furnish the information, Colonel Wardle having, in 1808, undertaken to furnish for her a house in Westbourne-place, Sloane-square, in part payment for her services in prosecution of the Duke of York at the bar of the House of Commons. This personal promise led to an action against Wardle for the recovery of 1,9147., the amount of the upholsterer's bill for articles of furniture supplied.

It is said that the whole exposure originated in the resentment of one M'Cullum against Picton (afterwards Sir Thomas Picton), for his oppressive conduct as Governor of Trinidad. M'Cullum, on reaching England, sought justice, but was baffled, as he suspected, by royal influence; he then exposed Picton in his Travels in Trinidad, and next ferreted out charges against the War Office, and through Colonel Wardle, exposed a suspicious contract for great-coats. This being negatived, M'Cullum then traced Mrs. Clarke, and arranged the whole of that exposure for Wardle and others. M'Cullum worked night and day for months in getting up this case: he lodged in a garret in Hungerford Market, and often did not taste food for twenty-four hours; he lived to see the Duke dismissed from office, and to publish a Narrative of his exertions and then died of exhaustion and want.

To return to Mrs. Clarke. In 1814, she was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment, for a libel on the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. She concocted a Memoir of her own Life and Adventures, upon the publication of which she consulted Mr. Galt. "I told her," he says, "point-blank, she was in want of money, and that this was an expedient to raise the wind. She confessed the truth, and also that her debts had been paid to the amount of 7,000l., and an annuity of 4001. granted to her on condition that she should not molest the Duke of York." The papers were unfit for publication, and by Mr. Galt's advice she suppressed the book.

The announcement of the Memoir had excited such expectation that the printer had worked off 10,000 copies, two volumes each, requiring 640 reams of paper, at 35s. per ream. The above settlement was made upon the condition that the whole should be burnt, and the manuscript delivered up to an agent under seven seals, being the number of the parties concerned. The work was accordingly burnt in the printingoffice, in the presence of witnesses, and the conflagration was continued for three successive days, during which the smell

of burnt paper excited repeated alarms near Salisbury-square, where this extraordinary transaction took place.

Meanwhile, incensed at the Duke's desertion of her, she threatened to publish his love-letters, which were likely to expose the whole of the Royal Family to ridicule, as they were often mentioned. Sir Herbert Taylor then bought the letters of Mrs. Clarke at an enormous price, on her signing an undertaking not to implicate the honour of any of the Royal Family. A pension was secured to her, on condition of her leaving England. She first went to Brussels; and then settled comfortably in Paris, where she died not long since.

Mrs. Clarke was of very agreeable manners, lively and rattling, and full of anecdotes, especially of the Royal Family; these she had received from the Duke of York, whom she used to prime with stories for the dinner-table: next morning, she used to say: "Well, Dukey, how did the story go off?" She was a pretty little fascinating woman: Galt, however, says, she had no pretensions to beauty; she dressed remarkably neat and plain; her hair was almost black, and her eyes sparkling. She possessed great powers of conversation, and was often witty, with flashes of shrewdness seldom seen in women her mind was decidedly masculine. "The fact is," says Galt, "that she did not possess that extraordinary fascination which posterity may suppose from the incidents in which she was engaged; but she was undoubtedly clever, with a degree of tact, that, either in man or woman, would have been singularly "acute."

One of Mrs. Clarke's most noted rejoinders was, when under examination in the Court of King's Bench, and being asked under whose protection she then was-she replied, with a bow to Lord Ellenborough, who presided in the court "Your Lordship's."

Mr. Cyrus Redding gives altogether a different version of Mrs. Clarke's antecedents to either yet related, which goes far to disprove the character fixed on her by Mr. Wilberforce as "a low, vulgar woman." Mr. Redding says:

"The lady, while pronounced one of the canaille by the ministerial papers, was found at the bar of the House of Commons to be full of grace in her bearing,' and accomplished. Not free from feeling at the mode in which certain persons treated her, and replying to them in their own coin; this and perfect self-possession gave the contradiction

at once to her mean origin and education. Not one paper stated the truth about her. I accidentally had twenty or thirty of her letters before me at one time. I read them, and they fully proved she was a woman who had been well educated. Time has removed the passions and prejudices of that period, neither reflecting honour on any of the actors in the scene, nor any advantage, except that the affair pushed up the fortunes of John Wilson Croker, whose acting in the comedy was not that of the worst performer. Again, let it not be supposed I knew the lady; I never coveted the honour or disgrace, whichever it might be. Mrs. Clarke was the daughter of Colonel Frederick, and grand-daughter of Theodore, King of Corsica, whose melancholy fate, as well as that of his son, need not be repeated here. She had a son, and, I believe, two daughters. Twice or thrice I well recollect seeing her, and one of her daughters. What business Mr. Clarke carried on when he married, I never heard, but that he had very scanty means of support was clear, for he accepted at one time a situation in the Excise at Dartmouth. As the daughter of Colonel Frederick, Mrs. Clark had been noticed by the Prince of Wales, Lady Jersey, and several persons of distinction before the Duke of York knew her, and she had received money from them in consideration of her misfortunes; perhaps his knowledge of her arose that way. One lady who died left her a hundred guineas in her will, in addition to former gifts.'

