A pretty message truly to come to a man whose whole anxiety was to obey orders if he could find out what those orders were. And now let us see how

ham, the French despatches are not on fairly with them, but still to keep him-
precise as to the person from whom the self master of his ship, and if they pro-
words came,—was to assert boldly that ceeded so far as to offer to take the pos-
the ships were not bound to fight against session of her, that then his men should
Rochelle. But the words of the contract take him prisoner and bring away the
were too clear, and to all outward appear-ship. And that the said Capt. Penning-
ance the King made up his mind to com- ton might believe him that he had thus
ply with the wishes of the French. Buck- much to deliver, it being the King's will
ingham apparently threw himself heart and the rest, that it was far from them
and soul into their cause. He himself that any of his ships should go against
went down to Rochester to take part in any of the Protestants."
negotiations between the French Ambas-
sador Effiat and the owners of the mer-
chant ships, of which, with the single ex-
ception of the King's ship the Vanguard,
the squadron was composed. He wrote Clarendon's future friend, Nicholas, was
on the 16th of July to Pennington to hast- behaving. Habemus confitentem reum.
en back with all speed to Dieppe, and on despatches, at the time indeed, are written
the 18th he followed his directions up by with the utmost gravity, as if his ostensi-
an order to place the ships unreservedly ble mission was his real one. But the
in the hands of the French. As if this next year, when his master was called in
were not enough, he despatched his confi- question for this affair, he wrote to Pen-
dential servant, Edward Nicholas, to ac-nington about the ships:
company Effiat to Dieppe to see that the
surrender was really effected. If more be
wanted in the way of proof that Bucking-
ham was in earnest, we have numerous
letters detailing the efforts made by Nich-
olas to carry out his instructions, which
appear, on the face of these letters, to have
failed simply from the mutinous resolve
of the crews to take no part in fighting
against Rochelle.

And now let us look behind the scenes. On the 19th of July, Buckingham writes to Pennington, on hearing of mutinous proceedings amongst the sailors, that he "cannot but wonder as well as be sorry that any such disorder should happen as the withdrawing of the mariners from their duty and obedience"; and that he requires him to surrender the ships "according to the directions" he had given by his secretary Nicholas. The very next day Pembroke was sending the following message to Pennington:

...

His

"You are to satisfy the Parliament by whose and what warrant you delivered then to the French. The masters of the merchant ships have some of them said that it was by my Lord's command, and by reason of threatening speeches which I used to them by order from my Lord, but this will be, I doubt, disproved by many witnesses. It is true that before the ambassador or his people I did often charge them aloud to deliver them over according to my Lord Conway's letter, and the King's pleasure, but I fell from that language when we were private with the masters; and you may remember how often I told you I had no warrant or order from my Lord for delivery over of those ships."

From a paper written about the same time, of which the draft is in Nicholas's handwriting, we glean further particulars: "My instructions," he 66 says, were to this effect. To employ my best endeavour to hinder, or at least delay, the delivery of "That the letters which Capt. Penning- the ships to the French, but therein so to ton sent the Lord Duke of Buckingham's carry myself as that the ambassador might Grace to himself and the Lord Conway not discern but that I was sent of purpose was the best news that could come to the and with full instructions and command to Court, and that the King and all the rest effect this desire, and to cause all the ships were exceeding glad of that relation which to be put into his hands. Accordingly, he made of the discontent and mutinies of when the Vanguard came into the road of his company and the rest. And that if Dieppe, and that Capt. Pennington sent for such a thing had not fallen out, they should me to come aboard, I acquainted the amhave been constrained to have sent him ad- bassador with it, and told him, if I went to vice to have devised to have brought some the captain, I made no doubt but to persuch thing to pass, if the French should suade him to come ashore with me, notaccept of the service of that ship alone withstanding he was -as the ambassador -ie. the Vanguard, the others having at complained to me so obstinate that he first refused to follow to Dieppe-with- refused to come out of his ship to the out the rest; and that he should carry it Duke de Montmorenci, who importuned

