the sight of happiness in others. He loved his wife, and was fond of his children, with the young circle they brought about them, and was thus rather apt to hospitality, and meetings of relations, or the presence of any old brother officer whatever. He had also a notion of still compensating for early defects of education by reading; he had offered no obstacle to his eldest son Francis studying for the church; but he had meant that Charles, the younger, should not follow his own profession without such knowledge of military science, such familiarity with the history of campaigns, and such acquaintance with models of generalship, as should at once instruct himself, and better qualify his boy for the career he chose. So that many images of the most attractive kind had sparkled before him as he paced the room, only to be scattered; and if he yet remained tranquil-nay, sanguine -it was because aware that the work had begun, without in any way detracting from the future, or from obligations to the past.

It was as he sat down that his mind reverted to the singular paper found amongst his brother's confused documents. He took it from his pocket-book and read it again, chiefly to fix on memory the defined provisions for servants or acquaintances, which the lawyer had already taken note of, with charge for their fulfilment. The principal piece of manuscript only struck him with some painful emotion, as a strange symptom of warmth in that heart, now cold, which had so long lost the guidance of a clear brain. It did indeed revive his recollection of perhaps the chief folly in his brother's life, well enough known to the family, as necessarily to Mr Hesketh; it had been the cause, probably, of every subsequent imprudence, and of all that gloomy disappointment which could afterwards but turn for its solace to field sports and jovial riot. It was not of the oncerumoured kind, from any unsuccessful suit in rivalry with a brother, but a mad runaway marriage (when still plain Mr John Willoughby, of sporting reputation) with a beautiful young actress, passionately admired by him, as by others like him; and the shocking event which had destroyed

both his wife and her child, when the house was burnt during his short absence from Paris, though never afterwards spoken of by himself, had been announced in the French newspapers of the day, from the procès-verbal of the police. A mystery had indeed hung over it, to Colonel Willoughby in particular: not that there could be a doubt of their death, to which the slightest allusion had absolutely convulsed Sir John, when they two first met, years afterwards, nor could there have been any object or reason for deception nay, Sir John, in answer to a formal legal question, at his succession to the estate and title, had solemnly stated his distinct knowledge that he had no lawful heir of his body living. The claim fell, stripped of its baronetage, after the Colonel himself, to cousins, the children of their younger sister, with another name altogether. And it might have been but a bewildered mingling of times and persons, when feverish from excess, or perhaps the dread of some imposition, which could yet scarcely occur to the wildest brain, that had secretly prompted this odd expedient to the late baronet.

It was quite a different recollection, known only to himself, that troubled Sir Godfrey; nor had that any bearing on his mere interests as a proprietor or holder of a title. Amongst the persons involved in that fatal accident at Paris had been his brother's valet, a young German or Swiss, previously in his own service in the regiment, with so much fidelity and usefulness, that when the young man purchased his own discharge to avoid going abroad, Captain Willoughby had left him with the strongest recommendations to his brother. Yet years after the event, in the thick of the American Revolution, when thinking of no one less, had Colonel Willoughby for a moment imagined that by the flash of fire from the muskets of his men, against a crowd of colonial militia, he saw the very features of this servant, his heavy forehead, light blue eyes, and broad chin, only changed by a yellow beard. It seemed a fancy of the most absurd kind; yet it clung to him, recurring with each thought of either event: he never breathed it, yet the more was it like

the hint of some disagreeable mystery, some inscrutable circumstance, or hidden plot and disguise, of which he himself might have been the innocent occasion, so that its vile instrument might yet hover near him by the mere attraction of his name. His good sense, however, showed him that, in eighteen years since the occurrence, no fact had ever transpired to corroborate such a notion; and he ceased to think of it, only refolding the paper, and returning it carefully to his pocket-book, as well as the small private memorandum which referred to the French banker, and to the little pension of Suzanne Deroux, 48 Rue Chrétienne, l'île-de-Cité.

