heard by all who were present, "I find, sir, that you have spoken of me in the most unwarrantable terms." Captain Best replied, that he was quite unconscious of having deserved such a charge. Lord Camelford replied, that he was not ignorant of what he had said to Mrs. Simmons, and declared him to be "a scoundrel, a liar, and a ruffian." A challenge followed, and the meeting was fixed for the next morning. During the evening, the captain transmitted to Lord Camelford the strongest assurances that the information he had received was unfounded, and that, as he had acted under a false impression, he should be satisfied if he would retract the expressions he had made use of: but this his Lordship refused to do. Captain Best then left the coffee-house. A note was soon afterwards delivered to his Lordship, which the people of the house suspected to contain a challenge. Information was lodged at Marlborough Street, but no steps were taken by the police to prevent the meeting, until near two o'clock the following morning, when officers were stationed at Lord Camelford's door: it was then too late.

Lord Camelford had already left his lodgings, to sleep at a tavern, so as to avoid the officers. Agreeably to an appointment made by their seconds, his Lordship and the captain met early in the morning, at a coffeehouse in Oxford Street, where Mr. Best made another effort to prevail on Lord Camelford to retract the expressions he had used. To all remonstrance he replied, "Best, this is child's play-the thing must go

Accordingly, his Lordship and Captain Best, on horseback, took the road to Kensington, followed by a post-chaise, in which were the two seconds. On their

arrival at the Horse and Groom, the parties dismounted, and proceeded by the path to the fields behind Holland House. The seconds measured the ground, and took their stations at the distance of thirty paces-twentynine yards. Lord Camelford fired first, but without effect. An interval of several seconds followed, and, from the manner and attitude of Captain Best, the persons who viewed the transaction at a distance, imagined that he was asking whether his Lordship was satisfied. Best then fired, and his Lordship fell at full length. The seconds, together with the Captain, immediately ran to his assistance, when he is said to have seized the latter by the hand, and to have exclaimed, "Best, I am a dead man; you have killed me, but I freely forgive you." The report of the pistols had alarmed some men who were at work near the spot, when Captain Best and his second thought it prudent to provide for their own safety. One of Lord Holland's gardeners now approached, and called to his fellow-labourers to stop them. On his arrival, Lord Camelford's second, who had been supporting him as well as he was able, ran for a surgeon, and Mr. Thompson, of Kensington, soon after came to his assistance. His Lordship then asked the man" why he had called out to stop the gentlemen, and declared that he did not wish them to be stopped; that he himself was the aggressor, that he forgave the gentleman who had shot him, and hoped God would forgive him too." Meanwhile, a chair was procured, and his Lordship was carried to Little Holland House, where, after three days' suffering, he expired.

We have seen that Lord Camelford, in his heart, acquitted Captain Best; he acknowledged also, in confidence to his second, that he himself was in the wrong;

that Best was a man of honour; that he could not prevail on himself to retract words he had once used. The reason of the obstinacy with which he rejected all advances towards a reconciliation was, that his Lordship entertained an idea that his antagonist was the best shot in England; and to have made an apology would have exposed his Lordship's courage to suspicion.

On the morning after his decease an inquest was held on the body, and a verdict of wilful murder returned against "Some person or persons unknown;" on which a bill of indictment was preferred against Captain Best and his friend, which was ignored by the grand jury.

A LITERARY DUEL.

Ir was at the period when Fraser's Magazine was in the zenith of its popularity, that its publisher got involved in two unpleasant results-a horse-whipping and a duel. The Hon. Mr. Grantley Berkeley's narrative states that a lady conceived the idea of asking for his assistance, though she knew him only by repute, in a delicate difficulty, in which none of her own friends were able to assist her; and we learn that he did take up her quarrel, upon excellent grounds, and with very immediate and considerable effect. The culprit in the case was the well-known Dr. Maginn, who, having the lady in his power, from his then influence as a literary critic, was pressing upon her, as the price of averting his hostility, a dishonourable compliance with desires which were at once base and mercenary. Mr. Berkeley boasts that he succeeded in taking Dr. Maginn's intended prey out of his paws, though he was afterwards

warned by Lady Blessington, who was subsequently made cognizant of the circumstances, that Maginn would watch for an opportunity of having his revenge. The opportunity which came was the publication, some time afterwards, of a novel by Mr. Grantley Berkeley, which Dr. Maginn took the opportunity of criticizing in Fraser's Magazine, not, however, with a fair criticism, but with a malignant insinuation against Lady Euston (the present Dowager-Duchess of Grafton, and the cousin of the author), to whom he had very naturally dedicated the work. It would have been reasonable that any man, at whose lady relative a scandalous insult was thus pointed, should feel a little tingling of the blood in consequence; and accordingly Mr. Grantley Berkeley, accompanied by his brother Craven, and armed with a stout horsewhip, waited on Mr. Fraser, the publisher of the magazine, to demand the name and address of the author of the article in question. The author was Dr. Maginn, but, as Mr. Fraser declined to name him, Mr. Berkeley assumed that he might hold Mr. Fraser himself responsible, and thereupon he hauled him out by the collar, and administered a most severe chastisement. For the moment the assault was treated as a police case, but it was soon converted into the subject of a civil action; and in the meantime Dr. Maginn, though with no exceeding alacrity, threw himself in the way of Mr. Berkeley, and arrangements were made for a hostile meeting.

In the duel which thereupon took place, neither combatant fought with his own pistols; though both of them fought with Mr. Grantley Berkeley's choice gunpowder, to his own extreme disgust. They fired three

shots at each other, Mr. Berkeley aiming at his antagonist's legs, but only succeeding in hitting the heel of his boot and the hinge of his own brother Henry's pistol-case on which it rested. We remember hearing at the time that the latter, who had followed his brother on horseback to the field, and was looking on from behind the nearest hedge, was by no means gratified by this damage to his property, and that his disgust at this incident was almost the only sentiment he expressed upon this occasion. At all events, no further damage was done in the encounter, except what appears to have been the dispersion of some cotton wadding, under Dr. Maginn's shirt-front, by the third and last shot from Mr. Grantley Berkeley's pistol. Mr. Fraser was Dr. Maginn's second, and Major Fancourt was that of Mr. Berkeley. Subsequent to this a counter-action for libel was brought by Mr. Berkeley against Mr. Fraser in the Exchequer, but the litigation on both sides was compromised by the simple payment of Mr. Fraser's doctor's bill. Mr. Henry Berkeley subsequently had a correspondence with Dr. Maginn on another occasion, when he again assailed the honour of the Berkeley family, in which, metaphorically, the wadding flew out of the Doctor a second time; while the public result of the whole, according to the opinion of the author and principal in the business, and, indeed, in that also of some other more reasonable people, was to the effect that it put a wholesome restraint upon the herd of libellers who, in the Age and Satirist newspapers, and Fraser's Magazine, had for years been recklessly trading upon scandals affecting families of distinction.'-Times' Review.