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hideous; no term, in fact, could describe his demoniac expression. Two long jagged cuts had laid the cheek completely open, even to a disclosure of the back teeth, but the mortal injury was a gun-shot wound directly through the heart. Strange and inexplicable are the ways of Heaven! Reader, mark what follows.

On his return from the fair, Murdock seemed frightfully excited. He sat down for a few minutes, during which he kept muttering to himself. Suddenly, he jumped from the wooden bench, took his guns down from the pegs they rested on, drew the heavy shot with which they were charged, went outside, squibbed the powder off, returned in doors, cleaned the pans carefully, and afterwards pricked the touch-holes, reloaded both with great care; and, as he finished his task, and laid the weapons in the corner, he muttered a prayer, accompanied by a fearful oath, that "every shot which each gun contained should pass through the heart it was levelled at!"

The prayer was heard-and, ere sunset, the wish was realized! We entered the house; outside, there was slaughter-but inside, how shall I describe it? Two women, beaten into insensibility, moved about They stared with eyes in which there was no speculation-however they were perfectly idiotic, and neither could comprehend a question. Both seemed to recognise me, for they clung to my arms, and, by looks, seemed to solicit my protection. I have, in my day, looked upon death in all the multitudinous forms in which he makes his approaches, but there was a savage character about this murderous scene that far surpassed all I had witnessed before.

There is no use dwelling on a disgusting subject. We-and we are proud to say so-brought a couple of the murderers to the gallowsthe rest found shelter in the land of the Free, and under the stars and stripes are no doubt respected and valuable citizens.

The romance of this sanguinary, but not uncommon transaction in Ireland, remains to be narrated.

On investigating the property that the house contained, nothing could exhibit in stronger light the character of the murdered owner. All bore the look of penury. Not a particle of beef, bacon, or fish, was hanging, ut mos est, in the chimney. There was neither bread, tea, nor sugar-not even a candle; and all that the wretched inmates consumed, to judge by appearances, were oatmeal cakes and dairy produce. There was a huge sea-chest in the corner of the bed-room, jealously secured by double padlocks. The keys were found in the dead man's pocket, and I had the box unlocked. Its contents were chiefly nankeen clothing, adapted for a warm climate, and other articles of no

account.

Where were the imaginary riches of the murdered miser? Pshaw! his wealth was ideal after all. We examined a small till, and there, rolled upon a short round stick, we found government securities for over 20001.

Several years afterwards, when on a visit in the north of Ireland, an elderly gentleman called upon me and introduced himself. After some cursory conversation, he said,

"I perceive, by the newspapers, that you were much mixed that horrible affair-I mean Murdock's murder."

"Indeed, unhappily too much so."

"Know you who the man was?

VOL. XXVI.

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"No more than you do."

"Probably not half so much," and the stranger smiled. "Indeed?"

"I knew him well, and many a long year since. His name was Albert. Murdock was a name assumed.'

"He met a miserable end,” I said.

"And one that he deserved to meet."

I exhibited some surprise, while the stranger thus continued:"I was master and part owner of a country trading-ship, and Murdock, as we will call him, was a pilot in the River Ganges. He was a skilful and sober man, but everybody who knew him disliked, nay, detested him. His residence was on the river-bank, and one night he was detected carrying the body of a native servant towards the water in a sack, the skull having been fractured by some blunt implement. His intention, no doubt, was to throw the corpse into the stream, and that effected, all chance of detection would be over. It now transpired that several young females who had lived with him had all mysteriously disappeared; and there was reason to conjecture from report that these missing women were enceinte when they vanished. It would occupy time uselessly to tell you by what accidental omissions in the criminal proceedings the murderer escaped; and it would be libellous, perhaps, to add that money, as it was believed, had been liberally administered, and that it had not been employed in vain. By a miracle he saved his neck-but in India bis career was ended. His pilot's licence was taken away, and he was avoided as a leper. To remain in the country would have been sheer madness; but how was he to leave it? Not a home-bound vessel would receive him-for two or three applications that he made were scornfully rejected. How he managed to smuggle himself away at last I cannot tell; but when that ruffian gang sent him to his account, they were but tools in the hands of that just and retributive Providence which, inscrutable in His workings and His wisdom, metes in the appointed time a full measure of His wrath upon the murderer."

