age in himself or in the loving circle which surrounded him, very sanguine hopes of a protracted existence. He never recovered from

the wound in the spine which he received in the fight of Cazal Noval, and ague, which first set upon him amid the marshes of the Guadiana, troubled him continually. At last he became unable to walk and even to write, yet the spirit retained much of its elasticity, and almost all its original fire; for the letters which he dictated from his sick-bed at Scinde House are to the full as interesting as any in this collection. From the day of his marriage, Napier had been devotedly attached to his wife. It was well his part to be so, for there never lived a woman who, more completely than Lady Napier, gave herself up "to love, cherish, and obey" her hus

band. We have told how she aided him in the composition of his great work; and we may add, that as long as her strength lasted, she was his right hand. It seemed, indeed, as if these two lamps, which burned so entirely the one in the light of the other, could not continue to burn separately. Lady Napier's health had long been delicate. For sixteen years she laboured under a disease which care and skill may keep at bay for a while, but which, sooner or later, carries off its victim. During the greater part of 1859, the disease gained ground upon her rapidly, and Napier was himself by this time bed-ridden and dying.

"It was not thought either prudent or necessary to disturb Sir William's mind with the tidings; and when Lady Napier's visits to him were necessarily discontinued, he imagined some ordinary ailment to be the cause.

But

life. He who had shown wonderful fortitude under his own sufferings, and even to the very last, when not in the worst paroxysmis, manifested such an elasticity and cheerfulness of mind, now at last gave up the struggle. He refused all nourishment as loathsome to him, turned his face to the wall like the Israelitish king, and almost literally For days after grieved his life away. his wife's danger became known to him, he would see no one; and when his sonin-law, when first arriving, went to him by the doctor's wish, in the hope that he might be roused to talk, he found him with tears rolling slowly down his cheeks, thinking, as he said, over fortyeight years of married happiness, which long pains, it was not his disease but was coming to its end. After all his sorrow which overcame his extraordinary strength and vitality; and had it not been for the departure of hope and the desire to live, it is probable that he would have lingered on for some time longer. It is a remarkable circumstance, which now, as he writes, occurs to the author's memory, that during Sir William's long and terrible illness of the previous winter, when his condition appeared quite hopeless to all, he said,

My life for some years back has not been a very enviable one; still, bad as it was, and worse as it must be if I survive this attack, I feel as if I should like to live for a few months longer. I should feel that a few months more of life, seeing my friends, hearing what is going on in the world, and finding much enjoyment, as I have always done, in spite of my pain, would be a great boon-a great belief in the efficacy of the sick man's boon!' And so strong was his hearer's strength of will, that he communicated to the rest of the family his conviction, based on Sir William's words, that he would recover from that attack.

"Contrary to expectation, Lady Napier became better; but as she lay in one room, and her husband in another, it was doubtful which would first break, by death, the strong chain of forty-eight years' riveting, which bound them together.

"After lying in the state above described all January, on Friday the 10th of February Sir William's great strength began to yield. During the last two weeks, to the inexpressible comfort of his children, all acute pain appeared to have departed. On Sunday morning the 12th, death was evidently very near. His wife was wheeled into his room on a sofa, and placed beside his bed, where she remained about an hour. He did not speak, but she said he certainly knew

have led him to refine too much; and thus, in seeking to effect something in the best possible manner, to miss the opportunity of effecting it at all. As a probable leader of armies, therefore, we think that no injustice will be done him if we rank him, where he himself would have chosen his place, below his brother Charles. On the other hand, his brother Charles could no more have speculated as he did from his sick-bed in 1853 than he could have written the History of the Peninsular War. But in truth this is arguing, not after, but before an event. The whole world allows that if ever man understood what armies ought to be, and what they might fairly be expected to do, William Napier was that man. How he would have handled them if the opportunity had come in his way must be left for ever uncertain. Napier's disposition was frank, generous, irascible, and unforgiving. He was the warmest of friends, the bitterest of enemies. As he never forgot a kindness done to himself or to any member of his family, so he never forgave a slight, however unintentionally inflicted, nor measured the terms in which it should be censured. Few men were ever involved in such a number of personal quarrels; none ever got, upon the whole, better out of them. was ready to accept a challenge by whomsoever sent, rather than modify the most heedlessly severe statement to which he had committed himself. He was just as ready to engage in a bout of fisticuffs with any man not in the rank of a gentleman who happened to offend him. We find that his biographer has recorded not fewer than six cases of knocking down, besides the application of a horsewhip to the face of a French blackguard who insulted him in a crowd in Paris. His controversial writings, likewise, almost always degenerate after the opening sentence into mere abuse, and not unfrequently consist of little else. He was as reckless with his pen as with his fist. Yet there surrounded

