character, such, as the account given him by Brougham, who had it from Lord Grey, of the Emperor Alexander's reflections on "the branch of the Eng lish Constitution called the Opposition" which his Imperial Majesty thought a very fine institution, being a sort of mirror in which Ministers might at all times see themselves and discover their faults: "But there was one thing which rather puzzled him. As the object of both parties was of course the same-the public good-he did not exactly understand why the Opposition might not privately give information and advice to Ministers, secretly telling them what measures they should avoid and what they should adopt. Ministers would derive the same advantage from these friendly conferences as from debates in Parliament, and there would be no altercation, exposure, or éclat,' This was chiefly addressed to Grey, who did not know well what answer to return. His Majesty then turned suddenly round to Grenville and said: 'Qu'en pensez-vous, milord?' Grenville observed that the plan appeared very beautiful, but he doubted whether it was practicable.'

In November, 1814, he writes to an

nounce his victory over Ellenborough,

who had come down to the court with a volume of Reports in his hand, and, as soon as he had taken his seat, charged Campbell with having the day before cited a non-existing note:

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Ellenborough. I have looked at the report, and no such note is to be found.

Campbell. I cited the case from the octavo edition, in which there certainly is the note I referred to. I have got my copy in an adjoining room, and I can now produce it to the Court. "Ellenborough (furibundus). Sir, that is the edition I have looked to. I have brought down my copy, which is now before me. There! I will hand it down to you, sir, and I will thank you to find me out the note. (Book handed down, or rather thrown at my head, by his Lordship.)

Campbell (with great firmness and dignity). My Lord, in the book, which your Lordship had the kindness to hand down to me, I find subjoined to Barbent's case the following note: Note: The Secretary of State afterward interfered and satisfied the creditors, and this person was discharged out of custody.'

"Ellenborough (in confusion). Indeed! Let me see the book. Yes, it is so. I had overlooked it. You were right, sir; you were warranted in what you said.

"A great sensation was excited in the Court, and I was congratulated by my friends.”

The victory cost him dear, for Lord Ellenborough was not a generous antag onist:

"May 8, 1815.-I have not lately had any

serious set-to with my Lord, but we do not get on comfortably together. He has still particuing one absolute against me. lar pleasure in discharging my rule or in makHowever, he shall treat me with respect, if not with favor. I chiefly regret his brutality on the ground that display of my faculties."

it makes me so nervous, and checks the fair

During a trip to Paris in the long vacation of 1815 he fell in with his old pupil, now Sir James Wedderburn Webster, who consulted him about a current scandal affecting his (Sir James's) wife, Lady Frances, and the Duke of Wellington. I cannot mention to you

more than that I am certain the story is false and calumnious. But the Duke certainly paid and is disposed to pay her the most particular attentions. The object at present is to discover the authors of the libel and to bring them to punishment." By his advice an action of libel was brought in the joint names of husband and wife against the St. James's Chronicle. He was junior counsel, and complains that, although the whole responsibility rested on his shoulders, he was not allowed to take any prominent part, and was unfairly deprived of the éclat which might have accrued to him from the examination of the Duke of Richmond. Forgetting to mention the result (a verdict for the plaintiffs), he gives vent to a burst of enthusiastic admiration :

"Webster and his wife have been a week in London, and I have seen a good deal of them. She is the most fascinating creature that ever lived, and I believe in my conscience most perfectly virtuous. I really am quite in love with She may well be the conqueror of the conqueror of the world."

her.

Having been the idol of Brussels and Paris during the last twelve months, she is personally acquainted with almost all the distinguished characters in Europe. Then as to the battle of Waterloo she may be said to have been present at it. I rather think she was not forgotten in the Duke's visit to Brussels the next day. And at any rate she had intelligence from the field every hour. What she has seen she tells with as much naïveté as a country girl. I was five hours in conversation with her on Friday evening, and it seemed but a moment."

Not long afterward she and her husband quarrelled, and an advertisement appeared in a morning paper offering for sale, at a solicitor's office in Lincoln's Inn, two letters from the Duke, the one written the very night of the battle

of Waterloo, the other the day after. Colonel Gurwood was commissioned to purchase them, which he did for 60/. The Duke took them, read them carefully through, and then flung them into the fire with an emphatic remark on his own folly in having written them. Neither of these, therefore, could have been the letter to the same lady printed in The Supplemental Despatches'' (vol. x. p. 531), dated "Bruxelles, 19th June, half-past 8 in the morning, simply announcing the victory, telling her that her father, Lord Mountmorres, might safely remain in Brussels, and ending, the finger of Providence was on me, and I escaped unhurt.”

