"hot youth" to the fascinating genius of Sheridan, |flicted on him; but in this court the intention of the or some equally seductive dramatist) you might as soon "See great Hercules whipping a gig, as see a Quaker, a real Quaker—not a stage Quaker If such be the touchstone of the new philosophy; if all peaceful professions are to be construed with reference to their theatrical effect; if, in fact, all the world is a stage, and the "bubble reputation" is to be sought, even by the son of Victor Pacifico, in the private duello, where are we to look for comfort? In whose amiable dispositions can we henceforth trust? We did hope our own last Lord Mayor's show had been the sign of a new era: we should not now be surprised on the 9th of November, 1851, if by way of a novel dramatic attraction, the lady who represents Peace upon earth were to challenge to mortal combat her deposed predecessor, the melancholy "Man in brass." L'honneur le veut ainsi. But we must return to our judicial chronicle. parties was the first thing to be considered, as without them there could have been no misdemeanour. "Now, the intentions of M. Viennot and M. Charles Hugo were precisely similar. Neither of them was intent upon killing or wounding the other; that is not the point of a duel. A duel is a mental impulse, which induces you to expose your adversary and yourself to the eventualities of the particular weapons selected (aux conséquences des armes choisies). How can you absolve one and condemn the other, when their intentions were the same? By reason of the actual wound which resulted, the fait materiel of the blessure? You must see that justice, conducted on such principles, will inevitably fall into materialism (assez sur ces bizarreries). Let us look at the position of the seconds in this particular case. Two of them accompanied a relative, a friend, who fought in defence of his father, c'est sacré ! The other two accompanied a young friend whose honour had been intrusted to them by his father, c'est encore sacré! On the ground, the seconds threw themselves between the swords, and put an end to the combat. The law presumes in general (autre anomalie !) that the accomplice Maitre Plocque, the counsel of M. Viennot, urges on the principal; whereas, in the duel, the argued that his client was entitled to protection as second acts as mediator and moderator. I hope having inflicted the wound in question in his own that society may discover a substitute for duelling; defence, or rather in the .defence of "ce qu'il y a but, in the meantime, you must bear lightly on the de plus sacré dans autrui," the person of his father. seconds (menageons les témoins), or we shall come As the chronicler does not give Me. Plocque's to duels with no seconds-that is, duels with no arguments at length, we are unable to appreciate security for fair play, duels which may become their legal value: to produce an effect on the per-assassinations!" sonal sympathy of the court, we doubt if they After this harangue, which was interrupted, as could be better stated than in M. Viennot's own so cleverly inconclusive and bewildering an appeal words, which we have quoted above. The gentle- was likely to be, by frequent marks of approbation, man who defended the four "accomplices" or the court delivered the following judgment:seconds, Maitre Nogent-Saint-Laurens, is reported more fully. He began, like Polonius, by stating his intention to be brief, inasmuch as "cases of this kind are not subjects for argument, and the intervention of lawyers is of little use. They are not questions of reasoning, but of feeling: they are not submitted to a careful analysis, but precipitées, according to the inspirations of the conscience, and the impulses of personal honour." Accepting for all his clients the declaration made by M. De la Pierre with such frank and soldier-like clearness, that he had not conceived himself guilty of a crime or misdemeanour in assisting at a duel loyale, but allowing that the law, as at present interpreted by some of the French courts, held the contrary, he proceeded to point out the anomalous consequences of this jurisprudence singulière. In this case a wound had been inflicted: that brought it within the jurisdiction of the correctional policecourt, as a misdemeanour. If there had been no wound, it would have been legally an attempt at crime, an attempt to murder; so that, in the teeth of logic and common sense, the gravity of the offence varied inversely with the seriousness of the facts. Moreover, in this instance, M. Charles Hugo escaped prosecution. Why? Because he had been wounded. It had been decided in another court, that a man could not be supposed accessory to the wounds in "Considering that the law of misdemeanour does not except the case of wounds inflicted in a duel; "That the facts proved against the seconds bear all the marks of complicity' provided by the law; "That Charles Viennot, though moved