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spot. The royalist was committed to custody, but could not forbear from triumphing over Cromwell, by indiscreetly announcing that the bird had flown.' This information, and the non-appearance of Tomkins long after his appointed time, induced Cromwell to determine at last on setting out for the Lodge. He commanded Everard to attend him, and was followed by a chosen band of infantry and cavalry.

In the mean time Albert had rejoined the little party at the lodge, and brought intelligence to Charles that a vessel was prepared on the Sussex coast to take him to France. It was agreed that they should take their departure early on the following morning. The little circle were engaged in whiling away the time after an early supper, when a most melancholy howling arose at the hall-door, and a dog was heard scratching for admittance.' This was Bevis, that noble hound, who, from the attention which the author pays him on every occasion, and the generous qualities which he betrays, cannot fail to be a favourite with most readers. Bevis bore in his mouth a military glove, which belonged to Tomkins, who, we may now inform the reader, hath been already numbered with the slain. In an hour of intoxication he had followed the pretty Phoebe to Rosamond's Well in the early part of the evening, and made a brutal attack on her person. Her screams brought Joliffe to her assistance, and, in the first impulse of his anger, he struck Tomkins with a club on the temple, and that hollow wretch breathed no more. In his haste, Joliffe left him loosely covered among some brambles in the l'ark, and now, accompanied by Dr. Rochecliffe, he went out with mattock and spade, and a dark lantern, to bury the dead. The circle in the parlour were, however, as yet ignorant of the fate of Tomkins, which had so materially retarded the approach of Cromwell, and were about to separate for the night, when a tap was heard at the hall-door. Albert, the vidette of the party,' hastened to the portal, and asked who was there at so late an hour. "It is only me," answered a treble voice.

"And what is your name, my little fellow?" said Albert. "Spitfire, Sir," replied the voice without.

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Spitfire!" said Albert.

"Yes, Sir," replied the voice; "all the world calls me so, and Colonel Everard himself. But my name is Spittal for all that."

"Colonel Everard! arrive you from him?" demanded young Lee. "No, Sir; I come, Sir, from Roger Wildrake, Esquire, of Squattlesea-mere, if it like you," said the boy; " and I have brought a token to Mistress Lee, which I am to give into her own hands, if you would but open the door, Sir, and let me in but I can do nothing with a three

inch board between us."

"It is some freak of that drunken rakehell," said Albert, in a low voice, to his sister, who had crept out after him on tiptoe.

What token

"Yet, let us not be hasty in concluding so," said the young lady; "at this moment the least trifle may be of consequence. has Master Wildrake sent me, my little boy?"

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"Nay, nothing very valuable neither," replied the boy; "but he was so anxious you should get it, that he put me out of window as one would chuck out a kitten, that I might not be stopped by the soldiers." "Hear you?" said Alice to her brother; " undo the gate for God's sake."

'Her brother, to whom her feelings of suspicion were now sufficiently communicated, opened the gate in haste, and admitted the boy, whose appearance, not much dissimilar to that of a skinned rabbit in a livery, or a monkey at a fair, would at another time have furnished them with amusement. The urchin messenger entered the hall, making several odd bows and congés, and delivered the woodcock's feather with much ceremony to the young lady, assuring her it was the prize she had won upon a wager about hawking.

"I prithee, my little man," said Albert, "was your master drunk or sober, when he sent thee all this way with a feather at this time of night ?"

"With reverence, Sir," said the boy," he was what he calls sober, and what I would call concerned in liquor for any other person."

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"Curse on the drunken coxcomb!" said Albert. "There is a tester for thee, boy, and tell thy master to break his jests on suitable persons, and at fitting times."

"Stay yet a minute," exclaimed Alice; this craves wary walking."

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"A feather!" said Albert; "all this work about a feather! Why, Dr. Rochecliffe, who can suck intelligence as a magpie would suck an egg, could make nothing of this."

"Let us try what we can do without him then," said Alice. Then addressing herself to the boy," So there are strangers at your master's?"

"At Colonel Everard's, madam, which is the same thing," said Spitfire.

