Charles Dickens.] We had some distance before us, and Mike didn't like the idea of driving in the dark; so at last we determined on starting in the midst of it, Mike undertaking to return the old cloaks we borrowed of the landlady. By the time we had got comfortably wet through, a glorious sunset dispersed the heavy clouds, and made the sky brilliant with many colours. On we went, through forests of tall trees as straight as poplars, joining their foliage at top, and so forming canopies to pass under. A dray full of large pumpkins, drawn by six lazy bullocks plodding on, we quickly left behind. Then we met immense herds of cattle with drovers in a horrible state of excitement, swearing and smacking long whips, and halloaing to dogs, which were barking furiously, and rushing here and there after oxen that had run off in quest of water. A few miles farther, the air seemed infected by a horrible effluvia. "We'll see summut prisintly," said Mike, "whin we come to the crass roads." And sure enough we did then, and a wretched sight it was, too-the carcase of a poor bullock that had dropped in the middle of the road, from drought and fatigue; the sun had shrunk its skin, so that its skeleton could plainly be seen in many parts. Insects had already consumed most of its flesh, though it had lain there but a few days. cident arising from neglect upon their lines. Nearly coincident with Lord Campbell's lamented death was the award by a jury of heavy damages against the Great Northern Company to the widow of a Hertfordshire magistrate, killed by a fault upon their line. The author of the Act and its most powerful defender being for ever silent, the railway companies eagerly fastened upon an opportunity to set on foot an agitation which we trust was among the things crushed lately at Kentishtown and in the Clayton tunnel. But as we sincerely hope that the late railway massacres will be found very costly indeed to those answerable for them, so we fear that when the smart endured by the mangled victims has had The sun had now sunk beneath the horizon. its faint after-twinge in the pockets of directors, We yet had many miles to travel, and Mike there will be revived and strengthened the openly expressed his dread of the darkness desire of railway companies for the murder or overtaking him; for then his horses might chance mutilation of Lord Campbell's Act, so that it to stumble over thim confounded stumps of may again be, in all their disasters, cheapest of trees that would stick up just in the centre of all to kill a passenger outright. Let us, therethe road where they oughtn't. We were jour-fore, be upon our guard; this railway risk, at neying on at a snail's pace, when suddenly in any rate, the public itself has the power of the distance there appeared the light of a lamp. averting. Mike joyfully whipped his horses. "The Lord be thanked!" he said, "we're all roight now; we've passed that owld chasim where I made sure I'd upset you." In a few short moments we were at the hotel in Singleton, taking off our drenched garments in a pretty room decorated with white muslin curtains looped up with pink silk ribbons, while the handsome good-natured landlady was making tea for us in the room adjoining. There was the delightful fragrance of fresh lemons everywhere, which was accounted for when I opened my bedroom window next morning. In the lovely garden beneath, stood a row of lemon-trees, as big as apple-trees in England, covered with ripe fruit, diffusing refreshing odours. The sun was rising in the west, making the air sultry with his mighty beams: while every flower, bush, and tiny twig, was sparkling with rain-drops. RATHER INTERESTED IN RAILWAYS. We will set down in a few words the true The act in question is so state of the case. short that its whole contents are to be told in a few paragraphs. Before it passed-in the year 'forty-six-coach proprietors, railway proprietors, any persons or person, in fact, through whose negligence injury was caused to another, became liable to an action at law for money compensation, fairly proportionate to the money injury sustained. But if death were caused, the question was one of manslaughter, or homicide, and though the bread winner might have been taken from his children, though the most helpless, who are most in need of compensation, might have been deprived of their one support, there was no claim in law for money compensation. If a man's power of supporting his family had been, by the carelessness of another, and in fault was required, as far as possible, to pay by no fault of his own, crippled, then the person what would make good his loss of means; was only when the man's power of support was, by the killing of him, withdrawn altogether, that there was an end of the matter, and his children might go to the wall. it A COUPLE of months ago the English railThis injustice was met, thanks to the late way companies were mustering and joining their strength for an attack upon Lord Campbell's Act, which makes them liable for compensation Lord Campbell, by a law. Dated the twentyto the nearest relatives of persons killed by ac-sixth of August, eighteen forty-six, it is called "An Act for Compensating the Families of Persons killed by Accidents." The one good reason assigned for it in its preamble was, that no action at law had been maintainable against a person who by his wrongful act, neglect, or default, had caused the death of another person, although it was oftentimes right and expedient that the wrong-doer in such case should be answerable in damages for the injury so caused by him. Therefore it enacted in six clauses: allows some only of the claims that ought to be held good against them. Finally, let it be observed that the claim is dependent altogether upon proof that the accident which