We cannot pass by our especial favourite, _The Lotos-Eaters_. This

is poetry of the very highest order--in every way charming--subject

and treatment both. The state of mind described, is one which every

cultivated mind will understand and enter into, and which a poet, in

particular, must thoroughly sympathise with--that lassitude which is

content to look upon the swift-flowing current of life, and let it

flow, refusing to embark thereon--a lassitude which is not wholly

torpor, which has mental energy enough to cull a justification for

itself from all its stores of philosophy--a lassitude charming as

the last thought, before sleep quite folds us in its safe and tried

oblivion. No need to eat of the Lotos, or to be cast upon the enchanted

island, to feel this gentle despondency, this resignation made up

of resistless indolence and well-reasoned despair. Yet these are

circumstances which add greatly to the poetry of our picture. To the

band of weary navigators who had disembarked upon this land--

"Where all things always seemed the same--

The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

IV.

"Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,

Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave

To each; but whoso did receive of them,

And taste, to him the gushing of the wave,

Far, far away, did seem to mourn and rave

On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,

His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;

And deep asleep he seemed, yet all awake,

And music in his ears his beating heart did make.

V.

"They sat them down upon the yellow sand,

Between the sun and moon, upon the shore;

And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,

Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore

Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar,

Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.

Then some one said, 'We will return no more;'

And all at once they sang, 'Our island home

Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.'"

CHORIC SONG.

I.

"There is sweet music here, that softer falls

Than petals from blown roses on the grass,

Or night-dews on still waters between walls

Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;

Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,

Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;

Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.

Here are cool mosses deep,

And through the moss the ivies creep,

And in the stream the long-leav'd flowers weep,

And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.

II.

"Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,

And utterly consumed with sharp distress,

While all things else have rest from weariness?

All things have rest: why should we toil alone?

We only toil, who are the first of things,

And make perpetual moan,

Still from one sorrow to another thrown:

Nor ever fold our wings,

And cease from wanderings,

Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm;

Nor hearken what the inner spirit sings,--

'There is no joy but calm!'

Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things?

* * * * *

IV.

"Hateful is the dark-blue sky,

Vaulted o'er the dark-blue sea.

Death is the end of life: ah! why

Should life all labour be?

Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast,

And in a little while our lips are dumb.

Let us alone. What is it that will last?

All things are taken from us, and become

Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.

Let us alone. What pleasure can we have

To war with evil? Is there any peace

In ever climbing up the climbing wave?

All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave

In silence,--ripen, fall, and cease:

Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease!"

VI.

"Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,

And dear the last embraces of our wives,

And their warm tears: but all hath suffer'd change;

For surely now our household hearths are cold:

Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange:

And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy.

Or else the island princes over-bold

Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings

Before them of the ten years' war in Troy,

And our great deeds, as half-forgotten things.

Is there confusion in the little isle?

Let what is broken so remain.

The gods are hard to reconcile:

'Tis hard to settle order once again.

There _is_ confusion worse than death,

Trouble on trouble, pain on pain,

Long labour unto aged breath." . . .

VIII.

* * * * *

"We have had enough of action; and of motion, we,

Roll'd to starboard, roll'd to larboard, when the surge was seething free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind,

In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined

On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."

As at once a companion and counterpart to this picture, we have a noble

strain from _Ulysses_, who, having reached his island-home and kingdom,

pants again for enterprise--for wider fields of thought and action.

"It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed

Greatly, have suffered greatly.

I am become a name;

For, always roaming with a hungry heart,

Much have I seen and known; cities of men,

And manners, climates, councils, governments;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

* * * * *

"This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle--

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and through soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port: the vessel puffs his sail:

There gloom the dark-blue seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me--

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads--you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and, sitting well in order, smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die."

_St Simeon Stylites_ is a poem strongly and justly conceived, and

written throughout with sustained and equable power. Those who have

objected to it, that it is not the portrait of any _Christian_ even of

that distant age and that Eastern clime, have perhaps not sufficiently

consulted their ecclesiastical history, or sufficiently reflected how

almost inevitably the practice of penances and self-inflictions leads

to the idea that these are, in fact, a sort of present payment for the

future joys of heaven. Such an idea most assuredly prevailed amongst

the Eastern eremites, of whom our Simeon was a most noted example. But

we cannot quote from this, or from _The Two Voices_, or from _Locksley

Hall_, or from _Clara Vere de Vere_; for we wish now to select some

specimen of the lighter, more playful, and graceful manner of our poet.

We pause betwixt _The Day-Dream_ and _The Talking Oak_; they are both

admirable: we choose the latter--we rest under its friendly, sociable

shade, and its most musical of boughs. The lover holds communion with

the good old oak-tree, and finds him the most amiable as well as the

most discreet of confidants. May every lover find his oak-tree talk as

well, and as agreeably, and give a report as welcome of his absent fair

one! On being questioned--

"If ever maid or spouse

As fair as my Olivia, came

To rest beneath thy boughs,"

The oak makes answer:--

"O Walter, I have sheltered here

Whatever maiden grace

The good old summers, year by year,

Made ripe in summer-chase:

"Old summers, when the monk was fat,

And, issuing shorn and sleek,

Would twist his girdle tight, and pat

The girls upon the cheek;

"And I have shadow'd many a group

Of beauties, that were born

In teacup-times of hood and hoop,

Or while the patch was worn;

"And leg and arm, with love-knots gay,

About me leap'd and laugh'd

The modish Cupid of the day,

And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prick

Each leaf into a gall)

This girl for whom your heart is sick

Is three times worth them all;

"I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain,

(And hear me with thy ears,)

That though I circle in the grain

Five hundred rings of years--

"Yet since I first could cast a shade

Did never creature pass

So slightly, musically made,

So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flit

To make the greensward fresh,

I hold them exquisitely knit,

But far too spare of flesh."

The lover proceeds to inquire when it was that Olivia last came to

"sport beneath his boughs;" and the oak, who from his topmost branches

could see over into Summer-place, and look, it seems, in at the

windows, gives him full information. Yesterday her father had gone out--

"But as for her, she staid at home,

And on the roof she went,

And down the way you use to come,

She look'd with discontent.

"She left the novel, half uncut,

Upon the rosewood shelf;

She left the new piano shut;

She could not please herself.

"Then ran she, gamesome as a colt,

And livelier than a lark;

She sent her voice through all the holt

Before her, and the park.

"A light wind chased her on the wing,

And in the chase grew wild;

As close as might be would he cling

About the darling child.

"But light as any wind that blows,

So fleetly did she stir,

The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose,

And turn'd to look at her.

"And here she came, and round me play'd,

And sang to me the whole

Of those three stanzas that you made

About my 'giant bole;'

"And, in a fit of frolic mirth,

She strove to span my waist;

Alas! I was so broad of girth

I could not be embraced.

"I wish'd myself the fair young beech,

That here beside me stands,

That round me, clasping each in each,

She might have lock'd her hands."