"And what manner of strangers?" said Alice; " guests I suppose?"

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Ay, mistress," said the boy, "a sort of guests that make themselves welcome wherever they come, if they meet not a welcome from their landlord — soldiers, madam.”

“The men that have been long lying at Woodstock?" said Albert. "No, Sir," said Spitfire, "new comers, with gallant buff-coats and steel breast-plates; and their commander-Your Honour and Her Ladyship never saw such a man at least I am sure Bill Spitfire never did." "Was he tall or short?" said Albert, now much alarmed.

"Neither one nor other," said the boy; "stout made, with slouching shoulders; a nose large, and a face one would not like to say No to. He had several officers with him. I saw him but for a moment, but I shall never forget him while I live."

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"You are right," said Lee to his sister, pulling her to one side, quite right the Arch-fiend himself is upon us!"

"And the feather," said Alice, whom fear had rendered apprehensive of slight tokens, " means flight and a woodcock is a bird of passage."

"You have hit it," said her brother; "but the time has taken us cruelly short. Give the boy a trifle more nothing that can excite suspicion, and dismiss him. I must summon Rochecliffe and Joceline."

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He went accordingly, but, unable to find those he sought, he returned with hasty steps to the parlour, where, in his character of Louis, the page was exerting himself to detain the old knight, who, while laughing at the tales he told him, was anxious to go to see what was passing in the hall.'- Vol. iii. pp. 209-214.

Arrangements were speedily made for the flight of the King in the dress of Albert, while the latter should remain to personate Charles, and by detaining the pursuers amid the labyrinth of the bower, give ample time to the fugitive to insure his safety. The Knight was at length informed of the true character of his guest, which he had not hitherto, in the smallest degree, suspected. Sir Henry, upon this emergency, displayed the greatest coolness and intelligence. The horses prepared for the King were in a stable near the under-keeper's cottage, to which Charles, in the dark night, was unlikely, if unattended, to find his way. Phoebe was in hysterics since the occurrence near the well. It was of the first importance that Albert and the Knight should remain at the lodge; and Rochecliffe and Joliffe were employed in digging a grave for Tomkins in the forest. There was nobody to show the way to the distant stable but Alice. She readily performed this service for her sovereign, who had already seen too much of her character to entertain any other feelings towards her than those of gratitude and respect. Alice is thus adroitly saved from the ferocious scene which was about to take place at the Lodge, while she has the honour and the happiness to contribute to the escape of Charles, which is effected chiefly through her means.

The tale then hastens to a conclusion. Cromwell, with his followers, enters the lodge, ransacks the labyrinth, a plan of which he had obtained from Tomkins, and pursues the supposed Charles until he flies to his last citadel, Rosamond's Tower. This is blown. up; and after a scene of great bustle, highly dramatic in its effect, Albert escapes destruction, but is made prisoner. The lodge is left a heap of ruins. The whole party, however, ultimately are spared, in one of those fits of humanity which the author finds it convenient to ascribe occasionally to Cromwell; and they live to witness the restoration of Charles II., to his and their heartfelt satisfaction. At the time of this event, Alice is the wife of Everard, and the comely matron of several children. Phoebe and Joliffe are also usefully employed in a similar manner in adding to the number of His Majesty's subjects; and the Knight, after witnessing the longdesired return of the King, whom he almost worshipped, departs from this life in a good old age.

We have gone beyond our usual limits in introducing this novel to the acquaintance of our readers. They, perhaps, will only complain that we have not devoted still more space to a work which few of them will have had an opportunity of reading before this Journal reaches their hands. We must, however, be brief in the remarks which we have still to make. In the first place, considering the

