Chapter III: I. Antonio (5)

He was now particularly noticed by his officers for the intrepidity and spirit he displayed, and was high in favor with Colonel Massy, his commander; but an accident occurred of so humiliating and degrading a nature, as to extinguish at once all his hopes of advancement. An officer of Massy's regiment was possessed of a very valuable fowling-piece which he highly prized. He missed it from his tent, and made diligent inquiry after it, but it was nowhere to be found. It was, however, reported that it was seen in the possession of Roche, and an order was made to examine his baggage. On searching among it the lost article was found. Roche declared that he had bought it from one Bourke, a countryman of his own, and a corporal in his regiment. Bourke was sent for and examined. He solemnly declared on oath that the statement of Roche was altogether false, and that he himself knew nothing at all of the transaction. Roche was now brought to a court-martial, and little appearing in his favor, he was convicted of the theft, and, as a lenient punishment, ordered to quit the service with every mark of disgrace and ignominy. Irritated with this treatment, Roche immediately challenged the officer who had prosecuted him. He refused, however, to meet him, on the pretext that he was a degraded man, and no longer entitled to the rank and consideration of a gentleman. Stung to madness, and no longer master of himself, he rushed to the parade, insulted the officer in the grossest terms, and then flew to the picket-guard, where he attacked the corporal with his naked sword, declaring his intention to kill him on the spot. The man with difficulty defended his life, till his companions sprung upon Roche and disarmed him. Though deprived of his weapon, he did not desist from his intention; crouching down like an Indian foe, he suddenly sprung, like Roderick Dhu, at his antagonist, and fastened on his throat with his teeth, and before he could be disengaged nearly strangled him, dragging away a mouthful of flesh, which, in the true Indian spirit, he afterward said was "the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted." From the fierce and savage character he displayed on this occasion, he obtained the appellation of "Tiger," an affix which was ever after joined to his name.

A few days after, the English army advanced to force the lines of Ticonderoga. Unfortunate Roche was left desolate and alone in the wilderness, an outcast from society, apparently abandoned by all the world. His resolution and fidelity to his cause, however, did not desert him. He pursued his way through the woods till he fell in with a party of friendly Indians, and by extraordinary exertions and forced marches, arrived at the fortress with his Indians, to join in the attack. He gave distinguished proofs of his courage and military abilities during that unfortunate affair, and received four dangerous wounds. He attracted the notice of General Abercrombie, the leader of the expedition; but the stain of robbery was upon him, and no services, however brilliant, could obliterate it.

From hence he made his way to New York, after suffering incredible afflictions from pain, poverty, and sickness. One man alone, Governor Rogers, pitied his case, and was not satisfied of his guilt. In the year 1785, Roche received from his friends in Ireland a reluctant supply of money, which enabled him to obtain a passage on board a vessel bound for England, where he arrived shortly afterward. He reserved part of his supply of money for the purchase of a commission, and hoped once more to ascend to that rank from which he had been, as he thought, unjustly degraded; but just as the purchase was about to be completed, a report of his theft in America reached the regiment, and the officers refused to serve with him. With great perseverance and determined resolution, he traced the origin of the report to a Captain Campbell, then residing at the British Coffee-house, in Charing-cross. He met him in the public room, taxed him with what he called a gross and false calumny, which the other retorted with great spirit. A duel immediately ensued, in which both were desperately wounded.

Roche now declared in all public places, and caused it to be every where known, that, as he could not obtain justice on the miscreant who had traduced his character in America, he would personally chastise every man in England who presumed to propagate the report. With this determination, he met one day, in the Green Park, his former colonel, Massy, and another officer, who had just returned home. He addressed them, and anxiously requested they would, as they might, remove the stain from his character. They treated his appeal with contempt, when he fiercely attacked them both. They immediately drew their swords, and disarmed him. A crowd of spectators assembled round, and being two to one they inflicted severe chastisement on Roche. Foiled in his attempt, he immediately determined to seek another occasion, and finding that one of them had departed for Chester, Roche set out after him with the indefatigable perseverance and pursuit of a bloodhound. Here Roche again sought him, and meeting him in the streets, again attacked him. Roche was, however, again defeated, and received a severe wound in the sword-arm, which long disabled him.

But that redress to his character now came accidentally and unexpectedly, which all his activity and perseverance could not obtain. Bourke, the corporal, was mortally wounded by a scalping party of Indians, and on his death-bed made a solemn confession that he himself had actually stolen the fowling-piece, and sold it to Roche, without informing him by what means he had procured it, and that Roche had really purchased it without any suspicion of the theft. This declaration of the dying man was properly attested, and universally received, and restored the injured Roche at once to character and countenance. His former calumniators now vied with each other in friendly offers to serve him; and as a remuneration for the injustice and injury he had suffered, a lieutenancy in a newly-raised regiment was conferred upon him gratuitously. He soon returned to Dublin with considerable eclat; the reputation of the injuries he had sustained, the gallant part he had acted, and the romantic adventures he had encountered among the Indians, in the woods of America, were the subject of every conversation. Convivial parties were every where made for him. Wherever he appeared, he was the lion of the night. A handsome person, made still more attractive by the wounds he had received, a graceful form in the dance, in which he excelled, and the narrative of "his hair-breadth 'scapes," with which he was never too diffident to indulge the company, made him at this time "the observed of all observers" in the metropolis of Ireland.

