Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXIV, May 1852, Vol. IV

We went into the bazaars to encounter these enemies of the black hat, and ex-officio riders of dromedaries. We had a glimpse of their beauty as we entered the city. But Eastern life is delightful in detail. It is a mosaic to be closely studied.

You enter, and the murmurous silence blends pleasantly with the luminous dimness of the place. The matting overhead, torn and hanging in strips along which, gilding them in passing, the sun slides into the interior, is a heavy tapestry. The scene is a perpetual fair, not precisely like Greenwich Fair, or that of the American Institute, but such as you frequent in Arabian stories.

Bedoueen glide spectrally along, with wild, roving eyes, like startled deer. Insane Dervishes and Santons meditate the propriety of braining the infidel Howadji. Shekhs from distant Asia, pompous Effendi from Constantinople, Bagdad traders, cunning-eyed Armenian merchants meet and mingle, and many of our old friends, the grizzly-bearded, red-eyed fire-worshipers, somnolently curled among their goods, eye us, through the smoke they emit, as perfect specimens of the proper sacrifice they owe their Deity. All strange forms jostle and crowd in passing, except those which are familiar; and children more beautiful than any in the East, play in the living mazes of the crowd.

Shopping goes actively on. The merchant without uncrossing his legs, exhibits his silks and coarse cottons to the long draped and vailed figures that group picturesquely about his niche. Your eye seizes the bright effect of all the gay goods as you saunter on. Here a merchant lays by his chibouque and drinks, from a carved glass, sweet liquorice water, cooled with snow from Lebanon. Here one closes his niche and shuffles off to the mosque, followed by his boy-slave with the chibouque. Here another rises, and bows, and falls, kissing the floor, and muttering the noon prayer. Every where there is intense but languid life.

The bazaars are separated into kinds. That of the jewelers is inclosed, and you see the Jews, swarthy and keen-eyed servants of Mammon, busily at work. Precious stones miserably set, and handfuls of pearls, opals, and turquoises are quietly presented to your inspection. There is no eagerness of traffic. A boy tranquilly hands you a ring, and another, when you have looked at the first. You say "la," no, and he retires.

Or you pause over a clumsy silver ring, with an Arabic inscription upon the flint set in it. Golden Sleeve ascertains that it is the cipher of Hafiz. You reflect that it is silver, which is the orthodox metal, the Prophet having forbidden gold. You place it upon your finger, with the stone upon the inside, for so the Prophet wore his upon the fore-finger, that he might avoid ostentation. It is a quaint, characteristic, oriental signet-ring. Hafiz is a common name, it is probably that of the jeweler who owns the ring. But you have other associations with the name, and as you remember the Persian poet, you suffer it to remain upon your finger, and pay the jeweler a few piastres. You do not dream that it is enchanted. You do not know that you have bought Ala-ed-deen's lamp, and as a rub of that evoked omnipotent spirits, so a glance at your ring, when Damascus has become a dream, will restore you again to the dim bazaar, and the soft eyes of the children that watch you curiously as you hesitate, and to the sweet inspiration of Syria.

You pass on into the quarter where the pattens are made, inlaid with pearl, such as you remarked upon the feet of the kohl-eyebrowed houris. Into the shoemakers, where the brilliant leathers justify better poetry than Hans Sach's interminable rhymes, though here is only their music, not their moral. You climb crumbling steps, and emerge from darkness upon the top of the bazaar, on a ledge of a Roman ruin, and look down into the sunny greenness of the great mosque, which you can not more nearly approach. Then down, and by all the beautiful fabrics of the land, hung with the tin-foiled letters that surround pieces of English prints, and which the color-loving eye of the Oriental seizes as an ornament for his own wares, you pass into the region of drugs and apothecaries, and feel that you are about visiting that Persian Doctor in Mecca who dealt in nothing but miraculous balsams and infallible elixirs, whose potions were all sweet and agreeable, and the musk and aloe wood which he burned, diffused a delicious odor through the shop. Surely he was court-physician to Zobeide.

