street, who he could swear was no other than Miss de Crespigny. He recognised her at once. But she was on this occasion attired as a man. And from this strange and startling assertion he never varied.

Meanwhile marvellous changes took place. The Emperor was driven from his throne. The Bourbons were restored. Peace again visited Europe. The prison gave up its captives, and among those who returned was the long lost Hussey !

The account he gave of himself was simple and straightforward. The beauty of the day, and the excellent sport they met with had tempted him and his companion far beyond Sunny Bay bar. A French privateer espied them, lowered a boat, manned it, and captured them. They were plundered of all they had, and lodged in a French prison. His fare had been hard enough, and his treatment worse. His fellowsufferer had sunk under it, but he, sustained by hope, lived on. He had never been able to find means of communicating with his friends in England, but he had never despaired of reaching her shores once more.

There he was! somewhat thinned, and aged, and worn, and grey; but still the real, veritable Hussey! And there, to greet him, sat his dame-happily yet unprovided with another mate.

All this was speedily communicated to Dr. Cave. He grunted and groaned most awfully. And when his informant asked him his opinion, gave this most unexpected answer: "All he could say was, it was extremely wrong!"

Time sped on. The Bourbons were restored, and expelled. At least the elder branch of that dynasty was driven from the throne of France. The three frightful days of July drew on! and the horrors of a revolution were once more rife in the streets of Paris. And Lady Nelson was present, and in the very thick of it. The son of the mistress of the hotel where she resided was shot almost in her presence. The rifles of the combatants penetrated the room where the youthful members of her family were sitting. The servant who was waiting on them was shot dead by their side. The gensdarmerie searched the house with extraordinary keenness and rigour, because they were assured some member of the Polignac ministry was concealed in it, and because they knew full well the intimacy that had subsisted between "the Duchess de Berri and Miladi Nelson."

Searched it was repeatedly, minutely, distressingly; but no Polignac had, or was likely then to have, made it his place of refuge. Grief possessed the household. It was as had been foretold her, one of the most wretched days of the widowed peeress's chequered life. She had just buried her son, her only child, him who had been so true to her in all her trials, whose dutiful attachment to her had never wavered, and in whose affection she found a balm for much of her past sorrow and neglect. It was a bitter hour, for she had never deemed it possible she should survive him; and quenchless sorrow for his loss soon brought her to the grave.

She died, generous and self-denying woman! truly and literally of a broken heart.

But the question still remains unanswered-where was Miss de Crespigny? and who was she? An enigma to this hour!

ROBERT EMMETT AND ARTHUR AYLMER;

OR, DUBLIN IN 1803.

BY W. H. MAXWELL,

AUTHOR OF STORIES OF WATERLOO," &c.

THROUGHOUT the morning of the 23rd of June, 1803, strange and confused rumours were prevalent in the Irish capital-vague whisperings were interchanged that treason was abroad; all shook their heads suspiciously, but none ventured to point out the quiver from which the arrow should be discharged, or name a probable period for the expected explosion.

It would be idle to suppose that coming events, known to all besides, were concealed from the executive, and that for several preceding days their employés had not assured the government that an émeute might be momentarily expected. The information, however, did not come directly through the Vidocq of the day; and it is more probable it did not suit Major Sirr's purpose to disclose his knowledge of the conspiracy until it had become more extended and matured.

A wilder scheme was never devised by a mad enthusiast; and how Emmett could have carried on his preparations undiscovered as he did, and to the very evening of the insurrection, is astonishing. His arsenal-a deserted malt-house-was situated in the heart of a district densely populated; many persons were employed in fabricating weapons, filling cartridges, and forming hand-grenades; numbers were seen entering and departing from a building which for years had been unoccupied; and yet this unaccountable circumstance appears neither to have excited suspicion nor provoked inquiry, nor did an accidental explosion of gunpowder create more alarm than the disappearance of a drunken tailor, who had been kidnapped and confined in the depôt to make a general's uniform for the chief conspirator.