But a service which he rendered the public in Dublin deservedly placed him very high in their esteem and good-will. It was at this time infested with those miscreants who were known by the names of "sweaters," or "pinkindindies," and every night some outrage was perpetrated on the peaceable and unoffending inhabitants. One evening late, an old gentleman with his son and daughter, were returning home from a friend's house, when they were attacked on Ormond-quay by a party of them. Roche, who was accidentally going the same way at the same time, heard the shrieks of a woman crying for assistance, and instantly rushed to the place. Here he did not hesitate singly to meet the whole party. He first rescued the young woman from the ruffian who held her, and then attacking the band, he desperately wounded some, and put the rest to flight. His spirited conduct on this occasion gained him a high and deserved reputation, and inspired others with resolution to follow his example. He formed a body, consisting of officers and others of his acquaintance, to patrol the dangerous streets of Dublin at night, and so gave that protection to the citizens which the miserable and decrepit watch were not able to afford.

But he was not fated long to preserve the high character he had acquired. His physical temperament, impossible to manage, and his moral perceptions, hard to regulate, were the sport of every contingency and vicissitude of fortune. The peace concluded in 1763 reduced the army, and he retired in indigent circumstances to London, where he soon lived beyond his income. In order to repair it, he paid his addresses to a Miss Pitt, who had a fortune of £4000. On the anticipation of this, he engaged in a career of extravagance that soon accumulated debts to a greater amount, and the marriage portion was insufficient to satisfy his creditors. He was arrested and cast into the prison of the King's Bench, where various detainers were laid upon him, and he was doomed to a confinement of hopeless termination. Here his mind appears to have been completely broken down, and the intrepid and daring courage, which had sustained him in so remarkable a manner through all the vicissitudes of his former life, seemed to be totally exhausted. He submitted to insults and indignities with patience, and seemed deprived not only of the capability to resent, but of the sensibility to feel them.

On one occasion he had a trifling dispute with a fellow-prisoner, who kicked him, and struck him a blow in the face. There was a time when his fiery spirit would not have been satisfied but with the blood of the offender. He now only turned aside and cried like a child. It happened that his countryman, Buck English, a personage of some notoriety, was confined at the same time in the Bench; with him also he had some dispute, and English, seizing a stick, flogged him in a savage manner. Roche made no attempt to retaliate or resist, but crouched under the punishment. But while he shrunk thus under the chastisement of men, he turned upon his wife, whom he treated with such cruelty, that she was compelled to separate from him, and abandon him to his fate.

At length, however, an act of grace liberated him from a confinement under which all his powers were fast sinking; and a small legacy, left him by a relation, enabled him once more to appear in the gay world. With his change of fortune a change of disposition came over him; and in proportion as he had shown an abject spirit in confinement, he now exhibited even a still more arrogant and irritable temper than he had ever before displayed. He was a constant frequenter of billiard tables, where he indulged in insufferable assumption, with sometimes a shrewd and keen remark. He was one day driving the balls about with the cue, and on some one expostulating with him that he was not playing himself, but hindering other gentlemen from their amusement; "Gentlemen!" said Roche, "why, sir, except you and I, and one or two more, there is not a gentleman in the room." His friend afterwards remarked that he had grossly offended a large company, and wondered some of them had not resented the affront. "Oh!" said Roche, "there was no fear of that. There was not a thief in the room that did not consider himself _one_ of the _two_ or _three_ gentlemen I excepted!"

Again his fortune seemed in the ascendant, and the miserable, spiritless, flogged and degraded prisoner of the King's Bench, was called on to stand as candidate to represent Middlesex in Parliament. So high an opinion was entertained of his daring spirit, that it was thought by some of the popular party he might be of use in intimidating Colonel Luttrell, who was the declared opponent of Wilkes at that election. In April, 1769, he was put into nomination at Brentford by Mr. Jones, and seconded by Mr. Martin, two highly popular electors. He, however, disappointed his friends, and declined the poll, induced, it was said, by promises of Luttrell's friends to provide for him. On this occasion he fought another duel with a Captain Flood, who had offended him in a coffee-house. He showed no deficiency of courage, but on the contrary even a larger proportion of spirit and generosity than had distinguished him at former periods.

Returning at this time one night to his apartments at Chelsea, he was attacked by two ruffians, who presented pistols to his breast. He sprang back, and drew his sword, when one of them fired at him, and the ball grazed his temple. He then attacked them both, pinned one to the wall, and the other fled. Roche secured his prisoner, and the other was apprehended next day. They were tried at the Old Bailey, and capitally convicted; but at the humane and earnest intercession of Roche, their punishment was mitigated to transportation.

