when he heard any speculations concerning the Duchessa's line of defence. What that line of defence would be, nobody seemed to doubt. Francisco shut his eyes, and set his teeth against it with the haughtiest resistance. He said nothing now in reply, but Rospigliosi himself had been daunted by those haughty black eyes of the Duchessa gleaming in passionate reserve and silence, unknown to her, out of her son's face.

The Avvocato was proceeding with his evidence, collecting slowly every kind of corroborative proof, and wasting those summer days, Francisco thought, with unnecessary and elaborate verifications. For it was summer in Rome, villeggiatura had not yet begun, and now that the reality of the sun, and the chimera, bigger than reality, of the fever, had driven away the Forestieri, Rome felt herself mistress of her own streets, and demeaned herself accordingly. A few languid figures, driven by necessity, crept along the blazing streets in the day, but when the evening came the Corso was alive with the most brilliant faces and toilettes, the gayest equipages, the brightest groups imaginable. Perhaps a gleam of national arrogance, which sits well on the descendants of an imperial race, perhaps only the natural relief of a vast household at finding itself relieved, after long endurance, of an incubus of visitors, gives at that period of the year a certain exhilaration and abandon to the Roman crowd; perhaps only the delicious brightness of that crowning glory of the Italian year; but whatever may be the cause, it is certain that Rome never looks so gayly and joyously Roman as in that early glorious summer after the strangers are gone. And the Avvocato Rospigliosi and all his men were mortal, and of Roman blood, and so were all the official persons who had to do with suits at law; and so even were Teta and Madame Margherita, and all the people in San Michele whose evidence was necessary to Francisco's cause; so that the business was noways advanced, according to the young man's impatient thoughts, when the great summer festival came round, and Rome bright

VOL. LXXXVIII.—NO. DXLI.

ened up to keep its pyrotechnic vigil before St Peter's Day.

It was on that eve that Francisco met with another great awakening in his life. That eve, its crimson sunset dying afar in ineffable circles of colour, ever sweeter and fainter as they fled through the magical ring of that rapid twilight; with the green outspreading boughs and trees upon Pincio flinging their outlines so doubly, brightly, ecstatically green, against that crimson and pink and orange, then blackening slowly into solemn types of trees as the quick darkness fell. And over Monte Mario and his brethren a serene sweet sky appearing out of the clouds, green blue with its tender twinkles of dilating stars; and the darkness gathering and falling over these irregular heights between, hiding big San Pietro and his lamps, as Time hides a great event, till its hour has come; and nothing clear to be seen here from the top of Pincio but the reluctant crimson lingering out over the distant sea, the green break, towards the east, of that ineffable serenity of sky, and close by the weird trees and indistinct figures and huge angles of houses down in the piazza, rising black into the atmosphere, which, even in its darkness, preserved a tint of the sunset red. Here Francisco was waiting languidly among the moving crowd to see the world-famous illumination, when it chanced to him to encounter Monsignore, not in top-boots, as at Rocca, but in the full glory of his purple stockings, with an attendant in livery behind him. They had not met again since their interview in the good prelate's study, and the young man was about to pass with a respectful salutation. Catching sight of him, however, Monsignore extended his hand with a lively exclamation. "Figlio mio," said the good man, "turn and walk with me if you are alone. I have a great deal to say to you; I should have come to seek you to-morrow if I had not seen you here.'

Much flattered by an address which was audible enough to attract much observation to himself, and to cause, though Francisco did not observe it, many whispers among

20

suspense is hard at thy age. I am concerned for thee now.'

Francisco stood still for a moment among the darkling crowd. It seemed to him as though a white apparition of the English Lucy floated between him and those noisy Italian groups, shaking a tiny hand in his face, exclaiming, "You will take Monsignore's money-you! Then think of me no more!"-with all the indignation and defiance possible to that positive little maid. The young Roman broke into tears and warm exclamations of gratitude and admiration, according to the fashion of his nation. He kissed Monsignore's pale hand as he had kissed it when he was little Chichino. He behaved himself, with a total disregard of all reserves and reticences, in a manner which almost attracted the notice of the crowd, well accustomed as that crowd was to "scenes." Francisco on his part did not know what it was to have an objection to "a scene." He did and said what came into his head exuberantly under the cover of that darkness, with San Pietro silently blazing in the distance-all its lights yellowing over into the final golden glory. Francisco, transported, had forgotten all about San Pietro when he kissed Monsignore's hand.