caused death was preventable. The railway companies may say, That is no consolation to us, because ninety-nine in a hundred of our great accidents happen through fault in some of our servants. But the public only replies, Why do you not prevent the ninety-nine accidents in a hundred by being on the safe side in all your regulations, and compelling along your whole line, as you are morally bound to do, where life and limb depend on it, minute obe 1. That in case of every such death, where, if the party injured had recovered, he could have maintained an action and recovered damages, the person liable was to remain liable notwith-dience to your orders? Very rarely, indeed— standing the death; and although the death never, perhaps has it been the uncontrollable should have been caused under such circum- fault of a single servant that led to a general stances as would amount in law to felony. disaster. 2. That every such action should be brought by the executor or administrator of the person deceased, for the benefit of that person's wife, husband, parent, or child; that the jury should award damages proportionate to the injury resulting from the death to those on whose behalf the action was brought, and that the amount was to be distributed in shares apportioned by the jury. 3. That there should only be one action in each case, and that it was to be brought within twelve months after the death. 4. That the defendant or his attorney should have full particulars of the claim made and the persons claiming. 5. The fifth clause explained the terms of the act, so that they should include the liability of companies and bodies corporate; and here also the word parent was defined to include father and mother, and grandfather and grandmother, and stepfather and stepmother; child to include son and daughter, and grandson and granddaughter, and stepson and stepdaughter. 6. The last clause gave the act immediate operation, and excluded Scotland from its provi sions. In the two cases that have lately fixed attention, no jury could lay the whole blame on the signalmen immediately concerned. In the Brighton accident three trains had been hurled quickly one after another from a main terminus, not one true to its time. In the Kentish-town accident the disaster befel an excursion train which had no fixed time for running, and for which, by people who were not expecting it, the way had to be cleared as it ran. The breakdown also arose from the failure of a boy of nineteen, at fourteen shillings a week wages, working, under no proper oversight, fifteen hours and a half and ten hours on alternate days, to perform the duties of a too responsible position. In either case the responsibility for shameful laxity of management is not to be got rid of by a censure of some humble servant of the company. And when has it been otherwise? Knowing how to prevent risks, the companies, even in spite of Lord Campbell's Act, are tempted to believe it best economy to run them. The act, however, has by this time taught some sharp lessons on the value of life to the railway boards. Impatient of these, they rose at last in rebellion against it, as we have said, about two months ago. That is the whole act. The liability it creates is not confined to railway companies; is not, in The occasion of the rebellion was as follows. that respect, in any way whatever circumscribed. In April of last year a gentleman from HertWhere the killed man contributed to his own fordshire, having a wife and nine children, and destruction, damages are not recovered. Nei- an unencumbered income of almost four thousand ther is the wounded heart of the widow or child a year, was killed at the Hatfield crossing. to be considered in awarding compensation for Now this accident being caused by the snapping the loss of husband or father. It is only re-in two of a rail, and it being shown that the rail quired, that in proportion to the worldly loss in- which broke was an old rail that, although flicted by the death on those and on those only cracked at each end, had been doctored and rewho were by nature dependent on or interested fitted with the unworn side upwards, the fault in the person killed by fault of another, shall be of the company was clearly proved. The jury the claim for a worldly repair of the hurt done. then had to consider its award of compensation The claim, too, is one that can be made only on to the family. It was shown that the killed man behalf of those between whom the relation of died at the age of forty-one without a will. His dependence is the closest; between husband and eldest child was thirteen, and the youngest only wife, parent and child, or, at the remotest, two months old. The eldest son received by grand-parent and grandchild. A niece wholly the father's dying intestate the bulk of the prodependent on an uncle could claim no compen-perty; the widow had a jointure of a thousand a sation for his loss even by the most atrocious year; the eight younger children had each a recklessness of railway management. Obviously, hundred a year during the mother's life, but at therefore, Lord Campbell's Act, instead of press- her death all passed to the eldest son. Clearly, ing too harshly upon the railway companies, therefore, the death deprived the younger children of the education they would have had out of their father's means, of the probability of his provision for their future settlement in professions, and of any benefit they might have derived from his will. The jury awarded, as compensation, a thousand pounds to the widow, nothing to the eldest son, and fifteen hundred to each of the younger children. So that the Great Northern Company had to pay thirteen thousand pounds for a life lost through its attempt to save in a culpable way some thirteen shillings. The