"You should deliver a series of lectures on the growing vices of the age, Markham.” for "No, I don't pretend to any gift as a lecturer, but I have a real love you, for your own sake and for hers who is gone, and I like this poor girl very warmly-that's about the whole of it." "And enough too." They were both silent for some minutes, when Lord Serle spoke. 66 Why should you plague yourself about me, Markham? Let me go my own way in my own fashion, as, indeed, I am most likely to do, however you may fidget yourself." "That may be, Serle, but, my boy, you cannot have forgotten how Mary loved you nor how I loved her, and almost her last words to me were the most urgent prayers that come what might, so long as you and I both lived, I would, to the best of my power, watch over you as though you were my son, which you might almost be in years." "Oh! it is poor Mary's doing, then? I was often puzzled to know what you meant by your carefulness over me. Well, women are strange creatures. I am sure I never did anything for Mary but worry her." "She had many an anxious hour on your account." "Ah! poor Mary!" "Serle, I do believe you have introduced her name for a purpose, and that you want to distract my attention from our first topic." And, if it were so, is it not better thus than that we should quarrel ?" "I cannot see why we should quarrel." "Nor I; yet it is probable we may, if you be so persistent. The consciousness that he is wilfully pursuing a line of conduct which he cannot defend, and yet will not bear to have condemned, is not apt to make a man very sweet-tempered nor forbearing. I ask you again, Markham, not to interfere here; that miserable wretch Home evidently does not care whether I make love to his wife or not. You heard how he pressed me to stay; he takes no pains to conceal his attentions to other women, and he invites, or makes his wife invite, to the house one woman who ought not to be here. I think I should be doing the girl a service in freeing her from such a man, and I am not sure but that he would be very much obliged to me." "That has nothing to do with it. A woman may be very unhappy with her husband, but if she leaves him and places herself under the protection (as it is called) of another man, she may be sure that she will some time look back to the darkest hours of her married life, as to a state of comparative happiness. Those affairs never end well, Serle. have watched the progress of a few of them. How can they end well? Accursed of both God and man I Lord Serle did not speak for a short time, then he sprang up from his chair, and said, hastily: "Markham, I am talking falsely and meanly, leading you to suppose that it rests with me to make Mrs. Home false to her confounded husband. Whatever I may be, I have never been mean. And you shall have it all. I don't think she is to be tempted. She has repulsed my advances most decidedly." "I thought she was the woman to do so," cried Sir John, triumphantly. "I am glad she has done it, although sorry that you should have given her the chance." "I did it, however, and I have got my answer, and I am half tempted to cut all this cursed tomfoolery and go off yachting to the Levant with Wilbraham." "Do, my boy; go anywhere where you may be safe from temptation." "I don't know, either," said Lord Serle, perversely. "I have half a mind to stay, and try what perseverance will do." "A disgraceful perseverance for you; fruitless, I hope, so far as regards her." "If I had the faintest belief that I should succeed, no sense of the right or wrong of the thing could move me," continued Lord Serle, as if thinking aloud; "but I do believe that if she loved me as I love her, she would still cling to the fetish of respectable misery." "It cannot be utter misery so long as she is conscious of doing her duty." "That sounds noble, Markham, and very specious; but it is altogether a fallacy." "Now you are arguing for argument sake." "No; argument is not in my line to-night. I say, Markham, off with you to bed like a decent fellow, and leave me to think all this over by myself. I scarcely know what I want, and I should like to find that out. I swear to you I do not want to harm that girl, and I promise you that I will do nothing further without first letting you know.” "Very well. I am satisfied with that for the present." And Sir John bade his brother-in-law "good night," and retired to his own room. Lord Serle sat on, looking into the red caverns of the fire, heedless as they crumbled together and sank into grey cold ashes. Fainter and colder grew the light from the embers, and still he sat on motionless, till the creeping shuddering cold of that coldest hour of the twenty-fourthe mysterious hour which precedes the dawn-thrilled through him, and the wind came with a faint wild wail, sweeping over the woods and moaning round the house. Then he started up, looked at his watch, and saw that the wax-lights had burned low, so with a deep long-drawn sigh he returned from his visionary wanderings. Next morning he did not awake until Monsieur Verolles somewhat noisily opened the persiennes of his dressing-room. "Is that you, Verolles? Is it late?" 'Yes, milord, it is I. I took the liberty of disturbing you.' I suppose every one is up? It seems a fine morning." "Yes, milord, a beautiful morning for Madame Home's journey." "For what?" almost shouted Lord Serle, springing up from his recumbent posture. "Monsieur, Madame Home's father, has a seizure of the head, milord; the express arrived early this morning, and madame, with the ladies her sisters, is already some miles on her journey, pale and weeping, and in much sadness she went." Yes, Mr. Charlton had had a sudden and alarming attack of apoplexy, and so there was no "Lady of Lyons" performed that night at Thornicroft, and no ball. And after luncheon on that day the guests departed, and next day Colonel Home followed his wife. ABOUT HAVING THE LAW ON ONE'S SIDE. A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE. BY FRANCIS JACOX. SAMPSON and Gregory, armed retainers of Capulet, are intent on provoking to a quarrel Abram and Balthazar, armed retainers of Montague. But, eager as they are for the fray, they would like to have the law on their side, and therefore contrive how to make the others strike the first blow. In the streets of Verona, when and where Montagues and Capulets meet, a very petty gesticulation will suffice to beget knocks. So Gregory will frown, and Sampson will bite his thumb at the others as they pass; and as soon as that spark has fired the train-always laid, always ready-then let him and Gregory at once go in and win; and for all sakes let Gregory remember his swashing blow. Greg. Draw thy tool; here come two of the house of Montague. . Greg. I will frown, as I pass by; and let them take it as they list. Samp. Nay, as they dare. I will bite my thumb at them; which is a disgrace to them, if they bear it. Abr. Do you Abr. Do sir? thumb at us, Samp. [to Gregory]. Is the law on our side, if I say Ay ?