bone in the black knave's carcass. Pray for never permitted such a profanation in his go him, indeed! Him a white Christian! Was there not Bishops and Rectors enough, well-paid too, in England, to pray for churchmen; but Methodists, and niggers, and She-Saints, must have the impudence to pray for them! He would have the Church look to that. Poor Sam, under view of the whip-often threatened, but never applied-on his knees, promised that he never would have the audacity to pray for his white master again. Under this religious persecution he was tempted from without to leave his master a second time; but Sam still remembered how hungry and cold he had been, and said, "Black Sam stay and pray for poor wicked Massa Gubbana: him best understand Sam's constitution. Bery good Massa when not in a huff—” The Governor, whatever his pious neighbours might think of it, piqued himself on being a most exemplary Church Christian. Unlike black Sam, he could repeat the creed without blundering one word. In his Fort he had made a point of reading the Service every Sunday morning, and on Monday morning, of flogging as many of the negroes as did not attend chapel. Zealously had he defended the outworks of the Church from the attacks of Methodists, as he had proved by his angry abdication. He would have sworn the Thirty-Nine Articles, and with a perfectly safe conscience, as often as any statute desired or custom dictated. For why?-every body, save Methodists and Presbyterians, did so. It is probable that the Governor, who was, in every point, a man of action, did not enjoy the ministrations of a clergyman so well as his own service; for, until the era of black Sam, he had not regularly attended Church. Now he went,marching his marshalled household to church, every morning, Sam walking before, carrying his master's crimson and gold large Prayer Book, which was to the Captain exactly what his breviary is to a good Catholic-a thing of mysterious sanctity; something resembling a bishop in full costume-a tangible and comely body of faith. The Bible held but a secondary place in the Governor's esteem. It was a good book, to be read on holiday evenings, by those who had time, but suspiciously revered by the Scotch, the Methodists, and Quakers. Now, seated in church, at the head of his pew, the Amen certainly did not stick in his throat. His strenuous responses, and loud joining in the psalm, overpowered the choir and startled the congregation. He now partook of the communion regularly at Christmas, Easter, and other solemn times, because such was the duty of a churchman, and because he read in the newspapers that the King and the Royal Family did so, with the Dukes of York and Clarence. A doubt of his fitness had never once clouded his mind. This was a mysterious rite, in which all good churchmen, rich and poor, were entitled to participate and none else: and no missionary puppies had a right to dispense the holy sacrament, nor negroes to partake of it. He had vernment. The religious opinions of Governor Fox might not have been the most enlightened, but the were the natural growth of his education, and of the system working around him. He was, like most other human beings, very much the creature of external influences; and he had been for the greater part of his life placed in circumstances which shut out light by nearly every approach. In England light streamed in through many crannies. I have said that the Governor, save on the question of slavery, the black niggers, and the Church, latterly became a sort of ToryRadical; and it may be regarded as a sign of the times, that, towards the close of his life, he had been so far corrupted by Cobbett's writings as to begin to question why a Bishop should have so much higher pay than an Admiral of the Red; and a Rector, than a Colonel of Marines? He never got further than this; though the direct operation of tithe upon himself would, I have no doubt, in one season, have made the Governor a thorough Church reformer. He had already, by the unaided light of conscience, discovered that no work no pay, was the true principle to which society should adhere, with all its servants. At Church rate he grumbled excessively; and for this hardship his remedy was, that the Methodists, his general term for all dissenters, should be made to contribute double, to relieve churchmen of such burdens. I am afraid that my old friend will scarce appear either a very amiable or even consistent character. He was, however, quite consistent with himself. Besides, I have hitherto been exhibiting his asperities and angular points, in that unhappy interval of ten years, when having just lost absolute power, he had not learned to live on terms of equality and forbearance with his fellow men; and when every passing day, from his own overbearing conduct, litigiousness, and credulity, was roughly dispelling his life-long dreams of the state of society in happy Old England. His faults were more those of ignorance and temper than of heart. As his understanding expanded, his judgment became more correct, and his character improved. Though his prejudices were violent they were few. He had no respect for names or persons, no partisan feelings, save in the nigger, and the Church cases; and in him these were at least honest. Present any truth to him; and if he was able to perceive, he at once embraced it. General or abstract truth was not in his way.