mon speed he dressed, and threw himself into a Hansom, desiring to be driven to Sir Archibald Devereux's. The man whipped up his horse, that it might go its best, as behoved it, when taking a fare to the great Sir Archibald's, her Majesty's secretary of state. Colonel Devereux paid the man, and bounded into the house.

"Is Sir Archibald in his breakfast-room?"

"Sir Archibald has breakfasted and gone out, sir." "Gone out!"

"Twenty minutes ago, sir."

"Hallo!" called out Colonel Devereux. 66

"Stop the cab."

The man had driven off, but turned his horse round again. Colonel Devereux got into the cab.

"Where to, your lordship?" asked the man, putting on the title at a

venture.

The question was a poser to Colonel Devereux. The wide world of London was around him, and he knew not in what little spot of it to find Sir Archibald. "Wait," he said to the cabman, and went into the house again. His brother Lionel, who acted as Sir Archibald's private secretary, was in the library, opening letters.

did

"Lion, where's the governor ?"

"What's it you!" uttered Lionel Devereux, raising his head. "When you get back?"

"Last night. Where is he gone, I ask?"

"He did not say. Something troublesome is up, I expect, for he swallowed his breakfast at a mouthful, and was off. He was with Harebury the best part of yesterday."

Colonel Devereux retreated, and paused to reflect. It was possiblenot likely, but just possible-that his mother might know. She was not down, so he ascended a flight higher, and knocked at the door of her chamber.

"Come in," answered her ladyship, who was yet in bed. She supposed it to be her maid, and when the door opened and a black head presented itself, she shrieked out and buried her face under the clothes.

"Don't be alarmed," said the colonel, "it's only I. Sir Archibald is gone out have you any idea where?"

"Good gracious, Theodore!

startling one, like this, for?"

What in the world do you come

"I am in a hurry. I want particularly to see Sir Archibald, and my business with him will not bear delay. Have you no idea where he is gone ?"

"How should I have?" returned Lady Devereux. worry me with his business affairs."

"He does not

Colonel Devereux went down to the cab again. "Downing-street." Sir Archibald was not in Downing-street; had not been there. From thence he drove to the premier's, Lord Harebury. Lord Harebury had gone out of town the previous afternoon.

The cabman had a rare fare, for, until noon, did he incessantly drive about the colonel, first to one place, then to another. All in vain he could hear no tidings of the home secretary. Whether Colonel Devereux's conscience had come to him in his restless night, or that Mrs. May's threat was preying upon him, certain it is he was now feverishly bent Sept.-VOL. CXI. NO. CCCCXLI.

D

on obtaining the reprieve of the criminal. Hot, jaded, irritated, he drove once more to his father's house. Sir Archibald was in. Had been in since ten o'clock, and Colonel Devereux, when he heard it, gave the cabman something with his fare. It was not a blessing. Sir Archibald was alone, and his table was covered with papers.

"Ah, Tod! So you are back again.'

"I have been out looking for you all the morning, sir, and a pretty hunt I have had of it. Can you spare me five minutes ?"

66 No," answered Sir Archibald. "I am too busy."

"But I must demand it-I must," returned the colonel, in agitation; and Sir Archibald looked at him with astonishment.

"Well, two minutes, then. I can't give you more."

"There's a girl to be hung on Monday morning at Newgate." "Ah, there is," answered Sir Archibald, supposing the colonel, in spite of his injunction, was entering on a little prefatory gossip. "A shocking affair. It is the same who once got into Bessie's house, as governess, by means of false certificates. I told you I was busy."

"Is she sure to suffer ?"

"Sure! What do you mean?"

"She is young to-let the law take its course, as they call it."

66

Young in years, old in iniquity. Of course it will. Tod," continued Sir Archibald, imperatively, "I am short of time. What is your

business ?"

"Sir, this is my business," answered Colonel Devereux, dashing at once to the point. "I have come to ask you to save her.”

"Save her!" echoed Sir Archibald, 66 you can't know what you are saying. I could not save her life if she were my own daughter; no, nor would not. Why, in the name of wonder, should you make such a senseless application to me? What have you to do with the hanging or non-hanging of criminals ?"

"I have something to do with this," returned Colonel Devereux, bending his hot face over the papers, and lowering his voice to a whisper. "The child for which she is condemned

"Well?" for he really had had the grace to hesitate. "Was mine."

Sir Archibald sat and stared at his hopeful son.

"If you never accord me a petition henceforth, you must accord this," urged Colonel Devereux. "She has sent to me, from Newgate, to save her life she says I owe it to her. Perhaps I do."