by generous and honourable feelings to take the place of his father in single combat, did not come within the line of justification provided by the law as the case of legitimate self-defence, or defence of another person, but that these circumstances ought to be considered in reduction of the penalty; "That however loyale the conduct of the seconds may have been, they constituted themselves accomplices to the misdemeanour, by arranging and seeing executed the conditions of the duel: "The court condemns Viennot, De la Pierre, and De Grimaldi to a fine of 100 francs each; Méry and Alexandre Dumas to a fine of 200 francs each." We are told that the severity of this sentence caused a general feeling of painful surprise. The eye-witness whose chronicle we have quoted is inclined to attribute it to the line of defence taken by Maitre Plocque, and asserts that such was the prevailing impression. This defence is characterised as an "incroyable diatribe," full of "retro spective and unnecessary violence" against M. on us from the habit of remaining unfed. Let us Charles Hugo, who had in his evidence so "gene- be thankful that our friend Mr. Cochrane did not rously taken all the blame upon himself, to place think it necessary to call us to account for our the defendants in a better position." Whether friendly criticisms on "Young Italy;" that the Maitre Plocque, in throwing up outworks and en- foreign correspondents of the daily press have not trenchments round his "sanctuaire de logique," the risen upon us as one man; that the Morning argument that M. Viennot wounded his adversary Chronicle did not revengefully worry Toby, when in pure self or more than self-defence, may have Punch set "his little dogs and all" to bark at the used unnecessary violence towards M. Hugo, we papal articles, which "should have been printed in cannot, of course, determine; but we confess our letters of congenial scarlet," or send a red-tape inability to see how M. Hugo in his evidence did declaration of war to the office of the Globe, when take, or could have taken, an undue share of the contemptuously designated as Mr. Ranville Ranblame on his own shoulders. In obedience to the ville. In spite of our friendship for Sir Lucius maxim, "L'honneur le veut ainsi," he had taken O'Trigger on the one hand, in spite of the banalités offence at a common-place and not very ill-natured of the gospel of the pacific millennium on the other; metaphor; instead of answering with the pen, as in spite of the clap-trap cockney school of poetry; would have become a young and ardent polemiste, in spite of the truisms, platitudes, and fallacies of he at once took up the sword; on finding himself the Peace Society, let us at least be thankful that face to face with a respectable vieillard, he, by chez nous Captain Sword is not the invariable an adroit manœuvre, blockaded M. Viennot the companion of Captain Pen. Should the progress younger in the cul-de-sac of filial piety. All of civilisation take a different turn, and re-introduce these facts Me. Plocque had an unquestionable among us, with the other foreign manufactures right to dilate upon, without laying himself open which will crowd the Exhibition of 1851, this to the accusation of an "incroyable diatribe." If particular piece of continental manners, we intend his oration did, in fact, induce the court to mark to adopt in our own case, and recommend to all their sense of M. Hugo's "unnecessary violence" our brethren of the press, a precaution suggested in that part of the sentence which inflicts a double amount of fine on his seconds, we congratulate Me. Plocque on the character and success of his eloquence. by the "difficulty" which we have just been describing. It may be connue in France, but is not yet so in England. Any injured individual calling at our office for redress will find, not a vieux miliThe sentence itself is not, according to our no- taire, not a thundering six-foot Irishman, with tions, severe. We cannot, in England, get drunk shoulders broad enough to bear, and arms strong like gentlemen (including, of course, in that phrase, enough to return, a horsewhipping-not even a the amusement of driving a Hansom's cab from professed member of the Peace Society, with a the inside, drawing the teeth of a few street-doors policeman within call; but a vieillard fort reor a few passengers, or the perpetration of any spectable à qui (to use poor Armand Carrel's other unconsidered trifle in the way of "a lark") ominous expression) A QUI PARLER. He will inwithout subjecting ourselves to a fine of five variably declare himself the author of the offending pounds; a fine inflicted in a sentence of disappro-article; he will be bland, but firm; he will show bation pure et simple, unaccompanied by any pal- every disposition to place himself personally at the liatory expressions respecting the "generous and service of the "friends" of the complainant, but it honourable