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I or are you to be hard-hearted and merciless to the end?”

slipped by you without profit. am generous, madam, and I, forbear to say more. Tell me of these people here all that you know of them, for they are my more immediate interest at present."

"I will tell you everything, on the simple condition that you never speak to me nor of me again. Promise me but this, Miles M'Caskey, and I swear to you I will conceal nothing that I know of them."

"You make hard terms, madam," said he, with a mock courtesy. "It is no small privation to be denied the pleasure of your agreable pre sence, but I comply."

"And this shall be our last meeting?" asked she, with a look of imploring meaning.

Alas, madam if it must be!" "Take care," cried she suddenly; "you once by your mockery drove

me to

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"Well, madam, your memory will perhaps record what followed. I shot the friend who took up your cause. Do you chance to know of another who would like to imitate his fortune?"

"Gracious heaven!" cried she, in an agony, "has nothing the power to change your cruel nature;

"I am proud to say, madam, that Miles M'Caskey comes of a house whose motto is 'Semper M'Caskey.'"

A scornful curl of her lip seemed to show what respect she felt for the heraldic allusion; but she recovered herself quickly, and said, "I can stay no longer. It is the hour the Countess requires me; but I will come back to-morrow, without you would let me buy off this meeting. Yes, Miles, I am in earnest ; this misery is too much for me. I have saved a little sum, and I have it by me in gold. You must be more changed than I can believe, or you will be in want of money. You shall have it all, every ducat of it, if you only pledge me your word never to molest me-never to follow me-never to recognise me again!"

"Madam," said he, severely, "this menial station you have descended to must have blunted your sense of honour rudely, or you had never dared to make me such a proposal. Let me see you to-morrow, and for the last time." And haughtily waying his hand, he motioned to her to leave, and she turned away, with her hands over her face, and quitted the room.

CHAPTER XL-THE MAJOR'S TRIALS.

Major Miles M'Caskey is not a foreground figure in this our story, nor have we any reason to suppose that he possesses any attractions for our readers. When such men -and there are such to be found on life's highway-are met with, the world usually gives them what sailors call a "wide berth, and ample room to swing in," sincerely trusting that they will soon trip their anchor and sail off again. Seeing all this, I have no pretension, nor indeed any wish, to impose his company any more than is strictly indispensable, nor dwell on his sojourn at the Molo of Montanara. Indeed his life at that place was so monotonous and weary to himself,

it would be a needless cruelty to chronicle it.

Ruined old

The Major, as we have once passingly seen, kept a sort of brief journal of his daily doings; and a few short extracts from this will tell us all that we need know of him. On à page of which the upper portion was torn away, we find the following:-"Arrived at Mon the 6th at sunset. rookery. Open at land side, and sea defences all carried away; never could have been strong against artillery. Found Mrs. M'C. in the style of waiting-woman to a Countess Butler, formerly Nini Brancaleone. A warm interview; difficult to persuade her that I was not

144

"Pigeons again for supper, with
apology; quails had been sent for
to Messina, and expected to-mor-
row. Shot at a champagne-flask in
Sir O.'s to-
the sea, and smoked.
bacco exquisite, and the supply so
ample, I am making a petite pro-
vision for the future.

in pursuit of herself a feminine me with distinguished consideration,
delusion I tried to dissipate. She" but nothing said of an audience.
henceforth it is thus he always
designates Mrs. M'Caskey- "she
avers that she knows nothing of the
Count d'Amalfi, nor has ever seen
him. Went into a long story about
Sir Omerod Butler, of whom I know
more myself She pretends that
Nini is married to him-legally
married; don't believe a word of
it. Have my own suspicions that
the title of Amalfi has been con-
ferred on B. himself, for he lives
estranged from England and Eng-
lishmen. Will learn all, however,
before I leave.

"Roast pigeons, with tomato, a strange fish, and omelette, with Capri to wash it down; a meagre supper, but they say it shall be better to

morrow.

Slept "Seventh, Wednesday. soundly and had a swim; took a sea view of the place, but could see no one about. Capital breakfast'Frutti di mare,' boiled in Rhine wine; fellow who waited said a favourite dish of his Excellency's, meaning Sir O. B. Best chocolate I ever tasted out of Paris. Found the menue for dinner on the table all right; the wine is au choir, and I begin with La Rose and La Veuve Cliquot. A note from her referring to something said last night; she is ill and cannot see me, but encloses an order on Parodi of Genoa, in favour of the Nobile Signor il Maggiore M'Caskey, for three thousand seven hundred and forty-eight francs, and a small tortoise-shell box, containing eighty-six double ducats in gold, so that it would seem I have ' vrai Californie' fallen into here. Reflected, and replied with a refusal; a M'Caskey cannot stoop to this. Reproved her for ignoring the character to whom she addressed such a proposal, and reiterated my remark of last night, that she never rose to the level at which she could rightly take in the native chivalry of my nature.

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"Inquired if my presence had been anounced to Sir O., and learned it had. Orders given to treat

"Full moon. Shot at the camelias
Knocked off
out of my window.
seventeen, when I heard a sharp
cry-a stray shot, I suppose. Shut
the casement and went to bed.

