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confined. One of the gang employed to carry her off was an Irishman, and, touched by scruples of conscience, after he had spent his wages of sin in whisky, he revealed all to his priest, who immediately told Acacia. The three men started off at once to rescue her, while the priest was left to publish the following notice to the public:

Falsehood!
Infernal Treason!!

Abominable Wickedness!!!

Magnanimous people, you are deceived! You are aroused against your best, your only friends! A miserable fellow, of the name of Craig, and who ought to be called Judas Iscariot, has unworthily calumniated one of the most honest and loyal gentlemen in all Kentucky. No, M. Acacia is not an abolitionist, and will never be so! He holds that perverse doctrine in horror and detestation. His past life responds for his political and moral principles. This noble child of France imbibed with his nurse's milk the love of order and the constitution. His journal, the Semi-Weekly Messenger, is the organ of all honest people, and of all noble and loyal Kentuckians. M. Acacia has the honour to warn the public and Isaac Craig that he proposes, on the first meeting, to cut off the ears of the said Isaac, and nail them to the door of the office of the Herald of Freedom, as an example to all villains, and a pleasure to all the friends of order.

While this proclamation was left to produce its due effect on the inhabitants of Oaksburg, Acacia, Anderson, and Lewis were galloping at full speed toward Craig's farm. On reaching it, Acacia leaped over the fence, and was attacked by two enormous dogs, which he disposed of with his revolver. The noise of the firing aroused Appleton and Craig, who were at breakfast, and they rushed out to meet the foe. An exchange of shots took place, and Julia made her appearance on the stairs just as Anderson and Lewis entered the yard. At the sight of the new adversaries, Craig prudently escaped through the back door, while Appleton rushed up to Julia, Acacia close at his heels. Suddenly the villain drew his bowie-knife, and plunged it in the Quadroon's breast, and at the same moment Acacia stabbed him dead.

Mournfully the friends returned to Oaksburg, carrying the dying Julia, who was offered a shelter at Anderson's, where Lucy waited on her like a sister. Craig, who had returned to the town, and feared a trial, had already secured himself by finding twelve respectable gentlemen, all prepared to swear that he had not quitted the town for a month. In the mean time, he determined to get rid of Acacia at the first opportunity. This soon presented itself. Just as the gallant Frenchman was entering his office, a ball whizzed past his ear. He turned, and saw Craig taking aim at him once more. Acacia drew his revolver, and fired in turn. A crowd collected to see the fun, and the Frenchman, in his passion, rushed upon Craig. They fired simultaneously: Craig fell dead, while the Ingot received a ball in his thigh, and was borne by the triumphant crowd to the same room where Julia lay dying.

It was not long before the poor girl breathed her last sigh, her dying prayer being that Lucy should marry Acacia, to which the young lady willingly consented, after a decent interval. Acacia has decided on returning to his fatherland, and with his riches he will become the lion of Paris next spring. As for Lewis, he was soon cured of his dreams of martyrdom by espousing Deborah, and is now undergoing a martyrdom of a different description. He and his lady are at present engaged in con

verting the county of Kent, and Mrs. Lewis has gained an enormous reputation by the publication of an edifying work called "The Crushed Heart."

In taking leave of M. Assollant and his skits upon America, we are forced to the conclusion-remembering, as we cannot help doing, the latest accounts from that interesting country, in which Mr. Bright takes so lively an interest-that "many a true word is written in jest."

WALPOLE'S LETTERS, COMPLETE.*

As we shall soon have occasion to draw attention to Horace Walpole's Last Journals, we must not encroach on this month's space to dilate on his Last Letters. Here they are, however, the very last of the long, long, but never tiring series-completing that Complete Edition, of which we could say our say better in any other periodical than Bentley, because in the latter alone (so much is there in a name) it would wear the look of a puff. Happily, nine such volumes, so edited and so got up, no puff-or what Shakspeare calls

Windy suspiration of forced breath

could palpably avail, or perceptibly damage. Such good wine (sparkling to the dregs, too; rich, and fruity to the last) needs no bush; least of all, such barren bramble-bush as we could here hang out. Horace Walpole has not his reputation to make, as the prince of letter-writers (only the other day the Times newspaper made an invidious comparison of his masterly art in that respect, with some recent specimens by the Prime Minister of England); and a complete edition of his epistles, not far from three thousand in number, illustrated, annotated, and indexed with corresponding completeness, may and will and must speak for itself.