— His, from original constitution and training, was a mind of facts and details; but without any large views or well-defined principles, he often arrived at fair, practical conclusions. His moral pole-star was duty, though he had no very enlarged idea of the principle. His duty to his horse, to black Sam, and his country, stood pretty much on the same level; though he might have a clearer idea of the former than of the latter kind of duty. I have dwelt too long in these generalities. The first time I beheld Governor Fox, with knowledge, so I mean as to note and rememter him as a man of some mark,-was at the funeral of Lieutenant Walpole, leading 66 poor Ned's boy," as his phrase was. This was to see him to advantage. He was hotly and most characteristically alive to the indignity offered, as he thought, to the memory of "poor Ned," by the Walpole family sending an undertaker and their agent's brother, to see the last duties performed. Though he had quarrelled with all his kindred himself, he entertained that true old English respect for the remains of relations by blood, that had the degree of consanguinity exacted the attention, he would at once have travelled a hundred miles to fulfil the duty of attending their funerals-putting himself, as the Gazette says, "into decent mourning." "Poor Ned" was only a brother officer-scarce even that, for he had the misfortune to belong to the regulars, and the Governor appeared at the funeral in his ordinary dress, with the customary knot of crape on his arm. He might at this time have been about sixty-two years of age; but he had not lost one hair's-breadth of his original stature of five feet ten, nor a single tooth. The strongest impression given by the first view of his person and physiognomy was that of decision. His firm structure, and compact fibre, the movement of his limbs, his erect, and somewhat stiff mien, the firmness of his walk, his compressed lips, and loud tone of voice, all bespoke promptitude, and hardy, confident decision,-a ‚—a man never given to question or doubt -much less to speculate. Yet no one could have dreamed that his was the decision of a high and vigorous intellect. It was the pushing, strenuous force, the sinewy and muscular determination, of a bold animal, of a strong-willed man, whose maxim was, "Where there is a will, there is a way." The eye was the most striking feature in the tanned face of the old Governor. In a cold day, when I have seen him buttoned and wrapped above the nose, and the eye alone visible, it was a luminary to be marked. That strong greyishgreen, clear, frosty eye, quick but not penetrating, was of itself enough to show the man of prompt decision. It was certainly not in the least an eye like that of Mars, " To threaten or command;" yet it could sometimes twinkle and scintillate, in a way which plainly demonstrated that the person who looked at you was not a character it might be altogether prudent to trifle with. I have seen something very like it, though far more cunning, and as it were better instructed, under the shaggy brows of a Bow Street officer, near the head of the department. It would have been a perfectly appropriate feature in the countenance of a pilot, a smuggler, a whaler; then it might have been more ferocious or uneasy in expression; now, where it light.. ned, it was only an angry eye-the eye of a man who could flourish a whip, but who abhorred a stiletto. His natural love of order, a military education, and long residence in a burning climate, had made my old friend scrupulous and finical about personal cleanliness, and in all his arrangements of the toilet. "Cleanliness," he said, "his mother had taught him, was next to godliness; and the physical virtue was certainly much better understood by the Governor than the spiritual grace. The one dwelt in forms and usages, the other was shewn in the thorough, daily and hourly purification of the spotlessly kept outward man. His costume denoted the substance and respectability of the wearer. It was an invariable ample blue coat, of the finest cloth, with red facings, and under garments of the same material, which in summer were exchanged for white linen or nankeen. The black stock had its own set,—the hat, like that of every man of individual character, its own fit. His boots, very thick in the soles, seemed a part of his original structure. I never saw him out of them but twice, and then he rolled like a sailor come on shore after being five years afloat, and scarcely looked his own man. The Governor's taste was fixed before the date of embroidered military surtouts and Hessians, which he despised, together with the most of the "regular puppies" who wore them. All his habits were as fixed as his dress. His favourite dish was roast pork, with beanpudding; his general drink rum and water. But though plain in his own taste, he was not stinted in hospitality, unless he saw his guests troublesome or gourmands. Such characters he des. pised, more than he did a nigger or a Yankee. His favourite game was backgammon, though he played a cool, steady game at whist,-showing no indulgence to lax players; insisting upon every advantage to which he was fairly entitled, and no more; and sticking punctiliously to the game, the whole game, and nothing but the game. His poet was Dibdin ; but on holidays, Sternhold and Hopkins; his favourite author was De Foe, whose stories he never could fully persuade himself were fictions, though he knew this was generally said. He had at once found out "that fellow Gulliver," which I presented to him: "He was all bam!" The Governor had sailed the world round, and seen