THE FATAL MARKSMAN.

Rudolph return loaded with game, and William with an empty bag. At night he threatened to dismiss him from his house, and to revoke the consent he had given to his marriage with Katharine, unless he brought home, at least, two roe-deer on the following morning. Katharine herself was in the greatest distress, and conjured him for love of her to apply his utmost zeal, and not to think so much about her whilst engaged in hunting.

In a despairing mood William set off to the forest. Kate, in any case, he looked upon as lost; and all that remained for him was a sad alternative between the two modes of losing her, whether by the result of this day's hunting, or of the trial before the commissioner. This was an alternative on which he felt himself incapable of deciding; and he was standing lost in gloomy contemplation of his wretched fate when all at once a troop of deer advanced close upon him. Mechanically he felt for his last ball; it seemed to weigh a hundred weight in his hand. Already he had resolved to reserve this treasure at any price, when suddenly he saw the old wooden-leg at a distance, and apparently directing his steps towards himself. Joyfully he dropped his ball into the barrel, fired, and two roe-bucks fell to the ground. William left them lying, and hurried after the wooden-leg; but he had wholly disappeared. Father Bertram was well satisfied with William; but not so was William with himself. The whole day long he went about in gloomy despondency; the tenderness and caresses of Kate had no power to restore him to serenity. At night-fall, he was still buried in abstraction; and, seated in a chair, he hardly noticed the lively conand versation between the forester Rudolph, till at length the former awoke him out of his reverie.

"What, William, I say," cried Bertram, "sure you'll never sit by and hearken quietly whilst such scandalous things are said as Rudolph has just been saying of our forefather Kuno. I'll not sit and hear such things said of our Kuno. What, man? Kuno died in his bed quietly, and with a christian's peace amongst his children and children's children; but, the man that tampers with the powers of darkness never makes a good end. I know that by what I saw myself at Prague in Bohemia, when I was an apprentice lad."

"Aye? what was that," cried Rudolph and the rest: "tell us, dear father." "What was it? why bad enough," said Bertram, "it makes me shudder

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There was, at that
when I think on it.
time, a young man in Prague, one
George Smith by name, a wild daring
sort of a fellow. And a very fair hunter
he might have proved; but he was too
hasty by far, and flung his shots away in
One day, when we had been
a manner.
joking him on this, his pride mounted
so high that nothing would serve him
but he must defy all the hunters in a
body: he would beat any of them at
shooting and no game should escape
him, whether in the air or in the forest.
This was his boast: but ill he kept his
Two days after comes a strange
word.
huntsman bolt upon us out of a thicket,
and tells us that a little way off, on the
main road, a man was lying half dead,
and with nobody to look after him. We
lads made up to the spot, and there, sure
enough, lay poor George, torn and clawed
all to pieces, just as if he had fallen
amongst wild cats; not a word could he
speak, for he was quite senseless, and
hardly shewed any signs of life. We
carried him to a house: one of us set
off with the news to Prague; and thither
Well, this George
he was soon fetched.
Smith, before he died, made confession
that he had set about casting devil's balls,
with an old upland hunter; devil's balls,
you understand, never miss; and because
he failed in something that he should
have done, the devil had handled him so
roughly, that what must pay for it but
his precious life?"

"But did George not relate what it
was that brought such rough treatment
upon him?”

"Aye, sure enough, before the magis-
As it drew to-
trates he confessed all.
wards midnight, it seems he had gone
with the old hunter to a cross-road: there
they made a circle with a bloody sword;
and in this circle they laid a skull and
Then the old man
bones cross-ways.
told George what he was to do. On the
stroke of eleven, he was to begin casting
the balls, in number sixty and three,
neither more nor less; one over or one
under, as soon as twelve o'clock struck,
And during all this
he was a lost man.
work, he was not to speak a word, nor to
step out of the circle, let what would
happen. Sixty of the balls were to carry
true, and only three were to miss. Smith
began casting the balls; but such shock-
ing and hideous apparitious flocked
about him, that at last he shrieked out,
and jumped right out of the circle: in-
stantly he fell down senseless to the
ground, and never recovered his recollec-
tion till he found himself at Prague, in
the hands of the surgeon, and with a
clergyman by his side."

(To be Continued.)

1

NOTE.-In presenting our readers with the Parliamentary Speeches of the late Lord Byron, we entirely divest ourselves of any party feeling; indeed, so many years have now elapsed since their delivery in the House of Lords, so many changes have taken place in the political world, and public opinion has so often varied, that at the present day these speeches will generally be considered in their true light-as connected with the Literature of our Country. Under this conviction, we give them in their original form, as further characteristic of his Lordship's talent.-EDIT.

"1 only addressed the Honse twice, and made little impression. They told me that my manner of speaking was not dignified enough for the Lords, but was more calculated for the Commons. I believe it was a Don Juan kind of speech; the two occasions were, the Catholic Question, and (I think he said) some Manchester affair."-Medwin's Conversations with Lord Byron.

PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES

OF LORD BYRON.
No. I.

Debate on the Frame Work Bill, in the

House of Lords, Feb. 27, 1812. THE order of the day for the second reading of this Bill being read, LORD BYRON rose, and (for the first time) addressed their Lordships follows:

as

MY LORDS;-the subject now submitted to your Lordships for the first time, though new to the House, is by no means new to the country. I believe it had occupied the serious thoughts of all descriptions of persons, long before its introduction to the notice of that legislature, whose interference alone could be of real service. As a person in some degree connected with the suffering country, though a stranger not only to this House in general, but to almost every individual whose attention 1 presume to solicit, I must claim some portion of your Lordships' indulgence, whilst I offer a few observations on a question in which I confess myself deeply interested.

