PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF LIEUTENANT CHARLES SPENCER,

HALF PAY,

REGIMENT.

CHAPTER I.

I was born a hero; and since slaughter of our fellow-creatures gives a title to that epithet, I may add, that I was sprung of a family of heroes ;my great grandfather was a butcher, and spilled blood enough in his day to stain a field as wide as Waterloo,-my grandfather was an apothecary to a country hospital, and malicious people say that the atmosphere of the house was very pestilential, seeing that no patient ever recovered within its precincts;—my father was a surgeon in great practice, and if he did not avail himself of opportunities to exercise his powers, why I can't help him ;—my uncle was a lawyer, and even he showed that destructiveness was a hereditary developement in our family; for though he wielded not sword, knife, or lancet, yet being aided and abetted by those pugnacious personages called John Doe and Richard Roe, he sent four of his clients broken-hearted to a prematuré grave; and two others whom he had involved in a chancery suit, hanged themselves in despair. Furthermore, though wallowing in wealth, he most heroically starved himself to death, and left all his property to my father and myself.

I have been a soldier from my youth ;-my first recorded exploit is having struck my nurse a blow on the nose, and yelling with delight at the sight of the sanguine stream which ensued. As I grew up, every servant in the house fled at my approach, like pigeons from an eagle; the house dog dropped his tail between his legs, and scoured off whenever I crossed his path, and-no-that abominable cat-she sometimes was guilty of overt acts of rebellion, and scrawled the marks of her disaffection on my face and hands. By Jove I was born a general;-from my earliest days I commanded all the family; my father, by the death of some relatives, -my uncle the attorney amongst the rest, good for nothing but scraping money together,-had got possession of a large fortune; my mother had supreme mastery over him, by virtue of a tongue whose sarcastic eloquence would silence Plunkett, and Brougham to boot ;-and I commanded her in consequence of my great powers of squalling, kicking, and pinchingheroic propensities which were not nipped in the bud, for the very simple reason that I was an only child. I do not think that I will trouble you with any particulars about the when or where of my birth. In the first place they are nothing to you, and in the second, they are something to me-Sweet Matilda! continue in the delusion that my age amounts but to twenty-two, without knowing anything of the ten that Time has added to my account; and let not a breath whisper to thee that I was born in the unhallowed precints of Wapping, and not in the classic squares of Westminster. Another preliminary, Mr. Reader, is this, I will not tell you how I passed my time at school; for the recollection of the floggings I received there every day, makes memory still ache; neither will I say a word about the manner in which my commission was procured, seeing that the disposal of commissions for the purchase of votes, would furnish matter of declamation to Joe Hume and the other radicals who have quite enough to

talk about already; neither shall I describe my quarantine in the depôt; first, because the recollection thereof is not the most pleasant, and secondly, because I do not choose it. So leaving prefatory matter behind, you are to imagine that you see Ensign Spencer descending from a stage coach, in the city of Bristol, on the 19th day of August, A. D. 1816; being then on his way to join his regiment in the South of Ireland.—And now, gentle reader, you by this time must have conjectured my greatest misfortune;-alas for myself and for my country! I was not present at Waterloo! had I been there, Buonaparte would have been beaten before those rascally Prussians came up to claim share in laurels that were fairly our's. If you doubt my abilities, I refer you to Captain O'Mealy, on the half-pay of the Connaught Rangers. Said he to me, when I explained my plans, " my dear Spencer, if ever a war breaks out, you will certainly arrive at the top of your profession,-and that just reminds me, as cash runs low in these piping times of peace, perhaps you could accommodate me with the loan of fifty pounds until the next remittance day." Of course

;

I could not refuse a man of so much judgment, the loan of such a trifle but I hope you will not consider my mentioning the anecdote, as by any means a hint to the gallant captain, should he perchance eye these pages, that the said sum has never been repaid, and that I really should be obliged to him for a speedy settlement.

My regiment was I said quartered in the South of Ireland, in a little town named Youghal. If you were not born in the town, do not attempt to pronounce its name, or you will certainly make a blunder.-A schoolmaster there told me, "it must be pronounced with a mono-dissylabic intonation, so as to liquidate all the letters between the primary and ultimate into one rotund euphony."-If you understand these directions, Mr. Reader, you are a cleverer man than I take you to be.

