Journal

witness for the prosecution, declined, for a similar reason, to answer any question relating to the occurrence he had witnessed, having been cautioned by the Lord High Steward that he need not do so to his own incrimination.

The evidence was closed for the prosecution; but it was apparent that the counsel for the Crown were in a dilemma. The evidence pointed clearly to the shooting by the Earl of Captain Harvey Tuckett, whereas the indictment alleged the crime against him of shooting one Harvey Garnett Phipps Tuckett. The identity of the two persons had not been proved with the particularity then required by the inexorable law of evidence; the flaw was that technically called a variance. Here, then, was an unexpected loophole for escape, which was seized immediately by the noble prisoner's astute counsel, Sir W. Follett. He took the objection at once. It was insisted in reply by the Attorney-general-afterwards Lord Campbell-for the Crown, that surely it was unnecessary to produce and prove the prosecutor's baptismal certificate! On the other hand, it was contended that if strict proof of identity were not required, a man might be executed for the murder of a person whom he An elaborate and fearned argument ensued there and then on the whole point. Strangers were ordered to withdraw, including the noble prisoner; and the House proceeded to deliberate upon the case, the spiritual lords withdrawing by leave, according to custom. When the doors were again opened, the Lord High Steward was questioning each peer separately, beginning with the junior Baron; and he proceeded through the long list of Viscounts, Earls, Marquises, and Dukes in the following form: 'Thomas Lord Monteagle of Brandon. How says your lordship? Is James Thomas, Earl of Cardigan, guilty of this felony whereof he stands indicted, or not?' Whereupon each peer rose in his turn, and placing his right hand upon his breast, said: 'Not guilty, upon my honour.'

never saw.

When the question was put to the Duke of Cleveland, His Grace said, with emphasis: 'Not guilty, legally, upon my honour.' The last peer called was the Duke of Cambridge.

Their lordships, including the Lord High Steward himself, had unanimously resolved that the Earl was not guilty of the crime alleged.

The Serjeant-at-Arms then said: "Yeoman Usher, call in James Thomas, Earl of Cardigan;' and His Lordship was placed outside the bar.

Thereupon, the Lord High Steward addressing him, said: James Thomas, Earl of Cardigan, you have been indicted for a felony, for which you have been tried by your peers; and I have the satisfaction of informing you, you have been found not guilty by a unanimous sentence; and you are discharged."

The Earl of Cardigan at once bowed and retired. His remarkable trial was at an end.

Proclamation was made to dissolve the Commission; and His Grace the Lord High Steward, standing in front of the Throne, received his white staff again from the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod; he held it in both hands, and broke it in two, thus dissolving the Commission. The Lord High Steward's office was thereupon vacant; and my lords immediately adjourned.

Captain Douglas, the Earl's second, was after

wards acquitted on the same grounds, on a similar indictment as an accessory, at the Old Bailey. But though the prosecution of the Earl was abortive, the case yet bore some fruitful result; for attention had been drawn by it to a remarkable personal privilege which was still available for His Lordship, though it had been dormant very many years. It was rumoured amongst the lawyers, that if the Earl had been convicted, he would claim the benefit of the peerage, to avoid his punishment, transportation for life; and this new phase in the case heightened the extreme interest felt in the trial.

'His Lordship's privilege' in this respect was somewhat similar to the benefit of clergy, which had been previously abolished in the year 1827, and which ancient right enabled those who could read to claim, under certain conditions, immunity from the legal punishment for their offences. The benefit of peerage arose out of the statute first Edward VI. cap. 12, sec. 13, which gave immunity to peers and peeresses, on their conviction for felony, though they could not read-not an uncommon fact in the sixteenth century; and it appears by the old reported cases, that on the privilege being claimed, a peer was instantly discharged by the Court from punishment upon payment of his fees. He could, however, claim this privilege of the statute but once only. Its effect was simply to set aside punishment; as a convicted felon, his lands, goods, and chattels were still forfeited to the Crown. But the statute seventh and eighth George IV. cap. 28, abolishing benefit of clergy, did not mention in terms the benefit of peerage; and the point, it was said, was arguable that a peer was not deprived of it. The rumours respecting this privilege soon reached the ears of the Lord Chancellor, Lord Cottenham, who shortly afterwards introduced a Bill repealing the old Act of Edward VI., and declaring once and for all, that on conviction for felony, every peer shall be liable to the same punishment for felony as any other of Her Majesty's subjects, notwithstanding any law or usage to the contrary; and this Bill passed into the statute-book on the 21st June 1841, as the fourth and fifth Victoria, cap. 22.

