What was to be done? The relatives of the victims of the rebellion of 12th May demanded an act of vengeance. The peers "thought it was useless to continue their jurisdiction, if their sentences were not executed." The staff of the National Guards "was sure that the rappel might be beat in vain on any future occasion, if the chief of the last rebellion should not ascend the scaffold." But the "movement party set all its organs to work. Two thousand five hundred students marched, in order of battle, to the Chancellerie. Six hundred workmen paraded, in front of the Chamber of Deputies, their banners, with "Abolition of the penalty of Death" inscribed on them. A deputation of the Gauche and Extreme Gauche deputies waited on the minister of justice. The inhabitants of Guadaloupe, the native country of Barbes, who were present at Paris, assembled and presented an address to the king. The sister and mother of Barbes, and his brother-in-law, proceeded to the foot of the throne, and humbly supplicated mercy for him, who refused to ask it for himself. And the ministers were convoked to decide on the question of commutation.

Barbes was alone unmoved. "Death has no horrors for me," said the chief of the insurrection. "I should glory in ascending the scaffold, and laying my young head upon the block, for the cause I support, and for the country I love.". ...." I should prefer to die; and thus to die alone." He said little else. The peers were his political enemies! The king was the chief of an usurpation! "Aristocrats were his abhorrence!" Arago and Dupont, his brother, and his sister, pleaded with him in vain. "He scorned to ask a favour of a prince whose throne he desired to overthrow."... ..." He preferred death to ignominy ;" and "would never put his name to a petition to the occupier of the throne of July." What was to be done? The public mind became agitated. Tens of thousands of silent but observing workmen walked in the quarters most conspicuous in Paris during times of revolution. The blade and the guillotine are removed to the Conciergerie," said some; and a "secret execution" was stated to be the intention of the government. It had never been dreamed of. But what was to be done? It was

Saturday afternoon. On Monday the execution was to take place. The cabinet was divided. The king held out hopes of mercy to the sister of Barbes; but his ministers were relentless. Marshal Soult felt for the army, of which he was the chief, after the king his master. The officers and soldiers of the army had been decimated in the rebellion. Drouineau had been murdered. Jonas had been basely assassinated. The fidelity of the army would be weakened by the mitigation of the punishment of Barbes. The minister of justice feared that the peers would cease to decide with firmness against political criminals. But the minister of the interior pleaded for peace, for order, and against civil war. He pleaded in vain. The council decided that Barbes had been guilty of a double crime, that of murder and that of treason; and Marshal Soult informed the king that Barbes must die. "No, he shall not die!" said the king; "though the consequence of his crime was a murder, his original offence was political." Louis Philippe persisted in making use of the right he possessed of shewing mercy; and Barbes, like Mialon, was sentenced to the galleys for life. By this decision, death for treason is abolished. Is this wise? Who can answer this question, in such a country as France?

But as Paris must have its fêtes as well as its insurrections, we are on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the "glorious days of July;" after which (as the manager announces at the theatre), his majesty's servants, the peers of France, will commence another state trial for the rebellion of the 12th May. There are two hundred in custody at the Luxembourg; but, before they are either liberated or condemned, the dance must be danced in the Champs Elysées; the "Marseillaise" must be sung at the Tuileries; the drapeau tricolore must float in the Place Louis XVI.; the column of July must be inaugurated at the Place de la Bastille; and rockets and Roman candles must explode by the thousand, to the delight and amusement of the gaping gamins of revolutionary Paris.

This is France! No wonder, then, that she cannot obtain the confidence or the love of my dear Fraser.

YOU KNOW WHO,

Paris, July 15, 1839.

CHAP. VII.

Which embraces a period of seven years. THE recovery of so considerable a portion of his property from the clutches of Brock, was, as may be imagined, no trifling source of joy to that excellent young man, Count Gustavus Adolphus de Galgenstein; and he was often known to say, with much archness, and a proper feeling of gratitude to the Fate which had ordained things so, that the robbery was, in reality, one of the best things that could have happened to him,-for, in event of Mr. Brock's not stealing the money, his excellency the count would have had to pay the whole to the Warwickshire squire, who had won it from him at play. He was enabled, in the present instance, to plead his notorious poverty as an excuse; and the Warwickshire conqueror got off with nothing, except a very badly written autograph of the count's, simply acknowledging the debt.

