enjoyed since. His devotion to the Catholic Church made him particularly acceptable to the pope. Whilst at Rome he wrote and published in Italian a work entitled "Concordanza delle Scienze Naturali e principalmente della Geologia, con la Genesia," - always a favorite subject, on which he took the orthodox side. The late Lady William Russell acknowledges the receipt of a copy in a letter dated "Audley Square, Day of the Purification, 1864." Many thanks, my dear duke, for the book with the pretty concetto of "Che sarà, sarà."* Alas! Che sarà in Germany? I recommend my Roman son (Lord Odo) to your protection, as a sequel to the friendship of our Lisbon days, when he was a little child, and you came to Janellas Verdes (the British Legation), and were in your brilliant military, patriotic, heroic days. I am still, and, I fear, ever shall be, a great invalid! but I keep to my friendships; and am proud of numbering you amongst my hommes illustres! though I cannot write terse parallels, like Plutarch, or I would compare you to the Cid. Whilst at Lisbon, in the interim between his periods of residence at Rome, the premiership was repeatedly pressed king, and in January, upon him by the 1869, his Majesty wrote, "I cannot dispense with the service I request of you." To obey this command, he took leave of the pope, and was on his way back when, on reaching Bordeaux, he received a telegram, announcing that the ministers retained their posts; and that the legation at Paris was at his disposal. His mission to Paris did not last long, and was principally remarkable for his conferences with the French emperor touching the proposed union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns on the head of Dom Fernando. In the mean time misgovernment and popular discontent had reached their acme in Portugal, and in May, 1869, Saldanha felt imperatively called upon to repeat the part which he had so successfully enacted some three or four times already. He proceeded to the palace and told the king he must dismiss his ministry: "I had many times the honor of saying to his Majesty that his persistence in retaining the ministry might be fatal to him. I reminded him of Charles X. and Polignac; of Louis Philippe and Guizot; of Isabella II. and Gonzalez Bravo." On the king still hesitating, he said: The Bedford motto. Sire, I am unwilling to be considered ambitious, or disloyal to the crown; but I might appear so, if I did not endeavor to prevent a revolution which should oblige me to become the regent. I will, therefore, put myself at the head of a revolution, such as I know I shall be able to guide and control for your Majesty's advantage; and be assured that I will not, in my old age, dishonor my steadfast principles of loyalty. He was as good as his word. He had only to hold up his hand to produce a military demonstration in unison with the popular feeling; and, after some show of resistance, the ministry resigned, and he again became lord of the ascendant. Tranquillity being thus restored, he tendered in the evening the resignation of the offices he had accepted in the morning. The king replied by forcing on him an additional office, the department of foreign affairs, and as its representative he addressed a circular to the diplomatic agents abroad, recapitulating and justifying what had been done. He was now in his eightieth year, and all Europe was disposed to echo the remark of the Times, that "there was something so extravagant in the idea of a nation crouching at the feet of an octogenarian general." But, be it observed, it was the voluntary act of the nation; and it was moral rather than physical force which enabled him to execute this coup d'état. His next and last administration had lasted one hundred days, when he accepted the post of minister to the Court of St. James's, upon the understanding that no political reaction would be attempted by his successors. He led, as might have been anticipated from his advanced age, a quiet, unobtrusive life in London, so quiet that Lord Derby, sitting next the duchess one day at dinner, said to her, "I am going to try to pick a quarrel with Portugal." "Indeed," was the reply, "why so?" "Oh!" rejoined his lordship, "only that I may have the pleasure of seeing the marshal oftener at the Foreign Office." Some scraps of his conversation have been preserved. By way of an apology for the surrender at Sedan, it was observed that the "French had exhausted their powder." "They had their bayonets," was his dry rejoinder. When he was asked to what he imputed Napoleon's constant success until Waterloo, "Because until then he had never encountered an English army." When an aide-de-camp remonstrated with him for walking his horse back from the front during a hot fire, he sententiously made answer, " In the presence of an enemy advance at a gallop, but retire at a foot's pace." His most important work, in two parts, was published during his residence in England; the first part in 1874, the other in 1876. The translated title is The Voice of Nature ; or the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of GOD shown in Creation; in the connection between the Inorganic and the Organic World; and in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Structure of Plants, and to the Moral and Physical Constitution of Man. The Archbishop of York acknowledged ments, assaults, and battles, in which I have led my comrades to victory, I never undertook impossibilities. He might have said nearly the same of his political exploits, of his coups d'état which, rash as they generally appeared, never failed when he was left to himself. Nor is it enough to say that they were well planned and well executed; or that he was eminently endowed with courage and decision, the qualities which carry all before them