It is all equally charming, but we can proceed no further. Of the

comic, we have hinted that Mr Tennyson is not without some specimens,

though, as will be easily imagined, it is not a vein in which he

frequently indulges. _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue_ is not a

piece much to our taste, yet that

"Head-waiter of the chophouse here,

To which I most resort,"

together with the scene in which he lives and moves, is very

graphically brought before us in the following lines:--

"But thou wilt never move from hence,

The sphere thy fate allots:

Thy latter days, increased with pence,

Go down among the pots.

Thou battenest by the greasy gleam

In haunts of hungry sinners,

Old boxes, larded with the steam

Of thirty thousand dinners.

"_We_ fret, _we_ fume, would shift our skins,

Would quarrel with our lot;

_Thy_ care is under-polish'd tins

To serve the hot-and-hot.

To come and go, and come again,

Returning like the pewit,

And watch'd by silent gentlemen

That trifle with the cruet."

But this is not the extract we promised our readers, nor the one we

should select as the best illustration of our author's powers in this

style. In a piece called _Walking to the Mail_, there occurs the

following description of a certain college trick played on some miserly

caitiff, who, no doubt, had richly deserved this application of _Lynch

law_. It is not unlike the happiest manner of our old dramatists,--

"I was at school--a college in the south:

There lived a flay-flint near; we stole his fruit,

His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;

We paid in person. He had a sow, sir: she

With meditative grunts of much content,

Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.

By night we dragg'd her to the college tower

From her warm bed, and up the cork-screw stair,

With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,

And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.

Large range of prospect had the mother sow,

And but for daily loss of one she lov'd,

As one by one we took them--but for this,

As never sow was higher in this world,

Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?

We took them all, till she was left alone

Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine,

And so returned unfarrow'd to her sty."

_The Princess; a Medley_, now claims our attention. This can no longer,

perhaps, be regarded as a new publication, yet, being the latest of Mr

Tennyson's, some account of it seems due from us. With what propriety

he has entitled it "A Medley" is not fully seen till the whole of it

has come before the reader; and it is at the close of the poem that

the author, sympathising with that something of surprise which he is

conscious of having excited, explains in part how he fell into that

half-serious, half-bantering style, and that odd admixture of modern

and mediæval times, of nineteenth century notions and chivalrous

manners, which characterise it, and constitute it the medley that it

is. Accident, it seems, must bear the blame, if blame there be. The

poem grew, we are led to gather, from some chance sketch or momentary

caprice. So we infer from the following lines,--

"Here closed our compound story, which at first,

Perhaps, but meant to banter little maids

With mock heroics and with parody;

But slipt in some strange way, cross'd with burlesque

From mock to earnest, even into tones

Of tragic."----

However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism

which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old

romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately

and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was

this, that the _pictures_ it presents are the most vivid imaginable;

that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which

quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to

the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where

the author falls into _reflection_ and _sentiment_, he is not equal

to himself; that here a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to

steal over the page; so that, although the poem is not long, there are

yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that

peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has,

at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full

justification, we presume, in that half-burlesque character which is

impressed upon the whole poem.

The subject is a pleasing one--a gentle banter of "the rights of

woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The

feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance

of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic;

he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power,

and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band

themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no

sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every

heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park,

which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They

hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly

fancy, is the whole scene brought before us--the holiday multitude, and

the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down,

A man with knobs and wires and vials fired

A cannon: Echo answered in her sleep

From hollow fields: and here were telescopes

For azure views; and there a group of girls

In circle waited, whom the electric shock

Dislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lake

A little clock-work steamer paddling plied,

And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,

A dozen angry models jetted steam;

A petty railway ran; a fire-balloon

Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves,

And dropt a parachute and pass'd:

And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,

They flash'd a saucy message to and fro

Between the mimic stations; so that sport

With science hand in hand went: otherwhere

Pure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'd

And stump'd the wicket; _babies roll'd about

Like tumbled fruit in grass_; and men and maids

Arrang'd a country-dance, and flew through light

And shadow."----

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty

daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted

no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the

equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down;

It is but bringing up; no more than that

You men have done it; how I hate you all!

O were I some great princess, I would build

Far off from men a college of my own,

And I would teach them all things; you would see.'

And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,

If our old halls could change their sex, and flaunt

With prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,

_And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair_.

. . . . Yet I fear,

If there were many Lilias in the brood,

However deep you might embower the nest,

Some boy would spy it.'

"At this upon the sward

She tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot:

'That's your light way; but I would make it death

For any male thing but to peep at us.'

Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd;

_A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,

And sweet as English air could make her, she_."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess

who did what Lilia threatened--who founded a college of sweet girls,

to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now

domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of

woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the

poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the

first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted

to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such

precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He

sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise

themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this

palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat,

With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne,

All beauty compass'd in a female form,

The princess; liker to the inhabitant

Of some clear planet close upon the sun,

Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said:

'We give you welcome; not without redound

Of fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,

The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime,

And that full voice which circles round the grave

Will rank you nobly, mingled up with me.

What! are the ladies of your land so tall?'

'We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!'

She answered; 'then ye know the prince?'

And he,

'The climax of his age: as tho' there were

One rose in all the world--your highness that--

He worships your ideal.' And she replied:

'We did not think in our own hall to hear

This barren verbiage, current among men--

Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment:

We think not of him. When we set our hand

To this great work, we purposed with ourselves

Never to wed. You likewise will do well,

Ladies, in entering here, to cast and fling

The tricks which make us toys of men, that so,

Some future time, if so indeed you will,

You may with those self-styled our lords ally

Your fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'

At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,

Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have

sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of

men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror

reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to

them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination

creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must,

under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female

theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better

combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they

may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love

and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same

word, _Fancy_, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected two _widows_, (both of whom

have children, and one an infant,)--Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche--for

the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful

pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to

be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery.

After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she

recognises her brother.

"'My brother! O,' she said;

'What do you here? And in this dress? And these?

Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!

A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!

A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though

the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those

passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on

the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the

forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out,--

"To take

The dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stood

Among her maidens higher by the head,

Her back against a pillar, her foot on one

Of those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,

And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:

My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;

And from my breast the involuntary sigh

Brake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,

That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shook

My pulses, till to horse we climb, and so

Went forth in long retinue, following up

The river, as it narrow'd to the hills."

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to

his suit, and to his precontract--even ventures to speak of the despair

which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read--no books?

Quoit, tennis-ball--no games? nor deals in that

Which men delight in, martial exercises?

To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,

Methinks he seems no better than a girl;

As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.

We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;

We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,

Being other--since we learnt our meaning here,

To uplift the woman's fall'n divinity

Upon an even pedestal with man."

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and

"chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic.

And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly

part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

"'Forbear,' the princess cried, _'Forbear, Sir,' I_--

And, heated through and through with wrath and love,

I smote him on the breast; he started up;

There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general

flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider,

into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails

him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state,

"eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus

tauntingly dismisses him:--

"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,

And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:

And you look well too in your woman's dress;

Well have you done and like a gentleman.