:

"The thing is not possible," replied Sir Archibald, his brow relaxing from the scowl which had gathered on it.

There would be one The woman is detested

"It can be made so, sir. The power rests with you." "The whole country would cry out against it. universal feeling of indignation raised upon me. as never was condemned criminal detested yet. And when the public demanded as it naturally would demand-upon what grounds I had acted, I should have none to give. No, it would damage me too much."

"Stand it, stand the damage," pleaded Colonel Devereux, pushing his damp hair from his brow. "Sir, I dare not let her suffer. Whatever may be the consequences, consent to risk them. At the worst, they can be but trifling-none at all to you personally: a little wonder, a little blame from the cursed press."

"If this woman gets off, every one that has suffered before her has been murdered," emphatically exclaimed Sir Archibald.

"What if they have? If she suffers, I shall have her family upon my back, demanding retribution. It is hard to say what horrible stories will not be concocted and read out to the public: too much for me to remain in England, and stand."

"Who have you to thank for all this ?" harshly demanded Sir Archibald Devereux.

"Myself, I suppose you wish me to say," returned the son.

"I do. You have been a bad man all your life, Theodore, and unless you change wonderfully, you will go a bad man to your grave."

"If I do, it's my own affair," was Theodore Devereux's sullen answer; " and that is not the consideration now. Sir, you will save her?" "Leave me," returned Sir Archibald. "I will reflect upon it."

"It does not need reflection, and there is no space for it," he persisted. "I don't understand the routine of these things, but if her Majesty has to be seen, it will be a race with time. To-morrow is Sunday morning, and they are beginning to erect the scaffold."

"Theodore!" impulsively repeated Sir Archibald Devereux, "I would sooner cut off my right hand than do this."

"Give me your promise, sir, before I leave," he continued to urge. "It will cost you nothing, only the stroke of a pen. You will retain the after consolation of knowing that, if you have erred, it was on the side of humanity."

There was an ill-concealed sneer in the last sentence, which Sir Archibald Devereux detected not. In a moment of less perplexity he would have seen it fast enough. A few minutes more, and Colonel Devereux went out from his presence.

At six o'clock on Monday morning Newgate was aroused from its stony propriety by the arrival at its gates of a state messenger. He bore a reprieve for the unhappy woman, Sophia Lyvett, and when the sheriffs and the other officials arrived at the prison, in performance of their functions, to attend the execution, there was no execution to attend. The mob had the worst of it, and those who had hired windows, among whom was probably Viscount Dooham: the one lost their money, and the other enjoyed a few hours' soaking, for the morning had risen pouring wet. When the later editions of the daily papers reached the country towns, there was a sudden rush made for them; people were all agog to read of the last moments of Sophia Lyvett, her dying speech and confession. But, instead, they had the negative satisfaction of perusing the short fact of her reprieve.

Everybody was up in arms. One looked at another with wonder. Reprieve her! that notorious woman! What mania could have possessed Sir Archibald Devereux? the newspapers as good as asked him. They got no answer. They never knew. Shrouded in mystery was that step, and would always remain so. Frederick Lyvett had most cause to ask it, for now he was not legally rid of his wife.

And for the unhappy woman herself-was the reprieve, which she had so pressed for, a wise step? Was the life of transportation, to which her sentence was commuted, a more tolerable fate?-the long life stretching out before her, with its guilty remembrance, its wearing monotony, and its hopeless despair? Perhaps not. And yet-life is sweet to all.

OCCASIONAL NOTES ON LITERATURE IN FRANCE.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

IX.-CHARLES DE RÉMUSAT: LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF LORD

BACON.*

Or all the periodical publications started or carried on in France during the dynasty of the restored Bourbons, the most importance is claimed, by historians of French literature, for le Globe. This journal was conceived and conducted by a "deprived" professor, then young in years, and ardent in political liberalism, M. Pierre Dubois, whose avowed aim, loudly proclaimed, was to give perfectly free scope and absolutely full play to Liberty, root and branch, doctrinal and practical, civil and social, literary and political,-in effect, to introduce the "principles of '89 into the sphere of art, philosophy, and religion."+ On his staff of contributors were the now well-known names of Sainte-Beuve, who, after some préludes on a then seasonable topic, the geography of Greece, is said to have "opened" in the Globe the "campaign of romanticism" by his Tableau of French Poetry in the sixteenth century;-Damiron, who published in the same journal, in a series of articles, his History of Philosophy in the nineteenth century;-Jouffroy, like the editor a professor in disgrace,eloquent, clear-headed, and distinguished for his studies among the Scotch Schoolmen in metaphysics, and who made his début in the eleventh number of the Globe by his celebrated article, "Comment les dogmes finissent;"-Messieurs Duchâtel and Vitet, contributors in the departments of the fine arts and political economy;-Charles Magnin, who made this journal the vehicle of his "large ideas on the grand questions of general literature," "dissembling" his "immense erudition" under the "brilliant vivacity of his polemics;"-Patin, the youthful laureate of the French Academy;-and, not to over-amplify the list, Charles de Rémusat, whose reputation is hardly second to any of the foregoing names, on the score either of solidity or splendour.

