her in his weakness, and laid his long feeble arms round her as she sat hiding her face. "Mother! don't say that. I must have been mad. Not what I would have made you out”. Oh, my poor Will, my boy, my darling!" said Mary, "not you I never meant you!" And she clasped her boy close, and held him to her, not knowing what she meant. And then she roused herself to sudden recollection of his feebleness, and took him back to his sofa, and brooded over him like a bird over her nest. And after awhile Islay came in, bringing fresh air and news, and a breath from the outer world. And poor Will's heart being still so young, and having at last touched the depths, took a rebound and came up, not like, and yet not unlike the heart of a little child. From that time his moodiness, his heavy brow, his compressed lip, grew less apparent, and out of his long ponderings with himself there came sweeter fruits. He had been on the edge of a precipice, and he had not known it; and now that after the danger was over he had discovered that danger, such a thrill came over him as comes sometimes upon those who are the most foolhardy in the moment of peril. He had not seen the blackness of the pit nor the terror of it until he had escaped. But probably it was a relief to all, as it was a great relief to poor Will, when his doctor proposed a complete change for him, and a winter in the South. Mary had moved about very little since she brought her children home from India, and her spirit sank before the thought of travel in foreign parts, and among unknown tongues. But she was content when she saw the light come back to her boy's eye. And when he was well enough to move, they went away *They went to San Remo, if any one would like to know, for no particular reason that I can tell, except that the beloved physician, Dr. Antonio, has thrown the shield of his protection over that pic turesque little place, with its golden orange groves and its delicious sea. together, Will and his mother, Mary and her boy. He was the one who needed her most. And when Hugh and Nelly were married the Percivals sent the little bride a present, very pretty, and of some value, which the Ochterlonys in general accepted as a peaceoffering. Winnie's letter which accompanied it was not, however, very peaceful in its tone. "I daresay you think yourself very happy, my dear," Winnie wrote, "but I would not advise him to calculate upon too much happiness. I don't know if we were ever meant for that. Mary, who is the best woman among us, has had a terrible deal of trouble; and I, whom perhaps you will think one of the worst, have not been let off any more than Mary. I wonder often, for my part, if there is any meaning at all in it. am not sure that I think there is. And you may tell Mrs. Kirkman so if you like. My love to Aunt Agatha, and if you like you can kiss Hugh for me. He always was my favourite among all the boys." Poor Aunt Agatha heard this letter with a sigh. She said, "My dear love, it is only Winnie's way. She always liked to say strange things, but she does not think like that." And perhaps on the whole it was Aunt Agatha that was worst off in the end. She was left alone when the young creatures paired, as was natural, in the spring; and when the mother Mary went away with her boy. Aunt Agatha had no child left to devote herself to; and it was very silent in the Cottage, where she sat for hours with nothing more companionable than the Henri-Deux ware, Francis Ochterlony's gift, before her eyes. And Sir Edward was very infirm that year. But yet Miss Seton found a consolation that few people would have thought of in the Henri-Deux, and before the next winter Mary was to come home. And she had always her poor people and her letters, and the Kirtell singing softly under its dewy braes. THE END. ever, From the Spectator, Nov. 24. THE COMING CRISIS IN ROME. way, and the single answer to the final appeal from France, from Italy, and from Rome, has been an allocution declaring that they shall be blessed when they have humbly acknowleded their sin. The oppos be face to face without any barrier between them, and then- even the few cool English observers who know the Vatican and Rome as it is known only to Cardinals and the secret police of Florence, seem inclined to give way to fear, and anticipate a catastrophe which will rouse the whole Catholic world. THE Continental papers, English Tory journals, the Morning Advertiser, and most old women in Islington, are busily speculating forces, therefore, must in a few weeks ing on what Mr. Gladstone can possibly be doing in Rome. Is he about to convert the Pope or to turn Cardinal, to build up the temporal power or to denounce the Papal prisons, to act as Grand Referendary of