But at last he was beat, and sought help of the bin Many worse, better few, than bright broken Maginn." The time came when Mr. Grantley Berkeley was able to achieve a deed of which he seems especially proud. For a novel, of which he had the misfortune to be the author, he was "slated," as the modern slang goes, in a way which set all his bristles up. He, one of his worthy kinsmen, and a man, called on Mr. Fraser, the publisher, to demand the name of the author. Mr. Fraser, as gentlemanlike a man as ever breathed, and who probably had never read the article, required time for consideration; whereupon, without warning or calling upon him to defend himself, Mr. Berkeley suddenly felled Mr. Fraser to the ground, and while he was in that defenceless condition, with the other Berkeley by, and the man at the door to prevent aid coming to the poor gentleman subjected to such fearful odds, committed a series of violent acts which no one can read without disgust and indignation. Mr. Berkeley protests against the measure the Times has taken of them by describing them as 66 brutish and excessive." This proceeding led to the famous duel with Maginn, who boldly took the responsibility of the authorship of the review. We will only say of this combat that we are utterly at a loss to understand Mr. Berkeley's rule of chivalry by his description of the fight. He tells us that one of the regulations binding on both combatants was that neither should take aim at the other; and yet he confesses that he took a "hasty aim" at his adversary's leg. Most fortunately-for Mr. Berkeley boasts of being a crack shot-the "hasty aim" was ineffectual. Had it killed Dr. Maginn, the consequences might have astounded Mr. Berkeley himself. But for his own confession we could not have supposed that the circumstance so coolly narrated was possible in the present century. But there are a hundred other things in this book which will perplex commonplace people, so ignorant as to know only the difference between right and wrong. This vulgar folk will at least be glad that much of what was done and many of the men who did it, in the olden time, would be out of the pale of civilisation now. The muscular gent, who was dying out when the century began, would be stigmatised as a profligate blackguard if a revival of that unsavoury person were attempted now. Only the other day Lord Berkeley's "hunt" were prohibited riding over a certain ground by the resident gentleman there. He was not tossed into his own pond, as he would have been in the last century, but was treated with in the form of a courteous and friendly negotiation. Again, it is but the other day that an officer in the Household Cavalry had to defend an action for assault, when such violence on his part was sworn to, that the judge prophesied that no officer guilty of such conduct would remain an officer long. These things indicate a total change in society, for the better. The best-born ruffians of the last century seem to belong to an old fossil world, of which we are happily rid. Old men who, like Mr. Berkeley, are approaching their seventieth year, and were therefore born when the old ruffianism was hardly an effete fashion, and when it was rather admired than otherwise by those who spoke of it, may be expected to be less shocked at its unutterable brutality than younger men, who have been trained in the way of Christian gentlemen. In a civilised sense, the author, if he has not over-coloured his early scenes, seems to have had, in his father's stables and with his father's menials, no better training than the dogs who were his companions, or the vermin that he pursued. This may be an excuse for many details in his volume, which to modern notions will seem discreditable. One portion of his book, however, has no excuse. True or false, there is not a line written in disparagement of his parents, but especially of his mother, that should have fallen from the pen of a son. As critics, it is within our province to assert that this is entirely indefensible; and we only hope it may have caused the writer as much remorse as it has given his readers pain. On the question of its truth or falsehood we have nothing to say. It is one which Mr. Berkeley must settle with his brothers. They have started up in defence of their mother's reputation and their father's character. They denounce him, in no nice phrase, as a retailer of foul slanders and calumny! He who slanders his mother is the worst of matricides; and Mr. Grantley Berkeley wili doubtless be anxious to show that he is not subject to so horrible an imputation. But see the consequences of dealing with family scandal at all!—his success in demonstrating that he is not guilty of the slander and calumny with which he is charged in his brothers' pamphlet, will slay the poor woman over again! One may be almost permitted to pity any poor wretch who lies under the oppression of so ghastly a dilemma. "HOME late, Davy," said old Chantrey, carelessly, as David came home with his sister fast asleep in his arms. "Yes; I've been at a friend's, governor. I brought the young one with me, to show her a bit of the world." "With friends?" repeated his father. "Odd, that, my lad; your friends should be my friends." David laughed, and seemed to think that if the rule were carried out, it would be rather hard on the governor. He turned to go, and his father let him reach the door; there he transfixed him by a little careless and commonplace observation. "Good-night, lad," he said, returning to his former occupation with indifference; "pray remember me to my friend Wertley when you see him next." "Your friend?" asked David, considerably startled. . The fact was, that for some time he had been visited by misgivings lest his worthy friend Mr. Wertley might, out of compliment to him, make a morning visit upon his father. Such a visit would be fraught with every thing that was awkward and distressing. He had winced as he had realised the possibilities of that interview. Wertley and his father were as acid to