"Oh no, it is not too late, my father, if you will but listen to me; you do not know what has taken place since yesterday-you are not aware that I am governor-general of Flanders, and private governor of Lisle you see that I cannot be flogged-you would dishonour the glorious titles I bear-you would offend the king. Pity, pity, not only pity, but justice-you remain silent. Reverend fathers, join your entreaties to mine to the prior for a transmutation of punishment."

As he spoke, the poor child ran to and fro in the apartment, a prey to the most violent agitation. Addressing the different monks by name, he wept and prayed, and ended by falling, overcome with grief, at the feet of the father prior.

Hardened as were the Jesuits, and inured to scenes of sorrow, they were moved at this, and even the Father Arsenius let fall the instrument of torture; but at a sign of the inexorable prior's, he resumed it, and seizing upon his victim, began to inflict the brutal

sentence.

Whilst he was going through his rigorous duty, the faint voice of the lad was heard, exclaiming,

"I am governor-general of Flanders-I am private governor of Lisle." These words were like the faint echo of that sublime sentence bequeathed to us by antiquity, and the child recalled to mind the freeman who, condemned to die the death of the slave, expired, exclaiming, "I am a Roman citizen."

Just as the tired arm of the executioner let fall his instrument, a faint knock was heard at the door, and a lay-brother having entered, informed the prior, in a low voice, that two persons wished to see the Marquis of Boufflers.

"What are their names?

"The Duke of Coigny and the Duchess of Saint-Cerest."

However low their names had been whispered, they reached the ear of the young marquis, who swooned at their sound. They had wounded his soul, and given the death-blow to both his love and pride -his heart was broken.

The following day, a carriage bearing the arms of France, drove into the courtyard of the Hôtel de Boufflers, and a gentleman in waiting, who alighted from it, was immediately ushered into the old warrior's pre

sence.

"My lord marshal, the king having learned your son's illness and its cause, has addressed a severe remonstrance to the prior of the Jesuit college. His majesty has requested me to tell your lordship all the interest he takes in your son, and to inquire how he is to-day."

The marshal only replied by his tears, and taking the king's gentleman by the hand, conducted him into the adjacent chamber, where, seated by a bed of death, were the Duke of Coigny and Madame de Saint-Cerest-the corpse was that of the young marquis.

The following August two events created a great deal of sensation at court. One was the marriage of Madame de Saint-Cerest to the Duke of Coigny, and the other the death of the old Marshal Boufflers.

THE VERDICT OF THE WORLD.

BY MRS. GORE.

Judge not that ye be not judged.

AMONG Our minor garrisons of the Mediterranean, one which I must be permitted to define under the comprehensive name of used to enjoy, five-and-twenty years ago, a far from enviable reputation. The climate was pronounced to be unhealthy, the colony odious; one of those united populations of Greek, Italian, English, and nondescript, which poverty, dirt, bigotry, and a harbour, amalgamate into every thing that is unrecommendable. Though the island was known to be diversified by lovely scenery, and the bay to afford attraction to yachting dandies, a regiment under orders for was sure to

exhaust itself in grumbling previous to embarkation; and if it happened to contain a stray honourable or baronet, Sir George or Sir Thomas, or the Honourable Lionel So-and-so, was equally sure to be gazetted into some Brightonized regiment of hussars, "vice Lieutenant John. Brown, or Ensign Thomas Smith, who exchanges."

In process of time, however, the Thomas Smiths and John Browns so exchanging began to describe the colony, in their letters homeward bound, in such glowing terms, that it became clear a golden age had dawned for the garrison. The climate had become salubrious-the roads excellent - the society pleasant; with cricket-matches and races, private theatricals and balls in due season, to enliven the tedium of exile. It was observed, moreover, that the English yachts dropping anchor in the lovely little bay, appeared to find far more difficulty in getting under weigh again, than at Athens or Valeka.

These improvements were of course ascribable to the influence of a guardian genius, in the shape of a governor. Sir George Harcourt was a man of good fortune, good sense, and good temper; who, thus secured against the two sunken rocks of governors and governmenthouses in military colonies-viz., stinginess, in order to lay by fortunes for a young family, or prodigality in order to conciliate the good word of fashionable cruisers-devoted himself to promote the welfare

of

Like all reformers, his early efforts were hailed with considerable dissatisfaction on the part of a lazy colonel of engineers, who had been undergoing a slow process of desiccation for the preceding ten years, under the influence of the tropical sun and a tertian ague; and reports were privately despatched home, of a terrible mortality among the troops under the command of Lieutenant-general Sir George Harcourt, K.C.B. produced in the process of draining a fetid marsh adjoining the town, and improving the harbour.