This point his excellency conceded with the greatest candour, but (as, doubtless, the reader may have remarked in the course of his experience) to owe is not quite the same thing as to pay; and from the day of his winning the money until the day of his death, the Warwickshire squire did never, by any chance, touch a single bob, tizzy, tester, moidore, maravedi, doubloon, tomann, or rupee, of the sum which Monsieur de Galgenstein had lost to him.

That young nobleman was, as Mr. Brock hinted in the little autobiographical sketch which we gave in the last number of this Magazine, incarcerated for a certain period, and for certain other debts, in the donjons of Warwick; but he released himself from them, by that noble and consolatory remedy of white-washing, which the law has provided for gentlemen in his oppressed condition; and he had not been a week in London, when he fell in with, and overcame, or put to flight, Captain Wood, alias Brock, and immediately seized upon the remainder of his property. After receiving this, the count, with commendable discre

authorised to state that any of his debts to his tradesmen were discharged, any more than his debts of honour, as they are pleasantly called.

Having thus settled with his creditors, the gallant count had interest enough with some of the great folk to procure for himself a post abroad, and was absent in Holland for some time. It was here that he became acquainted with the lovely Madam Silverkoop, the widow of a deceased gentleman of Leyden; and although the lady was not at that age at which tender passions are usually inspired-being sixtyand though she could not, like Mademoiselle Ninon de l' Enclos, then at Paris, boast of charms which defied the progress of time,-for Mrs. Silverkoop was as red as a boiled lobster, and as unwieldy as a porpoise; and although her mental attractions did by no means make up for her personal deficiencies, -for she was jealous, violent, vulgar, drunken, and stingy to a miracle; yet her charms had an immediate effect on Monsieur de Galgenstein; and hence, perhaps, the reader (the rogue! how well he knows the world!) will be led to conclude that the honest widow was rich.

Such, indeed, she was; and Count Gustavus, despising the difference between his twenty quarterings and her twenty thousand pounds, laid the most desperate siege, and finished, by causing her to capitulate,—as I do believe, after a reasonable degree of pressing, any woman will do to any man; such, at least, has been my experience in the

matter.

The count then married; and it was curious to see how he, who, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Cat, had been as great a tiger and domestic bully as any extant, now, by degrees, fell into a quiet submission towards his enormous countess, who ordered him up and down as a lady orders her footman, who permitted him speedily not to have a will of his own, and who did not allow him a shilling of her money, without receiving for the same an ac

blow is, I believe, the decisive one in these cases, and the countess had stricken it a week after their marriage, -establishing a supremacy which the count never afterwards attempted to question.

We have alluded to his excellency's marriage, as in duty bound, because it will be necessary to account for his appearance hereafter in a more splendid fashion than that under which he has hitherto been known to us; and just comforting the reader by the knowledge, that the union, though prosperous in a worldly point of view, was, in reality, extremely unhappy, we must say no more from this time forth of the fat and legitimate Madame de Galgenstein. Our darling is Mrs. Catherine, who had formerly acted in her stead; and only in so much as the fat countess did influence in any way the destinies of our heroine, or those wise and virtuous persons who have appeared, and are to follow her to her end, shall we in any degree allow her name to figure here. It is an awful thing to get a glimpse, as one sometimes does, when the time is past, of some little, little wheel which works the whole mighty machinery of FATE, and see how our destinies turn on a minute's delay or advance, or on the turning of a street, or on somebody else turning of a street, or of somebody else's doing of something else in Downing Street or in Timbuctoo, now or a thousand years ago: thus, for instance, if Miss Poots, in the year 1695, had never been the lovely inmate of a spiel-haus, at Amsterdam, Mr. Van Silverkoop would never have seen her; if the day had not been extraordinarily hot, the worthy merchant would never have gone thither; if he had not been fond of Rhenish wine and sugar, he never would have called for any such delicacies; if he had not called for them, Miss Ottilia Poots would never have brought them, and partaken of them; if he had not been rich, she would certainly have rejected all the advances made to her by Silverkoop; if he had not been so fond of Rhenish and sugar, he never would have died; and Mrs. Silverkoop would have been neither rich, nor a widow, nor a wife to Count von Galgenstein; nay, nor would this history have ever been written; for if Count Galgenstein had not married the rich widow, Mrs. Catherine would never have

Oh, my dear Madam! you thought we were going to tell you. Pooh! nonsense, no such thing; not for two or three and forty or fifty numbers, or so. We know when we have got a good thing as well as our neighbours; and OLIVER YORKE says this tale is to continue until the year 44, when, perhaps, you may know what Mrs. Catherine never would have done.

