EPILOGUE OF THE BARNES TRAGEDY.
MR. PERFECT has addressed the Times on the subject of the Duke of Cumberland and the Misses Perfect. He does not trouble himself to go into the particulars of Mr. Jeff's letter, and that of his brother, or of the affidavits appended to them, but simply asserts that the person who alarmed his daughters, as was stated in the first letter that appeared on the subject, was the Duke of Cumberland. His letter concludes thus-
" Did not the Duke of Cumberland pass through the toll-gate on Hammer- smith Bridge, on his way to Kensington, at four o'clock on the afternoon of Saturday the 15th ult. (two miles and a half only from the Palace at Kew), in such haste that his groom left the toll unpaid until his return, at about half- past five o'clock on the same afternoon? Did he ever leave the toll unpaid be- fore, upon any occasion ; or could he require more than an labur and a half (with his speed) to perform the distance of seven miles, which would have brought him back to the very spot where the accident happened ?"
Misses Perfect say- " We know the Duke of Cumberland very well, and can say positively that he was the gentleman who passed us on horseback on the road between Hammer- smith Bridge and Barnes Terrace, about five o'clock on the afternoon of Satur- day the 15th ult."
A gentleman named Barnard has written to the Times to state that he saw the Duke shooting in Kew Gardens from five to six o'clock on the, 15th ult. ; and as the gallopade, of which so much has been said and writ- ten, happened within a quarter of an hour's ride of the Gardens, about five o'clock, this assertion, on the supposition that from, in the one case, may be taken "as a few minutes after, and about; in the other, as a few minutes before the precise hour, is not at all irreconcilable with Misses Perfect's declaration. The Standard would fain persuade its readers that MisSes Perfect were mistaken. Our contemporary laboured hard to prove that the Times had falsified the date of the reception of Mr. Perfect's letter, until Messrs. Jeff and Jelf Sharp showed the contrary. Its attempt to prove the Misses Perfect wrong, is akin to
- the old story of the lady, wbo,.on her infidelity being detected by her . lover, exclaims bitterly against his want of affection in believing his own . eyes in preference to his mistress's word. The world will probably rely on the testimony of Misses Perfect's eyes, however ingeniously the friends of the Duke of Cumberland may argue against it. That Prince has many enemies ; but his worst enemy never made him look so 'little as his "damned good-natured friends" have, on the pre- . sent occasion, combined to do.
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