ing him. "I could not help it, General," said Martin, much perturbed, "but I will not do it again.” "Yes, yes," said Marceau, "thou art wearied out; sleep, sleep here. But thou art ill at ease; lie down by me, since they have prepared thee no bed." And cutting short a protest, "I wish it, I order it. When I have need, I will call thee." And he twisted his legs to one side to make room for his comrade. At one in the morning of September 21 he felt better, and seized the opportunity to dictate a letter to Jourdan, asking promotion for two of his officers, and then his will-he had, as was said, nought but his peculum castrense, his horses to divide among his comrades, and, in money, only 14,400 livres (£576 in English), of which he left 1,200 livres to Emira, twice as much to his young brother Auguste, serving in the Chasseurs, and the rest had to go to his creditors. He signed his name firmly, and instantly fell into a delirium in which he fancied himself in action, gave orders, and tried to rise. At three o'clock he recovered sufficiently to recognise the Austrian general Elsuitz, and to address him by name; then he again gave some order, turned his head towards Souhait, Mon ami, je n'en suis plus rien," and with a last struggle he expired. After his death there was found round his neck a miniature of Agathe, which Hippolyte Le Prestre recognised as copied from one in his possession, which the general must have obtained surreptitiously. Sergent, summoned later on to act as executor, sealed it up and sent it back with the countess's letters. The Archduke Charles came with Baron Kray to gaze on the body, and the tears of an Austrian hussar fell on Marceau's sabre. "Were I French," said the archduke, "I would rather have lost a battle than such a general.” Kray's offer to provide for the funeral was refused, lest it should produce the impression that Marceau had died a prisoner. But an escort of Austrian hussars was accepted-two companies disputed the honour, and it was granted to that which had been oftenest engaged against Marceau. Kray indignantly ordered the removal of the bandages placed on the eyes of the French officers. "What have we to fear? Have they not to-day lost the best part of their forces?" The coffin, with dolman, hat, and Emira's tardily arrived scarf laid on it, was conveyed to Coblentz, where it was placed in the castle, and the street outside was illuminated by the townsfolk. Kray ordered a suspension of arms for the day, and the body, followed by four generals, a cavalry squadron, and the Coblentz magistrates dressed in black, was laid in the Fort Petersburg, henceforth renamed Fort Marceau, on the evening of September 23, 1796-the same hour and the same place where, two years before, on October 23, he had received the capitulation of the Coblentz garrison-while the salute from the French camp was echoed by the Austrian guns from Ehrenbreitstein. A leur commun regret, leur chagrin confondu, LESUR. But Sergent finds cause to complain of some remissness and signs of jealousy on the part of General Castelvert-who, indeed, could not forget that, a week ago, he had received a sharp letter of reproof from Marceau-and again on the part of the Government at home. "All Marceau's honours were bounded by the banks of the Rhine. Why did not his country raise him a tomb, when the enemy offered to do it? But the rising sun outshines the setting, and the Directory was then all taken up with its hero of Italy." Sergent saw the news in the Gazette and, hoping against hope, let Emira continue to prepare her brother's room, and to count the days to his coming. "If she hears it from anyone but you," said at last the French ambassador to him, "it will kill her." Then Sergent nerved himself. She remained with eyes fixed, as if dazed. Her husband placed a ring with Marceau's hair on her finger. "Ah! mon ami!" she cried, and fell on his breast sobbing. All that friends could do for her was done, in the way of letters of condolence from generals, from a cousin Alexandrine at Chartres, from Agathe Le Prestre, begging that, in their common grief, they might regard each other as sisters. Kléber, lying sick at Schwensart, shut himself up two days to mourn, and wept again on meeting Sergent. "I would fain quit the service," he said, "but I must remain to avenge Marceau." He was dissatisfied with the funeral. "The corpse of a great man should never become food for worms. O corbleu! had I been in command, Marceau's body should have been burnt." The Directory sent an address of condolence, and, on Jourdan's application, a pension, to Marceau's mother-who had done as little to deserve it as she well could-and found Government appointments for his brothers. The Academician Lavallée pronounced, in high-flown carmagnole style, an éloge, at which Moreau wept-rather for the matter than the manner of it, suggests Maze-and which Kléber dared not trust himself to come and hear. The name of Marceau was bestowed on the Rue du Chapelet at Chartres, where the hero was born, on the ci-devant Rue de Chartres in Paris, and on a line-of battle ship (a tradition kept up to this day, as we have been reminded during the recent visit of the French fleet). "Marceau's Todesfeier," by the German poet Schaler, renewed the idea of a chorus of weeping French and Germans, the Germans invoking "blutige Rach'" on his "Mörder," the French calling on their country to mourn and exult : Traure, Vaterland, und