The reader will remember, in the second part of these Memoirs, the announcement that Mrs. Catherine had given to the world a child, who might bear, if he chose, the arms of Galgenstein, with the further adornment of a bar-sinister. This child had been put out to nurse at the time of its mother's elopement with the count; and as that nobleman was in funds at the time (having had that success at play which we duly chronicled), he paid a sum of no less than twenty guineas, which was to be the yearly reward of the nurse into whose charge the boy was put. The woman grew fond of the brat; and when, after the first year, she had no further news or remittances from father or mother, she determined for a while, at least, to maintain the infant at her own expense; for, when rebuked by her neighbours on this score, she stoutly swore that no parents could ever desert their children, and that some day or other she should not fail to be rewarded for her trouble with this one.

Under this strange mental hallucination poor Goody Billings, who had five children and a husband of her own, continued to give food and shelter to little Tom for a period of no less than seven years; and though it must be acknowledged that the young gentleman did not in the slightest degree merit the kindnesses shewn to him, Goody Billings, who was of a very soft and pitiable disposition, continued to bestow them upon him, because, she said, he was lonely and unprotected, and deserved them more than other children who had fathers and mothers to look after them. If, then, any difference was made between Tom's treatment and that of her own brood, it was considerably in favour of the former, to whom the largest proportions of treacle were allotted for his bread, and the handsomest supplies of hasty pudding. Besides, to do Mrs. Billings justice, there was a party against him, and that consiste

nly of her husband and

her five children, but of every single person in the neighbourhood who had an opportunity of seeing and becoming acquainted with Master Tom.

A celebrated philosopher, I think Miss Edgeworth, has broached the consolatory doctrine, that in intellect and disposition all human beings are entirely equal, and that circumstance and education are the causes of the distinctions and divisions which afterwards unhappily take place among them. Not to argue this question, which places Jack Howard and Jack Thurtell on an exact level,- which would have us to believe that Lord Melbourne is by natural gifts and excellences a man as honest, brave, and farsighted as the Duke of Wellington,which would make out that Lord Lyndhurst is, in point of principle, eloquence, and political honesty, no better than Mr. O'Connell,- not, I say, arguing this doctrine, let us simply state that Master Thomas Billings (for, having no other, he took the name of the worthy people who adopted him) was in his long coats fearfully passionate, screaming and roaring perpetually, and shewing all the ill that he could shew. At the age of two, when his strength enabled him to toddle abroad, his favourite resort was the coal-hole, or the dungheap: his roarings had not diminished in the least, and he had added to his former virtues two new ones,--a love of fighting and stealing, both which amiable qualities he had many opportunities of exercising every day. He fought his little adoptive brothers and sisters; he kicked and cuffed his father and mother; he fought the cat, stamped upon the kittens, was worsted in a severe battle with the hen in the back-yard; but, in revenge, nearly beat a little sucking-pig to death, whom he caught alone, and rambling near his favourite haunt, the dunghill. As for stealing, he stole the eggs, which he perforated and emptied; the butter, which he ate with or without bread, as he could find it; the sugar, which he cunningly secreted in the leaves of a Baker's Chronicle, that nobody in the establishment could read; and thus from the pages of history he used to suck in all he knew-thieving and lying namely, in which for his years he made wonderful progress. If any followers of Miss Edgeworth and

as overcharged and distorted, let them be assured that just this very picture was, of all pictures in the world, taken from nature. I, Ikey Solomons, once had a dear little brother who could steal before he could walk (and this not from encouragement,-for, if you know the world, you must know that in families of our profession the point of honour is sacred at home,-but from pure nature)-who could steal, I say, before he could walk, and lie before he could speak; and who, at four and a half years of age, having attacked my sister Rebecca on some question of lollypops, and smitten her on the elbow with a fire-shovel, apologised to us, by saying, simply, “ her, I wish it had been her head!" Dear, dear Aminadab! I think of you, and laugh Nature these philosophers to scorn. made you for that career which you fulfilled; you were from your birth to your dying a scoundrel; you couldn't have been any thing else, however your lot was cast; and blessed it was that you were born among the prigs,- for had you been of any other profession, alas! alas! what ills might you have done. As I have heard the author of Richelieu, Natural Odes, Siamese Twins, &c., say, "Poeta nascitur non fit," which means, that though he had tried ever so much to be a poet, it was all moonshine; in the like manner I say, "Roagus nascitur non fit." We have it from nature, and so a fig for Miss Edgeworth.