Golden Sleeve pauses before an old figure curled among the bottles and lost in reverie, saturated, it seems, with opium, and dreaming its dreams. This is Zobeide's doctor. He had evidently the elixir of life among those sweet potions, and has deeply drunk. Life he has preserved; but little else that is human remains, except the love that is stronger than life. For as he opens his vague eyes and beholds us, they kindle with an inward fire, as if they looked upon the Philosopher's Stone. That stone is in our purses; the old magician knows it, and he knows the charm to educe it. He opens a jar, and a dreamy odor penetrates our brains. It is distilled of flowers culled from the gardens of the Ganges: or is this delicate perfume preferable – this zatta, loved of poets and houris, which came to the doctor's grandfather from Bagdad?

Attar of roses did Golden Sleeve suggest? Here is the essence of that divinest distillation of the very heart of summer. But, O opulent Howadji! no thin, pale, Constantinople perfume is this, but the viscous richness of Indian roses. As many wide acres of bloom went to this jar as to any lyric of Hafiz. It lies as molten gold in the quaint glass vase. The magician holds it toward the Syrian sun, and the shadow of a smile darkens over his withered features. Then, drop by drop, as if he poured the last honey that should ever be hived from Hymettus, he suffers it to exude into the little vials. They are closely stopped, and sealed, and wrapped in cotton. And some wintry Christmas in the West the Howadji shall offer to a fairer than Zobeide those more than drops of diamond.

Nor this alone – but the cunning of Arabian art has sucked the secret of their sweetness from tea and coffee, from all the wild herbs of Syria, and from amber. In those small jars is stored the rich result of endless series of that summer luxuriance you saw in the vale of Zabulon. Sandal-wood to burn upon your nargileh, mystic bits to lay upon your tongue, so that the startled Bedoueen, as you pass into the bazaar, and breathe upon him in passing, dreams that you came from Paradise, and have been kissed by houris.

Was it not the magic to draw from your purse the Philosopher's Stone? The court-physician of Zobeide, relapsing into reverie, smiles vaguely as he says salaam; as if the advantage were his – as if you were not bearing away with you in those odors the triumphs of the rarest alchemy.

Breathing fragrance, you enter a khan opening upon the bazaar, that of Assad Pacha, a stately and beautiful building, consisting of a lofty domed court, the dome supported by piers, with a gallery running quite around it. Private rooms for the choicest goods open out of the gallery. The court is full of various merchandise, and merchants from every region sit by their goods, and smoke placidly as they negotiate.

But we have received visits in our hotel from an Armenian merchant, young and comely – why not Khadra's cousin? – and he brought with him silks and stuffs at which all that was feminine in our nature swelled with delight. Tempted by his odors, we have come to his garden. The room is small and square, and rough-plastered. Upon the floor are strewn long deep boxes, and the comely young Armenian, in a flowing dark dress, reveals his treasures.

Scarfs, shawls, stuffs for dresses, morning gowns and vests, handkerchiefs, sashes, purses, and tobacco-bags are heaped in rich profusion. They are of the true Eastern richness, and in the true Eastern manner they rely upon that richness for their effect, and not upon their intrinsic tastefulness. The figures of the embroideries, for instance, are not gracefully designed, but the superb material suffices. They imply that there are none but beautiful women in the world, and that all women are brunettes. As the quiet merchant unfolds them, they have the mysterious charm of recalling all the beautiful brunettes who have reigned Zenobias, and Queens of Sheba, and Cleopatras, in the ruined realm of your past life.

But, Northerners and Westerners, we remember another beauty. We remember Palma Vecchio's golden-haired daughter, and the Venetian pictures, and the stories of angels with sunny locks, and the radiant Preziosa. The astute Armenian knows our thoughts. From the beginning was not the Oriental merchant a magician?

For while we sit smoking and delighted, the merchant, no less wily than the court-physician of Zobeide, opens the last box of all, and gradually unfolds the most beautiful garment the Howadji have ever seen. The coronation robes of emperors and kings, the most sumptuous costumes at court-festivals, all the elaboration of Western genius in the material and in the making of dresses, pale and disappear before the simple magnificence of this robe.

It is a bournouse or Oriental cloak, made of camel's hair and cloth of gold. The material secures that rich stiffness essential in a superb mantle, and the color is an azure turquoise, exquisite beyond words. The sleeves are cloth of gold, and the edges are wrought in gold, but with the most regal taste. It is the only object purely tasteful that we have seen. Nor is it of that negative safety of taste, which loves dark carriages and neutral tints in dress; but magnificent and imperial, like that of Rachel when she plays Thisbe, and nets her head with Venetian sequins. If the rest imply that all women are beautiful and brunettes, this proclaims the one superb Blonde, Queen of them all.

