with the best intent to serve him, he has been as it were lured to heavy misfortune; his money, his commission, his advancement, all gone, and poverty before him. Surely you will agree-I know you will, Hardinge, for I know your secret heart—that this should not be; that so good, so brave, so true and excellent an officer should not be snuffed out and cast aside to pass into an old age of privation, after expectations founded on assurances from Lord Fitzroy. I earnestly entreat of you to give him either the Good Service Pension or the post of Yeoman of the Guard; both together would not exceed his real merits."

The following letter refers to the case of the widow of an officer in the army, whose claim to the usual pension had been advocated for several years by Sir W. Napier (the widow having been an inhabitant of Guernsey and married there), but always denied by the War Office because of her inability to furnish legal proof of the marriage.

"SIR,

To the Right Hon. Sidney Herbert.

"Scinde House, May, 1856. "I have to thank you for the attention of sending me a letter relative to Mrs. McDonald's case, and enclosing the opinion of the Solicitor of the Treasury.

"Your letter induces me to address you privately, as giving me a freedom of noticing the matter which I could not have under an official form; and as I have had nothing to say to the case for some time, your reference to me appears, and I hope is, a proof that you feel how hard it is upon the poor woman to be deprived of a pension as the widow of an officer because she cannot prove her marriage, although she was, strange to say, twice married to the same person.

"I feel sure, Sir, that your benevolence of mind shrinks

from the laboured special pleading of Mr.'s letter, which would seem rather directed against the escape of some great criminal arraigned at the bar of justice, than a fair and gentle exposition of a poor destitute widow's claim to a bounty which she certainly is de facto, if not de jure, entitled to. There is not a doubt, from the testimony and belief of I may say the whole island of Guernsey, as to her first marriage; for I can assure you that hundreds of persons, high and low, foremost amongst whom was the Dean of Guernsey, came forward to testify to its having taken place. Many persons had been present at it, and all recollected it; and the reason of this eagerness to witness in her favour was that she had been a servant remarkable for her beauty and dignity of mind and prudence of conduct; and many of the upper classes attended her wedding to show their respect.

"A curious train of circumstances-the death or absence of those who solemnized or were more immediately connected with the ceremony, and the improper pride of her husband which led him rather to be ashamed afterwards of having married a servant—has placed her in her present predicament. To sum up the facts,-she was certainly married twice; the second marriage is proved legally, but a little too late for her claim; the first marriage was in time, but, as above said, involved by accident in legal doubt, though morally certain. May I not then, with strength, put it to your known gentleness of heart and just feelings whether such a case, though denied as one of technical right, may not be made one of favour?"

The great and good man to whom the above was addressed-great in his gentleness and goodness, apart from his brilliant and practical intellect-who would seem to

have been lent to his country for a space to set forth in his daily walk the beauty of the weightier matters of the law-"judgment, mercy, and faith"-and to afford his countrymen a shining example of the power and dignity that reside in benevolence and gentleness, allowed the force of the above appeal for the poor widow, and shortly after announced to Sir William that a special pension had been granted to her.

At this time a greater sorrow than had yet visited it overshadowed in its approach the family of Scinde House. Sir William's third daughter had for some time been in weak health; and now, in the spring of 1856, the medical men pronounced that her recovery was impossible, and that her life could not be prolonged many months. Sir William therefore, with his family, removed into the country to be near his daughter. On the first visit which he paid her, when he had risen from the seat of his carriage and was about to descend the steps, the sight of the house where his child lay dying so overpowered him, that he fell backwards, extended at full-length on the floor of the open carriage as if he had been struck down by a sudden heavy blow. The heavy fall in his then crippled state must at any other time have caused him dreadful agony, and it did in all probability injure him seriously and permanently, but he felt nothing at the time, and hardly seemed to be sensible of its having happened. Here day by day he came until the end, which took place on the 8th September; and the daily spectacle of mortal weakness and suffering, borne with an unsurpassed meekness and patience, and upheld not by man's pride, but by weak woman's strong faith, produced a softening influence on his soul which was never impaired, but which strengthened him to bear the long and sore trials which yet awaited him.

The family returned to Scinde House in September, where Sir William addressed himself with increased diligence to the completion of his brother's biography, and found, as Lady Napier told the author, some comfort in his grief from the task of transcribing the many beautiful passages of his brother's journal which are remarkable for their strong Christian faith. Outwardly there was little change in his appearance and manner, certainly none but his family could have fathomed the depth of his sorrow; and only in unguarded moments, or when under narcotic influence, did he betray the load he car ried at his heart.

His old and valued friend Mr. Savage Landor published about this time a letter concerning the King of Naples, which justified tyrannicide and excited a good deal of public disapprobation.

To W. Caldecot, Esq.

"MY DEAR CALDECOT,

"Scinde House, Nov. 18, 1856.

"This is the anniversary of the battle of Nivelle in which I won my Lieutenant-Colonelcy. I was then strong and swift of foot; only one man got into the rocks of La Rhune before me, and he was but a step; yet eight hundred noble veterans, strong as lions, were striving madly to be first. I am now old, feeble, bent, miserable, and my eyes are dim, very dim with weeping for my lost child, and my brain is weak also: I cannot read with pleasure, and still less can I think and judge of what other people write. You must not, therefore, expect from me an essay on Landor's noble letter; and it would require an essay, it is so full of meaning. I call it noble, while differing in many points pushed out by him like needles against the world and its opinion and conventionalism; I call it noble, I say, because it is not Landor's

writing, but Landor himself, bold, generous, brave, and reckless, where his feelings as a human being are stirred; reckless in expression only, not in deeds. He is unpopular for his tyrannicide letter; yes, and deservedly so; it would be a bad sign of public feeling if he were not so, for tyrannicide means assassination, and that gives a licence to every violent passion. There is no law, no justice, no generosity of feeling that is not violated by a licence, an excuse for assassination. I have no objection to the death of King Bomba, or any other ruffian; hang them as high as Haman; but once allow of their assassination and the best man in the world is no longer safebecause an enemy will call him a tyrant and plunge a knife into his throat. Well, but this mistake does not make Landor obnoxious to me, or you, or anybody that knows him, because it is not his feeling, and we know that if he saw tyrannicide lifting the knife he would step between and receive the blow himself rather than let it fall on the man it was aimed at. No! it does not spring from anything savage in his nature, but the contrary; it is a mere wild cry of rage at seeing his fellow creatures so tormented by a monster; it is the sign of his deep honest human nature, of his compassionate heart, that urges him to spring forward and tear the wrongdoer; and because he can't do that, it makes him roar with a chained lion's fury.

"Many of his opinions on art-indeed, most of them-I agree in, and also in his estimate of writers, Wordsworth especially, but not Byron; but again, I say, his letter is Landor, bold, original, and vigorous in right and wrong alike. He is like an oak with many gnarled branches and queer excrescences, but always an oak, and one that will be admired for ages.

"Emerson is a fop in literature; his crotchets are not