together, though I think I was not quite so there was something in the king's obsticold as I was the last two nights. This entry is dated the 19th of April, so clearly the snow and the hard frost that Lady Mary records, and which proved so fatal to poor Duchess Jenny, must have occurred at a time which the modern calendar places in the month of May, and from this it appears that late and bad springs are not new trials either in the history of English gardens or of English sick-rooms. As Lady Mary is suspected of having set her mind on marrying a royal duke, it may be supposed that the marriage of the Duke of Cumberland and the public avowal of the Duke of Gloucester's marriage to a subject were felt by her as personal injuries and mortifications. This is how she alludes to the latter event: nate seclusion which was equivalent to a fated to be both more fortunate and more favorable reception. At Vienna she was unfortunate. We resume Lady Louisa Stuart's narrative. Our ambassadors at foreign courts had not yet learned to dread invasions from their countrywomen; travelling boys and tutors did frequently give them a deal of trouble, but English ladies did not at that time go swarming all over Europe. The Empress Queen received and treated Lady Mary with all her habitual graciousness; Joseph, ever a most agreeable man in society, was well-bred and friend; Prince Kaunitz, the Prime Minister, courteous to Sir Robert Keith Murray's followed his example; Count Seileren, who had been ambassador in England, welcomed her as an old acquaintance; the Thuns, the Lichtensteins, and the Esterhazys invited her to superb entertainments, and, on Sunday, November 9, 1766. By the time I the whole, I suppose the months she passed had breakfasted and dressed for Court it among them were the happiest in her life. was time to go to chapel. I found Lady Fran- When about to go away she had a private cis Tilson in the closet. She gave me an audience of the Empress, who, with many account of the fine presents the King of Den- flattering expressions of regret for her depar mark had given her sister- a small pocket-ture, desired she would accept a fine medallion book set with diamonds, and within it a note for 1,000l. The Queen was to be married last Wednesday. Lady Bridget Lane sat over against me. When the dukes came into the King's closet she bent forward and said to "Married!" meaning the Duke of Gloucester, who I think must have heard her. I replied very softly, "Married?" "I assure you it is true. Thinking it was not a proper subject so near the King, I made no The Queen was not at the chapel, but came to the drawing-room, which was extremely full. I never got farther than just of the inside of the door, and had for my companions Lord Chatham, my Lord Chancellor Camden, and two bishops-no bad supporters, you'll allow. me: answer. But the history of Lady Mary's adventures would be incomplete unless we were to give an account of her foreign tours, and of her friendship with the Empress Queen Maria Theresa, the leading power of Europe, and who from having been Lady Mary's friend became, so Lady Mary flattered herself, her enemy. England, after the monstrous acts committed by their royal highnesses of Cumberland and Gloucester, and not committed by Edward, Duke of York, Lady Mary felt constrained to leave. It was not the first time that she had made excursions into Germany to visit sundry royal and serene highnesses. She had even once pushed as far as Berlin, with the hope of interviewing Frederick the Great, but after a week at Potsdam she had to beat a retreat, and comfort her own vanity that VOL. LXXIII. 3770 LIVING AGE. It was unfortunate set in jewels and wear it for her sake. All It is certain that Lady Mary's friends were more amused than concerned, or even surprised, at the rupture that followed. Lady Louisa Stuart says: be obtained. The sovereign's frown had its No more audiences or medallions were to Once started in this vein of quarrels, Lady Mary met or made them wherever she went. As Horace Walpole said of her, "she had a hundred distresses, and was like Don Quixote, who went in search of adventures, and when he found none imagined them." She went to Paris. Imagine [says Lady Louisa Stuart] a tall, elderly English noblewoman, full fraught with all the forms, etiquettes, decorums, and nice observances which old women value and recommend, wearing a flat hoop, long ruffles, and a sweeping train, holding herself very upright, speaking very bad French, and, to crown all, abusing the Queen's mother without mercy. I say, imagine such a wight arriving amid the revelry then reigning at Versailles, and judge whether the giddy crew and their leader were likely to receive her with open arms. have led her to suspect the wandering heroine | ments which it became in our Victorian of evil designs upon the heart and hand of era, and the education of royal ladies was Joseph. This I utterly disbelieve. then as defective as their lives were narrow, but this princess earned the affection of all who experienced her goodness of heart. It required, then, a caprice of temper that bordered on insanity for Lady Mary Coke to trespass as she did on so much indulgence. Possibly this untamed shrew regretted the quarrel when it was all too late, but it did not teach her any lessons of prudence or amiability. In truth, Lady Mary Coke proved herself such an astonishing woman, that no one