"Take that, Leisurlie, it was intended from the beginning of the world for an English beauty."

"Oh! Kooltooluk! there is not a woman in England who could wear it."

Through the dewy distances of memory, as you muse in the dim chamber upon all who might worthily wear the garment, passes a figure perfect as morning, crowned with youth, and robed in grace, for whose image Alpine snows were purer and Italian skies more soft. But even while you muse, it passes slowly away out of the golden gates of possibility into the wide impossible.

As we stroll leisurely homeward, it is early afternoon. But the shops are closed – strange silence and desertion reign in the Bazaars – a few dark turbaned Christians and Jews yet linger, and a few children play.

"They are gone to the cafés and gardens," says Golden Sleeve.

– And we follow them.

TIGER ROCHE. – AN IRISH CHARACTER

Among the characters distinguished for unbridled indulgence and fierce passions, who were, unfortunately, too frequently to be met with in Ireland in the last century, was one whose name attained so much celebrity as to become a proverb. "Tiger Roche," as he was called, was a native of Dublin, where he was born in the year 1729. He received the best education the metropolis could afford, and was instructed in all the accomplishments then deemed essential to the rank and character of a gentleman. So expert was he in the various acquirements of polite life, that at the age of sixteen he recommended himself to Lord Chesterfield, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who offered him, gratuitously, a commission in the army; but his friends having other views for him, they declined it. This seems to have been a serious misfortune to the young man, whose disposition and education strongly inclined him to a military life. His hopes were raised, and his vanity flattered, by the notice and offer of the viceroy; and in sullen resentment he absolutely refused to embark in any other profession his friends designed for him. He continued, therefore, for several years among the dissipated idlers of the metropolis, having no laudable pursuit to occupy his time, and led into all the outrages and excesses which then disgraced Dublin.

One night, in patrolling the city with his drunken associates, they attacked and killed a watch-man, who, with others, had attempted to quell a riot they had excited. He was, therefore, compelled to fly from Dublin. He made his way to Cork, where he lay concealed for some time, and from thence escaped to the plantations in North America. When the war broke out between France and England, he entered as a volunteer in one of the provincial regiments, and distinguished himself in several engagements with the Indians in the interest of the French, during which he seems to have acquired those fierce and cruel qualities by which those tribes are distinguished.

He was now particularly noticed by his officers for the intrepidity and spirit he displayed, and was high in favor with Colonel Massy, his commander; but an accident occurred of so humiliating and degrading a nature, as to extinguish at once all his hopes of advancement. An officer of Massy's regiment was possessed of a very valuable fowling-piece which he highly prized. He missed it from his tent, and made diligent inquiry after it, but it was nowhere to be found. It was, however, reported that it was seen in the possession of Roche, and an order was made to examine his baggage. On searching among it the lost article was found. Roche declared that he had bought it from one Bourke, a countryman of his own, and a corporal in his regiment. Bourke was sent for and examined. He solemnly declared on oath that the statement of Roche was altogether false, and that he himself knew nothing at all of the transaction. Roche was now brought to a court-martial, and little appearing in his favor, he was convicted of the theft, and, as a lenient punishment, ordered to quit the service with every mark of disgrace and ignominy. Irritated with this treatment, Roche immediately challenged the officer who had prosecuted him. He refused, however, to meet him, on the pretext that he was a degraded man, and no longer entitled to the rank and consideration of a gentleman. Stung to madness, and no longer master of himself, he rushed to the parade, insulted the officer in the grossest terms, and then flew to the picket-guard, where he attacked the corporal with his naked sword, declaring his intention to kill him on the spot. The man with difficulty defended his life, till his companions sprung upon Roche and disarmed him. Though deprived of his weapon, he did not desist from his intention; crouching down like an Indian foe, he suddenly sprung, like Roderick Dhu, at his antagonist, and fastened on his throat with his teeth, and before he could be disengaged nearly strangled him, dragging away a mouthful of flesh, which, in the true Indian spirit, he afterward said was "the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted." From the fierce and savage character he displayed on this occasion, he obtained the appellation of "Tiger," an affix which was ever after joined to his name.