To enter into any detail of the riots would be superfluous: the House is already aware that every outrage short of actual bloodshed has been perpetrated, and that the proprietors of the frames obnoxious to the rioters, and all persons supposed to be connected with them, have been liable to insult and violence. During the short time I recently passed in Nottinghamshire, not twelve hours elapsed without some fresh act of violence; and on the day I left the county, I was informed that forty frames had been broken the preceding evening, as usual, without resistance and without detection.

Such was then the state of that county, and such I have reason to believe it to be at this moment. But whilst these outrages must be admitted to exist to an alarming extent, it cannot be denied that they have arisen from circumstances of the most unparalleled distress. The

perseverance of these miserable men in their proceedings, tends to prove that nothing but absolute want could have driven a large, and once honest and industrious body of the people, into the commission of excesses so hazardous to themselves, their families, and the community. At the time to which I allude, the town and county were burthened with large detachments of the military; the police was in notion, the magistrates assembled, yet all the movements, civil and military, had led to-nothing. Not a single instance had occurred of the apprehension of any real delinquent actually taken in the fact, against whom there existed legal evidence sufficient for conviction. But the police, however useless, were by no means idle: several notorious delinquents had been detected; men, liable to conviction, on the clearest evidence, of the capital crime of Poverty; men, who had been nefariously guilty of lawfully begetting several children, whom, thanks to the times! they were unable to maintain. Cousiderable injury has been done to the proprietors of the improved frames. These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the adop tion of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous labourers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality; not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation. It was called, in the cant of the trade, by the name of "Spider work." The rejected workmen, in the blindness of their ignorauce, instead of rejoicing at these improvements in arts so beneficial to maukind, conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism. In the foolishness of their hearts they imagined, that the maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any

A gentleman who was present at his maiden speech, on the Catholic Question, says, that the Lords left their seats, and gathered round him in a circle; a proof, at least, of the interest which he excited: and that the same style was attempted in the Commons next day, but failed.

PARLIAMENTARY SPEECHES OF LORD BYRON.

improvement in the implements of trade, which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the labourer unworthy of his hire. And it must be confessed that although the adoption of the enlarged machinery in that state of our commerce which the country once boasted, might have been beneficial to the master without being detrimental to the servant; yet, in the present situation of our manufactures, rotting in warehouses, without a prospect of exportation, with the demand for work and workmen equally diminished; frames of this description tend materially to aggravate the distress and discontent of the disappointed sufferers. But the real cause of these distresses and consequent disturbances lies deeper. When we are told that these men are leagued together not only for the destruction of their own comfort, but of their very means of subsistence, can we forget that it is the bitter policy, the destructive warfare of the last eighteen years, which has destroyed their comfort, your comfort, all men's comfort? That policy, which originating with "great statesmen now no more," has survived the dead to become a curse on the living, unto the third and fourth generation! These men never destroyed their looms till they were become useless, worse than useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in obtaining their daily bread. Can you, then, wonder that in times like these, when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found in a station not far beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest, though once most useful portion of the people, should forget their duty in their distresses, and become only less guilty than one of their representatives? But while the exalted offender can find means to baffle the law, new capital punishments must be devised, new suares of death must be spread for the wretched mechanic, who is famished into guilt. These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them: their own means of subsistence were cut off, all other employments pre-occupied, and their excesses, however to be deplored and condemned, can hardly be subject of surprise.

It has been stated that the persons in the temporary possession of frames connive at their destruction; if this be proved upon enquiry, it were necessary that such material accessories to the crime should be principals in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure proposed by his Majesty's government,

183

for your Lordships' decision, would have had conciliation for its basis; or, if that were hopeless, that some previous enquiry, so ne deliberation, would have been deemed requisite; not that we should have been called at once without examination, and without cause, to pass sentences by wholesale, and sigu deathwarrants blindfold. But admitting that these men had no cause of complaint; that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless; that they deserved the worst; what inefficiency, what imbecility has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of, if theywereto be called out at all? As far as the difference of seasons would permit, they have merely parodied the summer campaign of Major Sturgeon; and, indeed, the whole proceedings, civil and military, seemed on the model of those of the Mayor and Corporation of Garratt.--Such marchings and counter-marchings! From Nottingham to Bullwell, from Bullwell to Banford,from Banford to Mansfield! and when at length the detachments arrived at their destination, in all "the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," they came just in time to witness the mischief which had been done, and ascertain the escape of the perpetrators, to collect the "spolia opima," in the fragments of broken frames, and return to their quarters amidst the derision of old women, and the hootings of children. Now though, in a free country, it were to be wished, that our military should never be too formidable, at least to ourselves, I cannot see the policy of placing them in situations where they can only be made ridiculous. As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. In this instance it has been the first; but providentially as yet only in the scabbard. The present measure will, indeed, pluck it from the sheath; yet had proper meetings been held in the earlier stages of these riots, had the grievances of these men and their masters (for they also had their grievances) been fairly weighed and justly examined, I do think that means might have been devised to restore these workmen to their avocations, and tranquillity to the county. At present the county suffers from the double infliction of an idle military and a starving population. In' what state of apathy have we been plunged so long, and now for the first time the House has been officially apprised of these disturbances? All this has been transacting within 130 miles of London, and yet we, “good easy men,

THE CRYPT CHAPEL IN LAMBETH PALACE.

THIS is generally thought to be the oldest port of the palace. It consists of a series of strong stone arches, supported in the centre by a short massy column, and is thirty-six feet long by twenty-four feet wide: the height of the roof from the ground is about ten feet. These vaults are now converted into cellars. These Crypts are generally supposed to have been places allotted to private devotion, though some authors give it as their opinion that they were used for clandestine drinking, and feasting, and things of that kind. For an account of the palace and chapel we must refer the reader to Mr. Allen's interesting History of Lambeth.