Admiral Allen, who died in 1800, and who pretended to have certain claims to the earldom of Errol and the estates of the Hay family.  This gentleman, it seems, had two sons, Captain John Allen and Lieutenant Thomas Allen, both of whom were officers in the navy.  The younger of these, Thomas, was married on the 2d of October 1792 to Catherine Manning, the daughter of the Vicar of Godalming.  In this gentleman, Lieutenant Thomas Allen, the reviewer declares the prototype of the mysterious “Red Eagle” may clearly be recognised; and he works his case out in this way:—­The “Red Eagle” calls himself captain, and is seen in the story in connection with a man-of-war, and displaying remarkable powers of seamanship during a storm among the Hebrides; Thomas Allen was a lieutenant in the navy.  The “Red Eagle” passed for the son of Admiral O’Haleran; Thomas Allen for the son of Admiral Carter Allen.  The “Red Eagle” married Catherine Bruce, sometime after the summer of 1790; Thomas Allen married Catherine Manning in 1792.  In the last of the three “Tales of the Century,” Admiral O’Haleran and the mysterious guide of Dr. Beaton are represented as endeavouring to prevent the “Red Eagle” from injuring the prospects of his house by such a mesalliance as they considered his marriage with Catherine Bruce would be; and there is a scene in which the royal birth of the “Red Eagle” is spoken of without concealment, and in which the admiral begs his “foster son” not to destroy, by such a marriage, the last hope that was withering on his father’s foreign tomb.  In his will Admiral Allen bequeathed his whole fortune to his eldest son, and only left a legacy of L100 to Thomas; so that it may reasonably be inferred that his displeasure had been excited against his youngest born by some such event as an imprudent marriage.  This Thomas Allen had two sons, of whom the elder published a volume of poems in 1822, to which he put his name as John Hay Allen, Esq.; while the marriage of the other is noted in Blackwood’s Magazine for the same year, when he figures as “Charles Stuart, youngest son of Thomas Hay Allen, Esq.”  These are the gentlemen who, more than twenty years later, placed their names to the “Tales of the Century,” and styled themselves John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, thus seeking to persuade the world that they were the direct heirs of Prince Charlie.

There can be no doubt as to their motive; but is it probable, or even possible, that the occurrences which they describe with so much minuteness could ever have taken place?  The imaginary Dr. Beaton’s story as to the birth is altogether uncorroborated.  What became of the attendants on the Princess Louisa, of the lady who was in the bed-chamber, of the nurse who held the child in her arms, and of the little page who announced the advent of the royal heir to the mysterious guide?  They knew the nature of the important event which is said to have taken place, yet they all died with sealed lips, nor, even “in