"Lady Drummond," he exclaimed, in a tone of some little vexation," why is not Miss Stuart here to-night? I can never win a game of Mr. unless she is here. I wish you would always ask her and her aunt."

After that, the then queen of my affections was a more constant visitor at these evening parties; and two or three times a week, Sir William got the better of me at chess. But pleasant as were those little social reunions, and pleasant as were the dinner parties at this house, where I met all that was most distinguished amongst the natives or the travelling English, Lady Drummond was celebrated to the Neapolitan world at large for the magnificence of her balls, which collected all the élite of the society of the place. At these, some of the royal family were generally present; for as Sir William Drummond had been ambassador of England to the King of Naples during his exile in Sicily, he was still looked upon as an old friend and member of the corps diplomatique. And yet he told me that he had more than once been in temporary disgrace for refusing to participate in King Ferdinand's all engrossing passion for the chase.

"At my first visit to one of his country houses in Sicily," he said, "all the court went to bed at ten o'clock. I could not go to bed at ten; so I sat in my apartment reading till long after midnight. At five o'clock on the following morning, in rushed my valet with his Majesty following at his heels, ready booted, and calling upon me to come out and shoot wild boars. I was obliged to dress in a hurry, and, unshaved and almost unwashed, to stand near him in a wood all day shooting black pigs! I took care to receive despatches from England in the evening which recalled me to Palermo."

With a feeling of "Auld lang syne," the Duke of Salermo, or the Duchess of Florida, or some other member of the royal family, was often a guest at the Lady Drummond's balls. On these occasions, my Helen being in the dancing-room, I need scarcely say that I generally shirked the chess-board, which was always set out in a quiet corner; unless, indeed, some person of eminence was hovering near whom my little vanity would like to have a witness of the conflict and, as I hoped, of my triumph. Thus the Duc de Blacas, late Minister of Louis XVIII., came often to sit beside us, and told how he used to play, and of the moves he made with "le roi, mon maitre—the king my master."

Sir William Gell, also, the author of the topographical inquiries into ancient Rome and Pompeii, would sometimes come and sit near us. What a pleasant man I thought him! He used to attend our little social parties as well as these balls, and always brought life and animation with him. And yet he was,

or said he was, generally ill of the gout, and used to drop into an easy chair, and call upon some one of the party to come and sit by him, and say, qualche cosa d'amabile-something pleasant" to him. He used to complain of the sufferings his gouty feet had undergone when he was in attendance on our English Queen Caroline, and had to stand for hours behind her seat at the opera or elsewhere. He was a tall, square-built man of about fifty-five years of age, with a handsome face, bushy whiskers, and easy and most agreeable manners.

Sir William Gell saw more in Pompeii than any one else. All antiquaries in the pursuit of their favourite study are apt to run after Edri Ochilltrea's ladle.* Pompeii, after all, was but a small provincial town, although the beauty of its situation was such as to induce wealthy Romans to have villas near it. But it must always have been considered a place of danger, as nearly a century before the first recorded eruption, both Vetruvius and Strabo mention Vesuvius as an extinct volcano, and the very buildings themselves are composed of ancient lava. This fact is as completely overlooked by our tourists and bookmakers as was the buried town itself by the Norman and Spanish sovereigns; for it was never excavated until the reign of Murat --although parts of it had always cropt out above the superincumbent ashes.

Lady Drummond had always two bands of music at her balls: a Neapolitan and a German band; the latter for us waltzers. I do not think that the Neapolitans considered their military music any compensation for the occupation of their country by the Austrians: but it was very delightful: and although my adored refused to waltz, (and I adored her the more for it), I myself loved to rush from the chess-table to the magic circle and to spin round amid the square elbows of the white-jacketted Austrian officers, or the more loose and degagés élégants of Italy or France, or the blundering automatons from England.

Across the supper-table at one of these balls (it was on Easter Sunday: English Protestants do not object to balls on Sunday abroad), across the supper-table at one of these balls, I saw Sir William Gell lean and address an elderly lady on the opposite side of the table, whom we all knew to be as deaf as a post. He held in his hand a decanter of Madeira, and motioned as though he would help her from it while he exclaimed, "Lady Douglass, will you marry me?"

"No, thank you," quietly replied the poor deaf old woman,

See Scott's Antiquary.

quite innocent of the question addressed to her: “No, thank you. I would rather take champagne."

Could she have given a better answer?

Sir William Drummond considered that he had a claim to be Duke of Perth, and that the title was withheld from him on account of his heterodox religious principles. It is well known that all dukes are orthodox. English orthodoxy for English dukes and Scotch orthodoxy for Scotch dukes. Church and state knows no heterodoxy, excepting that which is not by law established.

