his parlour as the portrait of his father, was concerned, and which, when produced, bore the inscription, “Hugh Smyth, Esq., son of Thomas Smyth, Esq., of Stapleton, county of Gloucester, 1796,” he indignantly repudiated the idea that it was a likeness of John Provis the younger, although he reluctantly admitted that the old carpenter sometimes entertained the delusion that the painting represented his son John, and that the inscription had not been perceivable until he washed it with tartaric acid, which, he declared, was excellent for restoring faded writings.  He was then asked about some seals which he had ordered to be engraved by Mr. Moring, a seal engraver in Holborn, and admitted giving an order for a card-plate and cards; but denied that at the same time he had ordered a steel seal to be made according to a pattern which he produced, which bore the crest, garter, and motto of the Smyths of Long Ashton.  However, he acknowledged giving a subsequent order for two such seals.  On one of these seals the family motto, “Qui capit capitur” had been transformed, through an error of the engraver, into “Qui capit capitor,” but he said he did not receive it until the 7th of June, and that consequently he could not have placed it on the deed in which Sir Hugh Smyth so distinctly acknowledged the existence of a son by a first marriage—­a deed which he declared he had never seen till the 17th of March.  A letter was then put into court, dated the 13th of March, which he admitted was in his handwriting, and which bore the impress of the mis-spelled seal.  Thus confronted with this damning testimony, the plaintiff turned pale, and requested permission to leave the court to recover from a sudden indisposition which had overtaken him, when, just at this juncture, the cross-examining counsel received a telegram from London, in consequence of which he asked, “Did you, in January last, apply to a person at 361 Oxford Street, to engrave for you the Bandon crest upon the rings produced, and also to engrave ‘Gookin’ on the brooch?” The answer, very hesitatingly given, was, “Yes, I did.”  The whole conspiracy was exposed; the plot was at an end.  The plaintiff’s counsel threw up their briefs, a verdict for the defendants was returned, and the plaintiff himself was committed by the judge on a charge of perjury, to which a charge of forgery was subsequently added.

The second trial took place at the following spring assizes at Gloucester.  The evidence for the crown showed the utter hollowness of the plaintiff’s claim.  The attorney’s clerk, from whom the impostor had stated he received the formal declaration of Sir Hugh Smyth, was called, and declared that he had written the letter which was said to have accompanied the deed, from the prisoner’s dictation; the deed was produced at the time, and the witness took a memorandum of the name of the attesting witnesses on the back of a copy of his letter.  This copy, with the endorsement, was produced in court.  The