You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:

Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;

Then men had said--but now--

You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'd

Our tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us--

_I_ wed with thee! _I_ bound by precontract,

Your bride, your bond-slave! _not tho' all the gold_

_That veins the world were packed to make your crown_,

And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the

palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all

the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with

an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess,

comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with

a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in

the _mêlée_, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises

in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her

palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is

for ever broken up--disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into

that greatest of all her rights--a heart-affection, a life-service, the

devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further

extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief

these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in

their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained

her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very

charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child,

and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child!

My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more;

For now will cruel Ida keep her back;

And either she will die for want of care,

Or sicken with ill usage, when they say

The child is hers; and they will beat my girl,

Remembering her mother. O my flower!

Or they will take her, they will make her hard;

And she will pass me by in after-life

With some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.

But I will go and sit beside the doors,

And make a wild petition night and day,

Until they hate to hear me, like a wind

Wailing for ever, till they open to me,

And lay my little blossom at my feet,

My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:

And I will take her up and go my way,

And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had

congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying

on the grass--

"Psyche ever stole

A little nearer, till the babe that by us,

_Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede_,

_Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass_,

_Uncared for, spied its mother, and began_

_A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance_

_Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms_,

_And lazy lingering fingers_. She the appeal

Brook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine--mine--not yours;

It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,'

Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores

of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not

give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled--gives it,

however, to Cyril.

"'Take it, sir,' and so

Laid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,

Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprang

To embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks,

Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,

And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough;

And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it,

And hid her bosom with it; after that

Put on more calm."

The two kings are well sketched out--the father of Ida, and the father

of our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man,

who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to

demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;

A little dry old man, without a star,

Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,

And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,

And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,

Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,

'All honour. We remember love ourselves

In our sweet youth: there did a compact pass

Long summers back, a kind of ceremony--

I think the year in which our olives failed.

I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart;--

With my full heart! but there were widows here,

Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;

They fed her theories, in and out of place,

Maintaining that with equal husbandry

The woman were an equal to the man.

They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;

Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;

Nothing but this: my very ears were hot

To hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,

A certain summer-palace which I have

Hard by your father's frontier: I said No,

Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another

tone--a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he

speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these

novel "rights of women."

"Boy,

The bearing and the training of a child

Is woman's wisdom."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and

deprecates war, the old king says:--

"'Tut, you know them not, the girls:

They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.

Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them

As he that does the thing they dare not do,--

Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes

With the air of trumpets round him, and leaps in

Among the women, snares them by the score,

Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death,

He reddens what he kisses: thus I won

Your mother, a good mother, a good wife,

Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness

To such as her! If Cyril spake her true,

To catch a dragon in a cherry net,

And trip a tigress with a gossamer,

Were wisdom to it.'"

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go

far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines

and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it

contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our

maiden university:

"There

One walked, reciting by herself, _and one

In this hand held a volume as to read,

And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that_.

Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,

Or under arches of the marble bridge

Hung, shadow'd from the heat."

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem,

such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing

the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been

impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already

said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we

learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very

often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and

we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which

soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from

him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the

undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This

last performance, _The Princess_, took, we believe, his admirers by

surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him--not of so

high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we

should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson.

Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome

the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more

cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have

added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded

in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances--a

list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.[12]

[12] _The Romance of the Peerage, or Curiosities of Family History._ By

GEORGE LILLIE CRAIK. Vols. I. and II. London: 1849.

_Celebrated Trials connected with the Aristocracy in the Relations of

Private Life._ By PETER BURKE, Esq., of the Inner Temple,

Barrister-at-Law. Pp. 505. London: 1849.

_Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, and Episodes in Ancestral Story._ By

J. BERNARD BURKE, Esq. 2 Vols. London: 1849.

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in

publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the

vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should

simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence

in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each

other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and

erudite--at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held

out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that

it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in

nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage

which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the

history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by

destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value.

And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be

improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal

of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those

to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole,

his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on--for he

promises four or five more volumes--that interest is likely to rise.

Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting

than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which

they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally

popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here

we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and

fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest

greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our

annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to

have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected

with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred

during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality

and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical

information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He

has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact

words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the

pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting

us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips

of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable

speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened,

instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the

third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says

Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito--and Burke

is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr

Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the

manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth.

As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those

verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure

and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our

feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will

perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style. _Ne sutor_, &c.,

means, we apprehend, in this instance, let not Burke, whose prename

is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into

picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where

his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless

profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far

have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where

he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance.

Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult

to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant.

But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of

the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes,

tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting

are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive,

are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections.

People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for

striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They

do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense

as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite

this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from

dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay,

has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather

too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable

entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately,

being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better

writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that

makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"

The first section of Mr Craik's book extends over nearly a century,

"that most picturesque of our English centuries which lies between the

Reformation and the Great Rebellion," and owes its priority to its

length and importance, not to chronological precedence, which is due

rather to some of the narratives in the second volume. The history of

the Lady Lettice Knollys, her marriages and her descendants, occupies

nearly the whole volume, including much interesting matter relative

to various noble English families, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, Amy

Robsart, Antonio Perez, and other characters well known in history or

romance. Here there is temptation enough to linger; but we pass on to

a most interesting chapter of the second volume, which illustrates, as

well and more briefly, the merits of Mr Craik's book. It is entitled

_The Old Percys_--a name than which none is more thoroughly English,

none more suggestive of high and chivalrous qualities. Mr Craik begins

by a tilt at Romeo's fallacy of there being nothing in a name, instead

of which, he says, "names have been in all ages among the most potent

things in the world. They have stirred and swayed mankind, and still

do so, simply as names, without any meaning being attached to them. Of

two sounds, designating or indicating the same thing, the one shall,

by its associations, raise an emotion of the sublime, the other of the

ridiculous. There can hardly be a stronger instance of this than we

have in the two paternal names, the assumed and the genuine one, of

the family at present possessing the Northumberland title. The former,

Percy, is a name for poetry to conjure with; it is itself poetry of a

high and epic tone, and may be said to move the English heart 'more

than the sound of a trumpet,' as Sidney tells us his was moved whenever

he heard the rude old ballad in which it is celebrated; but when

Canning, or whoever else it was, in the _Anti-Jacobin_ audaciously came

out with--

'Duke Smithson of Northumberland

A vow to God did make,'

he set the town in a roar." The case is neatly made out, and the writer

then investigates the etymology of the name of Percy. The popular

version is, that a Scottish king, the great Malcolm Canmore, was slain

in the latter part of the eleventh century whilst assaulting the castle

of Alnwick, whose lord ran his spear into the monarch's eye, and thence

derived the surname of Pierce-eye. This is so pretty and romantic a

derivation that one is loath to relinquish it, but unfortunately

the Percys were Percys fully two centuries before Malcolm's death.