A laudable result certainly, that the Lords and Peers of Parliament, of their free-will and motive, should have unanimously deprived themselves of one of their ancient personal privileges !

VALENTINE STRANGE.

A STORY OF THE PRIMROSE WAY.

CHAPTER II.—'THE BLIND BOW-BOY'S BUTT-SHAFT.' ON the western coast of England, there is a narrow bay which is bounded on each side by a headland of igneous rock. The smaller and more northerly headland is locally known as Daffin Head; and the larger headland on the southern side of the bay is called Welbeck Head. For some half mile, Welbeck Head runs gently up from the mainland, its grass growing sparser, and its prehistoric old bones declaring themselves more plainly, until you come upon broken rocks with no other covering than lichen, and then go on by paths which increase in difficulty for another half mile. There, suddenly, you reach a bit of seeming fairyland-Welbeck Hollow. A carpet of green turf, soft and fine, is belted by trees;

and above the topmost branches rise the veritable bones of old earth, lichen-spotted and hoary with rain and sunshine-the rain and the sunshine of thousands of years. In the centre of the grassy space is one great isolated rock; the tombstone, as the country legends tell, of a beautiful young Princess buried there by a cruel magician. The perennial tears of the beautiful Princess flow from the southern side of this vast

boulder in a sparkling stream, which brawls inland for a mile, and then returning, ends its brief life in salt waters.

Beyond the Hollow, the Head grows precipitate and even terrible. It is tall enough to bathe its hoary forehead now and then in storm, and can push a bare defiant scalp at the very thunders. It rises like a wall on the seaward side, and overhangs a little, as though it threatened to tumble headlong. Nervous tourists keep clear of its edge; and even strong-headed people, tempted to lie prone there and venture one look sheer down to the wrinkled sea, have confessed to something of a thrill of fear.

On its southerly side the Head has neither terrors nor splendours. It slopes quietly to the mainland meadows, and bears on its wide bosom a pleasant park and a quiet country mansion. This quiet country mansion is called 'Lumby Hall; and men, women, and children bearing the name of Lumby have lived there almost from time immemorial. The Lumbies were always a solid household, reverencing the wisdom of our ancestors, and believing blood to be thicker than water. They were a quiet and inoffensive people; but they were known to be hard and implacable in enmity. If you had a Lumby for a friend -all the Lumbies were proud of this, and made it an honourable tradition, to be maintained at all hazards-you had a friend who would stick by you like a brother. But if you had a Lumby for an enemy-the Lumbies were proud of this also, and made an honourable tradition of ityou had to face an enemy not to be appeased or conciliated; a man relentless, unreasoning, who hated you root and branch, you and yours to the ninety-ninth relationship.

The elder Lumby had inherited this nature, and had transmitted it to his son. They both took a pride in it, and were pleased to think that it was English. That was old Lumby's sacred shibboleth. If the Standard-he was a staunch Conservative-told him that a thing was un-English, he voted against it in the House of Commons, in whose collective wisdom he furnished a unit. He liked good old English sports and pastimes; and without having a grain of vulgar cruelty in his nature, he would have welcomed the return of cock-shying and bullbaiting, simply because those sports were oldfashioned, and had once been popular in this island. He mourned over the gradual evanishment of the good old English penal laws; he drank unwittingly much good old English port. That, he believed, had a continental origin, and it was one of the few things he did not disdain on that account. He was not in the direct line of the good old county house whose name he bore, but had inherited the estates from a childless uncle. The city Lumbies, of whom he was the head, had always been a little despised by the county Lumbies; but the county Lumbies

had died out, and the city branch ruled in their stead. Mr Lumby had gradually released himself from the toils of labour; and though he would not accept the position of a sleeping-partner, he had exercised of late years but little supervision over the doings of the firm, and was not much more than its nominal head, except that he drew the lion's share of its profits.