"Thursday. - Gardener's boy flesh-wound in the calf of the leg; hope Sir O. may hear of it and send for me.

"A glorious capon for dinner, stuffed with oysters-veritable oysters. Drank Mrs. M'C.'s health in the impression that this was a polite attention on her part. No message from Sir O.

"Friday. A general fast; a lentil soup and a fish: good but meagre; took it out in wine and tobacco. Had the gardener's boy up, and introduced him to sherry-cobbler. The effect miraculous; danced Tarantella till the bandage came off and he fainted.

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- Rain and wind; Saturday. maccaroni much smoked; cook lays it on the chimney that won't draw with a Levant wind. Read over my instructions again, and understand them as little as before;-'You will hold yourself at the orders of the Count d'Amalfi till further instructions from this department.' Vague enough all this; and for anything I see, or am likely to see, of this Count, I may pass the autumn here. Tried to attract Sir O.'s attention by knocking off the oranges at top of his wall, and received intimation to fire in some other direction.

"Sunday.-Don Luigi something has come to say máss. Asked him to dinner, but find him engaged to the Countess. A dry old cove, who evidently knows everything but will tell nothing; has promised to lend me a guitar and a book or

two, in return for which I have ly dissimilar-neither of them, howsent down three bottles of our ever, had this-neither had this," host's champagne to his reverence. "Monday.-Lobsters.

"Tuesday. Somebody ill apparently; much ringing of bells and disorder. My dinner an hour late. Another appeal from Mrs. M'C., repeating her former proposal with greater energy; this feminine insistance provokes me. I might tell her that of the three women who have borne my name none but herself would have so far presumed, but I forbear. Pity has ever been the weakness of my nature; I feel its workings even as I write this. It may not carry me to the length of forgiveness, but I can compassionate; I will send her this note:

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"MADAM, Your prayers have succeeded; I yield. It would not be generous in me to say what the sacrifice has cost me. When a M'Caskey bends, it is an oak of the forest snaps in two. I make but one condition; I will have no gratitude. Keep the tears that you would shed at my feet for the hours of your solitary sorrow. You will see, therefore, that we are to meet no more.

"One of the ducats is clipped on the edge, and another discoloured as by an acid; I am above requir ing that they be exchanged. Nothing in this last act of our intercourse shall prevent you remembering me as "Semper M'Caskey."

"Your cheque should have specified Parodi & Co., not Parodi alone. To a man less known the omission might give inconvenience; this, too, however, I pardon. Farewell.''

cried he, as he darted a look of catlike fierceness from his fiery grey eyes. "The Princess Metternich fainted when I gave her that glance. She had the temerity to say, 'Qui est ce Monsieur M'Caskey?' Why not ask who is Soult? who is Wellington? who is everybody? Such is the ignorance of a woman! Madame la Princess," added he, in a graver tone, "if it be your fortune to turn your footsteps to Montpellier, walk into the churchyard there, and see the tomb of Jules de Besancon, late Major of the 8th Cuirassiers, and whose inscription is in these few words-Tuè par M'Caskey.' I put up the monument myself, for he was a brave soldier, and deserved his immortality."

Though self-admiration was an attractive pastime, it palled on him at last, and he sat down and piled up the gold double ducats in two tall columns, and speculated on the various pleasures they might procure, and then he read over the draft on Parodi, and pictured to his mind some more enjoyments, all of which were justly his due, "for," as he said himself aloud, "I have dealt generously by that woman.'

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At last he arose, and went out on the terrace. It was a bright starlit night, one of these truly Italian nights when the planets streak the calm sea with long lines of light, and the very air seems weary with its burden of perfume. Of the voluptuous enervation that comes of such an hour he neither knew nor asked to know. Stillness and calm to him savoured only of death; It was evident that the Major he wanted movement, activity, exfelt he had completed this task with citement, life, in fact-life as he had befitting dignity, for he stood up always known and always liked it. before a large glass, and placing one Once or twice the suspicion had hand within his waistcoat, he gazed crossed his mind that he had been at himself in a sort of rapturous sent on this distant expedition to veneration. "Yes," said he, thought- get rid of him when something of fully, "George Seymour, and D'Or- moment was being done elsewhere. say, and myself, we were men! His inordinate vanity could readily When shall the world look upon supply the reasons for such a course. our like again? Each in his own He was one of those men that in style, too, perfectly distinct, perfect- times of trouble become at once

famous. "They call us dangerous," thought that if no intention of forsaid he, "just as Cromwell was cible detention had ever existed, dangerous, Luther was dangerous, the fact of his having feared it would Napoleon was dangerous. But if be an indelible stain upon his courwe are dangerous, it is because we age. "What an indignity," thought are driven to it. Admit the supe- he, "for a M'Caskey to have yieldriority that you cannot oppose, yield ed to a causeless dread!" to the inherent greatness that you can only struggle against, and you will find that we are not dangerous -we are salutary."