A few days after, the English army advanced to force the lines of Ticonderoga. Unfortunate Roche was left desolate and alone in the wilderness, an outcast from society, apparently abandoned by all the world. His resolution and fidelity to his cause, however, did not desert him. He pursued his way through the woods till he fell in with a party of friendly Indians, and by extraordinary exertions and forced marches, arrived at the fortress with his Indians, to join in the attack. He gave distinguished proofs of his courage and military abilities during that unfortunate affair, and received four dangerous wounds. He attracted the notice of General Abercrombie, the leader of the expedition; but the stain of robbery was upon him, and no services, however brilliant, could obliterate it.

From hence he made his way to New York, after suffering incredible afflictions from pain, poverty, and sickness. One man alone, Governor Rogers, pitied his case, and was not satisfied of his guilt. In the year 1785, Roche received from his friends in Ireland a reluctant supply of money, which enabled him to obtain a passage on board a vessel bound for England, where he arrived shortly afterward. He reserved part of his supply of money for the purchase of a commission, and hoped once more to ascend to that rank from which he had been, as he thought, unjustly degraded; but just as the purchase was about to be completed, a report of his theft in America reached the regiment, and the officers refused to serve with him. With great perseverance and determined resolution, he traced the origin of the report to a Captain Campbell, then residing at the British Coffee-house, in Charing-cross. He met him in the public room, taxed him with what he called a gross and false calumny, which the other retorted with great spirit. A duel immediately ensued, in which both were desperately wounded.

Roche now declared in all public places, and caused it to be every where known, that, as he could not obtain justice on the miscreant who had traduced his character in America, he would personally chastise every man in England who presumed to propagate the report. With this determination, he met one day, in the Green Park, his former colonel, Massy, and another officer, who had just returned home. He addressed them, and anxiously requested they would, as they might, remove the stain from his character. They treated his appeal with contempt, when he fiercely attacked them both. They immediately drew their swords, and disarmed him. A crowd of spectators assembled round, and being two to one they inflicted severe chastisement on Roche. Foiled in his attempt, he immediately determined to seek another occasion, and finding that one of them had departed for Chester, Roche set out after him with the indefatigable perseverance and pursuit of a bloodhound. Here Roche again sought him, and meeting him in the streets, again attacked him. Roche was, however, again defeated, and received a severe wound in the sword-arm, which long disabled him.

But that redress to his character now came accidentally and unexpectedly, which all his activity and perseverance could not obtain. Bourke, the corporal, was mortally wounded by a scalping party of Indians, and on his death-bed made a solemn confession that he himself had actually stolen the fowling-piece, and sold it to Roche, without informing him by what means he had procured it, and that Roche had really purchased it without any suspicion of the theft. This declaration of the dying man was properly attested, and universally received, and restored the injured Roche at once to character and countenance. His former calumniators now vied with each other in friendly offers to serve him; and as a remuneration for the injustice and injury he had suffered, a lieutenancy in a newly-raised regiment was conferred upon him gratuitously. He soon returned to Dublin with considerable eclat; the reputation of the injuries he had sustained, the gallant part he had acted, and the romantic adventures he had encountered among the Indians, in the woods of America, were the subject of every conversation. Convivial parties were every where made for him. Wherever he appeared, he was the lion of the night. A handsome person, made still more attractive by the wounds he had received, a graceful form in the dance, in which he excelled, and the narrative of "his hair-breadth 'scapes," with which he was never too diffident to indulge the company, made him at this time "the observed of all observers" in the metropolis of Ireland.

But a service which he rendered the public in Dublin deservedly placed him very high in their esteem and good-will. It was at this time infested with those miscreants who were known by the names of "sweaters," or "pinkindindies," and every night some outrage was perpetrated on the peaceable and unoffending inhabitants. One evening late, an old gentleman with his son and daughter, were returning home from a friend's house, when they were attacked on Ormond-quay by a party of them. Roche, who was accidentally going the same way at the same time, heard the shrieks of a woman crying for assistance, and instantly rushed to the place. Here he did not hesitate singly to meet the whole party. He first rescued the young woman from the ruffian who held her, and then attacking the band, he desperately wounded some, and put the rest to flight. His spirited conduct on this occasion gained him a high and deserved reputation, and inspired others with resolution to follow his example. He formed a body, consisting of officers and others of his acquaintance, to patrol the dangerous streets of Dublin at night, and so gave that protection to the citizens which the miserable and decrepit watch were not able to afford.