Gerard Lumby the younger, with whom this history has much to do, was cut by nature on the lines of the paternal pattern; but the world being thirty years older when he came into it than it had been at his father's birth, his social and political conservatisms were of a milder type. He walked homeward with the Yankee's odd-sounding name in his mind, and smiled to think of the quaint earnestness with which the fellow had promised help in any day of need. Taking the way by the lane, the youth whistled as he went, out of mere jollity and youth. By-and-by he was met by an open carriage, drawn by two handsome chestnuts, driven by a fat coachman, of rubicund countenance, who wore an exceedingly crisp and curly wig. lane was so confined, that Gerard had either to retreat, or to mount a bank on one side or another. He chose the readier alternative; and laying his disjointed rod on the grass, he leaped upon the mound, caught a sturdy overhanging ash-branch, and waited for the carriage to go by. From this height of vantage, he saw that it had one occupant, a lady, who carried a sun-shade, and carried it in such a position that her face was hidden.

The

Now, Gerard knew, or supposed he knew, everybody who kept a carriage within ten miles; but this equipage was strange to him. A thing of that sort is matter of interest in the country, and he wondered who the lady might be. She, while yet a dozen yards away, saw from beneath her sunshade one of Gerard's feet swinging clear of the mound, in readiness to drop when the carriage should have passed; and coming out of the pretty silken shelter to see to whom the foot belonged, herself became visible. The average of beauty in these favoured islands is high, and Gerard had seen pretty faces in plenty. People who live in the west of England need not travel far to look for feminine charms; but Gerard had never seen anything to approach this new vision. She was charmingly dressed, but somewhat quaintly, and she wore a profusion of lace. So much Gerard could have told you, and no more, for he was as ignorant of millinery as I am. Her face was beautiful, and not with any merely common type of loveliness, but with that soft yet haughty splendour which belongs alone to some few Englishwomen, and is at once loftier and more charming than any form the Greeks have left us. Millais might have painted it, and made himself twice immortal; but no mere marble could have carried more than half its charm.

The lady at a guess might be twenty. Gerard was five-and-twenty. The unknown beauty shot one shaft at him in passing, and sent it barbed with a smile. A queenly little inclination of the head acknowledged the trouble the passing carriage gave him. Off came Gerard's hat in a moment, leaving his crisp curled hair and

a

frank forehead open to the view. With one foot planted on the grassy bank, and the other swinging loose, the strong brown left hand stretched freely out to grasp the bough-the attitude was as graceful as that of Mercury new lighted. The young lady's eyes regarded him with demure admiration for a second, and then she hid herself with her sunshade, and the sun seemed shaded from Gerard's eyes.

It is very natural for young men of five-andtwenty to fall in love; and it is in accordance with the decrees of Nature that some of them should do it suddenly, without prescience, premonition, or warning, and indeed in barefaced defiance of all likelihood. The ways of falling in love are as various as the natures of men and women. Some, of the critical, cautious, and unimaginative sort, are inclined to set down love at first sight as a figment of the poet's and the novelist's invention. But there is an actual moment of time-if it could only be caughtat which anything has its beginning; and though I, for one, have not much faith in the raptures of passion which take rise at a single glance, I nevertheless have seen enough of love and lovers to believe that even one glance may slay all chances of bachelorhood and spinsterhood in a pair of youthful lives. Here it was not two but one that fell, and even he did not now begin to guess that he was wounded.

Our youthful Gerard was not much of a hand at the poets and fictionists; and being hit with "the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft,' took to wondering what was the matter. Had he been given to verse-making, he might have gone home to write a sonnet about his vision, and so have fanned love's little flame into a premature fire, which should have died for want of fuel. As it was, he took up his rod, and sauntered along the lane with the beautiful face before him, not consciously or intentionally recalling it, yet renewing his passing glimpse of it again and again, almost as if by actual sight. The queenly head just bent a little, the lovely face smiling, the violet eyes turned upwards, still holding him in sight while the head bowed- My poor Gerard, you are a smitten man. And who amongst us, from whose topmost head the thickset hazel dies,' would not have changed places with you, if it were but for a month or two, an hour or two, a mere five minutes, to be young again, and once again in love?

So Gerard strolled home, and the beautiful face bore him company. The broken-haired terrier hailed him with a voice of joy, and careered about him in wild circles; but meeting with no response to outspoken affection, followed disconsolately at a distance with his moist tail between his legs. Through the gates, with their crumbling pillars of gray stone bearing the Lumby arms, along the shady avenue, and across the trim-kept lawn, the beautiful face bore Gerard company. He sat down, and smoked a pipe in its society; but feeling, somehow, a little restless, he arose, and with no definite idea of action, strolled round to the stables.