"But no!" cried the young man. "I am an orphan for your love, padre mio! but I am a man, and can work if I were twenty times the son of a duke. No. I will go back to my pictures that I have neglected. I will return to my work, Monsignore; and you who are a saint out of heaven will help me with your prayers."

My prayers are for the service of all my children," said Monsignore; "but thou shouldst remember, Chichino mio, that the blessed Angelico painted on his knees, and made pictures that it is like a prayer to look at. And wherefore not thou?"

and his witnesses do as they will, henceforward I will work and live."

With which resolution, Francisco, all a-glow with youthful pride and shame, tears in his eyes, a flush on his cheeks, and his whole person moved with the exaltation of excited feeling, left Monsignore among the crowd in his purple stockings, and hurried down the hill. As he gained the foot of Pincio, he came suddenly upon a carriage, where the poor old Duchessa, on her way to see the girandola in the Piazza, leant back with her old dame de compagnie beside her, enveloped, soft as the June air was, in a world of shawls. Life seems to grow precious in proportion to the dying-out of everything more valuable. The Duchessa had outlived love and honour, if she ever had them; but she was more careful than ever before of that poor thread of existence which was all that remained to her. As they met, the eyes of the two encountered each other; the son's warm with noble youthful sentiment and resolution, the mother's cold, cruel, and eager, incapable of any passions but those of hatred and rage. Francisco passed on, after he had seen her, with a cloud of graver thoughts subduing but strengthening the resolution in his face. But the Duchessa leant out of her carriage to look after him, holding the shawls close over her withered breast. She scolded all the way to the Piazza

scolded through the fizz of the gir andola-drove Cenci almost crazy when she went home. Perhaps in that moment she had recognised the hapless baby-the forgotten life that rose up so bold and strong among those dews of youth to confront her, and had seen all her plans defeated and all her precautions useless. She was a very poor old woman, that splendid beautiful Duchessa who had sent the child away; and whether it was unnatural cruelty or a certain savage virtue in vice which prompted it, her sin had been fatally a failure. Here was this boy, her son, with her own eyes; and what could she do against his young vigour, the power and passion which she could see in his face?

WHEN the Bengal sepoys proclaimed the extinction of the Company's rule, they little imagined the hands that were to execute the mad bulletin. The Home authorities had weakened the European garrison beyond any precedent of former rashness; while, at the same time, native prejudices were successively outraged, neglected, and petted, with a caprice that 100,000 bayonets would have been too few to protect. The Pandies might well trust their own arm to wield the weapon put into their hands in the affair of the greased cartridges. It was not much that then seemed to be wanting to complete the overthrow of the edifice constructed by the courage and sagacity of Clive, Hastings, and Wellesley. It was but to massacre a few score of Europeans scattered up and down the country, without strategy, caution, or misgiving to seize on the treasuries and strongholds, mostly in native custody to proclaim a new raj-and Koompni Sahib" would pass away, like many a predecessor in history, before the far-distant resources of Great Britain could be collected to the rescue.

In these calculations, however, the rebels fell into a twofold mistake. They did not reckon on the fight to be made by the victims whom they had destined to summary extermination -and it never entered their wildest dreams that, when the revolt should be known in England, the Imperial Legislature would be the first to bow to the vaticination of the Brahmans, and, instead of straining every nerve to replace the outraged representative of England's majesty, itself prepare the bowstring that was to execute the award of the traitors.

The sepoys may be pardoned their dual error. Not even their experience of British daring could foresee the more than heroic gallantry with which the Indian officers and civilians turned to bay by twos and threes upon their merciless assailants, arrested the revolt before it could spread into a rebellion, and not only held the government, but recovered

the lost citadel, mastered the mutiny and scattered the traitors, before the home reinforcements arrived to prostrate the country more completely than ever under the iron heel of military conquest. But if India, with her hundred years' experience, was not prepared for deeds of individual prowess, which have recalled the days of Amadis and Sir Lancelot, and filled the battalions of modern Europe with wonder and praise, what sane imagination could have anticipated the spectacle exhibited in the Palace of Westminster, when an imperial Sovereign cancelled, at the dictation of traitors, red with the blood of their murdered officers, a commission of Government, just before publicly renewed!-when a Constitutional monarch was seen to change, in the crisis of an armed insurrection, the administration agreed upon, after deliberate investigation, by the almost unanimous voice of the Legislature and the Nation !-when a great Power, outraged with every possible laceration of public and private honour, stood forward to endorse the treason by sacrificing its own representative! when a wise and generous nation rewarded the heroes who fell, or nobly conquered, in the unexampled struggle, by abolishing the Service in which they were trained, and placing in doubt the prospects which had encouraged them to embrace a life of exile with the chances of a premature death!

