There being no lethal weapon used, the jury found him guilty with 'extenuating circumstances,' and he only had travaux forcés à vie. He is a lifer. Don't you see his double irons. If he misconducts himself, he has triple ones; and as he can't walk with them, is obliged to lie on the floor of a cell."

"I don't mean the Negro. I mean the other."

"Oh, the Englishman. He's a lifer too. Burglary and attempt to murder too; that's his little affair. It took hard swearing, though, to convict him. He very nearly proved an alibi. Was at a railway-station his counsel protested when he was said to have been at Chaillot. All the eloquence of M. le Procureur Impérial had to be employed to drum a persuasion of his guilt into the heads of the jury. They are so stupid, those juries."

"At Chaillot, did you say?"

"Yes, at Chaillot. It was necessary to prove that he had been at Chaillot; though of course M. le Procureur Impérial could have proved him to have been any where he pleased. A very clever man M. le Procureur Impérial."

"Is he quiet?"

"Yes; il est assez bon diable. He has not yet been punished, although he frequently suffers for the sins of his black friend; for when the negro has triple irons for three days or so, our Englishman has to sit or stand by his side; and when the blackamoor gets the bastinado, which is his pleasant fate about once a month, his comrade has to stand by and look on."

"Horrible!" "Horrible!

Ah, you are but young to the business. You'll soon get all that nonsense out of your head, after you've seen a few more horrible things."

"Is he always chained to that black demon?"

"Always! Death alone can unrivet his manacles. You see, our lambs are never uncoupled save when one dies, or is sentenced to death for killing his brother convict."

"They kill each other, then?"

"Occasionally. C'est une petite distraction; it relieves the monotony of their existence."

"Do they never kill their jailers?"

"Jailers! Oh, you mean us? Bah, it is not a pretty word, jailer! Well, sometimes they murder a garde-chiourme who is fool enough to be looking the wrong way, but that is his own fault. And now, my friend," Le Camus continued, "I think we have seen every thing that is to be seen in the dockyard and the Bagne.to boot. Two of our little institutions you have not witnessed, the infliction of the bastinado and of the guillotine. But you will have time enough to assist at both those ceremonies. We don't trouble the Exécuteur des hautes œuvres of the department when

we have a capital case. premises."

La chiourme keeps a guillotine on its own

They took boat again, and went back to the Bagne. That evening Le Camus was on leave, and he took François Vireloque to a wretched cabaret just outside the dockyard gates, and frequented exclusively by gardes-chiourme. Here Le Sieur le Camus submitted to be treated to several glasses of absinthe, and became convivially conversational.

"You had better enjoy yourself to-night," he said, "for to-morrow you will have to study your livret of duties, and will be examined upon them by M. le Commissaire. Burn M. le Commissaire! I hate him. Yes; I will have yet another pipe and another absinthe. You are a silent fellow, but you are generous. How like an Englishman you

are!"

"I am an Alsatian. I come from Strasbourg," answered François Vireloque.

"Ah, that's half a German, and a German's half an Englishman. By the way, I forgot to tell you that our friend who is chained to the Negro always stoutly protests his innocence. M. le Commissaire even says that he has doubts about his case. I remember once when that wretched black was in trouble, and the Englishman had to keep him company in his cell, that it was my duty to take them their victuals. The Negro was sleeping in his triple irons, the lazy old rascal, and I had some talk with the Englishman. He is not generally very communicative, but that evening I got him to loosen his tongue. I remember well the finish of his conversation. 'Garde-chiourme,' he said, almost solemnly, 'I am the victim of an infernal plot. I am here through the wickedness and the treachery of a she-demon with yellow ringlets, who has been my Evil Genius through life.' What on earth is the matter with you, Brother Vireloque ?" he exclaimed, suddenly stopping in his discourse.

The Lay Brother, the garde-chiourme, had buried his face in his hand, and his head prone to the cabaret-table, was sobbing violently.

VOL. II.

N

A Jovial Bishop.

DOCTRINA facit difficultatem. Polemics, cæteris paribus, when indulged in to too great an extent, are apt to sour one's temper, causing a sour poison of ill-nature to exude from honest and kindly human hearts; and for this, among other reasons, a genuine man of flesh and blood is least himself when wrangling over the musty membra of a mangled logic, and most himself when he sits down to dine his friends and chirrup over his cups, be they filled with Burgundy or Bohea,-or when he muses in his sanctum sanctorum about the "stuff of which our life is made." Yes; bare doctrine is, in more senses than one, the parent of difficulty; and it must dwindle down to insignificance when compared with those homeamenities which visit us in our easy-chairs, sending echoes to the seat where love is throned. The author writes his healthiest words when surrounded by the soft associations of the fireside; he makes his thoughts flow silkenly to the purring of the cat, and measures his syllables by the music of the hissing urn. It is here that the divine, above all men, changes his outward aspect, and sloughs the skin of the over-wise serpent for a comfortable dressing-gown. He is not seldom least skilful with those weapons which the old controversialists fought with so valiantly and bloodily, and which, it is erroneously believed and asserted by many, are his only legitimate weapons. He does much good unprofessionally-exchanging his hard steel stiletto for the liberal and generous gray goosequill, while his fair lady is busy hard by with the tea-kettle and the toasting-fork. In the arena of controversy he is expected to exert himself so valiantly that he is apt to lose courage, to stammer, to "spin the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He is so thoroughly Christian that he dislikes to quarrel; his social life is often less narrow than his stricter orthodoxy. So it very frequently happens that we find the best-natured clerical gentlemen transformed into furies by professional fisticuffs, narrowed down to the limits of the village-pump by parochial prejudices. But separate them from their polemics and their parishes, meet them in the fresh bracing air of general literature, and you will not recognise them as the same individuals. There is in unfettered authorship, as in the cosy domestic parlour and the social gathering, a certain talismanic freemasonry, which unbuttons the stiffest ecclesiastical cassock, and reveals to us the warm human heart throbbing underneath. The mystical sign of brotherhood once exchanged, sectarianism is banished, and each unites with his neighbour to make society the sweeter welcome. The hard blinding dust of life is transformed into grains of golden diction; Bigotry plays Niobe on the bosom of Benevolence; and Dogmatism, stooping down to sip of Aganippe, touches the warm blushing cheek of a Pantheistic Venus! Old enmities tumble voluntarily overboard, like

