thought him, with the same courage. The next morning Brigette came What a letter it was! And her an- into the room of her mistress and drew swer? He might not understand it at back the curtains. She handed her a first sight, but afterwards its meaning letter. Manette, rising from her pil would break in upon him. He would lows, recognized Claude's handwritt understand her then, as she now un- ing. She tore it open, glanced at it derstood him. for a moment, then gave a sharp cry.

“I have just left the Palais de Justice," it said, "aud am going back to Sainte Pélagie. I have been to the Palais to be examined. They assigned me as counsel Citizen Boutroué, a law

What the revenge was that she promised him he must not know. She now saw clearly that Cilly had been at the bottom of everything. Things had remained quiet while he was in Auvergne, but at the moment of his leav-yer who lives in what was formerly ing Paris on his mission of proscribing and slaying, the tiger had not forgotten his intended prey. He had taken care to put Laverdac, whom he suspected of being his rival, safe out of the way, as he supposed, in prison. Manette was thankful Laverdac did not suspect this. Cilly had threatened her with Laverdac's ruin, and he had not quitted Paris on his mission without taking steps to accomplish it. Possibly he did not know that Laverdac had escaped, and that his sectionaries had only arrested

a woman.

Poor, pretty little Emilie,-yes; her arrest was cruel! It was piteous to think of it. Emilie lay forgotten in prison. Perhaps to be forgotten was the best that could be hoped; deliverance from prison might mean the guillotine. But Manette ? Manette herself? Twice had the cruel hand struck down those whom she was supposed to love. And by this time Cilly had shown her she had no course left but to yield herself to his wishes.

She drew herself up proudly. Things had not come to that. A bright light was in her eyes. A vision seemed to pass before her.

The rain was over. There was more light now in the chamber. She called Brigette to take the lamp away, and coming up to her, she laid her hand upon her shoulder.

66

"Come, my good Brigette," she said, 'you shall be satisfied with me tonight. I am going to sleep soundly." Then in a whisper, she added: "I shall set Claude free, and Emilie. Perhaps that will pay the debt I feel I owe them."

called the Rue St. Merry. Be easy about me, dear Manette. The accusa tions against me are not the same as the charges when I was taken to Sainte Pélagie. I was then accused of having intrigued in my section in favor of the nomination of Raffet, the candidate who was opposed to Hauriot, in the election of the commanding general of the National Guard; now I am accuseć of having said that the sans-culottes needed the support of the rich. I do not fear. I know that I have truth or my side. They can hardly go agains the truth when eight hundred persons heard my speech in the section. I beg my father to go to-morrow, before nine o'clock, to the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal. He must ask him for permits to see me, for himself. and for my wife. He will obtain them without difficulty. He must say that have been examined to-day, the 19th Frimaire, in Room No. 43 by a judge whose name I did not hear, but whe wore a bandage over his right eye, sc that he will know. My father will read him this: To the public prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal: Citi zen, having been examined yesterday. as I have already stated, I entreat thee to give my father and my wife permission to see me. Thy fellow citizen, Cézaron.' Good-bye, my beloved. Would I could press you to my heart."

Manette fell back on her pillow. Brigette leaned over her anxiously. Her eyes were closed. "Madame, what is it?" she said. But the young wife suddenly rose up with energy. "Brigette," she said, "help me tot dress. There is not a moment to be

lost. Ah, Brigette! my poor husband!"

we owe the first publication of Shelley's "Posthumous Poems.”

Cilly had indeed lost no time in in- Beddoes from his first youth was a forming her of his return to Paris. He writer of verse; he belongs to the was making ready for another blow. order of poets whose genius within He had inspired this examination. certain limits is undeniable, and of perThe judge, no doubt, was his creature. manent acceptance, but whose want of She understood it all too well. The popularity is not to be extenuated by public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, criticism. While at Oxford, Beddoes did not generally take such preliminary published "The Improvisatore" aud steps before he seized his prey. A "The Bride's Tragedy." He says, in preliminary examination before a juge a letter written at the time: "Mr. Mild'instruction was considered superflu- man (our poetry professor) has made ous. This was a warning addressed me quite unfashionable here, by deto herself. And it would be the last. nouncing me as one of a 'villainous Claude was unaware of his danger. school.' I wish him another son." He counted upon truth for his defence, have it, on the authority of Mr. Gosse, and was sure that hundreds would bear that Browning thought very differently witness in his favor. What folly! from "poet-priest Milman," for he said What delusion! This sudden reawak- on one occasion, "If I were ever proening of his enemies had only struck fessor of poetry, my first lecture at the him as a favorable opportunity of see- university should be on Beddoes, a foring her. gotten Oxford poet."