alkali. It was a moral certainty that his friend would wander, with a most confiding simplicity, into some gentle controversy, and no less certain that he would receive rough handling from his father. Thus already might have commenced a quarrel of the Montagues and Capulets. "Tell him,” continued the old man, "that I am not convinced upon the question of the sewage; and that I can prove him clearly wrong the incubation of domestic fowl." upon "You know him, then?" asked David. "Why not? he incubated me for two hours, till I clawed him a bit with my tongue." "You didn't offend him, sir, I hope?" "I've observed you are growing close with me, my lad; I tell you I don't like it. Offend him! no; I'm an old business-man; I never offend any one I can make use of. I proposed to do business with him.” Here Mr. Chantrey, with much complacency, stated a small stroke of business he had essayed, which consisted of a cool proposal that Mr. Wertley should join his son David in a 50%. bill. Then David compre hended for the first time the position which he had occupied in Emmie's mind on the day of that charmed visit to Kew. He had little comment to make upon the explanation, and was again about to leave the room, when his father contrived, by a second careless comment, to catch his ear again. "I offered him good security," said he; "you will allow that;" and he gently stirred the lower bar of the fire with his slipshod shoe. In some curiosity David inquired its nature. "Undeniable security; yet I'm bound to say he didn't think much of it. Order in a pint of stout, Davy, as you pass the Crown and Anchor." "This security, governor?" asked David. "Your mother's novel," said the old man with dramatic brevity. "We'll talk of it again," said David, setting the subject for the present aside. "I'll find a little money for you, governor, I hope. Goodnight to you." "Good-night! Don't forget it in your pleasure-parties,” said old Chantrey, turning gruffly to the fire. "There's a letter for you on the chimney-piece since this morning." David laid his little sister in her cot, dressed as she was, and wrapped her up warm without breaking her sleep; he then returned to read the letter. He opened it, and his father watched him rather curiously. "Poor silly woman!" ejaculated David. "It was a bad business-hand direction," muttered old Chantrey. "Who is it from?" "This? from Mrs. Blenheim's lawyer." "Why, what scrape are you in now?" "The woman's cracked!" sung out David, re-reading the letter. "Margaret Blenheim, eh? don't believe it!" "Read that," said David, putting the open letter into his father's hands, who read it aloud with his accustomed deliberation. 66 SIR,-My client, Miss Blenheim, was much surprised at receiving the sum of five pounds towards the liquidation of her claim of six thousand. She instructs me to remind you that misappropriation of trustmoney has become penal under the new act, and to assure you she means to take the most summary measures to compel you to refund the whole amount. "The following are the only terms she can entertain: an immediate payment of two thousands pounds down, and the remaining four thou sand she may consent to receive in quarterly instalments of one hundred pounds. Pray consider this letter as preparatory to instant proceedings. "There's a letter to come from a respectable business house!" cried David. Old Chantrey burst out into a loud harsh laugh when he had finished reading this production. "You simpleton, look at it again! lawyer never put pen to that." “Do you mean to say Mrs. Blenheim would forge a signature?” "Pish, man! don't you know a lady's style?" "You mean that Mrs. Blenheim wrote it?" "Certainly." "Why, it would be forgery." "But do you suppose a woman of fashion knows the meaning of forgery? I tell you that, beyond the circle of their education, there is no more daring or ignorant creature than a woman of fashion." 66 "I cannot believe it. If Mrs. Blenheim is a fashionable woman, she is also a lady," said David. "Do you fancy, my good fellow, that the hundred-and-one ladies who have been caught shoplifting know they are thieving? not theyI hold them quite irresponsible, as I would a wild South-Australian, who thinks it a harmless freak to let fly his boomerang in the street. They don't know any thing so vulgar as the laws respecting petit larceny." We must really protest against such extravagant and libellous assertions. Old Chantrey is in a bitter mood; and I hold myself quite irresponsible for his sentiments. Society and dissipation may have their peculiar diseases, but they are slight, and cure themselves; they are beneath the notice of the cynic. Ah, my friend, it is poverty which gives the true virus to crime. Lash poverty with scorpions, ye philosophic magistrates; never mind the trifling diagnostics, theft, assault, drunkenness; go straight, like a surgeon of genius, to the cause, and the effects will vanish: indict poverty wherever you may find it,-envious, covetous, carping, treasonous poverty,poverty that murders in thought twenty times a day,―poverty the sycophant, poverty the unsavoury, poverty the sneak. Poverty is high treason against nature. This bountiful world is man's freehold, and all that it contains. "I will call upon Mrs. Blenheim to-morrow," said David, rising and leaving the room, to the harsh music of his father's laughter. But by the time he reached the Blenheims' house his mood was changed. Whilst within his own honest and diligent area, he seemed to look at this case from the Chantrey point of view; which may be thus stated, the generous spontaneous offer of an innocent man employed as an opportunity of insult. Generosity towards an enemy is equivalent to weakness. It is the lift of the arm which exposes the heart to a thrust. He had opened his conduct to the very basest construction, and he was charged with cowardice and meanness by a lady he had never wronged. That was the aspect from the Chantrey side. But as he knocked at the door in Bedford Square-as he stood in the hall whilst his name was |