All the fluctuations of this strange man's character seemed at length to settle into one unhappy state, from which he was unable ever again to raise himself. He met with a young person, walking with her mother in St. James's Park, and was struck with her appearance. He insinuated himself into their acquaintance, and the young lady formed for him a strong and uncontrollable attachment. She possessed a considerable fortune, of which Roche became the manager. His daily profusion and dissipation soon exhausted her property, and the mother and daughter were compelled to leave London, reduced to indigence and distress, in consequence of the debts in which he had involved them.

He was soon after appointed captain of a company of foot in the East India service, and embarked in the Vansittart, for India, in May, 1773. He had not been many days on board, when such was his impracticable temper that he fell out with all the passengers, and among the rest with a Captain Ferguson, who called him out as soon as they arrived at Madeira. Roche was again seized with a sudden and unaccountable fit of terror, and made submission. The arrogance and cowardice he displayed revolted the whole body of the passengers, and they unanimously made it a point that the captain should expel him from the table. He was driven, therefore, to the society of the common sailors and soldiers on board the ship. With them he endeavored to ingratiate himself, by mixing freely with them, and denouncing vengeance against every gentleman and officer on board the ship; but his threats were particularly directed against Ferguson, whom he considered the origin of the disgrace he suffered. On the arrival of the ship at the Cape, after all the passengers were disembarked, Roche came ashore, in the dusk of the evening, and was seen about the door of the house where Ferguson lodged. A message was conveyed to Ferguson, who went out, and was found soon afterward round the corner of the house, weltering in his blood, with _nine_ deep wounds, all on his left side; and it was supposed they must have been there inflicted, because it was the unprotected side, and the attack was made when he was off his guard.

Suspicion immediately fixed on Roche as the murderer; he fled during the night, and took refuge among the Caffres. It was supposed that he ended his strange and eventful life soon after. The Cape was at that time a colony of the Dutch, who, vigilant and suspicious of strangers, suffered none to enter there, but merely to touch for provisions and pass on. The proceedings, therefore, of their colonial government were shut up in mystery. It was reported at the time, that Roche was demanded and given up to the authorities at the Cape, who caused him to be broken alive upon the wheel, according to the then Dutch criminal law of the Cape, which inflicted that punishment on the more atrocious murderers, and the uncertainty that hung about the circumstance assorted strangely with the wild character of the man.

It appears, however, he was tried by the Dutch authorities at the Cape, and acquitted. He then took a passage in a French vessel to Bombay; but the Vansittart, in which he had come from England to the Cape, had arrived in India before him; information had been given to the British authorities, charging Roche with Ferguson's murder; and Roche was arrested as soon as he landed. He urged his right to be discharged, or at least bailed, on the grounds that there was not sufficient evidence against him; that he had been already acquitted; and that as the offense, if any, was committed out of the British dominions, he could only be tried by special commission, and it was uncertain whether the Crown would issue one or not, or, if the Crown did grant a commission, when or where it would sit. He argued his own case with the skill of a practiced lawyer. The authorities, however, declined either to bail or discharge him, and he was kept in custody until he was sent a prisoner to England, to stand his trial.

An appeal of murder was brought against him, and a commission issued to try it. The case came on at the Old Bailey, in London, before Baron Burland, on the 11th December, 1775. The counsel for Roche declined in any way relying on the former acquittal at the Cape of Good Hope; and the case was again gone through. The fact of the killing was undisputed, but from the peculiar nature of the proceedings, there could not be, as in a common indictment for murder, a conviction for manslaughter; and the judge directed the jury, if they did not believe the killing to be malicious and deliberate, absolutely to acquit the prisoner. The jury brought in a verdict of acquittal.

The doubt about Roche's guilt arose on the following state of facts. On the evening of their arrival at the Cape, Ferguson and his friends were sitting at tea, at their lodgings, when a message was brought into the room; on hearing which Ferguson rose, went to his apartment, and, having put on his sword and taken a loaded cane in his hand, went out. A friend named Grant followed him, and found Roche and him at the side of the house, round a corner, and heard the clash of swords, but refused to interfere. It was too dark to see what was occurring; but in a few moments he heard Roche going away, and Ferguson falling. Ferguson was carried in, and died immediately. All his wounds were on the _left_ side. The most violent vindictive feelings had existed between them; and there was proof of Roche's having threatened "to shorten the race of the Fergusons." The message, in answer to which Ferguson went out, was differently stated, being, according to one account, "Mr. Mathews wants Mr. Ferguson," and to the other, "a gentleman wants Mr. Mathews." The case for the prosecution was, that this message was a trap to draw Ferguson out of the house, and that, on his going out, Roche attacked him; and this was confirmed by the improbability of Roche's going out for an innocent purpose, in a strange place, on the night of his landing, in the dark, and in the neighborhood of Ferguson's lodgings; and particularly by the wounds being on the left side, which they could not be if given in a fair fight with small swords. Roche's account was, that on the evening of his arrival he went out to see the town, accompanied by a boy, a slave of his host; that they were watched by some person till they came near Ferguson's, when that person disappeared, and immediately afterward, Roche was struck with a loaded stick on the head, knocked down, and his arm disabled; that afterward he succeeded in rising, and; perceiving Ferguson, drew his sword, and, after a struggle, in which he wished to avoid bloodshed, killed his assailant in self-defense. This was, to some extent, corroborated by the boy at the Dutch trial, and by a sailor in England, but both these witnesses were shaken a little in their testimony. According to this account, the message was a concerted signal to Ferguson, who had set a watch on Roche, intending to assassinate him. The locality of Ferguson's wounds was accounted for by his fighting both with cane and sword, using the former to parry. If the second version of the message was correct, it would strongly confirm this account. There was no proof that Ferguson knew any one named Mathews.

