One of the most ferocious duels, upon record, is that, between Lord Bruce and Sir Edward Sackville, of which the survivor, Sir Edward, wrote an account from Louvain, Sept. 8, 1613. These fellows appear to have been royal tigers, untameable even by Herr Driesbach. This brutal and bloody fight took place, at Bergen op Zoom, near Antwerp. The _cause_ of this terrible duel has never been fully ascertained, but the _manner and instrument_, by which these blood-thirsty gentlemen were put in the ablative, are indicated in the letter--they fought with _rapiers and in their shirts_. I have neither room nor taste for the details: by the curious in such matters, some account may be gathered, in Collins's Peerage, which refers to the correspondence, preserved in manuscript, in Queen's College library, Oxford. These, with Sir Edward's letter, may be found in Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses also, vol. iii. page 314, Lond. 1817. Wood says--"_he (Sackville) entered into a fatal quarrel, upon a subject very unwarrantable, with a young Scottish nobleman, the Lord Bruce_." Sackville was afterward Earl of Dorset. A more accessible authority, for the reader, probably, is the Guardian, vol. iii. No. 133, though the former is more full, and taken from the original manuscript, in the Ashmole Museum, with the ancient spelling. The duel, with swords, between the Lords Mohun and Hamilton, in Hyde Park, Nov. 15, 1712, was nearly as brutal. Both were killed. Richard Brinsley Sheridan's duel with Matthews--the second I mean, for they had two duels--was a very doglike thing indeed. They fought, first, with pistols, and, not killing each other, as speedily as they wished, resorted to their swords. They cut and pricked each other, at a terrible rate; and, losing all patience and temper, closed, rough and tumble, went heels over head, rolled, and puffed, and tussled, in the dust and dirt, till, at last, they were literally pulled apart, like two dogs, by their tails, and a part of Matthews' sword was found sticking in Sheridan's ear. Gentlemanly satisfaction this! It has sometimes occurred, that advantages, unduly taken, on the ground, such as firing out of order, for example, have converted the killing into murder, in the eyes even of the seconds, which it ever is, at all such meetings, in the eye of the law. Such was the case in the duels, between M'Keon and Reynolds, Jan. 31, 1788, and between Campbell and Boyd, June 23, 1808.