ot deeming it fit to consent to the proposition, Sir
Ferdinand quitted his capital in a huff, and, returning to England,
laid claim to the peerages of Tewkesbury and Armine. Although assured of
failing in these claims, and himself perhaps as certain of ill success
as his lawyers, Sir Ferdinand nevertheless expended upwards of 60,000L.
in their promotion, and was amply repaid for the expenditure in the
gratification of his vanity by keeping his name before the public. He
was never content except when he was astonishing mankind; and while he
was apparently exerting all his efforts to become a King of Poland,
a Roman cardinal, or an English peer, the crown, the coronet, and the
scarlet hat were in truth ever secondary points with him, compared
to the sensation throughout Europe which the effort was contrived and
calculated to ensure.

On his second return to his native country Sir Ferdinand had not
re-entered society. For such a man, society, with all its superficial
excitement, and all the shadowy variety with which it attempts to
cloud the essential monotony of its nature, was intolerably dull and
commonplace. Sir Ferdinand, on the contrary, shut himself up in Armine,
having previously announced to the world that he was going to write his
memoirs. This history, the construction of a castle, and the prosecution
of his claims before the House of Lords, apparently occupied his time to
his satisfaction, for he remained quiet for several years, until, on the
breaking out of the French Revolution, he hastened to Paris, became a
member of the Jacobin Club, and of the National Convention. The name
of Citizen Armine appears among the regicides. Perhaps in this vote he
avenged the loss of the crown of Poland, and the still more mortifying
repulse he may have received from the mother of Marie Antoinette. After
the execution of the royal victims, however, it was discovered that
Citizen Armine had made them an offer to save their lives and raise an
insurrection in La Vendue, provided he was made Lieutenant-general of
the kingdom. At his trial, which, from the nature of the accusation and
the character of the accused, occasioned to his gratification a great
sensation, he made no effort to defend himself, but seemed to glory in
the chivalric crime. He was hurried to the guillotine, and met his fate
with the greatest composure, assuring the public with a mysterious air,
that had he lived four-and-twenty hours longer everything would have