an end of angry feeling. To Sir Robert Peel's merits, after the sad accident which removed him from among us, none bore more willing testimony than those who, in 1846, cut him most deeply with their irony. And surely, when the brother of the statesman so abused finds it possible to act again with them, not in the House only but in the Cabinet, it ill becomes the friends of that statesman, no matter how attached, to stand upon their old grudges.

Sir Robert carried his repeal of the Corn Laws, and five weeks afterwards, on the 25th of June, proposed the second reading of a bill for the repression of acts of violence and disorder in Ireland. He had been supported on the first reading, which came on before the Corn Bill was proposed, by a majority of 149 votes; he now found, as indeed he expected to do, the great bulk of these ready to oppose him. The Conservative party, under the guidance of Lord George Bentinck, gave free scope to their indignation; and, for the avowed purpose of avenging themselves on the Minister, threw out the bill by a majority of 73 votes. Sir Robert took the defeat with calmness and dignity: not one angry word escaped him. He waited in the House till the result of the division was announced, and then, amid profound silence, withdrew. There was no cheering on either side. The Conservatives knew that the victory which they had won would not, in its results, work them good. The Whigs and Radicals, conscious that no share of the merits of success belonged to them, showed little gladness and no disposition to triumph. Yet at this very moment both parties heard that Peel's foreign policy was crowned with success, and that the differences which had threatened at one time to plunge England and America into a war, were reconciled. From the day of his resignation of office, up to that on which the fatal accident occurred to him, Peel maintained, or endeavoured to do so, an independent position in the House of Commons. Generally speaking, he gave his support to Lord John Russell's Administration. He aided the Government to get rid of the

Navigation Laws, to introduce poorlaws into Ireland, and to carry through, in 1847, a Coercion Bill similar in its details to that which they had enabled the angry Tories to throw out in 1846. In a like spirit he supported the increased grant which Lord John proposed for education; and not only voted, but spoke in favour of a bill for the admission of Jews into Parliament. It seemed, indeed, as if now at length he felt himself free to follow the promptings of his own judgment. Finally, he suggested the adoption of a measure, which the Government first resisted, but which it afterwards took up and carried through-the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court, which has done more to remedy the worst social evils of Ireland than all the other laws which Parliament has passed since the union of the two legislatures. All this was directly at variance with the rigid obstructiveness for which his enemies had laboured to give him credit, and it very much increased the hostility of the more prejudiced among his former supporters. Yet it was quite in accord with the whole turn of his mind. Robert," his father is reported to have said, "has a great deal of the Whig in him; he must be carefully trained to become a Tory." Certainly, if by Whig the old man meant a statesman of large views on all questions not affecting the principles of the constitution, he was right; but according to our reading of the expression, it applies rather to Tories than to Whigs-certainly to Tories of the school of Pitt, in which Peel had been carefully educated.

So public matters went on, Peel holding himself aloof from any connection with the Whigs, though generally supporting them in their home policy, when the Don Pacifico question arose, and Lord Palmerston's treatment of the little helpless kingdom of Greece gave offence to France, and was condemned by more than the Tory party in England. Under the leadership of Lord Stanley, the House of Lords passed upon it a formal vote of censure, and in the House of Commons there was every disposition to

