"Between whom?"

66

Nay, but I know nothing. Don't detain me."

66

Jerome, as he spoke, took a light from the hands of one of the servants, walked quickly forward, and turned round at the door of the haunted room. "I must go in first alone," said he: "I am the oldest retainer in the family, in the confidence of the lords of Pommeroy, and I demand it."

He passed in, and let fall the hangings, but in less than a minute he held them up. "Walk in now: oh, woe! woe!" Holding their breaths, the crowd pressed in, one upon another. Woe, woe! as Jerome had said: for there lay the lord of Pommeroy, beaten to death.

So, Rupert had mastered! had obtained possession of the pistol, and shot his unfortunate brother!-for the bullet was subsequently found in the head. Not content with that, he had afterwards battered him as he lay, probably with the butt-end of the same weapon, until scarcely a trace of the face of a human being could be discerned.

It must be remembered that those, now gazing on him, had no clue to the murderer: Jerome doubtless suspected, but he kept silence. Horror-stricken and sick, when they had gazed their fill, they began to look about the room for a solution of the mystery: Who had done it?and how? Nothing was to be seen save the ordinary and dilapidated furniture, and the dust on the floor, disturbed as by a scuffle.

"What's this ?" exclaimed one of the guests, snatching up a dark grey cloak and exhibiting it to their view. "This was not the lord's. Ah, ha! this will lead to a discovery."

"I know that," interrupted a servant. "It is Father Andrew's capuchin he comes in it to the abbey sometimes on a winter's night.” "Father Andrew!" echoed the shocked and scandalised assemblage.

"I could swear to it," doggedly repeated the speaker: "I know it by those two rents at the tail of the skirt. The father got it caught in a gate one windy evening, he said."

Father Andrew, a holy priest, and an unoffending man, attack the lord! The thing was inexplicable. Jerome, who had sat down on the edge of the velvet settee, lifted his face of misery, and slightly shook his head. That the motive had nothing to do with robbery was apparent: the lord's signet ring was on his finger, and his valuable gold watch and chain had not been touched. When his pockets came to be examined afterwards, their contents were found safe: keys, pocket-book, purse, and handkerchief with the great crest and supporters, only used by the lords of Pommeroy-the younger sons used the more simple one. The clothes were much torn, proving how severe had been the scuffle. But Father Andrew! they looked in each other's amazed eyes and where had he got to?

The last question was soon decided, for who should walk into the room but the reverend father himself: a stout man with a merry face, quite the opposite to all popular notions of a midnight murderer. The terrified women below had sent for him in haste.

"What's to do?" cried he, on the broad grin. "Somebody seen the ghost ?"

They made way for him, and threw the light on the floor. Father Andrew's countenance changed, and he stepped back awestruck.

"Who is it?" whispered he.

"How was it done?"

"It's the lord; and he has been murdered. Do you know this?" added the speaker, picking up the cloak.

"That's mine," said the priest.

"How came it here, father?"

A light, as of horror, seemed to break upon him. "I lent that toto a friend," he whispered.

"To whom?"

"Rupert Pommeroy. He came to me yesterday, and borrowed it." There was a pause of dismay, and then arose the cry: "He cannot have escaped! he must be in the rooms."

Up they rose and searched, but no Rupert Pommeroy was there.

And though the country was scoured and tracked for several days, no Rupert Pommeroy was found, or heard of. How he had managed to escape, either from the abbey or the neighbourhood, was a mystery. Perhaps time would solve it. The ill-fated lord of Pommeroy lay in state; his unsightly face, what remained of it, covered up from view; and then he was buried with all the pomp and honours customary at the interment of the chief of the Pommeroys.

Verily, the prediction had, so far, been strangely worked out.

MY ISLAND HOME!

BY FRANCIS HINGESTON, M.A.

Он, be it ever mine to sing

Of thee, my Mother Isle!
And, wafted high on Fancy's wing,

Each idle hour beguile

In musing on thy shady dells,
As fair as Eden's bowers,
Where amid gem-like flowers
Each crystal streamlet swells,
And, striving bravely to be free,
Hurries along its pearly foam.
Yes, they are ever dear to me,
Thy emerald vales, thy glassy brooks, my

O Albion, I can never love
Valley or hill but thine;
For, though he rises far above-
The purple Apennine-

Yet even his unfading hue

Is not so dear to me

As the eternal sea,

Island Home!