He

this display of temper such an atmosphere of nobleness, it was so manifest that his faults sprang from a chivalrous sense of right—not always, in the indulgence, wisely directed that with few exceptions even those who had the best reason to be angry with him bore him no lasting ill-will. As to his friends, they were numerous, and they loved him like a brother.

If Napier had kept clear of politics his reputation would have stood even higher than it does. He had neverstudied the subject, and seemed incapable of studying it. For political economy, considered as a science, he entertained and always expressed sovereign contempt; indeed, of the real purpose for which society exists he knew absolutely nothing. Hence his Whiggery or Radicalism had its origin in impulse quite as much as his personal loves and hatreds. He could not bear the sight of distress, and never paused to inquire into the causes of it. He would have everybody relieved who complained of poverty, whether the complainant were willing to do anything for himself or not. In like manner the shouts of any mob to which he happened to address himself were accepted by him as evidence of the fitness of what he called the people to choose their own rulers and make their own laws. Hence his advocacy of manhood suffrage and vote by ballot, under the inexplicable delusion that these things were quite compatible with the continued existence of a constitutional monarchy, which he would have sacrificed his life to uphold. Let us not, however, dwell upon the weaknesses of a nature in which there is so much to admire. We may not look for perfection on this side of the grave; wherefore William Napier may well rest in his, with so much recorded concerning him, that, in spite of some blemishes overshadowed by a thousand admirable qualities, he was a noble creature, of whom, as a soldier, an author, and a man, his country has just reason to be proud.

THE little assembly which met in the vestry of Carlingford Church to inquire into the conduct of the Perpetual Curate, had so many different interests in hands when it dispersed, and so much to do, that it is difficult for the narrator of this history to decide which thread should be taken up first. Of all the interlocutors, however, perhaps Mr Proctor was the one who had least succeeded in his efforts to explain himself, and accordingly demands in the first place the attention of an impartial historian. The excellent man was still labouring under much perplexity when the bed of justice was broken up. He began to recollect that Mr Wentworth's explanation on the previous night had convinced him of his innocence, and to see that it was indeed altogether inconceivable that the Curate should be guilty; but then, other matters still more disagreeable to contemplate than Mr Wentworth's guilt came in to darken the picture. This vagabond Wodehouse, whom the Curate had taken in at his sister's requestwhat was the meaning of that mystery Mr Proctor had never been anyhow connected with mysteries; he was himself an only son, and had lived a straightforward peaceable life. Neither he nor his estimable parents, so far as the late Rector was aware, had ever done anything to be ashamed of; and he winced a little at the thought of connecting himself with concealment and secrecy. And then the Curate's sudden disappearance on the previous evening perplexed and troubled him. He imagined all kinds of reasons for it as he walked down Grange Lane. Perhaps Miss Wodehouse, who would not receive himself, had sent for Mr Wentworth; perhaps the vagabond brother was in some other scrape, out of which he