in revolutionary times. Uniform success on such a variety of oссаsions cannot be explained away in this fashion. Why was he trusted by sover the reception of a copy in these compli eign after sovereign, telling them all mentary terms: I have read with great interest your important work. Whilst there are, of course, some things in it which are written from the standpoint of another Church, it is impossible not to admire, and appreciate highly, such an ear nest attempt to defend the truth against dis belief. I doubt not that it will do much good. He died at Gloucester Place on November 21, 1876, four days after he had completed his eighty-sixth year. The body was conveyed to Lisbon and buried in state with royal honors. He died in embarrassed circumstances, and a pension of 5337. was granted by the Chambers to the widow, with one of 4447. to his sole surviving son. along that he was defying their authority, keeping order by disorder, and committing treason out of loyalty? Why did the people as well as the army rise at his bidding whenever he proclaimed that the hour for action had struck? Why did English ambassadors encourage and applaud measures so much opposed to English notions of legality? They must one and all have given him credit for honesty of purpose; and his consistency of aim is beyond dispute. The two things which he kept steadily in view throughout were the monarchy and the Liberal constitution; and on a careful analysis it will be found that the preservation of one or the other was involved in every exceptional proceeding on which he staked his honor and his life. He acted strictly on the maxim, Nec Deus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus. He was pre-eminently the man for an emergency, but he never intrigued to create or accelerate one he never came The career of which we have given little more than an outline was and is wholly without parallel, precedent, or example in any country. Saldanha has been called the Espartero of Spain, but he presents rather a contrast than resemblance to the Spanish dictator, who grasped the supreme power which Saldanha repeatedly refused. At the risk of being thought paradoxical, we should say that he had more in common with the Iron Duke, asking first in a crisis how the king's (or queen's) government was to be carried on, always guiding his course by the public weal as his polestar, and subordinating he made a revolution. Moreover, to sup even principle to broad considerations of expediency. There is extant a letter from Saldanha to a minister of war, in which he says: till he was wanted; and whenever he put his shoulder to the wheel, it was on the eve of an otherwise inevitable crash. This is a decisive answer to the current calumny that he remained quiet whilst his pose him possessed of such a talisman, I cannot help telling you that on many occasions I have undertaken acts of the most decided rashness, and have always come out successful. The results have proved that, notwithstanding obstacles which to many appeared insuperable, victory was possible. Up to the present moment, thanks to the Supreme Being, I have never suffered a defeat; an evident proof, that in the numberless engage-❘ the constant recurrence of the evils to which his drastic remedies were applied. fortable square box in the north aisle, But he has left a reputation that his coun- well-cushioned and carpeted, with plenty trymen will not speedily let die. When a of high hassocks, on one of which I genchildren, the women curtsy; he nods, pleasant and royal-looking, as he passes through them all down the churchyard path, his eagle eye sweeping their ranks, and an indescribable effluence of high breeding and careless kindheartedness playing about him like an invisible atmosphere. was not deputy towards the close of 1870 stated in the Chamber at Lisbon, that Saldanha had not stood alone as the champion of the Constitution, another indignantly replied: True: but without the Marshal Saldanha, the cause of liberty was lost. He is our only general; and base is it to deny his work. If France, instead of Bazaines and Lebœufs, had had Marshal Saldanha, she would not, at this moment, be trampled upon by Prussia. Although, therefore, he may not be placed by posterity where his biographer would fain place him- in the category of statesmen and warriors alongside of Washington he will fill some of the most luminous pages in Portuguese his tory, and take high rank amongst the brightest illustrations of the nineteenth century who just fall short of being great. From Temple Bar. GIRL AND GRANDFATHER. THE pretty, sleepy parish of Aspenkirk lay basking in the fervid blaze of a noontide sun, one Sunday, early in June, some five-and-forty years ago. It was the hour of morning service, and the doors of the old parish church stood open, so that the rector as he stood preaching in the wormeaten pulpit, a commanding-looking figure in his black gown, could see all around him, not only the living flock of which he was the shepherd, and who now sat respectfully hearkening to his accents of rolling thunder, but also the quiet, grassy graves outside, where the village forefathers lay taking their rest under the daisies. I, too, could see from the corner where I sat in my grandfather's pew, a green patch of churchyard, with a butterfly skimming about the porch, which was very refreshing to me after keeping my eyes dutifully fixed on my prayer-book such a long, long time. Close to the door sat the workhouse children, who also snatched a fearful joy as they sniffed the summer air, but woe to the wight whose roving eye, or gently protruded head was detected by the guardian's searching glance. Crack went the cane on poor woodenpate, to his grief and anguish, and at the well-known sound my heart would bleed for