A writer of the last century, in speaking of the Irish character, concludes with the remark: "In short, if they are good, you will scarcely meet a better: if bad, you will seldom find a worse." These extremes were frequently mixed in the same person. Roche, at different periods, displayed them. At one time, an admirable spirit, great humanity, and unbounded generosity; at another, abject cowardice, ferocity, treachery, and brutal selfishness. The vicissitudes of his fortune were as variable as his character: at times he was exposed to the foulest charges, and narrowly escaped ignominious punishment; at others, he was the object of universal esteem and admiration.

WIVES OF GREAT LAWYERS.

Lawyers do not marry with the impulsiveness of poets. For they are a prudent class--mostly shrewd, practical men--any thing but dreamers; and though they may admire a handsome figure, and like a pretty face as other men do, they have not usually allowed those adventitious gifts of nature to divert their attention from the "main chance" in choosing a wife. Lawyers are, take them as a whole, a marrying class, and they not unfrequently enjoy that "lawyer's blessing," a large family. Take the Lord Chancellors, for instance. Lord Clarendon, Lords-Keeper Coventry, Lyttleton, Bridgeman, Judge Jeffries, Lord York, Lord Bathurst, Lord Loughborough, and Lord Erskine, were twice married; Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Maynard, and Lord Harcourt, were three times married. The wives whom they chose were usually heiresses, or rich widows; those who remained bachelors, or who married "for love," seem to have formed the exceptions. And yet, on the whole, the married life of the Lord Chancellors, judging from Lord Campbell's Lives, seems to have been comfortable and happy.

The great Lord Bacon, when a young man plodding at the bar, but with a very small practice, cast about his eyes among the desirable matches of the day, and selected the handsome widow of Sir William Hutton (nephew and heir of Lord Chancellor Hutton), who had a large fortune at her own disposal. But another legal gentleman had been beforehand with him; and when he proposed he was rejected. His favored rival was Sir Edward Coke, a crabbed widower, but attorney-general, rich and of large estate, as well as of large family. The widow who valued wealth as much as Bacon did, married the old man, running off with him, and entering into an irregular marriage, for which they were both prosecuted in the Ecclesiastical Court. Bacon had reason to rejoice at his escape, for the widow was of capricious and violent temper, and led Coke a most wretched life, refusing to take his name, separating from him, doing every thing to vex and annoy him, and teaching his child to rebel against him. Bacon was however shortly after consoled by a rich and handsome wife, in the daughter of Alderman Barnham, whom he married. But the marriage seems at best to have been one of convenience on his part. They did not live happily together; she never was a companion to him; and not long before his death, a final separation took place, and the great Lord Chancellor died without the consolations of female tenderness in his last moments. When the separation took place, "for great and just causes," as he expresses it in his will, he "utterly revoked" all testamentary dispositions in her favor. But she lost nothing by this, for his costly style of living during his official career left him without a penny, and he died insolvent.

Sir Thomas More, when twenty-one, married the eldest daughter of one "Maister Coult, a gentleman of Essex," a country girl, very ill-educated, but fair and well-formed. Erasmus says of the marriage--"He wedded a young girl of respectable family, but who had hitherto lived in the country with her parents and sisters; and was so uneducated, that he could mould her to his own tastes and manners. He caused her to be instructed in letters; and she became a very skillful musician, which peculiarly pleased him." The union was a happy one, but short, the wife dying, and leaving behind her a son and three daughters; shortly after which, however, More married again, this time a widow named Alice Middleton, seven years older than himself, and not by any means handsome. Indeed, More indulged himself in a jest on her want of youth and beauty--"_nec bella nec puella_." He had first wooed her, it seems, for a friend, but ended by marrying her himself. Erasmus, who was often an inmate of the family, speaks of her as "a keen and watchful manager." "No husband," continues Erasmus, "ever gained so much obedience from a wife by authority and severity, as More won by gentleness and pleasantry. Though verging on old age, and not of a yielding temper, he prevailed on her to take lessons on the lute, the viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practiced to him." Her ordinary and rather vulgar apprehension could not fathom the conscientious scruples of her husband in his refusal to take the oath dictated to him by Henry VIII.; and when he was at length cast by that bad monarch into the Tower, then the grave of so many royal victims, his wife strongly expostulated with him on his squeamishness. "How can a man," she said to him on one occasion, "taken for wise, like you, play the fool in this close filthy prison, when you might be abroad at your liberty, if you would but do as the bishops have done?" She dilated upon his fine house at Chelsea, his library, gallery, garden, and orchard, together with the company of his wife and children. But to all he opposed the mild force of his conscience and religious feelings. "Is not this house," he asked, "as nigh heaven as my own?" to which her contemptuous ejaculation was--"_Tilly vally, tilly vally!_" He persisted in his course, and was executed, after which we hear no more of his wife.

