Captain W. Cuming, of the Prince of Wales, was asked by Sir Robert Calder:

Q. As you were near my person during the whole time of the action of the 22nd, was any part of my conduct to be attributed to fear, or a want of zeal for his majesty's service?

A. Most certainly not.

Court.-Captain Cuming, what number of the British ships appeared to you, on the morning of the 24th, incapable of sailing in line-of-battle or order of sailing?

A. I imagine the whole, except the Windsor Castle, might have been formed in line-of-battle.

Q. If the Windsor Castle had been taken in tow, considering the relative situation of the two fleets, could the British squadron have renewed the action on the 24th, the enemy declining so to do?

A. Certainly not.

Q. Did the vice-admiral decline the action, either on the 23rd or 24th, if the enemy had been inclined to renew it?

A. He did not.

Sir R. Calder.-Mr. President, I conceive Captain Cuming to be the only person competent to speak to the question I put to him, or I should have no difficulty in submitting the same to every captain in the fleet.

Notwithstanding this testimony, and to the surprise of most present and the public generally, the court came to an adverse decision. Its judgment was this:

"The court is of opinion, that the charge of not having done his utmost to renew the said engagement,

and to take or destroy every ship of the enemy, has been proved against the said Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder, that it appears that his conduct has not been actuated either by cowardice or disaffection, but has risen solely from error in judgment, and is highly censurable, and doth adjudge him to be severely reprimanded; and the said Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder is hereby severely reprimanded accordingly."

The Gentleman's Magazine of the time thus records the effect of this judgment upon Calder:

"Upon the sentence being pronounced, Sir Robert Calder appeared deeply affected—he turned round, and retired without a word. He was accompanied by a great number of friends, and, on descending from the deck of the Prince of Wales into his barge, scarcely lifted up his head, which was apparently bowed down by the weight of the sentence upon him. He is in his sixtieth year; forty-six of which he has passed in the service

of his country."

This judgment of the court-martial has been since, by most naval writers, looked on, if not as quite erroneous, at least as extremely severe. One circumstance made people the more regret it. It was passed at the very time when there lay, encircled by a halo of victory, in Greenwich Hospital, awaiting a State ceremonial, the dead body of Nelson, who before he himself annihilated at Trafalgar the very admirals and some of the very vessels Calder encountered, had openly approved of Calder's conduct. The public soon veered in Sir Robert's favour, and the sentence did not prove popular. It was spoken against in Parliament, and it was

everywhere felt that a true and valuable British commander had been hardly dealt with. Restitution was subsequently proferred to Calder in the appointment, which he accepted, of admiral in command at Plymouth. But the trial broke his spirit, and it was remarked that henever was the same energetic man again. His amiability, social manners, and sound good sense, however, lasted to his death, and during his final retirement he continued to experience the greatest respect and attention not only from the Admiralty, but from a host of friends and from persons of all rank and station. He died at Holt, near Bishops-Waltham, Hants, on the 31st Aug. 1816; and as he left no issue by his wife, Amelia, daughter of John Mitchell, Esq., of Bayfield, Norfolk, his own baronetcy became extinct. The baronetcy of his family, however, continues, and is now held by his nephew, Sir Henry Roddam Calder, the fifth Bart. of Muirtoune.

TRIAL OF

GENERAL SIR ROBERT WILSON

AND OTHERS FOR THE ESCAPE OF

LAVALLETTE.

ONE of the most wonderful historic events that occurred on the second Restoration of the Bourbons, in 1815, was the escape from his condemned cell of Marie Chamant, Count de Lavallette, through the means of his devoted wife, Emile Louise, daughter of the Marquis of Beauharnais, niece of the Empress Josephine, and cousin in blood of Napoleon III. This escape was not without parallel, for, just one hundred years before, by a similar act of heroism, a wife, the Countess Winifred, of the noble and illustrious house of Herbert, daughter of William, Marquis of Powis, freed her husband, William Maxwell, fifth Earl of Nithsdale, from the Tower of London, where he lay under sentence of immediate death for joining in the Rising of 1715. It is a curious fact that in either case some suspicion has attached to the Sovereign then reigning of not being altogether uncognisant of, or adverse to, the successful attempt at issue. George I., satiated with Jacobite blood, and not so intent on

punishment as his Government and adherents, may not have secretly connived, but certainly did evince satisfaction, at the happy result of Lady Nithsdale's daring act. "It is," he exclaimed, "de very best ting a woman can do for a man in his condition." A still stronger notion exists, to the honour of Louis XVIII., that a hint, if not actual help, as to what Madame Lavallette was to do, came from him. The fury of the supporters of the House of Bourbon at the second Restoration was without control. Labédoyère had been executed; and that still worse piece of cruelty, a deed never forgotten by the public, and eventually fatal to the Bourbon dynasty, had been just consummated-the consignment to a traitor's death of Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave." France already murmured; and it is natural to suppose that Louis's own good sense and humanity revolted at continuing such slaughter. He dared not, such was the violence of his party, openly interfere; but one cannot carefully read the whole affair of Lavallette without being struck with some circumstances in it. How was it, for example, that Louis XVIII., after refusing to see Mesdames Labédoyère and Ney, come to beg their husbands' lives, admitted Madame Lavallette on the same errand, to a personal and private interview, where but little ever transpired of what passed? How was it that the gaoler, without bribe, acted so glaringly in Lavallette's favour? How, too, did Lavallette live so long sheltered in the Foreign Office? And how was it that the party who harboured him was never brought to account? Then there were the lenient sentence passed on Wilson and his associates, and finally, the ready par