On going down to the Quay, I learned that a merchant vessel was about to sail for the place of my destination in a few hours. Unfortunately, for my first debut in public life, I got on board. The captain was civil to be sure, but my brother-passengers were-stop, and I will tell you all about them. There was Cornelius O'Dwyer, Esquire, the same being written in legible round hand on a black leather trunk, and two flour-bags which constituted his luggage; the said Cornelius O'Dwyer having taken the designation of Esquire, in consequence of his being appointed to the honourable post of a guager, by the interest of his sister, whose excellence as a washerwoman in the family of a nobleman, who had some boroughs under his control, had recommended her to another situation in the same family of greater importance, but not with quite so honorable a name. Next to him, came Mr. Solomon Smith, a worshipful grocer, who, having purchased a good supply for his shop in Bristol, embarked himself and his property in the same vessel, taking care to ensure the latter, but leaving his proper person to the care of an old proverb, respecting hanging and drowning, which I do not quote for half a dozen good reasons, with none of which shall you be troubled at present. The said Mr. Smith richly deserved either or both of these fates, seeing that he had once in his life perpetrated a bad pun, and spent the remainder of his days in repeating it; he weighed about twenty stone, and therefore called himself positive and comparative Smith, "for" said he, "I am at once gross and grocer."

Thirdly, we had a tithe-proctor, of whom I shall have more to say in the 1578th chapter of this history, for which I hope, kind reader, you will have the patience to wait, and if you have not, why, you shall wait whether you like it or not.

Somebody who possessed more sense than is usually found going astray among the children of this perverse generation said, or ought to say, "that all sins committed on sea are pardoned." As for my part, I know of no penance that could atone for crime, of equal severity with a trip across the channel, similar to my own. We were not well out of the river, when -but if ever you were sea-sick you will understand me without the trouble of a description, and if you were not, all the descriptions in the world could not give you even a remote conception of my situation. What a state for a hero! and what a clever fellow Homer was, he begins the Iliad when the Greeks were safely across the Ægean, and thus escapes taking notice of all the unheroic positions, exclamations, and several other ations which took place on the voyage. We went on very well, however, for a great part of the night; but towards morning the wind died away, and our vessel lay as motionless in the middle of the channel as if she had been quietly moored at the quay of Bristol. The internal insurrection which had taken place in my body politic having somewhat abated its violence, I crawled up on deck: the first person I met was Mr. Smith; he addressed me-" Good morrow, sir, the captain here has been joking me about my sickness last night, he was very gross, but then you know I don't mind that, for I am grocer." Oh that an eighteen-pounder had been pointed at his breast, and that I had had a match in the vicinity of the touch-hole! This pun, which had now in my hearing reached the fifteenth edition, had almost re-produced the nausea of the preceding evening; yet I did not knock him down for several reasons, the first of which is, that I should not have been able. Getting rid of him, I walked over to a tarry son of Neptune, who kept ever and anon eyeing the heavens with any thing but a face of satisfaction; “A fine day, friend.” said I; he looked at me with a face of astonishment, such us I shall never see equalled, and then set up a demoniac howl, which appeared intended for a laugh, but which resembled no earthly sound that had ever before reached human ear: at length he replied with a kind of cool contempt, "Asy talking, boy, y'ell have purty weather afore night." The tar had some reason for his remark; before ten o'clock the sky was overcast with a dark scud, and sharp gusts came moaning over the water, like the hypocritical inquisitors who weep before they condemn a victim; at twelve, the wind had risen into a squall, and the silent preparations of the sailors showed that they anticipated danger; at three, the vessel was driving at such a rate, that the passengers were unable to keep the deck, and sought the protection of their cabin; but at seven, "the storm sprite shriek'd in air," or if she did not, I did most lustily in water, which came splashing in over the deck, and thence to the cabin through an uncaulked seam, like the cataract of Niagara. Nobody minded me; all noises were drowned in that of the terrific storm, before which we were driving at a furious rate, without the slightest notion of the course we were pursuing. What a man must suffer for his country! here, before I had even joined my regiment, was I sentenced to endure calamities sufficient to qualify me

Reply to the Foreign Review, on the eloquence of the French bar. 187 for the post of field-marshall; if promotion were proportioned to endurance. To ask whether I was afraid, would be both impertinent and unclassical; you remember that Æneas blubbers through half a score of hexameter verses when a storm overtook him in the Mediterranean, and this too when he had been seven years on sea; and I had not been twice that number of hours. Of the tempest I have but a very indistinct remembrance; there was whistling, creaking, crashing, swearing, tumbling, and rolling, for sixteen hours or thereabouts, after which, things began to grow better very slowly. Towards the middle of the third day 1 got on deck, the sea was still running mountains high, but our brig gallantly topped them like a spirited hunter clearing a hedge. I found the captain and his crew employed in deep consultation, and on inquiry found that they were at a loss to discover their exact position. The tar who had prophesied the storm, was appealed to as an oracle, but his reply was any thing but satisfactory--" If ye'd only but show me the ould head of Kinsale, I'd tell ye where ye are in a twinklin; but divel a bit of me knows one o' these waves from t'other." How the matter was settled I forget, that is, if I ever knew it; a distinction which I would recommend good and honest people to bear in mind, unlike my friend Captain Lewis of the

hussars, who complains that he has forgotten Latin, of which, entre nous, he never knew a syllable; but this I do know, that we got sight of some head or other before evening, and ere I awoke on the following morning, we were lying snugly alongside the quay of Youghal. My description of that town, my reception by my brother officers, and sundry other topics of great interest and importance, must be reserved for the second chapter, which those who read, will know what it contains.

