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mission. The gates of the prison were closed against her, and she was sent away despairing and broken-hearted. But Shepherd's spirit did not quail. He would not disgrace the cause for which he knew he was to die. In his mistaken enthusiasm, death was preferable to life

under usurpation.

Had not his mind frequently reverted to Jane, the youth would have exulted in his approaching martyrdom; but when he thought of her, his spirit fluttered and fell at the prospect of the misery into which he had plunged her. Even this dismay was, however, overcome by self-congratulation that he would perish for his lawful prince.

On his trial, Shepherd proudly disdained to make any defence. He at once acknowledged the truth of what had been deposed against him; and declared that, by dying for his principles, he had attained the summit of his ambition. The jury gave a verdict of "Guilty;" and when the culprit was asked why sentence should not be pronounced on him, according to law, he drew himself up haughtily, and said, I cannot hope for mercy from a prince whom I will not own." He was accordingly condemned to be hanged.

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It was a harsh and drizzly morning on the 17th of March, 1718, when the unfortunate enthusiast set out on his last pilgrimage in this world. The progress from Newgate to Tyburn was long and tedious; but a serene and happy smile played during the whole time on poor Shepherd's countenance. Some few persons were bold enough to bid God bless him as he passed the crowded windows on his road; and even those whose timidity made them dumb, sympathized with sorrow in his fate. He did not, however, anticipate that he was not to be the only actor in the tragedy about to ensue. Had he known this, his firmness must have given way. How often does Providence mercifully hide from our sight approaching terrors!

The prison ordinary and a nonjuring priest of the name of Orme. were in the cart with Shepherd, engaged, during the whole procession, not in affording spiritual consolation to the culprit, but in acrimonious disputes with each other as to certain tenets of their faith. These indecent wranglings were continued even on the scaffold, to the hindrance of the executioner's office. Some thought the time was pur posely prolonged in expectation of a reprieve; and one panting, trembling creature was there who, seeing the contest between the clergymen, dared to cherish a faint ray of hope.

At length, the ordinary quitted the spot, leaving Mr. Orme to pray with the malefactor. After Shepherd and the priest had gone through several religious exercises, Orme, with a loud voice, gave the youth public absolution; for which daring defiance of government he was taken into custody on the spot.

The executioner now advanced; there was a breathless silence: the rope was fixed, and in an instant James Shepherd was seen swinging in air. At this moment, the spectators were still more horrorstricken on hearing a piteous shriek from one of the stands. A rush was made towards the place, where a young girl was found gasping in the agonies of death. Her power of utterance was gone. A slight quivering of the limbs indicated the final agony, and she soon ceased to breathe. Life must have departed from her nearly at the same moment as it left Shepherd. Her body was conveyed to the nearest tavern, where, ere long, it was owned as the corpse of Jane Wilson.

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A TALE OF EAST INDIA LIFE.

(FOUNDED ON FACT.)

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BY J. H. STOCQUELER, AUTHOR OF THE HAND-BOOK OF INDIA."

ONE of the strongest proofs that can be afforded of the prevalence and force of the aristocratic principle in English society, is to be found in the deference invariably paid to good blood. The peer is not singular in his anxiety to exhibit a high descent, and display a 'scutcheon untarnished by the misconduct of an ancestor, or the accident of an ignoble connexion. Every country gentleman, every citizen, every member of the liberal professions, delights to trace his origin to a proud and honourable source; and if he cannot commence the family pedigree with the visit of the Norman conqueror, he is not at all displeased to be able to speak of his great-grandfather the Bishop, or even his grandfather the General. Mothers with dowerless daughters, and sons who have only their wits to depend upon for advancement in the world, will be content to seek for the former a comfortable establishment without much regard to the birth, character, or social position of the man to whom they consign their child; but a son's marriage is always a subject of fearful domestic anxiety. He may degrade his family by a humble alliance; he may forget that the blood of all the Snookses courses through his veins, and in a moment of passionate enthusiasm espouse an unpresentable Tomkins, whose portion is only derivable from a successful speculation in figs. But there is still one consolation left the girl is the result of honourable wedlock. John Tomkins père was duly called in the parish church, and no one saw "just cause or impediment" why he and Mary Briggs should not be joined together in holy bands. Were it otherwise-if it should so fall out that the son and heir of Duffy Snooks should give his hand to one whose parentage had never received the sanction of the law,-the family honour is blighted the shield is blotted, disfigured, stained irrevocably, and the "anxious mother" can no longer hold her head erect in the pew of the parish church.

