was rejected by a majority of sixty-five, and Viscount Sackville lived on peaceably, and died on the 26th May, 1785, at Stoneland Lodge, Sussex.

His lordship, it would appear, was an eloquent writer : the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 1785, in commenting on his death, says:—

"The late Lord Sackville, who was a gentleman of extraordinary talent, wrote a beautiful eulogy on the late Princess of Orange, but which never graced the press. The genius, learning, and exalted virtue of the princess were the theme of his lordship's all-powerful pen. The above noble lord and his illustrious relation, Lady Betty Germain, had the art of painting in words to a very eminent degree, and which afforded the finest ornaments in either poetry, history, or elocution. The very animated and beautiful imagery of Cicero, in which he paints the cruelty of Verres, is spoken of with rapture by her ladyship in some of her letters. It is in a letter to the above lady that Dean Swift styled Ireland 'the Isle of Saints,' from the many very pious and eminent men it produced; it was also, he said, the school of wisdom and the seat of knowledge."

Lord Sackville's honours were inherited by his eldest son Charles, second Viscount Sackville, who eventually became fifth and last Duke of Dorset. The only child. and heiress of the first Viscount Sackville's second son, George, is the present Mrs. Caroline Harriet Stafford, of Drayton House, county Northampton, a seat formerly the property of her grandfather, the Lord George of this narrative, whose representative this lady now is.

The dukedom of Dorset is extinct, but one of the

baronies belonging to the family, that of Buckhurst, was, on the 27th of April, 1864, revived by new patent of creation in favour of Elizabeth, present Countess Delawarr, daughter and heiress of John Frederick, third Duke of Dorset, with limitations to her younger sons and their issue male. Thus, oddly, a descendant of the General Lord Delawarr who sat on the court-martial of Lord George Sackville, may be bearing a title which belonged to Lord George's own ducal line.

THE DOCKYARD INCENDIARY, JACK

THE PAINTER.

THE American War was in 1776 at its height, and though some successes were for the moment cheering the spirits of the British Government, it already required but little foresight to see how the contest would end. The revolted colonies, with their declaration of independence, their President and Congress, had virtually become a new empire among the dominions of the world, and France was evidently about to give its aid to their complete establishment. It was just at this period that occurred the following extraordinary and execrable act of felony, the work of a single villain, guided by a kind of morbid enthusiasm and desire of notoriety. That Dr. Franklin, or Silas Deane, or the French Court, had aught to do with the crime is not in the least credible. It was, in a moment of war, the natural though questionable policy of the British Crown and its officers to tinge as much as possible the cause of the enemy. Hence the prisoner's lying accounts of interviews with Mr. Deane, and of other transactions abroad, were skilfully relied upon and allowed to go forth as casting suspicion on the American and French Governments. The incendiary, however, did not support his averments

with one tittle of evidence to inculpate any accomplice high or low, and so, on maturer consideration, thought the British Government and the public; for after the execution of the culprit, no political notice whatsoever was taken of the charges he brought against either America or France. It would, indeed, be an insult to the transcendent fame of Franklin, or the high character of Deane, to for an instant suppose them sharers in such atrocity. The burnings perpetrated by Jack the Painter are to be ascribed to the wretch's malignant nature alone.

To come to the shameful affair itself. A fire had happened in the rope-house at Portsmouth on the 7th December, 1776, and had passed for an accident; and as no suspicion had fallen on any one, no inquiry was made about it, till, on the 15th of January, 1777, Mr. Russell, one of the under-clerks of the dockyard, having occasion to use some hemp in the hemp-house, discovered a tin machine, constructed for holding matches, and in the cavity at bottom spirits of wine. The matches had been lighted, and were nearly burnt out; but the fire had not reached the spirits, the want of air, as it is supposed, having extinguished it before it had its full effect. This left no room to doubt but that the late fire was wilfully and maliciously contrived.

If it had burnt as low as the cross-lines, it would have caught the matches placed on the sides, and would have burnt in four channels down to the spirits, which would have set the whole place in a blaze. The machine was made of tin, except the bottom, which was of wood. It was about the size of a half-pound tea-canister.

The stores in the store-house, which would have been burnt if it had caught fire, were sufficient to have rigged out fifty sail of ships.

It was then that the whole dockyard was alarmed. Some hundreds of workmen were instantly drawn together, and every one looked at his neighbour, convinced that whoever was the contriver of that machine, and had placed it there, was the incendiary.

This called to mind every minute circumstance that had happened previous to the breaking out of the fire on the day mentioned, and it occurred to one that a fellow had been locked into the rope-house the night before; to another, that a man, whose name was unknown, had been seen loitering about the yard on the very day; and to others, that he was a painter and had worked in the neighbourhood, and as he had never been seen there after the fire, a strong suspicion arose that he must be some way or other concerned in the mischief that had already been done, and also in the diabolical design which providentially had been defeated. A singular advertisement was issued, describing the person of the man, and under the name of John the Painter, offering him a reward of £50 to surrender himself to examination, and the same reward to any one who should apprehend him. In the meantime other fires broke out, particularly at Bristol, which could not otherwise be accounted for than by supposing American agents employed to spread fire and devastation throughout the kingdom, wherever their malignant purposes could be executed with effect-an idea that favoured the prejudices of the vulgar, and therefore was the more easily