WINDHAM'S ORATORY.

Of the mixed tenderness and figure in which Mr. Windham sometimes indulged, a specimen is afforded by his fine speech, in which, after comparing two plans of recruiting our army to a dead stick thrust into the ground, and a living sapling planted to take root in the soil, he spoke of carving his name upon the tree as lovers do when they would perpetuate the remembrance of their passions or their misfortunes. Of his happy allusions to the writings of kindred spirits an example is afforded in his speech about the peace of Amiens, when he answered the remarks upon the uselessness of the Royal title, then given up, of King of France, by citing the bill of costs brought in by Dean Swift against Marlborough, and the comparative amount of the charges of a Roman triumph, where the crown of laurel is set down at twopence. But sometimes he would convulse the House by a happy, startling, and most unexpected allusion, as when, on the Walcheren question, speaking of a coup-de-main on Antwerp, which had been its professed object, he suddenly said, "A coup-de-main in the Scheldt! You might as well talk of a coup-de-main in the Court of Chancery." Sir William Grant having just entered and taken his seat, probably suggested this excellent jest ;

and, assuredly, no man enjoyed it more. His habitual gravity was overpowered in an instant, and he was seen absolutely to roll about on the bench which he had just occupied. So a word or two artistically introduced would often serve him to cover the adverse argument with ridicule. When arguing that they who would protect animals from cruelty have more on their hands than they are aware of, and that they cannot stop at preventing cruelty, but must also prohibit killing, he was met by the old answer, that we kill them to prevent them overrunning the earth, and then he said in passing, and, as it were, parenthetically,--"An indifferent reason, by the way, for destroying fish." He happily caricatured Mr. Pitt's diction as a state-paper style, and that he believed he could speak a King's speech offhand.-Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches.

66

Of Mr. Windham's gaiety of spirits we have a trait in his halting to see Punch and Judy:" he was then one of the Secretaries of State, and was on his way from Downing-street to the House of Commons, on a night of important debate; he paused before the street-show like a truant boy, until the whole performance was concluded, to enjoy a hearty laugh at the whimsicalities of the motley hero.

It was Mr. Windham who described the Parks as "the lungs of London; " for they were essential to the healthful respiration of its inhabitants.

He was an accomplished scholar and mathematician. Dr. Johnson, writing of a visit which Windham paid him, says: "Such conversation I shall not have again till I come back to the regions of literature, and there Windham is 'inter stellas luna minores."" In a word, Mr. Windham has been described, and the description has been generally adopted as appropriate, as a model of the true English gentleman.

JOHN HORNE TOOKE.

This extraordinary man, the son of a poulterer named Horne, in Newport-street, a "turkey merchant," as he told his schoolfellows, was educated for the Church, according to his father's wish, and took orders, but soon quitted the Church for the Bar. He had a quarrel with Frederick, Prince of Wales, his father's neighbour, at Leicester House, respecting a right of way, and defeated the Prince, which success seems

to have had something to do with his turbulent after-life. Mr. Massey, M.P., in his recently published History of England, tells us :

"For many years he had been the terror of judges, ministers of State, and all constituted authorities. He was that famous Parson Horne who attacked the terrible Junius, after statesmen, judges, and generals had fled before him, and drove him back defeated and howling with his wounds. He it was who silenced Wilkes. Some years afterwards he fastened a quarrel on the House of Commons, which he bullied and baffled with his usual coolness and address.

When put on trial for his life (for treason), so far from being moved by his dangerous position, he was never in more buoyant spirits. His wit and humour had often before been exhibited in Courts of Justice; but never had they been so brilliant as on this occasion. Erskine had been at his request assigned to him as counsel; but he himself undertook some of the most important duties of his advocate, cross-examining the witnesses for the Crown, objecting to evidence, and even arguing points of law. If his life had really been in jeopardy, such a course would have been perilous and rash in the highest degree; but nobody in court, except, perhaps, the Attorney and Solicitor-General, thought there was the slightest chance of an adverse verdict. The prisoner led off the proceedings by a series of preliminary jokes, which were highly successful. When placed in the dock, he cast a glance up at the ventilators of the hall, shivered, and expressed a wish that their lordships would be so good as to get the business over quickly as he was afraid of catching cold. When arraigned, and asked by the officer of the court, in the usual form, how he would be tried? he answered, 'I would be tried by God and my country-but-' and looked sarcastically round the court. Presently he made an application to be allowed a seat by his counsel; and entered upon an amusing altercation with the Judge, as to whether his request should be granted as an indulgence or as a right. The result was that he consented to take his place by the side of Erskine as a matter of favour. In the midst of the merriment occasioned by these sallies, the Solicitor-General opened the case for the Crown."

Tooke took some delight in praising his daughters, which he sometimes did by those equivocatory falsehoods which were one of his principal pleasures. Of the eldest he said,