But he was not fated long to preserve the high character he had acquired. His physical temperament, impossible to manage, and his moral perceptions, hard to regulate, were the sport of every contingency and vicissitude of fortune. The peace concluded in 1763 reduced the army, and he retired in indigent circumstances to London, where he soon lived beyond his income. In order to repair it, he paid his addresses to a Miss Pitt, who had a fortune of £4000. On the anticipation of this, he engaged in a career of extravagance that soon accumulated debts to a greater amount, and the marriage portion was insufficient to satisfy his creditors. He was arrested and cast into the prison of the King's Bench, where various detainers were laid upon him, and he was doomed to a confinement of hopeless termination. Here his mind appears to have been completely broken down, and the intrepid and daring courage, which had sustained him in so remarkable a manner through all the vicissitudes of his former life, seemed to be totally exhausted. He submitted to insults and indignities with patience, and seemed deprived not only of the capability to resent, but of the sensibility to feel them.

On one occasion he had a trifling dispute with a fellow-prisoner, who kicked him, and struck him a blow in the face. There was a time when his fiery spirit would not have been satisfied but with the blood of the offender. He now only turned aside and cried like a child. It happened that his countryman, Buck English, a personage of some notoriety, was confined at the same time in the Bench; with him also he had some dispute, and English, seizing a stick, flogged him in a savage manner. Roche made no attempt to retaliate or resist, but crouched under the punishment. But while he shrunk thus under the chastisement of men, he turned upon his wife, whom he treated with such cruelty, that she was compelled to separate from him, and abandon him to his fate.

At length, however, an act of grace liberated him from a confinement under which all his powers were fast sinking; and a small legacy, left him by a relation, enabled him once more to appear in the gay world. With his change of fortune a change of disposition came over him; and in proportion as he had shown an abject spirit in confinement, he now exhibited even a still more arrogant and irritable temper than he had ever before displayed. He was a constant frequenter of billiard tables, where he indulged in insufferable assumption, with sometimes a shrewd and keen remark. He was one day driving the balls about with the cue, and on some one expostulating with him that he was not playing himself, but hindering other gentlemen from their amusement; "Gentlemen!" said Roche, "why, sir, except you and I, and one or two more, there is not a gentleman in the room." His friend afterwards remarked that he had grossly offended a large company, and wondered some of them had not resented the affront. "Oh!" said Roche, "there was no fear of that. There was not a thief in the room that did not consider himself one of the two or three gentlemen I excepted!"

Again his fortune seemed in the ascendant, and the miserable, spiritless, flogged and degraded prisoner of the King's Bench, was called on to stand as candidate to represent Middlesex in Parliament. So high an opinion was entertained of his daring spirit, that it was thought by some of the popular party he might be of use in intimidating Colonel Luttrell, who was the declared opponent of Wilkes at that election. In April, 1769, he was put into nomination at Brentford by Mr. Jones, and seconded by Mr. Martin, two highly popular electors. He, however, disappointed his friends, and declined the poll, induced, it was said, by promises of Luttrell's friends to provide for him. On this occasion he fought another duel with a Captain Flood, who had offended him in a coffee-house. He showed no deficiency of courage, but on the contrary even a larger proportion of spirit and generosity than had distinguished him at former periods.

Returning at this time one night to his apartments at Chelsea, he was attacked by two ruffians, who presented pistols to his breast. He sprang back, and drew his sword, when one of them fired at him, and the ball grazed his temple. He then attacked them both, pinned one to the wall, and the other fled. Roche secured his prisoner, and the other was apprehended next day. They were tried at the Old Bailey, and capitally convicted; but at the humane and earnest intercession of Roche, their punishment was mitigated to transportation.