Geoffrey, son of Mainfred the Danish chieftain, accompanied Rollo in

his invasion of France, and became lord of the town of _Percy_ or

_Persy_, in Lower Normandy, and this became his _sur_-name--originally

_sieur_-name or lord-name--an appellation derived from territorial

property. Two of the _de Percys_, fifth in descent from Geoffrey,

followed William the Conqueror to England, where the elder of them

became one of the greatest lords in the country. "About a hundred and

twenty lordships in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and other parts, are set

down in Domesday Book as his property. He was, of course, a baron

of the realm. His family name being probably reserved for occasions

of form and ceremony, he was familiarly known in his own day as

_Guillaume al gernons_--that is, Will with the Whiskers--which puts

us in possession of at least one point in the personal appearance of

this founder of the English house of Percy. Hence _Algernon_ became a

common baptismal name among his descendants.... Will with the Whiskers

must have been a good fellow, if it be true, as we are told by an old

writer, that his wife, Emma de Port, was the Saxon heiress of some of

the lands bestowed upon him by the Conqueror, and that 'he wedded her

in discharging of his conscience.'" We here observe a variance between

Mr Craik and Mr Bernard Burke, who devotes more than one chapter to

anecdotes of the house of Percy, which he states to have enjoyed an

uninterrupted male descent from the date of the Conquest to the death

of Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh earl, in 1670. Mr Craik, on the other

hand, whilst noticing that the line has thrice ended in a female,

and been revived through the marriage of the heiress, fixes the date

of the first of these extinctions and revivals in 1168, or rather

later, about a century after the Conquest, when the death, without

male heirs, of the third Lord Percy, left the wealth and honours of

the house to his two daughters. Maud, the eldest, died without issue;

Agnes, the younger, married Jocelyn of Loraine, whose house was one of

the most illustrious in Europe, boasting relationship with the dukes

of Hainault, and collateral descent from the emperor Charlemagne, but

whom she took for her husband only on condition of his assuming her

ancestral name. Mr Craik gives Collins' _Peerage_ as his authority; Mr

Burke would probably refer us to his own: but we do not feel enough

interest in the subject to attempt to decide where doctors of this

eminence differ. Amongst his celebrated "Peerage Causes," Mr Burke

gives some curious particulars of the claim made by a Dublin trunkmaker

to the titles and estates of the Percys, on the extinction of the male

line in 1670. This man, whether the blood of the Percys flowed in his

veins or not, showed no small share of the pluck and boldness for which

that family was so long distinguished, by upholding his pretensions for

fifteen years--at first against the dowager Countess of Northumberland,

and afterwards against the proud and powerful Duke of Somerset, who

had married the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy. When it is remembered

that this occurred in the reign of Charles II., whose tribunals were

not renowned for their equity, (and when a long purse was often better

than the clearest right,) and that the influence and position of the

countess and duke gave them incalculable advantages, it may be thought

that the box-builder from Ireland was almost as bold a man as the

Hotspur he claimed for an ancestor. He got hard measure from the House

of Lords, and was rebuked for presuming to trouble it. He tried the

courts of law, suing persons for scandal who had stated him to be an

impostor--an indirect way of establishing his descent. After one of

these trials, Lord Hailes, dissatisfied with the decision of the court,

which was unfavourable to the plaintiff, is stated to have said to

Lord Shaftesbury, when entering his coach--"I verily believe he (James

Percy) hath as much right to the earldom of Northumberland as I have to

this coach and horses, which I have bought and paid for." In the reign

of James II., Percy again petitioned the Lords, but ineffectually.

His final effort was in the first year of William and Mary, when his

petition was read and referred to a Committee of Privileges, whose

report declared him insolent; and ultimately he was condemned to be

brought "before the four courts in Westminster Hall, wearing a paper

upon his breast, on which these words shall be written: THE FALSE

AND IMPUDENT PRETENDER TO THE EARLDOM OF NORTHUMBERLAND." This

was accordingly done, and, thus disgraced and branded as a cheat, the

unfortunate trunkmaker was heard of no more.

Connected with the early years of the heiress whose rights were thus

disputed, are some singularly romantic incidents, of which a long

account is given by both Burkes. Before the Lady Elizabeth Percy

attained the age of sixteen, she was thrice a wife, and twice a

widow. She was not yet thirteen when the ceremony of marriage was

performed between her and the Earl of Ogle, a boy of the same age,

who died within the year, leaving the heiress of Northumberland to be

competed for by new suitors. Amongst these was Thomas Thynne, Esq.,

of Longleat in Wiltshire, known, from his great wealth, as Tom of Ten

Thousand, member of parliament for his county, a man of weight in the

country, and living in a style of great magnificence. He had been

an intimate friend of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., but,

having quarrelled with that prince, he turned Whig, and courted the

Duke of Monmouth, who frequently visited him at his sumptuous mansion

of Longleat, and to whom he made a present of a team of Oldenburg

carriage--horses of remarkable beauty. Thynne was soon the accepted

suitor of Lady Elizabeth Percy, and they were married in 1681, but

separated immediately after the ceremony on account of the youth of the

bride, who went abroad for a tour on the Continent.

"It was then, as some say, that she first met Count Konigsmark

at the court of Hanover; but in this notion there is a

confusion both of dates and persons. The count, in fact,

appears to have seen her in England, and to have paid his

addresses to her before she gave her hand, or had it given for

her, to Thynne. On his rejection, he left the country; but that

they met on the Continent there is no evidence or likelihood.

Charles John von Konigsmark was a Swede by birth, but was

sprung from a German family, long settled in the district

called the Mark of Brandenburg, on the coast of the Baltic.

The name of Konigsmark is one of the most distinguished in

the military annals of Sweden throughout a great part of the

seventeenth century."--(_Celebrated Trials_, p. 41.)

Count Charles John did honour, at a very early age, to the warlike

reputation of his family, upon whose scutcheon he was subsequently

to cast the shadow of a foul suspicion. When eighteen years old, he

greatly distinguished himself in a cruise against the Turks, undertaken

in company with the Knights of Malta. Early in 1681, he returned to

England, and the probabilities are that it was then, during Lady

Elizabeth's widowhood, that he became an aspirant for her hand. Her

second marriage apparently destroyed the chance of the desperate Swede,

but without extinguishing his hopes. In the month of February 1682,

the position of the three personages of the drama was as follows: Lady

Elizabeth, or Lady Ogle, as she was styled, was abroad; Konigsmark had

been lost sight of, having gone none knew whither; Tom Thynne, with

the heiress of Northumberland his own by legal title, if not in actual

possession, was at the zenith of his personal and political prosperity.

His friend Monmouth was the idol of the mob, the Duke of York had gone

to Scotland to avoid the storm raised by the absurd popish plot, and

by the murder of Sir Emondbury Godfrey; Shaftesbury had been released

from the Tower, amidst acclamations and illuminations: party-spirit, in

short, ran so high, and Thynne was so prominent a figure at the moment,

that the crime to which he presently fell a victim has been thought by

many to have been instigated by political enemies, at least as much

as by a disappointed rival for the hand of the heiress of the Percys.

