thing more to do with such a hardhearted old miser.'

'Now supposing,' said I, ' as one man of the world talking to another, it was rather in hopes to bring the old miser into your terms; and supposing that your plan has taken effect, and that I am instructed to pay you half your demand-that is to say, £4000-upon condition that Mrs. Mountjoy returns to her friends ?'

I had expected an outburst of rage at this proposal, but he only turned himself to the cabalistic documents upon the table; and after a little consideration answered calmly, No, I must have £6000.' Mr. Weynall would have given double that sum; but I was so enraged by this coolness and want of feeling, that I expressed myself with an eloquence that would have carried everything before it at the Old Bailey.

'Swindler! cheat! felon!' I cried (and at the word felon I saw him shake like a guilty thing,' and pursued my lawyer's advantage); 'yes, felon, whom to-morrow may consign to a life-long imprisonment, how dare you make conditions with me?' But he recovered himself almost immediately, and bade me leave the

room.

'To-morrow, sir, will see me far from Wiesbaden, with her whom your unselfishness is so anxious to divorce from her husband. Do you think,' he added, with all his ancient bitterness, as I crossed the threshold, 'that I have not heard of the family lawyer, the Platonic friend, the rejected suitor, before now ?'

My indiscretion had thus broken off a treaty which had shown signs of being more favourable than I had hoped for. If Lucy could have been got to leave him, the business might have been by this time equitably, or at least legally, settled; but what was to be done now? I went straight to my young acquaintance of the steam-boat, in whose quickness I had a great confidence, and laid before him all the circumstances.

Can your brother, the attaché, do anything for me?' said I.

Certainly,' he replied. A bright thought seemed to strike him. 'Come along to the Embassy.'

After a short conversation with

the young official, who took a great interest in the whole case, I procured the assistance of a couple of soldiers (a considerable portion of the standing army of the country), with full instructions as to how they were to proceed, and returned at once with them to the Mountjoys' lodgings. I left my myrmidons outside, and entering, found the Captain alone, as before, but with a crowd of boxes about him, and everything ready for immediate departure. I said, 'I am come once more to repeat my offer of this morning.'

He laughed scornfully, and replied, Since you are so hot about it, sir, you must now give £8000 for the lady. I will take no less; in a couple of hours it will be too late; go to your hotel in the meantime, and debate the question of Love or money."

You do not move from this place unless I wish,' I answered. At a sign from me the soldiers entered, and I continued, 'You are now arrested for living under an assumed name, and possessing a forged passport; and you will be confined in prison until other and graver charges which may be brought against you shall have been substantiated.'

The last sentence was a happy addition of my own, and it had a great success.

'Well,' he said, with an appearance of his old frankness; you have out-manoeuvred me, I confess; withdraw your forces, and pay me the £4000, and I will perform my part of the business.'

The men retired.

6

Shall I take an oath before you, or will my word suffice ?' said he. Sir,' I replied, the results of the last oath you took in my presence have not been such as to induce me to ask you for another.'

He said nothing, but a flush came which forcibly recalled the same in his rooms at College. I drew up a document for him to sign, which bound him by the strongest tieviz., his own interestclaim Lucy as his wife again, and he signed it; while I, on my part, gave him a cheque for the money. Ät that moment in came his poor wife, with her travelling dress and bonnet on.

'You may take those things off

1856.]

again,' said her husband, calmly; we are not going away.'

She looked from one to the other with a sort of hope just awakening in her tear-worn face.

You are going home to your father, Lucy,' he added.

Thank God, thank God!' she said; and thank you, Laurence. How happy you have made me; we will go together to him, and to the dear old place, and never leave him ; we will forget all the rest, wont we, dear husband, wont we?'

'Mrs. Mountjoy,' I said, 'your husband cannot accompany you; it would not be possible for your father to see him, even if he chose to go, which he does not.' I was vexed that she should cling to this rotten tree. I had been too much accustomed to Divorce Bills, and Breach of Promise Actions, not to understand the love that cleaves to its chosen object through disgrace, neglect, and

crime.

'I do not leave my husband,' she said, quietly, until death doth us part.' She stood erect, and laid her hand upon his shoulder, but with a mournful look: it was the dignity of love, but also of despair.

He quietly and coldly put her arm away.

It is better for us both, Lucy,' he said; I wish it to be so; I would rather,' he added, with some effort, 'that you never saw my face again.' She gave a short sharp cry, and fell heavily upon the floor.

