new evidence, if necessary; descriptions of the person and circumstances of Martin Guerre, the absent husband, were also circulated throughout the kingdom. At length, after several months had elapsed, and considerable pains had been taken, the absentee was fortunately discovered in a distant province, conveyed to Thoulouse, and ordered into close custody, with particular directions that he should have no intercourse with any person whatever, even at his meals, but in the presence of one of the commissioners, who ordered an additional lock to the door of the room in which he was confined, and themselves kept the key. A day was fixed for a solemn and final re-hearing, and a list of such witnesses as would be required to appear before the parliament, was, in the mean time, sent to Rieux, for the purpose of preventing the trouble and expense of conveying to Thoulouse so large a number of persons who had crowded the court and streets of Rieux. The parliament assembled at an early hour; the former proceedings were read; the prisoner still persisted in asserting his innocence, and complained of the hardships and injuries he had suffered. The real Martin Guerre now walked into court on his wooden leg, and Du Tilb being asked if he knew him, undauntedly answered, "No." The injured husband reproaching the impostor for the perfidiousness of his conduct in basely taking advantage of the frankness of an old companion, and depriving him of his wife and property, Du Tilb retorted the charge on his accuser. The present was thought a curious instance of audacity contrasted with simplicity of heart and unassuming manners; an impudent and flagitious adventurer, who had for several years enjoyed the wife and property of another, and, in the face of his country, endeavouring to persuade the injured man out of his name and personal identity; it was further observed that the gesture, deportment, air, and mode of speaking of the impostor were cool, consistent, and steady; while those who appeared in the cause of truth were embarrassed, hesitating, confused, and, on certain points, contradictory in their evidence.

The wife, the four sisters, and the uncle, had not yet seen the real Martin Guerre; they were now called into court: the first who entered was the eldest sister, who the moment she caught sight of the man with a wooden leg, ran and embraced him, exclaiming, with tears, "Oh, my dear brother, I now see and acknowledge the error and misfortune into which this abominable traitor hath betrayed us.". The rest of the family, as they approached, confessed in similar way how much they had been deceived; and the long-lost Martin, mingling his tears with theirs, received their embraces, and heard their penitential apologies with every appearance of tenderness and affection. But towards his wife he deported himself very differently; she had not yet ventured to come near him, but stood at the entrance of the court, trembling and dismayed; one of the sisters, taking her arm, conducted her to Martin, but he viewed her with sternness and aversion, and, in reply to the excuses and advances she made, and the intercession of his sisters in her behalf, "that she was herself innocent, but seduced by the arts of a villain;" he observed, "Her tears and her sorrow are useless; I never shall love her again; it is in vain that you attempt to justify her

from the circumstance of so many others having been deceived; in such a case as this it is impossible that a woman could have been imposed on, if she had not entertained a secret wish to be unfaithful; I shall for ever regard her as the cause of all my misfortunes, and impute solely to her the whole of my wretchedness and disgrace." The judge, reminding the angry husband that if he had remained at home nothing of what had happened could ever have taken place, recommended lenity and forgiveness.

Du Tilb was pronounced guilty of fraud, adultery, sacrilege, rape, and theft, and condemned to make the amende honorable in the market-place of Artigues, in his shirt, with his head and feet bare, a halter round his neck, and a lighted torch in his hand; to demand pardon of God, the king, the nation, and the family he had so cruelly deceived; it was further ordered that he should be hanged before the dwellinghouse of Martin Guerre, and that his body should be burnt to ashes; his effects were adjudged to be the property of the children begotten by him on Martin's wife. The criminal was taken back to Artigues, and, as the day of execution approached, was observed to lose his firmness. After a long interview with the curé, he at last confessed his crime, acknowledging that he was first tempted to commit it by being repeatedly mistaken for and addressed by the name of Martin Guerre; he denied having made use of charms,or of magic, as many suspected, very properly observing that the same supernatural art which could enable him to carry on his deception, would also have put it in his power to escape punishment. He was executed according to his sentence, first addressing a few words to Martin Guerre's wife, and died offering up prayers to the Almighty to pardon his sins, through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ. This singular narrative is authenticated by the respectable evidence of Gayot de Pitaval, and related in good Latin by the worthy Thuanus.