At the close of five years, however, the lazy colonel became superannuated, and Sir George Harcourt had thenceforward the comfort of a more active coadjutor. The town prospered. Its commerce was nearly doubled; and the white and sun-baked walls of with

the striped awnings of its balconies, assumed a more cheerful aspect as the population became healthy and active.

All this time, the governor had been leading a bachelor-life, which

perhaps tended not a little to its activity and usefulness. He had originally accepted the appointment as an excuse for escaping from England and the grief of losing a beloved wife; and the two little daughters bequeathed by her to his affection had been ever since at school, under the authority of his maiden sister.

More than once, indeed, he had visited his native_country in the interim, to enjoy a sight of his two promising girls. But he loved them too well to desire that they should share his exile till their education was completed, and brought to the degree of amelioration in

dispensable to their welfare.

The Harcourt family, however, was unanimous in advising, as Emma and Sophia approached their sixteenth and seventeenth years, that he should resign his appointment and settle with them in England. But the general was unpersuadable. During the ten years he had resided at the colony had become, as it were, a third child to him! He loved it with all the force of the favours he had conferred upon the place; and as the two girls had luckily imbibed from their father's letters considerable interest in his seat of government, so far from regarding a sojourn there as banishment, they were enchanted at the thoughts of accompanying Sir George to the Mediterranean, at the close of a London season in which he had visited England in order to witness Sophia's presentation at court.

Even Aunt Martha, who had made sundry difficulties about undertaking so unspinster-like a change as to preside over the government-house of a military colony, at length consented to accompany the dear girls, rather than leave them exposed to the perils and dangers of so trying a situation.

Thanks to the facilitation of steam, the voyage was happily accomplished; and for many weeks succeeding their arrival, the half Oriental beauties of that lovely island transported the inexperienced English girls into the regions of romance. They were quite ready to subscribe to the opinion of the Ensign Smiths and Lieutenant Browns, that was a paradise upon earth!

Aunt Martha, unluckily, was far from sharing their opinion. The handsome tranquillity of her villa at Campden Hill had not prepared her for the drummings and fifings, the parades, and morning and evening guns, of military government, and she had not been a month in the garrison before the sight of a red coat was as much a source of ire and irritation to her as to a turkey-cock.

It was in vain that she discharged against her excellent brother her quivers of maidenly pruderies. More amused than angry, he would not hear of depriving himself of the society of his darling girls, and immuring them in Mahommedan seclusion, because he was occasionally surrounded with handsome aides-de-camp, and gallant brigademajors.

"I don't ask you to appear at table on public days," said he, in reply to Aunt Martha's lamentations over the destiny of her nieces. "I don't want you or the girls to figure at reviews. But I have lived too long debarred from their company to coincide in your wish that they should reside all the year round at Santa Chiara, instead of the government-house. No, no!-In the hot season, we will all remove to the villa together, and, in winter-time, remain together at

Last

The girls will enjoy themselves mightily, I make no doubt. Christmas, the officers of the -th, got up the "School for Scandal" in first-rate style; and though the Greek ladies might not pass muster at Almacks, I promise you, that the ball of the French consul, last winter, was one of the prettiest entertainments I ever saw in my life!"

"But all these officers, my dear brother! perpetually officerswhichever way one turns, nothing but officers!"'

"What then?-Am I not an officer myself? and a more gentlemanly set of young men than those under my command, I defy you to produce. Has any one of them done any thing to offend you, sister?" Aunt Martha, whose ungraciousness had prevented a single officer of the garrison from approaching her within two hundred paces, resented the supposition with becoming dignity.