[25.]

REPLY TO THE FOREIGN REVIEW, ON THE ELOQUENCE OF THE FRENCH BAR.

AMONG the topics of continental literature which have been ably treated by that eminent periodical, the "Foreign Review," none will be found more attractive than the article whose title we have prefixed. To the general reader, the pleasing information it conveys, on a subject of which so little had been previously known, must prove exceedingly entertaining; while, to the legal student, it is in the highest degree interesting and instructive. We gratefully acknowledge the satisfaction we have derived from its perusal but it is because we place no slight value on the merit of this periodical, and are conscious of its extensive circulation, that we are the more anxious to correct some glaring mis-statements, and combat what we believe to be its erroneous views. It is to be lamented, that the reviewer has, on shallow grounds, impeached the character of the English bar; boldly asserting that its members have been, on every occasion, the ready tools of arbitrary power, and as we are convinced it never was his intention to mislead the understandings of the living, by traducing the memory of the dead, we are conscious we shall receive the ready tribute of his praise, if, upon satisfactory evidence, we can establish the

historical falsehood of his positions. The passages we hope to confute are the following:

Comparing the Church and Bar of France with the same orders in England, we find the contrast inverted and still more curious. The church, we have said, in France, has been servile, the bar independent; but in England, the church, on those great emergencies, when our laws and liberties were vitally attacked, has stood firmly by 'the nation, while the lawyers have a scandalous notoriety in history, as the ready organs of arbitrary power, in every design against the national liberties. We will refer to one great crisis--that which preceded and ended in the revolution. The judges and crown lawyers declared, that the power of dispensing with the laws was the monarch's indefeasible prerogative. Now, when Feversham went so far as to indulge the savage sport of ordering men to death, while he and his officers drank the health of the king and chief justice Jefferies, to the music of the dying groans of his victims-Who came forward to tell the tyrant that his prisoners were entitled to trial by law, and that his executions were murders?—neither a judge nor a lawyer; but a churchman-the Bishop of Bath and Wells."

After asserting that the lawyers have been notorious for their prostitute servility, ministering to the despotic pedantry of James I., vindicating the dispensing power, and committing every other offence against the liberties of the people, he concludes by saying that "these remarks are essentially retrospective and remote;" so we shall treat them. The eulogium on the church we could pardon; we deny the truth or justice of the sweeping charge against the bar. Observe the sentence-" lawyers have a scandalous notoriety in history, as the ready organs of arbitrary power, in every design against the national liberties." There is no saving clause, no exception whatever. The rashness of this assertion is easily proved, by numerous and striking examples.

Selden flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; his name is honourably perpetuated as the undaunted advocate of constitutional liberty: the Reviewer may remember he published a history of tythes; this we mention because we think the atrocities practised by the Bishops towards Selden forms a good set-off against the villanies of Jefferies. The parliament convoked by James, in 1621, were soon at issue with him on the point of their privileges. Selden lent them the powerful aid of his vast legal and antiquarian knowledge, and spoke so freely against the wicked practices of the court, that he had the honour of being selected as one of the victims to royal resentment. He was, in the reign of Charles, engaged in the impeachment of Buckingham; he was counsel for the immortal Hampden, when he immortalized himself by refusing to contribute to the forced loan; he was one of the eight members imprisoned for not giving security on the question of the Habeas Corpus, and he defended, before the judges, the dignity of Parliament and the rights of Englishmen. Somers, in the seventeenth century, nobly signalized himself by sternly opposing the tyrannical measures adopted in the flagitious reign of Charles; he laboured in the good cause with Algernon Sydney; he defended the sheriffs of London, and, after the accession of James, he continued a resolute opposer of tyranny; he was one, the youngest and the ablest, of the patriotic band of lawyers who zealously defended the seven bishops; he forwarded the glorious revolution, and his critical acuteness was as serviceable in the settlement of the constitution, as his spirited exertions had been instrumental in the acceleration of that mighty event. The name