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pounds; and Mr. Wittingham could not forget that fact. As he thought of it, it increased, swelled out, grew heavy, like a nightmare. To lose five thousand pounds at one blow! What was any other consideration to that? What was the whole Newgate-calendar, arranged as a genealogical tree and appended to his name either as ancestry or posterity? Nothing, nothing! Dust in the balance! A feather in an air-pump! Mr. Wittingham grew exceedingly civil to his kind friend, Mr. Wharton; he compassionated poor Sir John Slingsby very much; he was sorry for Miss Slingsby; but he did not in the least see why, when other people were about to help themselves, he should not have his just right. He chatted over the matter with Mr. Wharton, and obtained an opinion from him, without a fee, as to the best mode of proceeding-and Mr. Wharton's opinions on such points were very sound; but in this case particularly careful. Then Mr. Wittingham went home, sent for his worthy solicitor, Mr. Bacon, whom he had employed for many years, as cheaper and safer than Mr. Wharton, and gave him instructions, which set the poor little attorney's hair on end.

Mr. Bacon knew Mr. Wittingham, however; he had been accustomed to manage him at petty sessions; and he was well aware that it was necessary to set Mr. Wittingham in opposition to Mr. Wittingham, before he could hope that any one's opinion would be listened to. When those two respectable persons had a dispute together, there was some chance of a third being attended to who stepped in as an umpire.

But, in the present case, Mr. Bacon was mistaken. He did not say one word of the pity, and the shame, and the disgrace of taking Sir John Slingsby quite by surprise; but he started various legal difficulties, and, indeed, some formidable obstacles to the very summary proceedings which Mr. Wittingham contemplated. But that gentleman was as a gun loaded with excellent powder and well-crammed down shot, by Mr. Wharton; and the priming was dry and fresh. Mr. Bacon's difficulties were swept away in a moment; his obstacles leaped over; and the solicitor was astonished at the amount of technical knowledge which his client had obtained in a few hours.

There was nothing to be done but obey. Mr. Wittingham was too good a card to throw out: Sir John Slingsby was evidently ruined beyond redemption; and with a sorrowful heart--for Mr. Bacon was, at bottom, a kind and well-disposed man-he took his way to his office with his eyes roaming from one side of the street to the other, as if he were looking for some means of escaping from a disagreeable task. As they thus roamed, they fell upon Billy Lamb, the little deformed pot-boyThe lawyer eyed him for a minute or so as he walked along, compared him in imagination with one of his own clerks, a tall, handsome-looking fellow, with a simpering face; thought that Billy would do best, though he was much more like a wet capon than a human being, and beckoning the boy into his office, retired with him into an inner room, where Mr. Bacon proceeded so cautiously and diffidently, that, had not Billy Lamb's wits been as sharp as his face, he would have been puzzled to know what the solicitor wanted him to do.

CHAP. XXVII.

Ir was a dark, cold, cheerless night, though the season was summer, and the preceding week had been very warm-one of those nights when a cold cutting north-east wind has suddenly broken through the sweet dream of bright days, and checked the blood in the trees and plants, withering them with the presage of winter. From noon till eventide that wind had blown; and although it had died away towards night, it had left the sky dark and the air chilly. Not a star was to be seen in the expanse above; and, though the moon was up, yet the light she gave only served to show that heavy clouds were floating over the heavens, the rounded edges of the vapours becoming every now and then of a dim white, without the face of the bright orb ever being visible for a moment. A dull, damp moist hung about the ground, and there was a faint smell, not altogether unpleasant, but sickly and oppressive, rose up, resembling that which is given forth by some kinds of water-plants, and burdened the cold air.

In the little church-yard, at the back of Stephen Gimlet's cottage, there was a light burning, though ten o'clock had struck some quarter of an hour before; and an elderly man, dressed, notwithstanding the chilliness of the night, merely in a waistcoat with striped sleeves, might have been seen by that light, which was nested in a horse-lantern, and perched upon a fresh-turned heap of earth. His head and shoulders were above the ground, and part of his rounded back, with ever and anon the rise and fall of a heavy pick-axe, appeared amongst the nettles and long hemlocks which overrun the church-yard. His legs and feet were buried in a pit which he was digging, and busily the sexton laboured away to hollow out the grave, muttering to himself from time to time, and sometimes even singing at his gloomy work. He was an old man, but he had no one to help him, and in truth he needed it not, for he was hale and hearty, and he put such a good will to his task, that it went on rapidly. The digging of a grave was to him a sort of festival. He held brotherhood with the worm, and gladly prepared the board for his kindred's banquet.