was surprised when she brought about a rupture between herself and Horace Walpole. He often laughed at her, but he liked her, called her "a dainty widow," and, had she been amenable to reason, would have kept up with her one of those intimacies with a woman so common in French manners, and so necessary for Walpole's happiness. He had been, as Madame du Deffand told him, the best company in the world, the sovereign of the kingdom of taste at a time when a vulgar court had rendered letters unfashionable. He possessed this real or imaginary importance, that of a man of letters and fashion about town, and Lady Mary had also an imaginary importance, that of a dashing woman of quality with relations as important as herself. Yet a quarrel between two such persons was not quite unlikely. On the one hand he grew more valetudinarian, and she grew more contradictory and impertinent, and it is perhaps true that as people get on in life ill-humor waxes larger and wants more elbow-room. In one respect these friends, both so well adapted originally for bustling in the great world, were unequally matched. The reputation of Horace Walpole would endure through centuries that were to come. He would live as the keenest delineator of manners, characters, and events, while a woman has but one real reign. that of her beauty. Now Lady Mary was old, and if she did not love her follies less she ought at least to have learned by sad experience that But worse than this was yet to come. It will hardly be believed that Lady Mary gave a finishing stroke to her absurdities by contriving to put, as Horace Walpole expressed it, a very good quarrel on foot between the Princess Amelia and herself. The royal lady and the capricious traveller had seen a great deal of each other through life. Nothing could exceed the kindness nay, the forbearance always shown by the superior for the faults, foibles, and eccentricities of her friend; but when Lady Mary became impertinent, and when, instead of apologizing and making it up, as the king's daughter gave her the ready opportunity of doing, she went into heroics, then the princess drew herself up, ordered the carriage of her ill-tempered visitor, dismissed her with a bow, and never saw her again. The Princess Amelia survived this rupture two years, dying in her house in Harley Street, very much regretted by her friends. She never was a favorite with her nephew George III., yet it is only justice to her memory to say that in the dull and coarse atmosphere in which she had been brought up she shone like a sunbeam in a cloudy day. She had the misfortune to be born at a time when Sarah, Duchess of Marl borough, declared that "in her woful experience most princes, thanks to flattery and want of intelligence, were alike." Princess Amelia, however, was not quite alike, and under better circumstances she would certainly have been a commendable and a successful woman. The court of her day was very far from being that compendium of virtues and accomplish a great deal of laughter at her expense. Lady Louisa Stuart wrote, in 1803, "Lady Mary Coke called on me yesterday; she is very thin. I felt sorry for a person who had outlived the last of her youthful friends. I fancy it is a great chance whether you ever behold her again. Her existence is certainly not a happy one.' At the time of her death Lady Mary was the owner of a house in Mount Street, but she actually died in a villa at Chiswick, which Lord Gower described as presenting a dull and triste appearance. She passed away in the autumn of 1811. made the ears of every one in the place to tingle again. He was a stout man, this bugler, in scarlet uniform, and must have been proud of his vocation, or he would scarcely have considered it necessary to blow again, even louder than before, after he had moved on barely a hundred yards. It really seemed wrong of him to disturb the still June air in this fashion, and the startled swallows skimming to and fro quickened their flight, not knowing what to make of it. But he did not notice this, and went on raising the clamorous call again and again, as he made his way slowly down the street. The little boys flocked round him like flies, and followed his steps with pattering feet; and whenever he stopped they gathered apart in an anxious group, and watched the bugle go to his lips with such intensity of interest that every little brow was rumpled and every little mouth puffed out in sympathy. At last the bugler reached the further In the society where she long shone, and which she had convulsed with her "hundred distresses,” she had become an extinct volcano. Of that society much harm has been said; its apes and peacocks have been reviled, but they can retort that their loves, hates, and pastimes are unforgotten still. There is no doubt that its beauties and its dandies were highly artificial, and that the men of fash-end of the street, and was heard no more. ion who set themselves above all human emotions were absurd enough. To be correct in attitude and step was the thing principally demanded of those who entered the narrow precincts of good society; but, since plain sense cannot govern, it is fortunate when at least good taste is regnant. That age was less exacting than is our own; but it was more sincere in this respect, that it had not agreed to censure that which all agreed to do. Nor were the men and women all bad, though play was high and though the