whole of his money, which amounted to several hundred pounds. Sheridan had not so many shillings in his possession at the time. "It's very true, my dear Bob, all that you say," replied Sheridan ; "I'm really very sorry, but I say, Bob, you don't want it all to-day, hey? won't a part do?" "No, sir," retorted the enraged creditor, "it won't. I must have it, I will have it; I daren't go home without every farthing of it. My wife is distracted, my house is beset with creditors, and, by G-d, I won't leave this room without the money." "Wouldn't half do to-day," pleaded the manager, "and a bill for the remainder?" No, the coal-merchant would have his bond to the utmost farthing. Then Sheridan paused, and in a voice of deep emotion exclaimed: "Then would to heaven I could assist you! I cannot; but" (diving a hand into his pocket)" one thing I can, I will, I ought to do there," grasping Mitchell's hand, "never let it be said that while Sheridan | had a guinea in his pocket he refused it to his friend, Rob Mitchell." Mitchell stood | aghast for a moment, then, pocketing the guinea, rushed out of the house, and to the latest hour of his life he never tired of displaying the last guinea that his friend Sheridan had in the world. Michael Kelly relates another story as good. During the time that he was acting manager of Drury Lane, the narrator became responsible for a debt he had contracted for the theatre, and Sheridan, as usual, failing to meet it, Kelly was arrested. Sheridan at once sent for the hard-hearted creditor, remonstrated with him upon his cruelty, reasoned with him upon the hardship of the law of imprisonment for debt, pointed out that he had acted in an arbitrary, unchristian manner, until he had so thoroughly softened and convinced him that before the man left the house, Sheridan had borrowed two hundred pounds of him, and left upon his mind an impression that he had been highly favored by the great manager deigning to accept the favor. A creditors' levee was held daily in his house; his library, parlor, butler's room, and even the staircase were every morning filled with a motley crowd, anxiously listening for the sound of his footstep. When at last he came, elegantly dressed, all smiles and urbanity, shaking hands with one, nodding to another, he seemed to cast a charm over all; fellows that had been raging like tigers a few minutes before, could scarcely summon the courage to state their errand, while others seemed actually to forget what brought them there. Byron relates in his journals, how he once found Sheridan at his lawyer's, and learned that he had come to stave off an action from his wine-merchant: "I can vouch," says Byron, "that my attorney is by no means the tenderest of men, or particularly accessible to any kind of impression out of the statute or record; and yet Sheridan in half an hour had found the way to soften and subdue him in such a manner, that I almost think he would have thrown his client (an honest man with all the laws, and some justice on his side) out of the window, had he come in at that moment." His cool assurance never failed him in an extremity. One night he was stopped by footpads in company with Challie, the wine-merchant. My friend can accommodate you," he said to the fellows, "and as for myself, I tell you what I can do, I can give you my note of hand." Another story of the same kind, told by Byron, is yet better. Writing to Moore (1815) he says: "Perhaps you heard of a late answer of Sheridan to the watchman, who found him bereft of that 'divine particle of air' called reason. He, the watchman, who found Sherry in the street fuddled and bewildered, and almost insensible: Who are you, sir?' No answer. 'What's your name?'- - a hiccup. 'What's your name?' Answer, in a slow, deliberate, impressive tone: 'Wilberforce !'" While treasurer of the navy he gave a banquet to the Prince of Wales at Somerset House. But, fearful of an execution being levied, he had neither furniture nor decorations for the rooms, and had to borrow these from the Drury Lane property-room, while certain friendly bailiffs were put in possession, and, dressed in handsome liveries, waited upon the guests. Godlike in giving-a devil to pay, wrote Tom Moore. For he was as generous as he was unjust, and would frequently give away to a person in distress the money of which another to whom it was due was equally in want. In 1792 his wife died. "I never," says Michael Kelly in his "Reminiscences," "beheld more poignant grief than Mr. Sheridan felt for his beloved wife; and though the world which knew him only as a public man, will perhaps scarcely credit the fact, I have night after night seen him sit and cry like a child, while I sang | night. When the curtain rose he was in They bore her to a grassy grave.” There is something infinitely charming in this touch of tenderness, coming like a note of sweet music in the midst of this worldly, artificial life. I am afraid poor "St. Cecilia," notwithstanding the social advantages of being the wife of the famous Mr. Sheridan, might have often regretted that trip to France and its consequences. She was an excellent partner, however, who assisted him in all his pursuits kept his accounts, read the plays submitted to the theatre, made extracts from State papers for his speeches, and entered heart and soul into everything. his room writing the last act, which, with the most profuse apologies, was sent down bit by bit to be studied by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, during