That girdles thee with heavenlier blue!

Yes, hill or dale, I love thee well,

And nought can ever bid me roam,
Or to thy white cliffs say farewell-

Thy grassy meads, thy leafy glades-my Island Home!

NOTES ON NOTE-WORTHIES,

OF DIVERS ORDERS, EITHER SEX, AND EVERY AGE.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

And make them men of note (do you note, men ?)—Love's Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. 1.

D. Pedro. Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Balth.

Do it in notes.

Note this before my notes,

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. Pedro. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks, Notes, notes, forsooth, and noting!

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Sc. 3.

And these to Notes are frittered quite away.-Dunciad, Book I.

Notes of exception, notes of admiration,

Notes of assent, notes of interrogation.—Amen Corner, c. iii.

XIX.-CARDINAL MAURY.

M. AMÉDÉE PICHOT, in one of his most recent publications, devotes some lively pages to his personal recollections of the French physicians, and medical professors, of a former generation. Baron Portal is one of these imposing figures-the first sight of whom, at fourscore and upwards, struck his young observer as that of an almost literal spectre-so ghost-like appeared "ce cadavre desséché," the osteology whereof admitted of facile demonstration; add to which, the patriarch's all but extinct voice, scarcely capable of the exertion implied in a whisper, though his venerable age, reputation, and professional titles to be heard always ensured him the compliment of a general silence whenever those shrivelled lips were seen at work, whether the whisper was audibly forthcoming or not. When M. Pichot entered this august presence for the first time, the aphonetic octogenarian (to speak in Pichot-polysyllables) was holding forth to a respectful auditory, that hung on his words, articulate or the reverse, as the old gentleman whispered to them passages of his professional experience. Very devoutly the new comer listened. "It was in 1766"-the baron continued, after merely nodding to the fresh man; and as the bit of reminiscence thus recorded is pertinent to our subject, we may as well, intermediately, listen too.

In 1766, then, young Portal started afoot from Gaillac for Paris, to make his way in the world, with a tolerable fund of hope in his breast, but a clear deficit as regards the circulating medium. While on the road between Lyons and Roanne, stepping nimbly along, his bundle suspended from the stick across his shoulder, he observed another "young peripatetic" like himself, equally unburdened with luggage, and going in the same direction, and pretty much at the same pace. Not being Englishmen, silence was not considered indispensable by this pair of adventurers,

with no third "party" at hand to perform the rite of introduction. Walking together, they began talking together. Both were from the South. For both of them Paris was the terminus ad quem. One was going to the capital to set up in the medical line, the other in the ecclesiastical. So the young doctor and the young abbé became intimate friends on the highway, and divided such travelling expenses as were thenceforth incurred. Arrived at Paris, they shared the same lodgings, and continued castle-building together and day-dreaming together about this one's first surgical operation, and the other's first sermon. Now it fell upon a day, that the Gazette informed them of the dangerous illness of one of the princesses, Louis the Fifteenth's daughters. "Ah! if they would only just give me the opening of her body after death," sighed our medical student. And "Ah! if they would but entrust me with her funeral sermon," exclaimed his theological companion. Well; the Princess died. And so it chanced that old Ferrein, who, like Portal, came from the South, selected his young compatriot to conduct, under his surveillance, the "autopsy of the illustrious deceased," of which task Portal acquitted himself so well that it was the means of placing him, a year later, in the Professor's chair of Anatomy in the Collége de France, and thereby of securing for him all his subsequent titles and places. A recommendation of the same kind caused his friend to be nominated, as a fit and proper person to pronounce the funeral oration on the high and puissant princess. A few years later the panegyrist of the king's daughter delivered in presence of the French Academy the panegyric or Saint Louis; item, became grand-vicaire of Lombez; item, succeeded to the Academical fauteuil of Lefranc de Pompignan; item, was chosen as deputy to the States-General, and was consecrated Bishop of MonteFiascone and cardinal. C'était l'abbé Maury.*

