thought necessary. Cheyney fastened a quarrel on
Wharton. They drew. Wharton, whose cool good humoured courage and skill
in fence were the envy of all the swordsmen of that age, closed with his
quarrelsome neighbour, disarmed him, and gave him his life.

A more tragical duel had just taken place at Westminster. Conway
Seymour, the eldest son of Sir Edward Seymour, had lately come of age.
He was in possession of an independent fortune of seven thousand pounds
a year, which he lavished in costly fopperies. The town had nicknamed
him Beau Seymour. He was displaying his curls and his embroidery in
Saint James's Park on a midsummer evening, after indulging too freely in
wine, when a young officer of the Blues named Kirke, who was as tipsy as
himself, passed near him. "There goes Beau Seymour," said Kirke. Seymour
flew into a rage. Angry words were exchanged between the foolish boys.
They immediately went beyond the precincts of the Court, drew, and
exchanged some pushes. Seymour was wounded in the neck. The wound
was not very serious; but, when his cure was only half completed, he
revelled in fruit, ice and Burgundy till he threw himself into a violent
fever. Though a coxcomb and a voluptuary, he seems to have had some
fine qualities. On the last day of his life he saw Kirke. Kirke implored
forgiveness; and the dying man declared that he forgave as he hoped to
be forgiven. There can be no doubt that a person who kills another in a
duel is, according to law, guilty of murder. But the law had never been
strictly enforced against gentlemen in such cases; and in this case
there was no peculiar atrocity, no deep seated malice, no suspicion of
foul play. Sir Edward, however, vehemently declared that he would
have life for life. Much indulgence is due to the resentment of an
affectionate father maddened by the loss of a son. But there is but
too much reason to believe that the implacability of Seymour was the
implacability, not of an affectionate father, but of a factious and
malignant agitator. He tried to make what is, in the jargon of our time,
called political capital out of the desolation of his house and the
blood of his first born. A brawl between two dissolute youths, a brawl
distinguished by nothing but its unhappy result from the hundred brawls
which took place every month in theatres and taverns, he magnified into
an attack on the liberties of the nation, an attempt to introduce a
military tyranny. The question was wheth