swine missed after a storm. Jealousy maunders afar, on the hunt for a bishopric. All are united under one heaven, sanctified in one blessed humanity; and there are smiles of love to "put all face-physic out of countenance." In this free spirit, clergymen of all denominations have united to do good work for literature.

"I beg to remind honourable members," quoth a protesting British senator, "that we all owe much to the Jews." I beg to remind the honourable public that we can never repay the debt we owe to those members of the literary clergy who have jotted down stray secular notes for general circulation, while moralising about humanity in their rural homes, and musing "like Tityrus and Melibous under the broad beech-tree." They have given to our literature much of its bonhomie, its wholesome sentiment and muscular vigour; and they have at the same time made their secular pages the vehicle of thoughts holy and ultimately Christian. Quoth parson Herbert, one of their number, a wise man and a pious:

"A verse may catch a wandering soul that flies

Profounder tracts, and, by a blest surprise,

Convert delight into a sacrifice;"

and, for this reason, many of the clergy, when desirous of preaching God, have invited the congregation, not to a mausoleum or a church, but to the mid resting-place on an English Helicon. Thence they can sow honey-seed of doctrine in soil where the beautiful words of the pulpit would be neglected and spring to wormwood. At the same time, we must not undervalue the good done to nations by their tougher theology -a good which springs from polemics slowly but surely, like shaky old Æson renewed in the boiling-pot of Medea. But, to a very large body of the public, their Christianity appears most vividly when separated from controversy and parochialism. The insular spirit which characterises so many of them in England, and which is apt to render their professional duties exclusive and their pamphlets pugnacious, salts their books with an egotism, and spices them with a pungency, which are peculiarly wholesome; and their contributions to general literature are consequently unique and individual. Take the sing-song of Robert Herrick,-the parson of whom I discoursed to the readers of Temple Bar in January last. Take much-abused Swift, or much-misunderstood Sterne. I could continue this catalogue for pages, and rely for names solely on my desultory reading. But, to come nearer to our own time, take the Essays of A. K. H. B., who has lately published two volumes in many respects so admirable.

One of the most loveable divines I ever read of was Richard Corbet, who attacked Puritanism so good-humouredly, when men wore cropped polls, and who is entitled to much respect for his literary productions alone. How many of my fair and gentle readers have heard of this old prelate, and how many of them have read his books? Very few, I am sure, if any, even of those who haunt the reading-room of the British Museum; whence, and from other quarters, I have gathered notes for a

gossip about him and some of his companions. He is better company for a leisure hour than Mr. Tupper the Proverbial Philosopher, if he is worse company for a studious hour than Robert Browning, the kernel of whose dry diction you find so sweet and savoury after you have spent hours in getting at it. Corbet was very orthodox, very English, very humorous, and idiosyncratic; he wrote verses full of trenchant satire and homely vigour. He was no Blougram, though he possessed all Blougram's selfcomplacence and belief in the Mother Church; though, when men were cutting each other's throats for the good of England, Gigadibs and he often passed the bottle together.

I should bore you, fair and gentle reader, by entering into an elaborate narrative of the jovial poet's life. The biography of a divine prominently engaged in public events cannot well be condensed into a moderately short memoir; and for this, among other reasons, although I have at my elbow matter enough to fill a large portion of this Magazine, I will content myself with noting only the prominent and more succinct incidents. Corbet was born in 1582, at the little village of Ewell, in Surrey. His parents were homely quiet people, well-born, and well-to-do in the world. Readers of Ben Jonson's Underwoods-that "box where sweet compacted lie," that casket of fine thoughts and fancies which should be opened oftener-will remember a beautiful and touching epitaph on a certain Master Vincent Corbet, who is described, in more subdued and feeling tones than were wont to issue from the mouth of the burly laureate, as

"A life that knew nor care nor strife,

But was by sweet'ning so his will
All order and disposure still."

This good Vincent Corbet was the father of our bishop; and he appears, if tradition is to be credited, to have been on good terms with the jovial crew who had met at the "Mermaid," the "Devil," the " Three Tuns," and the "Apollo." By this time he had settled down quietly into a good-natured quiet gentleman, rich enough at his death to leave his son an inheritance of freehold lands and tenements, lying in St. Augustine's Parish, Watling Street, London, besides five hundred pounds in money (a good sum in those days), which was to be paid to the heir when he had attained his twenty-fifth year. In common with most of the middle-class children near enough to London to reap the advantage, young Richard received the rudiments of education at Westminster School. He was, in 1599, admitted as a student of Christ's Church College, Oxford. In 1605, six years after his matriculation, he received his degree of Master of Arts, and immediately afterwards became known as a wit who wrote excellent satirical verses.

An anecdote, related among other "Mery Passages and Jestes" which have been handed down to posterity in manuscript, relates to this period. "Ben Jonson was at a tavern, and in comes Bishop Corbet, but not so then, into the next room. Ben Jonson calls for a quart of raw wine,