcations or looked exceedingly quoted it as the story which better than like them, outlays not indeed for the benany other illustrated the home life of the efit of M. de la Motte's private account times of Henri Quatre or the Regent Phi- with his bankers, but intended to allow lippe of Orleans. M. de la Motte, though him that Louis Quinze style of living for only a great official, a bureaucrat not a which his salary was insufficient. Where soldier, a Prefect not a Crusader, is in the old Seigneur would have skinned his every essential characteristic a great noble peasantry the Prefect of the Eure skinned of the old French régime. Able, popular, his department. The Emperor wanted a and recklessly dissolute, regardless of fête, and the Prefect carried expenses to money, or accounts, or virtue, careless the account of a work, a bridge, on whether he spent his own funds or those which, nevertheless, he had spent thousof the State, equally ready to give to his ands of his own. His mistress - or was debauched favourites or to beggars, it a second wife, for evidence is divided? squandering his own fortune and then pil-desired a gorgeous bedroom, and the laging his wife's, yet as ready to waste furniture was paid for as Asylum furniture, them on State business as on his own; but paid for with the knowledge of the £50,000 the poorer for his Prefectures, Council-General, and left, like the blazing yet reasonably accused of malversation; gauds of the Paris Hôtel de Ville, as part 80 competent a ruler that great nobles, of the furniture of the Prefecture. The old Legitimists, who must have hated him Government quite properly resolved to with holy zeal, turned out to testify that prosecute for these offences, but instead of no man ever governed the department prosecuting fairly they went in headlong like him he doubled, it is said, the for a conviction, raked up charges which wealth of the Eure and so foolish that were ample grounds for dismissal, but had at every step he left materials for a crimi- nothing to do with the charge of malvernal action; so kindly that the jealous, en-sation, demanded in the name of the Treasvious, criticizing poor of the department ury sums which the head of the Treasury rose in thousands after his fall to protest declared on his oath were not due, and in against it, yet unable to be decently just to fact prosecuted as Colbert would have prohis wife; luxurious, generous, brave, clever, secuted a Fermier-General whom he had and utterly immoral, M. Janvier de la Motte allowed to gorge himself till his hour came. stands out in the evidence governing the The Prosecutor, with his bevy of female Eure as the Duc de Richelieu might have witnesses brought forward to prove that governed Toulouse, or M. de Bouillon have official accounts were not straight; the administered Sedan -a strange figure, Judge, with his sarcastic reprimands to all one which no good man can approve or who praised the defendant; the defendant fail to condemn, but which no other peo- himself, with instinctive gentlemanliness ple than the French is entirely competent and audacity, rising to state that a witto judge. And he was attacked and de-ness who had fabricated an account was fended in the old, old way. The Govern- quite blameless, for "I myself gave him ment did not assail him, though it is pos- the order," it was all a scene from the sible M. Dufaure, the Minister of Justice, history of the old régime. did, in the name either of outraged morals, And so was the defence. One-half of or of the violated sanctity of accounts. If the witnesses who came forward neither M. de la Motte had been a Republican he proved nor attempted to prove anything might have been quietly removed as be- except that M. de la Motte was popular, longing to an order of men Republics can- while the witness who ultimately saved not tolerate, but he would have been al-him was the Finance Minister himself, who lowed to be forgotten. He was, however, a determined Bonapartist, and one of the dangerous type, as able as Haussman and popular besides, a man who understood the art of conciliating the masses; who could rule with a strong hand, yet not be as President of the Council-General of the Eure had watched him all through his career. M. Pouyer-Quertier did not attempt either to defend his friend's private life, or to deny that accounts had been cooked, but asserted that his energy, gen though it may be mistaken, belief that the Prefect had been justified by law in his acts, and that it would be cowardice for the President of the Council-General who, we may remark, was no Imperialist, standing always as the advocate of Protection against the official candidate - to shrink in this extremity from avowing his opinion, while it is certain that M. PouyerQuertier's appearance in the box was opposed to all his interests. Nobody suggests that he was dishonest, or actuated by any sentiment except one of duty and honour towards his colleagues of the Council-General. The sanctity of evidence, however, ius, and philantrophy had made of the Eure the first department of France — this is true, the improvement in every kind of civilization, including the diminution of crime, being proved by figures and that the practice of transfers of account, which the witness had always condemned, had been authorized by a Senatus-Consultum promulgated under the Ministry of M. Fould. Under this order the transfers are permitted, subject to the approval of the Audit Office (Cour des Comptes, one of the oldest institutions in France), and this approval had in each instance been formally given. The Council-General of the Department, the controlling authority esthe obligation of every man tablished by law, had given its assent to in the witness-box, to say what he believes all the expenditures complained of, and if to be true without reference to consethat Council was Imperialist, the Council quences-is not yet acknowledged in elected since 1871 was not, and it had in- France, the Finance Minister had stopped dependently examined and confirmed the a great State prosecution, and the Cabinet expenditures. "I am convinced," said the felt as wroth as Louis XIV. would have Minister speaking in the old style, as if the felt had Colbert or Louvois interfered to conviction of one so highly placed must be protect a Farmer-General the King himbetter than evidence, "that M. Janvier de self had doomed. M. Pouyer-Quertier, la Motte never appropriated a single cen- though essential to M. Thiers' Protectiontime of the local funds to his own uses, ist policy, was ordered to resign, or, as is and that he expended a large part of his hinted, actually dismissed for giving eviprivate fortune to serve the interests of dence too favourable to an enemy, and the the department." The Prefect, in fact, had round of dramatic wrong was made comtaken nothing; his accounts were manu-plete. From first to last the trial bears factured under legal authority, his irregularities were "inevitable" under the system, and the jury, evidently believing that he was made the scapegoat of an entire system, unanimously voted for acquittal. If the Finance Minister is right as to the legal effect of the Senatus-Consultum