the Conclave, or to bid for old china on the dispersion of the collections in the Vatican? We are authorized to explain the mystery which so vexes the souls of the faithful few In the remnant of the Roman States, inwho still believe that a visit to Rome is not deed, there is little, we are told, to dread. the best of all possible prophylactics against There are no troops, and although the Romanism. Mr. Gladstone is doing nothing fanatics in the Roman Government are in Rome. He is not playing any part what- organizing the brigands under the title of but is simply seated an honoured spec- Auxiliary Companies, still brigands rob tator in the stage box, and watching from much more comfortably when they are not that post of vantage the most exciting dra under organization. The moment the ma of modern times, the death struggle of French troops depart, terror will compel the oldest government on earth, the new the landed proprietors to organize a nationdevelopment of its only spiritual power. al guard, which will pronounce the districts As the fifth act draws slowly on- even first independent and then Italian. The death cannot be hurried in Rome - the troops of the monarchy, too, which are interest of the audience becomes absorbing, gathering in a solid ring round the frontier, the listeners hold their breath lest a whis- could interfere to put down agrarian insurper should escape, and even the English rection without risk of recalling the French show signs of that emotion, that overpower- or of collision with any force which the Paing sense of expectation, which is so nearly pacy can avow. The perplexity does not fear. The "tension of the situation," as lie there, but within Rome itself, where the the diplomatists call it, becomes greater every hour. The "Vatican," -- in which expression we include the Pope, Cardinal Antonelli, the ruling Committee of the Society of Jesus, and the three or four Cardinals and Monsignori who retain some initiative power, are at last convinced that the French troops are going, and their attitude as of suffering angels has given place to one of fierce, almost despairing, anxiety and suspense. From causes varying with each individual mind, the effect of the change has been to make the Society, with its definite policy and extreme counsels, master of the situation. That policy is resistance to the end, a calm, unblenching defiance alike to France, Italy, the Roman people, and the spirit of the age. In the supreme hour of its existence, abandoned by its allies, tricked by its friends, detested by its children, the Papacy will concede nothing, will promise nothing save pardon after submission, will make no reforms, will accept no advice, will simply assert itself now as ever, as beyond the need of human wisdom, above the range of earthly insult or aggression. Even Cardinal Antonelli, most secular of all its counsellors, has given foreign legionaries, and the Sanfedisti, and the more trustworthy of the brigands will gather in great force, will show fight, will, if they can, provoke an insurrection which would justify an appeal to the Catholic world for the protection of his Holiness. If in that case the appeal were made to Italy all would be well, as the sight of the Italian uniform would at once reduce the city to order, and compress once more that hatred of the priestly caste which burns so fiercely in the Roman heart that it baffles even the otherwise irresistible authority of the National Committee. That Committee contains of necessity two elements — the Italian and the Revolutionary and though the former, backed by Ricasoli, by the Italian Army, and by every Liberal with property in Rome, is still completely in the ascendant, still, any great outrage, any slaughter of a crowd, any rumour of an intended massacre might give Mazzini's agent a moral stand-point, and with it irresistible power. Even Roman patience has limits, and the scores accumulating through a generation of oppression, petty, wearying, searching, remorseless oppression, as of malignant old women, might be wiped off in one excusable - but most disastrous hour. The agents of In that event all will go well, for Rome the Reds are working to this end, eagerly once free will be Italian, and the Pope, backed by the ultra-Clericals, who see be- recognized as a Sovereign Prince residing yond the Red Sea the road to the promised in Italy, will be free to execute all spiritual land, but watched, and in many directions functions untrammelled by personal considbaffled, by a body as well organized as erations or secular interference. But if the themselves and better disciplined, the Pope does not rise to this temper, if he secret police of Italy. The friends of dis- yields to the advice