We are told by a foreign Protestant divine, distinguished in the not quite contiguous departments of pastoral theology and historical romance, that Madame du Deffand-who continued as well as she could the Hôtel de Rambouillet, hastening to attempt whatever occurred to her as likely to make the succession more direct, and the resemblance greater-was at one time tormented by the idea that her salon had hitherto produced no Bossuet, nothing, in fact, at all approximating to the Bossuet of the Rambouillet circle. Devotion, we are assured-for madame had a slight penchant in that direction-joined its voice with that of vanity after having patronised so many infidels, it would be a sort of expiation to patronise a believer, or at least a man who bore the dress and aspect of a believer. But where was such a man to be found? He must be, at the same time, youthful enough to admit of her having the honour to form and direct him, and old enough, and (in particular) well enough endowed, to ensure his being instantly taken up by the public.

"I have found the man!" one day exclaimed madame's vigilant jackal, or lion-provider in ordinary and extraordinary, M. Pont-de-Veyle. "I have found him!" A gladsome eureka! to the pricked-up ears of the used-up old lady. "He is a young man from Venaissin-the son of a shoemaker. Ne sutor ultrà crepidam, you will say. But no. I think he is the very man to disprove the proverb. Quite newly arrived in

* Amédée Pichot: "Sir Charles Bell," pp. 239-41.

Paris, he was asked, the other day, what he came for? 'To look for my hat,' was his reply. They say the Cardinal de Rohan laughed very heartily. He called him his colleague in the blade.”*

The next day, says M. Bungener, a new guest made his appearance in the salon of Mme. du Duffand. "This young man, with his lofty brow and fearless eyes, had in two hours become familiar with all the great lords and authors whom he found there. Whence did he come? No one, from his aspect, would for an instant have supposed it. Everything about him indicated at once the man of the people and the man of the world, the plebeian and the aristocrat, that happy mixture by which high and low are so easily attracted." This unknown youth, it is added, was he who for the next twenty years was to be witty in the pulpit, and sceptical in the saloons; who was to pass his youth at the feet of Voltaire, and his old age at the feet of Napoleon; not, it is true, without having displayed during the perils of the Revolution more than

"Let us water the plant," advises Pont-de-Veyle, in continuation, “and"How old is he?" interrupts Madame du Deffand.

"Sixteen or seventeen."

"Why! he is a mere child."

"

"You would take him for twenty. Besides, it was just Bossuet's age when he made his appearance at the Hôtel de Rambouillet."

"Yes; but Bossuet-Bossuet-was Bossuet."

"Bossuet himself at that age certainly had not greater facility and confidence than this young man."

"He had more faith, probably-"

"That is not my business."

"Profane man!"

"Maury. The Abbé Maury."

"But he is not yet abbé."

"So I should suppose.

I am trying how it would sound. The Abbé Maury.Cardinal Maury.-Oh yes; the name does very well. Decidedly he is the man to take up. We will do so. We must make him extemporise a sermon, shall we not?"

"A sermon! You would

Why not? You know very well that Bossuet made his debut in that way." "Yes, but-__"

"But what?"

"A sermon before these gentlemen? Before D'Holbach. Before Diderot, perhaps?"

"Without counting you."

"Yes, without counting me. An edifying audience, on my honour!" "It will show whether the orator is a man of talent."

"I understand. If he knows how to play his part as a Christian without interfering with those who are not so, we will patronise him; if he thinks himself obliged to thunder away at the infidels, we will say to him, Depart in peace, mon cher: become a village curé, and God be with you!-That is the thing, is it not?"

Exactly."

(See the closing chapters of Part II. of "Trois Sermons sous Louis XV.," by L. F. Bungener-a work rendered into English under various names by various translators. See also a sketch by the same author, entitled "Two Evenings at the Hôtel de Rambouillet," published as long ago as 1839, which gives an account of the début of Bossuet before that most distingué society, in 1644, as referred to in the foregoing extracts.)