Robert Emmett was a gentleman by birth, well educated, and possessed talents of the highest order; his personal appearance was very favourable, his manner polished, and his disposition kind and generous. But on one subject he was decidedly monomaniac, and that was, in his enthusiastic attachment to what he fancied was civil liberty. In 1798 he was obliged to quit the country; no change, however, "came o'er the spirit of his dream," and he returned to Ireland early in 1803, not shaken, but madly confirmed in the wildest theories of ultra-republicanism. The impracticable project for overturning the government was too desperate for a reasoning man to contemplate, and it could therefore be nothing but the phantasy of "a mind diseased." He repudiated foreign aid, and at home he had none to countenance his mad attempt but a few of the lowest of the citizens. On a score or two muskets, some hundred pikes, and any of the rabble who would be persuaded to receive them, his wild expectations rested; and never was a political superstructure raised on sandier foundation than in reliance on an Irish mob.

Emmett for some time had been under the surveillance of the metropolitan police, and consequently had lived in close concealment.

His days were passed in the malt-house, superintending his military preparations, and in the evening he retired to the house of a deluded tradesman, which, from its immediate vicinity to his depôt, was to one circumstanced as he was particularly convenient.

That a discovery of his plot against the government might hourly be expected, Emmett had good reason to conclude; and the only desperate alternative left to the mad adventurer was, to draw the sword at once, and precipitate the outbreak.

I said that Emmett's associates were confined to the lowest classes of society; but there was a solitary exception. A young gentleman, of ruined fortunes, had desperately entered into the conspiracy; and while Emmett saw nothing but what was brilliant in the distance, Arthur Aylmer felt assured that success was altogether hopeless.

Aylmer was a man of ancient family. His father, after dissipating a goodly inheritance in horse-racing and electioneering, left his only son an orphan; and an unmarried uncle, a gentleman of large property, adopted him, and announced him to be his heir. With Emmett

Aylmer had been a student in the Dublin university; and, while his friend cultivated a fine taste and inculcated his dangerous doctrines, Aylmer wasted neither time nor thought on political theories, but led a gay and careless life in evening revelries and morning amusements. Fine as the college youth were then, none in the manlier exercises could compete with Arthur Aylmer. He was the best hurler of his day, threw the sledge farther than any of his compeers, and, in a running leap, was held to be unrivalled. By a singular coincidence, Aylmer and Emmett on the same morning had obtained an unfortunate notoriety; the former was expelled for fighting a duel, the latter upon charges of sedition.

Pardonable as the first offence was, at a period when duelling was so much the order of the day that even the judges of the land would send and accept a challenge, Aylmer's expulsion was never forgiven by his uncle, and time, instead of healing, appeared to enlarge the breach. At last the old man, by an insane marriage with a girl who might have been taken rather for a grand-daughter than a wife, annihilated every hope his nephew might have still indulged of succeeding to his uncle's fortune. Debts, contracted when he considered himself about to inherit a fine estate, now pressed heavily on the unfortunate young gentleman. His creditors, as his prospects became more overclouded, became in turn more urgent; writs were issued, which he could only avoid by personal concealment. Literally without a guinea, a mad attempt or a debtor's prison was the only alternative left him; and, reckless of a life, which he now regarded as worse than valueless, Aylmer sheltered himself in the depôt, and agreed to take part in a wild émeute, which he knew would consign its leaders to the scaffold.

It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and on that night an outbreak, once postponed, was to be attempted at every hazard. All the matériel within the arsenal of the conspirators was now being placed in readiness; and the mad enthusiast who had devised the conspiracy, and the reckless man who had joined it, were personally superintending the preparations for the intended insurrection. Against the walls of a large and desolate-looking loft hundreds of pikes were restingfire-arms, grenades, and cartridges were spread loosely over the floor;

several beams, hollowed and filled with powder, and planks thickly studded with spike-nails to impede cavalry, were placed against an open window to launch into the street. All was bustle, and some twenty men were employed in active preparation for one of the wildest attempts which history records.

Screened by some packing-cloths, a cornerof the wretched building was considered private, and appropriated to "the general," as poor Emmett called himself. A deal table, two crazy chairs, and a desk comprised the furniture, and there, after a hurried meal, the two conspirators were seated: all was in perfect keeping with the place. Two vulgar wine-glasses and an undecanted bottle of portwine were placed upon the table.

"You seem dispirited, Arthur; come, rouse thee, man!—the wine is not amiss, although our table appointments are of the plainest order. Well; 'tis the last night we shall be constrained to play at hide-and-seek; and, before this time to-morrow evening the metropolis will be-"

"Marvelling that men could be out of Bedlam, who were half so mad as we," exclaimed Aylmer, as he broke in upon the unfinished

sentence.

