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"Your husband!" was the answer, and where will you look for him? If truth must be told, is it not notorious, that you are as much separated from each other, as if you were already divorced; that he pursues one mistress, Ambition, or perhaps twenty other mistresses more nameless, and leaves you to solitude and neglect? How often in the last month have you seen the face of the husband to whom you profess yourself so much attached? Bound you may be, but attached, pardon me, is totally impossible."

No reply followed; the indignation had given way to tears. "Come," said the tempter, "let those tears be the last that you shall ever shed under this roof. All is ready to convey you from the house of a cold-blooded and careless tyrant, who, before all the world, treats you with a contempt not to be endured by youth, birth, and beauty, and convey you where you will be received with honour, and treated with the homage due to loveliness and Lady Castleton."

"

"Villain let loose my hands !" were the only words that Castleton could hear, before he had burst through the screen, and stood before the astonished pair. The gentleman was the identical French Ex-Count, who two years before, in the streets of Florence, had received Castleton's pistol shot, and who, with the double object of gratifying his revenge, and of carrying off the handsome settlement of the handsome heiress, had availed himself of the first moment of his recovery, to ask passports for England, and present himself at her ladyship's levee. The Count was a dancer no more, for the pistol ball had spoiled his talent in that direction, but he made charades, sung canzonettes, played the guitar, and was a Frenchman! qualifications which are found irresistible with the sex, and which naturally authorized him to think himself indispensable to the brilliant lady of the Minister,

and as

as they have done to a host of brilliant ladies, who having spent six months beyond the Channel, are thenceforth entitled to feel the exquisite superiority of the foreign graces. T But in the present instance

the Count had calculated too rapidlys and the lady, who had indulged him with her smiles, was perfectly surprised at the accomplished stranger's expecting more than smiles. She had flung him from her, with a sincerity, that perfectly surprised the Frenchman in turn. He was a ruffian, and would probably have dragged her reluctant ladyship to the chaise and pair, which he had waiting for the result of his argument, but Castleton's sudden presence put an end to this portion of the plan; and the Count had scarcely begun to make a speech, "accounting for appearances in the most satisfactory manner," when the indignant husband's grasp was on his throat. The struggle was brief, but it was effective. Castleton was strong, but if he had possessed but the nerves of an infant, his towering indignation would have given him vigour. To drag the offender through the saloon would have been tedious, and have attracted attention. The alternative was the window, and through the window was flung the Count. It was, fortunately for his limbs, not high, and it opened into the garden. He alighted in great astonishment, and, in a whirlwind of sacres, made solitary use of that post-chaise which was to have carried along with him the matchless "mistress of his soul," and restorer of his fallen finances, and took the Dover road, inventing epigrams on the country, fierce enough to make England wish herself at the bottom of the sea.

Castleton turned to his lady. He, too, had his share of astonishment; he had expected a contrite speech, clasped hands, and a flood of tears. He saw none of the three. But the lady laughed; as far as bienseance will suffer so rude a thing as laughter to derange the etiquette of a highborn physiognomy. She extended to him one of the fairest possible hands. "You seem to be horribly angry with the Count, my dear lord," said she, "but he is excusable from the manners of his country. I hope you have broke none of my poor admirer's limbs. He must live by his talents, and if you disfigure him, he will be excluded from giving lessons on the guitar to any woman of fashion."

Her husband listened in undis. sembled wrath. "Madam," he at

memory. In the midst of this glory, she herself was the guiding star, the most glittering where all was bright; but the rouge covered a cheek which was growing paler and paler, and the jewels covered a bosom filled with pangs, that the envied possessor of all this opulence felt preying on her existence.

length exclaimed, am I to believe my senses? Can this tone be serious? It would better become you to fall on your knees, and thank Heaven for having saved you from the miséries of a life, the most contemptible, the most wretched, and the most hateful that can fall to the lot of a human being." He turned to leave her he gave a last glance. She still smiled. I beg but one thing, my dear lord," said she, once more holding out the lovely hand; "if those can be your real sentiments, that you will keep them as private as possible. They are totally tramontane in this part of the world, however they may exist in Westminster. Attentions from all men are considered a natural tribute on their part, to women of a certain rank; and to refuse them, would be an absolute breach of decorum on ours. At least, these are the lessons which I understand to be essential to the leaders of society; and as your lordship has been too much occupied by higher pursuits, to care what I learned, or who were my teachers, I have only availed myself of such instructions as make the law of fashion."