him there by many kind invitations and the ships, which he fancied would please noble messages; but the ambassador would Lewis and not hurt the Huguenots. It not permit me to go aboard, but command- turned out, however, that the peace was ed me to write to Capt. Pennington to come not made, and all this long mystification ashore, which I did as pressing as the am- went for nothing. bassador desired, which took effect. When The facts thus disclosed have, I believe, he was come the ambassador interposed a bearing beyond their immediate scope. still between us so as I could not have a Not only in this affair of the ships, but in word in private with him, but was forced all other matters, during the early years to let fall a word now and then as I pur- of the reign, the general sincerity of posely walked by him, to bid him look well Charles and Buckingham can be placed bewhether he had sufficient warrant to de-yond question. All known evidence goes liver the ships, which I did lest the ambas- to sustain the view that they honestly sador... should draw a promise or en- wished to carry out the warlike policy gagement from the captain to deliver the ships, before I should have opportunity privately to advertise him to be ware how and on what warrant he did surrender the fortresses of the kingdom into the hands of a foreign prince."

In the end Buckingham outwitted himself. Having news from Paris that peace with the Huguenots was almost made, he dashed at the conclusion that it was quite made, and finally directed the delivery of

which had been accepted by the Parliament
of 1624, and to beat down Spain and its
allies. The suspicions of the Parliament
of 1625, however intelligible, were quite
unfounded. It was their thorough inca-
pacity, conjoined by their duplicity in seek-
ing to carry out their avowed policy by
underhand contrivances, which brought
contempt upon their claims to statesman-
ship.
SAMUEL R. GARDINER.

THE HABITS OF THE COATI-MONDI. -Sai- | closely-fitting lid was pried open, and every arlors from South America occasionally, among ticle inspected, in happy ignorance of the provother pets, bring a small animal, which, because erb about edged tools. It was enough that any of its long nose, they invariably call an Ant- thing was hollow to excite her curiosity, which eater. Thus was a little stranger introduced to was of a thoroughly simian type. The dinnerour care a few years ago. A glance was enough bell was turned over; but unable to detach the to see that it was no ant-eater at all, but a pret- clapper and chain, it was soon abandoned in ty female Coati-Mondi. Gallant Jack Tar, her disgust. A round sleigh-bell received more permaster on ship, unconscious of the incongruity, severing attention. Unable to get her nose or had made a namesake of her, and called her paws into the little hole at the side, the clatter Jack. Science had already named her Nasua, within set her wild with excitement, and evoked and in a matter-of-fact way, for the word inter- a desperate attack on the little annoyance with preted just means-Nosie. The animal was her teeth. She then gave it up as a bootless about the size of a cat, with a'thick, coarse fur, job. A bottle of hartshorn was next made the of a brownish hue on the back and sides, and subject of investigation. We had purposely underneath shades from yellow to orange. The loosened the cork, and promised ourselves a long tail was ornamented by a series of black "nice sell;" and we got it—not Nosie. She and yellowish brown rings. Her nasal promi- was not in the least disconcerted by the drug. nence reminded me of a queer Spaniard, once In fact she had a strong nose for such things. employed in the government service to detect A man gave her his tobacco-box. Resting it on spurious coin. His" counterfeit detector" was the floor between her two paws, which possessed a sensitive proboscis. By sticking this organ uncommon flexibility, she turned it over and into the glittering heaps he literally "nosed " over, round and round, exercising alternately out the bad from the good. To that man his her nose, claws, and teeth upon it with great nose was the instrument of his profession; and energy, but to no avail. It seemed thot the to Nasua her nose was equally important. It smell of its contents infatuated her, as she even prompted a nick-name and a juvenile pun showed no disposition to stop. The man opened "Nosie's nose knows too much!" Inap- the box for her. She was in rapture. In went peasably inquisitive, she was incessantly in- the nose, also both front paws. Very soon that truding that organ into every thing. Having wonderfully mobile organ had separated every made no allowance for an extra-tropical temper- fibre, so that the mass seemed trebly increased. ature, this little South American made a failure The same man let her have his dirty pipe, when in an attempt to lift with her nose the lid of a her velvety nose was instantly squeezed into the pot in the cook's domain. The next attempt, rank nicotian bowl. - REV. Š. LOCKWOOD, PH. successful one, was on the knife-box, whose D., in Popular Science Monthly for December.