sentiments" by which the said lark is highly probable that he will not be able (by was dictated, or the general loyauté of our conduct towards the apprehending policeman, to soothe our wounded vanity. England is a much more expensive country than France, both as regards the necessaries and the luxuries of life. reason of his age) to find among his own acquaintance "deux hommes serieux" who will consent to accompany him to Wimbledon Common or Wormwood Scrubbs. And (chose qu'il faut constater) the enemy will not be able to extricate himself After all, let us be thankful that it is so. Let us from his false position by an appeal to the filial or be thankful that, among the other hardships of nepotal piety of a son or nephew of our aged taxation under which John Bull grumbles, there is "Pater Eneas," or " Avunculus Hector;" for "the a considerable and almost prohibitory ad valorem distinguished individual who has consented to duty imposed upon duels; that there is no tendency occupy the important editorial post" in question towards Free-trade in this respect; and that, in our establishment, is especially warranted as A although we have not yet succeeded in finding an RESPECTABLE OLD GENTLEMAN, aged 67, without "equivalent pour le duel dans les mœurs," the incumbrances! want of appetite for this particular luxury grows LEGENDS OF ULSTER. NO. XI. THE BURNING OF BELFAST CASTLE. BY FRANCES BROWN. THE town of Belfast, which gazetteers reckon the the family fortunes had prospered. The baronet's fourth in Ireland, and most travellers regard as crest with which the builder of Belfast Castle had the first in commercial prosperity and general in- left his paternal estate in Devonshire was long telligence, though long the acknowledged capital ago exchanged for a coronet, and the lord in pos of Ulster, is, with the exception of Liverpool, the session was believed to contemplate still higher most modern town in the United Kingdom. At honours in right of his political services against the beginning of the seventeenth century there was the remnant of native proprietors whose fatal and not on the alluvial slope at the head of Carrick- unmerited loyalty to James the Second had given fergus Bay, now covered with regular streets and the powers that were an opportunity of complettall chimneys, a trace of human home or hold, ex-ing the work of confiscation and exile in Ulster. cepting one long-ruined castle, in which the Norman Wealth had flowed to their house through similar De Courcys, the Irish O'Neils, and many a latter channels. The colony which Sir Arthur planted name, had by turns held sway through the course around his mansion had become a busy burgh of of warring ages. At that period, Sir Arthur Chi- sundry streets and lanes, from whose old timber chester having obtained a grant of the district, it was said by way of reward for his active agency in the great confiscation of Ulster, rebuilt the castle as his family residence; and, in the phraseology of those times, planted a colony of loyal subjects at the mouth of the Laggan, anciently called Bealafearsaidh, or the ford of the river. An old writer remarks that, "though Sir Arthur began with English, none but Scottish men could ever be brought to settle there, because of the untameableness of that country." But useful subjects, at least, those colonists must have been; for henceforth the town grew and prospered in the regular pursuit of commerce and the industrial arts, though not without its share in the history of succeeding times. Its presbytery received the title of "ungodly priestlings," with other compliments of the age, from no less a pen than that of Milton, for lifting up their testimony against the execution of Charles the First. James the Second showed his taste for arbitrary power by setting aside its charter. The Duke of Schomberg's heavy cannon broke down its bridge in their passage, and King William lodged in the town. Nor, small as its pretensions to antiquity are, is Belfast undowered with some portion from the common stock of provincial tradition, of which the following story is at least a specimen. cottages and new brick houses, standing, as they did, in confused proximity, the sound of the handloom and spinning-wheel were heard six days out of the week. It had churches, forges, and shops, not to speak of hostelries and warehouses near the wharf, from which some half-dozen smacks made fortnightly voyages to the ports of Glasgow and Bristol, and carried on the seaward commerce of the town. The dues and rental of the lord of the manor had, in consequence, largely increased since that active deputy made good his share of the confiscated lands. The Chichesters were still hereditary provosts, or, as its charter said, sovereigns of Belfast; but the trade and industry over which they presided was not of their English origin or creed. True to the observation of the author already quoted, Belfast, as well as the adjacent