had to be extricated by the Curate's assistance. Mr Proctor was perfectly honest, and indeed determined, in his "intentions ;" but everybody will allow that for a middleaged lover of fifty or thereabouts, contemplating a sensible match with a lady of suitable years and means, to find suddenly that the object of his affections was not only a penniless woman, but the natural guardian of an equally penniless sister, was startling, to say the least of it. He was a true man, and it did not occur to him to decline the responsibility altogether; on the contrary, he was perhaps more eager than he would have been otherwise, seeing that his elderly love had far more need of his devotion than he had ever expected her to have; but, notwithstanding, he was disturbed by such an unlooked-for change of circumstances, as was natural, and did not quite know what was to be done with Lucy. He was full of thoughts on this subject as he proceeded towards the house, to the interview which, to use sentimental language, was to decide his fate. But, to tell the truth, Mr Proctor was not in a state of very deep anxiety about his fate. The idea of being refused was too unreasonable an idea to gain much ground in his mind. He was going to offer his personal support, affection, and sympathy to Miss Wodehouse at the least fortunate moment of her life; and if there was anything consolatory in marriage at all, the late Rector sensibly concluded that it must be doubly comforting under such circumstances, and that the offer of an honest man's hand and house and income was not a likely thing to be rejected by a woman of Miss Wodehouse's experience and good sense-not to speak of his heart,

which was very honest and true and affectionate, though it had outlived the fervours of youth. Such was Mr Proctor's view of the matter; and the chances were strong that Miss Wodehouse entirely agreed with him-so, but for a certain shyness which made him rather nervous, it would not be correct to say that the late Rector was in a state of special anxiety about the answer he was likely to receive. He was, however, anxious about Lucy. His bachelor mind was familiar with all the ordinary traditions about the inexpediency of being surrounded by a wife's family; and he had a little of the primitive male sentiment, shared one way or other by most husbands, that the old system of buying a woman right out, and carrying her off for his own sole and private satisfaction, was, after all, the correct way of managing such matters. To be sure, a pretty, young, unmarried sister, was perhaps the least objectionable encumbrance a woman could have; but, notwithstanding, Mr Proctor would have been glad could he have seen any feasible way of disposing of Lucy. It was utterly out of the question to think of her going out as a governess; and it was quite evident that Mr Wentworth, even were he perfectly cleared of every imputation, having himself nothing to live upon, could scarcely offer to share his poverty with poor Mr Wodehouse's cherished pet and darling. "I daresay she has been used to live expensively," Mr Proctor said to himself, wincing a little in his own mind at the thought. It was about one o'clock when he reached the green door-an hour at which, during the few months of his incumbency at Carlingford, he had often presented himself at that hospitable house. Poor Mr Wodehouse! Mr Proctor could not help wondering at that moment how he was getting on in a world where, according to ordinary ideas, there are no lunch nor dinner parties, no old port nor sa

voury side-dishes. Somehow it was impossible to realise Mr Wodehouse with other surroundings than those of good-living and creature-comfort. Mr Proctor sighed, half for the departed, half at thought of the strangeness of that unknown life for which he himself did not feel much more fitted than Mr Wodehouse. In the garden he saw the new heir sulkily marching about among the flower-beds smoking, and looking almost as much out of place in the sweet tranquillity of the English garden, as a churchwarden of Carlingford or a Fellow of All-Souls could look, to carry out Mr Proctor's previous imagination, in the vague beatitude of a disembodied heaven. Wodehouse was so sick of his own company that he came hastily forward at the sight of a visitor, but shrank a little when he saw who it was.

"I suppose you have brought some news," he said, in his sullen way. "I suppose he has been making his statements, has he? Much I care! He may tell what lies he pleases; he can't do me any harm. I never did anything_but sign my own name, by Jove! Jack Wentworth himself says so. I don't care that for the parson and his threats," said Wodehouse, snapping his fingers in Mr Proctor's face. The late Rector drew back a little, with a shudder of disgust and resentment. He could not help thinking that this fellow would most likely be his brother-in-law presently, and the horror he felt made itself visible in his face.

"I am quite unaware what you can mean," said Mr Proctor. "I am a parson, but I never made any threats that I know of. I wish to see Miss Wodehouse. I-I think she expects me at this hour," he said, with a little embarrassment, turning to John, who, for his part, had been standing by in a way which became his position as a respectable and faithful servant, waiting any opportunity that might come handy to show his disgust for the new régime.