award was made on the fifteenth of last June. Eight days afterwards, Lord Campbell died. He was hardly buried, when newspaper paragraphs began to inform the public that the late award of heavy damages had "had the effect of directing the attention of several gentlemen interested in railways to the importance of improving the law on the subject." There had been, in fact, a conference of chairmen of the principal railway lines (the "several gentlemen interested in railways"), at which it was resolved" that a future Conference should be held, at which all the railway companies of the United Kingdom should be invited to decide in what manner the question should be brought under the consideration of Parliament." That conference has yet to be held, and there could be no time for it better than the present, no place for it better than the Clayton tunnel, where, if it were not a hundred thousand times too small for such a purpose, a meeting might also be held of several other gentlemen rather interested in railways, who might be invited to decide whether, as passengers, they would like a reduction of the terms on which they might be slaughtered. In the face of the late accidents doubtless it may be thought by railway authorities good policy not to press the matter, as had been intended, at the next session of parliament. It may even be agreed-hopeless as the suggestion would seem to wait for a comparatively bloodless year before making an application, of which the gist is to be-if we may gather it from the very few journals that were in this matter of one mind with the "several gentlemen"-that there shall be a reduction of the rates for killing men of fortune. If Lord Campbell's Act is to stand, the desire of the railways is, that persons of worldly consideration may be killed on the premises of railway companies, not only at the shortest notice, but also at a great reduction of charge. The slender sums representing worldly compensation to the children or widow of a poor mechanic these rich companies do not so much mind paying; but they do flinch from what they have to pay when they kill men whose lives are of great moneyvalue to their families. From all which, it clearly appears that the whole protection to be got by the public from the act lies in that part of it which the railway companies attack; that as men of all classes travel together, although the poor man would be little the safer for any anxiety that a great company would have lest it should forfeit the sum that may represent the value of his labour to his family, he does benefit by the anxiety felt lest the loss of any possible Croesus in the train should cause a crash among the dividends. The law is an equal one; the principle of compensation just alike to all but it is only where, in its equal dealing, it can make itself most sharply felt in the company's treasury, that it is of value to a public rather interested in this matter as a wholesome check upon rash management. STRIKING LIKENESSES. NATURE has patterns which she sometimes repeats in her work; jacquard looms of her own, where she weaves two or three pieces of humanity, varied perhaps in material and colour, but of identical style and arrangement-pieces so much alike, indeed, they can hardly be known apart. Of such were the two slave boys whom Toranius, the great slave merchant of his time, sold to Mark Anthony, saying they were twin brothers, when, in reality, the one had been born in Asia and the other in Europe, and there was not a drop of related blood between them. Of such was Caius Bibius, Pompey's double; and the anonymous youth whom the august Cæsar saw as it had been looking in a mirror, so exactly like himself was he. Asked slyly by the Emperor if his mother had ever been to Rome, the anonymous youth as slyly answered, No, but his father had been there often. But as this anecdote is told of various other persons, perhaps the august Cæsar's living looking-glass is a mere myth, and never existed at all. There have been certain historical doubles, though, about whom there is no doubt, if very much obscurity. For instance, there was Smerdis the magian, a Persian counterfeit of royalty, who, when Cambyses was away in Egypt and just before he died of that unlucky sword-wound at Ecbatana, boldly came forward as Smerdis, the brother murdered by Cambyses effectually enough some time before-and who managed so well, and was so very like the slaughtered prince, that when the king died he succeeded to the royal estate and dignities unchallenged. He was discovered at last by one of the numerous wives whom he had inherited together with the rolls of costly stuffs, the vessels of gold and silver, the apes, and the peacocks, and the rest of the royal chattels. She, in playful mood, lifting up his curls, saw-not ass's ears like Midas's, nor pointed and furry ears like Donatello's-but no ears. For the knave had lost them, not so very long before, for some trick unbefitting the magian calling. So Smerdis the magian came to the end of his farce; but he was marvellously like Smerdis the prince, for all that. Then, there was Antiochus the Great of Syria, who had his double in one Artemon, whereby his wife Laodice was enabled to play a trick, and a very good one for herself; after the great man was dead, putting Artemon into the royal bed, and making him commend to the special care of his nobles and people, his faithful and beloved spouse. Some writers say that Laodice mur-Richard of York, who had been murdered by Sir dered Antiochus, and took Artemon for her hus- John Tyrrell, as all readers of Shakespeare know. band instead; keeping up the deception for Perhaps Warbeck had a left-handed kind of above two years, so wonderfully like to the dead right to be like the son of Edward the Fourth; king was he. The best