their waits in the early part of the play. The receipts of the first sixty nights' performances amounted to £60,000, and he received as much as £2,000 for the copyright. But the inevitable Nemesis that sooner or later overtakes all such men, was now close upon his heels. On the 24th of February, 1809, Drury Lane Theatre, which had been rebuilt only ten years previously at a cost of £150,000, was burned to the ground. There is a story which relates how, while the theatre was burning, Sheridan was coolly sitting in a tavern close by, sipping his wine, and, upon some one remonstrating with him, he replied, with inimitable sang-froid, “A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside." Michael Kelly, however, who was his acting manager at the time, and present at the catastrophe, tells a very different tale. He says that there was no performance on that night, and that Sheridan was at the House when the news was brought him. Out of respect to him a motion of adjournment was made, but he opposed it, saying, that "Whatever might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not be allowed to interfere with the affairs of the nation," moved that the debate should be proceeded with, and calmly kept his seat. He married again three years after wards. His second wife was a Miss Ogle, a daughter of the Dean of Winchester. The story of the courtship and marriage is a curious one. They first met at a party at Devonshire House; years of dissipation had sadly disfigured his once handsome features, and only his brilliant eyes were left to redeem a nose and cheeks too purple in hue for beauty. "What a fright!" exclaimed Miss Ogle, loud enough for him to hear. Instead of being annoyed by the remark, he at once engaged her in conversation, put forth all his powers of fascination, and resolved to make her not only reverse her opinion, but to fall in love with him. At their second meeting she thought him ugly, but extremely fascinating. A week or two afterwards, he had so far succeeded in his design that she declared she could not live without him. Her father refused his consent unless Sheridan could settle £15,000 upon her, and, in his usual miraculous way, he found the required sum. But they were totally unsuited to one another, and the marriage was by no means a happy one. In 1799 he brought out his last dramatic work, "Pizarro," an adaptation from Kotzebue. Many will still remember Charles Kean's revival of this ranting, stilted, bombastic tragedy; but it suited the taste of the day, and the political significance of several of the speeches, more especially that of Rolla, the Peruvian hero, who in his address to the soldiers institutes a comparison between the Spaniards and Peruvians that the audience eagerly applied to France and England, secured it enormous popularity. But his usual dilatoriness imperilled its success on the first The directors of the theatre were naturally desirous to get rid of a manager who by his recklessness was grievously depreciating their property, and it was agreed that Sheridan should be bought out for £28,000, which sum was not to be paid until the house was rebuilt. Whitbread, the brewer, who started the proposition and undertook to carry it out, had the perhaps not enviable distinction of being the only man who was ever known to resist Sheridan's powers of persuasion; in vain did the fallen genius entreat him to advance a portion of the money which was his due before the stipulated time had expired, in order that he might meet his election expenses at Stafford. The man of beer was inexorable, and Sheridan lost his seat. This was the last blow. His furniture, his jewels, his pictures, all he possessed, were seized by his creditors, and he himself consigned to a sponging-house. Moore, in his "Life of Sheridan," as well as in the scathing monody on his death, bitterly denounces the "velvet friends" who forsook him in his distress, Who could bask in that spirit's meridian career, And yet leave it thus lonely and dark at its close, and more especially the prince, whose cause he had so well served in the early days of the regency. A writer, however, in the Edinburgh Review, soon after the publication of the biography, endeavored to place the prince's conduct in a more favorable light by stating that he sent his unfortunate friend £4,000 towards paying his liabilities, which amounted in all to only £5,000, but that the money was either attached by the creditors, or dissipated in such a manner that it was useless to him. Neither his wife. -a lymphatic creature, with very little heartnor her friends gave him any assistance, although, as we have seen, he settled £15,000 upon her; and gradually he sank into penury and misery. From The Cornhill Magazine. MY FAITHFUL JOHNNY. CHAPTER VII. WE left town directly after this for the autumn holidays. The holidays had not very much meaning now that all the boys had left school, and we might have gone away when we pleased. But the two youngest girls were still in the remorseless hands of Fräulein Stimme, and the habit of emancipation in the regular holiday season had clung to me. I tried very hard to get Ellen to go with us, for at least a day or two, but she resisted with a kind of passion. Her mother, I am sure, would have been glad had she gone; but Ellen would not. There was in her face a secret protestation, of which she was perhaps not even herself aware, that if her duty bound life itself from all expansion, it must also bind her in every day of her life. She