All the fluctuations of this strange man's character seemed at length to settle into one unhappy state, from which he was unable ever again to raise himself. He met with a young person, walking with her mother in St. James's Park, and was struck with her appearance. He insinuated himself into their acquaintance, and the young lady formed for him a strong and uncontrollable attachment. She possessed a considerable fortune, of which Roche became the manager. His daily profusion and dissipation soon exhausted her property, and the mother and daughter were compelled to leave London, reduced to indigence and distress, in consequence of the debts in which he had involved them.

He was soon after appointed captain of a company of foot in the East India service, and embarked in the Vansittart, for India, in May, 1773. He had not been many days on board, when such was his impracticable temper that he fell out with all the passengers, and among the rest with a Captain Ferguson, who called him out as soon as they arrived at Madeira. Roche was again seized with a sudden and unaccountable fit of terror, and made submission. The arrogance and cowardice he displayed revolted the whole body of the passengers, and they unanimously made it a point that the captain should expel him from the table. He was driven, therefore, to the society of the common sailors and soldiers on board the ship. With them he endeavored to ingratiate himself, by mixing freely with them, and denouncing vengeance against every gentleman and officer on board the ship; but his threats were particularly directed against Ferguson, whom he considered the origin of the disgrace he suffered. On the arrival of the ship at the Cape, after all the passengers were disembarked, Roche came ashore, in the dusk of the evening, and was seen about the door of the house where Ferguson lodged. A message was conveyed to Ferguson, who went out, and was found soon afterward round the corner of the house, weltering in his blood, with nine deep wounds, all on his left side; and it was supposed they must have been there inflicted, because it was the unprotected side, and the attack was made when he was off his guard.

Suspicion immediately fixed on Roche as the murderer; he fled during the night, and took refuge among the Caffres. It was supposed that he ended his strange and eventful life soon after. The Cape was at that time a colony of the Dutch, who, vigilant and suspicious of strangers, suffered none to enter there, but merely to touch for provisions and pass on. The proceedings, therefore, of their colonial government were shut up in mystery. It was reported at the time, that Roche was demanded and given up to the authorities at the Cape, who caused him to be broken alive upon the wheel, according to the then Dutch criminal law of the Cape, which inflicted that punishment on the more atrocious murderers, and the uncertainty that hung about the circumstance assorted strangely with the wild character of the man.

It appears, however, he was tried by the Dutch authorities at the Cape, and acquitted. He then took a passage in a French vessel to Bombay; but the Vansittart, in which he had come from England to the Cape, had arrived in India before him; information had been given to the British authorities, charging Roche with Ferguson's murder; and Roche was arrested as soon as he landed. He urged his right to be discharged, or at least bailed, on the grounds that there was not sufficient evidence against him; that he had been already acquitted; and that as the offense, if any, was committed out of the British dominions, he could only be tried by special commission, and it was uncertain whether the Crown would issue one or not, or, if the Crown did grant a commission, when or where it would sit. He argued his own case with the skill of a practiced lawyer. The authorities, however, declined either to bail or discharge him, and he was kept in custody until he was sent a prisoner to England, to stand his trial.

An appeal of murder was brought against him, and a commission issued to try it. The case came on at the Old Bailey, in London, before Baron Burland, on the 11th December, 1775. The counsel for Roche declined in any way relying on the former acquittal at the Cape of Good Hope; and the case was again gone through. The fact of the killing was undisputed, but from the peculiar nature of the proceedings, there could not be, as in a common indictment for murder, a conviction for manslaughter; and the judge directed the jury, if they did not believe the killing to be malicious and deliberate, absolutely to acquit the prisoner. The jury brought in a verdict of acquittal.