no such little people; and, what was more, there was nothing of them in Mr. Guthrie's Grammar of Geography-his staple scientific work. If any one would have taken the trouble, as I sometimes did, to tell him of the adventures of Cook and La Perouse, while he smoked his pipe, he would have listened with great interest and delight, and made very pertinent remarks; for he relished oral much better than written narrative. "The puppies," he said, " put their stuff together, o' purpose, in such a way, that no plain man could spell them out ;" and yet he had made young Walpole transform his own log-book in this fashion. The Governor's favourite print was Cobbett's Register, a taste common, I have noticed, among old military men. Cobbett offended him, by refusing to print his communications; and he dropt the Register for two weeks, but on the third gave in. One paper served him exactly a week. Though always rather averse to the society of females, whom he divided into the two grand | their dames. Though his house was not often "Thursday, in the morning, the nineteenth day of May, The Governor held no maxims of conduct upon which he did not act; and this made me rather wonder why, with his utilitarian notions, he disguised Sam in this fantastic costume at his galas. But besides some particles of latent vanity, or fondness of barbaric pomp, brought from his Government and days of African splendour, he alleged that monkeys, popinjays, and niggers, were meant by nature to wear yellow, green, and scarlet; to dance, sing, chatter, and play the bassoon and negro-drum, and cultivate sugarcanes for white Christians. A supplementary, or fragmentary feast, always followed the Governor's annual banquet, which was, in various ways, more interesting than the grander display. It was a true old English exhibition of beef, beer, and bread, to his various clients in the neighbourhood,-old marines, and open either to the needy or to the suffering," who had seen better days," there was a class of persons to whom Governor Fox was nobly liberal— old, infirm paupers, and maimed or blind persons, evidently disqualified to earn their own bread, especially if they had been in service, wounded, and without pensions. They had only to come to him with clean skins, at a reasonable hour, and say they belonged to the Church, to be sure of aid any day, so far as a substantial meal, and a few coppers. His locality often swarmed with miserable women, followers of the troops, or soldiers' wives, with a fry of half-starved, puny children, to whom his casual bounty was uniformly extended, though, on such occasions, he never failed, for the benefit of society, to deliver the whole sum and substance of the doctrines of Malthus, in a few sweeping and pithy sentences, generally put in the interrogative form, and pronounced with angry emphasis and energy: no matter how public the preaching-place, or who were the auditors. Walking, riding, or driving, the Governor, before distributing his bounty, at the rate of about a penny a-head on the attendant military brood, never failed to halt and rebuke the mother, in a few pithy words of Malthusian doctrine. The Governor was, however, in this, quite innocent of plagiary-even the name of the great modern philosopher had never reached his ears, till some years afterwards, when he became a Reformer, and began to study every old soldier's favourite print, Cobbett's Register. This was not until his fortunes had undergone a mortifying change. The fate of the South American Speculation may be surmised. He lost every shilling of his "Investment." The Scotch Ale Company turned out even worse; but the Drury-Lane shares was the worst concern of all. We were at the most ticklish time of the war-its tremendous close. The Funds were tumbling down every day; and in one of the few anxious days that preceded the battle of Waterloo, I saw the Governor arrive very early from Rochester, on foot! in a plight that I shall not easily forget. He came directly to my lodging. He had been on the road from midnight. "On foot!" "Ay, and why not? Is it for beggars to ride, sir? Don't you see how those d-d Stocks are tumbling down. Let Master Pitt look up now, I bid him, to his act of 1797-his paper rags. Not but that I could weather it for myself, if the trifle Widow Walpole intrusted to my management, were once secured in hard gold. Thank God, I can handle a pickaxe, a spade, or a scull on the Thames yet';-but a widow, and a gentlewoman, cheated, in trusting to Stephen Fox-all she had scraped up for seven years, to give Ned his schooling, without being beholden to these Northampton Dons, her husband's relations, who have neither conscience nor bowels. It is enough to drive a man mad." You have not invested Mrs. Walpole's slender funds I trust? "No!" roared the Governor, 66 save in those blasted English Funds :-down one-fourth, Friday, down one-sixteenth, Saturday, down one-eighth, yesterday. The vitals are eaten out of Old England by subsidies, loan-contractors, and Jew-jobbers. I have walked up to London, sir, with this hazel-stick in my hand, and a couple of clean shirts, and my prayer-book, in this bundle, to begin the world again. Can your landlady let me have any dog-hole of a garret at 2s. 6d. a-week, or so. I can't promise more at first. I have written to Bamboo to take the lease of my Box, which he always longed for, and Sam off my hands. An idle man has better chance of a job about London, where there are so many coal lighters, and so forth, than down yonder." "Governor