ASCHAM, ANTHONY, an English envoy, employed in 1649 by the long parliament at the court of Madrid, where he was assassinated by six English royalists, who, entering his house as he sat at table with a few friends, planted their daggers in his heart; for this outrage on the law of nations, as well as humanity, the murderers were taken into custody, and some of them executed. With the defeated adherents of King Charles I. this appears to have been a favourite and effectual method of getting rid of their enemies: it was practised, nearly at the same period, on Dorislaus, an English resident at the Hague, and on John Lisle, a commissioner of the great seal during the usurpation of Cromwell. This lawyer, who appears to have taken an active part during those turbulent times, and from whom the editor of this collection is maternally descended, was a native of the Isle of Wight, and sat as member for Winchester, in the parliament which met in 1640. At the Restoration he fled to Lausanne, in Switzerland, where he designed to pass his days in privacy and peace, but was attacked by banditti, of the same livery with the murderers of Ascham and Dorislaus. These brave and honourable men heroically shot him in

the back as he returned from church. His widow survived him, and was beheaded in the reign of King James II., after a long trial, during which Jefferies, the presiding judge, bullied the jury, and insulted an unfortunate woman, whose crime was the having sheltered, in her house at Moylescourt, a fugitive preacher of the name of Hicks.

ASPASIA, an inhabitant of Athens, a contemporary of Socrates and Xenophon, one of the numerous instances of the inefficacy of superior talents to regulate the conduct and guard the heart against the grosser appetites. This extraordinary woman, who devoted her earlier years to licentious pleasure, was roused by ambition, or satiated by enjoyment, and suddenly emerging from infamy and indecorum, won the affections and secured the lasting esteem of Pericles, the hero of his age and country; was respected as the friend, and admired as the companion of all that was illustrious and exalted during the most refined and brilliant period of Grecian history.

Such circumstances excite our curiosity, and we naturally wish to inquire further concerning this fair Milesian, who, with vices which would have banished most women to the lowest dregs of society, boldly claimed and eminently enjoyed that consideration which the world generally and properly bestows on virtuous and correct conduct alone. Athenian matrons, mothers of families, and the wives and daughters of respectable senators and wealthy citizens, repaired without scandal to the entertainments of Aspasia, where society was enlivened by beauty, wit, and wine, while the graces, with loosened zones, presided at her repasts. Exhibiting, early in life, a masculine understanding, and uniting with it a bewitching form, no improvement had been spared which expense and cultivation could bestow; but the same quickness and sensibility which made her progress in acquirement so rapid, rendered her an earlier and easy victim to the tender passions, so often fatal to youth and beauty; too soon they taught her, it was no crime to love. The arts of this accomplished syren must have been wonderfully fascinating, or the domestic life of Pericles, who was already a married man, very uneasy; for, not satisfied with those clandestine snatches of enjoyment, so frequently preferred to the dull routine of lawful affection, he prevailed on his wife to consent to a separation; provided her with another husband, and led Aspasia to the altar; a proceeding which did not escape the comic lash of Cratinus and Aristophanes. Pericles, at first attracted only by beauty, had sought relief in her society from the sameness or the chagrin of matrimony, and expected, after the zest of novelty was dissipated, the usual frivolous superficial nauseating small talk of vicious absurdity. He was, however, agreeably surprised, when he found her well acquainted with the present interests and the past history of her country, and qualified to converse on any subject he introduced, as a scholar, a general, a politician, and a man of taste. With a woman of this description, the giddy raptures of desire were naturally succeeded by warm esteem, by rational attachment; and this great commander, who by arms and influence governed Greece, confessed without reluctance, that he valued Aspasia far beyond all his honours

and all his triumphs; that he was indebted to her for much of the fame and success of his riper years; for the highest intellectual pleasures, as well as the most blissful moments of his life.

If such is the magic charm of beauty without innocence, and accomplishment without correctness of conduct, what might not these gifts of heaven achieve, under the salutary direction of prudence and virtue! How severely ought those women to be censured who misapply instruments which might be so powerfully and effectually exerted in reforming the morals of the world.