Now it was natural that his lawyer, as he was driven from Stoke Gate, had thought of the same curious document, with far greater inquisitiveness, though with less satisfactory results. Sitting bolt upright by himself in the chaise, Mr Hesketh might have been seen to peer sharply back at Stoke Manor, where it rose through leafless woods, smoking faintly and heavily; the snow just mottling its many dark old roofs, and the icicles hanging by its fretted timber eaves, to make them still richer; yet with no glitter in the frosted panes of its broad old-fashioned casements, many-framed, and filling at intervals the whole face of some projecting gable-the mullioned panellings of the lower window, in sumptuous Tudor fashion, or the brassy outward gleam of its red-stained oriel in the library, looking indeed picturesque -while through the grey, motionless air, down from immensity, came wandering and wafting the large snowflakes, like feathers of sheltering wings. His cold eye lit as he gazed at it, but only at its look of substance, its grand remnants of old timber, its ample park. Then drawing deliberately in, he reclined back, and with his small grey eyes behind their large cold goldtrimmed glasses, keenly and secretly, saw food for meditation all the way. Mr Hesketh was acute of hearing, too, as of eye; nor did the spruce clerk, on the dickey above, venture to converse above his breath with the grave driver. They merely exchanged significant looks, and as the vehicle drew on to Exeter, the young man seemed ever and anon endeavouring, by va

rious pantomime, to convey to passing acquaintance that the lawyer was within.

As for Stoke Manor, it was soon vacant; left to the care of the housekeeper, the old butler, and a couple of under-servants. The hounds were

sold off; so also the horses, save two which Sir Godfrey took along with him. The lodge was kept by the gardener, who might have found it a sinecure, but for his having the whole grounds to mind, added to his own young children, whose mother worked all day at the Hall. Welsh Will, the dog-keeper, went to live in the village, croaking and grumbling, because he had a good-for-nothing wife, who wasted his pension; he croaked and grumbled also against a bad surgeon, a bad lawyer, and a bad parson, of whom, however, no one could ever hear the names from him. There was something always odd about Welsh Will; he had had an undutiful son too, though not by his present wife, it seemed,-about whom he often talked, because he had broken his indentures at Mr Hesketh's office in Exeter, years before, and run away; though Will had expected great things of him, and got him there to be out of idleness, through his master's good word. It was a thing that had hitherto seemed to grieve him little, till he came back to his wife. And Mr Hesketh one day suddenly questioned him on the point; but the late huntsman was sullen as a whipped hound, and as close. He gave surly answers, and knew nothing of his lad now, but that the lawyer had taken him to break his spirit, because Sir John had had a bitter spite at the boy for taking partridge eggs. If old Sir John had had as bad a huntsman, he said shrewdly afterwards in the Royal Oak, as one he could name was a lawyer-many a fox, whose brush he could show, would never have been uncovered, much less run to earth. Finally, in the spring, he went off himself from his pension, and was said to have taken to rat and mole catching, then to have turned travelling tinker.

The rector, too, began to sink. The whole place acquired a lazy, weedy, dreamy look, that spread about to Stoke village, partly to Deanstoke,— as soon, at least, as the farmers, who

had quite expected higher rents under lawyer Hesketh, learnt his inclination to leniency: though he was firm at present against granting fresh leases.

And the Manor House had a melancholy aspect the emptiness made its windows gloomily mysterious; it gave the house a great spectral air, like a ghost itself, when through the Janu

ary woods it rose fronting the blast, amidst tossing boughs and the last leaves still flying. The impression almost fixed itself, even while summer embowered it from sight, that an uncommon secret, yet to be known, lay hidden in Stoke Manor. As for the family, they were already established in Paris, by the time the winter had passed away.

THE military history of the world scarcely affords episodes more interesting than are to be found in the long and sanguinary struggles between the Venetian and the Turk. At the present day, when we behold Turkey, fallen in the scale of nations, indebted for existence to foreign support, we look back as upon a dream or a fable to a time when her power was perilous to Christendom, when the most puissant nations of Europe were fain to league together to repel her encroachments, whilst others, adopting a less hardy resolve, courted her alliance, and even purchased tranquillity by tribute to the Infidel. Venice, the geographical position of whose dominions rendered her one of the first objects of the Turk's ambition, and peculiarly exposed her to his assaults, held a very unequal conduct in the contests that occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We find her alternately waging heroic warfare, and accepting shameful peace, on terms that lost her nearly all the points of her costly contests and not unfrequent victories. Her island possessions in the eastern Mediterranean had become, by Turkish conquests on the European and African continents, the advanced posts of the Christian world-posts perilously situated, and which could be secured to her only by maritime superiority. Corfu, Cephalonia, Zante, Candia, and, still farther east, at short distance from the Syrian shore, the

