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'Do not awake her,' he whispered.

things sleep.'

'Let all sleeping

Conyngham passed down the stairs noiselessly, and through the doorway into the garden.

'And at the end-the Gloria is chanted,' said Concha, watching him go.

The scent of the violets greeted Conyngham as he went forward beneath the trees planted there in the Moslems' day. The running water murmured sleepily as it hurried in its narrow channel towards the outlet through the grey wall, whence it leapt four hundred feet into the Tajo below.

Estella was seated in the shade of a gnarled fig tree, where tables and chairs indicated the Spanish habit of an out-of-door existence. She rose as he came towards her and met his eyes gravely. A gleam of sun glancing through the leaves fell on her golden hair, half hidden by the mantilla, and showed that she was pale with some fear or desire.

'Señorita,' he said, 'I have brought you the letter.'

He held it out and she took it, turning over the worn envelope absent-mindedly.

have

'I have not read it myself, and am permitted to give it to you on one condition-namely, that you destroy it as soon as you read it.'

She looked at it again.

'It contains the lives of many men-their lives and the happiness of those connected with them,' said Conyngham. 'That is what you hold in your hand, Señorita as well as my life and happiness.'

She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, and their tenderness was not of earth or of this world at all. Then she tore the envelope and its contents slowly into a hundred pieces and dropped the fluttering papers into the stream pacing in its marble bed towards the Tajo and the oblivion of the sea.

'There I have destroyed the letter,' she said, with & thoughtful little smile. Then looking up she met his eyes.

'I did not want it. I am glad you gave it to me. It will make a difference to our lives. Though I never wanted it.' Then she came slowly towards him.

THE END.

THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

NOVEMBER 1897.

THE ENGLISHMAN'S CALENDAR.

NOVEMBER.

1 Sir Matthew Hale, Chief Justice, b. 1609.

2 George Boole, mathematician and logician, b. 1815.
3 The Long Parliament met, 1640.

4 Admiral Benbow d. 1702.

5 William III. landed in England, 1688.

Battle of Inkerman, 1854.

6 William Byrd, musician, 1587.

7 The first Gazette published, 1665.

8 The Bodleian Library opened, 1603.

Thomas Bewick, wood engraver, d. 1828.

9 William Camden, antiquary and historian, d. 1623.
10 William Hogarth, painter, b. 1697.

Alabama Arbitration Convention, 1868.

11 Hudibras, by Samuel Butler, licensed, 1663.
12 Sir John Hawkins, admiral, d. 1595.

13 James Clerk Maxwell, physicist, b. 1831.

14 James Bruce discovered the sources of the Blue Nile, 1770.

Sir Charles Lyell, geologist, b. 1797.

15 Statute of Mortmain, 1279.

Defence of Arcot by Clive, 1751.

16 The Grand Remonstrance, 1641.
17 St. Hilda, abbess, d. 680.

18 Sir David Wilkie, painter, b. 1785.

Sir Henry Bishop, musician, b. 1786.

19 c. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, published 1776.
20 George Graham, mechanician, d. 1751.

Battle of Quiberon Bay, Admiral Hawke, 1759.

Roger Payne, bookbinder, d. 1797.

21 Sir Thomas Gresham, merchant and financier, d. 1579.
Henry Purcell, musician, d. 1695.

22 George Eliot, novelist, b. 1819.

23 Thomas Tallis, musician, d. 1585.

Richard Hakluyt, geographer, d. 1616.

VOL. III.-NO. 17, N.S.

25

24 Laurence Sterne, novelist, b. 1713.

Richard Lander discovered the mouths of the Niger, 1830.
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, published, 1859.
25 Edward Alleyn, actor, d. 1626.

26 Richard Baxter, Nonconformist divine, released, 1686.
27 Sir John Eliot, statesman, d. 1632.
28 Cardinal Wolsey, statesman, d. 1530.
29 John Ray, naturalist, b. 1627.