Be that as it may, (and at this distance of time it were a hopeless

undertaking to elucidate a deed which the tribunals and annalists of

the day failed to clear up,) "on the night of Sunday, 12th February

1682, all the court end of London was startled by the news that Thynne

had been shot passing along the public streets in his coach. The spot

was towards the eastern extremity of Pall-Mall, directly opposite to

St Alban's Street,--no longer to be found, but which occupied nearly

the same site with the covered passage now called the Opera Arcade. St

Alban's Place, which was at its northern extremity, still preserves

the memory of the old name. King Charles, at Whitehall, might almost

have heard the report of the assassin's blunderbuss; and so might

Dryden, sitting in his favourite front-room on the ground-floor of his

house, on the south side of Gerrard Street, also hard by, more than

a couple of furlongs distant." Sir John Reresby, the magistrate and

memoir-writer, took an active share in the arrests and examinations

that followed, and gives the details of the affair. He was at court

that evening, and declares the king to have been greatly shocked at

news of the murder--"not only for horror of the action itself, (which

was shocking to his natural disposition,) but also for fear of the

turn the anti-court party might give thereto." Three persons were

arrested--a Pole, a German, and a Swedish lieutenant; and Borosky,

the Pole, declared that he came to England by the desire of Count

Konigsmark, signified to him through his Hamburg agent, and that on

his arrival the count informed him what he had to do, supplied him

with weapons, and put him under the orders of a German captain, by

whose command he fired into Mr Thynne's carriage. The murderers were

determined their enterprise should not miscarry for want of arms, and

got together an arsenal. "There were a blunderbuss, two swords, two

pair of pistols, three pocket-pistols, &c., tied up together in a sort

of sea-bed, and delivered to Dr Dubartin, a German doctor, who received

them at his own house." Active search was made for Konigsmark, who had

arrived in England _incognito_ some days before the murder, and after

a while he was discovered in hiding at Gravesend. The Duke of Monmouth

and Lord Cavendish were particularly active in the affair, and a reward

of £200 was offered for the count's apprehension. He was carried

before the king. "I happened," says Reresby, "to be present upon this

occasion, and observed that he appeared before his majesty with all

the assurance imaginable. He was a fine person of a man, and I think

his hair was the longest I ever saw." Nothing was elicited at this

examination, which was very superficial, but on the 27th February the

four accused persons were put on their trial at Hick's Hall. Konigsmark

was acquitted for want of evidence (that of his three accomplices and

servants not being receivable against him,) and by reason also, says

Mr Peter Burke, of the more than ordinarily artful and favourable

summing up of Chief-Justice Pemberton, who seemed determined to save

him. The others were hanged in Pall-Mall, and Borosky, who fired the

blunderbuss, was suspended in chains at Mile End. Although Konigsmark

slipped through the fingers of justice, the moral conviction of his

guilt was so strong, and the popular feeling so violent against him,

that he was glad to leave England in all haste. "The high-spirited

Lord Cavendish," says Mr Bernard Burke, "the friend and companion of

the murdered Thynne, indignant at what he deemed a shameful evasion of

justice, offered to meet Konigsmark in any part of the world, charge

the guilt of blood upon him, and prove it with his sword. Granger

records that the challenge was accepted, and that the parties agreed to

fight on the sands of Calais, but before the appointed time arrived,

Konigsmark declined the encounter." Such backwardness is rather

inconsistent with the count's high reputation for bravery--somewhat

inexplicable in the leader of the Maltese boarders, and in the man

who subsequently greatly distinguished himself at the siege of

Cambray and Gerona, at Navarin and Modon, and at the battle of Argoo,

where he was either killed in fight, or died of a pleurisy brought

on by over-exertion. On this last point authorities differ. It is

not improbable, however, notwithstanding his approved valour, that

conscience may have made a coward of him in the instance referred to by

Granger, and that the man who never flinched before the Turk's scimitar

or the Spaniard's toledo, may have shunned crossing his sword with the

vengeful blade of Cavendish.

If, as may be supposed, it was Konigsmark's intention, by the

assassination of Mr Thynne, to clear the way for his own pretensions to

the hand of Lady Elizabeth, that part of his scheme was frustrated by

the discovery of his complicity in the crime. There could be no hope

of a renewal of the favour with which the lady has been said to have

regarded the handsome Swede previously to her contract with Thynne--the

work apparently of her restless matchmaking grandmother and guardian,

rather than the result of any inclination of her own. Twice married,

and still a maid, the Lady Ogle returned to England, immediately

after the execution of her second husband's murderers, and soon (only

two months afterward, we are told) she was led to the altar, for the

third time, by Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, commonly known as

the Proud Duke of Somerset, by reason of his inordinate arrogance

and self-esteem. He outlived her, and married Lady Charlotte Finch,

daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea. "Madam," he is reported to have

said, with infinite indignation, to this lady, when she once ventured

to tap him familiarly on the shoulder with her fan--"Madam, my first

wife was a Percy, and she never would have dared to take such liberty."

The Proud Duke, who not infrequently made himself a laughingstock by

his fantastical assumption, attended the funerals of three sovereigns,

and the coronation of five. On all such state occasions the precedence

was his, the first peer of the realm (Duke of Norfolk) being a Roman

Catholic. His only surviving son, out of seven borne him by his first

duchess, left but one daughter, married to Sir Hugh Smithson, to whom

the earldom of Northumberland descended, and who, in 1776, became the

first duke of Northumberland.

Opposite the title-page of Mr Craik's second volume smiles the sweet

face of Mary Tudor, the daughter, sister, and widow of kings, the wife

of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the grandmother of the hapless

Lady Jane Grey. No English princess, so little remarkable for high

mental qualities, occupies so conspicuous a place in our annals.

Her life was a romance; and the portion of it passed in France, as

the bride of the infirm Louis XII., has been more than once availed

of by the novelist. But the truth is here far too picturesque for

embellishment. The utmost efforts of fiction could scarcely enhance

singularity of the chain of circumstances entwined with Mary's

girlhood, in the course of which she was near becoming an empress,

as she afterwards became Queen. In January 1506 Mary was eight years

old, Philip, Archduke of Austria, and, in right of his wife, King of

Castile, was compelled by stress of weather to put in at Falmouth,

during a voyage from the Netherlands to Spain, whereupon Henry VII.

detained him at his court, and would not let him go, till he had

extorted his consent to a marriage between the infant princess and

Prince Charles of Castile, afterwards the Emperor Charles V. Philip

died in the autumn of the same year, but the marriage was not the less

solemnised by proxy in London early in 1508, to the great contentment

of Henry, to whose felicity, Bacon says, there was then nothing to

be added. "Nevertheless, the marriage of Mary of England with the

Spanish prince, though it had gone so far, went no farther; nor does

her father seem to have counted upon the arrangement being carried out

with absolute reliance. When he died, in 1509 he was found to have

directed in his will that the sum of £50,000 should bestowed as a dower

with Mary, whenever she should be married either to Charles, King of

Castile, or to any other foreign prince. In October 1513, after the

capture of Tournay by Henry VIII., it was stipulated by a new treaty,

concluded at Lisle, between him and Maximilian Emperor of Austria, that

Charles should marry the Princess Mary at Calais before the 15th May

next." The match, however, hung fire on the part of the Austrian, who

had been tempted by the offer for his grandson of the French princess

Renée, and although nothing came of this project, it enabled the King

of France to connect himself as closely with the royal family of

England, as he had been desirous of doing with that of Castile, but in

another manner. His queen, Anne of Bretagne, died just about that time,

and a few months afterwards the decrepid valetudinarian of fifty-three

proposed marriage with the blooming sister of Henry VIII., then in her

seventeenth year. Mary, attaching apparently little importance to the

contract with the Prince of Castile, had fixed her affections on the

handsome and chivalrous Charles Brandon, her brother's favourite, and

the best lance of his day.