What an eventful tale of years is told over, between the first letter and the last in this collection-between November, 1735, and January, 1797. Alike in that first letter and in that last one, Horace characteristically affects an epistolary impotence-and it is as a correspondent that he is potent beyond compare. "I can't build without straw," writes the volatile young Cantab at eighteen to his Eton crony, West, "nor have I the ingenuity of the spider, to spin fine lines out of dirt," &c. Whereas it was just this sort of ingenuity in which he excelled, as epistles of his by the hundred go to show; and bricks he could make without straw, without almost anything, so creative was his art in fabricating a smart and showy letter, that should amuse an existing generation in manuscript, and all succeeding ones in print. That was his style at eighteen. And what was it at eighty? "My dear Madam," he writes to Lady Ossory -it is the final letter in this collection-" you distress me infinitely by showing my idle notes, which I cannot conceive can amuse anybody. My old-fashioned breeding impels me every now and then to reply to the letters you honour me with writing, but in truth very unwillingly, for I

The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford. Edited by Peter Cunningham. Now first chronologically arranged. In Nine Volumes. Vol. IX. London: Richard Bentley. 1859.

seldom can have anything particular to say." He scarce goes out of his own house, and then only to two or three places where no news is to be had. At home he sees only a few charitable elders, "except about fourscore nephews and nieces of various ages," who come once a year to stare at him as the Methusalem of the family, and with whom he has nothing in common. "Must not the result of all this, Madam, make me a very entertaining correspondent? And can such letters be worth showing? or can I have any spirit when so old and reduced to dictate?

"Oh! my good Madam, dispense with me from such a task, and think how it must add to it to apprehend such letters being shown. Pray send me no more such laurels, which I desire no more than their leaves when decked with a scrap of tinsel and stuck on twelfth-cakes that lie on the shop-boards of pastry-cooks at Christmas. I shall be quite content with a sprig of rosemary thrown after me, when the parson of the parish commits my dust to dust. Till then, pray, Madam, accept the resignation of your

"Ancient servant,

"ORFORD."

Accepted or not, the resignation was given in, and it was final. Dust to dust was soon to be in the parson's mouth over the old peer's grave. But we see how effervescent to the last was the spirit that had given airy life and flavour to thousands of letters for sixty and more years. These nine volumes contain matter for all moods, grave and gay, contemplative and frivolous; for students of English history, social progress, and human nature at large and in little. What a span in the eighteenth century-beginning with the eighth year of George II. and ending at a period when the French Revolution had recovered from its Reign of Terror, and the star of Napoleon was beginning to "flame amazement" on the world. Within that interval what Ministries rise and fall, what reputations are won and sometimes lost, what successions of beauties flourish and fade-all of them registered in this far-glancing correspondence. Mr. Cunningham, who characterises the Letters as "absolute jests and story books, and the exact standard of easy engaging writing," points out their value as preserving the "dark jostlings for place of the many Administrations which governed England" from the fall of Sir Robert Walpole to the accession of the younger Pitt. Horace, we are reminded, knew the members of the Broad Bottom and Coalition ministries; had seen or known (certainly knew a great deal about) the many mistresses of the four Georges, from the Duchess of Kendal to the Countess of Suffolk, from Miss Vane to Mrs. Fitzherbert. "He was known to two kings and to their children. He lived throughout a long life in the best society, and in the best clubs. His means were ample, and every reasonable desire he seems to have gratified. As a boy he had kissed the hand of King George I., and as a man in years had conversed with two young men, who long after his own death succeeded King George III. on the throne of England. He had seen in the flesh two of the heroines of De Grammont and the Restoration, La Belle Jennings, and Arabella Churchill, and lived long enough to offer his coronet to two ladies (Mary and Agnes Berry), who lived far into the reign of Queen Victoria.

* Vol. ix. Pref. p. xvi.

"He has the art to interest us in very little matters, and to enliven subjects seemingly the most barren. His allusions, his applications, are the happiest possible. As his pen never lay fallow, so his goose-quill never grew grey. We take an interest in his gout and his bootikins, in Philip and Margaret (his Swiss valet and housekeeper), and in his dogs Patapan, Tonton, and Rosette. We know every room in Strawberry Hill, and every miniature and full-length portrait in the Tribune and Gallery. We are admitted to the Holbein chamber and the Beauclerk closet, and as we wander in print over the stripped rooms and now newly-furnished walls, we can pass a night in his favourite Blue Room, restore the Roman Eagle, replace the bust of Vespasian and the armour of Francis I.; bring back from Knowsley the blue and white china bowl, commemorated in the Odes of Gray, and call up Kirgate, the printer, carrying a proof of the Anecdotes of Painting to Conway's Elzevir Horace in the Gothic Library. As we become better acquainted with his letters, we can summon before us the skilful antiquary and virtuoso midwife, and see Strawberry in lilac-tide-that period of the year in which its owner thought Strawberry in perfection.'