and of votes pa sed by the Council-General, they are of course in the right, and their verdict amounts to this, that under the Imperial system, as in the State, so in the Department, a vast expenditure on the personal magnificence of the head of the Administration was, so long as he governed successfully, considered on all hands by Prefects, by representatives, and by anditors a legitimate use of the money of the taxpayers. He was not to steal chairs, but to buy chairs covered with gilding out of poor people's money was but to create the pomp demanded by his position. The child's rule, "Eat all you like, but pocket nothing," was the rule of an entire administration. evidence of a society in which nothing is regulated by anything higher than the expediency of the hour. The Prefect, with his grand-seigneur life at ratepayers' expense; the Council-General, with its tolerance for everything so long as material prosperity was secured; the Ministry of Justice, with its passionate desire for a conviction, whether legally correct or not; the Minister of Finace, with his acknowledgement that transfers of account were utterly bad, but legal and inevitable if the administrative mechanism were to remain as at present; the Cabinet, which feels evidence as an assault-all alike belong to a world in which nothing is sacred except success, and everything is tolerated except the humdrum. In England we should have been Philistine to the last degree, should have sued M. Janvier de la Motte by civil process for the moneys expended contrary to their proper allocation, should have heard an enormous quantity of tedious legal argument, but no denunciations and The trial was concluded, but the ver- no eloquence, and should, in the end, after dict was still to have its reflex effect. enduring a boredom of weeks, have given The Finance Minister had baffled the Min- a sore discouragement to the most danisters of Justice and of the Interior, and gerous of all possible breeds of adminishis evidence became at once a Cabinet trators, - the officials who are popular bequestion. There seems no reason to doubt cause of their magnificent deficiency of that it was given honestly, from a sincere,' morale. From The Spectator. MAZZINI. ITALY has lost one more of her great sons. Kings and journalists did their best by persecution and calumny to make of Mazzini a cosmopolitan power, a Chief of the Universal Revolution, but it was to Italy that he essentially belonged. It was her oppression that first kindled the fire in his soul, for her sake and on her territory that his greatest acts were done, in her and her destiny that he most ardently believed. Whatever else he was, he was before and beyond all things an Italianone to whom Rome was Mecca, who believed that there, and there only, could the movement be begun which was to regenerate the world. It was on an Italian Assembly sitting in Rome, and reigning by the full consent of Italians over the whole Peninsula, that he expected the divine influence to descend which shonld make its proceedings as important to the world as the decrees of Councils once were to Christianity, which should make its laws the models for all human legislation, and its resolves the bases for the grand Code which should ultimately regulate our race. Perhaps of all men who have ever borne a great part in politics Mazzini was most entirely patriot. Through forty years of incessant thought, teaching, and action, in hiding or at the head of a revolutionary government, an idol or a denounced fugitive, in all countries and by all roads he pressed forward towards the same object, the transfer of Italy, once more united, from its foreign or semi-foreign despots to the sway of a freely elected Sovereign Assembly, which, as he trusted or believed would be guided by something difficult to distinguish from direct inspiration from above. That he changed his means frequently is true, and that he sometimes subordinated means to ends can hardly be denied, for he was that rare character, a practical ideologue. He had to fashion his tools as well as use them, and using when compelled materials like the Carbonari the Secret Societies, and the Socialists, it is little marvel that he was himself believed for years to be the greatest of Rovolutionists, Socialists, Terrorists, the chief and soul of all the parties which Continental Statesmen hold in such abhorrence. In truth, he was neither anarchist nor Jacobin, nor even Revolutionist, but a calm and serene teacher and leader, a prophet possessed with a faith and absorbed in an object, who swayed men by the force of his ideas, the holiness of his life, and the unique loftiness of his character, pressing steadily onward towards an end which was not always theirs. Perhaps no man since Mohammed died ever held such ascendancy over all with whom he came into habitual contact. It was at the lowest ebb of Mohammed's fortune, while living a proscribed rebel among his kinsmen, that the "Companions," as they were subsequently called, the men who had known him from boyhood, who saw him eat, drink, and sleep, who were hiding with him from an hourly-expected vengeance, who knew by every testimony that can impress men that his cause was lost, acknowledged the great Arabian for the first time as the prophet of God; and Mazzini over and over repeated that marvellous experience. No reverse of fortune made him less powerful. No amount of disaster ever shook his companions' confidence. No man of all he must have trusted ever betrayed him. He passed through countries where to be discovered was to die, through armies of spies and police and political enemies, like a spirit clothed with the old gift of invisiblen is to mortal eyes. This influence, rising in some cases to an ascendancy such as has hardly been given to the greatest religious teachers, was employed unswervingly for his single end, and it was employed successfully. Cavour made Italy, but it was due to Mazzini, and not to Cavour, that such making was possible; that the idea of nationality had revived, that men accustomed from infancy to think of their next neighbours as foreigners had come to long for the unity of their nation, to believe that Italy was above her provinces, to postpone hatreds and jealousies and causes of division, some as old as civilization, many involved in their very creed, some few like the difference of civilization between North and South Italy fearfully real, to the one grand end, the restoration of Italy to herself. His writings, spread broadcast by secret presses, had popularized the new faith, his disciples had made it the first object of the Societies, he himself had converted the Italian leaders, till when the hour at last arrived, and Orsini's will had done the work on Napoleon's mind, and Garibaldi had driven the Bourbon to a fortress, and Cavour was ready "to strike quickly and strike hard,” Italy was ready to take advantage of the blow, and become once more the nation she has since remained, a nation not grown to its full strength, not so full of nerve and fibre as Germany or England, but a nation still united, industrious, and free. The idea of the powerless lawyer had penetrated an entire people, and Italy |