then dared him to pledge his honor" Then," said Mr. Roe, "the statement from the Helgorn. He did so. For you have just heard is not true?" eighteen months afterwards Iltyd Rhys was in confinement-in point of fact, he was never afterwards perfectly sane. Now, you see, Owain, a member of this family, tells us he pledged his honor to something or other from the Helgorn, and subsequently experienced some wonderful adventures, of which he can give not one fragment of proof. Will not the verdict be hallucination ? "On the other hand, the defendant, though a woman with a story, is young, pretty, goes to church, and pays her debts. What she will say it is impossible to guess; but, mark my words, the bench will believe her. The Bensons can if they please decline to answer any questions lest they should incriminate themselves. Now, major, you must admit that it is a difficult case to fight." "It is pure imagination." I failed to shake her in cross-examination. Richard Benson swore he had never seen Captain Rhys in his life before that day. He stuck to this. Eliza Benson said that she had often seen Captain Rhys when her mistress, then Miss L'estrange, was engaged to marry him, but not since that date. William Colney Hatch swore that he was a doctor of medicine; that he had never seen or heard of Captain Rhys until he was summoned to this court. He had never been in Abergloyne before that day. He had paid great attention to toxicology, more especially to that branch of the study which dealt with narcotic poisoning, but he knew of no drug which would immediately stupefy a man and induce sleep lasting for more than twelve hours. He had listened with great interest to Captain Rhys's statements, and had no hesitation in saying that the gentleman was of unsound mind. Difficult or not, it had to be done, and on the Monday week all the persons interested in our story were assembled in the courthouse of Abergloyne. I had obtained summonses against Hester Rhys, Richard Benson, Dr. Colney Hatch, a venerable, beand Eliza Benson for false imprison- nevolent-looking old gentleman with ment. I appeared for the plaintiff. long white hair and a flowing beard, Dr. Colney Hatch was subpoenaed by the defendants, who were represented by Mr. Roe, of the great London firm of Doe and Roe. They pleaded not guilty. Three magistrates sat Colonel Sheldrake in the chair, supported by Messrs. Scolton and Charrington-Lane a good bench, all men endowed with sound common sense. I put Owain in the box. He told his story much as he has since written it down. Then Mr. Roe cross-examined. He asked how long it was before the potion took effect. Owain answered, "In not more than three minutes." Mr. Roe said that his clients had elected to be tried separately, in order that the matter might be thoroughly sifted, and they were prepared to answer any questions put to them. gave his evidence very well indeed, and if the bench had any doubts before, this witness cleared them away. The case was dismissed. In sheer despair I asked Dr. Gwyther, Major Steinkirk, and Owain Rhys to write out very fully, exactly what they could remember concerning this mysterious case. For until we could prove where Owain spent the time between 11 P.м. on Monday, June 29th, and the morning of Friday, July 3rd, he was branded either as rogue or lunatic. Hours and hours I spent poring over these narratives, with no result. Abergloyne was odious to Owain, who had taken his young wife to London. Months passed by. Then one morning society in west Wales was horrified to hear that Mrs. Rhys had been found The defendant, Hester Rhys, was dead in her bed. In due course, as sworn, and declared she had not coroner, I held an inquest on the body. seen Captain Owain Rhys since she The principal witness was Eliza Benhad married his late brother Iltyd. son, who proved that for years past SIR, New York. her mistress had been in the habit of | ceived a letter, which is transcribed dosing herself with narcotics of all below : kinds - opium, morphia, chloral, paraldehyd, and all the other abominations with which foolish men and women tempt fate. There was no reason to suspect that this was a case either of suicide or foul play. The jury very properly brought in a verdict of "death from misadventure." So Hester Rhys was buried, and we all wondered who was heir to Abergloyne. These doubts were settled by a letter which I received from Messrs. Doe and Roe, informing me that the executors nominated by the late Mrs. Rhys were myself and their Mr. Roe, who had drawn up the will the day after the testatrix had been acquitted by the Abergloyne bench. She had left everything absolutely to her brother-in-law, Captain Owain Rhys, with the exception of a legacy of four thousand pounds to be divided between her faithful servants, Richard and Eliza Benson. Was this a tardy