conversation was often both deistical and dissipated where But the desolation was only momen"round our coaches crowd the white-tary, the stillness that of a pot just before gloved beaux," and though of the belles it might truly be averred that With varying vanities from every part From Macmillan's Magazine. THE SHAM FIGHT AT RUDDIFORD. I. EVIDENTLY something unusual was toward in Ruddiford. In the early evening a portent had appeared, in the shape of a man with a bugle. This bugler stationed himself at one end of the long street which contained nearly the whole town, and blew a blast that But his passing had completely broken up the placid calm which had brooded over the town all day. The long street burst at once into fitful activity, and everywhere clean-aproned men and boys were popping in and out of the shops, with thump and clatter, putting up the heavy wooden shutters. Then the men and boys disappeared, and for a space the glowing sun, sauntering along the western horizon as his fashion is in June, glanced the whole length of the desolate street without being able to strike a single shadow. it comes a-boil. Extraordinary figures suddenly appeared in every quarter-figures in military attire and yet most ludisuch figure was the centre of a cluster. crously unmilitary in aspect; and every All down the street the scarlet coats blazed in the sun, and they and their sober satellites flowed steadily in one direction. Finally they became concentrated in an open space under the shadow of the old church tower, and there, jostled by a crowd of onlookers, they arranged themselves in two uneven ranks, and stood forth the X. Company of the Fifth Cornshire Rifle Volunteers. They were as jovial and good-natured a set of men, these volunteers, and as undisciplined, as you could have picked up anywhere. They were just a pack of lads brimful of fun and mischief, even though some of them were mature in years. Healthy eyes twinkled out as merrily from above bushy, grizzled beards as from over the smoothest chin, and there was not a sad heart in the lot. They were all friends and neighbors not more than three score of them altogether unless you counted the band-and were animated by a single desire, which was, to have as jolly a time of it as possible. The band itself formed a separate cluster in which the musicians stood, hugging their ponderous instruments as though they loved them. Since every true Ruddifordian takes a healthy delight in noise, this band was extremely popular, and was disproportionately strong. It numbered five-and-twenty pairs of vigorous lungs, beside the drummer, and would have been still larger if the men could have had their choice. It was quite a local institution, and did duty at every club feast and agricultural show for miles around. rangement both for themselves and their families, and then out into the country for two miles until they came to the wide pasture half-way between Ruddiford and Ditchfallow, where the Ditchfallow corps would meet them and they would proceed to annihilate each other with blank cartridge. at Their exuberant spirits at this prospect revealed itself even on the roll-call and the facetious ones responded to their names with "Here!" "There!" "Yonder!" "Gone to bed!" and such-like witticisms, given it is true, in a tone intended to reach only to the ears of their comrades. Then some preliminary evolutions were tempted, but the press of spectators brought all to confusion. So the signal was given for which the band had been impatiently waiting. Thud-thud — thud went the drum, and then, with a sudden blare that astonished even the cows and set the horses galloping wildly in every field for miles around, the band struck up. Off went the musicians down the long Main Street, and the rest of the corps muddled itself somehow or other into fours and followed. II. The captain of this array was the great gentleman who owned the big brewery behind the church. Full of importance he strutted to and fro in front of his men whenever the crowd would let him, but found the labor of sustaining, among his other military embellishments, a large eyeglass under his left eyebrow too severe to allow him much time for anything else. It is very doubtful whether he could see anything through it, and his men, having IN its idle moments Ruddiford frediscovered this, made fun of him to his quently speculated upon the past history face. He was indeed by no means popu- of one of its inhabitants. This was natular with them, though of course quite un-ral, because he was the only man in the conscious of the fact. His lieutenant, the young miller, was on the other hand a general favorite; but then he was hail fellow-well-met with every member of the corps, and they called him by his Christian name and exchanged “chaff " with him as he moved about among them. As for the drill-sergeant, he was an easy-going Irishman, and had given up all hope of the Fifth Cornshire long ago. From the general enthusiasm it was evident that this muster was no ordinary affair, no mere drilling practice such as the Ruddifordian volunteers loved to shirk, wherein after no end of tedious marching and counter-marching their rifles were brought to the "present" with empty barrels, and nothing louder than a tantalizing click followed the word "Fire." No! This time it was cartridge they were to have, and plenty of it; and the business on hand was a real sham-fight, such