counties, had become an entrenchment of Scottish Presbyterianism. The people of the Covenant had taken refuge there from the Stuart persecutions, bringing with them their hostility to episcopacy, their adherence to the Solemn League, and the ascetic Calvinism then prevalent in the West of Scotland. The revolution settlement, indeed, left these to work themselves out in annual testimonies and lengthy sermons; but among their Presbyterian tenantry the episcopal creed and moderate Whig politics of the lords of the soil, advantageous as they had found them, were regarded as "time-serving lukewarmness and a manifest leaning to Popery." The handsome street still known as Castle-place, and presenting a fair array of fashionable shops and modern buildings, is not only the oldest site in the town, but retains in its name the memory of Life at the castle did not flow in a current cala lordly mansion which, till the early part of the culated to lessen such prejudices in the minds of last century, was esteemed the chief attraction and an austerely pious people. The habits of English centre of Belfast. It had risen on the ruins of the aristocracy were at that period still tinged with ancient stronghold. The town had grown round the mingled pomp, extravagance, and irregularity it to almost the fourth of its present size; and about of the preceding reigns, and, as might be expected, the year 1708 the castle, or, as it was called these prevailed in the lordly household. Its chief throughout Ulster, the Palace of the Chichesters, was, according to the records of the peerage, occupied nearly one-half of the present street, with Arthur, third Earl of Donegal, an apparently its halls, courts, and offices, being a castellated frank and polished though somewhat unscruedifice, built in the decline of the Tudor style, pulous nobleman, fitted, on the whole, to prosper which had survived two civil wars, besides many in the age of Sunderland and Bolingbroke. a change in politics and fashion, and was growing had continued long a widower, which those who venerable in the antiquity of more than a hundred knew him best averred was owing to the fact that years. Through all the revolutions of that century he had yet found no advantageous opening for a He second alliance. His family consisted of three daughters, whose education was long finished, for it occupied but little space in the lives of the female nobility of that day. They were three stately ladies, with stiff bodices and ample trains, who went to church in the family-coach on Sundays, distributed a sort of largesse to the poorer tenantry at Christmas, and at all times painted, patched, and valued themselves highly on their ancient lineage, which dated before the Norman conquest, and the broad lands of which, as more than one suitor had heard, their politic father intended they should be co-heiresses. The Earl kept a retinue which was reckoned large even for his rank and times; but, in conformity with their established prejudices, they were all of English descent and their master's Church, with the exception of the house-steward, the ladysmaid, and the sempstress. The first of these had been, from his coming to authority in the castle, the subject of some wonder and much dread to the inferior servants. The uncompromising character of the sway exercised by Archie, as they called him, when certainly out of hearing, and, in his own translation, Archibald Cunningham, was sufficient to account for the latter feeling; and the former continually recurred with the fact that his lordship had placed in an office of such power and trust one who made no secret of being a Scotchman and a Presbyterian. Archibald Cunningham reckoned as his progenitors a captain in Lesley's army, a testifier for the Covenant in the Grass-market of Edinburgh, and a zealous minister who came to plant his faith on the then wild shore of Hollyrood, when Belfast was yet unnamed among the towns of Ulster. In memory of these worthies, it seemed a partial degradation to serve an English lord and manage a prelatical household; but his country's enduring strength of purpose had descended to him as well as her creed, and Archibald had an object of his own. At the foot of that solitary mount which rises on the level shores of Carrickfergus-bay, about three miles from Belfast, and is still known as the Cave-hill, from the numerous caverns which pierce it on all sides, there lay, at the period of our story, where fair domains and villas now embellish the landscape, a rough but extensive farm, which the Cunningham family had held in freetenure since the days of the first plantation. Its last possessor, Archibald's father, had, however, shown that excess and imprudence may find their way into the most sober community; and having, in the course of that exhibition, become involved in pecuniary difficulties, he mortgaged his land to a neighbouring proprietor, for a sum which barely enabled