Emmett coloured to the brows. "If you think the attempt so unpromising, why persevere? You are still a free agent, and need not commit yourself—you have ample time to recede. Your secret rests in a breast that never will betray it; and, excepting myself, none even know your name."

"My dear Emmett, I have never concealed from you the fact, that circumstances, and not fancy, have made me your partisan," returned Aylmer; "there are secret springs which influence human actions, and mine obey their guidance: attend to me a moment. You know the cruel disappointment which cherished assurances of wealth, and all that is attendant on it, inflicts on him who was taught from infancy to look to a noble inheritance as his, and at manhood finds his dream suddenly dispelled, and himself thrown on the world, worse even than a pauper. Would you believe me when I tell you, that, even after the dotard's marriage, some whisperings of hope sustained me; but this day the final blow has been delivered, and there is nothing in this world now, as far as I am concerned, to occasion either hope or fear." He took a newspaper from his pocket, pointed out a paragraph as he handed it across the table to his companion, and then continued. "Read, my friend, and then say whether my ruin is not fully consummated."

Emmett took the paper, and, in an under tone, rapidly repeated the paragraph:

"Yesterday, at Aylmer Castle, the lady of Reginald Aylmer was safely delivered of a son and heir. The universal joy which this happy event occasioned was evidenced by a general demonstration of delight; when darkness came, on every height bonfires were blazing." Nay, stop, my dear Emmett; these agreeable details are not particularly gratifying to me. Whatever doubts I entertained before of joining in the intended outbreak are now removed, and for a thousand pounds, by heaven, I would not now hold back !"

66

"I do not exactly see how far this occurrence can have removed your previous scruples," was the remark.

"A very few words will explain it," replied Aylmer. "You are, my dear Emmett, a political enthusiast-forgive me, I mean you no offence and so also is my uncle, although you differ in opinion widely as the poles are apart. Seek Ireland over, you will not find a more bigoted Orangeman than he; he might feel some regret at seeing a mad dog hanged, but he would be particularly gratified in assisting to string up a rebel. He prides himself on the loyalty of his name, and, as I am well convinced, would much rather that any of his lineage were accused of highway-robbery than sedition. Were I thrown into a jail he would treat the matter with indifference, and probably dole out through the keeper enough to prevent the prodigal from starving. A ruined nephew has caused him no regret-a rebel nephew will wring his withers to the quick! Yes, old dotard ! I'll mar your festivities when you least expect it; and while you pride yourself on a youthful heir, the paper that records his birth will recall to memory your traitor kinsman. What hour is this affair to commence ?"

"At twilight," was the reply.

"Then shall I be with you punctually; one visit must be paid, and then the sooner the world and I shake hands and part, the better."

Aylmer rose from the table-was cautiously let out of the building into the narrow lane, the door was jealously secured, and, proceeding by the most private and unfrequented streets, he left the wretched locality for one of the chosen resorts of fashion.

Arthur Aylmer we have described as combining what are generally found to be physically opposite, uncommon strength and great activity. When nature is liberal in some gifts, she often plays the niggard regarding others; but in Aylmer's case the fickle dame had made a generous exception. No ponderous outlines marred the symmetry of his figure while they marked its strength; no meagre and sinewy frame-work promised a remarkable agility. His appearance was, at the same time, graceful and commanding; while in a face, whose expression was exceedingly prepossessing, not a feature could have been objected to.

As a student, Arthur Aylmer was an idler; but who could have waded through the stupid reading which a university course then imposed but some dull mortal, to whose heavy intellect Pope and Shakspeare were incomprehensible? But Aylmer was a man of better taste; and while De Lolme and Burlemaqui were thrown aside, the old dramatists and all the lighter literature of the day were more pleasantly and profitably substituted.

Never had a brilliant career closed more sadly and unexpectedly; one short year before, men envied and women worshipped Reginald Aylmer's then acknowledged heir. All that could intoxicate youthful vanity had assailed him, and whether he hurled in the park, or danced in the gay assembly, on him admiring looks were centred. To personal advantages, others which influence society were superadded. Aylmer had birth, position, and prospective fortune, and for him many a beauty sighed, and on him many a mother speculated; but he was love-proof-his heart was already preoccupied. With Irish gallantry, Aylmer returned the flattering incense abundantly offered him by the fair; and while all praised his agreeability, none asserted that a sentence had ever passed his lips which indicated a