beautiful isle of Cyprus, all required strong garrisons and strict vigilance to protect them from the attacks, often sudden and treacherous, of the Turks, to whom it was a constant eyesore to behold the banner of the Cross waving within sight of their coasts. After Venice, Spain was the maritime power that had most to fear from the aggressive and invading policy of Mahomet's successors. Her Italian and African possessions, especially Naples and Sicily, could hardly be considered safe -if not from conquest, at least from great molestation-at a time when the Grand Seignior, having seized upon Rhodes and grievously assaulted Malta, displayed his Crescent flag at the gates of Rome and Marseilles, sheltering under it numerous galleys and whole fleets of corsairs, who captured ships in the very Tiber's mouth, and into whose Infidel hands a pope once nearly fell. Under Mahomet II., Bajazet II., and Selim I., surnamed the Ferocious, the Turkish power made immense strides. Bajazet invaded the dominions of Venice, and obtained from the republic by treaty, in exchange for the island of Cephalonia, the important fortresses of Lepanto, Modon, Coron, Durazzo, and Navarino. By the conquest of Egypt and subjection of the Mamelukes, Selim inherited the tribute paid by the Venetians for the free navigation of the Nile. But it was under Soliman, styled the Magnificent, that the Ottoman power made enormous

progress, both in the north, where Belgrade fell, and in the south, where Rhodes became Turkish. This was not a brilliant period of Venetian history. During Soliman's reign, in the year 1540, a humiliating peace was concluded between Venice and the Porte. By this treaty, besides the payment of an exorbitant sum, the republic gave up several Albanian ports, and most of the Venetian islands in the Archipelago. These onerous and shameful terms were acceded to by Venice almost without a blow having been struck, and at a time when she had the support of the Emperor Charles V., and of the Pope, who had formed a league with her against the Porte. There then was evidently little of that determined spirit in her councils which, a century later, supported her through the glorious war for the possession of Candiaa desperate struggle, illustrated by countless heroic deeds, and during which a Venetian fleet was seen to blockade the Dardanelles, whence the Turkish ships dared not attempt to issue forth. In 1540, a far meeker and less honourable spirit guided the chiefs of the republic. Almost at the first clash of arms they sought peace, and, freed at heavy cost from their unworthy apprehensions, they suffered their country to sink into inaction. For thirty years Venice remained inert and declining. During that long slumber, nothing was done to reform her institutions, or increase her resources; her fleet and army were neglected, as were also the necessary fortifications of her coasts and islands. This was notably the case with Cyprus, a rich and valuable possession, whose remote position relatively to Venice should of itself alone have suggested the necessity of a strong guard and many precautions. The island was well worth keeping, for it produced great abundance of corn, saffron, sugar, cotton, and fruits, although, under the Venetian sway, historians affirm that more than three-fourths of its superficies were uncultivated. As for its defences, its military posts were neglected, the fortifications of its towns were suffered to decay, and a force of seven hundred cavalry, established for the guard of its coast, was allowed to dwindle to one hundred wretched

horses. The unprotected condition of the island was well known at Constantinople, and Soliman's son and successor, Selim II., surnamed El Mest, or the Drunkard, coveted Cyprus, and formed plans for its conquest.

It is at this period of history, about the year 1568-9, that Señor Rosell commences a volume to which a crown was unanimously awarded by the Spanish Royal Academy of History, and which, as well by the research it displays as by the manner of its execution, certainly does great credit to its author. In Spain the appearance of works of this class is now exceedingly rare. There are few readers in that country at the present day, and very few writers whose names are worthy of mention. Literature of all kinds is much neglected, and the few books published consist chiefly of third-rate poetry and plays, and of translations from the French and English. Good historical works are seldom produced, and that of Señor Rosell may be looked upon almost as an event. He has made excellent use of the works of a host of writers, chiefly Spanish and Italian, many of them contemporaries of, some of them sharers in, the battle of Lepanto; of the Coleccion de documentos inéditos of Messrs Navarrete, Salvá, and Baranda, and of papers and correspondence existing in the National Library of Madrid, and in the archives of Siman

cas.