"Le premier des rois fut un soldat heureux,"

says the French ballad; and Brandon, whose pedigree was a blank

previously to his father's father, may be said to have had almost

equal fortune. For if not a king himself, he was a queen's husband,

and a king's brother-in-law. He must have been some years older than

Mary, for he had already been twice married, and had been talked of

as the proposed husband of various illustrious ladies, and amongst

others, of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, whose heart he is said

to have won by his prowess in a tournament. At last Mary Tudor cast

her eyes upon him, apparently with the full approval of her brother,

whose most intimate friend Brandon long had been, and who now created

him Duke of Suffolk, in anticipation of his marriage with his sister.

Just then came Louis XII.'s offer. "The temptation of seeing his sister

queen of France," says Mr Craik, "was not to be resisted by Henry; and

the prospect of such an elevation may not perhaps have been without

its seductions for the princess herself:" an illiberal supposition,

refuted, if there be aught in physiognomy, by Mr Craik's own artist.

The owner of those frank, fair features can never have preferred

ambition to love, a decrepid French king to a gallant English duke.

She consented, however, to the alliance; and if there were tears and

overruling in the matter, they are certainly not upon the record. Old

Louis--who, although not much past what is generally the full vigour

of life, had already a foot in the grave--had planned the marriage

as a matter of policy, but soon became exceedingly excited by the

accounts he got of Mary's great beauty. A letter from the Earl of

Worcester, sent to Paris as her proxy at the ceremony of marriage, to

Cardinal Wolsey, exhibits the French monarch in a fever of expectation,

"devising new collars and goodly gear" for his bride. "He showed me,"

says the earl, "the goodliest and the richest sight of jewels that ever

I saw. I assure you, all that I ever have seen is not to compare to

fifty-six great pieces that I saw of diamonds and rubies, and seven of

the greatest pearls that I have seen, besides a great number of other

goodly diamonds, rubies, balais, and great pearls; and the worst of

the second sort of stones to be priced, and cost two thousand ducats.

There is ten or twelve of the principal stones that there hath been

refused for one of them one hundred thousand ducats." It seemed as

if Louis, diffident of his own powers of captivation, had resolved

to buy his wife's affection with trinkets; and Lord Worcester, duly

appreciating the glittering store, and overrating, perhaps, its power

of conferring happiness, doubts not "but she will have a good life

with him, with the grace of God." The respectable and uxorious old

sovereign was too wise to hand over the entire treasure at once, and

planned, as he told Worcester, to have "at many and divers times kisses

and thanks for them." He accordingly doled them out in daily morsels,

which, although minute enough when compared with the coffers' full

of which Lord Worcester speaks, were yet sufficiently considerable

to satisfy an ordinary appetite. On the day of their marriage, which

took place at Abbéville, he gave her "a marvellous great pointed

diamond, with a ruby almost two inches long, without fail." And the

following day he bestowed upon her "a ruby two inches and a half long,

and as big as a man's finger, hanging by two chains of gold at every

end, without any foil; the value whereof few men could esteem." At

the same time he packed off her English attendants, which at first

greatly discomposed her, but after a time she appears to have become

reconciled to it, when a new cause of embarrassment arose in the

arrival at Paris of the Duke of Suffolk in the character of English

ambassador. "The attachment understood to have so recently existed

between her majesty and Suffolk was of course well-known in France.

The story of the English chroniclers is, that Suffolk was on this

account regarded with general jealousy and dislike by the French; and

the Duke of Bretagne, in particular, is charged with having actually

sought his life."--(_Romance of the Peerage_, vol. ii. p. 245.) The

Duke of Bretagne, also called the Dauphin, was son-in-law of Louis,

and afterwards Francis I. One feels unwilling to credit the imputation

cast on so chivalrous a king. Mr Burke generalises the matter, making

no mention of Francis, and attributing the foul play to "the French,

envious of the success of Brandon." But Mr Burke, who will gossip by

the hour about an apocryphal legend, huddles over the romantic career

of Charles Brandon in half-a-dozen pages, and can hardly be looked upon

as a serious authority. The alleged unfair attempt on Suffolk's life

occurred on the occasion of a tournament, which began at Paris, on

Sunday 12th November, "before the king and queen, who were on a goodly

stage; and the queen stood so that all men might see her, and wondered

at her beauty, and the king was feeble, and lay upon a couch for

weakness." In this tourney, the Duke of Suffolk and Marquis of Dorset

and other Englishmen bore a gallant part, doing, says a chronicler, "as

well as the best of any other." And a trifle better, too, judging from

results; but old Hall, in his quaintness, is a friend to anything but

exaggeration. And Suffolk himself, in a letter to Wolsey, after the

tournament, merely says, with praiseworthy modesty, "blessed be God,

all our Englishmen sped well, as I am sure ye shall hear by other."

He himself was the hero of the jousts. It was no bloodless contest,

with bated weapons, but a right stern encounter, with sharp spears.

"Divers," says the cool chronicler, in a parenthesis, "were slain,

and not spoken of." The felony charged on Francis was, that on the

second day of the tourney, when he himself, by reason of a hurt in the

hand, was compelled to leave the lists, he "secretly had a certain

German, who was the tallest and strongest man in all the court of

France, brought and put in the place of another person, in the hope of

giving Suffolk a check." The bulky champion met his match, and more.

