who is imprudent enough to accept the arm which I sometimes proffer to a member of the fair sex: forgetting what a stumbling creature I have become. Lord Sandwich used to say that he knew a man who walked on both sides of the street at once. Can you understand the process of walking over your own feet? That is what I have done for many years.

Nothing remarkable happened to me in 1874; and I had no adventures. The Daily Telegraph did not think I was strong enough to go to St. Petersburg for the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh with the daughter of the Emperor Alexander II.; but I was present at Guildhall on the 18th of May, when the Tsar was entertained with magnificent hospitality by the Lord Mayor. I had a good deal to do with the International Exhibition at Kensington, which closed in October; but my work was simply so much mechanical business; and I should say that by this time, placable reader, you have had enough of the descriptions of exhibitions, international and otherwise, from my tedious pen. I should also mention that in 1873 my illness prevented me from exercising my usual functions as art critic to the Daily Telegraph at the Exhibition of the Royal Academy; but in 1874 I returned with great glee to that particular branch of my employment as a journalist.

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CHAPTER LIII.

COLLAPSE OF THE CLAIMANT.

Dr. Kenealy's Career-The End of Sir Alexander Cockburn's Summing UpThe Verdict-A Parting Glance from the Claimant.

I HAVE said that nothing of an adventurous kind befell me in 1874; but a tremendously remarkable adventure was, on the 28th of February in that year, the lot of the stout Sphinx of whom I have more than once made mention in these pages. The case for the prosecution of Castro, or Orton, or whoever the strange man may be, had closed late in January. He had been liberated on heavy bail; but the end was coming; and there were very few intelligent people who entertained a doubt as to what the verdict could be. On February the 27th, Edward Lawson wrote to say that he would call for me in Thistle Grove early the next morning, in order that we might go down to the Law Courts at Westminster and see the last of the Claimant. Accordingly, by ten o'clock we gained admission to the crowded court. I was not to see the face of the defendant until some hours afterwards. I was behind him on one of the benches reserved for counsel; but I could see his broad back looming large in the offing like some huge man-of-war hulk moored in ordinary. Close to him sat two or three gentlemen in private clothes, whom I easily recognised as superintendents or

inspectors of police; then I could make out the handsome countenance of Sir John Duke Coleridge, afterwards Lord Coleridge, Chief Justice of England; and in particular could I descry the gold-rimmed spectacles and abundant whiskers of that singularly able, wrongheaded, and unfortunate advocate, Dr. Kenealy.

I call him unfortunate; because Edward Kenealy was a man of immense scholarship, of profound legal erudition, and wide-ranging general attainments, which should have gained him the highest professional rank, and the admiration of his contemporaries; but there was, I should say, a moral "kink in his cable," which led him into extravagances and aberrations, and eventually wrecked the life which should have been valuable to himself and his contemporaries. I had first become aware of him when he was a young barrister in Gray's Inn, and when he wrote in Fraser a noble article on that great Irish scholar, journalist, and wit, William Maginn, LL.D. About 1848 or 1850, Kenealy got into trouble for having chastised, with reprehensible severity, a young boy, his son. The matter was settled somehow without his suffering any imprisonment; and as time wore on the incident was forgotten, and Kenealy did his utmost, by unflagging industry, to redeem the past. He rose steadily in the ranks of his profession, became a Q.C., and was chosen a Bencher of his Inn-one of the Temples I should say. It happened, however, on his promotion to this honourable post, that some evil-minded, illconditioned, cantankerous, and of course anonymous,

scribbler, raked up the old story of his having mercilessly beaten the boy at his chambers in Gray's Inn. I took up the cudgels in defence of a man who was clearly entitled to claim the benefit of a moral Statute of Limitations; and pointed out, in an article published I forget where, how much the new Bencher of his Inn had done, not only in his own vocation, but by his brilliant writings, to increase the sum of knowledge and culture. Kenealy expressed himself as deeply grateful for my defence of him; and he sent me a copy of a work he had just published, entitled "Goethe: a New Pantomime," which, so far as I can recollect, was a violent attack on the ethics of the author of "Faust." On the title-page of his book, he wrote an inscription to myself, full of flattering expressions; but as the Claimant's case wore on, and Kenealy had accepted the position of counsel for the defence, I had to write somewhat strongly on the matter in the Daily Telegraph. Dr. Kenealy became aware that I was the writer of the articles; and for some months he pursued me, whenever he had the chance, with the most virulent abuse, his favourite allusion to me being to call me "Sala the Spotted Dog." Why he should have coupled me with the highly respectable tavern in question-which, by the way, to the best of my knowledge, I never set foot in-passes my comprehension; but in all probability he confused the interesting hotel in Holywell Street, the "Old Dog," with the Spotted Dog" in the Strand hard by. Abuse never ruffled my temper for more than ten minutes, nor did me, as I have already

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hinted, a halfpenny worth of harm; and at present I can very deeply sympathise with Dr. Kenealy's family; nor have I lost one iota of my thorough appreciation of his great natural capacity, and his equally great scholarly attainments.

The Tichborne trial-I have no reason to believe that he had himself the slightest doubt that the Claimant was really Sir Roger Charles Tichborne-was the ruin of Edward Kenealy. His intemperate utterances led to his being cashiered as a Bencher of his Inn, and to his being ultimately disbarred. He got into Parliament for some borough in the Potteries, and it should not be forgotten, as an illustration of the singularly noble and high-minded character of John Bright, that when the new M.P. came to the table to be sworn, the only Member who came forward to act as his sponsor was Mr. Bright. His action was, I take it, as courageously dignified as that of Horace Greeley when he offered to stand bail for Jefferson Davis.

We heard the last of Sir Alexander Cockburn's summing up. I can see the great Judge pushing his wig a little off his high forehead, when, turning to the jury, he asked them with just a tone of irony in his beautifully musical voice, what they were to think of a defendant who did not even know the name of his own mother. The jury retired. I have not the least idea as to the length of time they were absent from the court; but I remember the dead silence which all at once succeeded the buzz of conversation when the "twelve honest men" resumed their places.