wide field which the wanderings and perils of Charles before his final escape from Shoreham presented to the novelist, we think that he has made but an inconsiderable use of it. He might have introduced several scenes capable of being wrought up to the highest degree of interest, in which the flight of the King should be exposed more than once to the most imminent danger of interruption. We would have willingly exchanged the greater portion of the first volume for some such hair-breadth escapes, particularly as they would have been perfectly consistent with history, and, indeed, might have assumed the appearance of filling up the general outline it presents us of the dangers to which the fugitive was exposed for forty-one days. We think, also, that however useful it may have been in allowing the author to complete the happiness of the Lee family, the introduction of the Restoration disturbs the unity of the tale. It is quite a new scene, hastily got up, and requires the imagination to pass in an instant from the year 1651 to 1660. It does not harmonise with the train of feeling which had been awakened by the previous current of the tale. The beauty and airy grace of Alice are, in a great measure, disenchanted of their effect, by the new situation in which we find her at the close of the volume, surrounded by chubby urchins, and herself no longer that fair vision whom we met in the early part of the work, and followed with so much interest, until she disappeared from the Lodge, the protector and guide of her sovereign. The character of Rochecliffe reminded us more than once of the stone of Sisyphus. The author labours hard to render him a prominent and interesting person in the scene, but all his exertions are in vain. There is nothing about him that touches our feelings: we hear and see him, and the next moment forget his existence, as if he had never been. When we arrive at the end of the volume, we are in doubt even how he spells his name. Nevertheless the extracts and the outline of the work which we have given, prove that it is the creation of no ordinary mind. If it be inferior in every respect to "Waverley," yet it is such a tale as no one but the author of that splendid fiction could have written.

In the preface the author states that he had not read "Brambletye House" before he finished his task, being desirous that if there were any coincidences between two novels treating of the same period he should not be suspected of any intentional imitation. We hardly think that he need have made this disclaimer; for there is a palpable difference between the sterling gold of genius and the compositionmetal of such a writer as one of the authors of "The Rejected Ad- . dresses."

ART. IX. Essai Historique et Moral sur la Pauvreté des Nations. Par F. E. Fodéré. 8vo. Paris. 1825. Treuttel, Wurtz, and Co. London.

THIS is a trying time to the true believers in political economy. Their creed is passing through a severe ordeal, which does not seem at

all likely to be very speedily ended. For many years it had been making its way gradually, and not silently, among classes of persons in this country, most of whom were rather removed from public affairs, who made up by the zeal and constancy with which they urged their doctrines for the want of power to enforce them in practice. It was their lot, like all professors of a new faith, to be continually harassed by controversy; but the attacks upon their system were for the most part so desultory, and their adversaries acted with so little concert, that although not very well united among themselves, they have uniformly, and of late very rapidly, gained ground upon their opponents. The time has however come, when they have to sustain a conflict far different, both in the kind and the degree of its dangers. They are no longer opposed by mere reasoners, who confine themselves to a war of words and arguments, content with knocking down some "stubborn facts," or wrestling against the logic of the new school. Its proselytes have at length appeared in places so high, and with attitudes so resolute, as to attract, among us, the gaze of the whole nation; and the attempt to introduce its maxims into the government of the state has united in angry and rather formidable resistance, all the habitual haters of innovation, and all those partial interests which must in some degree suffer from any change, even from the worst to the best, in the policy of a commercial country.

Something of this might have been expected, even if the clearest and soundest principles of political science had been unfolded in the most familiar and intelligible language, and with the meekest possible temper. But we cannot help thinking, that much of the opposition which is now made to the best established doctrines, concerning the sources of national wealth and the means of promoting it, is owing to the tone and the manner in which these doctrines have been of late years expounded. Nothing can be more injurious to the interests of science than an exaggerated estimate, by its advocates, of the evidence on which it rests. There is a strong disposition in that perverse animal, man, to withhold even a reasonable portion of assent, when too much is demanded. Political economy is a science which requires more than almost any other that its calculations shall be corrected by experience. It is built upon inductions of facts, of a nature by no means easy to be ascertained, because they are always found in combination, and their effects are perpetually changing according as they are variously combined. Perhaps no facts relating to the transactions among mankind were ever more minutely and extensively investigated than those which regulate the value of money. It may be safely said, that the subject was exhausted by the labours of the Bullion Committee. Yet few investigations ever led to more numerous and bewildering contradictions; and Parliament at length pronounced an opinion upon the value of a bank-note, which is probably not now entertained by half-a-dozen sane persons in the nation. When

VOL. II.

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