After several fierce encounters, "Suffolk, by pure strength, took his

antagonist round the neck, and pummelled him so about the head that

the blood issued out of his nose." This "coventry" practice, then

adopted, we believe, for the first time, settled the German, who was

conveyed away in lamentable plight--by the dauphin, Hall affirms, and

secretly, lest he should be known. The supposed motive of Francis,

in seeking Suffolk's life, was his passion for his father-in-law's

bride, which Brantome and other French writers have asserted to have

been reciprocated by Mary--a base lying statement, there can be little

doubt. There is every reason to believe the French queen's conduct

to have been irreproachable. At any rate, her husband found no fault

with her, declaring, on the contrary, in a letter to Harry the Eighth,

how greatly pleased and contented he was with her, and lauding at the

same time, in the highest terms, his excellent cousin of Suffolk. Four

days after writing this letter, and twelve weeks after his marriage,

Louis, who was much troubled with gout, and who, for the sake of

his young queen, had completely changed his habits, dining at the

extravagantly late hour of noon, and remaining out of bed sometimes

until nearly midnight, departed this life. Upon which event Mr Craik

strikes another splinter out of the romantic lens through which we have

always loved to contemplate Mary Tudor, by insinuating she may have

been not quite pleased to lose the dazzling position of queen-consort

of France; and that it would have been equally satisfactory to her if

Suffolk and Louis had lingered a little longer--the one in the pangs of

disappointed love, the other in those of the gout. But if a diadem had

such charms for Mary, that of Spain was at her command, by Mr Craik's

own confession. "Both the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Spain

would now have been glad to secure her hand for her old suitor the

Prince of Castile." Now, as ever, her behaviour was correct, proving

both good sense and good feeling. She remained several weeks in Paris

without giving the least indication of an intention to marry again,

although Wolsey had no sooner heard of her being a widow than he wrote

to her on the subject of a second union. Of course, nobody expected

she would allow the usual term of mourning to expire before bestowing

her hand on Suffolk, for their mutual and long-standing attachment was

well known. Exactly three months after the death of Louis, they were

privately married. At the last moment Suffolk hesitated, through fear

of offending Henry VIII.; and although Francis himself advised him

to marry the queen, he still demurred, with a degree of irresolution

hardly to have been expected in one of his adventurous character,

until Mary herself took energetic measures, giving him four days, and

no more, to make up his mind. Thus urged, he ran the risk, and had no

cause to repent. Henry was easily reconciled to the marriage, which he

had doubtless foreseen as inevitable; and Mary, the French queen, as

she continued to sign herself, was happy with the husband of her choice

until her early death at the age of thirty-five.

The nobility of Great Britain need no advocate to vaunt their

virtues and exalt their fame. Ever foremost in the field and at the

council-board, they long since achieved, and still maintain, the first

place amongst the world's aristocracy. Their illustrious deeds are

blazoned upon the page of history. Ready alike with purse and blade,

they have never flinched from shedding their blood and expending their

treasure in the cause of loyalty and patriotism. Measure them with

the nobility of other countries, and they gain in grandeur by the

comparison. Whilst in nearly every other European land the aristocracy

is fallen, as in France, by its vices and heartlessness; degenerate

and incapable, as in Spain; or, as in Russia, but lately emerged from

barbarism, and with its reputation yet to make, the nobles of Great

Britain proudly maintain their eminent position, not by factitious

advantages alone, but because none more than they deserve it--because

they are not more conspicuous for high rank and illustrious descent,

than for dignified conduct and distinguished talents. We have heard

of self-styled liberals scowling down from the gallery of the House

of Lords upon the distinguished assembly, and with an envious grimace

pledging their utmost exertions to its extinction. Fortunately the

renown of such gentlemen is not equal to their spite, or the British

constitution, there can be little doubt, would soon be abrogated in

favour of some hopeful scheme, coined in a Brummagem mint. Fortunately

there is still enough right feeling and good sense in the country to

guard our institutions against Manchester machinations.

Accustomed as we have been of late years to meet all manner of

radicalism and mischievous trash, in the disguise of polite literature,

in weekly parts and monthly numbers, in half-guinea volumes and

twopenny tracts, tricked out, gilt, and illustrated, just as a cunning

quack coats his destructive pills in a morsel of shining tinsel, we

took up Mr Peter Burke's book with a slight mistrust, which did not,

however, survive the perusal of his preface. Therein he disclaims all

intention of depreciating the character of the British aristocracy.

Had such been his view, he says, it had been signally defeated by the

statistics contained in his book, which proves to be a most triumphant

vindication of the class referred to. "The volume embraces a period

of three hundred years, and during the whole of that time we find but

three peers convicted of murder: the very charge against them, if we

except Lord Ferrers' crime--the act of a madman--and some cases of

duelling, is unknown for more than two hundred years back. Moreover,

setting aside these murders, and also the night-broils peculiar to the

beginning of the last century, the aristocratic classes of society

have scarcely a single instance on record against them of a base or

degrading nature, beyond the misdemeanour of Lord Grey of Werke, and

the misdeeds of two baronets.... The judgments pronounced against them

are the judgments, not of felony, but of treason. Crimes they may have

committed, but they are almost invariably the crimes, not of villany,

but of misapplied honour and misguided devotion." Mr Burke steers clear

of politics, and limits his investigations to the offences against

society. The first trial he records took place in 1541--the last

occurred in 1846. Besides treasonable offences, he has excluded such

cases as could not be given, even in outline, without manifest offence

to his reader's delicacy. With these exceptions, he intimates that he

has noticed all the trials connected with the aristocracy that have

occurred during the last three centuries. We cannot contradict him,

without more minute reference to authorities than we at this moment

have opportunity to make; but we thought the criminal records of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been richer in this respect;

and indeed his brother Bernard's book of anecdotes reminds us of two

or three cases--that of the Countess of Strathmore, and of Mure of

Auchindrane--which, it seems to us, would have been in their place in

his collection. The trials given by Mr Peter Burke are thirty-three

in number, and it is not uninteresting to sort them according to the

offences. In many instances, it is to be observed, the members of the

aristocracy concerned were sinned against, not sinning, as in the

murder of Lord William Russell, the singular attempt to extort money

from the second Duke of Marlborough, the recent action for breach of

promise against Earl Ferrers. There are nine cases of murder, most of

them of ancient date; five duel cases, beginning with Lord Mohun and

terminating with the Earl of Cardigan; two trials for bigamy, (Beau

Fielding and the Duchess of Kingston;) two parricides, and sundry

brawls. First in the list is the trial of Sir Edmond Kneves, knight,

of Norfolk, arraigned before the king's justices "for striking of one

Master Clerc, of Norfolk, servant with the Earle of Surrey, within

the king's house in the Tenice-court." Sir Edmond was found guilty,

and condemned to lose his right hand. In cases of decapitation, a

headsman and his aid, or two aids at most, have generally been found

sufficient. The cutting off of a hand involved much more ceremony, and

a far greater staff of officials. A curious list is given, from the

state trials, of the persons in attendance to assist in Sir Edmond's

mutilation. "First, the serjeant chirurgion, with his instruments

appertaining to his office; the serjeant of the woodyard, with the

mallet and a blocke, whereupon the hand should lie; the master cooke

for the king, with the knife; the serjeant of the larder, to set the

knife right on the joynt; the serjeant farrier, with his searing-yrons

to seare the veines; the serjeant of the poultry, with a cocke, which

cocke should have his head smitten off upon the same blocke, and

with the same knife; the yeoman of the chandry, with seare-clothes;

the yeomen of the scullery, with a pan of fire to heat the yrons, a

chafer of water to cool the ends of the yrons, and two fourmes for

all officers to set their stuffe on; the serjeant of the seller, with

wine, ale, and beere; the yeoman of the ewry, in the serjeant's steed,

who was absent, with bason, ewre, and towels." A dozen persons or more

to assist at poor Sir Edmond's _manumission_. Everybody remembers Sir

Mungo Malagrowther's charitable visit to Lord Glenvarloch, when he had

incurred a like penalty, and his description of the "pretty pageant"

when one Tubbs or Stubbes lost his right hand for a "pasquinadoe" on

Queen Elizabeth. Sir Edmond Kneves was more fortunate. When condemned,

he prayed that the king, (Henry VIII.,) "of his benigne grace, would

pardon him of his right hand, and take the left; for, (quoth he,) if

my right hand be spared, I may hereafter doe such good service to his

grace, as shall please him to appoint." A request which his majesty,

"considering the gentle heart of the said Edmond, and the good report

of lords and ladies," was graciously pleased to meet with a free

pardon. Sir Edmond was a man of high rank and consideration, and his

descendants obtained a peerage and a baronetcy, both now extinct.