feature in old stories is, for his beautiful mother had been honoured with that you have so many versions, and all so di- much notice from king's majesty, given to rectly contradicting one another, that you may honour pretty women with special and peculiar make your choice according to your fancy; which regard; and when she and her crafty, comis an historical luxury in general, extending even plaisant husband, the renegade Jew of Tournay, down to later times than the classical. settled in England, they were so greatly patronised by court and king, that Edward actually condescended to stand godfather for the little Perkin, when that small Hebrew was made into a Christian. Rumour said, indeed, that he was the father without any godliness preceding. However that might have been, it is certain that handsome young Perkin was not only exceedingly like Edward's family, but also that he had something regal and distinguished in himself, and so was doubly fitted for his part. The Duchess of Burgundy sent him men and moneys, calling him her dear nephew, and the White Rose of England; Charles of France and James of Scotland espoused his cause, as did many gentlemen of note in England. James, indeed, gave him his own cousin, Lady Catherine Gordon, to wife, and more substantial, but not lavish, aid into the bargain. But fate and Lancaster were too strong for Warbeck and the Yorkists. At a great battle fought near Taunton he lost his army and his cause, was taken prisoner by the king, locked up in the Tower, and after some time of imprisonment executed, on the plea of breaking ward and plotting his escape. This is the last historical counterfeit presentment to be found in England. Coming into somewhat more intelligible company and on to firmer English ground, we find ourselves face to face with Jack Cade, who in the sixth Henry's generation spoilt a good and reasonable cause by giving himself out as Mortimer, whom he resembled, and who was believed in by thousands, not only as "the Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent," but also as the close relative of the House of York. He finally got himself and his pretensions fully settled by one Alexander Iden, who had no eye for likenesses. And in fourteen hundred and eightysix, Lambert Simnel, well tutored by Richard Simon, priest, and backed by the Duchess of Burgundy, sister to the late King Edward the Fourth and aunt to the poor young murdered boys, set himself forward to play the part of Richard, second son of Edward, who, it was reported, had escaped from the Tower, and was now wandering through Europe. Finding this personation would not do, he then said that he was Edward Earl of Warwick; under which name he was warmly supported by the Irish people, who crowned him in Dublin Castle with the diadem taken from the Virgin, and publicly proclaimed him King Edward the Sixth. During the height of the craze, Henry caused the real Warwick to be led through London, that men might see the difference; but that did not prevent their saying that Henry's was the counterfeit and Lambert Simnel was the original; for could not every one see how much more like to the Plantagenets he was than Henry's mummer? Encouraged by so much apparent success, Lambert Simnel landed in England, prepared to carry all before him, but after one or two trials of strength was fairly defeated instead-the king, disdainfully enough, granting him a life which was too insignificant for his high mightiness to take. He made him a scullion in the royal kitchen, as about the most contemptible thing he could be; though afterwards he was raised to the more honourable post of falconer. There was a fine irony in Henry's treatment of the would-be king-that fragment of plebeian stuff which nature had wound off the foom in the likeness of the Plantagenets; and history would be less sad reading if all conquerors had been as contemptuous In 1554 was born Sebastian of Portugal, posthumous son of Don John, and heir to the crown; and in 1578 he led his men at the disastrous battle of Alcaçar, when Christians and Moors hacked to pieces thousands of the divine image in honour of the God who made them. After the battle, Sebastian was missing: some said he was dead; others, taken prisoner; but the general belief was that he had been slain, though, to be sure, there was just the chance of the prisoner theory. Sufficient chance to encourage a host of adventurers, all more or less like the missing youth, all wanting one eye, all of the same complexion and stature as himself, and all owning their adherents from pure conviction, as well as from design and crafty insight. First, there was Gabriel Spinosa, the one-eyed cook of Madrigal, who, in 1585, got even Doña Anna of Austria on his side, and prevailed on her to give him her jewels, by which means he was arrested, it being thought more than suspicious that such a ragged robin as he should have regal jewels for sale. Yet he was strangely like the princely Sebastian, oneSix years after Simnel's defeat, the Duchess eyed cook though he was. Then there was the of Burgundy again brought forward a counter-son of a tiler at Alcobaça, with two notable feit presentment. This time it was Perkin Warbeck, or Osbeck, a handsome youth of fine parts, made even more like to the Plantagenets than Simnel had been; sufficiently like to personate to the life Lambert's first venture-young and as humane. adherents, Don Christopher de Tavora and the Bishop of Guarda. This tiler's son of Alcobaça had been a man of loose life and more than doubtful morals, who had become converted, and then turned hermit; but, being exceedingly ness anywhere, it was made the most of. The most famous of the false Demetriuses was the monk Otrafief, a fine, brave, handsome fellow, run off the same jacquard loom as the