In this manner, then, while his father, blessed with a wealthy wife, was leading, in a fine house, the life of a galley-slave; while his mother, married to Mr. Hayes, and made an honest woman of, as the saying is, was passing her time respectably in Warwickshire, Mr. Thomas Billings was inhabiting the same county, not cared for by either of them, but ordained by Fate to join them one day, and have a mighty influence upon the fortunes of both. For, as it has often happened to the traveller in the York or the Exeter coach to fall snugly asleep in his corner, and on awaking suddenly to find himself sixty or seventy miles from the place where Somnus first visited him; as, we say, although you sit still, Time, poor wretch, keeps perpetually running on, and so must run day and night, with never a pause or a

drink

imagine that, since he left Mrs. Hayes, and all the other worthy personages of this history, in the July number of this Magazine, seven years have sped away in the interval; during which, all our heroes and heroines have been accomplishing their destinies.

Seven years of country carpentering, or other trading, on the part of a husband, of ceaseless scolding, violence, and discontent, on the part of a wife, are not pleasant to describe, so we shall omit altogether any account of the early married life of Mr. and Mrs. John Hayes. The Newgate Calendar (to which excellent compilation we and the other popular novelists of the day can never be sufficiently grateful) states that Hayes left his house three or four times during this period, and, urged by the restless humours of his wife, tried several professions; returning, however, as he grew weary of each, to his wife and his paternal home. After a certain time his parents died, and by their demise he succeeded to a small property, and the carpentering business, which he for some time followed.

What, then, in the meanwhile, had become of Captain Wood, or Brock, and Ensign Macshane? the only persons now to be accounted for in our catalogue. For about six months after their capture and release of Mr. Hayes, those noble gentlemen had followed, with much prudence and success, that trade which the celebrated and polite Duval, the ingenious Sheppard, the dauntless Turpin, and, indeed, many other heroes of our most popular novels, had pursued, or were pursuing, in their time. And so considerable were said to be Captain Wood's gains, that reports were abroad of his having somewhere a buried treasure; to which he might have added more, had not Fate suddenly cut short his career as a prig. He and the ensign were-shame to say -transported for stealing three pewter pots off a railing at Exeter; and not being known in the town, which they had only reached that morning, they were detained by no further charges, but simply condemned on this one. For this misdemeanour, her majesty's government vindictively sent them for seven years beyond the sea; and, as the fashion then was, sold the use of their bodies to Virginian planters during that space of time. It is thus, alas! that the strong ***** }

with the weak; and many an honest fellow has been led to rue his unfortunate difference with the law.

Thus, then, we have settled all scores. The count is in Holland with his wife; Mrs. Cat, in Warwickshire, along with her excellent husband; Master Thomas Billings, with his adoptive parents, in the same county; and the two military gentlemen watching the progress and cultivation of the tobacco and cotton plant in the New World. All these things having passed between the acts, dingaring-a-dingaring-a-dingledingleding, the drop draws up, and the next act begins. By the way, the play ends with a drop; but that is neither here nor there.

Mrs. Hayes had now been for six years the adored wife of Mr. Hayes, and no offspring had arisen to bless their loves and perpetuate their name. She had obtained a complete mastery over her lord and master; and having had, as far as was in that gentleman's power, every single wish gratified that she could demand, in the way of dress, treats to Coventry and Birmingham, drink, and what not-for, though a hard man, John Hayes had learned to spend his money pretty freely on himself and her having had all her wishes gratified, it was natural that she should begin to find out some more; and the next whim she hit upon was to be restored to her child. It may be as well to state, that she had never informed her husband of the existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's former connexion with the count, Mrs. Hayes, in their matrimonial quarrels, invariably taunting him with accounts of her former splendour and happiness, and with his own meanness of taste in condescending to take up with his excellency's leavings.