reparation? Mr. Roe, whom I found a very pleasant gentleman, could give no information on the subject. When Mrs. Rhys gave him instructions as to her will, she stated she had always entertained kindly feelings towards Owain, who was in her opinion of unsound mind on certain subjects, but still capable of managing his affairs with more or less success. She informed her solicitor that she had several times offered to share the property with him, but he refused to agree to any arrangement. "I suppose," she added, "in the ordinary course of events I shall outlive my brother-in-law; but, in case of accidents, I will bequeath him that which is really his own." Mr. Roe and I administered the estate; but Owain declined to return to Abergloyne until he was in a position to clear himself. The Bensons took their money and left the neighborhood, as was natural, for neither of them was Welsh. So matters rested until the anniversary of Owain's wedding day had very nearly arrived. One morning I re On receipt of the legacy left to us by the late Mrs. Rhys, my husband, Richard Benson, and myself, travelled to this place. To-morrow we pass on elsewhere, change our names, and begin a new life, which we trust may be a better one. Before doing so we wish, as far as may be, to atone for the past. The late Hester Rhys and I were sisters, daughters of a widow by the name of Tompkinson, formerly employed in the Eleusinian Theatre, which, as you know, has long ceased to exist. Our mother was not an actress, but employed in various capacities behind the scenes. We, as little children, appeared in pantomimes, and such like. Then a gentleman (who I have often thought was the father said to have been dead) took Hester away and sent her to school for five years; but as he died without making any provision for her, she returned to mother and me. Hester, as you know, was very pretty, so, with mother's knowledge of the manager, she got on the stage in small parts, and, though never much of an actress, was popular with the public. She lived with mother and me, and, when mother died, I became her dresser. Then I married Benson, who had been a gentleman's servant, but tried acting with some success. The next thing in the story is that the Lanark Regiment, who were going to play Robinson's "Caste," wanted a Polly Eccles. Hester got the job. Captain Rhys played Old Eccles. Hettie took me with her, saying it would be fun for me. There we saw Captain Rhys for the first time, and, as you know, she got engaged to him. Then she married Mr. Iltyd, and when he died Benson and I went to live with her, for she was the kindest, best sister that could be, whatever she may have been to other people. 4303 was first published four years earlier. Since then many a book of the same type has appeared and disappeared, but White still keeps his hold upon the English mind. Though many may talk of his book without having read it it through without discerning its quality, the fact remains that the demand for it is steadily on the increase, and that it is finding its way into the village library and the home of the working man. The name of Gilbert White is a household word with every one who loves his own incomparable country, with its thousands of villages as homely and as sheltered as Selborne. Hettie heard he was going to marry Miss Gwyther she got in a terrible taking, and declared she would kill him first. Then she vowed she would lock him up in the padded chambers. Benson and I laughed at her, but she kept to the point, and offered us a thousand through, and still more may have read pounds if we would help her. I gave way. I don't think it was so much the thousand pounds, but you could not refuse Hettie anything she had set her heart on; any way, I promised to persuade Benson, and that I did after a while, he bargaining that there should be no violence. How Doctor Colney Hatch could say there is no poison that can overcome a man in three minutes and keep him asleep for twelve hours, I don't know, for with my own eyes I saw Hettie put a paper of white powder into the horn, and I helped Benson to carry the captain up-stairs within five minutes at the most. That reminds me about Dr. Colney Hatch. Now I was always considered a good makerup, but that was the very best piece of work I ever did. All the material I had was the "Old Eccles" wig, which Captain Rhys himself had worn, and a beard. I don't know what was the history of that, but with these I made up Benson, who had just been talking to the captain, so well that he didn't know him. I worked from a photo of the doctor's Hettie had got. That, I think, sir, tells the story of the captain's disappearance. In court we all perjured ourselves; but, as Hettie said, having gone so far we were bound to go on. I don't think the poor dear poisoned herself on purpose, but I am not quite