She dressed in all haste, having recovered command over herself. Brigette was no longer with her. The old Woman was now busy with Citizen Andrey, who must be made ready for the visit that his niece was about to make. They would have to go first to the Rue de Grenoble, where Citizen Grégoire would join them. Citizen Cilly would not be at home after eleven He lived at No. 48 Boulevard Poissonière. Perhaps he might even that day go out earlier than usual, for it was the tenth-day holiday, the Revolutionary substitute for Sunday,

o'clock.

called the décade.

From Temple Bar.
THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES.
BY MRS. ANDREW CROSSE.

WHEN the admirers of Browning Would scarcely have supplied the quorum for a jury, Beddoes was among the select few who recognized his genius, and in earlier days he had been one of the small circle who acknowledged the transcendant gifts of Shelley; in fact, it was owing to his help, together with three of his friends, that

I

Miss Zoë King, to whom Landor, Kenyon, Eagles, and others addressed sonnets in the early Victorian period, was a cousin of Beddoes; and to the day of her death, which only took place in 1881, she treasured with romantic interest every word of praise bestowed on his poetry. When his collected poems appeared in 1850, just a year after his death, Miss King took occasion to inform their common friend, Mr. Kelsall, who was Beddoes' literary executor, that Mr. and Mrs. Browning had both expressed great appreciation of her kinsman's poetry. This statement of Browning's opinion was a link in the chain of circumstances that led to the preservation of a number of Beddoes' letters, which are now textually published for the first time. It further chanced that Browning one day met Kelsall, then "a shy, diffident old man," at Procter's house. The latter had always been an admirer, and had occasionally been a correspondent, of Beddoes. We may assume that the departed poet came under discussion when this trio met; anyhow, the result was that shortly afterwards Kelsall

1 The Letters of Thomas Lovell Beddoes. Ed-
Elkin

ited, with notes, by Edmund Gosse.
Mathews and John Lane, 1894. London.

In touching briefly on the character istic aloofness of his nature, and or the "tumultuous thought" which to gether led to his apparent failure i life, I am irresistibly reminded Browning's noble poem which ha those sad words for its title. But stil more to the purpose, for mercy season justice, let me quote from Beddoe himself some lines which are infinitel pathetic.

informed Browning that he intended | come into their possession, they would to leave the Beddoes manuscripts to most probably have been consigued to him. Mr. Gosse tells us that Mr. the fire that burns steadily on the alta Browning wrote to Kelsall, endeavor- of bigotry. His first cousin, Zoë Kiug ing to dissuade him from so doing; but took a widely different view, and re on the death of the latter in 1872 the joiced when Kelsall in careful regard intention was carried out. A curious for the poet's memory and fame pub circumstance connected with the be- lished his most important work, th quest was the discomfort, apparently year after his unhappy end; this worl causeless, which it gave to Browning. was a tragedy, for which Beddoes said= He could not persuade himself to open he had "found a jewel of a name the box for a long time. At length heDeath's Jest-book.'" called in his neighbor and friend, Mr. Gosse, to help him to examine these papers, for he had never as much as peeped at them. Mr. Gosse tells me that when the key was produced, and he was about to open the box, Browning said in great agitation, "I am sure we shall come upon some dreadful secret. I cannot bear to lift the lid." Singularly enough, when that was done, there were discovered at the top They were written in hi certain papers showing that Beddoes twenty-fifth year, during one of thos had committed suicide in a most deter- rare home-comings to his birthplace mined manner, a fact known only to Bristol-home-comings which, as year Kelsall and to Zoë King, and by them carefully concealed. There was also found Kelsall's express wish that after a due delay these facts should be made known to the world, as was presently afterwards done by Mr. Gosse, at Browning's desire, in the columns of the "Dictionary of National Biography." Mr. Browning made the further request that Mr. Gosse should edit Beddoes' works. Besides the manu

went over the exile's head, becam more and more infrequent. He write in an album, seemingly at the reques of Zoë King; he begins by describin himself as one buried long ago, nov called up by a necromancer to answe dreadful questions. He says:—

Woe unto him whose fate hath thwarte him,

Whose life hath been 'mongst such as wer not born

scripts of all the poetry written by To cherish in his bosom reverence, Beddoes in English,

the ominous-looking box contained nearly fifty letters from the poet to his friend Kelsall, including a few addressed to Procter and others. Mr. Swinburne, we learn, has given it as his opinion that Beddoes "noble instinct for poetry "" was better shown in this "brilliant correspondence" than even in his practice as a verse writer.

