mixed with the flashes of drawn sabres and fixed bayonets; the strong and condensed light thrown on the King's figure, countenance, litter, and surrounding group; the deep dark masses of shade that seemed to flitter high above and far below the principal group, and the occasional illumination of the vast and magnificent outline of the structure, formed, on the whole, a spectacle more grand, impressive, and picturesque than any state or theatrical procession, in the arrangement of which the tasteful Gustavus had ever been engaged.

In the midst of excruciating agonies his eyes lost not their brilliancy, and his finely expressive features displayed the triumph of fortitude over pain. Terrible and sudden as was this disaster, it did not deprive him of self-possession; he seemed more affected by the tears that trickled down the hard yet softened features of the veterans who had fought by his side, than by the wound which too probably would soon end his life. As the bearers of the royal litter ascended from flight to flight, he raised his head, evidently to obtain a better view of the grand spectacle of which he formed the principal and central object. When he arrived at the grand gallery, level with the state apartments, he made a sign with his hand that the bearers should halt, and looking wistfully round him, he said to Baron Armfelt (who wept and sobbed aloud), "How strange it is I should rush upon my fate after the recent warnings I had received; my mind foreboded evil; I went reluctantly, impelled, as it were, by some invisible hand. Í am fully persuaded, when a man's hour is come it is in vain he strives to elude it!" After a short pause, he continued, "Perhaps my hour is not yet arrived. I would willingly live, but am not afraid to die. If I survive, I may yet trip down those flights of steps again, and if I die-why, then, enclosed in my coffin, my next descent will be on my road to the mausoleum in the Ridderholm church." The King died on the 29th of March.

The assassin, Ankastroem, was discovered, and executed; and many of the conspirators were banished out of the country. In the character of Ankastroem, and in his conduct during his last moments, a striking similarity may be traced to the wretched Bellingham, the assassin of Percival; the same fanatical satisfaction at the perpetration of the crime, the same presumptuous confidence of pardon from the Almighty.

It was the opinion of several officers of long standing and great experience in the Swedish service, that if the King had not been cut off by Ankastroem, the very army he was assembling with the view of invading France, in Normandy, and marching direct on Paris, would have hoisted the standard of revolt, and destroyed the monarch whom once they adored.

Two chests containing papers were not to be opened, according to the injunctions of Gustavus, until fifty years after his death. Accordingly, on April 29, 1842, these chests were opened; there was nothing found among the papers of any importance; but they proved that Gustavus enjoyed the reputation of being a great author without even knowing how to spell.

The fate of Gustavus has furnished the incidents of a very charming opera, composed by M. Auber: it is worthy of remark that this musical piece, terminating with the murder of a king, was produced for the French, who shudder at the death scenes of our tragic drama!

THE O'CONNORS OF CONNORVILLE.

Of the eccentricities of this Cork family some amusing instances are related.

Roger Connor had high notions of his own dignity. At a Cork assize he walked across the table in the courthouse, in presence of the judge, conceiving that his personal importance gave him this privilege. The judge, who did not know him, gave him a sharp reprimand. Shortly after the judge received, to his great surprise, a note from Mr. Connor, requiring either an apology or "satisfaction at twelve paces.' The judge was a man of peace, and as no hostile meeting occurred it is not improbable that he apologised. A pun of this fiery gentleman's is recorded. Being asked by a guest at his table what description of wine they were drinking, Roger replied that it was Pontick ('pon tick) wine—that is, it had not been paid for.

Robert O'Connor, although not in the army, had military tastes, and commanded a corps, or, as he called it, a corpse of yeomanry cavalry, with which formidable body he sometimes frightened his wife by threatening to invade France at their head, seize Bonaparte, bring him to Ireland captive, and suspend him in an iron cage in his family hall! He was in constant communication with the Government at Dublin Castle, and with one of his political epistles he sent a map of the barony in which he resided, his own domain occupying so large a space as to leave but little room for the estates of all the other proprietors; on the map was written, in front cf his mansion, “The finest station in the Barony for cannon." He once addressed to Sir Francis Burdett, then of Radical politics, an epistle, concluding with, "Well, Sir Francis, what d'ye think of that?" "Excuse me, Connor," answered the Baronet, I am not a judge of music," for the blotched and clumsy manuscript, with its underscored lines, bore a comical resemblance to an awkward attempt at musical notation.

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Roger O'Connor, brother of Robert, when at Dublin College, was allowed to be the best scholar in his division, and the most idle lad in his class." He grew up a strong insurgent, aiming to wield the Irish sceptre. He claimed to be descended from the royal O'Connors; and in the Chronicles of Eri, published by him, he is portrayed with his hand upon the Irish crown, and the legend, "Chief of a prostrate nation." His son Feargus records him to have exclaimed, in what we must suppose to have been a fit of patriotic frenzy, "My arm is yet young enough to wield the sword to recover my country's crown." His hatred to British domination naturally extended itself to taxes. During the continuance of the dog-tax the collector called on him one day for payment. Roger returned as meagre a list of taxable articles as possible. "Have you got no dogs?" inquired the collector. "Not one," answered the representative of Irish royalty. Just at this moment a favourite dog came running into the court-yard in which the collector and Roger were standing. The peril of detection was imminent, but Roger suddenly exclaimed, with well-feigned alarm, "A mad dog! A mad dog!" and forthwith he took refuge in the house, as if to escape from the rabid animal-the collector followed in terror of a bite-the dog was properly disposed of, and Roger, no doubt, kept the tax in his pocket.-Abridged from Sir Bernard Burke's Vicissitudes of Families. Second Series.