ASTLEY, JACK, the son of an apothecary, at Wem, in Shropshire, a well-written sketch of whose life has been given by a writer, often praised, and frequently censured, in this collection. From a country grammar-school, and the tuition of Hudson, a painter now only remembered as the first instructor of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he travelled to Rome, where he finished his education as an artist, and was patronised by Lord Chesterfield. Returning from Italy, he visited Ireland, and, to use a sailor's phrase, worked his passage home; occasionally striking out of the road, as accident, inclination, or interest led the way: a natural and, in this instance, a fortunate attachment to scenes endeared by early habit and youthful impression, tempted him to loiter in his old neighbourhood. He probably was ambitious of convincing his former associates, that the time elapsed since he left them had not been indolently or ineffectually spent; his memory was stored with useful information, his form and manners were improved; he had received the polish of polite intercourse, that unbought grace of life; he had visited regions, and contemplated objects, of which those who listened to him had only read or heard; and, what was of no small importance in his own opinion, as well as in the eyes of others, he travelled in his own post-chaise, accompanied by a French valet in jack-boots, at that period a fashionable novelty. To display ourselves to such advantage, in situations where we have passed unnoticed and lived unknown, or where we have been depressed by churlishness, traduced by envy, or persecuted by malignity, is one of the venial triumphs of human vanity; one of the few satisfactory compensations which wealth and elevation have power to bestow; but it was not Astley's fate to devote his life to oil and canvass. Entering the assembly-room at Knutsford, Lady Duckenfield, the widow of Sir William, was instantly struck with his appearance; the affair has often been mentioned as an instance of sudden love; being properly introduced, his fascinating manners completed a conquest which his person had begun; the lady sat for her picture the next morning, and gave him possession of the original in ten days.

In a few years he lost his wife, whom he always spoke of with tenderness and regret; her daughter by Sir William Duckenfield died soon after; these contingencies put into his possession the fee of a well conditioned estate of five thousand pounds a year. With such an income, the taste of a connoisseur, the passions of an amateur, quick sensibility, a full pulse, and strong nerves; idolised by the women, his company eagerly sought after by the men; we may rather lament than wonder

that he yielded to dissipation and voluptuousness. Yet Astley did not exhibit the gross indiscriminate sensuality of a foul-feeding epicure; and although in six years from the death of Lady Duckenfield, he spent fifty thousand pounds, some allowance from this sacrifice to the loves and graces must be deducted for building, planting, and agricul– tural improvement.

In the course of his professional studies, and during his residence at Rome, he had acquired a taste for architectural proportion and picturesque disposition, uniting with them, what are not always united, domestic accommodation in its highest perfection, social comfort, and practical utility. He found a good house at Duckenfield Lodge, and left it evidently better than he found it; his improvements there, and at Tabley, were remarked for chasteness of conception and correctness of design. His town house, for a short time, was in St. James's-street, where he was succeeded by Bardana Hill, and, if I mistake not, afterwards by Charles Fox; but purchasing an old family residence of Lord Holdernesse, in Pall-Mall, next to Christie's auction-room, he built on the spot three good town-houses; the centre, which he lived in himself, has been since occupied by Cosway, and Dr. Graham; the house adjoining has in later times been made classical ground, by the residence of Mr. Gainsborough, who enriched our saloons with the wild beauties of forest scenery, and decorated our apartments with well selected portraits of trees. The whole was planned and executed by Astley, who, while he yielded a little to the prevalent taste of those days for ornamental foliage, long slender pilasters, and deep cornices, never lost sight of that expressive English term, snug comfort; yet he who is desirous of contrasting the fashion in building of that period, with the present, will soon be convinced of our superiority in simple grace and technical precision, by comparing Mr. Astley's front with the well finished banking-house of Mr Hammersley, lately erected near it, and I believe adjoining to the gateway of the Duke of Marlborough.

The subject of this article has been produced as an instance in proof of what has been sometimes asserted of men liberally and professionally educated, but who have attained affluence early, and not from official perquisite, or a long course of profitable business. Such persons have sometimes been observed to be more desirable associates and pleasanter companions, than those who have lineally succeeded to hereditary fortunes, or those who have procured considerable wealth by successful commerce; the riches of the first being frequently debased by indolent non-exertion, and the independence of the latter too often embittered by old age and incapacity for enjoyment. The parties in both cases, from neglect, or habits formed to other pursuits, have not attained the art of embellishing the blank superficies of private life; the happy art of improving and giving an importance to those numerous trifles which form the sum total of human felicity. The subject of this article has often been heard to confess, that the first hundred pounds his pencil produced, gave him more substantial heart-felt pleasure, as the fair produce of self-exertion, than all the splendour and wealth of the after part of his life. Yet, great as was his success, and eminent his accomplishments, he