been in my life before." The door opened at that
moment, and a beautiful woman came in, leading two little children by
the hands.

"This is my happiness, sir," he said, as he introduced me to his wife.
Then he looked at his children, and his eyes filled with unutterable
love. "And these," he said, "are my ambition."

But before my visit to the island was concluded, I found that a
governorship of Heligoland was very far from being a tranquil retreat.
The present Governor, it seems, had founded a new constitution, and was
charged with having assumed despotic powers, and with having perpetrated
various acts of inhumanity. Governor Wall himself appeared in the light
of a philanthropist as compared with this military ogre, who, having
acquired a taste for blood in the Crimean War, had been sent to
Heligoland to gratify his ruthless propensities. He was as bad as Eyre,
for he had suspended a native politician from the Council. He was worse
than Sir Charles Darling, who had defied a constitution; for he had
destroyed one.

My curiosity having been excited by these complaints, I went to the
proper sources of information, and in a few hours had mastered the
political history of Heligoland.

In 1807 it was captured by Vice-Admiral Russell from the Danes. From
that time until 1864 the government of the colony consisted of a
Governor, six magistrates, and a closed popular body called the
_Vorsteherschaft_, containing, besides the magistrates aforesaid, eight
quartermasters and sixteen elders. The elders were the tribunes of the
people; the quartermasters acted as pilot officers, and superintended
all questions of pilotage and wreck; while the magistrates had the power
of nominating persons to fill vacancies in the _Vorsteherschaft_, and
appointed to them their own particular adherents, or else dangerous
political antagonists. The Governor was a Doge.

A colony governed by pilots, lodging-house-keepers, and small tradesmen
could scarcely be expected to prove a success. In 1820 there was a debt
of L1,800; in 1864, of L7,200. Owing to the rapacity of the
quartermasters, the pilot-trade fell into the hands of the people of
Cuxhaven. And in the island itself the wildest anarchy prevailed. The
six magistrates were unable to execute their own decrees; there was no
prison in the island, and it seems to have been the custom for the
authorities to kidnap convicted criminals and deposit them on the
main-land. Petitions were being const