and face and hands bleeding, crossed the dip, mounted the slope and emerged upon a ferny hollow ringed about on three sides with the macchia. There face-downward in the fern lay Nat, shot through the lungs.

I lifted him against one knee. His eyelids flickered and his lips moved to speak, but a rush of blood choked him. Still resting him against my knee I felt behind me for my musket. The flint was gone from the lock, dislodged no doubt by a blow against the crags. With one hand I groped on the ground for a stone to replace it. My fingers found only a tangle of dry fern, and glancing up at the ridge, I stared straight along the barrel of a musket. At the same moment a second barrel glimmered out between the bushes on my left. 'Signore, favorisca di rendersi,' said a voice, very quiet and polite. I stared around me, hopeless, at bay: and while I stared and clutched my useless gun, from behind a rock some twenty paces up the slope a girl stepped forward, halted, rested the butt of her musket on the stone and, crossing her hands above the nozzle of it, calmly regarded us.

Even in my rage her extraordinary wild beauty held me at gaze for a moment. She wore over a loose white shirt a short waisttunic of faded green velvet, with a petticoat or kilt of the same reaching a little below her knees, from which to the ankles her legs were cased in tight-fitting leathern gaiters. Her stout boots shone with toe-plates of silver or polished steel. A sad-coloured handkerchief protected her head, its edge drawn straight across her brow in a fashion that would have disfigured ninety-nine women in a hundred. But no head-dress availed to disfigure that brow or the young imperious eyes beneath it. Are you a friend of this man?' she asked in Italian.

'He is my best friend,' I answered her in the same language. 'Why have you done this to him?

She seemed to consider for a moment, thoughtfully, without pity.

'I can talk to you in French if you find it easier,' she said after a pause.

'You may use Italian,' I answered angrily. I can understand it more easily than you will use it to explain why you have done this wickedness.'

'He was very foolish,' she said. 'He tried to run away. And you were all very foolish to come as you did. We saw your ship

while you were yet four leagues at sea. How have you come

here?'

'I came here,' answered I, 'being led by your hogs, and after shooting an assassin in disguise of a hog.'

'You have killed Giuseppe ?'

'I did my best,' said I, turning and addressing myself to three Corsicans who had stepped from the bushes around me. But whatever your purpose may be, you have shot my friend here, and he is dying. If you have hearts, deal tenderly with him, and afterwards we can talk.'

'He says well,' said the girl slowly, and nodded to the three men. 'Lift him and bring him to the camp.' She turned to me. 'You will not resist?' she asked.

'I will go with my friend,' said I.

'That is good. You may walk behind me,' she said, turning on her heel. I am glad to have met one who talks in Italian, for the rest of your friends can only chatter in English, a tongue which I do not understand. Step close behind me, please; for the way is narrow. For what are you waiting?'

To see that my friend is tenderly handled,' I answered. 'He is past helping,' said she carelessly.

You did not stop for Giuseppe, did you?'

'I did not.'

He behaved foolishly.

'I am not blaming you,' said she, and led the way.

(To be continued.)

MAYFAIR AND THACKERAY.

BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR ALGERNON WEST, G.C.B.

THOSE Who, like myself, agree with Dr. Johnson in thinking London the best place in summer and the only place in winter, and that the man who is tired of it must be tired of life, are apt to concentrate their interests and affections on some particular angle of the town which smiles to them above all others; and Mayfair, in which I have spent my life, contains hardly a square, street, or house in which there is not some delightful association with memories of the past.

Soho and Leicester Fields have long ceased to be fashionable quarters, and even lawyers have deserted the beautiful houses of Russell and Bedford Squares. Neither Harley Street, where, as Thackeray says, every other house has a hatchment, nor Wimpole Street, which is as cheerful as the Catacombs, nor Regent's Park, where the plaster is patching off the walls, nor Belgravia, that pale and polite district where all the inhabitants look prim and correct and the mansions are painted a faint whitey brown, can compare with the zigzags of Mayfair, where Mrs. Kitty Lorrimer's brougham may be seen drawn up to old Lady Lollipop's belozenged family coach.

The very pavements of Mayfair have for centuries been trodden by distinguished men and beautiful women. Walter Scott, in the 'Heart of Midlothian,' portrays the travel-worn Jeanie Deans making intercession for her sister with John Duke of Argyll at No. 15 Bruton Street, and the Duke after the interview ushering her in her Scotch garb into the presence of Queen Caroline in Richmond Park, from whom she obtained the pardon she sought for her poor sister Effie. In later days No. 15 belonged to Lord Granville, whose political parties were none the less remarkable for the presence of the famous diarist, Charles Greville, whom Lady Granville talked of as 'her lodger.' It was subsequently sold to Lord Carnarvon, who was for a time Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord Salisbury's Government.