ADVENTURES OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN.

Those who remember the streets of Dublin some forty years since, can scarcely have forgotten the above gigantic old man in his oldfashioned dress; and following him two last of a race of dogs of a Danish breed, though called by him, and supposed to be Irish wolf-dogs. Five-and-twenty years earlier Rowan made a pedestrian tour of England with Lord Cloncurry; when Rowan's practice at starting from the inn of a wet morning, was to roll himself in the first pool he met, in order that he might be beforehand with the rain. The laurels were then fresh which he had won by the performance of a grand feat, under the eyes of Marie Antoinette, and of which he was not a little proud. He had run a foot-race in the presence of the whole French court, in jack-boots, against an officer of the Gardes de Corps, dressed in light shoes and silk stockings, and had won with ease, to the great admiration of the Queen, who honoured him with special marks of her regard.

He

Rowan was once master of a fortune of full 50001. a year. had always some adventure upon hand; and two or three of these, in which he rescued distressed damsels from the snares of rakes of

rank, made a good deal of noise at the time; the particulars being made known by means of a private printing-press, which he kept in his house ready for such occasions. When he was obliged to take refuge in America, he was frequently in pecuniary distress; and was, for a good part of the time, indebted for a livelihood to his mechanical knowledge, which enabled him to take charge of a cottonfactory in New York.-Lord Cloncurry's Life and Times.

THE HOUSE OF CROMWELL SNUbbed.

Lord Cloncurry, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, and Sir Thomas Frankland, once took a pedestrian tour together, and a pleasant party they made. Frankland was a man of considerable ability; but, what he chiefly valued himself upon, was his lineal descent from Oliver Cromwell, a fact with which he acquainted Sir Richard Arkwright, much to the astonishment of that ingenious knight. In passing through Derbyshire, the tourists were desirous of visiting Sir Richard's factory, and accordingly presented themselves at his door, and sent in their names. They were kept waiting in the hall a considerable time; and when, at length, Sir Richard made his appearance, in his morning gown and nightcap, he gave a very gruff and unwilling permission for the party to enter. They, nevertheless, made use of it; but not before Frankland had read Sir Richard a lecture upon his discourtesy, and failure in the respect that was proper to be shown by a person in his position to a gentleman who, like himself, was a descendant of the great Protector. The ci-devant barber treated the House of Cromwell with great contempt, but did not withdraw the leave he had granted for the tourists to see his looms.

THE IRISH UNION.

At a dinner party, in the year 1795, at the house of John Macnamara, in Baker-street, at which Mr. Pitt was present, Lord Cloncurry, for the first time, heard of the contemplated project of a Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The news naturally acted as a ferment upon his Lordship's notions of patriotism and nationality; and he forthwith wrote a pamphlet of "Thoughts on the Projected Union." This brochure, published in Dublin, was the first blow at the ministerial scheme; it cost the author a heavy price, including his arrest as a "United Irishman," and subsequently to imprisonment for nearly two years in the Tower of London.

SUMMARY PUNISHMENT.

Some twenty years ago, one of the great organs of the Council of Edinburgh was James Laing; he was one of the clerks, and managed

such police as Edinburgh then had; and though not an officer in the old Town Guard could, as representative of the magistrates, employ it as he chose. It is incredible how much power this man had, and how much he was feared. He had more sense than to meddle with the rich, but over the people he tyrannized to his heart's content. For example, about the year 1795, six or eight baker-lads of good character, being a little jolly one night, were making a noise in the street. This displeased Mr. Laing, who had a notion that nobody could be drunk with safety to the public except himself. So he had the lads apprehended; and as they did not appear in the morning, their friends became alarmed, and applied to Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Jardine, who next morning inquired about them, when Laing said that he need not give himself the trouble, because, "they are all beyond Inchkeith by this time." And so they were. He had them sent on board a tender lying in Leith Roads, which he knew was to sail that morning. This was done by his own authority, without a conviction, or a charge, or an offence. They had been troublesome, and this was the very way to deal with such people. Such proceedings were far from uncommon; and legal redress was very seldom resorted to.

Laing had an incomprehensible reverence for Dugald Stewart. -Stewart used to tell how he was walking in the meadows very early one morning, when he saw a number of people within the inclosure seemingly turning up the turf; and that, upon going up to them he found his friend, Jamie Laing, who explained that in these short light nights, there was nothing going on with the blackguards, "and so ye see, Mr. Professor, I've just brought oot the constables to try our hands at the mondieworts."-Cockburn's Memorials.

THE GREAT SEAL OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC.

At the time of Lord Edward Fitzgerald's arrest, his wife (the well-known Pamela), had taken refuge in the house of the father of Lord Cloncurry, in Merrion-street, Dublin, though without his knowledge. She was pursued there by the police in search of papers; and some which she had concealed in her bedroom were discovered and seized. Among other prizes taken, upon this occasion, was a seal, pronounced by the quidnuncs of the Castle to be the intended Great Seal of the Irish Republic. In Appendix No. 23 of the Report of the Secret Committee of the Irish House of Commons, printed in 1799, there is an engraving of the impression of this seal, "found in the custody of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, when he was apprehended," together with the following description :-" In a circle, Hibernia holding in her right hand an imperial crown over a shield. On her