Highness. On that occasion the Prince was very agreeable and familiar. Among other anecdotes which he told us of Lord Thurlow, I remember these two:-The first was, Thurlow once said to the Prince, Sir, your father will continue to be a popular King as long as he continues to go to church every Sunday, and to be faithful to that ugly woman your mother; but you, Sir, will never be popular.'. The other was this:-While his servants were carrying Thurlow upstairs to his bedroom, just before his death, they happened to let his legs strike against the banisters, upon which he uttered-the last words he ever spoke-a frightful imprecation on all their souls.'"

CHANCELLOR'S CHURCH PATRONAGE.

When Erskine was made Lord Chancellor, Lady Holland never rested till she prevailed on him to give Sydney Smith, her father, a living (Foston-le-Clay, in Yorkshire). Smith went to thank him for the appointment. "Oh!" said Erskine, "don't thank me, Mr. Smith. I gave you the living because Lady Holland insisted on my doing so; and if she had desired me to give it to the devil, he must have had it."

Lord Chancellor Thurlow, on reading Horsley's Letters to Dr. Priestley, at once obtained for the author a stall at Gloucester, saying that "those who supported the Church should be supported by it."

OPPOSITION TO GAS LIGHTING.

Miss Martineau, in her History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace, thus vividly paints the difficulties which beset the introduction of this great social invention :

"The brilliantly-lighted, carefully-watched, safe, orderly, and tranquil London of the present day, presents as great a contrast to the London of 1816, as that again, contrasted with the London of 1762-the year in which the Westminster Paving and Lighting Act was passed. Street robberies, before that period, were the ordinary events of the night. For half a century after this the metropolis had its comparative safety of feeble oil-lamps and decrepid watchmen. The streets were filled with tumultuous vagabonds; and the drowsy guardians of the night suffered every abomination to go on in lawless vigour, happy if their sleep were undisturbed by the midnight row of the drunken rake. In 1807 Pall-Mall was lighted by gas. persevering German (Winsor), who spent his own money and that of the subscribers to his scheme, had no reward. The original gas company, whose example was to be followed not only by all England, but the whole civilized world, were first derided, and then

The

treated in Parliament as rapacious monopolists. We turn to the Debates, and we see how they were encouraged in 1816-nine years after it had been found that the invention was of unappreciable public benefit:-'The company,' said the Earl of Lauderdale, ‘aimed at a monopoly, which would ultimately prove injurious to the public, and ruin that most important branch of trade, our whale fisheries.' Alderman Atkins, 'contended that the measure was calculated to ruin that hardy race of men, the persons employed in the Southern and Greenland whale-fisheries, in each of which a million of money and above a hundred ships were engaged. If the Bill were to pass, it would throw out of employ ten thousand seamen, and above ten thousand ropemakers, sailmakers, mastmakers, &c., connected with that trade.' At every step of scientific discovery which promises to impart new benefits to mankind, however certain and unquestionable be the benefit, we are called upon to maintain the ancient state of things, amidst the terrible denunciations of ruin to some great interest or other. There never was a nation doomed to such perils by the restless character of its people. They will not let well enough alone, as the only wise men say. In 1816 they risked the existence of the British navy, which depended upon the whale-fisheries, for the trifling advantage of making London as light by night as by day, and bestowing safety and peacefulness upon its million of inhabitants. And yet, at the very moment that this ruin was predicted to oil, it was admitted that we could not obtain a sufficiency of oil."

To these facts may be added another anecdotic testimony. When Winsor first applied to Parliament to charter a company, to light the streets, the testimony of Accum, the chemist, in favour of the practicability of gas-lighting was bitterly ridiculed by Mr. William Brougham; and Sir Humphry Davy, then President of the Royal Society, asked the inventors, "if it were intended to take the dome of St. Paul's for a gasometer."

Soon after the establishment of the first gas-works at Westminster, 1810-12, an extensive explosion took place on the premises, when a committee of the Royal Society was, by request of the Government, appointed to investigate the cause of the catastrophe. They met several times at the gas-works to examine the apparatus, and made a very elaborate Report, in which they stated as their opinion, that if gas-lighting was to become prevalent, the gas-works ought to be at a considerable distance from all buildings; and that the reservoirs should be small and numerous, and always separated from each other by mounds of earth, or strong party-walls!

THE BOMBARDMENT OF ALGIERS.

There is, perhaps, nothing in the history of warfare more terrific in its consequences than the first broadside that the British fired at Algiers, in 1816. On the morning of August 27, as Lord Exmouth, with the British fleet, was nearing Algiers, his lordship despatched his interpreter, Mr. Salamé, with two letters, one for the Dey, the other for the British Consul. The letter to the Dey demanded the entire abolition of Christian slavery; the delivery of all Christian slaves in the kingdom of Algiers; the restoration of all the money that had been paid for the redemption of slaves by the King of the the Two Sicilies and the King of Sardinia; peace between Algiers and the Netherlands; and the immediate liberation of the British Consul, who had been put in chains, and two boats' crews who had been detained with him. The commander's letter to the Consul of course contained an assurance that every effort should be made for his safety; but who, under such circumstances, could forget that when the French Admiral Duquesne, in 1682, bombarded Algiers, the Dey fastened the unhappy French Consul to the mouth of a cannon, and blew him to atoms, in savage defiance of the hostile armament? At eleven o'clock the interpreter reached the mole, in a boat bearing a flag of truce, and delivering his letters to the captain of the port, demanded an answer to the letter addressed to the Dey in one hour. The Algerine engaged that an answer, if answer were returned at all, should be given in two hours; and in the meantime the interpreter remained in a sufficiently uncomfortable situation, within pistol-shot of thousands of the people on the walls and batteries. The interpreter, with his flag of truce, waited for his answer from eleven o'clock till half-past two, but in vain.