George Canning, when Foreign Secretary, lived in Conduit Street in 1809. He had turned from the brilliant satires and verses of the Anti-Jacobin' to which he was the greatest contributor

verses which Sydney Smith, with, I fear, some party spirit, called 'schoolboy jokes and doggerel rhymes-into the statesman who planned the capture of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen.

When spring had set in with its usual severity,' not all the attractions of Strawberry Hill could keep Horace Walpole away from his warm house in Berkeley Square, from the window of which he witnessed the planting of those magnificent plane-trees whose profuse foliage now gives shade to his descendants.

Lord Chatham lived at No. 6, and his illustrious son received there deputations from the City of London. Lord Shelburne bought what is now Lansdowne House, only partially built, with the garden in which it stands, for £22,000, and the plans, designed by Robert Adam, are still to be seen at the Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

It was under Lord Shelburne's Administration that William Pitt became Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Lord Henry Petty, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, filled the same office, at an age when men nowadays are but leaving college, in the Ministry of All the Talents. At the corner of the Square and Bruton Street lived Colley Cibber, who began his career while yet a boy as a soldier in the revolutionary army of 1688, became a prolific dramatist and actor, and ended by becoming Poet Laureate in 1730, and was the subject of a lampoon said to have been written by Pope :

In merry old England it once was a rule

The King had his poet as well as his fool;

But now we're so frugal, I'd like you to know it,
That Cibber can serve both for fool and for poet.

Lord Grey, when Prime Minister, lived near the house once occupied by Lord Bath of the 'Short-lived Administration,' and here Lady Grey entertained, as a constant guest, the witty Sydney Smith, who lived hard by in Green Street; while earlier in the century Richard Brinsley Sheridan, moving from house to house, pursued by bailiffs, resided for a time in Hertford Street. In Park Lane, too, lived the beautiful Mrs. Jordan, who intoxicated the town by the 'Wildness of Delight' with which she fascinated all beholders in the part of the Country Girl, in which character she was immortalised by Romney, whose picture is now in the possession of Sir Charles Tennant. Later Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, the novelist, lived here till, as Lord Lytton, he migrated to Grosvenor Square.

In 1771 the Duke of Cumberland married Miss Irnham in Hertford Street, and his marriage was the cause of the Royal

Marriage Act of 1772; in spite of which the Prince of Wales married, in her house in Park Lane, Mrs. Fitzherbert, whose life has recently been so ably written by Mr. Wilkins.

In the house now owned by Lord Rosebery Lady Jersey entertained the Tory politicians of her day. She was the daughter of that Earl of Westmorland who had run away with and married the heiress, Miss Child, at Gretna Green. Another daughter, Lady Maria, was in this house married to Viscount Duncannon; for in those days the marriages in the fashionable world, and the christenings, were generally solemnised in private houses. Gerald Ponsonby has told me that Lady Jersey, sitting in one of her windows on a warm evening in June 1815, was startled by a shouting crowd, following as best it could a carriage passing through the Square. On inquiry she found that it contained Colonel Henry Percy, who had brought the news of the battle and victory of Waterloo to this country. On his arrival he had hastened with dust-covered eagles, and in the uniform he had worn at the famous ball of the Duke of Richmond's at Brussels, to the Horse Guards, but finding the Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of York, was out at dinner, he went on to a house in St. James's Square, where the Prince Regent was, communicated the news to him, and then begged to be allowed at once to go home to dress and rest. He was on his way from St. James's to Portman Square, where his father, Lord Beverley, lived, when he passed in front of Lady Jersey's windows.

Lord Clive, the great Pro-Consul, after his return from India, built there the house now belonging to Lord Powis. At the corner of the Square is the picturesque manor house called Bourdon House, formerly the residence of the heiress, Miss Davies, who married Sir Thomas Grosvenor, and brought to that family the great London property now owned by his successor, the Duke of Westminster.

Charles James Fox lived in South Street, where close to him Lord and Lady Holland made their home during the winter months, thinking in those pre-motor days that their palace in Kensington was too remote from social intercourse. The side-window which she built to give her a view on to the Park can still be seen from Park Lane. At No. 14 Lord Melbourne, who bought it from Lord Holland, lived through the whole of his Administration from 1835 to 1841; and as it was said he never once gave or ate a dinner there—

His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot;
Cool was his kitchen.