as only happened once in a time, and, when it did, was reckoned by every one in Ruddiford as good as any circus. No wonder therefore that every one was elated. First the men were to march the whole length of the town, a very gratifying ar town whose career had not been watched from the beginning. He had not started at the beginning like the rest, he had come to them with his career accomplished. It was always reported in Ruddiford that Mr. Cayton had come to live there because of the healthiness of the air and the cheerfulness of the company; but the clever ones, whose eyes saw deeper into the millstone, whispered mysteriously that it suited a certain noble family very well to bury alive its stricken member in this quiet, out-of-the-way place. Perhaps it did, -anyhow the poor, weary-faced, wandering-eyed invalid had drifted hither with his solitary attendant some years before, and was here still. The attendant, a morose, coarse-featured man, was by no means easy to approach, and though in the early days of his arrival Ruddiford had plied him with its wonted liquorish hospi tality on every available occasion, he remained obdurate and uncommunicative. This made Ruddiford look upon him as something of a swindler, and it thereafter held aloof from him. Mr. Cayton and his servant lodged in a pleasant house standing back from the who had been fishing all day, was sitting at the table there busy with a substantial meal, when the uproar began at the end of the street. road in one of the side lanes of the town, and there almost any day when it was fine, the tall, thin, melancholy figure of the former might be seen straying aimlessly backwards and forwards along the garden He stopped eating to ask the waiter paths, and generally the square-set, short-what the deuce was the matter." "It's necked form of the latter was not far our Rifles, sir," said the waiter. "There's behind. Gradually the calm and fresh-going to be a sham fight to-night, sir, and ness of the country had called back in some degree the bodily powers of the invalid, but you had but to look into his restless grey eyes to see that something had gone which was past recall. When Ruddiford had had time to get thoroughly accustomed to these figures and to regard them as really belonging to itself, it became quite proud of them and made them one of the stock subjects for discussion during the long winter evenings in the snug bar of the George. If a Ditchfallovian was present he was often twitted on the absence of any such attraction in his own town. Even the little boys were interested; as they went to school they used often to press their little noses between the palings and watch the silent figure for a time, and then shout out "Au'd Softie" and run away as fast as their legs would carry them, boasting all day after of their boldness. The years passed, and still the tall form moved aimlessly along the garden paths, tapping the flowers occasionally with his light cane. Time had been for him, but was no more. He was there as usual, on this very June night, when not a soul in Ruddiford but had hurried away either to watch the volunteers or to join them he alone unconscious and undisturbed. But hark! what march is that they are playing? Surely- Mr. Cayton has lifted his head and is listening attentively. As he listens faint gleams of expression play across the blankness of his countenance. He leans forward for a moment, and then moves slowly and deliberately towards the gate. Reaching it, he looks furtively around him, but for once the watchful eyes he dreads are not upon him. He opens the gate, and steps boldly into a world unvisited for years. a good deal of shooting, and, if you please, very Evidently the gentleman did not relish this disturbance; his eyes dilated and he snorted a little as he got up, and strode to the window. In doing so he betrayed his military training. He was in fact a retired officer of the Regulars, and the scorn depicted on his face as he watched the procession pass the window was terrible to behold. "Fools! asses! idiots!" he snorted. Wasting good time and good money in child's play! Not the making of a soldier among 'em! Bah!" and he banged down the window to shut out the noise, and drank three glasses of wine in rapid succession to soothe his ruffled feelings. 66 No one could deny it; it was a trying sight. Such a crew! First the band puffing out blasts of sound like the spasms of a locomotive, preceded and surrounded by their friends and admirers; and the drummer who wielded the drumstick with one hand and the cymbals with the other, and could scarcely get elbow-room for the children on either side of him. Then the company, all at sixes and sevens, with their rifles sloped at all angles, bumping and jostling each other as they turned about to shout their greetings to friends on the sidewalks. Gaily they all stamped along, careless of orders. The little boys dared each other to rush across the ranks, and the men good-naturedly gave way to let them do so. Relations and families, "by tens and dozens" like the Hamelin rats, hastened along beside them and kept up a running fire of conversation and comment. Hi there's me bruther Bill!" yelled one urchin. "Tom! let me see d' buckle a rubbed bright for tha," cried another. "John, le-ak at thee bairns!" sang out a stout matron in the midst of a circle. In vain the little lieutenant pleaded, and expostulated, — they 66 |