This tenaciousness of family consequence-amiable it may be, and politic it certainly is-characterizes, as we have said, all classes of the English, but nowhere does it operate so extensively as in our colonies and East India possessions. There, a man's marriage becomes almost a national question: his family, absent in the mother country, are seldom made aware of his matrimonial intentions until too late to interpose a remonstrance or offer a friendly caution; he tells them by one mail that he is in love, and the next, perhaps, announces that the knot has been irrevocably tied. But his fellow-men on the spot see with concern his disregard of the paramount claims of legitimacy and purity of blood, and revenge themselves on what they regard as an outrage on national honour, by a coldness and contumely which they extend to even the second and third generations. Neither education, nor talents, nor conduct, nor wealth, secure to the youth who has sprung from an Indian source, on the mother's side, that degree of consideration which is awarded as a matter of course to the pure descendants of Europeans: he is looked upon as a living type of the in

continency of the emigrants from the West; he is a connecting link between the white man and a race he disdains to recognise as his equal in the scale of humanity. He is, in short, a person who, for good reasons or bad reasons, should be "kept down," let his individual merit be what it may. But habitual contumely, however much it may, in a general way, brutalize its objects by lowering them in their own esteem, has not the effect of degrading the Eurasian East Indian country-born, or half-caste*. Proud of his parentage on the father's side, he claims to be treated as a European, whom he imitates in costume and pursuits, and of whose acquirements he obtains a smattering by a course of such education at one of the local grammar-schools as the bounty of the government or the European community, or a vague sense of duty on his father's part, may open to young persons of his grade of life. And be it said to his honour, that in his after career he rarely disgraces his teachers or dishonours his paternal origin. He takes pride in cherishing good principles and sober practices, assured that these alone will enable him to boast of his father the Colonel, or his father the Judge, without exciting contemporary ridicule. Sometimes it is his lot to be sent to England at a very early age, for the benefit of a higher kind of education than is generally attainable in India. Personal fondness for his offspring, a conviction that scholarship and good training may serve the boy in after life, if he be not destined to inherit a fortune, or help him to adorn it if he is to be a legatee, will induce the father of a Eurasian son to go to the expense of consigning him to some tried friend or well-conducted establishment in the far West; but the result is fatal or otherwise to the youth's happiness, according to whether he remains in England or returns to the scene of his childhood. Here, we are not disposed to scan very narrowly the birth, parentage, and complexion of men whose conduct and demeanour entitle them to a friendly reception in society; but in India, as before observed, the highest qualities are insufficient to set off the individual who wears "the shadowed livery of the burning sun." Hence, on his return to his native country, the Eurasian finds himself suddenly and almost unaccountably placed beyond the pale of society; and his natural sensibility, stimulated by education, is thus outraged to a most cruel degree, and often to a fatal issue. A tale, illustrative of this fact, occurs to me just now, and I am not aware that I can do better than relate it, with the double view of entertaining the reader of" Ainsworth's Magazine," and inducing the European in India to evince more consideration for the feelings of the educated Eurasians than is at present extended to them.

Edmund Merton was the son of a major in the Bengal army who, being stationed for some years in a part of the country remote from the great towns in Upper India, had formed a liaison with a female whose occupation was that of a nautch or dancing girl. This female became the mother of my hero, and as she and her companions appeared to the major to possess very few qualifications for the task of rearing his heir, he resolved, as soon as the child had reached his fifth year, to separate him from the tenants of the Zenana, and send him to a relative in

This latter term is repudiated by the class, and its use regarded as an insult. The term Eurasian, first employed by the penultimate Marquis of Hastings, when Governor-General of India, is perhaps the most appropriate, combining as it does the titles of the two quarters of the globe.

England for his educatian His relative, a cousin, having no family of his own, felt himself at a loss to rear so young and helpless a charge, and therefore committed him to the care of a maiden lady, who eked out a decent existence at a village near Totness, in Devonshire, by playing custodian and teacher to half a dozen of the tenderest youths of both sexes. With this lady and his companions the child was happy. His gentle disposition and pretty black eyes, added to the presumed helplessness of one so far removed from his parents, made him the pet of the guileless beings. One of them, Emily Bertram, a fair girl exactly his equal in years, especially attached herself to him, regarding the little Indian with the interest which an affectionate sister extends to a younger brother. Six years of the childhood of Edmund Merton were passed under the roof of Miss Worthington, and they were years unclouded by either sickness or family misfortune, or any of the bereavements which ever and anon cast a gloom over the existence of infancy. Major Merton, who in due course rose to the rank of Lieu tenant-Colonel, was punctual in his remittances to his cousin the merchant, who as regularly transmitted the stipend to Miss Worthington, receiving with the stamped acknowledgment a favourable report of the progress of little Edmund. When our hero attained his eleventh year, however, it was deemed expedient by his guardian to transfer him to an academy where a higher class of education was obtainable than that which Miss Worthington professed to give. He was accordingly sent to a school in Yorkshire. Bitter was the separation between the poor boy and his little companion Emily Bertram-they had "grown together,"

"Like to a double cherry, seeming parted;

But yet a union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

But they hoped and expected to meet again soon, and, with the elasticity common to young hearts, the grief of the parting was soon forgotten.