of the Jesuits, or allows order are pitted not only against the Na- the instinct of kingship to get the better of tional Committee, but against a far serener the nobler elements in his character, if he and stronger brain, wielding the forces of a calls on mercenaries instead of St. Peter, nation, daring as a Jacobin, cool as a grand and trusts to brigands rather than to prayer, seigneur, unswerving as the Papacy itself. all the efforts of his opponents may not avert Still, even Ricasoli's force is inadequate a catastrophe which will resound to the alone to hold down a population boiling ends of the world. Personally, he neither with hate and injury, and an accident, a is nor can be in any danger, but the accumurder, a rumour, may call up the Roman mulated hatreds of a thousand years menace populace, brave, cool, and capable of reason, his caste, and the possibility of an explosion but with a thirst in it for blood. Once which will hoist them into the air has not Rome is in revolution, Italy and the whole yet passed away. It is well that under such Catholic world are adrift on a sea of possi- circumstances substantive power belongs bilities. The French may return, the Pope may fly, the "faithful" throughout Europe may rise to a crusading fervour, as Mgr. de Merode believes; above all, Italy may insist on her capital, though its purchase-money be a war with France. With the centre of Catholicism in commotion almost anything may occur, the least disastrous possibility, perhaps, being the flight of the Pope from Rome. Amid all this play and counterplay of great forces, this imbroglio of priests and Reds, of secularism and sacerdotalism, of forces which, while they must co-exist, cannot endure a compromise, the best hope is in the Italian character alike of the Pope and his opponents. They can wait like Orientals, he can endure like a martyr or a negro. Pius IX. will neither quit Italy, nor recall the French, nor massacre Romans, if he can help it. He may be induced by those about him to do either, but he may also at the last moment assert himself, rise to the splendour of an unparalleled situation, and forbid absolute resistance to the powers of the world. The man is an Italian to the core of his heart, hating the idea of flight to any other country, scorning the barbarians to whom, if he resist, he must appeal for aid. He believes, too, in himself, really thinks, difficult as it appears to Englishmen to believe, that he is in spiritual affairs the Vicegerent of Heaven, the appointed mouthpiece of the Universal Church, and he may in the supreme hour override all counsel and reject all interference, declare that with or without dominion he is still the successor of St. Peter, and leave the men of the world to work their will, undismayed by their violence or the external losses of the Church. to two men so calm and patient as Louis Napoleon and Ricasoli, well that even the National Committee feels, like the Papacy and the people, "What is time to Rome? From the Spectator, 24th November. FROM THE GUNROOM TO THE BENCH. LIEUTENANT BRAND is not, we take it, likely to be in the pay of the Jamaica Committee. The Committee seems respectably constituted, and not the kind of body to be guilty of such a trick as bribing an officer to cast a slur on the service; and, on the other hand, Lieutenant Brand himself is probably incapable of such an offence against the service. The Admiralty, who have pronounced that his letters alone, if authentic, render him unworthy of the name of an officer and gentleman, clearly do not even suspect him of the graver offence of being a creature of the Jamaica Committee: so that, considering all things, we do not see any room for the hypothesis that Lieutenant Brand is intentionally playing into the hands of Mr. Eyre's antagonists. But of this we are quite sure, that if Mr. Hamilton Hume and his colleagues could have stopped Lieutenant Brand's youthful pen at the sacrifice of (say) half the sum raised for Mr. Eyre's Defence Fund, they would have only refrained from doing so from motives of honour, and not from motives of policy. The "larking" young fellow, who evidently thought his vulgar little epistles to Mr. | fident of the complete success of his o Buxton such a capital joke, has acted pre- military measures. If he had the ke cisely as he would have acted if he had doubt as to the instruments with which h been bribed by the Jamaica Committee to was working, that doubt should have deter expose the recent Courts-Martial. The mined him at once, even if there had ben loss of Mr. Coleridge, Q.C., as counsel, if other room for hesitation, to suspend the he be lost to the Committee, does not even terrible agencies at work. Now Lieutenan approach in its