woodenpate as I thought how sore his head would be next time he had his hair brushed. Our pew was a com erally sat, my head resting on my grand. father's knee. We were great allies, he and I, and braved my grandmother's looks of mild disapproval on many minute occasions, when her sense of propriety was ruffled by some childish freedom of gesture, or breach of rules conventional. She was a strict disciplinarian, and could not forget how in her young days the maternal hand had held a stick when the hour of correction came, a vision which always made me rejoice in secret that my greatgrandmother was safe out of sight and reach before I came into a world, where, as a rule, children were naughty. reforming finger had as yet been laid on Aspenkirk Church. The large east window, thickly festooned with ivy, looked beautiful in my inexperienced eyes. No I did not know how hideous the whitewashed walls and great high pews were, but I hated old Robbie, the clerk, who took so prominent a part in the services, and whose droll nasal performances, and self-satisfied smirk, used to excite me to illicit smiling, which not all the cold severity of my grandmother's eye could control. Heavens! what a performance was the "Old Hundredth" in those days at Aspenkirk Church! There was no organ, nor can I remember any tuneful voices, but I can still hear Robbie, in high monotone, giving out each line successively, before it was sung by the congregation of untutored north-country voices at the full pitch of the lungs. One hymn-tune which was in use, and which, in spite of barbarous treatment, still haunted my ear and gave me pleasure, I never heard elsewhere, till after many years, in a French convent, I found it again, and recognized in the old Latin invocation to Mary, chanted so pathetically by the nuns of Avranches, the identical melody that had charmed me in Aspenkirk Church when I was a child. But this is a digression. Let us get outside the church this glorious summer day, for the rector's discourse is over, the first rush of Cumberland clogs has escaped into the churchyard, the lads and lasses are sidling off in company, the farmers gathering in knots for a gossip about the hay and other rustic matters, and their wives and daughters are exchanging civilities and the tittle-tattle of the week, before dispersing to their several homes. Through them all strides the rector, in gown and college cap, tall, spare, and aristocratic. Bob go the "Ah! Mrs. Somerby," he cries out to my grandmother, "what a fine rose you have there! Why have I none like this in my garden?" "Dear! Mr. Featherstone," she says, "you have finer far than this, for certain," as she puts the rose into his hand. He stood smelling it critically. "Where will you match me a fragrance like this among all the apothecary's gums?" says he, in that deep, rolling voice that always sounded to me like the sea. He carried it off with him as he disappeared through the door in the rectory wall, and from that day the bush on which the ruddy rose had grown was called the "apothecary's rose." My grandmother's quaint-looking conveyance, styled the "minibus," was standing waiting for us outside the churchyard wall, under the shade of a great elm-tree, but old Farmer may just go on whisking his tail at the flies for another ten minutes, for the meetings at the church-gate are not to be scrambled through all in a moment. I sat down on a gravestone, and waited contentedly enough while grandmamma gossiped. "Mary Atkinson" slumbered below. I began to draw mental pictures of Mary Atkinson's past, present, and future condition, who had lain here for I stood up, confused, and properly overpowered by such an honor. Miss Betty's girdle-cakes were the creamiest in the parish; moreover, her cow, "Miss Story," was an old acquaintance, having been once a calf in our Holm field. Her garden lay in pleasant proximity to a broad and silvery river, and there, on a bed of fine gravel, I could enjoy an unmolested half-hour at the agreeable game of ducks and drakes. I demurely thanked Miss Betty, whose old, puckered, parchment mask took an additional crease of approbation. I was only a visitor at my grandmother's house, and was to return to my parents in Scotland shortly. I think Miss Betty somehow expected to inhale, through my small personality, some impressions of the northern metropolis, as her sister, Miss Anne, always dubbed the city of my birth. Of Miss Anne I was considerably afraid. She was much more imposing than Miss Betty; wore a silk gown, and confined her hair by a very broad fillet of black velvet, which gave her an impressive appearance. She was generally spoken of in respectful tones, as "a woman of very superior mind." She was portly in person, and condescending in manner, but she had a displeasing custom of always coming down on me with a sudden public appeal on historical questions, which was sorely disconcerting, and made me timid in her august presence. Only last week, at my grandmother's tea-table, just when the hot, buttered cakes were coming in, she had startled me by the abrupt question, "Now then, Miss Charlotte, what is your opin fifteen years. Her natural body mustion of the character of Henry VIII.?" have been eaten by the worms long ago. I wondered if her bones were quite gone also, and if the coffin was empty, and what was going on inside it now; and where Mary Atkinson's soul was waiting all this time, and if she were not rather tired of waiting, and feeling chilly without her old body? Suddenly I heard a cracked, quavering voice close at my ear, which made me start up in apprehension. Mary Atkinson's voice might sound as queer as that if she had nothing but a few bones left; but, oh relief! it was only Miss Tremblingly I felt that upon the style of my reply would depend