high words passed between them; he struck the lieutenant, and a challenge was the consequence.

The two officers provided themselves with seconds, and an early hour next morning was fixed on for the hostile meeting. O'Donnell's friend spent the remainder of the evening with him, and about half-past eleven o'clock left him to write two or three letters, and snatch a few hours of sleep previous to the business of the morning. "Take a stiff tumbler of brandy-and-water, my good fellow," he said, "and turn in as fast as you

"There is no hurry," said O'Donnell. "I don't fear Master Johnson's bullet in the least degree, and I don't intend to kill him. I shall only give him a scratch, just to teach him not to be such an impertinent jackanapes in future."

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The friends parted, and O'Donnell hurriedly looked over some papers, which he destroyed. He then wrote one or two letters, and, as he sealed them, he said to himself, Really this is almost an unnecessary ceremony, for that stupid boy, who never fought a duel in his life, is not going to send me to the terra incognita."

Having made all the necessary little arrangements, he lighted a nighttaper, and quietly betook himself to his bed.

Just as the cocks began to crow his friend returned to his apartment, expecting to see him up and dressed; but he found him lying on his bed, pale, haggard, and trembling as if he had been attacked by the palsy. His eyes were fixed with a glance of horror on one spot, and he seemed to breathe with difficulty.

"O'Donnell! what on earth is the matter?" exclaimed his friend, approaching his camp-bed.

"Is he gone? Edwards! is he gone?"

"Who?" asked Edwards, in amazement.

"Who was here?"

"De Lacy," groaned O'Donnell, with a shiver of agony.

"De Lacy! Impossible, my dear fellow. You forget that poor De Lacy was shot. You must have had a disagreeable dream."

"It was no dream; so sure as I now see you, I saw De Lacy. He sat there." And he pointed to a chair at a little distance from his bed. "But it cannot be. Poor dear De Lacy was shot by order of that wretch Paez, you know. How could a dead man be sitting in that chair? Come, come, O'Donnell, you must have taken more brandy than I prescribed last night."

"I did not touch a drop. Laugh at me if you will, Edwards, but what I tell you is true, nevertheless. I tore up some papers, and wrote one or two letters, after you left me last night, and then I lay down, having taken off my coat and upper things, and lighted a night-lamp, as I intended to get up before daybreak. I was certainly not asleep, for I was thinking of my mother and the happy days of my boyhood in old Ireland, when I observed something like a figure flitting across my room. No one had opened the door; it remained for a few moments strangely indistinct, but by degrees became more defined, until at last it sat down on yon chair, and I perceived that it was De Lacy! And he had the same look of mingled reproach and pity that blasted my sight on that fatal morning when our eyes met for the last time in life. He sat there all night-all the dreadful night, Edwards-and I felt that he came to

summons me to meet him before a tribunal more awful than any on earth. I know that my time is come, and that I shall fall in this duel."

Edwards was startled by the recital, and shocked to see O'Donnell so unnerved. He tried to reason with him, he tried to cheer him, all was of no avail. At length he said:

"But why should poor De Lacy's spirit-if it was a spirit-visit you, his particular friend, and forebode evil to you? You never injured him in life. If he had haunted Paez, or the man who denounced him, there would be some sense in it."

"I was that wretched man!" cried O'Donnell, starting up wildly. “I was maddened by my love for a worthless woman, my jealousy of him, and I was-his murderer!"

Edwards was struck dumb for a few moments, but he soon recovered his self-possession. He could not believe in the visit of the ghost; he felt assured that ail was the creation of a morbid fancy, or perhaps an accusing conscience. Still it would be better, he thought, to humour the half maniac before him.

"When did your unearthly visitor leave you?" he asked, in a tone of solemn interest.

"Just as you turned the handle of the door, and when the cocks began to crow. He seemed at that moment to rise from yon very chair, and as he did so he waved his shadowy hand, and then seemed to disappear, I know not how, or perhaps my sight, so overstrained for hours, became suddenly dimmed."

"It is very, very strange," said Edwards. "But there are moments when imagination takes the reins, and we fancy the most extraordinary things. You have, doubtless, all along regretted deeply that you were in any way concerned in that poor fellow's death, and now that you are on the eve of a duel-a matter of life and death-your feelings are stirred up anew, and in a half-dreamy state you have pictured poor De Lacy before your eyes as a visitor from the other world. It is your too vivid imagination, O'Donnell; but you will not be killed in the rencontre. That self-sufficient puppy, Johnson, never fired a pistol in his life, I dare say, in good earnest, and you are the best shot in the whole Legion. Come, my dear fellow, be yourself! It is almost time for us to be on the ground-see, day is breaking."