I was acquainted with one of Beddoes' sisters, an amiable old lady who died only a few years ago, and I feel sure from what she told me that the immediate family were so prejudiced against his opinions on politics and other matters, that had the manuscripts

And the calm awe that comforteth th
heart

And lulls the yearnings of hope unfulfilled
Such have I been.

...

Woe again to me!
For now I hear even such an anxious voic
Crying in my soul's solitude, and bewailin
That I had never in my childhood known
The bud of this manifold beauteousness,
And seen each leaf turn of its tender hing
Until the last few parted scarce, and held
Deep in their midst a heaven-reflecting gem
For then I might-oh, vain and flatterin
wish!-

I might have stood, tho' last among th

friends

Where I am now the last among th strangers,

And not have passed away, as now I must,
Into forgetfulness, into the cold

Of the open, homeless world without a
hope.

common sense

moon

The diagnosis of would doubtless pronounce the poet's charges against fate as mere shine, the result of a morbid imagination which refuses to balance the facts of life. There are men with every needful equipment, saving and excepting the linch-pin which keeps the wheel on its axle. In truth, the gods had abundantly bestowed their good things on this child of genius. Beddoes at his start in life had youth, health, competence, the social advantages pertaining to the highest class of education, and, what is of more importance, he was endowed with an insatiable hunger for

was as yet a youth unknown to fame. Davy describes Dr. Beddoes as possessing great talents and extensive reading, much occupied with his peculiar theories, little enlightened by experiment, but with a wild, active, and poetical imagination, in strange contrast to his coldness in conversation. Sir H. Davy says further that

On his death-bed he wrote me a most affecting letter, regretting his scientific aberrations. I remember one expression : "Like one who has scattered abroad the

avena fatua of knowledge, from which neither branch, nor blossom, nor fruit has resulted, I require the consolations of a which would have exalted him to the pinfriend." Beddoes, says Davy, had talents nacle of philosophical eminence, if they had been applied with discretion.

knowledge. We have in this singular After this slight sketch of the aubeing a remarkable instance of hered- tecedents and surroundings of the ity. His father, a distinguished physi- young poet of the "villainous school," cian, lived at Clifton some years at the let us turn to the man himself as he close of the last and through the first appears in his "Letters." "With a decade of this century. His name apfriend," says Bacon, "a man tosseth pears in the biographies of Davy, Cole- his thoughts." A tossing and tumbling ridge, Poole, Southey, the Wedgwoods, out of thoughts from the affluence of and others of the period. His house his mind, aptly describes the spirit of was the gathering-place of these men, these letters, written for the most part and others of mark, who severally to his own familiar friend, the one became acquainted with one another friend who remained staunch and true under his hospitable roof. Dr. Bed- to him when "all the blandishments of does had married a sister of Maria life were gone." The first of the series Edgeworth; his friend and neighbor, is dated 1824, when Beddoes was in his Mr. King, a man of much originality twenty-first year. He writes to Kelof mind and considerable attainments, sall on business details connected with had also married into the same family, the Shelley poems; and then, in someand in later years greatly influenced thing like a parenthesis between some the younger Beddoes. idle chatter about theatres, he remarks:

Mrs. Beddoes appears from all accounts to have been a most charming Woman, combining in admirable harmony the best gifts of heart and mind. She lived to see her son attain his majority.

Spenser-you do him injustice; I was and am villainously ignorant of him; but I have bought him in folio and intend to read him piecemeal. Beginning, as all rational folks do, at the end, I stumbled on "Britain's Ida," which is extremely like Keats with a mixture of the Shakespearian play on words. "" of

It is recorded1 that Sir Humphry Davy never ceased to remember the "healthy, noble, kind influence this amiable lady, at the time when he Was her husband's assistant at the Pneumatic Institution, and when he

To Procter- better known as Barry Cornwall - he writes:

About Shakespeare you don't say enough... He was an incarnation of nature; and you See Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy. might just as well attempt to remodel the seasons, and the laws of life and death, as

By his brother, John Davy.

to alter one jot or tittle" of his eternal | says, he has "ensconced himself in the thoughts. hospitality of his demi-uncle." King he describes as