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Beforehand. Now, my darling, it hath come! Let the Queen-Bee leave care to-day for hum-A SONGLESS bird, a garden without flowers,

text

From The Cornhill Magazine.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

are but a clumsy comment on part of Hawthorne's preface to the House of the I HAVE always sympathized with the fa- Seven Gables; they roughly express, theremous senior-wrangler who, on being in- fore, Hawthorne's theory of his own art; vited to admire Paradise Lost, inquired, and they are preparatory to the question, "What does it prove ? To the theory, so far as it is a rational question, what do indeed, on which his question is generally his romances prove? Abandoning the absupposed to be based, that any human surdity of answering that question as one composition is worthless which does not would answer a hostile barrister or a Civil end with the magical letters Q. E. D., I Service examiner, one may still attempt to can by no means yield an unqualified as indicate what is for some persons the most sent. I fully share the ordinary prejudice conspicuous tendency of writings in which against stories with a moral. No poem or the finest, if not the most powerful genius novel should be conspicuously branded of America has embodied itself. Comwith a well-worn aphorism, and declare to pressing the answer to its narrowest limthe whole listening universe that honesty its, one may say that Hawthorne has is the best policy. The tracts which in the shown what elements of romance are disdays of our childhood went to prove that coverable amongst the harsh prose of this little boys who didn't go to church would prosaic age. And his teaching is of imbe drowned in a millrace or gored by a portance, because it is just what is most bull, and the more pretentious allegories needed at the present day. How is the where abstract qualities are set masque- novelist who, by the inevitable conditions rading in frigid forms of flesh and blood, of his style, is bound to come into the moved, like the figures on a barrel-organ, closest possible contact with facts, who has not by passions but by a logical machinery to give us the details of his hero's clothes, grinding out syllogisms below the surface, to tell us what he had for breakfast, and are equally vexatious. And yet I fancy what is the state of the balance at his that the senior-wrangler had a dim percep- banker's-how is he to introduce the ideal tion of a more tenable theory. Some cen- element which must, in some degree, be tral truth should be embodied in every present in all genuine art? A mere phowork of fiction, which cannot indeed be tographic reproduction of this muddy, compressed into a definite formula, but money-making, bread - and - butter - eating which acts as the animating and informing world would be intolerable. At the very principle, determining the main lines of lowest, some effort must be made at least the structure and affecting even its most to select the most promising materials, and trivial details. Critics who try to extract to strain out the coarse or the simply proit as a formal moral, present us with noth-saic ingredients. Various attempts have ing but an outside husk of dogma. The been made to solve the problem since Delesson itself is the living seed which, cast foe founded the modern school of English into a thousand minds, will bear fruit in a novelists by giving us what is in one sense thousand different forms. The senior a servile imitation of genuine narrative, wrangler was therefore unreasonable if he but which is redeemed from prose by the expected to have Paradise Lost packed for unique force of the situation. Defoe painthim into a single portable formula. The ing mere every-day pots and pans is as dull true answer to him would have been, as a modern blue-book; but when his pots "Read and see. The world will be changed and pans are the resource by which a hufor you when you have assimilated the man being struggles out of the most apmaster's thought, though you have gone palling conceivable "slough of despond, ' through no definite process of linking x they become more poetical than the vessels and y with a and b. Though the poem from which the gods drink nectar in epic proves nothing, it will persuade you of poems. Since he wrote novelists have much. It is not a demonstration, but an made many voyages of discovery, with vaeducation." rying success, though they have seldom These remarks, certainly obvious enough, had the fortune to touch upon so marvel