would be satisfied with a small salary
and the consciousness that she was doing
good; and a fifth— concluding the list of
accomplishments— desired in the following
remarkable manner: "No one need apply
who has not confidence in her own good
temper.''

The salaries, generally speaking, were low
— very low; sixteen, twenty, and from that
to forty pounds being the average; a few
were fifty and sixty. One family offered eighty,
and one a hundred; but all demanded much
more than the value of their money. To know
English generally, German, French, and
Italian— acquired in their respective countries
— to be an accomplished pianiste— to sing,
draw and dance, were the usual group of
accomplishments demanded for the liberal pay of
thirty and forty pounds. One or two ladies
had caught hold of a hard idea called Natural
Philosophy, and others would not be satisfied
without a knowledge of Physical Geography;
but, I did not observe that a higher rate of
pay was held out as a bait to draw Natural
female Philosophers and Physical feminine
Geographers into the bosoms of families of
this superior order of cultivation. The
reflection was forced upon my mind that many
ladies who want governesses must be
profoundly foolish to imagine that women like
themselves can be proficients in a half-a-dozen
arts and sciences which, separately and
singly, form the whole life-study of able men.
The cheap system prevails to a ruinous extent
amongst governesses; it has lowered them as
they never ought to have been lowered; they
are compelled to seem to know what it is
impossible that they should know.
Supposing a case; if I lost my little
property; I should naturally turn to the
scholastic profession— everybody who loses
her little property does, to speak literal
truth, I should only advertise myself
as possessing a tolerable knowledge of my
own language and its literature; and what
sort of salary should I get? Perhaps sixteen
pounds, as a nursery-governess. Therefore,
like thousands more, I should add French,
Italian, music, and drawing, in various
branches, and then my value— not real, but
nominal— might rise to thirty, forty, even
sixty pounds! People will be deceived in
this way continually, so long as the cheap
system holds good.

Altogether, my study of that Register for
Governesses did not please me; it made me a
convert to Miss Green's opinions of the hardships
of her class. A governess at twenty
pounds a-year gets thirteen-pence per day;
reckoning her to work only six hours a
day— which is almost the lowest average— she
gets a fraction more than twopence an hour.
Twopence for an hour at the piano, twopence
for an hour at chalk-drawing, twopence for
an hour of English lessons, twopence for an
hour of French, twopence for an hour of
German, twopence for an hour of singing
songs and doing Italian lessons, and the odd
penny for the natural philosophy and physical
geography thrown in as make-weights.

CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

HAVING been condemned to be shot for
what the court-martial at Rastadt, sitting
in judgment over political offenders declared
to be capital crime, I was carried back to
the Fort, and placed in a dungeon used as a
condemned cell.* The day was Saturday, the
fifteenth of September, and the hour three in
the afternoon. The rule was, that men
sentenced as I had been, should be shot at
five o'clock on the morning following their
condemnation; but, if the next day happened
to be Sunday, the execution was to take
place the same evening before dark. At
three o'clock in the afternoon, on a Saturday
in the middle of September, I had not, by
this calculation, very long to live.

* See page 75 of the present volume.

Under these circumstances it was not
necessary that I should be critical respecting
the accommodation furnished in my chamber.
On a raised board in one corner there was a
tumbled litter: the bed occupied by a comrade
of mine who had been shot that morning.
A gaoler came with rueful looks to ask
whether I wished for anything, and whether
he might not summon the clergyman. I asked
for writing materials, a good dinner, a bottle
of Rhenish, and a few cigars; for, bodily
refreshment I did need; and as to spiritual
help (though God knows I needed that too),
I knew it was not to be obtained from a
minister who had found nothing to talk about over
the grave of a fallen officer but Nebuchadnezzar
and his pride. While I sat writing on the
board that was my table, I looked through the
grated window at the sentry, who kept
guard over me, a red-cheeked, honest fellow
from Thuringia, who liked his work so little
that he was fairly blubbering. A little of
the sentry's sympathy would have made of
the chaplain a better man for his all-important
work.

But the best sympathy was being spent on
me elsewhere. My wife during the past
week had not been idle. A few days before
the trial she was in Carlsruhe. She had
then called on the minister-at-war, Colonel
von Moggerbach. He is now dead, and it can
hurt nobody to name one who received a
suffering woman with humane emotions. "I
am rising," he said, "from the sick bed to
which I was brought by grief at these sad
things. It is not with my wish or approval
that so much blood has been spilt. However,
we have ordered better now that all sentences
of death not decreed unanimously by the
court-martials, shall be forwarded here for
ratification. That is your only hope of mercy."

My wife attempted, too, upon the very morning
of the trial, to see the Grand Duke. She