believe that the mere appearance of the
troops of the Republic on these Monarchical
shores would be the signal for a
revolutionary rising of all the disaffected classes
from one end of Great Britain to the other.
Viewed merely as materials for kindling the
insurrectionary spark, the fourteen
hundred Frenchmen might certainly be
considered sufficient for the purpose—providing
the Directory of the Republic could only
have made sure beforehand that the English
tinder might be depended on to catch
light!

One last event must be recorded before
this History can be considered complete.
The disasters of the invading army, on shore,
were matched, at sea, by the disasters of the
vessels that had carried them. Of the four
ships which had alarmed the English coast,
the two largest (the frigates) were both
captured, as they were standing in for Brest
Harbour, by Sir Harry Neale. This smart
and final correction of the fractious little
French invasion was administered on the
ninth of March, seventeen hundred and
ninety-seven.

MORAL.

THIS is the history of the Great (Forgotten)
Invasion. It is short, it is not impressive,
it is unquestionably deficient in serious
interest. But there is a Moral to be drawn
from it, nevertheless. If we are invaded
again, and on a rather larger scale, let us
not be so ill-prepared, this next time, as to be
obliged to take refuge in our wives' red
petticoats.

THE CHETWYNDES.

I.

PEOPLE cannot get used to skinning all at
once. When the Chetwyndes were ruined,
their moral epidermis, thickened by long
habits of luxury, might be said to be flayed
off them, while they were left to shiver with
bare nerves under the unaccustomed blasts of
poverty. But they bore the miserable process
with a certain degree of high-bred stoicism.
No one ever heard Mr. Chetwynde rail
against anybody for having led him into his
dismal speculations, and no one ever saw
the women of the family shed a tear
because they were deposed from their high
estate, as county people, and driven to an
obscure refuge, amongst the crowds of
London, where the vicissitudes of their fortune
would be unknown and unpitied.

Mr. Chetwynde was a man of excellent
intentions. His father's extravagance had
eaten the heart out of the Harringby
property, and the flesh off its bones long since,
and the son had inherited nothing but the
meagre skeleton. When he took possession
of it he was encumbered with a wife and
an immense family, and improvident tastes,
which they shared. He had married a beautiful
young woman whom Sir Jasper Carghill
had brought up as his own daughter,
though popular rumour said she was the
illegitimate child of his elder brother. She
was a fine, high-spirited woman, proud of her
children, impatient of narrow circumstances,
and resentful of her own position. People
in general did not much like her; they
charged her with ingratitude to Sir Jasper,
whom she would never pretend to love,
though she owed him everything she had and
was; also they charged her with having
encouraged her husband in those wild
speculations that had proved their ruin; but
along with their blame they also vouchsafed
her their pity.

Just before Nurse Bradshaw left
Harringby to go up to town on her sorrowful
errand of preparing a place for the reception
of her ruined master and his family,
Mrs. Chetwynde took her aside, and said:—
"Nurse, if there should be a pleasant room
in the house you fix on, let the girls have it,
poor darlings. They will feel the change the
most of all of us!"

Mr. Chetwynde had been in London the
week before, and had seen several houses;
but they all wore to him such an air of pretentious
gentility that he shirked the necessity
of coming to a decision; and, on the plea of
not knowing which of them was in the
healthiest neighbourhood, he left the casting-
vote to Nurse Bradshaw, who was a
Londoner born and bred, and might be better
informed. She took a ten-roomed villa, and
arranged the larger of the second-floor back
bedrooms as a boudoir for the young ladies,
decorating it with their water-colour sketches,
books, favourite chairs, and little knick-
knackeries, to make it appear as much as
possible like their lost home.

The reason why she chose the second-floor
back bedroom was three-fold. In the first
place it was out of echo of the roar and rattle
on the road; in the second, it looked over an
expanse of small gardens where, it being now
summer, the trees were bushy and green, and
the flowers gay; and, in the last, it possessed
a fine, old yellow-veined, marble chimney-
piece which might have come out of some
great house fallen into decay; a chimney-
piece with carved clusters of grapes and
leaves, and two yawning heads, with serpent-
wreathed hair, supporting the narrow ledge.
It was a grotesque piece of workmanship, and
must have cost a large sum of money once
upon a time. Immediately on entering the
room, it caught the eye as out of place with
the common sash window and uncorniced
ceiling; but when Nurse Bradshaw had set
upon it Miss Olivia's engraved Prague
vases with some ivy-tendrils and early
reddened leaves of the Virginian creeper hanging
from the centre one; when she had spread
the little Persian carpet on the hearth, drawn
up the chairs, strewn books and folios on the
table, kindled a fire, and lighted the lamp,