repeat the blow. But the catastrophe of a change of Ministers, which nobody in truth desired, was prevented by the co-operation with the cabinet of Mr Roebuck and the Radicals. The learned gentleman moved that "the principles on which the foreign policy of her Majesty's Government have been regulated, have been such as are calculated to maintain the honour and dignity of this country, and, in times of unexampled difficulty, to preserve peace between England and the various nations of the world." This was a declaration which wounded Sir Robert Peel's sensitive nature. He accepted it, as bringing the foreign policy of past Governments, of many of which he had been himself a member, into unfavourable comparison with that of the present Government; and towards the close of the debate he rose to protest against its adoption. He was listened to with breathless attention-for neither section of the House knew which side he was going to espouse; and in spite of all that men said and affected to believe, his moral influence, both in Parliament and out of it, had never been more commanding than at that moment. When, therefore, he declared, "I will state the grounds upon which I protest against the resolution, the carrying of which, I believe, will give a false impression with respect to the dignity and honour of this country, and will establish a principle which you cannot put into execution without imminent danger to the best interests of the country," it is scarcely going too far to say that the House was electrified. The Ministers felt that the staff which had so long contributed, at least, to support them, was gone; while the Conservatives looked to Peel once more, as a far sounder politician and truer Englishman and Tory, than the strong prejudices to which they had of late yielded themselves up, permitted them to see that he

was.

Ministers carried the resolution, however, by a majority of 46 votes. It was well that they did. The Opposition-broken up into fragments, one of which was called a party without a leader; another, leaders

without a party-was by no means in a condition to profit by success, had it been achieved. But without all doubt, the effect of the discussion was very materially to abate the bitterness of the alienation which kept the best and wisest of Peel's old friends. apart from their old leader.

The debate of which we have spoken began in the evening of Friday, the 28th of June. Daylight had come in on Saturday the 29th, when Peel quitted the House, satisfied with the success which he had achieved, and more cheerful in consequence, than he had appeared to be after any other debate since the repeal of the Corn Laws. Having rested a few hours in bed, he went about noon to attend a meeting of the Commission which was to arrange for the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851; and about five o'clock rode out, attended by a groom, to take his usual exercise in the Park. He was in the act of speaking to Miss Ellis, who was likewise on horseback, when his horse suddenly shied and swerved round, and Sir Robert, always a loose and rather inelegant rider, was thrown violently over the animal's head. A medical gentleman from Glasgow happened to be near, and with some other persons ran immediately to lift him up. Being asked whether he were hurt, he replied, with a heavy groan, "Yes, very much;" and before a carriage could be procured, he fainted. In this state he was lifted into Mrs Lucas's carriage, where he soon recovered his senses, and declared himself to be better. But the mortal blow was given. He was conveyed slowly to his residence in Whitehall Gardens, and laid upon a sofa in the library. He never quitted that room alive. Always, even in health, nervously sensitive to pain, he would not submit to any close examination of the nature of his hurts; and when his medical attendants had set the collar-bone, in which a fracture was discovered, he became so irritable under the pressure of the bandages that they were forced to remove them. The consequence was, that with all the skill and science of London at his service, he left nature to take her course, and died in great

agony from congestion of the lung; upon which, after all was over, it was discovered that a broken rib was pressing.

The outline which we have endeavoured in a spirit of perfect impartiality to sketch, will have conveyed to the minds of our readers a more accurate view of Sir Robert Peel's character, as it represents itself to our minds, than could be given by any formal summing up, however elaborately and skilfully prepared. It would be too much to speak of him as one of England's greatest statesmen. He possessed little originality of mind, and no genius. But he was painstaking, able, industrious, unprejudiced, honest in the best sense of that term, and incapable of meanness. In spite of the pains which were taken to settle his opinions in early life, he seems never to have wholly surrendered his own judgment to that of others. Indeed, his nature was one of those which mature themselves very slowly, and are therefore open to the charge, often very ill-founded, of having no fixed principles to guide them. How gradual, yet how steady, were the advances which he made towards the adoption of those views of commercial policy which are now every where in the ascendant. How, by little and little, the conviction seems to have dawned upon him that men's religious opinions ought not of themselves to present any impediment to their possession of political power. Yet no man of his age cared more for the wellbeing of the working classes; and it would be to do him great wrong were we to question his firm attachment to the doctrines and discipline of the Church of England. Peel's defects were those of temperament merely. He was constitutionally shy and proud. He could neither give nor receive unshackled familiarity. His manner