And this is your ladyship's determination," said Castleton, sternly.

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Certainly, until your lordship shall condescend to teach me better," said the lady, sportively. Her husband, without look or word more, quitted the apartment. The lady rejoined her guests, was more animated, more brilliant, and more admired than ever-was the soul of every thing gay and graceful, till the morning sun, breaking in through curtains and casements, began to make those discoveries in exhausted complexions and dilapidated ringlets, which drive beauty to her couch, saw the last fairy foot glide over the last semblance of the chalked lilies and roses on her floors, heard the last clang of the last steeds over the pave of her court-yard, and then retired to her chamber, to take a miniature of her husband from its case, and weep over it, and sleep with it hid in her bosom.

The season flourished still, and Lady Castleton was now more incontestably than ever, the sovereign of the season. Her fêtes were decorated by more counts, ambassadors, and lords of principalities, from Siberia to the Seine, than any within

Castleton had turned to his old career with still more activity and success. His mind, once at rest upon the subject of Lady Castleton's fame, and feeling that he might confide in her honour, if he had lost her heart, he determined to forget domestic cares in the whirl of public life. Distinctions now flowed in upon him irrepressibly, as they do upon thé favourites of Fortune. A new step in the peerage only ushered in his Majesty's most gracious commands, "that he should lay the basis of a new administration." In another week he was Premier. He had now attained the height for which he had panted; but he had now attained all that once brightened the future, and he feelingly discovered the truth, that hope is essential even to the vigour of ambition. In the loftiness of his public rank, he experienced the common sensation of all men who have nothing more to gain, and whose anxieties now turn on what they have to lose. In the full blaze of prosperity, he felt chillness of heart growing upon him. To his own wonder, the generous, the daring, the ardent aspirant, was gradually withering into the suspicious, the anxious, and the stern possessor of power. The discovery pained him still more than it surprised him. He had now been for some months habitually estranged from home; and the newspapers, in their notices of routs and concerts, alone gave him the intimation that his establishment was splendid as ever, his mansion still the temple of the great and the fair, and his lady the presiding priestess of the temple. An involuntary sigh broke from him, as the memory of gentler days came across his mind. He would have thrown off the chains of office, of which he now felt nothing but the weight; the gilding had long lost all its temptation to his eye. But" national emergencies, the will of a sovereign, the necessity of keeping Administration together," the cloud of reasons that gather over the

understanding when we are yet irresolute in the right, bewildered even the strong mind of the Minister. He was roused from one of those meditations, by his valet's announcing that he would be too late for the "drawing-room." It was the last of the season, and he must attend. With a heavy and an irritated heart, hé obeyed the tyranny of etiquette, and drove to St James's. Nothing could be more gracious than his reception; but while he was in the very sunshine of royal conversation, a face passed him that obliterated even the presence of royalty. It was pale and thin, through all the artifices of dress. No magnificence could disguise the fact, that some secret grief was feeding on the roses there. The face was still beautiful and beaming, but the lustre of the eye was dim. It was Lady Castleton. Both bowed, and a hurried word was exchanged, they passed out of the circle together, and returned to their home together. The phenomenon excited more astonishment than a treaty between the Knights of Malta and the Algerines. It was the universal topic of the evening. The next day, the fact transpired that Lord and Lady Castleton had sent their apologies to the noble mansions at which they were respectively to have dined, and were surmised to have even dined tête-a-tête. Expectation was now fully afloat, and the news followed that a succession of equipages had started from his lordship's mansion at an early hour on the day after the drawing-room. But one wonder more was to be completed, and the wonder came the announcement to the Peers and Commons that a new Ministry was about to be formed, "the Lord Castleton having, from ill health, resigned." The reason was, like the friar's beard in Rabelais, partly the work of nature, and partly of convenience. The Premier's frame had been sinking under the anxieties of his mind, and if he had delayed his retirement from office a year longer, it must have closed with a retirement into his grave.