There is little prospect, we are assured, that any additions of moment can now be made to this correspondence, though Walpole undoubtedly wrote more letters than are at present in print. Those to Mrs. Damer were destroyed, it appears, by her own desire, with the rest of her papers, and those to Mrs. Clive were returned to him by her brother at her death, and are not now known to exist. "Walpole foresaw the value of his letters, and, on the death of a friend, constantly asked for his correspondence back. As a request, in every way so proper, has preserved many of his letters, so it has led to the destruction of others, and those there is reason to believe not the least important. West and Gray, as he observed to Mason, were good-natured enough to destroy his letters." One is reminded of the curt and curst epithet applied by Sir Peter Teazle to that same term, good-natured, in the case of another couple, of the other sex.

The present edition includes above one hundred letters of Walpole's now for the first time published-addressed to his niece's second husband, the Duke of Gloucester; to Henry Pelham; to his uncle, his brother Edward, and the crackbrained nephew to whose title Horace succeeded; to Lords Harcourt, Hertford, and Holland; to that whimsical busybody, Lord Buchan, whom Sir Walter found so overbearing a bore; to Joseph Warton, and Malone, and Dodsley, and Lodge, and Henderson the actor, and various ladies of title, to whom an epistle from Strawberry Hill was precious through the three degrees of comparison. The editor acknowledges his obligations to (inter alios) the Duke of Manchester, for access to the original letters to George Montagu, which has enabled him to correct many blunders and supply many omissions; to Lady Waldegrave, "the restorer of Strawberry Hill" (to whom this edition is inscribed), for the use of the Harcourt correspondence; to the late Mr. Croker, not only for access to Lord Hertford's unpublished correspondence with Walpole, but for his own annotated copies of Walpole's works; and to Mr. Forster, for access to Cole's unpublished letters to his sometime schoolfellow and constant friend. In short, Mr. Cunningham, in his editorial toiling, has had every advantage, and so have his readers now-barring the toil.

FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR LADY.

A MODERN STORY.

BY DUDLEY COSTELLO.

CHAPTER XLIX.

DISCLOSURES.

To the outer world, including all the strangers then in Paris, the year 1848 opened with pleasant prospects, though the cloud had already risen which was soon to overshadow the land.

Slowly recovering from his illness, Sir James Tunstall was still a prisoner in his hotel, with the desire as strong as ever upon him to reach Italy; no longer, however, for the purpose of shooting wild boar, the season for that sport being over, but hoping to recruit his health at the Villa Lavagna, from whence Lord Deepdale sent the most pressing invitations.

"Edith's unaccountable depression," wrote her husband to Lady Tunstall, " appears to me to increase daily. I know not what remedy to devise, for the quiet which she has always sought cannot anywhere be more complete than in this beautiful, secluded place. Strange that one so kind and gentle as Edith, whose life since I have known her has been all tranquillity, should be the victim of what seems an incurable melancholy! Had Heaven blessed us with children, it might, I think, have been different with her; with me, too, perhaps, though even the son I yearn for could never have wrought any change in the affection I bear for her who was my first and only love. But this expectation is long past, and all my thoughts are now centred on the one object of restoring or giving to Edith that sunshine of the mind which is so much wanting to her happiness. God knows there is no sacrifice, if such were necessary on my part, that I would not cheerfully make, to see her again with the light heart I remember, when she and you, Agatha, were girls together. You have heard me often say that Edith was more like her former self when you and Mary were our guests at Tivoli than at any other period of her married life. A renewal of that visit here would do much, I am convinced, towards the realisation of my fondest hope, and you, I feel assured, will not withhold your presence a day longer than you can help. You may judge then how much, independently of my regard for him, I• have lamented Sir James's unfortunate illness, which has kept you from us. Edith's anxiety to see you, though she speaks of it less frequently than I, is, I am certain, quite as strong as mine, for upon one occasion, only two or three days since, she asked me whether it would be very tedious and difficult, at this season of the year, to travel to Paris, and on my replying that the journey itself presented no difficulty to speak of, provided she were strong enough to bear it, she smiled, and said her strength was greater than I imagined; from which I infer, that if she

VOL. XLV.

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