sure. Now, sir, I have confessed the whole truth, and my husband joins me; so we are your obedient and repentant servants, - ELIZA AND RICHARD BENSON. EDWARD LAWS. It is strange at first sight that this should be so at a time when we seem passing from a period of poetry and romance into one of stern reality, when the rural population is being drained into the towns, when the squire and the parson are going down in the world, when leisure such as White enjoyed is a rarity and almost a crime, and when the study of economic problems should be driving out of our heads the delights of wild nature or of sport. But the Englishman has always been a strange and self-contradictory creature. With all his commercial instincts and his town-bred vulgarity, his phases of stern Puritanism and political excitement, he has never yet lost that love of the country which is rooted in the life of the manor and the village. Even with the American the same passion still lives; he took it with him to New England in the seventeenth century, and the books of Mr. John Burroughs and Miss Mary Wilkins have lately made us aware how strongly it survives in him in the nineteenth. Surely the spread of the factory system, and the consequent growth of huge towns, has rather strengthened than weakened this love of all things rural. We pine for pure air, for the sight of growing grass, for the footpath across the meadow, for the stile that invites you to rest before you drop into GILBERT WHITE died a hundred the deep lane under the hazels. But years ago, June 26, 1793; the "Natural in the last century there was no need History and Antiquities of Selborne "to pine, when there was hardly a town From Macmillan's Magazine. from which a man could not escape into | possession of the English mind as sethe fields when he would, without toil- curely as the "Complete Angler," or ing through grimy suburbs where the even as "Robinson Crusoe." At the problems of economic science force distance of a century one may well ask themselves at every turn on his mind. why this is so, and what has given the In those days men loved the country book its enduring quality. This I will simply as their home, not because they try to do; but first I must say a word were shut away from it; they took it of the man himself, for I think it is in as a matter of course, and seldom wrote one characteristic of his, and one that about it. Now we mingle a touch of in these days some might call a weakself-consciousness in our passion for it, ness, that the secret of his fame is to which finds its expression in a multi- be found. tude of books. He was born in 1720 at the village What a literature of the fields has which will always be associated with sprung up, since the "Natural History his name, and in which he spent almost of Selborne" was first published! Not the whole of his long life. The conto mention the poets, from our novel- nection of his family with Selborne ists we seem almost to demand the was, however, an accidental one. His familiar descriptive background, care- grandfather, after whom he was named less too often whether they are mere Gilbert, was a fellow of Magdalen Coldaubs, or the work of a master such as lege, Oxford, and was presented by the Mr. Blackmore or Mr. Hardy. And college to the living of Selborne in then again there is an ever-increasing 1681. This Gilbert White was apparcall for books whose whole intention is ently a well-to-do man, for he left conto open our wayward eyes to country siderable bequests to the village, and sights and sounds. Since the days of doubtless inherited wealth from his White we have had Knapp, Howitt, father, who had been an eminent citiJesse, Knox, Wood, and others who zen of Oxford in the time of Cromare still readable and still read; and well. Sampson White, whom we may later, and in a higher region of literature, we have had Kingsley, Jefferies, and Mr. Hamerton. To-day a score of books of the same type are published every year; and good and bad alike seem to find abundant readers. The Selborne Society has spread all over the land; most of our public schools boast of a natural history society, which has taken root in the very citadel of athleticism, and effectually holds its own, issuing its report yearly. Neither athletics nor examinations can kill the old instinct of Englishmen; it is as strong as ever, and the scientific spirit of the age has given it a useful turn. All this literature of the country, all this youthful endeavor, may be traced back not only to the natural instincts of the English country gentleman, like so many other institutions of ours, but to the work of the first country gentleman who could shake himself free from the tyranny of books, and describe what he saw around him in simple and engaging English. White's book has taken call the founder of the family, was a draper in the High Street; he had migrated to the city from Coggs near Witney, where his family had been settled for many generations. He was mayor in 1660, and served as "butler of the beer-cellar" at the coronation of Charles II., and was knighted among many others at that gay time. Thus I may claim the recluse of Selborne as in some sort an Oxfordshire man. But that his own Hampshire folk may have their due, I must add that not only was his grandmother a Hampshire lady, but, if Anthony Wood is to be trusted, the family was "originally descended from the Whites of South Warnborough in Hampshire." 