'Gerard!' cried a pleasant girlish voice; and the young man turning, saw a pretty sight-a young lady, namely, of some eighteen years, fresh and bright and happy, with a face in which innocence and piquancy charmingly blended.

'Well, Milly?' said Gerard. 'We have had visitors this afternoon whilst you were away,' she said. 'Guess who they were.'

'Who were they?' asked Gerard languidly, trying to get up a show of interest. "Guess,' she said.

Gerard, with his hands in his pockets, his hat drooping over one eye, and his pipe stuck in one corner of his mouth, looked like a protest against intellectual effort. But he responded gallantly to the challenge. 'Val Strange?' 'No.'

"Then I give it up,' said lazy Gerard. 'Guess again.'

'Milly,' said Gerard appealingly, 'don't you think it's too hot for guesswork? Who was

it?'

Our new neighbours,' said Milly, nodding gaily. 'Mr Jolly and his daughter. And, Gerard, I think she's the most beautiful girl I ever saw! And she wore such lovely lace! Gerard flushed a little.-'And Mr Jolly,' pursued Milly with great vivacity, 'is a little man, with a face like a Normandy pippin-brown and shrivelled, you know. And they're going to give a big dinner and a ball, and we're all invited!'

'Great news, eh, Milly?' said Gerard.

'And,' said Milly, in breathless pursuit of her theme, they have such a coachman, Gerard, in such a wig, and a wonderful port-wine face like an old-fashioned vintner; and I'm so sorry you missed them, for they have only been gone an hour.'

Gerard had begun to put things together. Yet what had he to blush for? 'I met a young lady in a carriage just now,' he said; 'but she was alone.'

'Oh,' said Milly, 'Mr Jolly came on horseback. He is an old friend of the Mortons, and has gone to Daffin Head to see the General.'

'M-m,' said Gerard, blushing again, through all his assumption of indifference. "Carriage I met was a landau. Pair of chestnuts, very handsome horses. Very fat coachman. Rather a pretty girl inside.'

'O Gerard!' cried Milly, 'what a shame to call her "rather pretty." She's beautiful. I never saw anybody half so lovely, even in a picture.'

'Perhaps,' said Gerard, making much pretence of cleaning the stem of his pipe with a stalk of grass-perhaps I saw some other young woman.'

""Young woman indeed! Why, you know everybody else for miles.'-Ladies fire those quaint conversational double-shots at times. And I'm sure if I were a man, I should have fallen in love with her at first sight.'

'But being a young woman,' said Gerard, repeating the obnoxious phrase, 'your notions of manly conduct are not valuable.'

'Perhaps not,' said Milly. 'But I wish you had been here to meet them.'

'I shall see them at the feed,' said Gerard, still very busy with his pipe, and turning more than half away from Milly. What had he to blush for? It made him almost angry with himself that he should be so foolish.

'All you Oxford men are vulgar,' said Milly with decision. 'You speak of a dinner as though

you were horses. You call a ball "a hop," and you talk of money as "rhino" and the "stumpy." I wouldn't talk slang, if I were a man.'

'But being a young woman,' said Gerard, repeating himself, your notions of manly conduct are not valuable.'

'And, O Gerard!' exclaimed the young lady, 'it's my first ball; and will you practise the deux temps with me?'

As much as you like,' said Gerard. "Thank you,' said Milly. That is kind. The ball is this day six weeks; and I am to wear'Then the young lady drove into millinery detail; and Gerard having conquered the imaginary obstacle in his pipe, recovered composure, and listened with a good-humoured smile, understanding nothing.

'And very nice you'll look in it,' he said; 'and I wish you lots of partners.'

'Aunt is going to return the visit this day week,' said Milly. 'I am going as well.'

'All right,' said Gerard.-'I say, Milly! I'm going up to town next week. There are jewellers in town. Who knows? I might find a bracelet, or a necklace, or a pair of earrings, or something of that kind. Eh?'

'O Gerard,' cried Milly, 'you are kind!' 'Not a word about it now,' said Gerard in grave badinage. "The governor might stop my allowance if he heard of such extravagance. Mum's the word !'