The doubt about Roche's guilt arose on the following state of facts. On the evening of their arrival at the Cape, Ferguson and his friends were sitting at tea, at their lodgings, when a message was brought into the room; on hearing which Ferguson rose, went to his apartment, and, having put on his sword and taken a loaded cane in his hand, went out. A friend named Grant followed him, and found Roche and him at the side of the house, round a corner, and heard the clash of swords, but refused to interfere. It was too dark to see what was occurring; but in a few moments he heard Roche going away, and Ferguson falling. Ferguson was carried in, and died immediately. All his wounds were on the left side. The most violent vindictive feelings had existed between them; and there was proof of Roche's having threatened "to shorten the race of the Fergusons." The message, in answer to which Ferguson went out, was differently stated, being, according to one account, "Mr. Mathews wants Mr. Ferguson," and to the other, "a gentleman wants Mr. Mathews." The case for the prosecution was, that this message was a trap to draw Ferguson out of the house, and that, on his going out, Roche attacked him; and this was confirmed by the improbability of Roche's going out for an innocent purpose, in a strange place, on the night of his landing, in the dark, and in the neighborhood of Ferguson's lodgings; and particularly by the wounds being on the left side, which they could not be if given in a fair fight with small swords. Roche's account was, that on the evening of his arrival he went out to see the town, accompanied by a boy, a slave of his host; that they were watched by some person till they came near Ferguson's, when that person disappeared, and immediately afterward, Roche was struck with a loaded stick on the head, knocked down, and his arm disabled; that afterward he succeeded in rising, and; perceiving Ferguson, drew his sword, and, after a struggle, in which he wished to avoid bloodshed, killed his assailant in self-defense. This was, to some extent, corroborated by the boy at the Dutch trial, and by a sailor in England, but both these witnesses were shaken a little in their testimony. According to this account, the message was a concerted signal to Ferguson, who had set a watch on Roche, intending to assassinate him. The locality of Ferguson's wounds was accounted for by his fighting both with cane and sword, using the former to parry. If the second version of the message was correct, it would strongly confirm this account. There was no proof that Ferguson knew any one named Mathews.

A writer of the last century, in speaking of the Irish character, concludes with the remark: "In short, if they are good, you will scarcely meet a better: if bad, you will seldom find a worse." These extremes were frequently mixed in the same person. Roche, at different periods, displayed them. At one time, an admirable spirit, great humanity, and unbounded generosity; at another, abject cowardice, ferocity, treachery, and brutal selfishness. The vicissitudes of his fortune were as variable as his character: at times he was exposed to the foulest charges, and narrowly escaped ignominious punishment; at others, he was the object of universal esteem and admiration.

WIVES OF GREAT LAWYERS

Lawyers do not marry with the impulsiveness of poets. For they are a prudent class – mostly shrewd, practical men – any thing but dreamers; and though they may admire a handsome figure, and like a pretty face as other men do, they have not usually allowed those adventitious gifts of nature to divert their attention from the "main chance" in choosing a wife. Lawyers are, take them as a whole, a marrying class, and they not unfrequently enjoy that "lawyer's blessing," a large family. Take the Lord Chancellors, for instance. Lord Clarendon, Lords-Keeper Coventry, Lyttleton, Bridgeman, Judge Jeffries, Lord York, Lord Bathurst, Lord Loughborough, and Lord Erskine, were twice married; Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Maynard, and Lord Harcourt, were three times married. The wives whom they chose were usually heiresses, or rich widows; those who remained bachelors, or who married "for love," seem to have formed the exceptions. And yet, on the whole, the married life of the Lord Chancellors, judging from Lord Campbell's Lives, seems to have been comfortable and happy.

The great Lord Bacon, when a young man plodding at the bar, but with a very small practice, cast about his eyes among the desirable matches of the day, and selected the handsome widow of Sir William Hutton (nephew and heir of Lord Chancellor Hutton), who had a large fortune at her own disposal. But another legal gentleman had been beforehand with him; and when he proposed he was rejected. His favored rival was Sir Edward Coke, a crabbed widower, but attorney-general, rich and of large estate, as well as of large family. The widow who valued wealth as much as Bacon did, married the old man, running off with him, and entering into an irregular marriage, for which they were both prosecuted in the Ecclesiastical Court. Bacon had reason to rejoice at his escape, for the widow was of capricious and violent temper, and led Coke a most wretched life, refusing to take his name, separating from him, doing every thing to vex and annoy him, and teaching his child to rebel against him. Bacon was however shortly after consoled by a rich and handsome wife, in the daughter of Alderman Barnham, whom he married. But the marriage seems at best to have been one of convenience on his part. They did not live happily together; she never was a companion to him; and not long before his death, a final separation took place, and the great Lord Chancellor died without the consolations of female tenderness in his last moments. When the separation took place, "for great and just causes," as he expresses it in his will, he "utterly revoked" all testamentary dispositions in her favor. But she lost nothing by this, for his costly style of living during his official career left him without a penny, and he died insolvent.