Miss Anne's opinion of the system of education in the northern metropolis, and that my mother and my governess stood upon their trial in that dread moment. Grandpapa had somehow come to my aid, as he generally did in awkward emergencies, and I was saved for the time. But now, again, I saw her steadily approaching. Surely she would not desecrate the holy day with profane antiquarian researches. There was no saying. I slipped out at the Betty Jefferson, who stood looking curi- churchyard gate, and made for the "miniously at me from under her long poke bus," where 1 sat, full of hopes and fears, bonnet, eccentrically trimmed with a a distinct hope being that my grandmother knotted bunch of worsted stay-laces. My grandmother's more familiar tones saluted me, "Lotty, are you dreaming, child? Do you hear, Miss Betty is inviting you to tea?" would not ask Miss Betty to Fairholm till after my departure, for the good lady, having a nervous disinclination to sleep alone in the yellow guest-chamber, had invited me, on a recent occasion, to keep her company there. Should I ever forget the vague, unutterable terrors of that night, when I, aroused by some inexplicable sympathy with Miss Betty's wakeful fears, opened my eyes in a pitchy dark ness within that hearse-like bed, and heard in the unearthly silence the odd, croaking voice of Miss Betty proclaiming nervously, "How deadly still all is!" My grandmother joined me at last, and we drove home to Fairholm in our usual jog-trot fashion, picking up my grandfather after we had gone about a mile. There were two little cupboards in the "minibus," whence grandmamma always produced some relishing gingerbread cake to beguile the long drive of four miles. What a pretty rural drive it was through the Aspenkirk plantations! How fragrant the odors of pine and fir! What a liberal margin of short, sweet turf bordered the park-like road on either side! Here and there we passed a cottar's cow, peacefully grazing on the roadside, followed step for step by a little herd-girl patient virtue in miniature - for whom there was generally a bit of gingerbread to spare. Why does no gingerbread taste the same nowadays? Narrower grew the lanes, and more tortuous. The hedges and ditches hereabouts are all a tangle of meadow-sweet and ragged robin. The home landscape is tame and monotonous; but in the distance rise the blue hills of the Borderland. And now we must cross Lyn Bridge. How black and sullen the river looks on the one side under the cliffs of red sandstone, and how brightly it ripples on the other! Then we turn a sharp corner, and descend gently for half a mile, through grandpapa's fields and plantations. At last we sight our own pretty homestead, and Farmer, with no need of admonition, turns into the courtyard, his labors ended for the day. CHAPTER II. READER, let me linger a moment over the memory of Paradise, for such was Fairholm to me. The days I passed there were purely happy, the only days out of a long life that shine ever undimmed in memory's golden light Arcadian days, when my soul, like a bud, began to open softly to the morning sun, and no cankering worm crept nigh the favored blossom - days that rolled by blessedly uneventful, as I learned to read out of Nature's book, and to rejoice in the operations of her hands; to distinguish the notes of the birds, and watch them in the coverts where they reared their young; to stand in the early morning, as the mower whetted his scythe, and smell the new-cut grass; to hunt the mushroom ere the dew dried upon the meadow, and gather the eggs for breakfast from the cackling hens; to watch the cows, over the byre-door, as they yielded their milk to the pail, and stand aside as they passed me lowing to the fragrant pastures. Here I learned the names and properties of flowers and herbs, and wrought in a corner of my own with spade and watering-pot; watched the bloom on the plum, as it swelled to ripeness on the sunny wall, and the cherries reddening day by day beneath the net, among their pointed, glossy leaves. Down in the hayfields, I played till I was weary, and read fairy-tales underneath the gold tassels of the laburnum-tree. And moving through all, was the influence of a mighty affection, which tinctured everything in which I lived, moved, and had my being. Never have I loved any human being as I loved my grandfather. I loved my grandmother also, but in quite a secondary way. She was less indulgent, more impatient of the small mistakes and blunders of childhood. A little wholesome fear tempered my love for her, yet I liked well to lay my round young cheek against her soft, velvety old one, or to trot by her side as she visited the dairy and larder, and to watch her decant her clear gooseberry wine into the quaint old pint decanters, with wrought into the crystal. My first view of her in the day was always pleasant. She sat in a sunny window of the breakfast parlor, which looked into the garden - in sober, black gown, a clean muslin kerchief folded across her bosom, pinned at the throat by a little rose in garnets, the only ornament she ever wore, a gift of my grandfather in his courting days. She was always reading the same little book, Bogatzky's "Golden Treasury," whence she gathered, I fancy, her note for the day. I can see her well-cut features, her calm, sensible, spirited expression, and the little stiff brown curls upon her forehead, for she did not then wear her own hair. I now know that the mistress of Fairholm was a very handsome woman. My grandfather was not handsome - a homely-looking, blue-eyed man of medium stature and ruddy complexion. His smooth, bald crown I admired exceedingly. I was not the only person who paid him homage. John Somerby was master wherever he stepped. Another bright tint at the breakfast-table roses |