Milly nodded with a grave face and sparkling eyes; and Gerard, with an answering nod of the head, strolled on to the stables. When he was alone again, the beautiful face came back to him, and he sauntered on solemnly, thinking of the coming dinner and the ball, and wondering with a surprising interest whether the young lady would remember him. He was absent-minded and silent through the quiet family dinner that evening, though Cupid's butt-shaft did not yet so rankle in him as to spoil his appetite. His mother, a sedate lady of six-and-forty, large and matronly, with honest gray eyes like Gerard's own, remarked his preoccupied looks; but his appetite appeased her fears. Mr Lumby senior was nursing his first gout, and was free from the toils of the House of Commons for the remainder of the session. He drank mineral waters at dinner; and though he looked with longing eyes at the decanters and the claret jug, he suppressed himself like a hero. Between Gerard's preoccupation and his sire's grievance at the mineral waters, the table was very silent.

'Father,' said Gerard suddenly, 'I think I shall ride over and see Val Strange to-night.'

'Why?' asked the elder briefly.

'Rupert is getting a little thick about the legs,' said Gerard, referring to his favourite horse. 'And it's just the night for a quiet ride. I left a portmanteau and dressing-case there, so that there's no need to take anything with me.'

'All right, my lad,' said Lumby senior heartily. Come back to-morrow.'

'Of course,' said Gerard; and having kissed his father and mother, he went his way. The good-night kiss in this old-fashioned household was a habit carried on between father and son from Gerard's childhood, and was always followed

his pretty little second-cousin, though perhaps you and I might have chosen Milly's lips in preference to those of Lumby senior. But possibly Milly might have resented us.

He

The blind boy's butt-shaft rankled, though ever so little. That curious longing for solitude, that almost unconscious desire to be alone with fancy, which assails the least imaginative of men under Love's earliest influences, was upon him. started briskly enough; and Rupert's pace would have overtaken the halting Hiram's steps before the gates of the Manor House were reached; but Gerard had not gone far, when he suffered his half-formed dreams to run away with him. The reins dropped loose on the horse's neck. The swift trot became a leisurely walk. The shadows gathered closer, flowing on from the east in dim pursuit of the descending sun, and Gerard was in the narrow lane again waiting for the carriage to go by, and looking down for one brief second, a thousand times recalled, into a pair of wonderful violet eyes, that smiled and then were hidden.

But at this period of its existence, Love has its impatience, its little bursts of temper, and its sudden longings for swift motion, as well as its liking for dreams. Rupert, not being in his master's confidence, was astonished at the sudden dig of the spur; but after one angry curvet, he laid himself out for speed, and dashed along the level high-road at a rattling pace. He drew rein at the town, and went through its dimly lighted main street at a sufficiently sober pace; but he made Rupert lay himself out again along the stretch of road between town and Manor House, and had so roused the blood of the thoroughbred by this last spin, that he had as much as he could do to hold him in hand when he reached the darkened avenue.

'Look yere!' said a voice from the darkness. 'Say which side o' the way you want to hev, an' I'll take the other.'

'Is that you again?' asked Gerard, recognising the voice.

'Good-evenin', Colonel,' said Hiram, recognising Gerard in turn.

'You have delivered the letter? Or are you going now?'

'I hev been thar,' said Hiram, reminiscent of Dr Watts's hymns; 'but I cannot say I still would go.'

'Why not?' said Gerard. 'What's the matter?' 'Wal, Colonel,' returned Hiram, 'Mr Strange's flunkey is a deal too over-cooked for my taste.'

'What is the matter with him?' asked Gerard.

'If you're goin' thar,' returned Hiram, 'you can make inquiries into the natur of his complaint yourself. An' it's like master like man, up thar, Colonel. I reckon, though, as you're another sort from that kind, an' I wish you good luck, sir, an' piles of it. Good-night.'

"Good-night,' said Gerard, and rode on.

Hoskins answered the bell in wrath, being persuaded that the tramp had returned. 'Well, now, what is it?' he demanded, opening the door and confronting the visitor with an air of lofty scorn. Then beholding Gerard, to whom he was indebted for countless tips, he abased himself inwardly, and made excuses. 'I beg your parding, sir,' said Hoskins with much humility;

屯