effect on the trial this un- Brand was one of the principal of thee expected appearance of the President of instruments. He was the President of the the Morant Bay Court-Martial in the field. Court-Martial, and therefore we must cu Involuntary evidence, too, is always more clude that his colleagues were even more important than the deliberate evidence unfit than himself for that duty, though of subpoenaed witnesses, and Lieutenant more unfitness than absolute unfitness cer Brand's evidence is purely involuntary, but tainly passes the limits of finite conception exceedingly ample and instructive, at and lands us in all the difficulties of Pro least on one important point, the judicial fessor Mansel's metaphysics. What, ther character of Lieutenant Brand. The is Lieutenant Brand like? He sketches charge against Mr. Eyre is, we suppose, himself so happily in his correspondence we have not heard the precise wording of with Mr. Buxton that there is no difficulty the indictment, that by handing over in answering the question. He is evidently Mr. G. W. Gordon illegally to a Court- an under-bred, ignorant, larky young naval Martial, which tried and condemned him lieutenant, of the kind Captain Marryat without evidence of his guilt, and by ap- took so much pleasure in sketching, -a proving the verdict and the sentence of young fellow who glories in practical jokes, death, he was the cause of Mr. Gordon's who is probably cruel in the sort of way illegal execution, which the English law in which schoolboys are cruel,- from calls murder. Everything which tells on levity, more than from malice, a young the constitution of the Court by which he fellow who might possibly even think it a was tried, — and which tried also and exe- capital joke to toast a live rat at the end of cuted 188 other persons, besides flogging a his sword, but who, if he did, would do so great many, will have the most impor- as children tear away flies' legs and wings, tant bearing on the main question likely to without any power to realize the suffering be raised, namely, whether all these trials, he inflicts; in short, a fast young man, who sentences, and executions were legalized may hardly know what courtesy and huby the existence of martial law at all, manity mean, but whose nature boils over whether, in short, they were acts done in with so much animal vigour that no one the exercise of a moderate and reasonable would seriously condemn him for bad qualidiscretion for the protection of the colony ties which may be found in perhaps five against violence, or were, in any degree, out of ten hardy schoolboys, and are very acts needless and of cruel panic, unnecessary quickly knocked out of them by a little to preserve peace, and cruel in the eager- experience of pain and suffering on their ness shown for unlimited bloodshed. own account. As to sober judgment, Lieutenant Brand evidently does not know what the word means. No doubt he sat in the gunroom and concocted these very silly and vulgar letters with his brother cadets, under the impression that they would produce a most depressing effect on Mr. Buxton, and humiliate him to the earth, if not terrify him. His first sentence charges the member for East Surrey with “wicked and malicious lies." Very likely he said to himself, and his juniors told him, that that was "damned plain speaking, which would make the fellow laugh on the wrong side of his mouth." On one of these points Lieutenant Brand's curious correspondence with Mr. Buxton will shed an instructive light. If we find that Mr. Eyre chose exceedingly unfit instruments for carrying out the martial law he deemed necessary, the only excuse for him will be that he had no others; but that will be an excuse only so long as the severities of martial law can be shown to have been reasonably held necessary. The knowledge that he had exceedingly unfit instruments for working properly so fearful a legal power, should have been one of the strongest possible motives for suspending its action the moment it was safe to do so. We all know that before Mr. Gordon's apprehension Mr. Eyre thought the danger in the main over. A bloody remedy had been effectually applied. He felt con Then there comes a little chaff of the West Indian Naval School. “You may be a very fine buckra amongst the polished gentlemen at Exeter Hall." The Lieutenant was pleas ed when he thought of calling Mr. Buxton a "fine buckra." He thought to himself that to apply to Mr. Buxton negro slang was 'paying him out in his own coin.' Then the challenge was a good joke, and caused, no doubt, much jocular suggestion amongst the Confederates as to how blue the Exeter Hall buckra would look if you could but really get him under fire.' Then the happy