I pulled up as if I thought there was something the matter with the horse; and begged him, as a favour, just to get down and examine the shoe on the horse's near fore-leg; but he assured me that it was all right, and that there was no occasion for either of us to alight, in such a dogged manner, that I saw there was no getting him out of the gig that way. I then got out myself, and he instantly got out too, exhibiting the most obsequious attention towards my person. Seeing the necessity of bringing matters to a crisis, and preferring to meet the difficulty there rather than at the town which was at that point about two miles off, I politely but firmly communicated to him my wish that he would perform the rest of his journey on foot, for the reason, as I represented, that, as it was necessary for me to make all possible haste on my way, the addition of his weight, notwithstanding the extreme pleasure which I had in his company, was an incumbrance which it was highly expedient for me to get rid of. The man in top-boots, on his part, seeing that I smoked his object, and that it would be in vain for him to attempt to dissemble any longer, now threw off the mask, and announcing his name and title, said that I was his prisoner by virtue of a writ of arrest which he had in his pocket, advising me at the same time to go along with him peaceably to avoid unpleasantness.

I replied to this by a sudden and vigorous blow between his eyes which I thought had stunned him, and I sprung round towards the body of the gig and tried to jump in; but the bailiff was not so easily settled; he was a practised bruiser, having done his utmost to perfect himself in the art of boxing as an accomplishment useful in his craft. Coming up to me he dealt me a side blow on my left side, under my arm, which made me feel, for the moment, very queer; but recovering myself quickly, and trusting to my youth and agility, I gave him a dreadful punch in the stomach which made him cough a bit; but he returned it before I could turn round by a prodigious thump on my chest; and now we got fairly engaged in a regular stand-up fight; the bailiff having the advantage of experience and weight; and I of quickness and agility. I have a notion that my eyes were better than his in the dark, which had been so frequently fomented with hot brandy-and-water that they had become somewhat bleared and dim. However it was, it soon became evident that I had the best of the fight, for I gave him half a dozen blows to one from him. It was hard I thought, to be obliged thus to fight with my fists in the night with a bailiff; but then it was for liberty; and somehow it seemed to me that it was more humiliating to be grabbed by a bailiff for a debt, than to be arrested by a constable for a murder. And, as I say, I fought for liberty; and that thought inspired me with fresh vigour, and I dealt thump after thump on the bailiff so unremittingly, that at last, by a fortunate blow just under the left ear, I knocked him over, and he tumbled down on the hard road. Without waiting to learn the result of my last blow, I jumped into the gig, laid the whip on the horse, who all the while had behaved in the most gentlemanlike manner by standing quite still till I had finished the bailiff; and now having rested a bit and recovered his wind, he took me along at a pace that soon left my enemy far behind.

I drove through the town without stopping, and kept on without pulling up for about thirty miles further, directing my course, by a sort

of instinct towards the coast. At the end of that distance my good horse showed symptoms of distress, as I reached a certain town about thirty-five miles from the sea. To my great joy the mail was on the point of starting to the very place that I wanted to reach. Leaving my horse at the inn, to remain till called for, and giving a feigned name to the landlord, I transferred my baggage to the coach, and in due course arrived at its place of destination. As if Fortune who had lately so persecuted me, was now determined to favour me, the packet was about to sail at break of day, and in a few hours I was landed in France. On my passage I had time to make many and serious reflections. I marvelled at the contrariety of Fortune; and of the concatenation of events which had caused me instead of effecting an elopement to Gretna Green, to fly for my life, or my liberty at least, to a foreign country with the pangs of conscience too assailing me for having, undesignedly though it was, been the cause of the death, in cold blood, of a fellow-creature. Much too did I think of Lavinia, mixed with thoughts also of Emily; and bitterly did I deplore my hard fate; and then I cursed the bill which I had put my name to, and which I accused as the cause of all my misfortunes by prejudicing the father of Lavinia against me, and forcing me to endeavour to secure by indirect means a success which that unlucky and confounded instance of Tick had prevented me from obtaining by straightforward courses. But these reflections could not change the facts, and I felt very miserable and lonely.-The only part of recent events that I could look back on with satisfaction was the having licked the bailiff

"But at least," said I to myself, "there is an end, for the present at least, to my immediate difficulties;"-but I was mistaken; instead of the end it was only the beginning.