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Castleton and his lovely lady were forgotten in an eternity of three months; and as his lordship was no Meltonian, nor her ladyship the president of a mission for teaching the peasantry to preach in the unknown tongue,they thus threw away the natural means of keeping their names alive.

They remained in their exile for the intermediate period of five years, under the unimaginable penalties of a noble mansion, a lovely landscape round them, a grateful tenanttry, and a life full of the diversified occupations of intelligent minds, determined to do what good they can in their day. At the end of the five years they returned to London, on their way to a summer tour among the glories of the Swiss Alps. Time had made formidable inroads among their circle. The beauties had become blues, and the blues had be come card-players, critics, and gor gons. Nine-tenths of the lady's ac quaintances had become terrible be youd all power of the toilet.

His lordship's friends had felt the common fate, in the shape of loss of office, or loss of money; claret had extinguished some-gout had made an example of others-and a new Parliament had so unfortunately exempted others from the duty of tending the public interests, that they had summarily crossed the British Channel, to study ways and means of their own.

Castleton was in the prime of life and health, and was rustic enough to think the dulness of the country more wholesome, and even more interesting, than any number of nights spent between the House and the Clubs. His lady was now the mother of four children, wild and lovely as the wild flowers of their native meadows. She had recovered her beauty; no fictitious colour was now required to give the rose or lily to one of the finest countenances of woman. She had the health of the mind. Her spirit was not now wasted in flashing at midnight over a crowd of sumptuous and weary revellers ;hers was the lamp that threw its sacred light over the sacredness of home. She honoured her husband for his talents, his acquirements, and his fame, but she loved him for his heart. He had made a high sacrifice for her; and she was proud of him and the sacrifice. Neither count nor prince was now found essential to her existence. Her husband's praise was worth the incense of a kneeling circle of sovereigns. Castleton was an English husband to her; she was an English wife to him, and the name includes all the names of love, honour, and happiness.

ON PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,

No. XIII.

Revolutionary Concession-The New Bill.

Ir was this day twelve months that this course of papers on Parliamentary Reform and the French Revolution began. At that period all the journals, and a great proportion of the people of this country, were unanimous in favour of the French convulsion; and a large majority, in point of numbers at least, were inclined to expect public tranquillity, general satisfaction, increased prosperity, and renovated vigour, from the infusion of popular power into the ancient veins of the British Constitution.

Foreseeing the disastrous consequences which must inevitably ensue from the prevalence of such absurd and unfounded illusions, we applied ourselves vigorously to stem the torrent; never expecting, indeed, that any single efforts could at once effect any considerable change in public opinion; but confident that Truth would gradually assert its ascendant over Falsehood, and that in the end the truth of the principles we advocated would become obvious to the most prejudiced of mankind. With this view, we endeavoured, in a series of papers, to illustrate the fundamental principles which govern such questions, which may be summed up in the following propo

sitions :

1. That the late French Revolution, like every other sudden change in government brought about by popular force, was a calamity of the deepest kind, which threatened a grievous series of misfortunes to that unhappy country, and promised to retard for a very long period, in every European state, the progress of real freedom. That it was not, like our Revolution in 1688, a national movement, headed by the higher classes, and in effecting which the different bodies of the state retained their respective places, and were kept in subordination to the

* No. 176, Jan. 1830.

requisite authority; but a violent convulsion, in which the lowest classes at once subverted the highest, and the mob of Paris re-assumed its fatal revolutionary ascendant over the rest of France. That from such a catastrophe, nothing but weakness in government, vacillation in council, and anarchy in the nation, could be anticipated; and that the first and greatest sufferers from such a state of things would be the very lower orders, by whose infatua❤ ted ambition it had been occasioned.*