Lady Frances has a double claim to immortality. Lord Byron was her devoted and apparently favorite admirer till she threw him over for the Duke, and the reproachful, very compromising, verses beginning, "Go, triumph securely," were addressed to her. A curious incident of this liaison was narrated by Scrope Davies. "Byron came one evening into my lodgings in St. James's Street in a towering passion, and, standing before the fire, broke out into a fit of railing against women in general, and that woman in particular. He tore from his watch-ribbon a seal she had given him and dashed it into the grate. soon as he left the room I picked it out, and here it is." It was a large seal, representing a ship in full sail, a star in the distance, with the motto: la perds, je suis perdu."*

As

Si je

It may be collected from Campbell's letters that his father and brother were disappointed at seeing his name so seldom in the newspapers, at his remaining

unknown to fame while his income was constantly on the increase. "If," he replies, "I remain obscure, I have no reason to complain of my profits." He himself has a yearning for display or notoriety as a thing of marketable value, independently of the gratification to vanity or self-love. Thus he writes, June, 1816

"I think my genius never displayed itself more than in this proceeding. I take more credit to myself for setting up my groom and horses than for writing my book, or fagging in

* "Diaries of a Lady of Quality." Second edition, p. 351, note.

Tidd's office. Of such efforts a common man is capable-but he is not a common man who thus adapts himself to varying circumstances, and who seeks the same object by opposite means! Laying down my Reports and setting up my horses, I announce that my fortune is made, and there will be a greater disposition to employ me. I must, of course, display the same assiduity and devotedness for which I have been hitherto remarked."

lessons was the promotion of the matriThe declared object of the dancing lessons was the promotion of the matrimonial schemes or dreams in which he now thought himself fully justified in indulging. "If a pretty girl of respectable connections should fall in love with my brisés, I should have no objection to make her my partner for life. I could now venture on marriage without imprudence, and I have no time to lose.' Much time was not required, for after a

dinner at which he met

a great num

ber of dashing people," he writes that "two girls that I had thought of are going to be married to my rivals. At the same time I had not met with the disgrace of a rebuff, for I had never spoken to either of them in my life."

Again, after a dinner at Alexander's (afterward Chief Baron):

"I there met a niece of his, a very sweet and interesting girl, whom I should like very after to a picture gallery, and afterward called upon her. I have not seen her since, nor shall I probably see her again these three months. I cannot run after her or any woman. The thing is impossible. I would willingly sacrifice any given quantity of business; but if I were to attempt this, the concern would at once break up and go to ruin."

well for a wife. I went with her a few days

The manner in which his marriage was brought about is told with details and touches of sentiment which give it the interest of a romance. The first faint indication is contained in a letter to his brother, January 16th, 1820:

"A pleasant party at Scarlett's. I sat at dinner next Miss Scarlett, and Scarlett has invited me to spend some days with him at his country house at Easter. What say you to that? Very small accidents may at present determine my subsequent history.'

Little or no progress is made in the course of the next three or four months. May 4th, 1820, to his brother :

side. Coltman, he, and I, have all been un

fortunate in love, although happy in friendship.

Tancred has met with more rebuffs than

either. But there might be an entertaining

volume made up of the rejected addresses of the three.

"Alas! for all that I have ever read,

Or ever heard in tale or history,

The course of true love never did run smooth.'

I can only say with Gibbon that I feel dearer to myself for having been capable of this elegant and refined passion.'

"Tancred and I," he continues, have made a vow that we will henceforth never court, and that, unless we are courted, we will remain in a state of single blessedness." He did not adhere to this resolution long, for in the following week he is engaged to escort the lady to the Regent's Park, which he does, attired (as he duly records) in white duck trousers, a buff waistcoat, and an olive-colored morning frockcoat, cut after the fashion of the Duke of Wellington's:

"We rode through St. James's Park, up Constitution Hill, into the New Road, and all round the Regent's Park, getting back about six. The conversation good-humored, but not approaching anything particular. The weather was delightful, and the excursion went off altogether very well.

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According to all reasoning this is encouragement, but I find matters of all sorts

now turn out so differently from what might be expected on fair calculation that I know not what inference to draw."

The extent to which his feelings were involved and his thoughts preoccupied, is shown by his eagerness to draw favorable or unfavorable inferences from pass-, ing remarks and occurrences:

"Tuesday night, May 16.-I was speaking to Scarlett to-day about opportunities of distinction. He said a man need not complain of the want of opportunities who does not avail himself of those he has. Whether there was any hidden meaning in this you know as much as I do."