Sir Thomas More, when twenty-one, married the eldest daughter of one "Maister Coult, a gentleman of Essex," a country girl, very ill-educated, but fair and well-formed. Erasmus says of the marriage – "He wedded a young girl of respectable family, but who had hitherto lived in the country with her parents and sisters; and was so uneducated, that he could mould her to his own tastes and manners. He caused her to be instructed in letters; and she became a very skillful musician, which peculiarly pleased him." The union was a happy one, but short, the wife dying, and leaving behind her a son and three daughters; shortly after which, however, More married again, this time a widow named Alice Middleton, seven years older than himself, and not by any means handsome. Indeed, More indulged himself in a jest on her want of youth and beauty – "nec bella nec puella." He had first wooed her, it seems, for a friend, but ended by marrying her himself. Erasmus, who was often an inmate of the family, speaks of her as "a keen and watchful manager." "No husband," continues Erasmus, "ever gained so much obedience from a wife by authority and severity, as More won by gentleness and pleasantry. Though verging on old age, and not of a yielding temper, he prevailed on her to take lessons on the lute, the viol, the monochord, and the flute, which she daily practiced to him." Her ordinary and rather vulgar apprehension could not fathom the conscientious scruples of her husband in his refusal to take the oath dictated to him by Henry VIII.; and when he was at length cast by that bad monarch into the Tower, then the grave of so many royal victims, his wife strongly expostulated with him on his squeamishness. "How can a man," she said to him on one occasion, "taken for wise, like you, play the fool in this close filthy prison, when you might be abroad at your liberty, if you would but do as the bishops have done?" She dilated upon his fine house at Chelsea, his library, gallery, garden, and orchard, together with the company of his wife and children. But to all he opposed the mild force of his conscience and religious feelings. "Is not this house," he asked, "as nigh heaven as my own?" to which her contemptuous ejaculation was – "Tilly vally, tilly vally!" He persisted in his course, and was executed, after which we hear no more of his wife.

Among the few great lawyers who have married "for love," Hyde, Lord Clarendon, deserves a place. While yet a young man, he became desperately enamored of the daughter of Sir George Aycliffe, a Wiltshire gentleman of good family, though of small fortune. A marriage was the result, but the beautiful young wife died only six months after, of the malignant small-pox (then a frightful scourge in this country), and Hyde was for some time so inconsolable, that he could scarcely be restrained from throwing up his profession and going abroad. Two years after, however, he married again into a good family, his second wife being the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Master of the Mint; and the marriage proved highly auspicious. This worthy lady was his companion in all his vicissitudes of fortune – lived with him for many years in exile – shared all his dangers and privations, when at times the parents could with difficulty provide food and raiment for their children; but the wife was yet preserved to see her husband Earl of Clarendon, Lord Chancellor and Prime Minister of England. As an instance of the straits to which the family was occasionally reduced, we may quote the following extract from a letter written by Hyde to a friend, when at Madrid in 1650, in which he says: "All our money is gone, and let me never prosper, if I know or can imagine how we can get bread a month longer;" and again, "Greater necessities are hardly felt by any men than we for the present undergo, such as have almost made me foolish. I have not for my life been able to supply the miserable distress of my poor wife."

Francis North, afterward Lord-Keeper Guildford, went about marrying in a business-like way. He was a reader at Lincoln's Inn, but much desired to wed, because he had "grown tired of dining in the hall, and eating a costelet and salad at Chateline's in the evening with a friend." Besides, he wished to mend his fortune in the most summary way. He first tried a rich, coquettish young widow, but she jilted him. Then he found out an alderman who was reputed to be rich, and had three marriageable daughters with a fortune of £6000 each. He made his approaches, was favorably received, and proceeded to broach the money question to the alderman. The sum named as the young lady's portion was £5000; but as North had set his heart on the £6000, he was disappointed, and at once took his leave. The alderman, running after him (at least so relates Lord Campbell), offered him to boot £500 on the birth of the first child. But North would not take a penny under the sum he had fixed upon, and the match fell through. At last he found a lady with £14,000, one of the daughters of the Earl of Devon, whom he courted in a business style, and ultimately married.