and contemptuous silence. His bitterest enemy,
Mr. Lavie, whom, at Lord Gambler's trial, Lord
Cochrane had openly accused of fabricating false
charts, was chosen by the Stock Exchange
committee as the solicitor for the prosecution, to
the rejection of their own lawyer. De
Berenger himself secretly offered his aid to the
Admiralty and to the Stock Exchange; but the
government, though eager for a conviction, were
afraid to have dealings with such a scoundrel.
They managed to get Cochrane expelled from
the House of Commons by one hundred and
forty votes to forty-four. The Westminster
constituency, however, re-elected him in July
triumphantly. Determined to take his seat,
Cochrane escaped from prison in disguise, and
presented himself on the 21st of March, 1815,
at the right hand of the Speaker's chair. The
marshal of the King's Bench was allowed to
take him into custody once more, and he was
marched off to jail to suffer the rest of his un-
just sentence.

Lord Cochrane's bold and fearless
explanation of the affair (when in his eighty-fifth
year, and still a vigorous unbroken old man)
thoroughly exculpates him in the matter. De
Berenger's misfortunes had interested him: the
giving him clothes to return in disguise to the
Rules and save his sureties, was the result of a
momentary impulse of compassion for a man
almost a stranger. The moment his character
was impugned, Lord Cochrane came forward
and gave up the name of the mysterious visitor,
and that was the one clue wanted by the
Stock Exchange. If he had been one of the
conspirators, why could he not have burnt
the dangerous coat? If he was guilty, why did
he not profit by the rise in the funds, and sell
out hard and fast? If he was criminal, why
should De Berenger, instead of posting to the
City, go and spend two hours waiting at the
house of his accomplice? If he was a sharer
in the fraud, why did he refuse to take De
Berenger in the Tonnant, when the rascal could
so easily have changed his name, and been
quietly shipped off to America, or landed in
France?

No wonder the great heart nearly broke
under that terrible disgrace. Once free from
prison, Cochrane sought other worlds, and
fought there bravely for liberty. The country
he still loved had lost his services for ever.

As an old man, after a long career of glory,
and looking back to this crushing blow, the
hero said, "Yes, it was hard to bear; just,
too, when the opportunity had come for
professional activity, in spite of the jealousies that
had always pursued me. My heart did sink
within me at that outrageous sentence, and it
required all my energies to bear the blow. It
may be thought that after the restoration to
rank and honours by my late and present
sovereign, after my promotion to the command of a
fleet when I had no enemy to confront, and
after the enjoyment of the sympathy and friend-
ship of those whom the nation delights to
honour, I might safely pass over that day of
deep humiliation. Not so. It is true I have
received those marks of my sovereign's favour,
and it is true that, from that day to the
present, I have enjoyed the uninterrupted friend-
ship of those who were then convinced, and are
still convinced, of my innocence; but that
unjust public sentence has never been publicly
reversed, nor the equally unjust fine inflicted
on me remitted."

Of De Berenger, the dark scoundrel who thus
basely, and, to judge from a letter of his own,
regretfully, plunged a brave and honourable man
into a slough of disgrace, we know little more. He
eventually wrote a clap-trap book on gymnastics,
and became, we believe, a showy riding-
master on the site of the present Cremorne
Gardens.

Of all the ruthless and unprincipled acts of the
Sidmouth government, there was not one more
heartless and unjustifiable than this prosecution
of Lord Cochrane. He did not benefit by the
fraud; his complicity with it was utterly
unproven; and the sentence was not only severe,
but loaded with a humiliation intended to be
worse than death. It was a disgrace to the
ministry that restored this brave man's rank,
that it did not also cancel the old injustice,
reverse the sentence, and pay back the money
that had been unjustly extorted.

Now ready, price Fourpence,
THE
EXTRA DOUBLE NUMBER FOR CHRISTMAS,
ENTITLED
NO THOROUGHFARE.
BY CHARLES DICKENS
AND WILKIE COLLINS.

To commence in the Number dated Saturday,
January 4, 1868,
THE MOONSTONE;
A NEW SERIAL STORY
By WILKIE COLLINS.

Bound in cloth, price 5s. 6d.,
THE EIGHTEENTH VOLUME