frohlocke, MARCEAU fiel ! Durch des Laurers Meutergeschoss Dem Laurer fluchten Austria's Aedle, A month after Marceau's death, the Austrians made an unsuccessful attack on the fort named after him. When they had retired, the French sentinel was found still guarding his general's grave. He had meant to perish there, he explained, but the Austrians had only looked at him and passed on. Marceau's soldiers subscribed for a stone pyramid, of Kléber's design, towards which Agathe sent 12,000 francs-anonymously, for not even now would the stern father relent. Next year the body was exhumed, and, in compliance with Kléber's wishes, burnt, the ashes being, in pseudoclassical fashion, divided between the tomb and the sorrowing Agathe and Emira. The epitaph, "Hic cineres, ubique nomen,” has become inappropriate, for the tomb was twice broken into in hopes of plunder, and the ashes were scattered abroad. But the pyramid stands on the "slope of rising ground," to which it was removed in 1819 on account of alterations in the citadel; and the stone placed by Captain Souhait to mark the spot where the death-shot was fired was held sacred by the peasants. "We feel sure," said an old man to Sergent, "that while that brave general's stone remains, it will preserve us from hail and thunder." Sergent solaced himself by engraving vignettes of Marceau's funeral urn, by the side of which a dishevelled Agathe, wearing her lover's portrait about her neck, sinks fainting into the arms of an Emira in a gipsy bonnet; it spoils the pathos to find that the real Agathe ended by marrying a marquis. Further, Sergent made a point of recording every compliment paid by Austrian officers to "Madame the sister of the brave Marceau." But these were barren honours. A more substantial reward came at last to Emira in the following way. After the battle of Wagram, Buonaparte, holding a review, announced that he would grant favours to all who had been wounded. Maugars, Marceau's former aide-de-camp, retired to his tent to write a petition, and presented it under his arm in a sling. Meeting Emira and her husband some time later, he asked her if she had any news from France. No, she replied, and Maugars changed the subject. But two years later Emira received official notice that a pension was granted her, and that the arrears of two years would be paid. She was amazed; to whose favour could this be owing? Maugar's question recurred to her mind. She wrote to him, and he replied with joy that his petition, which he had deemed forgotten, was for a pension for "Marceau's beloved sister, she who had been a true mother to him." "And Maugars has remained a captain!" comments Sergent. "This petition wanted but one word to make it perfect-Granted to the Chef de bataillon, Maugars." Emira died at Nice in 1834, aged eighty years. Her husband lived on till 1847, an old man of ninety-six, toothless, but hale and sound in mind, delighting to receive visitors of all nations in his room hung over with his various engravings of Emira and Marceau. As a special favour, he would sometimes admit the visitor to the inner cabinet, where Marceau's sabre and funeral urn stood on the mantelshelf, and where on the wall hung the last gown worn by Emira. E. PERRONET THOMPSON. 169 THE OLD INNS OF SALT HILL. TH HE hamlet of Salt Hill lies better than half mile west of 3 Slough, on the Old Bath Road. It formerly consisted of two large inns, on opposite sides of the way, at a short distance from each other and connected by what might pass for a street. But on the Slough side a number of cottages have been recently built, suited for the families of working men; and should, as seems likely in course of time, a church be added, the settlement may gradually form itself into a separate district. The more westerly of the two inns was called the "Castle," and must have been, in prosperous days, a considerable fabric-made up of three connected buildings, and standing in its own grounds, with a garden to the south, from whence a long stretch of the Thames valley came in sight. The other establishment was called the "Windmill," and, from its association with the curious old festival the Eton Montem, perhaps more generally known. Before railway times a journey of some twenty miles was considered sufficient to carry the weary statesman or over-worked artist into a renovating country seclusion; and a Sunday was often spent by celebrities at these Salt Hill inns. The "Windmill" had a beautiful garden in front, separated from it only by the high-road. The ground was planted with fine trees and girdled by a brook; and, though the view from the windows was thus obstructed, at a little distance towards London there was, and is, a charming prospect of Windsor Castle, of the buildings at Eton, and of both towns and their environs. This can be best obtained exactly where the lane from Stoke Poges meets the main road; and it is a landscape calculated to impress a person walking up from that village. It seems not unlikely, when all things are considered, that this is the spot which inspired Gray with his delightful stanzas on Eton College. The poem in the Pembroke MS. is headed, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Windsor and the Adjacent Country," and that accords better with what is seen at this point than the later title, which refers more particularly to the school and chapel at Eton. If it should be objected that the line That crown the wat'ry glade, |