slain prince, who gathered together a large army with which he defeated his enemy Boris Gudenow, who thereupon killed himself, as the best thing he could do for mankind. Otrafief was crowned at Moscow by the name of Demetrius the Fourth, or Fifth, as historians choose to recognise or ignore that other Demetrius some three hundred years before him, and began his reign so well, that even those who thought within themselves, and those who knew for certain, that he was only a shabby monk and no Demetrius at all, held their tongues, finding the new state of things quite sufficiently to their liking to buy their silence. But usurpers seldom prosper. In a short time, Demetrius Otrafief gave way to such cruelties and excesses that like the lost Sebastian, he had been got hold of by the knight and the bishop, and persuaded to act the part of the prince redivivus. He did not succeed, but got sent to the galleys for life, while the bishop was hanged for a treasonable plotter as he was. Of the knight's future not much seems to be known. After him came Gonçalo Alvarez, the son of a mason, who generously granted the title of Earl of Torres Novas to a rich yeoman whose daughter he wanted to marry-raised a body of men, and gave the government a few days of anxiety. He was soon disposed of, like the rest; but under a severer sentence, as he had been more trouble some than they. He was hanged and quartered, and the Earl of Torres Novas was deprived of his dignity and estate, and left shivering in social nakedness, exposed to the ridicule of the world. But twenty years after the battle of Alcaçar, namely, in 1598, came one, about whom history is even yet undecided-mankind, as embodied in the Muscovites of a kingly-looking man, noble in spite of poverty and the deep lines of suffering like scars across his face-who presented himself at Venice, saying that he was Sebastian, so long thought to have been slain at Alcaçar, but who had been taken prisoner by the Moors instead, and kept in close ward for all these weary waiting twenty years. He gave a very likely and detailed account of himself when examined by the Venetian nobles deputed to try him, and showed great firmness, piety, and patience, as might have been expected from a prince who had been so severely tried; he knew all the secrets of the palace and the royal family; was exceedingly like what the true Sebastian would have been after twenty years of affliction and privation; had all the bodily marks and personal peculiarities of the prince; and was, in short, so dangerously possible, that the Portuguese authorities were uneasy, and got him ordered out of Venice, afraid to have him any longer in public view. When banished from the Queen of the Adriatic he went to the Queen of the Plains, and took refuge in Florence. But the grand duke gave him up to Count de Lemos, the viceroy of Naples, by whom he was imprisoned in the Castle d'Ovo, every now and then brought forth and exhibited to the people-the officer in charge of the exhibition crying out, "This is the man who calls himself Sebastian!" "And I am Sebastian," would sometimes answer the patient, proud, and kingly-looking prisoner. From d'Ovo he was sent to the galleys, thence to San Lucar, and thence to a castle in Castile, where he disappeared from history, and no one ever knew what became of him. If he was not the true Sebastian, he was the most remarkable of all the false presentments to be found in history. Of false Demetriuses in Russia there were many. Demetrius, the son of John Basilowitz, Czar or Grand-Duke of Muscovy, had been murdered by the order of Boris Gudenow in the early part of 1600. But it was found convenient for certain men to say that he had not been murdered, and if there was a like 1605, could hear him no longer. On the day of his marriage with the daughter of the Vaywode of Sendimir, one of his first and most influ ential adherents, a party of conspirators burst into the palace and slew him; and then the fact was publicly proclaimed that he was only the monk Otrafief, and no more the true son of John Basilowitz than Boris Gudenow himself. Then, in 1773, one Pougat schoff must needs give himself out as Peter the Third, whom the imperial Catherine had good reason to know was sleeping safely his last sleep, carefully put out of her royal way. He seized the fortresses in the county or district of Orenburg, assembled a goodly army, and might have given the royal murderess no end of trouble had he not been betrayed by some of his followers, and given up to the enemy. He was put into an iron cage, and so carried to Moscow, where he was first shown in derision to the people as a bad likeness of the dead Peter, and then executed, January, 1775. Yet he was a counterfeit presentment of no such very grotesque forms, and quite sufficiently like the original to deceive men with more faith than discernment. Of the false Dauphins who have troubled France since the death of poor little "Louis Capet," we have not much to say. They were rather impostors and adventurers than counterfeit presentments, none of whom were very successful in their attempts, and none of any special mark or political significance. The chief person worried by them was the poor Duchesse d'Angoulême, with whom they all, naturally enough, claimed relationship and knowledge. For the rest, they were only laughed at by the public, and locked up when they became too intrusive and annoying. But some of the strangest instances of this double likeness are to be found in private life; and the history of the false Martin Guerre is one of the strangest of all. In the middle of the sixteenth century one Martin Guerre, aged eleven, was married to Bertrande de Rols, aged seven, both of Artigues, a little village near Rieux, the "chef lieu" of Haute Garonne. In |