The general interest of his book is heightened by the many characteristic traits and anecdotes he has introduced, and the style in which it is written induces a regret that a language so well suited to the narration of stirring events and martial exploits should not be more frequently employed for that purpose by those whose native tongue it is.

The profound peace existing between Venice and the Porte at the time of Selim's accession, was no obstacle to his designs upon Cyprus; so long as his object was gained, he cared little about the justice of his cause. If scruples he had, which is unlikely, he quieted them by a singular chain of reasoning. Venice had received Cyprus as a gift from Catharine Cornaro, daughter of a Venetian, and widow of a king of that island. But this king was a usurper, who had dis

possessed his sister of the crown; and thus, although the republic had for eighty years been undisputed mistress of Cyprus, Selim maintained that she had no legitimate right to its possession. Moreover, he looked upon the Venetians as feudatories of his own, since they paid him various tributes, and did homage to him as successor of the Soldan of Egypt. But he had probably no need of thus excusing to himself the prosecution of an enterprise whose success would in some degree obliterate the stain cast upon the Moslem arms by their repulse at Malta, whilst it would give him a welcome addition to his dominions in the shape of a fertile island situated in the very midst of them. Some historians have set down amongst the thirsty monarch's motives his great fondness for the famous Cyprus wine, but it is unnecessary to seek trivial in centives, when so many more potent naturally present themselves. Whilst pondering his plans, an unexpected event facilitated their execution, and induced him to accelerate it. In the night of the 13th September 1569, a terrible explosion and shock roused Venice from her slumbers. It was succeeded by a universal shriek of terror, as the Venetians sprang from their beds, and hurried out of their houses, believing in an earthquake. The evil was not so great. Fire had broken out in the arsenal, and the powdermagazine had exploded. The first alarm over, measures were taken to extinguish the flames, and were speedily successful. The explosion was heard at a distance of thirty miles; four churches were in ruins, and various edifices suffered more or less, but few persons perished, and only four of the galleys in the arsenal were lost. Report exaggerated the disaster; it was said that the whole Venetian fleet had been destroyed, and that a multitude of nobles and citizens had perished. Selim heard and believed this, and redoubled the activity of his warlike preparations, getting together troops, provisions, and ammunition, and stimulating by his presence the arming of galleys and founding of cannon in the arsenal at Constantinople. Whilst

concealing these measures as far as possible from the ambassador of the republic at his court, he ordered his cruisers to capture, upon futile pretexts, all the Venetian merchantmen they fell in with. This might have sufficed to open the eyes of the government of Venice, but they remained strangely blind, until the repeated warnings of their ambassador, and the positive information he sent, forcibly dispelled their illusion, and filled them with anxiety and alarm. Seeking to repair by activity their want of foresight, they hastily adopted various extraordinary means of raising money, selling state property to the amount of three hundred thousand crowns, imposing a contribution on the clergy, putting up to auction the high office of procurator, eight of which places were sold for twenty thousand ducats each, and permitting a number of young nobles to purchase seats in the grand council. A fleet was equipped, consisting of 136 galleys, eleven galeas, or larger vessels of the class specially known as Venetian galleys, fourteen ships, and some transports and smaller vessels, and was put under the orders of the cavaliero Jeronimo Zanne, procurator of St Mark's, whilst Sforza Palaviccino took command of the land forces. This done-and it was all that the penury of the treasury permitted to be done-Venice sought, through the Pope, the assistance of the Catholic princes of Europe. The days were gone when all nations courted the alliance of the Queen of the Adriatic, and beheld in it an assurance of triumph it was now her turn to supplicate, and her fate to meet refusals. France had little or no fleet, and was on terms of amity with the Turk; moreover, she was distracted by internal dissensions. The Huguenots, under Condé and Coligny, pressed the Catholics hard; Catherine of Medicis assured the Pope and the Venetians of her good wishes, but could afford them no aid. From England nothing was to be expected, since its sovereign was then Elizabeth, a greater enemy to Rome, says a writer of that time, than the Turks themselves.* More might be hoped