Among the few great lawyers who have married "for love," Hyde, Lord Clarendon, deserves a place. While yet a young man, he became desperately enamored of the daughter of Sir George Aycliffe, a Wiltshire gentleman of good family, though of small fortune. A marriage was the result, but the beautiful young wife died only six months after, of the malignant small-pox (then a frightful scourge in this country), and Hyde was for some time so inconsolable, that he could scarcely be restrained from throwing up his profession and going abroad. Two years after, however, he married again into a good family, his second wife being the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of the Mint; and the marriage proved highly auspicious. This worthy lady was his companion in all his vicissitudes of fortune--lived with him for many years in exile--shared all his dangers and privations, when at times the parents could with difficulty provide food and raiment for their children; but the wife was yet preserved to see her husband Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister of England. As an instance of the straits to which the family was occasionally reduced, we may quote the following extract from a letter written by Hyde to a friend, when at Madrid in 1650, in which he says: "All our money is gone, and let me never prosper, if I know or can imagine how we can get bread a month longer;" and again, "Greater necessities are hardly felt by any men than we for the present undergo, such as have almost made me foolish. I have not for my life been able to supply the miserable distress of my poor wife."

Francis North, afterward Lord-Keeper Guildford, went about marrying in a business-like way. He was a reader at Lincoln's Inn, but much desired to wed, because he had "grown tired of dining in the hall, and eating a costelet and salad at Chateline's in the evening with a friend." Besides, he wished to mend his fortune in the most summary way. He first tried a rich, coquettish young widow, but she jilted him. Then he found out an alderman who was reputed to be rich, and had three marriageable daughters with a fortune of £6000 each. He made his approaches, was favorably received, and proceeded to broach the money question to the alderman. The sum named as the young lady's portion was £5000; but as North had set his heart on the £6000, he was disappointed, and at once took his leave. The alderman, running after him (at least so relates Lord Campbell), offered him to boot £500 on the birth of the first child. But North would not take a penny under the sum he had fixed upon, and the match fell through. At last he found a lady with £14,000, one of the daughters of the Earl of Devon, whom he courted in a business style, and ultimately married.

Judge Jeffries, when a dissolute youth, courted an heiress, and in spite of her father's interdict, the young lady encouraged Jeffries, and corresponded with him. The father fell upon a heap of love-letters which had passed between Jeffries and his daughter, and in a savage manner turned the young lady from his doors. She was suffering great distress in some house in Holborn, in which she had taken shelter, and where Jeffries sought her out. Perhaps his marrying her under such circumstances was the one generous act of that infamous man's life. She made him an excellent wife while she lived, but before she died, Jeffries was already courting another wife, and married her three months after; and in about three months after that, his new wife presented him with certain marital fruits rather prematurely. This woman caused much scandal during her life, and seems to have been as great a disgrace to the domestic conditions of life, as her husband was to the bench he occupied.

Neither Lord Somers nor Lord Thurlow were married--both having been disappointed in attachments in their younger years. The latter proposed to a young Lincolnshire lady, a Miss Gouch, but she protested "she would not have him--she was positively afraid of him;" so he forswore matrimony thenceforward. We do not remember any other of the Lord Chancellors who have led a single life.

Strange that Lord Chancellor Eldon--a man of so much caution and worldly providence, should have been one of the few great lawyers who married "for love;" but it was so. His choice was nearly a penniless beauty, and he had nothing; she was only eighteen, and he twenty-one. Scott induced the fair damsel to elope with him; she stole away from her father's home by night, descending from her window by a ladder planted there by her impatient lover; they fled across the border, and got married at Blackshiels. The step was an important one for Scott--fraught with great consequences; for it diverted him from the church, for which he had been studying, and forced him to the bar, thus compelling him to enter upon a career which ended in the highest honors. William Scott, his elder brother, afterward Lord Stowell, helped the young couple on, and the young lawyer worked with a will. "I have married rashly," said he, in a letter to a friend, "and I have neither house nor home to offer to my wife; but it is my determination to _work hard_ to provide for the woman I love, as soon as I can find the means of so doing." He was shortly after engaged by Sir Robert Chambers, as his deputy, to read lectures on law at Oxford; and in after years he used to relate the following story respecting his first appearance in the character of a lecturer. "The most awkward thing that ever occurred to me was this: immediately after I was married, I was appointed Deputy Professor of Law, at Oxford; and the law professor sent me the first lecture, which I had to read _immediately_ to the students, and which I began without knowing a word that was in it. It was upon the statute of _young men running away with maidens_. Fancy me reading, with about one hundred and forty boys and young men giggling at the professor! Such a tittering audience no one ever had."

It remains for us to notice the wives of two other great lawyers, who, though not equal in rank to those we have named, were equal to any of them in professional merit, and in true nobility of character. We allude to the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh, both of whom were blessed in their married state, and have left behind them memorials of the most touching kind in memory of their wives.