2. That in solving the difficult question, of how to deal with a nation in a state of reforming or revolutionary excitement, the only method is to afford the utmost redress to every real and experienced grie vance, but to resist steadily all the advances of democratic ambition; that inattention to complaints founded upon real suffering is as fatal an error, as concession to revolutionary fervour; and both tended equally to plunge the nation into the horrors of anarchy; the first, by causing them to brood over unredressed wrongs -the last, by awakening in their minds the insatiable passion for democratic power. †

3. That in considering the question of Parliamentary Reform, it was above all things necessary to await a period of coolness and moderation; that such a temper of mind could not be expected, while the transports consequent on the French Revolution continued; and therefore the subject should not be broached till those transports had subsided, and the real consequences of the change in the neighbouring kingdom had developed themselves; and consequently, that any Ministry would have the fate of the country to answer for, who, at such an excited moment, should throw into it the additional firebrand of democratic ambition.

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4. That the passion for democratic power, like every other passion which agitates the human breast, is insatiable, and becomes more violent, the more it is indulged, and therefore that it is chimerical to expect that any concessions made to that desire can have any other effect, than rendering the discontent and fury among the classes excluded from the legislation more violent; that, therefore, if change on a considerable scale is once begun, it is impossible it can be stopped short of universal suffrage, by any other method than the sanguinary and unanswerable force of military despotism. That the power of the people, so far from diminishing of late years in the legislature, has been steadily and progressively increasing, and is already, without any reform, more than a match for the influence of the Crown and the Aristocracy put together; and therefore that it is utterly impossible that any great change in the constitution can have a beneficial effect, because, if it makes any considerable addition to the power of the people, it must at once subvert the constitution; if it does not, it will increase the existing discontent, by awakening desires and expectations which were not destined to be realized.*

5. That at all events, whatever change is introduced, should be gradual and progressive in its operation, experience having proved in every age that constitutions suddenly formed are ephemeral in their duration, and those alone are destined to endure for ages, which, like those of Rome and Britain, have slowly arisen with the wants of successive generations.+

6. That of all the methods of preserving the public peace during revolutionary fervour, the most chimerical and fatal is the institution of clubs and national guards. That from the former, all the horrors and atrocities of the first French Revolution directly emanated; and from the latter, the fiercest and most sanguinary of their civil conflicts: that the National Guard invariably failed at the critical moment, and witnessed, without a struggle, devastation, blood

No. 178, March 1830.

shed, and horrors, unparalleled since the beginning of the world; and that this was always to be expected from a domestic force so constituted during the unhappy periods of civil dissension; because it shared in the passions of the different classes of citizens of which it was composed, and was itself as much divided as the inhabitants whom it was intended to protect.‡

All these principles were laid down, and illustrated by historical references, before the dissolution of the late Parliament; before the first debate on the Reform Bill; while as yet England was free from revolutionary convulsion, and her cities had not been lighted by popular conflagration. Were we actuated by the malice of demons, we should feel a malignant satisfaction at the extraordinary proof which subsequent events have given to the very letter of the truth of all these principles. We do not pretend to the gift of prophecy, but only to the results of patient historical research. It is in the book of history that we looked for "the shadows which coming events cast before," and in the lessons of historic experience, that we have sought to portray the mirror of future fate. The reformers have adopted the opposite course; they have rejected the old Almanack" with all its contents, and put to sea without either rudder or compass, in the midst of a tempestuous gale; and the nation is astonished that they are drifting upon the breakers!

It is hard to say whether the progress of events in France or England has most strongly demonstrated the enormous peril of the course upon which the Reformers have perilled the national existence. The pressure of domestic danger, the rapid succession of subjects of interest in our own island, have withdrawn our attention from the tragedy which is approaching its catastrophe on the Continent; but the recurrence of a new year naturally suggests some reflection upon the march of events in that which is passed. They have become the province of history; the conclusions to be drawn from them now belong to a loftier class than

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