Sainte-Beuve has somewhere observed that there are in M. de Rémusat several distinct men, harmoniously coexisting together in one body, and with one mind, or one consent. There is the man of esprit, whose esprit shines forth on subjects all and sundry,-who delights in, and delights, the salon, where, seated at his ease, and surrounded by a select auditory, fit and few, he starts themes of every description, discusses them, makes vexed questions of them, and vexatiously leaves them undecided as he gets up and moves away. There is in him, again, the amateur, the artist, who essays every literary genre that is in fashion, and often succeeds better than he is willing to allow-and whose variety of unacted and unpublished dramas, historical and philosophical, during some five-andthirty years past, have won cordial applause from the favoured élite to whose ears alone the author has entrusted them. Indeed, it was once

Bacon: Sa Vie, son Temps, sa Philosophie, et son Influence jusqu'à nos jours. Par Charles de Rémusat, de l'Académie Française. Paris: Didier. 1857. † Demogeot.

said of him by M. Royer-Collard, C'est le premier des amateurs en tout. Quite early in life, M. de Rémusat betook himself to metaphysicspartly for amusement. Other "amusements" wherewith he recreated himself were political journalism, ministerial functions, parliamentary duties, and general literature. By degrees he learned to manage his forces better, by reducing them within narrower bounds. His drama of "Abélard,” greatly admired in private, became the occasional cause of his two volumes on the Life, Theology, and Philosophy of Abelard, a treatise long since warmly appreciated in public. Another marked success was his Life of Saint Anselm, which appeared in 1852, highly and justly commended for its historical impartiality, its combination of a serious tone with an interesting manner, and the intimacy which it provides for the reader with one of the finest and serenest intellects of the middle ages. Then again we have, from the same studious and reflective writer, two volumes of Critical and Literary Etudes; and a quite recent work, of more particular interest in this country, viz., "England in the Eighteenth Century," comprising a series of Studies and Portraits pour servir to our political history since the accession of Queen Anne. And now he presents us with a volume devoted to Bacon, his Life, his Times, his Philosophy, and his Influence, down to the age in which we live.

In compiling this monograph, M. de Rémusat professes to have made use of, first, Bacon's own works and correspondence at large, and secondly, such contemporary documents as the memoir by his chaplain and secretary, William Rawley, together with Thomas Tenison's Baconiana, Aubrey's "Lives," &c. Without neglecting later biographies of Bacon, -by David Mallet, for instance, and the Abbé Emery (Christianisme de Bacon), and M. de Vauzelles (1833), our author owns his especial obligations to Macaulay's celebrated essay, to Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, the memoir by Basil Montague, and the "notices" of two French editors of the philosopher, in 1834 and 1845 respectively, M. Bouillet and M. Riaux.* He appears also to have seen and consulted, so far as the issue has hitherto advanced, the important and complete edition of Bacon's "entire works" now in course of publication by Longmans, under the joint editorship of Messrs. R. L. Ellis, Spedding, and Heath. And we may here remark that the pages devoted by his present French critic and censor to Bacon's character as a man, suffer a particular disadvantage in appearing a little before, instead of a little after, the exhaustive statement of the whole question which is now being looked for from Mr. Spedding.

The memoir here given of that lord chancellor of Nature, whom Pope has, after a mixed mode, "damned to immortal fame," as the

wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind—

* His foot-notes moreover imply some degree of miscellaneous research, referring as they occasionally do, for example, to Strype's Annals, and Antony Wood's Athence Oxonienses,-to Dr. Drake's Shakspeare studies and Mr. Charles Knight's Old England,-to Ben Jonson, Hooke, Boyle, Hobbes, the Sydney Papers, Miss Aikin's Court of Elizabeth, Addison, Reid, Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, De Gérando, Hallam, Macvey Napier, Whately, Sir William Hamilton, Damiron, Dr. Whewell, Sir D. Brewster, Edward Tagart, G. H. Lewes, J. D. Morell, Victor Cousin, Auguste Comte, J. Stuart Mill, S. T. Coleridge, Ampère, Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Royer Collard, &c. &c., not forgetting Peter Cunningham and Edmund Lodge.