was not a pleasant one, either in the House of Commons or anywhere else. His anxiety always to represent himself as actuated by the loftiest motives, and as sacrificing inclination and the ties of friendship to duty, amounted to positive Pecksniffianism. It was this weakness of temper, doubtless, which made him resent as a wrong done personally to himself anything like remonstrance against his plans, whether of public policy or private patronage. The same may be said of his ostentatious rejection of titles of honour for his children as well as for himself. There is as much of snobbishness in the pride which affects to despise rank to which it has not been born, as in the folly which worships rank for its own sake. Peel exhibited this weakness in his will, and seemed at least to be often under its influence in society. He had many admirers, therefore, but few friends. Still he was a man of whom, with all his shortcomings, England has cause to be proud; and whose name will go down to posterity among the ablest and most disinterested of those who have taken the lead in the management of her affairs.

We cannot conclude without a few words about the charming volume which has furnished us with the opportunity of writing this paper; it cannot fail to be largely and pleasantly read. We do not quite agree with Sir Lawrence in the estimate which he forms of his relative's character and abilities. We think that he has considerably under-estimated the latter; and we are not quite sure that a man so genial as he, could fully appreciate either the lights or shades in the former. But he evidently sat down to his task determined not to be carried away by his feelings, and he has produced a work which is as creditable to his heart as to his head.

The

"MAKE haste then, Teta. child is mad. Must I call the other women because thou refusest to obey thy mother? What are my lady's secrets, if she has secrets-the blessed Madonna forbid I should say she had to thee? Send for Mariuccia, I say. If her Excellency would gossip with her foster-sister, is it thy business? Go, child, you weary me. Send to Rocca for Mariuccia, and if there is anything to be told, she loves to talk; be sure she will tell it word for word."

"Ah, mamma mia, but what has Madame Margherita to do with my lady?" said the lively Teta, fixing upon her mother her inquisitive black eyes; "and why did you fetch her in such haste? and what is to be done with Mariuccia? She is but a villana, as all the world knows. My lady cares no more for her than I care for Chichina in the kitchen. A great lady like La Duchessa to gossip with her foster-sister!-ah, mother mine, do you think Teta believes it? And why, then, did you fetch Madame Margherita from Rome?"

"Madame Margherita is a wise woman: she knows what the English Forestieri do when they are sick," said the mother, gravely. "Nay, she only serves the English strangers, had it not been a great lady like ours. Thy aunt, Teta, who has been in England, went to seek her for my lady-thou knowest very well my lady has been ill. Send thou for Mariuccia, and hold thy peace-she will be better now."

"Ah, yes; so they say, 'she will be better now,' ," said Teta, satirically; "but why do not the Duke and my lady make rejoicings and a great festa in Genzaro, as they did when Donna Anna was born? Nay, to be sure, you will not answer; but one talks in the Agostini palace, madre mia, and one thinks also. I will send for Mariuccia directly-and do you think she will not tell?"

So saying, the saucy Teta went briskly along the gallery, crossing the lines of sunshine from the great windows-for it was still spring, and the sun was bearable with her white muslin apron fluttering, her long earrings glancing, her gloss of black hair shining under the light. The waiting-woman looked after her with a gleam of maternal vanity, and a sigh of more anxious feeling. She was not annoyed by Teta's curiosity, but it made her watch with a little trembling the progress of her fulldeveloped Roman girl.

"Ah, Teta is clever!" said the mother to herself. "I am glad she did not go with Donna Anna. Send her a safe husband, Madonna mia santissima! for to be a cameriera in a great family, one must see all and say nothing, which would not do for my Teta; and Mariuccia, though my lady trusts her, is but a countrywoman, and loves to talk. These peasants will talk of anything if their life were on it; but they are so far above us, these great ladies-how should the Duchessa know who best to trust?"