*

*

*

**

*

For many days she lay feverstricken and delirious; Miss Wilmot herself nursed her, and scarcely ever left her side. That poor girl, banished from her husband, without a friend of her own sex, and in a foreign land, was indeed a case to excite sympathy in any heart. When she returned to consciousness, the face hanging over her sweet eyes was that of her own father; it was his tremulous voice that answered when she said Laurence! Laurence!' Nevertheless when the mist over her mind quite cleared away, she did not refuse to be comforted, even at first. Whatever others might have said against her husband, whatever proofs of his unworthiness might have been shown to her, she would have disbelieved or she would have forgiven, but

VOL. LIV. NO. CCCXIX.

63

his own renunciation of her cut, like a sharp sword, her heart-strings from him. She never asked to go to him again. He became to her an ideal being; the portrait she possessed of him, the lock of golden hair, the love letters he had once written to her, were memorials of a far other than he who had said, 'I would rather that you never saw my face again.' She was taken back to the old house, and grew resigned, and in time almost cheerful. She must have suffered many and terrible things, and her nature recovered itself slowly at the touch of kindness, as the drooping flower opens to the sun. The old

man became almost young again, and scarcely ever left her; he is fuller of kindliness towards me than ever, but not so is Lucy, and I am not wanted at Thorney Grove, I can see. I had a difficult mission to perform when I went to Wiesbaden, and I did not do it as well, perhaps, as the attaché would have done it ; from first to last, I did my best however, and with nothing but her good before my eyes.

Some few years after these circumstances, I spent a vacation in Paris, alone. I went about from sight to sight, until I had no interest left for any such things, and then (as happens in those cases) became nipped and morbid. I had climbed one day up the tower of Notre Dame, and found my head running more than was prudent upon the Archdeacon' and 'Quasimodo.' I began to wonder how long it would take a man to fall to the ground, from the point where I was standing, for instance, and to make other unhealthy calculations. I passed that judgment on my own thoughts, and it made them, I suppose, revert with a flash to Mountjoy and his rouge-et-noir plans.

And whether,' I asked, 'in this great outstretched city, does that hapless man abide? Friendless, and doubtless beggared by this time, does he still walk the earth, and remembers he his forsaken wife, and does he look back upon his earlier days?'

I know that I said these things to myself then, and not afterwards; I felt my eyes wandering back to the sad building that stands by

E

1856.]

The volume opens with the embassy of the King of Persia to Peter the Great, requesting his aid against his Affghan subjects, who had seized provinces, possessed themselves of Candahar, and threatened the total annihilation of the empire—in short, Persia really was 'the sick man.' Without wishing to give offence to the sons of Esculapius, we must observe that this volume shows how dangerous it is to call in the physician. Peter was, however, called in, and very naturally took his fee. The energetic Czar, who may be said to have established the Muscovite empire, instantly responded to the summons of the Shah; a flotilla was constructed at Moscow, and floated down, viâ the Oka, to the Volga and the Caspian. Thence they proceeded to Derbend, the chief town of Daghestan, where a gale of wind dashed Peter's hopes to the ground, and he was forced to return to Astracan, not forgetting, however, to secure the fortified city of Derbend. The point of the wedge thus entered, a treaty followed soon after between Russia and Turkey, by which many of the fairest provinces of Persia were partitioned, and the power of the Czar established on the western and southern shores of the Caspian. Soon after this-between 1732-1736 -Nadir Shah appeared on the scene, and forced the Russians to evacuate the provinces they had taken. After the death of Nadir Shah, the Georgians, who were threatened by the Turks, sought protection from the Czar, offering to hold their country under him on Russian terms, as they had under Persia, and this fair province became incorporated with Russia, Prince Sesianoff being the first Governor-General, a duty he discharged with considerable ability for four years, at the expiration of which time he was treacherously murdered by the Governor of Bakoo. The theatre of the war exhibits such a host of petty chiefs and petty intrigues, that, fettered by space, we cannot, and in mercy to the reader we

65

would not, do more than touch upon the leading characters and conquests, of which the volume is so copious an epitome. In 1807, Prince Sesianoff having been succeeded by General Goudowitch, a rupture with Persia became inevitable, as also with the Turks, who sided with their Mussulman brethren. The religious jealousies of these two nations rendered any cordial co-operation impossible. The consequence of this alliance without love or confidence was, that the Turks, taking an independent line of their own, got excessively well thrashed; and the Russian general, thus relieved from a situation of extreme peril, turned his whole force against Persia, and endeavoured to capture Erivan; in which, unfortunately for him, he signally failed.