30 Dean Jonathan Swift, author, b. 1667.

(6) On this date in the Stationers' Register is entered Byrd's Collection of Psalmes, Sonnets, and Songs of Sadnes and Pietie made into Musicke of five parts.' (8) The original library, which Sir Thomas Bodley practically refounded, was completed about 1411, and was probably the first free public library in Europe. (15) It was this brilliant achievement which gave occasion for Chatham's description of young Clive as a heaven-born general.' (20) Among his other productions Graham supplied the French Academy with the apparatus used for measuring a degree of the meridian. He is buried in Westminster Abbey, in the same grave as Tompion. (21) Gresham stands perhaps at the head of our merchant princes. During the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth he was the financial agent for all Government loans abroad, and his influence on all financial matters was of the highest importance. He was the founder of the Royal Exchange and of Gresham College. (23) The Services and Anthems of Tallis, the father of Cathedral music,' are still in use in our churches. We owe the familiar setting of Ken's Evening Hymn to this celebrated composer. (25) The founder of Dulwich

Gallery.

J. M. S.

579

THE GREAT STORM OF 1703.

NOVEMBER 26, 27.

AN ANNIVERSARY STUDY.

NOVEMBER has for ages been popularly credited with being the nost stormy month of the year on the coasts of North-Western Europe. To our Saxon forefathers it was known, not only as Blot-monat,' the month for shedding the blood of cattle to secure a stock of provisions to meet the requirements of the rapidlyapproaching winter, but also as 'Wint-monat,' because of the boisterous winds which marked the close of the Autumn.

Numerous instances of immense loss of life and destruction of property on our own and neighbouring coasts could be mentioned as having been occasioned by November storms, but there seems to be but one storm in English History which writers have agreed to consider as one of the great events of our island story. The naval and mercantile fleets of European nations have at various times. suffered terribly in those awful aerial convulsions we know as tropical cyclones or typhoons, but overwhelming disasters in such far-distant regions as the West Indies, China Seas, or Samoa do not appeal to us with the same force as would similar events occurring in our midst.

On the night of November 26-27 (O.S.), 1703, the southern half of Britain was ravaged by a tempest which exhibited the worst features of the tropical cyclones. Whole forests of trees are said to have been uprooted; more than a dozen men-of-war were wrecked; 800 houses, 400 windmills, seven church steeples, and Eddystone lighthouse blown down; the lead roofing of more than a hundred churches rolled up; and houses innumerable unroofed, so that 'at London upon this sad occasion the wicked hucksters have raised the price of tiles, slates, and bricks to an unreasonable height, and both materials and workmen are wanting for the repair of the houses.' Thousands of lives were lost, the Navy Royal losing at least 1,500 men. Bishop Richard Kidder (Ken's successor in the See of Bath and Wells) and his wife were killed by the collapse of a portion of the episcopal palace. Lady Penelope Nicholas, the Bishop of London's sister, was also

killed at Horsley, Sussex. Gilbert White refers to it as 'the amazing tempest' which overturned at once the vast oak tree which stood in the centre of the village of Selborne. The lowest estimate of the damage in London alone was a million sterling, some computations placing it at two millions and even considerably above four millions sterling. According to 'The Observator' for December 1-4, 'never was such a storm of wind, such a hurricane and tempest known in the memory of man, nor the like to be found in the Histories of England.'

6

Before the full extent of the destruction was known the House of Commons, on December 1, voted an address to Queen Anne expressing the great Sense this House hath of the Calamity fallen upon the Kingdom by the late violent Storm,' promising to grant supplies for making good the serious losses of the Navy Royal. There is no other instance on record of an English storm being the occasion of national humiliation, January 19, 1703-4, being appointed a General and Public Fast, to be observed throughout the Kingdom.' The Lords went in a body to Westminster Abbey, where Talbot, Bishop of Oxford, had been desired to preach, and the Commons attended a similar service in St. Margaret's Church, with Dr. Gastrell as the preacher.

It is to De Foe we are indebted for most of the information hitherto published about this frightful visitation. The author of 'Robinson Crusoe' had already written an account of the condition of London during the Plague of 1665, and thinking the hurricane an equally great event, he decided to hand down to posterity such particulars as could be obtained, and made an appeal to people in all parts of the country to supply him with local details of the gale and its consequences. Some months afterwards he published a work on 'The Storm: or, A Collection of the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters which happen'd in the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land.' The first part of the book is made up of the theories then current as to the causes of storms, and a review of previous storms mentioned in the Scriptures and elsewhere, from a consideration of which the author arrived at the conclusion that this particular storm was The Greatest, the Longest in Duration, the Widest in Extent of all the Tempests and Storms that History gives any Account of since the Beginning

of Time.'

An unknown writer describes it in much the same style, 'So remarkable and signal a judgment of God on this Nation (as lately

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