creatures, while, nevertheless, they extol him as a demigod, scout the idea of his cowardice, talk of his expected suicide as a bétise, contend that Paris was sold, and his beaux plans for its defense defeated only by Marmont's treachery and Joseph's drunkenness, and own their highest obligation to him for their present exemption from civil war.

"The speculation as to his future destiny is the most curious possible: it happens that all France can boast of is connected with his name, and that all the inconveniences arising from his mighty projects only began to be felt in the time of his successors, who have the further disadvantage of appearing to be forced on the nation by his old rival, England. Notwithstanding all this, I feel pretty confident the Bourbons will stand their ground."

Denman's fondness for theatrical representations has already been mentioned: it was indulged to the full during his short stay in France.

"You know me well enough," he writes, "to be sure that I have lived in the theatres. We were fortunate at Rouen in the occasional visit of Madlle. Duchesnois, the first tragic actress of the Théâtre Français, and in the world, I believe, whom I saw as Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, Adelaide, in Gaston, and in a new Bourbon play called the 'Retour d'Ulysse,' containing the line,

bénissent l'heureux jour

Qui rend, après vingt ans, un père à leur amour,2

which was rapturously applauded, and lastly, in 'Les Horaces' of Corneille. These exhibitions increased my regret that Kean [who had made his great debut as Shylock at Drury Lane on February 26 of this same year] did not visit France: they are perfection, and in his way exactly. Paris was deserted by Duchesnois, Talma, and all its first performers, but I saw Racine's 'Iphigenie respectably acted, followed by his 'Plaideurs,' the representation of which was inimitable. The French little

1 Return of Ulysses.

2 Bless the happy day which restores, after the lapse of twenty years, a father to their love.

farces (Vaudevilles) are exquisite; the music of the French opera is fine, its singing delectable, its dancing beyond all praise.

"We saw the Triumph of Trajan,' composed expressly to compliment Bonaparte, and introducing the famous column on the scene, now acted for the first time since the Restoration. It was a great opportunity for Parisian discontent to display itself, but nothing occurred.

"You know the statue was deposed from the said column. I saw it, with its legs hacked by the Cossacks, in the foundry where it was cast: it is about twice my height, extremely beautiful, composed, dignified, imperial. The column itself, though finely executed in detail, I do not think a fine thing in its effect: it is extremely crowded with figures, and the pedestal is a contemptible mass of trophies, caps, and regimentals, worthy of Monmouth Street.

"Excuse haste, prosing, and nonsense; but I would not delay giving you some account of what we had seen. I am indignant at the Drury Lane managers, who, instead of giving Kean a fair respite, are doing their utmost to weary the public of him by serving him up as a single dish at a time when London has scarcely an audience, and those who are likely to attend would prefer Elliston and dogs or lions to the highest efforts of genius. I mean to attend his first appearance to-morrow.

"We are all well. My brother-in-law brought Tom [the present lord] from school to meet us on our arrival: he is going on very desirably. All join in every good wish with, dear Merry,

"Yours most affectionately,
"THOMAS DENMAN."

The year following this excursion (1815), Denman, through the interest of his kind and steady friend the third and famous Lord Holland (the Lord Holland of Hallam, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Macaulay) was appointed Deputy Recorder of Nottingham, an office which he retained till he resigned it on becoming representative of the borough in 1820.

The Circuit duly recorded and imposed a fine on this

promotion, as appears by the following entry in the circuit book:

"1816. March 15.-Mr. Denman congratulated by the whole circuit on his appointment to the office of Deputy Recorder of Nottingham.-Fine one guinea."

In the latter part of the same year he lost his admirable and excellent father. Dr. Denman died at his then residence in Mount Street, Grosvenor Square, on November 26, 1815, in the eighty-third year of his age. He had retained his health, vigor, and active habits to the last. During his latest visit to Derbyshire, when past fourscore, he had on one occasion walked more than seven miles out and home with his eldest grandson, the present Lord Denman. On another occasion during the same visit, after having been out all the morning with the harriers, he rode on a coach horse, the only means of conveyance at the moment available, to attend an urgent case of midwifery at a distance of ten miles from the place (Stoke Hall) where he was staying.