would not accept the small alleviation, having, with her eyes open and with a full sense of what she was about, resigned everything else. She At the beginning of the year 1816, when would have been more perfect, and her his last illness had just come upon him, a sacrifice more sweet, had she taken sweetparagraph, supposed to have been penned by the little consolations of every day; but by Moore, appeared in the Morning Post, nobody is perfect, and Ellen would not calling attention to his condition. Noth- come. I had gone to Pleasant Place to ing could be more wretched than the home in which he lay dying," says an eye-witness: "there were strange-looking people in the hall; the parlor seemed dismantled; on the table lay a bit of paper thrown carelessly and neglected - it was a prescription." In his last moments a sheriff's officer arrested him, and would have carried him away in the blankets to a sponging-house, had not the physician in attendance threatened to make the fellow responsible should the patient die in consequence. 66 His death occurred on the 17th of July, 1816, he being then in the sixty-fifth year of his age. He died at his house in Saville Row, but the body was conveyed to the house of his friend, Mr. Peter Moore, in Great George Street, as being more convenient for a walking funeral to the Abbey. The Dukes of York and Sussex were mourners; the Duke of Bedford, the Earl of Lauderdale, Earl Mulgrave, Lord Holland, the Bishop of London, and Lord Spencer, were pall-bearers. How proud they can press to the fun'ral array and sorrow; How bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day, morrow! ask her, and the scene was a curious one. The mother and daughter both came to the parlor to receive me, and I saw them together for the first time. It was about a fortnight after John went away. Ellen had not been ill, though I had feared she would; but she was pale, with dark lines under her eyes, and a worn and nervous look. She was bearing her burden very bravely, but it was all the harder upon her that she was evidently determined not to complain. When I told my errand, Mrs. Harwood replied eagerly, "You must go, Ellen. Oh, yes! I can do; I can do very well. It will only be for a week, and it will do you so much good; you must go." Ellen took scarcely any notice of this address. She thanked me with her usual smile. "It is very, very good of you you are always good- but it is impossible." "Why impossible, why impossible?" cried her mother. "When I tell you I can do very well-I can manage. Your father will not mind, when it is to do you good." I saw that Ellen required she looked round. a moment's interval of preparation before "Dear mother," she said, "L we have not any make-believes between us, have we? How is it possible that I can go? every moment is mapped out. No, no; I cannot do it. Thank you all the same. | looked thirty-five. The bloom went from "Two or three days," the poor woman Was it possible she could suppose that "I don't want you to be overdone, mother. What is the use of all that is past and gone, if I am to take holidays and run away when I like for two or three days? No, no; my place is here, and here I must stay. don't want you to be overdone." And looking at her, I saw that she smiled. But her mother's face was full of trouble. She looked from Ellen to me, and from me to Eilen. For everything there is a beginning. Did she only then for the first time perceive what had been done? However, after this there was nothing more to say. We did not see Ellen again till the days were short, and the brilliant weather over. She changed very much during that winter. Her youth, which had bloomed on so long unaltered, seemed to leave her in a day. When we came back, from looking twenty she suddenly and as lightfooted, going out alert and bright every morning to her lessons; but her pretty little figure had shrunk, and her very step on the pavement sounded different. Life and all its hopes and anticipations seemed to have ebbed away from her. I don't doubt that many of her neighbors had been going on in their dull routine of life without knowing any of those hopes or prospects, all this time by Ellen's side, and fulfilled their round of duties without any such diversions: Oh, the mystery of these myriads of humble lives, which are never enlivened even by a romance manqué, a story that might have been; that steal away from dull youth to dull age, never knowing anything but the day's work, never coming to anything! But Ellen had known a something different, a life that was her own; and now she had lost it. The effect was great; how could it be otherwise? She lost herself altogether for a little while, and when she came to again, as all worthy souls must come, she was another Ellen; older than her age as the other. had been younger, and prepared for everything; no longer trying to evade suffering, rather desirous, if that might be, to forestall it, to discount it-if I may use the word - before it was due, and know the worst. She never told me this in words, but I felt that it was so. It is not only in a shipwreck that the unfortunate on the verge of death plunge in to get it over a few hours, a few minutes, sooner. In life there are many shipwrecks which we would forestall, if we could, in the same way, by a plunge - by a voluntary putting on of the decisive moment. Some, I suppose, will put it off by every expedient that despair can suggest; but there are also those who can bear anything but to wait until slowly, surely, the