Fox, you amaze me !" "Amazed, to see an old man, a fool, and a beggar! ha ha! ha! from having been a credulous idiot!" There was something terrific in his laugh; but Governor Fox was too firm-spirited long to give way to this wild mood. "Have I any claim to Chelsea, or Greenwich, think ye? My pipe is what I shall miss the most, no luxuries now. I hope the Lord will call me home, however, before old age and frailty drive Stephen Fox on his parish, with all his cousins grinning at the Governor. In the meantime, can your landlady let me have a garret ? I must have my billet settled for the night, before I look about me. I can make my own bed, buy and cook my own victuals, wash my own shirt, and keep my place clean myself. You can answer to her, I suppose, that I am a man of sober, regular habits, who attend Church, and pay my way as I go. I can surely make my bread, were it but selling mackerel,-what the deuce should I let down my heart for!" "The general run of womankind would say, Oh! the rich relations will surely some time seek after, and educate the boy. I must have this new bonnet, and t'other gim-crack.' Mrs. Walpole has trusted to no such contingency. Contingency! do you mark, sir. tingency! do you mark, sir. And what, pray, makes the difference between a man and a woman of sense, and born-idiots, but this same trusting to contingencies, that the one holds the whiphand of Fortune, as she has done, and the other lets the jade drive him, like me. But having secured my billet for the night, I must be off to my broker. I have written to him by every post:-always down, down, down. Last night he rather advises selling. If I have one five guineas, ay, or five shillings, of reversion, after paying my just and lawful debts, by Jove, I'll hoard! I'll lock 'em in my old sea-chest, which I bought when a boy at Halifax, for a dollar and a half. It can now hold all my worldly goods-I must send it up cheap by the waggon. But I must be off: the broker, that puppy Pantague, urges selling out to-day. Next mail will bring us down, perhaps, a whole per cent.-perhaps ten, or blow us out of the water altogether, who can tell? who can tell? If I had taken Cobbett's advice and warnings now, and laid up a few guineas?—Where is there a Cockney scribbler among them, with their Times and Chronicle, ever showed how fast this country is going to the devil, so satisfactorily and clearly as the old Sergeant?" "Cold comfort that, Governor; but I do insist and entreat, that before giving Mr. Pantague your final order, you wait the next mail. London is on the tiptoe of expectation,-good news must come,-worse than our fears have painted cannot arrive. We will have a rise this Ludicrous as this was, I could not, durst not morning!" laugh. "My dear Governor, though you have had losses and crosses in these evil times, you are certainly exaggerating the tricks of fortune. Depressed as the funds are you must have, even though selling out to-day, which none but a madman would do, a very comfortable reversion." "Not a doit!-not a stiver, I believe, will be left; but no matter, I will have, what with the lease, the furniture, my three swords, and gold epaulettes, enough to clear with poor Mrs. Walpole. There's a woman of honour, and resolution, sir! saving from her widow's pension; while I have been squandering like an extravagant puppy. It was her duty to be frugal, and she has been so ; but how few of the baggages, if at her age, could have been equally resolute :-they must have this gown; and it would not be decent to go without that cap-not that they ever care about it for themselves,-not at all!-Then who the devil does? let them answer that." I let the Governor divert himself by rambling in this new course, and indulged my private fancies as to the origin of the unusual warmth of his rooted esteem for the widow, who, last night, when he had apprized her of her danger, had behaved, he said, "like a hero, and an angel.” My persuasions had no effect, which I regretted, as I believed he had received bad, I was unwilling to think sinister, advice from his broker. It was a crisis of fearful excitement, delusion, and panic. Every hour might relieve us from suspense; but then it might be to deepen our loss or sufferings. I was a fundholder, too. I assured the Governor, in the meantime, that not nurse Wilks's garret, but the best chamber in her house, and that was my own, was much at his service; but, in the meanwhile, I hoped he could return home in a chaise to-day yet, and sleep in his own bed. I accompanied the Governor to his destination, though he assured me there was no danger of leaving him alone. "Your turtle-feeding Aldermen may go after their lost plums, to feed the great fishes. I will neither drown like a blind puppy, nor hang myself like a nigger in the sulks. I can work, sir.” There was already an unusual buzz in the streets. I held the Governor fast by the arm, to detain him a few more minutes from his broker. "If I were a rich man, Governor, or one whose credit was good, I would, at this moment, underwrite your whole present funded property, as you originally placed it, for five shillings." "More than its worth, egad! but let me go man, don't you see Pantague signalizing me from his window; there's the carriage coming to convey him to 'Change. They'll ride it out, by Jove! over our necks, whatever becomes of old men, widows, and orphans." I held him the faster; men, boys, women, were now all hurrying to and fro, or collecting in groups, with eager speech