The grave-digger had gone on for some time when, about the hour I have mentioned, some one paused at the side of the low mossy wall, about a hundred yards from the cottage of the new gamekeeper, and looked over towards the lantern. Whoever the visiter was, he seemed either to hesitate or to consider, for he remained with his arms leaning on the coping for full five minutes before he opened the little wooden-gate close by, and walking in, went up to the side of the grave. The sexton heard him well enough, but I never saw a sexton who was not a humorist, and he took not the least notice, working away as before.

"Why, what are you about, old gentleman?" said a man's voice, at length.

"Don't you see?" rejoined the sexton, looking up, "practising the oldest trade in the world but one-digging to be sure-aye, and gravedigging, too, which is a very ancient profession likewise, though when first it began men lived so long, the sextons must have been but poor craftsmen for want of practice.'

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"And whose grave is it you are digging?" asked the visiter. “I have been here some days, and have not heard of any deaths."

"One would think you were a doctor," answered the sexton, "for you

seem to fancy that you must have a hand in every death in the parishbut you want to know whose grave it is—well, I can't tell you, for I don't know myself."

"But who ordered you to dig it then?" demanded the stranger.

"No one," said the sexton; "it will fit somebody, I warrant, and I shall get paid for it; and why should not I keep a ready-made grave as a town cobbler keeps ready-made shoes? I am digging it out of my own fancy. There will be death somewhere before the week is out, I am sure; for I dreamed last night that I saw a wedding come to this church, and the bride and the bridegroom stepped on each of the grave hillocks as they walked-so there will be a death, that's certain, and may be two."

"And so you are digging the grave on speculation, old fellow?" exclaimed the other, "but I dare say you have a shrewd guess whom it is for. There is some poor fellow ill in the neighbourhoodwoman in a bad way, ha?"

-or some

"It may be for the young man lying wounded up at Buxton's inn, answered the sexton; 66 they say he is better; but I should not wonder if it served his turn after all. But I don't know, there is never any telling who may go next. I've seen funny things in my day. Those who thought they had a long lease, find it was a short one: those who were wishing for other people's death, that they might get their money, die first themselves."

The sexton paused, and the stranger did not make any answer, looking gloomily down into the pit as if he did not much like the last reflections that rose up from the bottom of the grave.

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Aye, funny things enough I have seen," continued the sexton, after giving a stroke or two with his pickaxe; "but the funniest of all is, to see how folks take on at first for those who are gone, and how soon they get over it. Lord, what a lot of tears I have seen shed on this little bit of ground! and how soon they were dried up, like a shower in the sunshine. I recollect now there was a young lady sent down here for change of air by the London doctors, after they had poisoned her with their stuff, I dare say. A pretty creature she was as ever I set eyes on, and did not seem ill, only a bit of a cough. Her mother came with her, and then her lover, who was to be married to her when she got well. But at six months' end she died there she lies, close on your left-and her lover, wasn't he terrible downcast? and he said to me when we had put her comfortably in the ground, I shan't be long after her, sexton; keep me that place beside her there's a guinea for you.' He did not come back, however, for five years, and then I saw him one day go along the road in a chaise and four, with a fine lady by his side, as gay as a lark."

"Well, you would not have the man go on whimpering all his life?" said the other; "how old are you, sexton?"

"Sixty and eight last January," answered the other, "and I have dug these graves forty years come St. John."

old men

"Have you many in the parish?" asked the stranger. "The oldest is eighty-two," replied the sexton, "and she is a woman." "Six from eighty-two," said the stranger in a contemplative tone, "that leaves seventy-six. That will do very well."

"Will it ?" said the sexton, "well, you know best; but I should like to see a bit more of your face," and as he spoke, the old man suddenly

raised his lantern towards the stranger, and then burst out into a laugh, ay, I thought I knew the voice!" he said, "and so you've come back again, captain? Well now, this is droll enough! That bone you've got your foot upon belongs to your old wet-nurse, Sally Loames, if I know this ground; and she had as great a hand in damaging you as any of the rest. She was a bad one! But what has brought you down now that all the money's gone and the property too?"

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Why, I'll tell you," answered Captain Moreton, "I'll tell you, my good old Grindley. I want to see into the vault where the coffins are, and just to have a look at the register. Can't you help me? you used always to have the keys."

"No, no," captain, rejoined the sexton, shaking his head, "no tricks! no tricks! I'm not going to put my head into a noose for nothing."