"For fifteen years," says Sir Samuel Romilly, writing in 1813, "my happiness has been the constant study of the most excellent of wives; a woman in whom a strong understanding, the noblest and most elevated sentiments, and the most courageous virtue, are united to the warmest affection, and to the utmost delicacy of mind and tenderness of heart; and all these intellectual perfections are graced and adorned by the most splendid beauty that human eyes ever beheld. She has borne to me seven children, who are living, and in all of whom I persuade myself that I discover the promise of them, one day, proving themselves not unworthy of such a mother."

The noble woman here referred to was Anne, the eldest daughter of Francis Garbett, Esq., of Knill Court, Herefordshire, whom Romilly married in January, 1798. He first accidentally met the young lady when on a visit to the Marquis of Lansdowne, at Bowood. He gives the following charming account of the circumstance in his diary: "The amiable disposition of Lord and Lady Lansdowne always renders the place delightful to their guests. To me, besides the enjoyment of the present moment, there is always added, when I am at Bowood, a thousand pleasing recollections of past times; of the happy days I have spent, of the various society of distinguished persons I have enjoyed, of the friendships I have formed here; and above all, that it was here that I first saw and became known to my dearest Anne. If I had not chanced to meet with her here, there is no probability that I should ever have seen her; for she had never been, nor was likely, unmarried, to have been in London. To what accidental causes are the most important occurrences of our lives sometimes to be traced! Some miles from Bowood is the form of a white horse, grotesquely cut out upon the downs, and forming a landmark to wide extent of country. To that object it is that I owe all the real happiness of my life. In the year 1796 I made a visit to Bowood. My dear Anne, who had been staying there some weeks, with her father and her sisters, was about to leave it. The day fixed for their departure was the eve of that on which I arrived; and if nothing had occurred to disappoint their purpose, I never should have seen her. But it happened that, on the preceding day, she was one of an equestrian party which was made to visit this curious object; she overheated herself by her ride; a violent cold and pain in her face was the consequence. Her father found it indispensably necessary to defer his and her journey for several days, and in the mean time I arrived. I saw in her the most beautiful and accomplished creature that ever blessed the sight and understanding of man--a most intelligent mind, an uncommonly correct judgment, a lively imagination, a cheerful disposition, a noble and generous way of thinking, an elevation and heroism of character, and a warmth and tenderness of affection, such as is rarely found even in her sex, were among her extraordinary endowments. I was captivated alike by the beauties of her person, and the charms of her mind. A mutual attachment was formed between us, which, at the end of a little more than a year, was consecrated by marriage. All the happiness I have known in her beloved society, all the many and exquisite enjoyments which my dear children have afforded me, even my extraordinary success in my profession, the labors of which, if my life had not been so cheered and exhilarated, I never could have undergone--all are to be traced to this trivial cause."

Lady Romilly died on the 29th of October, 1818, and the bereaved husband was unable to bear up under this terrible loss. The shock occasioned by her death deprived him of his senses, and in his despair he committed the fatal act which laid him in the same grave with his devoted wife. In life they were united, and in death they would not be separated.

Mackintosh married when only a young man in great pecuniary straits. He was living in the family of Dr. Fraser, London, where Miss Catherine Stuart, a young Scotch lady, was a frequent visitor. She was distinguished by a rich fund of good sense, and an affectionate heart, rather than for her personal attractions. An affection sprang up between them, and they got privately married at Marylebone Church, on February 18th, 1789, greatly to the offense of the relatives of both parties.

When composing his _Vindiciæ Gallicæ_ at Little Ealing, his wife sat by him in the room; he could tolerate no one else, and he required her to be perfectly quiet--not even to write or work--as the slightest movement disturbed him. In the evening, by way of recreation, he walked out with his wife, reading to her as he went along. This amiable wife died in 1797, when slowly recovering from the birth of a child, and she left three daughters behind her. Mackintosh thus spoke of his departed wife, in a letter to Dr. Parr, written shortly after his sad bereavement, and we do not remember ever to have met with a more beautiful testimony to a deceased wife than this is:

"In the state of deep, but quiet melancholy, which has succeeded to the first violent agitations of my sorrow, my greatest pleasure is to look back with gratitude and pious affection on the memory of my beloved wife; and my chief consolation is the soothing recollection of her virtues. Allow me, in justice to her memory, to tell you what she was, and what I owed her. I was guided in my choice only by the blind affection of my youth. I found an intelligent companion and a tender friend, a prudent monitress, the most faithful of wives, and a mother as tender as children ever had the misfortune to lose. I met a woman who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, gradually corrected the most pernicious of them. She became prudent from affection; and though of the most generous nature, she was taught frugality and economy by her love for me. During the most critical period of my life, she preserved order in my affairs, from the care of which she relieved me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation; she propped my weak and irresolute nature; she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful and creditable to me; and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness or improvidence. To her I owe whatever I am; to her, whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest, she never for a moment forgot my feelings, or my character. Even in her occasional resentment, for which I but too often gave her cause (would to God I could recall those moments), she had no sullenness nor acrimony. Her feelings were warm and impetuous, but she was placable, tender, and constant. Such was she whom I have lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast together, and moulded our tempers to each other,--when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had deprived it of much of its original ardor. I lost her, alas! (the choice of my youth, the partner of my misfortunes) at a moment when I had the prospect of her sharing my better days. If I had lost the giddy and thoughtless companion of prosperity, the world could easily repair the loss; but I have lost the faithful and tender partner of my misfortunes, and my only consolation is in that Being, under whose severe, but paternal chastisement, I am bent down to the ground."