I mentioned that I found some 20001, in the house of the wretched victim. Reader, mark again what follows. The hackneyed saw declares, that what comes over the old gentleman's back, is sure to disappear in an opposite direction. Dying intestate, his farm-a life interest-reverted to the landlord, and his chattle property to his wife and child. Imprimis, the latter passed into the possession of the widow, through the agency of a hungry attorney. Well, the lawyer, previously a Sunday man, was enabled to pay off his debts, and confront the sheriff on any day of the seven; while the disconsolate widow and her family led a roaring life, and, save when the male portion were in the county gaol for assault and battery, they never could be accused of doing an hour's work, or, throughout an entire day, of being exactly sober. In five brief years, of that ill-acquired wealth, not five pounds could have been scraped together!

If ever a reprint of that old black letter

God his Wrathe against Murther,

be given to the world, Murdock's tragic history would form a fitting pendent.

A man unable to appear through debts.

129

MARRIAGE A LA MODE-DE PARIS:

OR,

"PAS SI BETE."

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MELTON DE MOWBRAY," ETC.

HOGARTH'S inimitable satire on marriage à la mode" in England would have found its pendant in Paris, if, after immortalizing the gates of Calais he had sojourned in the capital. Never was there a more ample field for the moral force of his powerful genius.

The French may be defined-a match-making people-a dot for his daughter is the first thought with the bourgeois, it is the mainspring of his industry, the summum bonum of his life; with the noblesse, whose name is now their title, it is just the same thing. From the highest to the lowest, it is this small word of three letters which embraces the most important question of married life.

One great result which springs from this small beginning is, that all French women marry. An old maid in France is a rara avis-a species almost as extinct as the animals found in the lias of Dorset ; to confess the truth, in some respects the French manage these matters better than we do, every woman has a husband found for her. No husband is overwhelmed with a large family, with few exceptions, one, two, or three children at the outside, form the entire family; and this so universally, one might almost believe that anti-population Malthus sprang from la belle France, the soil and the atmosphere are so essentially Malthusian in practice.

Here, however, as elsewhere and everywhere, there are two sides to the question; and this great and comprehensive study of the small dot leads to evil as well as good-it makes match-making a trade, and one which the parents monopolize to themselves. They are the dealers the children are what the Yankees would call the "raw material"-they have no voice in the question, their views and their wishes weigh as nothing in the scale, and, in this most important act of woman's life, the party most concerned is a mere cipher to be placed by the side of another.

Great nations, though near, are very like neighbours in a great city, they know nothing, or, but little of each other. It is now some thirty odd years since peace came into fashion, and threw open the Continent to the vagabond spirit of England, yet, as far as the internal and domestic habits of the French are concerned, the English are almost as ignorant now, as in the year one thousand eight hundred and fourteen. Many a fair daughter of Britain has paid dearly for her ignorance. The manners of the unmarried, and the system of education for married life, differ so entirely the one from the other in the two countries, that some excuse may be found for the Frenchman who did, and who, for the most part, still do consider the English young ladies as utterly wanting in the charms of modesty and virtue! A startling and frightful assertion, but nevertheless true-it is a fact-though a fact founded in error. It needs but little effort to make the matter clear, and to prove that it cannot be otherwise so long as the one country only half

understands the other, an ignorance, by the way, much greater on the part of the French, who rarely travel for pleasure, and still more rarely for information.

Of the English system there needs not a word, a few words will suffice to expose its opposite.

In France, the daughter, from the time of her birth to the day of her marriage, is never lost sight of for a moment! The eye of la mère -la bonne, or l'institutrice, is never off her. She is guarded and shrouded with Oriental jealousy: she is neither to see, nor be seen, without a guardian eye upon her every action. So completely is this the case, that the long van, or school-omnibus, which takes up and sets down the day-boarders of a pension, is hermetically sealed to man's eye by white curtains, and the door is guarded by a duenna, or "dragon of prudery placed within call."

If, by chance, the French demoiselle is taken into society, the mother watches her as a cat would watch a mouse.

If allowed to dance, she is expected to move her feet and not her tongue. With no man apart must she ever have a conversation for five minutes de suite.