"Is it possible," cried he aloud, that this has been a plot-that while I am here living this life of inglorious idleness the great stake is on the table-the game is begun, and the King's crown being played for?" M'Caskey knew that whether royality conquered or was vanquished-however the struggle ended there was to be a grand scene of pillage. The nobles or the merchants-it mattered very little which to him-were to pay for the coming convulsion. Often and often, as he walked the streets of Naples, had he stood before a magnificent palace, or a great country house, and speculated on the time when it should be his prerogative to smash in that stout door, and proclaim all within it his own. "Spolia di M'Caskey" was the inscription that he felt would defy the cupidity of the boldest. "I will stand on the balcony," said he, "and declare, with a wave of my hand, These are mine: pass on to other pillage.'

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As he thus thought, he saw, or thought he saw, a dark object at some short distance off on the sea. He strained his eyes, and though long in doubt, at last assured himself it was a boat that had drifted from her moorings, for the rope that had fastened her still hung over the stern, and trailed in the sea. By the slightly moving flow of the tide towards shore she came gradually nearer, till at last he was able to reach her with the crook of his riding-whip, and draw her up to the steps. Her light paddle-like oars were on board, and M'Caskey stepped in, determined to make a patient and careful study of the place on its sea-front, and see, if he could, whether it were more of chateau or jail.

With noiseless motion he stole smoothly along, till he passed a little ruined bastion on a rocky point, and saw himself at the entrance of a small bay, at the extremity of which a blaze of light poured forth, and illuminated the sea for some distance. As he got nearer he saw that the light came from three large windows that opened on a terrace, thickly studded with orange-trees, under the cover of which he could steal on unseen, and take an observation of all within; for that the room was inhabited was plain enough, one figure continuing to cross and recross the windows as M'Caskey drew nigh.

The horrible suspicion that he might be actually a prisoner all this time gained on him more and more, and he ransacked his mind to think of some great name in history whose fate resembled his own. "Could I only assure myself of this," said he, passionately, "it is not these old walls would long confine me; I'd Stilly and softly, without a ripple scale the highest of them in half an behind him, he glided on till the hour; or I'd take to the sea, and light skiff stole under the overhangswim round that point yonder-it's ing boughs of a large acacia, over a not two miles off; and I remember branch of which he passed his rope there's a village quite close to it." to steady the boat, and then standThough thus, the prospect of escape ing up he looked into the room, presented itself so palpably before now so close as almost to startle him, he was deterred from it by the him.

LEWES'S ARISTOTLE.

selves willing or able to read critically the original Greek of a by no means captivating writer, some such work as this was absolutely necessary. Aristotle as a logician is known, or presumed to be known, to all educated men; at all events, there are works enough in our language to which to refer the eager student thirsting for syllogism, or the categories, or even for whatever the ancient sage may have taught of rhetoric, or politics, or poetry. But if any one, bewildered by the

MR. LEWES is known to every studious reader by his 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' by his phy siological writings, by his 'Life of Goethe,' and by a host of miscellaneous papers, all displaying the same tact, the same clear vision and lucid style. Remarkable for a distinct and rapid development of difficult and intricate subjects, he has proved himself one of the happiest expositors of those metaphysical subtleties which he, at the same time, describes and discards; while in that branch of science to which he has sedulously contradictory estimates thrown out devoted himself, he has been, if not a discoverer, yet much more than an expounder, for he has introduced into it an accuracy of thought, a distinctness in the reasoning or theorising upon known facts, which the readers of physiological works must often have felt the want of Having paid his homage, his farewell tribute to philosophy, the part ing guest, whom he "slightly shakes by the hand," he, as a true son of the nineteenth century, turns towards science,—

T

“And with his arms outstretched as he would fly,

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Grasps in the comer." It is now apparently his design to do for the history of science what he had formerly done for that of metaphysics-to describe the course of its development, to give what he has called "the embryology of science;" and the present volume is a chapter from this projected work. It is a chapter which may very well constitute a distinct and separate treatise, what our neighbours have taught us to call a monograph. We have Aristotle brought distinctly before us as the man of science.

To all who felt a curiosity in estimating Aristotle from this point of view, and who were not them

by eloquent lecturers, or other dis-
tinguished men, desired to know
what really Aristotle taught on
scientific subjects-on the inorgan
ic and organic world before us,
on the great mechanism, in short,
of nature-there was no book in our
language, nor, as Mr. Lewes assures
us, in any modern language, which
would have given him the materials
for a calm and sober judgment. On
the one hand, we hear the most un-
sparing contempt thrown upon the
science of Aristotle; and till lately
all popular lecturers, in their extra-
vagant eulogies upon Bacon, were
accustomed to tell their credulous
audience that, till the lord of Veru-
lam arose, no one understood that
the knowledge of nature was built
on the observation of nature.
the other hand, there have been
eminent men who were not satisfied
with proving that Aristotle knew
as well, and had stated as distinct-
ly as any of his successors, the
paramount necessity of observation
and an accurate collection of facts,
but that he had really observed and
reasoned upon facts in so miracul-
ous a manner as to have been able
-standing, as it were, at the very
starting-point of science-to have
anticipated many of those dis-
coveries to which the moderns

On

Aristotle: A Chapter from the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings By George Henry Lewes.

VOL. XCVI.-NO. DLXXXVI.

L

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