* As Gregory answers No to this, and as Sampson is scrupulous to keep on the safe side of the law, and studious to put his antagonists in the wrong, he professes in reply to Abram and Balthazar not to bite his thumb at them, only he insists on the fact of biting his thumb for all that. Of course a fight is speedily got up on other pretences; but Sampson and Gregory exult in so manoeuvring as to keep the law on their side. The common folk of Verona, as Shakspeare pictures them, seem to have been particular on this score in those troublous times. We find Peter, when upbraided by the Nurse, for not taking her part like a man when Mercutio derides her, declare that his weapon should have been out in a trice, had there been occasion for it: "I dare draw as soon as another man, if I see occasion in a good quarrel, and the law on my side."+ Bolingbroke and his uncle York affect a punctilious scrupulosity as to the law, when they take measures against the king. "What would you have me do?" exclaims the former: And hesitating York is talked over by his ambitious nephew to acquiesce in his procedure: It may be, I will go with you;-but yet I'll pause; For I am loath to break our country's laws.* Another banished man, an antique Roman, with less of Bolingbroke's plausibility of manner, affected more of submission to the law, under similar circumstances. When Cinna and Marius were invited by the senate to enter Rome, Cinna-who had received the message with courtesy-made his way into the city with a strong guard; while Marius-whose manner of acknowledging the invitation, with gloomy aspect and menacing looks, betokened, says Plutarch, "that he would soon fill the city with blood,"-stopped at the gates, with a dissimulation dictated by his resentment. He said, he was a banished man, and the laws prohibited his return. If his country wanted his service, she must repeal the law which drove him into exile. "As if," is Plutarch's comment, "he had a real regard for the laws," or were entering a city still in possession of its liberty.† Of Pisistratus it has been remarked, that, raised above the law, that subtle genius governed only by the law; and even affected to consider its authority greater than his own. The history of Rome is rife in pretensions to this effect. Reformers, innovators, revolutionists, all more or less claimed to have the law on their side. The year of Cæsar's Edileshipwhich was that of the appearance of Catiline-was marked by proceedings on the popular Edile's part, at the boldness of which the Marian party, all those opposed to Sylla and the Senate, took heart, as Dean Liddell says, and recognised their chief; while the Senate on their part took up the matter, and gave audience to Catulus accusing Cæsar of openly assaulting the Constitution. "But nothing was done, or could be done, to check his movements. In all things he kept cautiously within the Law."§ This for the time being; but it would hardly do for his opponents to rely upon his always adhering with equal scrupulosity to the legal side. When Pompey procured a Decree of the Senate by which he calculated on keeping his own army on foot after Cæsar should be required to disband his, it is strange, the historian remarks, that Pompey should not have foreseen that a man of Cæsar's character, so resolute and so ambitious, "would break through the cobwebs of law with the strong hand." Ben Jonson, in one of his Roman tragedies, makes Cato and one of the Catilinarian conspirators interchange sharp sentences on the province of law: Cato. Impudent head! Stick it into his throat; were I the consul, Gab. Is there a law for't, Cato? Cato. Dost thou ask After a law, that would'st have broke all laws *King Richard II., Act II. Sc. 3. † Plut., Life of Caius Marius. Lord Lytton, Athens, its Rise and Fall, i. 374. Id. ibid., p. 387. Meaning the paper that implicates Gabinius Cimber, who refuses to incrimi nate himself by owning to any knowledge of it. Michelet introduces Pope Innocent III., in his contest with imperial power, with the words: "A great legist, and accustomed on all questions to consult the law, he sat down to his own self-examination, and rose fully satisfied that the law was with him." Innocent was himself a Roman, and in some respects, and they respect-worthy ones, no degenerate type of the antique sort. As regards their distinctive reverence for law, we English are apt to plume ourselves on best representing the Romans, though of course beating them hollow. What we know of the doings of North Britons, during the Porteous riots, is characteristic of both sides of the Tweed. Men seem, it has been remarked, to have been habitually under an impression in those days that the law was at once an imperfect and a partial power: they seem to have felt themselves constantly liable to be called upon to supplement its energy, or control or compensate its errors. Discussing the real nature, as he apprehends it, of Spanish civilisation -and arguing that a blind spirit of reverence, in the form of an unworthy and ignominious submission to the Crown and the Church, is the capital and essential vice of the Spanish people,-Mr. Buckle observes that, in the most civilised countries, the tendency always is to obey even unjust laws, but, while obeying them, to insist on their repeal. This, he says, is because we perceive that it is better to remove grievances than to resist them while we submit to the particular hardship, we assail the system from which the hardship flows.§ England stands forth preeminent in the tactics which have thus ensured her having the law on her side. The sturdy Briton, as the poet depicts him, is Patient of constitutional control, He bears it with meek manliness of soul; To him that treads upon his free-born toe! Fires him at once in Freedom's glorious cause. "L'Anglais," said Chamfort, "respecte la loi et repousse ou méprise l'autorité. Le Français, au contraire, respecte l'autorité et méprise la loi. Il faut lui enseigner à faire le contraire."¶ So of our transatlantic stock, M. de Tocqueville wrote, that what he chiefly admired was "the extraordinary respect entertained for law: standing alone, and unsupported by an armed force, it commands irresistibly. I believe, in fact, that the principal reason is, that they make it themselves, and are able to repeal it. We see thieves who have violated all public laws obey those *Catiline, Act V., Sc. 4. † Michelet, Histoire de France, t. ii. l. iv. ch. vi. Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh: Edinburgh Mobs. Cowper, Table Talk. Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées. |