66

Nobody wants you to put your head in a noose, Grindley," answered the other, "all I want is just to take a look at the coffins for a minute, and another at the register, for I have had a hint that I have been terribly cheated, and that people have put my great-grandfather's death six years too early, which makes all the difference to me; for if my mother was born while he was living she could not break the entail, do you see?" "Well, then," said the sexton, 66 you can come to-morrow, captain; and I'll tell the doctor any hour you like."

"That won't do, Grindley,” replied Moreton, "the parson is with the enemy; and, besides, I must not let any body know that I have seen the register and the coffins till I have every thing prepared to upset their roguery. You would not have me lose my own, would you, old boy? Then as to your doing it for nothing, if you will swear not to tell that I have seen the things at all, till I am ready and give you leave, you shall have a ten-pound note."

It is a strange and terrible thing, that the value of that which has no value except as it affects us in this world and this life, increases enormously in our eyes as we are leaving it. The sexton had always been more or less a covetous man, as Captain Moreton well knew ; but the passion had increased upon him with years, and the bait of the ten-pound note was not to be resisted. He took up the lantern, he got out of the grave, and looked carefully round. It was late at night-all was quiet -nothing seemed stirring; and approaching close to Moreton's side, he said in a whisper,

"No one knows that you were coming here, eh, captain ?"

"Nobody in the world," replied the other, "I called at your house an hour ago, and the girl told me you were down here, but I said I would call on you again to-morrow.'

"And you only want to look at the coffins and the book?" continued the sexton.

66

Nothing else in the world," said Moreton, in an easy tone; "perhaps I may take a memorandum in my pocket-book, that's all."

"Well, then, give us the note and come along," replied the sexton, "there can be no harm in that."

Moreton slipped something into his hand, and they moved towards a little door in the side of the church, opposite to that on which stood the cottage of Stephen Gimlet. Here the sexton drew a large bunch of keys out of his pocket and opened the door, holding up the lantern to let his companion see the way in.

GEORGE CANNING.*

"O for an hour of George Canning!"—HON. G. SMYTHE.

THIS is a graceful and welcome contribution to the literature of the country. A good biography of a statesman so distinguished and so universally respected as George Canning, was a want that remained to be filled up. The task demanded calm judgment, chastened feeling, and a tutored pen : advantages which Mr. Bell is well known to possess in an eminent degree. The exquisite portraiture, given by the author of De Vere, of the contention in the mind of one of England's most gifted sons, between literary tastes and the pursuits of ambition, is here made the striking and instructive theme of a whole biography; and it was indeed the great, the dominant feature of Canning's life.

Descended from a family of note and antiquity, it was the subsequent prime minister's misfortune to have passed his first childhood under the most disadvantageous circumstances of the bad example of profligate and disorderly habits. The inauspicious guardianship of Mr. Reddish would, indeed, have been fatal to an ordinary intellect. Great, therefore, is the debt of gratitude due to the memory of the blunt and honest actor, Moody, who, declaring the boy to be on the high road to the gallows, persevered in his rescue till he got him transferred to the charge of his uncle, Mr. Stratford Canning, with the strict understanding that there should be no further intercourse with his mother's connexions.

Removed from Hyde Abbey School, the burial place of Alfred, whose memory must have often flitted across the mind of a boy who, even at this early period obtained some applause for his skill in verse-making, he was at once placed as an oppidan on his reception at Eton, and where, besides acquiring distinction for the easy elegance of his Latin and English poetry, he also discovered, says his biographer, "in his character the germ of those traits for which he was afterwards so much admired in public life: great generosity of temper, quickness of apprehension, and firmness of purpose."

There are no boyish delinquencies to record of Canning's Eton days. His laborious and studious habits kept the animal spirits in check, but it was there that he formed some of those warm and enduring friendships "The which had subsequently so much influence on his progress in life. purity of sentiment," Mr. Bell gracefully remarks, "and congenialities of pursuits in which these personal attachments had their origin, flowered out into a little literary enterprise, which has conferred celebrity upon the Microspot from which it issued-the famous boy-periodical, called the cosm,' projected by a few of the more accomplished Etonians, with Canning, then advancing towards the seventeenth of his age, at their head." It was at Eton, too, that the boy first discovered a political bias. His generous and heroic nature led him to side at once with what was then the weaker and the oppressed party. He threw himself, on the occasion of a contested election for Windsor, into the popular party, and his convictions were of so permanent a character as to have thriven even in the

year

The Life of the Right Hon. George Canning. By Robert Bell, Author of “History of Russia," "Lives of English Poets," &c. &c. 1 vol. 8vo, Chapman & Hall.

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