O'Donnell dressed in silence; then, handing a letter to his friend, he requested him, in the event of his death, to forward it to his mother. One or two more directions he gave him; then, swallowing a cup of strong coffee which Edwards had thought it necessary to order for him, he declared himself ready to go "to the place of execution," for, he added, "I know I shall be killed."

"This will never do," said Edwards. "You must not go, if you are in such a miserable state. I will hasten to Johnson's second, and say you are taken seriously ill, cannot leave your bed, and the meeting must be postponed. You must not go just to be slaughtered; they will believe me, and the duel can be put off."

"No, no," said O'Donnell; "I would not for worlds ask any favour from that insolent boy; no one shall attach the stigma of cowardice to my name. But, Edwards, promise me one thing-that you will do justice to De Lacy. Proclaim that he was no traitor to the cause he had Jan.-VOL. CXVIII. NO. CCCCLXIX.

G

espoused; prove that he had nothing to do with the mutiny-that he was unjustly accused, and that he perished-unjustly. Will you promise

me this?"

"I will," said Edwards. "But you will live to clear his fame yourself; you need not confess the hand you had in the unfortunate matter, and I will never betray your confidence; you can easily say that circumstances you are not able to disclose have convinced you of his innocence. Everybody will be glad to take up that view of the matter, for even now there are many doubts as to the reality of his guilt."

"De Lacy!" exclaimed O'Donnell, clasping his hands for a moment, and looking upwards, "does your spirit hear? Your name shall be cleared of the foul stain of dishonour, and your death shall be revenged upon your murderer. Come!" he added, "I am ready."

The young men walked arm in arm to the place appointed, and O'Donnell expressed his satisfaction to find that his opponent was not waiting for him, but was only coming on the ground at the same time as himself.

Edwards was most anxious for a reconciliation, and the young lieutenant, Johnson, was evidently willing enough for it; but his second, a brawling, ill-tempered, disagreeable fellow, would not hear of the quarrel being made up without fighting. The duel, therefore, took place. O'Donnell purposely avoided even touching Johnson, while the latter, by mere chance, not in consequence of his skill, mortally wounded him. O'Donnell fell, and Edwards and Johnson both rushed up to him. Johnson was shocked and frightened at his own act, and earnestly besought the dying man's forgiveness. Life was ebbing fast, but O'Donnell shook hands with him, and told him that he exonerated him from all blame, and that he must not make himself unhappy at what was, after all, more accident than design. "It was my fate," he gasped, "and you could not help it."

Then turning his fading eyes on Edwards, who was kneeling by him, he murmured: "I told you he came to summons me. Rescue his name from disgrace, that he may not pursue me in the darksome grave! And may the God of the Universe pardon me-for the sake of his SonJesus Christ!"

"Amen!" said Edwards, with a sob, as poor O'Donnell fell back, and his spirit fled to the unknown regions of immortality.

Reader, the mutiny which took place among some of the soldiers of the British Legion during the revolutionary war in South America; the story of the officer having denounced another, who was innocent, as having been concerned in it; and that officer having been shot by order of General Paez, are well-authenticated facts. The tale of the murdered man's ghost having appeared to his accuser the night before a duel, in which he was killed, was current in Caraccas, Laguayra, and some of the West India Islands, at the period when this strange event was said to have occurred. But as no one saw the nocturnal visitor except the man whose soul was weighed down by an unconfessed crime equivalent to murder, it is to be supposed that the apparition he thought he beheld was a delusion conjured up by a guilty conscience and an overheated brain.

SOCIETY OF ARTS PRIZE ESSAY.*

AMONG the advantages aiding our progress as a people must be enumerated those societies which, consisting for the most part of practical individuals in their several pursuits, propose investigations and encourage discussions upon scientific subjects. Of these societies, that denominated the Society of Arts has been one of the most distinguished and useful. The present Essay was published under its auspices, the prize being awarded on the adjudication of persons of its own appointment. The subject is a most interesting one to the public, as well as to those more immediately concerned in monetary transactions. Unhappily, the magnitude of the financial question discussed, and the difficulty of alleviation in the burden of the national obligations, have made the public despair of this reduction, and, too much like the victim of desperate inebriety, fall into hopelessness of a remedy. Not so the present essayist, who has the merit of recommending a scheme which, it appears to us, is only deficient in practicability-a deficiency which should, perhaps, be set down to an over-earnest zeal obscuring his perception while anxious to promote a benefit to his country.