Mackintosh married, about a year after the death of his first wife, Catherine, the second daughter of John Allen, of Cresselly, Co. Pembroke. She was an amiable and accomplished woman, and greatly contributed to his happiness in after life. She died in 1830, at Chêne, near Geneva, after a short illness; and her husband, speaking of her afterward, "in the deep sincerity of deliberate conviction," calls her "an upright and pious woman, formed for devoted affection, who employed a strong understanding and resolute spirit in unwearied attempts to relieve every suffering under her view."

CRIME DETECTED.--AN ANECDOTE OF THE PARIS POLICE.

Previously to the year 1789, but at what precise date can not say, the city of Paris possessed as guardian of its safety, and chief minister of police, a man of rare talent and integrity. At the same period, the parish of St. Germais, in the quarter of the Rue St. Antoine, had for its curé a kind venerable old man, whose whole life was spent in doing good to both the souls and bodies of his fellow-creatures, and whose holy consistency and dignified courage caused him to be loved by the good, and respected by even the most abandoned characters. One cold dark winter's night, the bell at the old curé's door was rung loudly, and he, although in bed, immediately arose and opened the door, anticipating a summons to some sick or dying bed.

A personage, richly dressed, with his features partly concealed by a large false beard, stood outside. Addressing the curé in a courteous and graceful manner, he apologized for his unseasonable visit, which, as he said, the high reputation of monsieur had induced him to make.

"A great and terrible, but necessary and inevitable deed," he continued, "is to be done. Time presses; a soul about to pass into eternity implores your ministry. If you come you must allow your eyes to be bandaged, ask no questions, and consent to act simply as spiritual consoler of a dying woman. If you refuse to accompany me, no other priest can be admitted, and her spirit must pass alone."

After a moment of secret prayer, the curé answered, "I will go with you." Without asking any further explanation, he allowed his eyes to be bandaged, and leaned on the arm of his suspicious visitor. They both got into a coach, whose windows were immediately covered by wooden shutters, and then they drove off rapidly. They seemed to go a long way, and make many doublings and turnings ere the coach drove under a wide archway and stopped.

During this time, not a single word had been exchanged between the travelers, and ere they got out the stranger assured himself that the bandage over his companion's eyes had not been displaced, and then taking the old man respectfully by the hand, he assisted him to alight and to ascend the wide steps of a staircase as far as the second story. A great door opened, as if of itself, and several thickly-carpeted rooms were traversed in silence. At length, another door was opened by the guide, and the curé felt his bandage removed. They were in a solemn-looking bed-chamber; near a bed, half-vailed by thick damask curtains, was a small table, supporting two wax lights, which feebly illuminated the cold death-like apartment. The stranger (he was the Duke de ----), then bowing to the curé, led him toward the bed, drew back the curtains, and said in a solemn tone:

"Minister of God, before you is a woman who has betrayed the blood of her ancestors, and whose doom is irrevocably fixed. She knows on what conditions an interview with you has been granted her; she knows too that all supplication would be useless. You know your duty, M. le Curé; I leave you to fulfill it, and will return to seek you in half an hour."

So saying he departed, and the agitated priest saw lying on the bed a young and beautiful girl, bathed in tears, battling with despair, and calling in her bitter agony for the comforts of religion. No investigation possible! for the unhappy creature declared herself bound by a terrible oath to conceal her name; besides, she knew not in what place she was.

"I am," she said, "the victim of a secret family tribunal, whose sentence is irrevocable! More, I can not tell. I forgive mine enemies, as I trust that God will forgive me. Pray for me!"

The minister of religion invoked the sublime promises of the gospel to soothe her troubled soul, and he succeeded. Her countenance, after a time, became composed, she clasped her hands in fervent prayer, and then extended them toward her consoler.

As she did so, the curé perceived that the sleeve of her robe was stained with blood.

"My child," said he, with a trembling voice, "what is this?"

"Father, it is the vein which they have already opened, and the bandage, no doubt, was carelessly put on."

At these words, a sudden thought struck the priest. He unrolled the dressing, allowed the blood to flow, steeped his handkerchief in it, then replaced the bandage, concealed the stained handkerchief within his vest, and whispered:

"Farewell, my daughter, take courage, and have confidence in God!"

The half-hour had expired, and the step of his terrible conductor was heard approaching.

"I am ready," said the curé, and having allowed his eyes to be covered, he took the arm of the Duke de ----, and left the awful room, praying meanwhile with secret fervor.