him to remove with his wife and son and augment the number of linen-weavers and spinners in the town. Evil habits accompanied him there also, and at length induced the man to abandon his home and family, and enlist for a soldier in a regiment engaged in William's wars on the Continent, from which he never returned. His mother's industry, aided by his own early labour, not only maintained the orphan-boy, but gave him an education considerably above that of the class to which their fortunes had fallen. Neither the widow nor her son ever forgot that they had seen better days, but both possessed the retrieving spirit; and means being wanting to bestow on Archibald a trade or profession becoming his birth, he, as the next resource, took to the service of the surrounding gentry, which, from the remnant of feudal ideas then existing, stood much higher in popular estimation than it does at present. Archibald had risen from one step to another in that vocation, always discharging his duties with unswerving punctuality, keeping the more humbly born at a dignified distance, and restricting his personal expenditure to the narrowest limits of sober decency. At the time of our tale, Archibald was almost relationless. His mother had long exchanged her humble abode and busy spinningwheel for the quiet of the narrow house; and he was a grave though strapping Presbyterian bachelor, whom the female inhabitants of Belfast Castle unanimously voted handsome and respectable, in spite of a certain raw-bonedness of appearance, and a manner which was reservedly deferential to his superiors and coldly civil to all below him. None of these two classes, it was said, had ever found the courage to ask him a couple of questions, one of which regarded his own age, and the other that of a church-going suit invariably laid aside as soon as sermon was over, and religiously brushed on Monday morning, when they were again locked up in an oaken chest, with the residue of the steward's clothes. The cause of Archibald's silence regarding his years was doubtless guessed at by his contemporaries, who knew him to be somewhere in that debateable land of life known as middle-age; but by the lengthy wear of that Sunday suit there hung an explanation of all his toil and saving; for Archibald had determined to buy back his father's farm, and establish himself in all his family honours at the foot of the Cave-hill. This was indeed a gigantic undertaking for a man of his income, as, besides paying off the mortgage, it included the purchase of a sufficient stock, the partial reclamation of the farm, which had become a petty wilderness under the stingy administration of its temporary proprietor, and the rebuilding of old Cunningham's dwelling-house, which had fallen into utter ruin, all but one apartment, and it was the habitation of Val. Mooney and his family. Val., whose name in full was that of a saint yet popular in Protestant England, "the good Saint Valentine" (though nothing but its abbreviated form was ever bestowed on the head of the Mooney household), belonged to that remnant of the native faith and people still allowed to linger on the shores of Carrickfergus Bay, under the treble stigma of a condemned creed, extreme poverty in worldly goods, and those improvident habits which charitable politicians regard as the inalienable heritage of their race. The Mooneys were by no means favourable specimens of their order. Val., his wife Rosin., and an anr.ually increasing family, now numbering six, completed his household. They were all lean and ragged, with an indolent and 15 : hungry yet almost cheerful look, as if life to them | alas for the chances of life's war!-one month after had been but a succession of meagre days, and they were ready to enjoy themselves at any table in the wilderness. Earth had but two subjects of knowledge and interest for Val. Mooney, and these were tobacco and holidays on the quality of the one and the recurrence of the other he was an undisputed authority in that district. Rosin. stood equally unrivalled in collecting news and communicating it in the most confidential manner. The children played continually in the fields in fine weather, and in storms cowered patiently over the fire, when they had any. The entire household "thravelled," as it was mildly termed, in dear seasons, for Ireland had then no poor laws; and their penates (to use a classic simile) had been removed from hamlet to hamlet, and from hut to hut, being generally found neglectful, and always unprofitable, tenants. Their latest resting-place was that ruined farmhouse for which Val. had promised to pay rent to Ralph Rutherford, the Cunninghams' successor. Ralph was an aged bachelor, on whom the desire of accumulation and the neglect of all his gatherings had grown in equal proportions from his youth, and naturally resulted in leaving him, at the age of seventy, the possessor of some hundreds deposited in the only bank