and animated looks, on every side; carriages and horsemen hurried along, some east, some west. News certainly had arrived; express came hot after express; but no bulletin had yet been sent from Downing Street to the City. A dreadful defeat, it was whispered about, had been sustained by the Allies,-the ruin was total,-of Europe, and of Governor Fox. The morning papers were all doubt and mystery. "Let me off, man,—if I don't sell out to-day, I may hang myself at night, for I never can face Rochester. They'll be at twenty-five to-morrow. We shall have French assignats for old English guineas, by Jupiter!" We had something like a struggle when he offered to break off. "Remember,-I protest : -I warn you, for Mrs. Walpole's, for Edward's sake you are going to throw away her little means, which to-day it is in your power so much to improve, to ruin absolutely, or deeply injure yourself: you are the dupe of jobbers,-you will curse yourself to-morrow and for ever, if you sell to-day. Did I not plead with you against the Scotch Ale Company,-the Drury-Lane Shares,— the South American Speculation.-Hark!" It was a distant gun-another, and another. The Governor was a little deaf even then on one side of the head; but when the rejoicing boom rolled majestically up the river from the Tower guns, there was no longer doubt. The exulting shouts of the gathering multitude,-the outburst of all the bells in London, told the same tale:-a splendid, decisive victory! The newsmen blew their horns. "Three per cent. better already! Hey, Governor!" was my rousing cry to the now stunned capitalist,-stunned but for five seconds. We went along and heard the first confused tidings of the Field of Waterloo. Eighteen or eightand-twenty thousand human beings had there bitten the dust,-what an image is that homely one of mortal agony !—and London was in a frenzy of joy, and the funds up, I cannot tell how much, in one hour. What histories were that day in men's faces! his The Governor bore the sudden tide of fortune with entire equanimity. He had been quite ready to take a spade or an oar, and was now equally ready to hire a chaise to go home, to be wiser in future. He thanked me for my counsel, and owned that for once he had done well not to act upon own judgment-"For why?—he had some knowledge of war, especially with niggers and maroons, and had studied gunnery and fortification; but how could any honest man out of London, though a good marine officer, be up to half the tricks of those stock-jobbing fellows, who ought to have their ears cropped, and be transported, every mother's son of them, as knaves and cozeners? "Now, mark me, Mr. Richard Taylor, let me only get back my own of them-I scorn a sixpence of their dirty Jew money-and if a guinea is to be bought for twenty-five shillings in England, and a strong-box to lodge it in, by Jove, you shall see if Stephen Fox is to be humbugged a second time by that great humbug, which will burst and go off some morning like the shell of an overcharged bomb. I have a plan in my head but never mind,-I shall tell you as we go down to Rochester. The only obstacle is Ned,and the young puppy loves me, and has been bred about my own hand,-a tractable, sharp rascal, and all as one as my own already." The reader will please to remember that it was with this same "Ned" I sat talking over all these old matters, now suggested by reading the death of the old Governor in the newspaper. In spite of his sincere regret, when we got the length of the Governor's sudden brightening of fortune priming him for matrimony, Mr. Walpole burst into a loud and violent fit of laughter, as the whole scene of the Governor's unpropitious wooing rose to his memory-of the Governor, who always took time by the forelock, arriving at his mother's cottage in full regimentals, sword, and epaulettes, and heralded by black Sam, on the evening of the same day he had walked to London to sell out and seek for honest labour,-his bold, resolute look, as a bachelor of sixty, who had now first screwed his courage to the sticking place, and resolved he would not fail,-and the embarrassment of poor Mrs. Walpole, who was innocent of all design of charming her kind old acquaintance, the friendly Governor, within many degrees of matrimony, and who was now considerably alarmed by her conquest. Yet she had certainly assured him, on the previous evening, that however low the funds fell, and precious as was her little hoard to her son, she should ever rest fully satisfied that his intentions had been most kind and disinterested. What, after all, was their loss to that of the many anxious, and soon probably to be, the bereaved and sorrowing mothers and wives of England!" When Walpole thought of all this, he laughed outrageously. How she contrived to reject without mortally offending her admirer, I cannot tell,-neither could Master Ned, Black Sam, nor Hannah the housemaid, who had taken their station in one listening group, without the parlour door, to overhear the Governor's declaration in form. "A parson," the Governor said, " could not have put it into prettier language." "It was exceedingly impertinent in me, I own," said Walpole; "for I was then a shrewd boy, and the negro and the girl little better than idiots; but somehow, though my own mother was concerned, the temptation was irresistible. The comical face of Sam alone,-who was grinning from ear to ear, rubbing his hands, halfdancing through the kitchen, and singing extemporaneously, in negro fashion, 'Putty Missey Walpool, |