Years rolled on-Edmund Merton was as happy with his new as with his late schoolfellows, for they liked his bland and unassuming manners, and instead of regarding his colour as a reproach, they deemed it, with the generosity common to youth, an appeal to their sympathies. He was a comparative stranger, and therefore entitled to friendly consideration. With the master of the school Edmund was likewise a favourite, for to his tractability he added a quick capacity, which saved the pedagogue a world of trouble, and gave our hero good places in the several classes to which, with his years and corresponding acquisitions, he advanced.

Pass we over the details of his school life. Edmund remained under the care of Dr. Parkinson until he was nineteen years of age, and had by that time attained a high degree of proficiency in all the branches of polite learning proper to a good position in society, and es sential to further advances in the higher grades of life. He had scarcely passed his nineteenth birth-day, however, when one morning a carriage drove to the door of Stadbrook House, (the name of the school,) and an elderly gentleman alighted and desired to see Dr. Parkinson and Edmund Merton. This visitor was no other than old Mr. Merton, the guardian of the youth. Fourteen years had not passed over his head without leaving their traces in his silvered hair and furrowed

To

cheeks. He had had his share of personal cares, though the dissolution of the bonds of love had formed no part of his affliction. He had "had losses," men in whom he trusted had failed to large amounts→→ a clerk in whom he confided had plundered him of heavy sums. solace the decline of life, with the affection of one on whose gratitude he had, unknown to the party himself, established a claim, was now the object of the venerable visitor. He thought, by making Edmund Merton the inmate of his house and his confidential friend, he should find a compensation in old age for the disappointments and vexations that had embittered the prime of life. And in making this transfer of the youth from the school to his domicile, he was but carrying out the wishes of Edmund's father, who, dying in India, a few years previously, had, by will, bequeathed the bulk of a tolerably handsome fortune to his son, enjoining the executor and guardian, his cousin, to withhold from Edmund the free use of the property until he had passed two or three years under his own eye, subject to the discipline of the countinghouse.

Mr. Merton was gratified to find his charge had grown into a fine young man, and that his mind had undergone a due degree of cultivation. Edmund, on his part, was pleased to learn that he was about to commence the world under favourable auspices. carriage rolled over the streets of London, bearing him to Finsbury A few hours, and the Square, where his protector and future host resided. A few weeks, and he had seen enough of the great city to satisfy present curiosity. He was now installed in the office of Mr. Merton, who followed the business of a merchant and ship-broker, and though conscious of the possession of a handsome independence, his well-regulated mind suggested to him the prudence of acquiring fixed habits, and profitably consuming time in the pursuit of a not uninteresting business.

For two years our hero conscientiously pursued the vocation of a clerk, rising early and working each day until a late hour; he became a proficient in book-keeping-no one could enter or clear a ship with greater expedition-no one was more ready with appropriate replies to business applicants. In short, Edmund Merton had made himself as necessary to his friend and guardian as if his very bread had depended upon his diligence. One afternoon, in the summer of 1825, as he was closing the accounts of the good ship Marquis of Granby, and writing letters for despatch by her upon the morrow, a lady entered the counting-house, and enquired of the clerk who had charge of the passenger branch of the shipping business, whether she might safely. prolong her stay in London another day without losing her passage by the Marquis of Granby. A reference was made to Merton, for he alone could tell when the vessel would actually sail from Portsmouth. The lady addressed herself to him. For the moment, Merton could not answer. Her beauty had powerfully arrested his attention-the softness of her voice had bound him as with a spell-and what rendered the enchantment more potent still, was a vague presentiment that he had seen that face and heard that voice before at some remote and now forgotten period. Pausing before he made reply, he ventured to ask the lady's name, and whether they had not met in by-gone days. The question operated upon her with electric effect-the features and complexion of Edmund Merton at once suggested his identity, and he, to his inexpressible delight, again clasped to his heart the idol of his

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