During this time a breeze sprung up, the fleet advanced into the Bay, and lay-to within half a mile of the city of Algiers. The interpreter then hoisted the signal that no answer had been given, and the fleet immediately began to bear up, and every ship to take her position. Salamé reached the Queen Charlotte, Lord Exmouth's ship, in safety. Then he saw the change which comes over a brave and decided man at the moment when resolve passes into action. "I was quite surprised to see his lordship was altered from what I left him in the morning, for I knew his manner was in general very mild; and now he seemed to be all fightful, as fierce as a lion which had been chained in its cage and was set at liberty. With all that, his lordship's answer to me was, 'Never mind, we shall see now ;' and at the same time he turned towards the officers, saying, 'Be ready.' The Queen Charlotte passed through all the batteries with

out firing a gun, and took up a position within a hundred yards of the mole-head batteries. At the first shot, which was fired by the Algerines at the Impregnable, Lord Exmouth cried out, That will do; fire, my fine fellows! The miserable Algerines who were looking on, as at a show, with apparent indifference to the consequences, were swept away by hundreds by this first fire from the Queen Charlotte. There was a great crowd of people in every part, many of whom, after the first discharge, I saw running away under the walls like dogs, walking upon their feet and hands." From a quarter before three o'clock till nine, the most tremendous firing on both sides continued without intermission, and the firing did not cease altogether until half-past eleven. During this engagement of nine hours, the allied fleet fired a hundred and eighteen tons of gunpowder, and five hundred tons of shot and shells. The Algerines exclaimed that hell had opened its mouth upon them through the English ships. That the Algerines had plied their instruments of destruction with no common alacrity is sufficiently shown by the fact, that eight hundred and fifty-two officers and men were killed in the British squadron, and sixty-five in the Dutch.

Lord Exmouth says in his despatch: "There were awful movements during the conflict which I cannot now attempt to describe, occasioned by firing the ships so near us." Salamé adds, one of the Algerine frigates, which was in flames, drifted towards the Queen Charlotte within about fifty feet of her; but a breeze springing up carried the burning frigate towards the town. The Algerine batteries around Lord Exmouth's division were silenced about ten o'clock, and were in a complete state of ruin and dilapidation; but a fort at the upper angle of the city continued to annoy our ships, whose firing had almost ceased. This was the moment of the most serious danger to our fleet. Our means of attack were well-nigh expended; the upper batteries of the city could not be reached by our guns; the ships were becalmed. “Providence at this interval," says Lord Exmouth, "gave to my anxious wishes the usual landwind common in this bay, and my expectations were completed. We were all hands employed warping and towing off, and by the help of the light air the whole were under sail, and came to anchor out of reach of shells about two in the morning, after twelve hours' incessant labour." There, when the ships had hauled out beyond the reach of danger, a sublime spectacle was presented to the wondering eyes of the interpreter, who had ventured out of the safety of the cockpit to the poop of the Queen Charlotte. Nine Algerine frigates and a number of gun-boats were burning within the bay the storehouses within the mole were on fire; the blaze illumined

all the bay, and showed the town and its environs almost as clear as in the daytime; instead of walls the batteries presented nothing to the sight but heaps of rubbish; and out of these ruins the Moors and Turks were busily employed in dragging their dead. When the fleet had anchored there arose a storm of thunder and lightning which filled up the measure of sublimity, at the close of the twelve awful hours of battle and slaughter.

Next morning, Lord Exmouth offered by letter terms of peace to the Dey, saying: "If you receive this offer as you ought, you will fire three guns." The three guns were fired, the Dey made apologies, and treaties of peace and amity were fully signed, to be very soon broken again. The enduring triumph of this expedition was the release, within three days of the battle, of one thousand and eighty-three Christian slaves, who came from the interior, and were immediately conveyed to their respective countries. "When I arrived on shore," says Salamé, "it was the most pitiful sight to see all these poor creatures, in what a horrible state they were; but it is impossible to describe the joy and cheerfulness of them. It was, indeed, a most glorious and ever-memorable merciful act for England, all over Europe, to see these poor slaves, when our boats were shoving with them off the shore, all at once take off their hats and exclaim in Italian, Viva il Ré d'Ingliterra, il padre eterno! e 'l Ammiraglio Inglese che ci ha liberato da questo secondo inferno!' (Long live the King of England, the eternal father! and the English Admiral who delivered us from this second hell!')"

It is worthy of remark that, in the debate in Parliament, in the spring of the year, after Lord Exmouth had acceded to a suspension of hostilities with the Dey, and returned to England with his fleet, Lord Cochrane maintained" that two sail of the line would have been sufficient to compel the Dey of Algiers to accede to any terms. The city of Algiers was on the sea-shore, the water was deep enough for first-rates to come up to the very walls, and those were mounted only with a few pieces of cannon, with the use of which the barbarians were scarcely acquainted." Lord Cochrane qualified this assertion in the subsequent session. It was fortunate that such an assertion was not the cause of an inadequate preparation and a fatal repulse. Lord Exmouth had his own observation for his guide. Abridged from Miss Martineau's History of England during Thirty Years' Peace.

SHERIDAN AND PEEL.

During the debate in Parliament, in the session of 1819, on the Koyal Household or Windsor Establishment Bill, the task of an