The meaning he suspected and hoped was that contained in the well-known lines of Montrose :

"He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,

Who dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all."

But this was not the meaning of the father-in-law that was to be, who was probably thinking of a different class of

opportunities, for when Campbell did put it to the touch, he received (July 7th) the following letter :

MY DEAR CAMPBELL: If I could permit myself to indulge a personal wish upon the subject of the enclosed papers, I would express my concern and regret at their contents. I think it right to send them to you without delay, as it is not right upon important subjects to trifle with a man's expectations. It appears to me also that I could not by any words of my own give a more genuine expression of the feelings which dictate these letters, or convey them in a manner more respectful to you. "Ever yours truly,

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JAMES SCARLETT.” The enclosed papers were two letters from the lady: one to her father, and one to the suitor declining his proposal of marriage. The shock was overwhelming and almost drove him to despair.

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What is to become of me I know not. I am at this moment wholly unfit to perform the duties of life" This was writthe fatal letter. At 5 P.M. he adds: “I ten to his brother directly after receiving have not yet been able to taste anything to-day, but I shall force myself to have some refreshment presently. What seems remarkable, I have a constant drowsiness, whereas before I was unable to sleep." Involuntary admiration mingles with and aggravates the disappointment.

Are not her letters well written? and

they are in the most beautiful hand you ever saw? My future lot is a terrible. contrast with what it might have been." Five days elapse before he can shake off his position. the stupor, and take a calm review of

of. Although, from the situations in which we "I do not think I have anything to complain were seen together, any stranger would have supposed she had made up her mind to accept the offer, yet these were not of her choosing, and generally she had no control over them. I cannot say that she ever gave me any positive encouragement. The conduct of the family has been marked by delicacy, frankness, and kindness. Yesterday, in court, Robert handed me a slip of paper with these lines : "Fama tui casus nostras pervenit ad aures, Indignas sortes clam dolet atra domus.'

"I now take leave of the subject with you forever. Excuse, my dear brother, the pain and anxiety I have caused you. Request our father not to mention it to me again.'

He gradually recovers his tone of mind, comments with his wonted animation on passing topics, and recurs with pleasure to his professional prospects,

HITHERTO, when the women to whom the larger interests of Society are dear have expressed their desire for an extension of the suffrage in their own direction, they have very commonly been met by the assurance that they belonged to an insignificant minority, the sex being on the whole indifferent, if not averse to, the active assumption of citizenship. The overflowing meetings which have taken place successively at Manchester, in London, and elsewhere, must at this stage of the discussion go far to silence objections founded on a premise which every passing year is rendering more erroneous. But, whatever might be the show of hands if the issue were polled throughout the country, it is not so much the amount as the quality of adherents which determines the success of a movement, and it would not be impossible to show that the greater part of all the force of intellect and character known by public proof to exist among Englishwomen, is warmly pledged to this woman's cause.

It may be conceded, then, as a fact that the desire on the part of the daughters of England to be no longer excluded from participation in one of the rights which her sons hold dear, is a genuine and increasing one; and in face of the manifest mental and moral worth of its chief advocates, the assertion-a favorite retreat of nonplussed disputants -that the best women" are still hostile to the change, must be acknowledged to be likewise untenable. I will not darken counsel by affecting to misunderstand what is meant in this connection by the "best women." They are the home-loving and tender creatures to whom fate has been good, and

who find their highest joy-no very difficult strain, as it may be thought—in the performance of the duties of wifehood and motherhood, undeniably the most accordant to Nature of any that can plenish a woman's lot, and at the same time so bodily and spiritually engrossing, that those who well fulfil them may be forgiven if they tend to somewhat narrow the view and contract the sympathies. But whether the outlook of these fortunate sisters may happen to be narrow or wide, it is probable that the larger-hearted advocates of women's right to make their political judgments regarded, would think little of yielding the place of honor, in the estimate of the selfish or unthinking, to the happy band from whose ranks it is possible that chance or a more fastidious taste have exiled themselves. A circle which includes a large contingent of unpaid workers who are helping forward the best interests of humanity in many fields, and whose representative woman may be taken to be Florence Nightingale, will in any case be felt to be sufficiently select.

The men whose pleasure it is to affirm that "good women" are in want of nothing, are far however from disclaiming the testimony to 'the same effect of beings who cannot be called "good," without putting an undue strain upon language, and who have of women neither the pitiful heart nor the helpful hand, but only the weakness and arrested development. These are the careless sisters of the millions who "work and weep," for working and weeping are only separately apportioned in a ballad, or in the quasi-poetical atmosphere which stagnates in places about mascu