As the further adventures, however, in which I was now to be involved, have a distinct character from those which preceded them, I shall close, at this place, the first part of these Memoirs. They have been unavoidably desultory as their title from the first imported; but in closing them I cannot but marvel at the pertinacity with which the Demon of Tick which has ever pursued me, still follows me to the last; for what am I now doing? I am obliged to go on Tick; still Tick; Tick everlasting; to go on Tick, I say, with my readers for the remainder of these reminiscences, for which I can only entreat their usual indulgence; leaving in their hands my promise, as a note of hand, to pay the debt which I have incurred with them at the earliest possible time, and hoping that the account will be settled eventually to their perfect satisfaction.

THE SIEGE OF VIENNA.

THE acts of violence committed in Vienna, which compelled the emperor for a second time to quit his capital on the 6th of October last, left no hopes of legal order being restored, except by force of arms. The chiefs of the insurrectionary party had, subsequently to the retreat of the emperor, only succeeded in retaining the authority which they had forcibly assumed, by an act of horror which has few parallels in history. They commanded the city through multitudes excited to the most frantic passions or in a state of wildest intoxication, while the remainder were paralyzed by fear. They were establishing treasonable connections with revolted Hungary, and sending emissaries to all the provinces of the empire, even where perfect order prevailed, and they were everywhere attempting to plant the standard of rebellion under the pretext of guarding endangered liberty.

In the manifesto of Ferdinand, published at Olmütz on the 16th of October, the emperor announced that he was compelled, with bleeding heart to meet the rebellion which then so shamelessly reared its head in his residentiary city, to oppose it by force of arms, and to combat it till it should be completely quelled, and the murderers of his faithful servants Counts Lamberg and Latour punished. From this moment insurrection at Vienna and Pesth received its doom; happy if such an attitude had been assumed at an earlier period in the history of the rebellion in Austria, and happy for the prospects of general civilisation and the safety and security of lives and property, if such an example should be successfully followed in Prussia and throughout all Germany.

Field-Marshal Prince Windischgratz, who had so distinguished himself in the Revolt of Prague, was accordingly appointed to the command of the army sent against the capital, and the troops thus placed under his command comprised the Bohemian corps of 20,000 men; the Moravian of 12,000, and the army of Poland 12,000 strong; added to these was the Contingent under General Auersperg, consisting of 20,000 men, and the Slavonian army, withdrawn from its unsupported and consequently insufficient operations against the Magyars, to co-operate with the army of Vienna and which army amounted to about 62,000 men, of all arms under the command of the Ban Jellachich. The armies thus united from divers parts of the empire to assist at the reduction of the capital could not have amounted to a force of less than 120,000 men.

The commander-in-chief upon bringing up his army, established the centre of his operations at Hetzendorf in the rear of the palace of Schönbrunn, by which his extreme right was connected with the Slavonian army, while his left extended by the high country west of Vienna to the Danube, the left bank of which river was occupied by the Imperial troops from the flying bridge established at the outpost of Floresdorf, to the Island of Lobau, where it came into contact with the Slavonian army, and thus completely enveloped the city and suburbs.

The Slavonian army had seen hard service during the first fortnight in October. Many even of the officers had not taken off their uniforms

nor seen a bed, and their horses had scarcely been unsaddled for a few hours for days together. It had been intended by the sturdy Ban to have given battle to the Hungarians approaching under Kossuth and Messaros, between Raab and Presburg, but when information was received of the insurrection at Vienna, which had once more driven the emperor from his home, the troops at once set off, under the Ban's personal command, to the relief of the imperial dynasty. The advanced guard of the Slavonian army, being without baggage, travelled with such rapidity as to arrive at Kaiser Ebersdorf in three days from the time of receiving the news; this was on the 10th of October. The Ban finding, however, that the capital was completely in the hands of the rebels, withdrew on the 11th in the direction of Modling, and established his head-quarters at Inzersdorf, near Laxenburg, where he waited for the expected reinforcements. These came on rapidly, Bohemian cavalry and infantry, and troops from Upper Austria and Galicia under Count Auersperg, and the Gallician contingent under Count Schlick, joined their forces to those of the Slavonians within a few days; and the junction thus effected with the Austrian army enabled the line to extend itself to the island of Lobau on the Danube, an island celebrated in the history of Napoleon's campaigns, and thus to invest Vienna along the whole extent of its eastern and north-eastern aspects, and at the same time to interpose between the capital and any relief that might be expected from the side of Hungary.

