HER DEATH AND BURIAL.

33

silk petticoat stitched on a white curtain. No English Protestant clergyman could be found in Calais, but an Irish half-pay officer was sent for, and he read the burial service. The ground in which the body lies interred is now a timber-yard; it ceased to be a public cemetery in 1816, and Lady Hamilton had found her resting-place in the January of the preceding year.

"The Earl of Nelson" (it is written) "went over to demand Lady Hamilton's property, but found only the duplicates of trinkets, &c., pledged, and which he wished to take away without payment. He declined repaying any expenses that had been incurred.”

Fit ending to the poor nursery-maid's history!—

August 22, 1849.

A

RAILWAY NOVELS.

"READ now and then a romance to keep the fancy under," was the counsel of a writer who knew something of life and human nature, to a friend bent upon a visit to the Antipodes. The wisdom of the advice is acknowledged by every living man beyond the age of thirty. Novels may concentrate action, excite interest, touch the heart, but they cannot heighten the power of imagination. It is reality that astonishes: fiction dares not, if it would, be half so bold. What if we should tell the reader that—say a century and a half ago there lived a man in England who in his youth gave himself up to riot, gambling, and debauchery, who, driven at last to desperation by absolute beggary, quarrelled with an acquaintance, fought and killed him, who was tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death, yet managed to escape unhurt to the Continent; who, in the course of his wretched wanderings, became known and marked at every notorious gambling house in Europe; who was publicly expelled, first from Venice, then from Genoa, and finally from indulgent Paris itself; who, venturing to visit the capital of France, encountered a prince of the blood royal at a public gaming-table, and won his friendship; who, trading upon the necessities of that prince, succeeded in obtaining the highest consi

deration in France-for his wife, the adulation of women in whose veins poured the richest blood of the land-for his son, the companionship of a King-for himself, the obsequious worship of millions? What if we should go on to say, how, in order to obtain but a moment's interview with this sublime adventurer, a duchess bade her coachman overturn her carriage at the great man's gate, and a marchioness, with the same intent, on the same spot, raised a cry of fire; how, in the course of a very few months, the convicted murderer, the beggared outlaw, the outcast gambler, became the owner of more than one magnificent estate in France, and generously filled the land of his adoption with wealth beyond the power of man to calculate or enjoy; how, in an hour, as if by the breath of an avenging angel, the fabric fell, the bubble burst, and the proud architect himself was fain to sneak in obscure hiding-places lest they should take his worthless life who but an hour before had knelt to him adoringly as before a god; how, finishing his wild career precisely as he commenced it, he eluded again the hands of justice, again walked up and down and through the world, eating the foul crumbs that might be gathered in the common gambling booth, until he reached, poor as at first, that very city of Venice, which he honoured with his death, as before he had polluted it with his living presence? What, we ask, if we were to narrate this tale, and fill up the sketch with all the incidents necessary to complete the startling history? Who would listen patiently to the ravings of one who, for want of better employment and greater skill, must needs communicate the inspirations of some feverish

dream? Dream, forsooth! The life and death of John Law, and the national bankruptcy of France, the result of his daring and splendid imposture, are as real as the life of George Hudson, and the history of railway speculation in England.

And not only are both histories true, but to the observant and inquiring mind both present points of resemblance in their details very remarkable and in the highest degree instructive. Mr. Hudson, like Mr. Law, emerged from obscurity to dazzle a whole kingdom with his amazing refulgence. He also filled the coffers of men with fictitious, wealth, and brought high and low, rich and poor, cringing to his feet. He gambled, too, venturing his credit and good name in a desperate game with fortune; he, too, counted his magnificent estates, and reckoned amongst his common associates the most renowned and the most illustrious of their kind. He, too, had his altar, upon which wealth-worshippers flung their daily incense, and offered up the sacrifice of their mercenary souls; and he awoke from a dream of bliss to a day of reckoning, to find himself hooted by throats already hoarse in singing his praise, smitten by hands erewhile too much honoured in receiving the bare droppings of his disgraceful gains.

A century and a half have carried us high up into the realms of civilisation. During the interval, what has science not accomplished for the comfort of man -what have the spread of intelligence, the labour of missionaries—sacred and profane—the intercommunication of thought, the better understanding of nations and classes-not wrought for his happiness? To dwell upon human progress during the last hundred

HIS HISTORY REPEATED IN 1848.

37

and fifty years is to behold at a glance the spoils of as noble a victory as ever rewarded patient endurance, unflinching energy, and heroic devotion. Yet in some respects we are precisely as we were. In the days of John Law a duchess was required to accompany one of the Royal family to Genoa. "Oh, if you want a duchess," said a courtier, "send to Madame Law's; you can have a choice of them; they are all assembled there." Had a lady of fashion been suddenly demanded at court whilst Mrs. Hudson the other day was receiving "friends," the lord in waiting might have addressed his messenger in language similar to that of his French brother. The bait that enticed the whole world to the saloons of Madame Law in 1720, took the whole world again to the saloons of Mrs. Hudson in 1848. Generations had passed away, but the lure remained. In Law's time a vast deal of business was done in la rue Quincampoix-in which stood his bank-upon the hump of a poor deformed fellow, who let out his hunch as a writingdesk at so much the day or hour. Morally speaking, who lives without a hump? Lords and ladies, fashioned like the rest of us, for a consideration let out their's at Albert-gate.

It was a pity. We are an imitative species, and are prone to ape the manners of our betters. When Mr. Law's coachman found his master growing rich by the sale of waste paper, he entered into the same profitable business, and gave his master warning,-it must be admitted like a gentleman. He presented two candidates for the office about to be vacated. "Take your choice, sir," said the coachman, "you have the refusal; one is for you, the other for