The two hundred guineas placed at the disposal of the society for the best essay on this important subject have not, as will presently be shown, produced a result so satisfactory as, in a land distinguished by commercial relations of such a magnitude as England, might be expected. Trade may narrow the grasp of mind and confine it to the merely mechanical in one pursuit; for were it otherwise, some plan more feasible and novel than the present would no doubt have been the result. We are therefore compelled to accept the present Essay, which, it must be presumed, was the best tendered for adjudication even in the metropolis of the commercial world, where relations in trade of such a magnitude are developed as were never before equalled in the history of mankind. We fear commerce does not tend to enlarge ideas on any subject, but rather to confine them to one channel, or we should find, not in the present instance alone, but in many others, that we draw wrong inferences when we expect the spirit of traffic, in connexion with science, literature, or art, to possess either an exalting or expanding tendency.

It is one of the misfortunes of prosperity, national as well as individual, that it exhibits itself as forgetful as it is ungrateful. The gratification felt at success, and the fatigue and anxiety of accelerated occupation, overlay the lessons supplied by the past time, and we neglect to avail ourselves of their teaching. Whatever be the cause, the effect upon the due consideration of many present duties is disadvantageous, because it renders us neglectful of evils we have inherited, which retard a still more rapid advance. We excuse ourselves, not over rationally, by pleading a reliance upon the Chapter of Accidents, comforting each other with the fallacies of hope when we hear complaints, in place of removing obstacles perseveringly, and meeting obligations not less heavy than binding, by postponing their fulfilment or evading them altogether.

The National Debt Financially Considered. By Edward Capps. Post 8vo. Groombridge and Son. 1859.

On setting out we find the present essayist early in error, for, when speaking of the origin of the national debt, he states it as a taking or seizure of money which Charles II. borrowed and refused to pay back. The fact was, that Charles did not repudiate the debt; he only refused to make the payments in the manner they were made originally-namely, by the week, from the Exchequer to the banker. The capital borrowed was not repaid by Charles, it is true, but the interest of six per cent. was regularly paid during the monarch's life, and was secured upon the king's hereditary excise by patent to his creditors, and paid regularly up to the last year of his reign, 1685. It is true that James II. refused to pay this just debt of his predecessor, which William III. settled with some difficulty in 1694. This was no part of the national debt until it merged into that debt in 1720, or forty years after the period it is declared by the essayist to have been the origin of the great debt of the nation. Though not a parliamentary debt, parliament interfered in the reign of William and Mary (12 Will. III.), by providing for the large arrear of interest that had accrued upon it. It also dishonestly cut down the interest from six to three per cent. at the same time, an arrangement confirmed in the reign of Queen Anne. This debt was afterwards, in 1720, subscribed into the South Sea stock. How, then, could it be the first item in the national debt as alleged by the essayist? There was no fund formed in 1710, as alleged, bearing an interest of six per cent. The unfunded debt was 9,471,3257., and the South Sea Company was incorporated on the special condition that it should take this debt at six per cent. No fund was formed; the unfunded debt was only transferred-an explanation which the essayist was bound to make, but neglected to do, if he were aware of it, at the commencement, too, of what he states to be a "history" of the great debt!

In the portion of the Essay devoted to an investigation of the present financial state of the country as affected by recent events, there is nothing new-nothing, in fact, that might not be gleaned from the works of Mortimer, Anderson, M'Culloch, and "Porter on the Progress of the Nation." The principle of a sinking fund is touched upon, but the reliance of the author for the more striking features and originality of his Essay is on the best mode of liquidating the great debt of the nation. His observations on the opinions afloat as to the influence of the debt upon the country are vague and contradictory. He professes to dismiss all regard to the political bearing of the question, in order, he says, to avoid the extremes of opinion existing upon the subject, so as not to make his Essay a repertory of facts and statistics on the one hand, “without any principles for making an application of them, and, on the other, presenting a mere abstract generalisation of principles, without corresponding facts and figures to test their truth"-an aim of considerable ingenuity. We confess that his intentions in their full meaning we cannot clearly understand; he alone can elucidate them. To us his propositions appear at times most contradictory. For example, as in reference to Charles II., touched upon above, where it was full forty years after the date given by the essayist that the debt of King Charles really merged into that of the nation. "Facts and figures" do not correspond here..

In stating that the Bank of England advanced 1,200,000l. to the