Arrived at the foot of the staircase, the old man, succeeded, without his guide's knowledge, in slightly displacing the thick bandage so as to admit a partial ray of lamp light. Finding himself in the carriage gateway, he managed to stumble and fall, with both hands forward toward a dark corner. The duke hastened to raise him, both resumed their places in the carriage, and, after repassing through the same tortuous route, the curé was set down in safety at his own door.

Without one moment's delay, he called his servant.

"Pierre," he said, "arm yourself with a stick, and give me your support; I must instantly go to the minister of police."

Soon afterward the official gate was opened to admit the well-known venerable pastor.

"Monseigneur," he said, addressing the minister, "a terrible deed will speedily be accomplished, if you are not in time to prevent it. Let your agents visit, before daybreak, every carriage gateway in Paris; in the inner angle of one of them will be found a blood-stained handkerchief. The blood is that of a young female, whose murder, already begun, has been miraculously suspended. Her family have condemned their victim to have her veins opened one by one, and thus to perish slowly in expiation of a fault, already more than punished by her mortal agony. Courage, my friend, you have already some hours. May God assist you--I can only pray."

That same morning, at eight o'clock, the minister of police entered the curé's room.

"My friend," said he, "I confess my inferiority, you are able to instruct me in expedients."

"Saved!" cried the old man, bursting into tears.

"Saved," said the minister, "and rescued from the power of her cruel relations. But the next time, dear abbé, that you want my assistance in a benevolent enterprise, I wish you would give me a little more time to accomplish it."

Within the next twenty-four hours, by an express order from the king, the Duke de ---- and his accomplices were secretly removed from Paris, and conveyed out of the kingdom.

The young woman received all the care which her precarious state required; and when sufficiently recovered, retired to a quiet country village where the royal protection assured her safety. It is scarcely needful to say, that next to her Maker, the curé of St. Germais was the object of her deepest gratitude and filial love. During fifteen years, the holy man received from time to time the expression of her grateful affection; and at length, when himself, from extreme old age, on the brink of the grave, he received the intelligence that she had departed in peace.

Never until then, had a word of this mysterious adventure passed the good curé's lips. On his deathbed, however, he confided the recital to a bishop, one of his particular friends; and from a relation of the latter, I myself heard it. This is the exact truth.

ZOOLOGICAL STORIES.

Travelers' tales have a peculiar reputation for the marvelous, and many travelers have been accused of fiction. Whether zoologists' tales are in all cases to be trusted, we have, now and then, a doubt. They are true in the main; but sometimes, possibly, the first narrator of an unusually good story has judiciously abstained from sifting it; and once in the Zoological Story-book, the pleasant tale has stood on its own merits, and been handled tenderly, as is the way with ornaments; no man too roughly scratching at them to find out of what materials they are composed.

Of course we accept legends _as_ legends. It was once believed of crocodiles, that, after they had eaten a man comfortably, and left only his skull, at the sweet kernel of which--the brain--they could not get, their tears were shed over the bone until they softened it, and so the skull was opened, and the brain devoured. When that is told us as a legend, we say, certainly, it was a very quaint thing to believe of the tears of crocodiles. Then, travelers' tales of the proverbial kind are next of kin to legends. Here is a very marvelous one, and yet, let us be bold and say that we believe it. It is this. An Indian, having tamed a rattlesnake, carried it about in a box with him, and called it his great father. M. Pinnisance met with him as he was starting for his winter hunt, and saw him open the box-door and give the snake his liberty, telling it to be sure and come back to meet him, when he returned to the same spot next May. It was then October. M. Pinnisance laughed at the man, who immediately saw his way clearly to a speculation in rum, and betted two gallons that his snake would keep the appointment. The wager was made; the second week in May arrived; the Indian and the Frenchman were on the appointed spot. The great father was absent, and the Indian, having lost his wager, offered to repeat it, doubled, if the snake did not return within the next two days. That wager the Frenchman took and lost. The snake, who (had he speech) might have apologized for being rather behind his time, appeared, and crawled into his box. We believe this. Rattlesnakes are teachable; and, in this instance, the keeping of the appointment seems to us only an apparent wonder. Snakes are not given to travel in the winter, and the Indian's father, turned out of the box, made himself snug at no great distance from the place of his ejectment. Winter over, the Indian came back. His great father may have been dining heartily, and indisposed to stir; but, as he grew more brisk, the accustomed invocation of his little son became effectual, and brought the tame snake to the box as usual.

Disjonval knew a spider (such a spider was a person to know) who regularly placed himself upon the ceiling over a young lady's head whenever she played the harp, and followed her if she changed her position. The celebrated violinist, Berthome (it is our shame never to have heard of him), when a boy, saw a spider habitually come out to hear when he was practicing: this creature at last became familiar, and took a seat upon the desk. Lenz tells of a goose who followed a harp-player wherever he performed, probably to hiss him out of self-respect. Bingley tells of a pigeon in the neighborhood of a young lady who played brilliantly on the harpsichord; the pigeon did not greatly care about her playing, except when she played the song of "Speri si," from Handel's opera, Admetus: then it would come and sit by the window, testifying pleasure; when the song was over, it would fly back to its dovecote, for it had not learnt the art of clapping wings for an encore.