We shall be answered that no such consequences were meant to be involved in the transfer of the government to the direct administration of the Crown. And if the events of this world were ruled by intentions, the answer would be complete. Of course we do not impute any such conscious treason to the statesmen, on either side of the House, who concurred in that disastrous measure; but amid the weighty arguments urged against it, there was one that ought to have commanded respect, if all besides had been unavailing. The time selected for the experiment-a period of panic and confusion-was not only liable

to dishonouring interpretations, but excluded the possibility of a mature deliberation. The more we consider the unformed and defective statute which stands in our legislative code as the 21st & 22d Victoria, cap. 106, the more it seems to deserve the sarcasm aimed by Mr Bright at another measure-that "not twenty members in the House understood what they were doing."

We can have no pleasure in recalling objections which it is now too late to consider; but the session has closed with another India bill, of hardly less importance, and equally crude and ill defined; in fact, placing in doubt the whole future of the Indian armies. The financial condition of the country, too, is so hopelessly involved, that it seems to be matter of conjecture in England, whether the deficit of the current year be six millions or nine. The Minister who was to restore order and abundance to the exhausted exchequer, has been swept away by death, and we are told that neither India nor England contains a competent successor. Surely it is high time to inquire whether there be any recognised system of government for India, or whether Parliament is content to have followed the example of the sepoys, destroying everything and reconstructing nothing.

In instituting this inquiry, we can have no party object to serve. Both sides of the House of Commons are implicated in the measures which call for our animadversions. The Conservatives may plead the excuse of only following their rivals, who had already seized on the panic of the moment to pronounce the Company's doom. They have also the more definite merit of devoting their foremost men to the service of India; while the Whigs, true to traditional instinct, continue to regard that great empire as the vile corpus of family and party patronage. To read the names of Ellenborough and Stanley in juxtaposition with those of Vernon Smith and Sir Charles Wood, is quite enough to account for the disgust and alarm, with which nine-tenths of the Indian services regard every project bearing the ominous stamp of WhigLiberalism.

In the haste to get rid of the Com

pany's government, few cared to inquire into the details of that which was to succeed. Only one change, indeed, seems to be possible amid the clash of arms, and that is to a Dictatorship. Such was, in fact, the effect of the statute of 1858. The government of the Crown was enacted; but the mode in which it was to be exercised, the nature and limits of the subordinate functions, with all the executive establishments, and the entire administration in India, were handed over, in the loosest possible manner, to the newly created Secretary of State. Some attempt was made to fetter him with a Council of Indian advisers; but this was one of those half measures which only serves to indicate the perplexity of their authors. A really efficient Council would have reproduced the "double government" of the Court of Directors;for the direct administration of the Crown no Council seems required but the responsible Cabinet. Wavering between the two policies, and timidly shrinking from both, Parliament took refuge in a sham;-a Council, to be advised with, or not, at the discretion of the Minister himself;-a body that might act as a blind, but could never presume to be a check. The inference is that, while effecting a revolution at the fountain-head, the Legislature desired as little practical change as possible in the course of affairs. Our senators wished to retain as much as possible of the agency they were displacing, and to escape as far as possible the known tendencies of that which they were introducing. With this vague and unstatesmanlike intimation, the exhausted members retired to their rural sports, leaving their abortion in the hands of a Conservative Minister.

Lord Stanley, in addition to great industry, and a spirit of progressive reform, happily preserves the pru dence which is content to leave well alone. His travels had enabled him to form a truer appreciation of the Indian services than falls to the lot of our newspaper students; while his good sense, and the general policy of his party, secured him against the conceit of inaugurating the new system by disturbing and embroiling all existing institutions.