If she were to walk out with her own brother in the Champs Elysées, or any where, she would be in a fausse position, and consequentlycompromise.

If, while walking with her mother, or bonne, she turned her head and looked back, the fate of Lot's wife was not more decided-her condition is changed-if she looks out of window, she is lost and abandoned.

If the father chanced to lose his wife, the daughter would be in a fausse position, if she lived alone with her own father! that is, the brother in his walks might meet his friends, and these friends might admire the sister even more than the brother, they might pay her some compliment, and chat for five minutes de suite. In the father's case it is inferred that he must have his affairs or pursuits to attend to, the daughter might be left with no eye but God's upon her; that, and her conscience would not avail, she would be in a false position and compromised in the eye of the world-meaning, of course, in the French eye of the French world.

If a mother chanced to be walking with her daughter in any public walk, and a young man of her acquaintance joined her in the promenade, and if "worserer than that," he walked by the side of the daughter and talked to her, instead of mamma, then and there, la pauvre enfant would be compromise and done for in the eyes of wedlock.

I speak from facts which have fallen under my own observation. I knew an only daughter, admirably brought up, as pure and perfect as well could be her mother died-she the daughter was previously engaged to be married, the mother's death hurried on the marriage, because to live alone with her father, the widower who mourned, would have placed the daughter in a fausse position!

To give one more instance, a friend of mine, a gallant officer in the navy, met at my house a French lady with her adopted child. The latter spoke English with all the sweet fascination which a French female tongue can give it, and, in general conversation, she was allowed to bear her part. The following day my friend met the lady and daughter in the Champs Elysées, meaning, no doubt, to do the agreeable thing, he turned and joined them in the walk. That

was bad enough, but what was worse, either by chance, or by a sailor's manoeuvring, he got next to the daughter instead of the mother! The following day the lady called upon my wife, laid her complaints, confessed her agonies, declaring that if she had met any friends, la pauvre enfant would have been compromise for ever.

In plain English, the daughters of France are bred up for matrimony with less restraint, it is true, but with quite as much vigilance as beauties destined to the seraglio. Of man and the world they know little; in nine cases out of ten, of the man they are about to marry, they know nothing. Like the blood-horse, or grey-hound, they are made over with pedigree and warranty by the parents; it is the dot which does the business, the priests are the commis employed, and they measure out happiness-or misery-with as much indifference as a shopman would measure his metres of tape.

With such a system in France, and with one so totally opposed to the system of England, great allowance must be made to the Frenchman who, through ignorance, mistakes the innocent freedom of the demoiselle Anglaise for a want of principle. The Frenchman cannot comprehend how she can be trusted to look on a man, to speak to a man, to walk out alone with a brother, or live alone with her father. These are all cases in which the French virgin would be compromise, and he jumps to the conclusion that such is the fact with the being, who, in his opinion, outrages all the laws of propriety.

It is thus that an English young lady is but too often addressed in a tone of levity which borders on insult. I could have used stronger language in concluding this sketch of French education, and more especially the consequences which result. But I trust I have said enough to convey a wise caution to the young and beautiful of England when they enter into French society, let them be upon their guard, and beware!

As all I have said bears indirectly on the anecdote I am about to tell I make no apology for the few pages which precede my story of pas si bête, and which, by the way, though really founded in fact, forms a rare exception to a general rule.

It only remains to add that there is just as much difference in the English and French manner of conducting a marriage as there is in the previous education. In France marriage is a civil contract, and not a religious ceremony: it is the mayor who marries and not the priest: instead of the parish church, it is the mairée of each particular arrondissement, which must be first sought, and there it is that the marriage takes place.

As to the subsequent blessing by the church it is quite a secondary consideration, and one which may be dispensed with altogether. This, however, rarely happens: if the new-made couple have any religious feeling about them there is a something which whispers in the heart that the blessing of God is required on such occasion, and should be implored on bended knee; that the church, in short, should do more than the law requires, and make marriage a sacred act in the eye of God and man.

As to the priests, it is their Roman Catholic métier to meddle in all things, and, for more reasons than one, they take care to enforce the necessity of seeking the priestly blessing of the church. It not only affords a good opportunity (when paid for) of holding forth a long and tiresome sermon on the duties of married life, and sounding the praises

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