His death, when it came, was quite unexpected. "There had been no previous confinement," writes his daughter, Mrs. Baillie: "scarcely even the slightest indisposition. Not a moment was allowed for preparation; but his whole life was a preparation for this awful change. I cannot go on," she adds, " without mentioning his virtues and his talents: his excellent understanding, his spotless integrity, his persevering industry, his warm affections, his peculiar readiness to sacrifice every selfish and personal indulgence, with his extreme liberality of every kind towards others."

There is no exaggeration in this tribute of a daughter's affection: few men have ever lived who deserved and enjoyed a more wildly-diffused reputation for virtue and ability than Dr. Thomas Denman.1

1 Dr. Denman's "Treatise on Midwifery" is still of repute in the profession as a standard work: his lectures are very able, and several practitioners who subsequently rose to eminence were among his pupils. He had paid attention to that terrible malady, cancer, and was one of the most zealous promoters of the scheme (since carried out) for establishing a cancer hospital. He induced the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire, whom he attended in her confinements, to nurse her own children, and for a time make that practice fashionable among the higher classes in England.

T

TREASON.

A.D. 1816, 1817. ET. 37, 38.

HE time was now approaching when Denman was to emerge from the comparative obscurity of mere provincial reputation, and obtain a wider and more general recognition of his abilities.

In the summer assizes of 1816 he was extensively retained for the defence of various Luddite prisoners, charged with machine-breaking and rioting. The exertions thus imposed on him, in addition to his ordinary circuit work, which had now become considerable, were pretty severe. To his brother-in-law, the Rev. R. W. Vevers, he writes on September 4 of the circuit then recently concluded as the "most fatiguing and harassing that has ever befallen me.' It was also the most profitable he had ever had, and he had about the same time been able to send to his wife, who was then with her children at Margate, the welcome intelligence that" on balancing his banker's accounts, he found them favorable beyond all expectation."

That he acquitted himself with great ability in defence of his unfortunate clients is sufficiently attested by the quaint records in the Circuit Book, which contains the following entries relating to the period now referred

to:

"Summer Assizes, 1816.-Mr. Denman congratulated on a puff from the judge: One comfort is, your defence cannot be in better hands.'--One guinea.

"Mr. Reynolds congratulates Mr. Denman on a gross

puff from the judge at Warwick: The learned and eloquent counsel, who has defended his client most ably.""

Derby. The Attorney-General [i.e. of the circuit] presents Mr. Denman for the horrible and merited applause which he received in court at Nottingham."

1

Before proceeding to relate the facts of the case, which in the next year, 1817, had so much to do with raising the forensic reputation of Denman, a word or two is necessary as to the nature and causes of these Luddite outbreaks. The operatives of Nottinghamshire and the adjacent midland counties had for some years been in a state of chronic discontent-breaking out from time to time into spasmodic acts of violence. It may be remembered that Byron, in 1812, a few days before the publication of "Childe Harold," had made his maiden speech in the House of Lords, on a Nottingham Framebreaking Bill, by which, with the usual policy of those times, it was attempted to repress increasing discontent by increasing severity. The young peer produced considerable effect by his solemn declaration-the declaration of a man of genius who saw vividly into the real truth of things, and on this occasion spoke what he thought "I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula, I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey, but never under the most despotic of infidel governments have I beheld such squalid wretchedness as I have seen, since my return, in the heart of a Christian country." The misery which Byron thus described in 1812, instead of diminishing, went on increasing. The Draconian laws, whose policy he denounced, had, as he prophesied would be the case, wholly failed in their object. Nothing was done to improve the social conditions in which these excesses of desperate and famishing men had their origin, and in a few years the discontent and the danger increased to a still more alarming point.

There probably never was a period of our history in which there was so much wretchedness and consequent disaffection among the English lower classes as in the

1 On February 27, 1812. :