About this period, 1809, England appears in the field at the Court of Teheran, represented by Sir Harford Jones and Sir John Malcolm. We engaged to supply Persia with an annual subsidy of £120,000, and to furnish 20,000 stand of arms, and 20 pieces of artillery. The French mission was dismissed, and a Persian ambassador sent to London. The Shah wished to appoint Sir John Malcolm Commander-inchief of his army, but he did not feel authorized to accede to the request, and returned to India. Shortly afterwards, Sir Gore Ouseley was appointed ambassador extraordinary to the Persian Court. It was at this period that our author, then a second-lieutenant of Engineers, and sent with others to assist in organizing the Persian army, first appeared personally on the stage. During the struggle going on at this time, the Persians were beaten on nearly all occasions, and as their allies the Turks were obliged to encamp at some distance to prevent perpetual squabbles, the result was natural enough; though our author says that if the Persians had shown the slightest energy, the situation of the Russian army would have been most precarious. General Monteith records, to the honour of the

Georgians, that when their Prince, Alexander Mirza, was obliged to disband his army and seek shelter among the mountains, they evinced toward him a fidelity not exceeded by that shown to Prince Edward after the fatal field of Culloden. The Shah's army in numbers and discipline was rapidly improving under the influence and guidance of British officers, but it wanted that indispensable adjunct to success-a general. They had the hearts to dare, and the hands to execute, but there was no head to plan, no Napoleon to lead them to victory with the swoop of the eagle, no Wellington to bear them in his triumphant car through gory fields

to

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar.

A special correspondent' would have been in ecstasy at having such a splendid field to exercise his untutored military pen upon, if he had only possessed sufficient pluck to stand a certain process of tickling the feet common to Eastern countries.

The invasion of Russia by Napoleon produced a change in our policy. We now desired peace, and the British officers were recalled, excepting Captain Christie, Captain Lindesay, and our author, who were upon earnest entreaty allowed to remain. Both Russians and Persians appear to have been very careless in watching their opponents. On one occasion the Russians marched across an open plain, crossed a river, and drew up their army within a mile and a half, before the Persians were aware of their presence. Not long after this surprise, Captain Lindesay, with thirty men, each supplied with a bag, reached the artillery park, filled their bags with ammunition, and quitted the camp on their return, before the suspicions of the Russians were aroused.' By the intervention of England a treaty was signed, equally distasteful to Persia and to Russia; but this latter power, true to the principle of progress, continued to increase her army in Georgia. No ambassador was, however, sent from Russia till May, 1817, when General Yermoloff was dispatched with an enormous suite, whose uncouth bearing and total disregard of the prejudices of

the Easterns appear to have given much and very natural offence. The government of Yermoloff seems to have been marked with unnecessary cruelty and oppression, and forms a striking contrast, in General Monteith's opinion, to the efficient and mild rule of Gortschakoff. Yermoloff appears to have

played the autocrat at Tiflis in as wholesale a manner as a near neighbour of ours has in another and a better known city. Lines were drawn, and houses knocked down, before the owners had time even to remove their property, far less to find other dwellings. This general had some military successes, but his harsh measures made enemies of those who might have proved useful friends, and, in consequence, he ultimately met some fatal reverses from the wild and hardy mountaineers. The death of Alexander was followed by a mission to Persia under Menschikoff, A.D. 1826. The fanaticism of the Mollahs prevented any peaceful termination of his mission. The war continued, and the Persians went so far as to detain the prince at Erivan, though only for a short time.

Paskiewitch now appears on the theatre of affairs for the first time, and signalizes his advent by a fit presage of his future greatness. Yermoloff had ordered him to retire as the Persians advanced, but, like another hero, he found a blind eye, and, seizing his opportunity, gained a decisive battle, and saved the Russian power in Georgia. Yermoloff proved a total failure. The gene. ral, in the terse language of a soldier, sharpened, perhaps, by an abhorrence of his cruelties, disposes of his merits in the following sentence:

He lost in a month what it had taken his predecessors twenty years of active warfare to obtain. He had always expressed an ardent desire for a war with Persia; and upon his wish being realized, he had in a few weeks brought the affairs of Russia to a most disastrous state. His magazines were lost, his frontier towns abandoned, and he himself appeared to have a difficulty in holding even the province of Georgia, declaring, in his dispatches to his Government, that if he was closely pressed he should evacuate Tiflis, and take up a position at the foot of the Caucasus.