About this time the old King Ferdinand-the hero of the "black pigs"-il nasone che ci dona maccaroni, as the Lazzari say of him-died, amid the execration of his subjects. Sir William Drummond, whose connexion with the court would not allow him to join in the opinions uttered around, attempted to justify him by the excuse always made in England for fools:"He was so very good natured!" Good nature is a poor palliative for perfidy, cruelty, revenge, unwarranted despotism, and the neglect of all the duties of a sovereign. However he died; and I saw him embalmed and lying in state and buried, after a grand procession to which the managers of it had forgotten to invite the clergy! But I saw a more curious sight still. I saw the coronation of his son Francis and of his Queen, on the stage of the theatre of San Carlo. It was managed thus: they all went in state to the Royal Box; we, the audience, were in court dresses: the actors sang a poem in honour of their Majesties; and then a curtain was drawn up and showed pasteboard figures of their said majesties and royal family, painted in the exact resemblance of each one, sitting on thrones on the stage, while actresses, personating the different towns of the kingdom, knelt around and presented their homage and the keys of their gates. Then, from the heavens above, descended two pasteboard angels, and held a wreath of laurel over the head of the painted sovereign; while the audience applauded with rapture and the King and Queen (the real ones) looked through their opera glasses from the box to see how their representatives on the stage bore their blushing honours!

The gentle reader may be still more astonished when I inform him that all this ceremony was enacted because (since the conquest of the kingdom of Naples by the Normans) the country has been held by its sovereigns as a fief under the Pope, and because when crowned they have to own themselves to be vassals of his Holiness. Hence are they only crowned in pasteboard, and the humiliation, as they deem it, is avoided. I thought that King Francis looked as though he would be like his father, which my friend called-" very good-natured."

Sir William Drummond died at Rome in the spring of 1829. In the autumn of that year, I was again in the Villa Reale at Naples. Lady Drummond was still there on her old beat; her nephew, Stewart, at her side. Both have died since then. My youthful flame, who had dwindled down to a pleasant boyish recollection, had disappeared: married, I was told, to a German officer. I take it for granted that she, too, like most of those I have known in former years, is dead. Naples, dear to me from my youth, became more than ever endeared to me at this visit. And heedless of those who had fallen or were falling before and around me, I received from God his most choice blessing, and thought myself invulnerable in the happiness awarded to me. Happy, happy years! how swiftly have ye fleeted by since then! But

"She is gone-she, too, is gone."

"How strange it is to think that it is all over!" said a dying mother to me. It is, perhaps, more strange to feel oneself gradually moving from the stage; to see the curtain gradually dropping between oneself and the outer world; while those who were actors with us before it withdraw, one by one, to that " " where waves the long grass over the green-room undulating ground and the tall nettles and thistles grow rank; where the wind whistles but the light grows dim under the spreading boughs of the old yew trees; and where the only sun that shines is the blessed cross upon the grave stone, ever proclaiming to us that

"Love and Hope and Beauty's bloom

Are blossoms gather'd for the tomb—
There's nothing bright but heaven."

[We much regret that press of matter obliges us to defer, until next month, the notice and interesting correspondence of Bishop Baines.

Our kind correspondents would very much oblige us if they would send their communications to us earlier in the month.— EDIT. CATH. MAG. & REG.]

VOL. XI.

Y

302

THE DIARY OF MARTHA BETHUNE BALIOL.

WRITTEN AT THE REQUEST OF HER BELOVED GRANDMOTHER, THE LADY BETHUNE OF LINCLUDEN: COMMENCED THE 1ST DAY OF SEPTEMBER, 1753.

THE first day of September.-My beloved grandmother having left Mount Baliol at 8 o'clock a. m., to visit our good friends and cousins the Græmes of the Knowe, has requested of me to note down all that may occur during her absence, and to acquaint her of the same on her return.

At eight o'clock this morning our coach departed, carrying in it the lady of Lincluden-our pretty kinswoman Jean Cumyn, and a favourite gaze-hound of the name of Speed! Her own woman also accompanied her; Roger drove the four black Flanders mares, and his son John, and a groom of my brother were the outriders; my brother praised Roger for the sleek appearance of his horses, but whispered to me he would have the coach newly painted for me ere we go to Edinburgh, where we are to pass the winter. I assured him that the coach that did for my grandmother, would suffice for me, whereat he laughed, and called me "a demure mouse." Truly he is an excellent brother! Ere my dear grandmother departed, she gave me a beautiful piece of rose-coloured taffetas. She has also installed Alice Lambskin to be my woman, and to have the charge of my laces; and expressed a hope that she would prove as faithful as her mother was, who served in our family upwards of forty years.

Alice tells me that there is sufficient taffetas to make me a sacque and negligé, which, with my cap of Flanders lace which my brother gave me, will, I am told, be a very becoming dress toappear in on my birth-day, the 17th.

The henwife came to tell me that the tod had taken two fat

hens and a green goose. I ordered her to tell the keeper and ranger to come to me, and told them that I marvelled how this might be, if they attended to their master's interest; whereat the ranger muttered, That if Tib would not go sae aften to the Clachan, the tod would not get her beasts;" but I sharply desired him not to prate, but to attend to his own affairs.

66

Memorandum.-To tell my grandmother this matter on her return, and also what Ringwood said about Tib.

My brother went out hunting soon after the departure of my grandmother, and brought home two fine stags; one was a stag royal. I ordered Ringwood to preserve the horns of it for the