catastrophe comes. Ellen wanted to make the plunge, to get it over, partly for John's sake, whose infidelity she began to calculate upon to (she believed) wish for. "He will never be able to live without a home to go to, without a woman to speak to, now," she said once, in a moment of incaution - for she was very guarded, very reticent, about all this part of her mind, and rarely betrayed herself. It is curious how little faith women in general, even the most tender, have in a man's constancy. Either it is because of an inherent want of trust in their own power to secure affection, which might be called humility; or else it is quite the reverse a pride of sex too | and it took a still longer time to settle subtle to show, in any conscious way, down than it did to tear up our old roots. overweening confidence in the power over So that there was a long interval during a man of any other woman who happens which we saw little of Ellen; and though to be near him, and want of confidence we never forgot her, or ceased to take an in any power on his part to resist these interest in everything that concerned her, fascinations. Ellen had made up her the distance of itself threw us apart. Now mind that her lover when he was absent and then she paid us a visit, always with from her would be, as she would have John's letter in her pocket, but her time said, "like all the rest." Perhaps, in a was so limited that she never could stay kind of wild generosity, she wished it, long. And sometimes I, and sometimes feeling that she herself never might be Chatty, made a pilgrimage to the old disfree to make him happy; but, anyhow, trict to see her. But we never could have she was persuaded that this was how it an uninterrupted long talk in Pleasant would be. She looked out for signs of it Place. Either Ellen was called away, or in his very first letter. She wanted to Mrs. Harwood would come in and sit have it over-to cut off remorselessly down with her work, always anxiously out of her altered being all the agitations watching her daughter. This separation of hope. from the only people to whom she could talk of her own private and intimate concerns was a further narrowing and limitation of poor Ellen's life. But what could I do? I could not vex my children for her sake. She told us that she went and looked at the old house almost every day, and at the square window in which I used to sit and see John pass. John passed no longer, nor was I there to see. But Ellen remained bound in the same spot, seeing everything desert her love, and friendship, and sympathy, and all her youth and her hope. Can you not fancy with what thoughts this poor girl (though she was a girl no longer) would pause, as she passed, to look at the abandoned place so woven in with the brightest episode of her life, feeling herself stranded there, impotent, unable to make a step - her breast still heaving with all the vigor of existence, yet her life bound down in the narrowest contracted circle? Her mother, who had got to watch her narrowly, told me afterwards that she always knew when Eilen had passed No. 16; and indeed I myself was rather glad to hear that at length No. 16 had shared the general fate, that my window existed no longer, and that a great shop with plate-glass windows was bulging out where our house had been. Better when a place is desecrated that it should be desecrated wholly, and have no vestige of its old self at all. But I need not say that John's letters were everything a lover's or rather a husband's letters should be. They were more like a husband's letters, with very few protestations in them, but a gentle, continued reference to her, and to their past life together, which was more touching than any rhapsodies. She brought them to me often, folding down, with a blush which made her look like the blooming Ellen of old, some corner of especial tenderness, something that was too sacred for a stranger's eye, but always putting them back in her pocket with a word which sounded almost like a grudge, as who should say, "For this once all is well, but next time you shall see." Thus she held on to her happiness as by a strained thread, expecting every moment when it would snap, and defying it to do so, yet throbbing all the time with a passion of anxiety, as day after day it held out, proving her foreboding vain. That winter, though I constantly saw her, my mind was taken up by other things than Ellen. It was then that the children finally prevailed upon me to leave the Road. A row of cheap advertising shops had sprung up facing us where had been the great garden I have so often mentioned, and the noise and flaring lights were more than I could put up with, after all my resistance to their wishes. So that at last, to my great regret, but the exultation of the young ones, it was decided that we must go away. The removal, and the bustle there was, the change of furniture, for our old things would not do for the new house, and Chatty, heaven save us! had grown artistic, and even the little ones and Fräulein Stimme knew a great deal better than I did, -occupied my mind and my time; Thus more than a year glided away, spring and winter, summer and autumn, and then winter again. Chatty came in one November morning, when London was half invisible, wrapped in mist and fog, with a very grave face, to tell me that she had met Ellen, and Ellen had told her there was bad news from John. "I can't understand her," Chatty said. "I couldn't make out what it was; that business had |