1 Apparently the love of village life was strong in the family; for John, son 1 I am indebted for these particulars to my friend the Rev. Andrew Clark, who has allowed Stamford's note on the White pedigree in “Nature of Gilbert the vicar, settled down in scholar, as scholarship was then; he Selborne after his father's death, as a read the Latin poets, and learnt to love country gentleman of some property, and quote them; and when he went to married, and had several sons by a Oriel in his nineteenth year he was Miss Holt of Streatham. He could sufficiently equipped with learning to afford to give his sons a good educa- be eventually elected fellow. tion, for he sent Gilbert to a tutor at His fellowship began early in 1744, Basingstoke who was himself a scholar, and he held it until his death almost and who knew how to bring up his sons fifty years later. As a fellow he was as scholars. Both these boys were of course ordained, and later on he took younger than Gilbert; the elder one, a small college living in NorthamptonJoseph Warton, matriculated in the shire; but he took it on the undersame year with him at Oriel, and be- standing that he should never reside came afterwards head master of Win- there, and to this resolution, which in chester; while the younger, Thomas, these days seems shocking, he steadily the friend of Johnson, was afterwards adhered all his life. I do not wish to fellow of Trinity and professor of po- dwell on this, or on his other relations etry. Of these schooldays we know to his college, which were not wholly of only one incident, told us by White a pleasant character; but Oxford men himself in his letters on the antiquities are aware that a non-resident who inof Selborne. "When a schoolboy, sists on his right to take his turn as more than fifty years ago, he [the author] was an eye-witness, perhaps a party concerned, in the undermining of that fine old ruin at the north end of Basingstoke town, well known by the name of Holy Ghost Chapel." Any one who will read the rest of the passage, will see that even in his old age White could dwell with some complacency on this exploit. With a quiet humor, only possible in an age that knew no "society for the preservation of ancient buildings," he quotes Dryden : It look'd so like a sin, it pleased the more. proctor, or who holds his fellowship for fifty years, is not likely to be popular with his college. Yet in Dr. Bell's edition of the "Natural History of Selborne" we have such irresistible evidence of White's kindness of heart and charm of manner as can hardly be reconciled with Mr. Shadwell's severe verdict in his account of the history of Oriel.1 The fact seems to be that the age was a self-indulgent one, and that Oxford was not the place to correct the tendency in a man whose mind was beginning to be ruled by one overmastering motive. Life and leisure in his native village were what White longed for, and it is to his indulgence of this longing that we owe his immortal book. This weakness, if such it be, is the clue to his character, and to the excellence of his work as well as to its shortcomings. Happy, amiable, observant at Selborne, he was perhaps too much discomposed at leaving it to be altogether himself elsewhere. For such close and keen observation as his, it is really necessary to be master of one's own time, to be absolutely free from But the history of White's early years is lost almost as completely as the memory of his features, of which no portrait seems to be in existence. Doubtless he was an animal-loving and bird-nesting boy, and acquired an observant habit without knowing it; but I doubt if he began any systematic study of natural history till he settled down at Selborne. He often refers to his earlier sporting days, and it is likely enough that it was only when sport began to fail him that he set about that minute attention to animal life that has chiefly made him famous as a naturalist. But under Mr. Warton his sporting instincts must have been kept under due control. He became a lage. 1 See "The Colleges of Oxford," edited by Rev. A. Clark, p. 121. It is only fair to White to add that for the greater part of his life at Selborne he held curacies, either there or at a neighboring vil |