And sighing over a little disappointed excellence of her own, the Duchess Agostini's faithful maid went into her mistress's chamber. This room was somewhat mysterious at present to the other inmates of the house. The anteroom which led to it was hung close with heavy velvet curtains, covering the doors, the floor was thickly carpeted, the outer blinds closed over the windows. Coming into this close, noiseless, breathless apartment, out of the great corridor, with its marble pavement and cold statues, it was not wonderful that the servants of the house were curious about the secrets of the further apartments into which they were not admitted. Vincenza, or Cenci, as it was common to call her, coming in with familiar composure to this anteroom, suddenly arrested herself in a

pause of horror at the door, and with all the disgust and apprehension with which English nostrils recognise that bugbear of modern life, an evil smell, sniffed at the motionless air, which was weighted with a faint odour of a very different character. The alarmed waiting-maid sniffed about the walls in anxious search for the secret foe which thus betrayed itself. Then she got down on her knees, and hunted about the corners. At last, catching a glimpse of something green and white under a table, she pounced upon it triumphantly. "Eccola!" cried Cenci; "behold it!" It was but an innocent morsel of half-opened orange-blossom; but Cenci dashed aside the velvet curtain, and rushed to the open window in the gallery, from which she could throw it out, contemplating suspiciously all the time the offending flower. "An enemy has done it," said the anxious waiting-woman, "to discover our secret; or, alas, alas! perhaps Teta, my thoughtless child! If Madame Margherita should have smelt it!-but the Madonna be praised, she is English, and if the Duchessa does not know, it will do her no harm. I shall hold my peace." With which prudent resolution, Cenci returned through the velvet-deafened anteroom, and through another vacant, muffled apartment, into the citadel of the whole-the lady's chamber. A sharpwitted Italian, seeing that manoeuvre of Cenci's, and knowing the horror which womankind in that country entertains of every kind of perfume, would speedily have divined the secret concealed there. The room was partially lighted, one little gleam of golden sunshine coming in through a slight opening in the green Persian blinds which sheltered the centre window outside, and was furnished with a cold splendour of marble and gilding which it needed that sun to endue with anything like comfort. The roof was painted with an alle gorical picture, the walls were rich with festoons of stucco flowers, and vast snowy lace curtains drooped close over all the windows, subduing still further the light which came through the closed Persianis. That gleam of sunshine, however, illuminated the central object in the picture

with a warmer light. On a vast bed, carved and gilt with all the splendours of rococo, nestled among white pillows and coverlets, and a world of lace, lay a pretty, languid, pale woman, with extreme ennui and a shade of vexation on her face. She was playing her pretty white hand over something which lay concealed among the coverings on the bed, and which an occasional snarl and spring betrayed to be a tiny spaniel. Now and then a sharp movement of the coverlet betrayed the impatience with which La Duchessa awaited her recovery. There was nothing visible of amusement or occupation about the bed-no books, none of those pretty safety-valves of fancy-work which suit the feminine subject-no chair for a chance visitor, or apparent possibility of any such delicious interlude of gossip. The poor Duchessa had nothing in the world to amuse her solitude but her waiting-woman and her dog.

Yet there was something else in the room which might have been supposed more interesting than either, but which, an unwelcome intruder condemning her to this reluctant retirement from the world, the Duchess Agostini looked upon with anything but love. Sturdily seated in an attitude of habit by the low wide fireplace, though there was no fire, was a little woman of a singular equality of dimensions, length and breadth being almost identicala little woman with a broad bright face, full of importance, fun, and intelligence. This fat fairy was clothed in robes of grey Roman flannel, which neutral-coloured material could not confer any shadowy softening upon her unmistakable substance, and held upon her lap a silent bundle of white, from out of which sometimes flickered, more quietly than the tiny black paws its triumphant rival on the bed, an infant's fitful little hand. Except that little hand, and the small mass of muslin from which it appeared, no trace of baby presence was in the room. All silently, and with the indignation of a nurse and a woman, Madame Margherita put the infant's tiny wardrobe, with all its accessories, out of sight when she had

of