at Belfast, the sad remembrances of still larger sums lent and lost through the lure of exorbitant interest, and the owner of lands and houses going rapidly to waste and ruin. Archibald Cunningham had grieved in secret over his father's neglected fields, and yet more to see his house made the abode of those who, in his scriptural but unflattering language, "bore the mark of the beast." The man had laboured and economised to redeem it, till the tracks of time were on his hair, and he said they came early, but there was yet no probability of accomplishing his scheme, The "dog and the manger" was the i example of old Ralph's life; and Archibald well knew that he would never accept an instalment of his claim, which consisted of both the principal and interest of the money advanced, and the latter had grown to be no trifle; besides, there was a spice of pride in the house-steward's nature which would not allow him to think of setting up in a small way, and all his visions of the Cunningham house and farm reclaimed were finished with the presence of Bell Seaton. Miss Seaton's education had been declared complete, her father was summoned from shop and ledger by an illness, brought on, it was believed, through anxiety regarding the sugar-market, a sudden change in which had ruined his fortunes. His affairs were in the hands of creditors; and old Ralph's lamentations were loud over the anticipated burden of maintaining his orphan niece. Fortunately for herself, the day of trial found Bell possessed of spirit and energy not always remaining to those who have been heiresses apparent. She at once relieved her uncle of his terrors, and turned Miss MacAdam's lessons in plain work to account, by applying for the place of sempstress, which happened to be just then vacant, at the castle. Everybody pitied Bell for the great downcome, even those who had prophesied that her father's pride would have a fall; and all the young men of the neighbourhood united in blaming old Ralph for not taking home the girl immediately, and declaring her his heiress; but as time wore away, and she was seen, Sabbath after Sabbath, occupying her father's seat in the Presbyterian meeting-house, and looking as respectable as ever, people began to calculate upon her as a clever girl, who had a fortune of well-doing in herself, and a goodly background of expectations on the death of old Rutherford. The housesteward and the sempstress have long ceased to be regular requisites of noble house-keeping in Britain; but at the beginning of the last century they were still retained, and neither office was a sinecure in the Earl of Donegal's mansion, particularly that which Bell Seaton had now filled for almost seven years. In that stitching time the handsome and spirited girl had grown a comely woman, with a manner above her station, and a character whose social side exhibited the rare blending of gaiety with discretion, and wit with good nature. Bell had consequently few enemies, many friends, and general respect at the castle; but the former's entire force was comprehended in Williamson, the Earl's own man, and Madame Claire, the ladysmaid, while at the head of all the latter stood Archibald Cunningham. Human enmities and friendships are often strangely connected, and so it was with the people of our story. The steward had considered it incumbent upon him to befriend Bell when she came, Bell was the daughter of Ralph Rutherford's young and inexperienced, to that great house, only sister, who married a merchant in Belfast, because, like himself, she had been born to better and died early, leaving no child but her. Thomas prospects, and her faith and descent were similar. Seaton was as aspiring a man as ever cast up daily There were, indeed, other motives, which the pruaccounts in a back parlour partitioned off an old-dent and care-worn man in authority scarcely fashioned shop. He sent his daughter to the most fashionable school in town, at which English, plain work, and good breeding in all their branches were taught by Miss MacAdam; and it was the puzzle of his leisure hours where or how a match could be found worthy of the fortune he should amass, and the lands of which Bell's unmarried uncle would make her heiress. Hard-working and unquiet days were his, between speculating on every commercial project within his reach, and alluring the old gatherer to realise these expectations; but avowed to himself, especially after he learned that Bell had ventured to hear the Established Church service read on Christmas-day, and that Williamson had said he thought the girl might suit him, considering her old miser of an uncle. Williamson had a class resemblance to the valets of all times. His bringing up in London, his tours on the Continent with more than one noble master, and his liberally-dispensed knowledge of all that concerned aristocracy, made him a man of mark, not only in the servants' hall, but among the humbler |