of

"I only mean to say," she resumed, "that I understand there is no call upon you to entertain at your table, as you do, all the subalterns in succession; or at all events, none to compel your daughters and myself to appear at table in these heterogeneous parties." "My dear sister Martha," cried Sir George, more peremptorily than he was in the habit of addressing her, "I make it a rule to behave towards the young men in this garrison, who are recommended to me either by private introduction or their personal merit, as I should wish a son of my own to be treated, under the same circumstances. With respect to the girls, I think too highly of their taste and principles to suppose their affections at the mercy of the first good-looking fellow in epaulettes who tries to make himself acceptable; and flatter myself I command too much respect here, to admit of any officer of the garrison pressing upon them attentions that are unacceptable. They are a soldier's daughters, and consequently, not above becoming soldiers' wives; and though you fancy that Sophy has a sneaking kindness for her cousin Gerard Harcourt, now that she is out of the way of seeing his fine park, and reading his fine speeches, it would not surprise me. at all if she were to-"

"Now, my dear, dear George! For goodness' sake do not threaten me again with that horrible aide-de-camp of yours-that dreadful Captain Orde," cried the prim maiden lady.

66

"How

Pho, pho, pho! I only reserve Bob Orde to frighten you with, when you put on your stiffest buckram!" cried her brother. do you know that I was not going to talk about Lord Algernon Spray, or some other of the milk-and-water yachting sprigs of nobility of whom you are so fond ?"

Aunt Martha soon saw that her case was hopeless. The habits of the frank-hearted soldier were unreformable. To his social roundtable, the young men of the garrison were successively invited; and the consequence was that the two accomplished girls they were permitted to approach so nearly, had no difficulty in discerning how few among them possessed the refinement of manners and cultivation of mind that might have rendered their society dangerous. Many a showy captain, attractive enough when viewed from a distance, lost all charm in crossing the magic threshold of the drawing-room of the government-house.

On the other hand, the governor's two handsome and pleasing daugh

ters became of course the divinities of the island. With half the attractions they exhibited, the popularity of Sir George's family was pre-assured. But they possessed merit inherent as well as inherited: and it came to pass that the letters to England of the Lieutenant Browns and the Ensign Smiths, as well as the revelations of dandy yachters and fashionable tourists described in such glowing colours the cheerfulness of a winter at —, and the beauties of the villa of Santa Chiara, that now, instead of the Honourable Lionels selling out of a regiment ordered to that orange-growing colony, commissions were at a considerable premium!

By degrees even Aunt Martha reconciled herself to "the spirit-stirring drum and ear-piercing fife ;" and had founded a variety of little benevolences in the garrison, tending to prove that with all her antipathy to the red-coats, their wives and families were as acceptable to her Good-Samaritanism as those of Campden Hill. She was perhaps the more encouraged to humanity because neither her own apprehensions nor the predictions of the general had been verified. So far from showing the smallest favour to her father's jolly aide-de-camp, Sophia was as faithful as ever to the debates, and the framed and glazed portrait of Harcourt Hall which hung in her dressing-room at Santa Chiara; while as to Emma, she seemed to take no more heed of the gallant-th, and th, than if they had been a confraternity of Capuchins.

It happened that while spending their second summer at Santa Chiara (a charming marine villa at the back of the island, to which only a few of the more favoured officers were invited by Sir George), an accident of a serious nature befel the government steam-packet as it entered the harbour of ; and the next time Captain Orde (the jolly aide-de-camp so much an object of abhorrence to Aunt Martha) visited the villa, he was vehement in praise of the presence of mind and gallantry displayed on the occasion by a certain Captain Seton, who was come out to join the -th, and had, on the sad occasion, lost all his baggage, and preserved several lives.

"Who is he-what is he?" was the universal exclamation; to which Bob Orde, who was a privileged favourite with Sir George,' was pleased to answer that he was "a deuced good-looking fellow,-but shy and sentimental as a girl."

"Which means, probably, that he is a young man of modest and amiable manners!" retorted Aunt Martha.

"All that, and a trifle more, my dear madam!" cried the jolly aidede-camp. "It means that though Seton must have been reduced to grievous shifts by his want of shirts, and other deficiencies arising from the loss of his baggage, not one of us could get him to accept the smallest civility at our wardrobes ! Though reduced to linen as coarse as a mainsail, he has persisted in holding us at bay."

"Did he bring letters to me?" inquired Sir George, not noticing the glum looks of his sister.

"To no one!" replied the aide-de-camp. "He got into the regiment I fancy through the Horse-guards. He seems a gentlemanly man and smart officer, which, at present, is all we know of him."

The first

Before a month elapsed, however, they knew much more. time Sir George Harcourt visited, he was so captivated by all