and dexterous compliment to the Admiralty, - "the Admiralty are my judges, not Buxton and Co.," and, with especially ironic emphasis on the Tory Admiralty, "we have a new Admiralty, my friend," - -a sad fact for him, as it now appears, -were all literary touches that no doubt commanded indiscriminate applause. Then, in the second letter, the happy thought of calling Mr. Buxton, who had spoken of his public capacity, Mr. Public Capacity, was, Lieutenant Brand sincerely felt, true wit, wit such as it is not often very easy to meet with. "Fair play is my motto, and true blue my colours," is just a slight excursion into moral eloquence. And then, when the young gentleman had finished his letter, he thought of a concluding sentence of the most effective irony, "Please don't write any more, as I am very nervous, and you terrify me." One can almost hear the chorus of noisy animal laughter with which this ostentatious pretence of being cowed by a civilian was no doubt received. It is as old a joke as schoolboyhood itself. Who cannot remember the thick-headed big boy who pretended to shiver and cower before the wrath of some clever small boy, looking out of the corners of his eyes all the time for the tribute of admiring delight in this great triumph of his wit from his circle of flatterers? There is no great harm in that sort of thing. Lieutenant Brand has only carried it a step or two beyond the usual age, and with the usual stupidity of mere fighting men, intruded on the great world of politics what belonged properly either to the fifth-form lubber in the playground, or to middies skylarking aloft. of favour, where he was reluctantly admitting the truth, when we consider, in a word, that Mr. Brand had the most delicate of intellectual and moral duties to perform in the case of more death sentences than all the now living judges of England have dealt with, even Mr. Eyre must feel that he had far better have settled each of these poor victims' case by the tossing up of a halfpenny. Indeed, in that case, about half the lives would have been sacrificed and half saved, though the wrong ones might have been sacrificed and the wrong ones saved. Lieutenant Brand, in all probability, looked on the whole affair as a sort of rat-hunt. He and his comrades were standing by with sticks while the police acted the terriers, and routed out the wretched negroes whom the Court-Martial were to knock on the head. It was "hanging like fun," as one of the officers justly remarked, where the fun' no doubt was impersonated in the President of the Court-Martial. A judge, in all grave cases, needs coolness of mind, impartiality, long experience, knowledge of the world, insight into human nature and passions, reverence for law if not large acquaintance with it, and a profound sense of justice. Lieutenant Brand has evidently heat of mind, violent prejudices, no experience, complete ignorance of the world except gunrooms, no knowledge of man, contempt for law, and all the injustice of partizan youth. Is there no grave responsibility attaching to the Governor who left the actual business of trial to such a goose as this, to call him by no harsher name, in at least 100 cases of life and death after all imminent danger had passed by? No doubt General Nelson revised the sentences. But the actual issues of life and death of course remained in the hands of the men who heard the evidence with their own cars and saw the culprits with their own eyes. What style of men they were Lieutenant Brand's letters sufficiently show. As Mr. Buxton remarks with quiet sarcasm, Lieutenant Brand's letter "has not wholly removed the doubt he ventures to express, whether the Lieutenant ought to have been entrusted for a whole month with the power of life and death over some hundreds of persons." There are many boys of fourteen whom we would have far sooner entrusted with the same powers. And, as we said before, tossing up would have been wise and just in the comparison. Not the least painful element in the Jamaica business has been the utter want of reality with which the public has conceived events happening at such a distance. We have reason to be truly But when we come seriously to reflect that a stupid young man of this kind, who does not know what is silly from what is grave, who is without knowledge of the world, without knowlege of manners, too full-blooded to know what cruelty means, too obtuse to have the least sense of justice, was the President of a Court-Martial in 189 cases that ended in a capital sentence, that he had the duty of considering what evidence was relevant and what was irrelevant, where there were signs of innocence or guilt, where a witness was telling lies under the influence of fear or hope |