The Viennese did not, however, lose all hope nor confidence. The state of excitement within the town was great, and only exceeded by the excesses that intoxication and insubordination were effecting in the name of liberty; every lover of law and order, and even strangers, being compelled at the risk of their lives to fight in the ranks of rebellion and discord. The imperial palace and other public buildings of the ancient and noble capital of Austria were, it was reported, filled with gunpowder and destined to be blown up the moment a hostile gun was fired against the city. Two imperial generals in the hands of the rebels were threatened with death in case of bombardment of the city. The Committee of Public Safety not being deemed to be sufficiently energetic Dr. Schütte convoked another assembly for the 23rd inst., for the purpose of constituting a committee that would act with more resolution. The main hope of the Viennese, however, lay in the succour of the Hungarians. Ever since the outbreak of the 6th, which had been mainly brought about by agents of Kossuth, they had placed their dependence on the co-operation of the Magyars. On the evening of the 20th a proclamation from the Hungarian camp was posted in the streets of Vienna, which is characterised by the boastful language, and we regret so to express it, the false and perverted statements in which the Magyars have so largely indulged ever since the commencement of the insurrection.

The Hungarian nation has been united for centuries to the people of Austria by the most intimate bonds. The constitutional liberty conquered in the days of March by the people of the monarchy, and sanctioned by the monarch, has more firmly consolidated these bonds. It is our common duty to defend our constitutional and legal liberty. The Hungarian army hereby declares that it has come to succour its Austrian brethren, and that it will pursue with its whole power the Croatian army, which has been chased from Hungary,

and which is at this moment ravaging the plains of Austria. We are persuaded that in chasing from Austria the hostile army of Jellachich, and re-establishing the interrupted communication with the city of Vienna, we shall render the greatest service to the liberty of the people as well as to the dynasty and to the whole monarchy. The Hungarian army is ready to live and die for the interest of all. Men of Vienna, have confidence in us, God will never abandon our just cause.

This characteristic document was signed by Dionys Pazmandi, President of the Hungarian National Assembly; Moga, commander of the Hungarian army; and three Commissaries Plenipotentiary.

The Hungarians actually crossed the frontiers at two points during the siege of Vienna, but without advantage to the besieged. Six steamers, it is said, were employed to bring a detachment of the Magyar belligerents up the Danube, but the foremost having been received with a brisk fire, the rest deemed it advisable to turn back again. According to some reports, the steamer that was fired upon was sunk. When the siege had attained its height the Hungarian force encamped beyond the Leitha, advanced into the Austrian territory from 15,000 to 20,000 strong, and, as will be afterwards seen, were attacked in the neighbourhood of Schwechat and Kaiser Ebersdorf by detachments from the left wing of Windischgratz's, and the right of Jellachich's army. The route of the Hungarians was complete; the artillery of the Imperial army entailed great losses, and they were thrown back, according to some, upon Brück, according to others, they were driven into the Danube! It was also reported that soon after the commencement of the battle of Schwechat, a great part of the Hungarian troops went over to the Austrian army, and among others the regiment Lichtenstein.

The city being, however, effectively invested, Prince Windischgratz made known to the committee the conditions under which the appeal to the force of arms might be avoided, and which were the possession of the capital, the complete disarmament of those who had taken arms since the 6th of October, the dispersion of the academical legion, the closing of the university, and the extradition of Count Latour's murderers. These conditions meeting with only a categorical answer on the part of the committee, the Imperial commander-in-chief gave notice that if the committee did not surrender by the evening of the 24th, he would bombard the city on the next day.

In the sitting of the Diet on the afternoon of the 22nd, a resolution was passed which declared the proclamation of the state of siege and of martial law as illegal. In reply to this protest of the Diet, Prince Windischgratz stated that his full powers did not extend to a negotiation with the Diet, which he recognised only as a constituent assembly. The only legal authority which he recognised in Vienna was the municipal council, which, he said, was subordinate to him. The commander-inchief persisted at the same time in granting only to the 24th (that was forty-eight hours from the time of answering the protest) for submission, and that there might be no mistake upon that point, issued a second proclamation, dated head-quarters, Hetzendorf, Oct. 23, 1848 :-

In pursuance of the state of siege and martial law for the city of Vienna, the suburbs and the immediate environs, announced in my first proclamation of the 20th of this month, the following conditions are subjoined by me :