Fifteen years later, under the reign of Queen Mary, happened the trial

and execution of Lord Stourton and four of his servants, for the murder

of William and John Hartgill. The motive was a private grudge. Lord

Stourton was a zealous Catholic, and great interest was made with Mary

to save his life, but in vain: she would only grant him the favour to

be hung with a silken rope. Next comes "The great case of the poisoning

of Sir Thomas Overbury," concerning which much has been written; and

then the investigation of a base and disgraceful conspiracy got up

by Sir John Croke of Chilton, Baronet, to accuse the Reverend Robert

Hawkins of felony. We pass on to the case of Lord Mohun--twice tried

for homicide, and finally slain in a duel, in which his antagonist

also perished. Cases of brawling--not the offence to which the word is

now generally applied, and of which Doctors' Commons takes cognisance,

but bloody brawls, with sword-thrusts and mortal wounds--were of

frequent occurrence towards the close of the seventeenth century, and

several of the more important trials they gave rise to are related by

Mr Peter Burke. Lord Mohun was one of the most turbulent spirits of a

period when gentlemen carried swords, frequented taverns, drank deep,

and swore high, and when a fray, with bare steel and bloodshed, was

as common an occurrence in London streets as is now the detection of

a pickpocket or the breaking-down of a hackney cab; when hot-headed

young men--the worthy descendants of the Wildrakes of a previous

reign--met on tavern stairs, primed with good liquor, quarrelled about

nothing, rushed into the street, and slew each other incontinently.

After this fashion did Sir Charles Pym of Brymmore, Somersetshire,

lose his life, after a dinner at the Swan, upon Fish Street Hill; his

decease extinguishing the baronetcy, and terminating the male line of

an ancient and honourable house. The cause of quarrel was trivial in

the extreme--a very dog's quarrel, it may be called, for the whole

ground of dispute was a plate of meat. However fashionable a house

of entertainment the Swan upon Fish Street Hill may in those days

have been deemed, its larder seems to have been conducted upon a most

economical scale; for on the trial, a Mr Mirriday deposed that, upon

going there to dine in company with Sir Charles and other gentlemen,

and asking for meat, they were told they might have fish, but there

was no meat save what was bespoke by Mr Rowland Walters, a person of

station and family, who was dining with some friends in another room.

The evidence on this trial, which is given at length, is curious as

a quaint illustration of the manners of the time. "He desired him

(the tavern-keeper) to help us to a plate of it, if it might be got,

which we had brought up stairs: after dinner we drank the gentlemen's

health that sent it, and returned them thanks for it. A little while

after, Sir Thomas Middleton went away, and about an hour after that,

or thereabouts, Sir Charles Pym and the rest of us came down to go

away; and when we were in the entry, Mr Cave met us, and asked Sir

Charles how he liked the beef that was sent up--who answered, we did

not know you sent it, for we have paid for it: then the boy that kept

the bar told us that he did not reckon it in the bill; upon which Mr

Cave seemed to take it ill; but, my lord, I cannot be positive whether

Mr Bradshaw and Mr Palms were at any words. Then I took Mr Cave to one

side into the entry, and he thought that I had a mind to fight him,

but I did what I could to make an end of the quarrel. [Upon which the

court highly commended. Mr Mirriday.]" The quarrel continued, however,

and Sir Charles Pym was run through the body by Mr Walters, "and fell

down crinkling (writhing) immediately," deposed a Mr Fletcher, who saw

the fight. It was urged in extenuation, that Sir Charles had previously

run Walters eight inches into the thigh. "'Pray, my lord,' said

Walters, 'let Sir Charles' sword be seen, all blood.' [But that gave

no satisfaction on either side.]" So much malice was shown, that the

jury would fain have returned a verdict of wilful murder; but Justice

Allibone overruled their wish, and laid down the law, and they brought

it in manslaughter. The sentence is not given; but such offences were

then very leniently looked upon, and it is not likely to have been

severe. Lord Mohun's two trials were of a different nature from this

one; for in the first--for the murder of Mountford, the actor, which

has been often told, and which arose out of an attempt to carry off

Congreve's friend, Mrs Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress--the blow was

struck by Captain Hill, who escaped, and Mohun was indicted for aiding

and abetting. "My Lord Mohun," the murdered man deposed, "offered me

no violence; but while I was talking with my Lord Mohun, Hill struck

me with his left hand, and with his right hand ran me through before

I could put my hand to my sword." Not only in street squabbles, but

in encounters of a more regular character, foul play appears to have

been not unfrequent. There was strong suspicion of it in the duel in

which Lord Mohun met his death. After he had received his mortal wound,

his second, Major-General Macartney, is said to have basely stabbed

the Duke of Hamilton, already grievously hurt. Colonel Hamilton, the

Duke's second, "declared upon oath, before the Privy Council, that

when the principals engaged, he and Macartney followed their example;

that Macartney was immediately disarmed; but the colonel, seeing the

duke fall upon his antagonist, threw away the swords, and ran to lift

him up; that while he was employed in raising the Duke, Macartney,

having taken up one of the swords, stabbed his grace over Hamilton's

shoulder, and retired immediately." This was one of the accounts given

of the affair. "According to some," says the author of _Anecdotes of

the Aristocracy_, "Lord Mohun shortened his sword, and stabbed the

wounded man to the heart while leaning on his shoulder, and unable

to stand without support; others said that a servant of Lord Mohun's

played the part attributed by the more credible accounts to Macartney."

Some years later, Macartney stood his trial at the King's Bench; and as

the jury found him guilty only of manslaughter, it is presumable they

discredited Colonel Hamilton's evidence. The truth is now difficult

to be ascertained, for the whole affair is mixed up with the fierce

party-politics of the time. The Whigs are said to have instigated

Mohun, "who had long laboured under the repute of being at once the

tool and bully of the party," to provoke the duke, and force him into a

quarrel. Mohun primed himself with wine, and took a public opportunity

of insulting his grace, in order to make him the challenger: then, as

the duke seemed disposed to stand upon his own high character, and

treat the disreputable brawler with contempt, Mohun sent him a cartel

by the hands of the above-named Macartney, a fire-eater and scamp of

his own kidney. The motive of Whig hatred of the duke was his recent

appointment as ambassador extraordinary to the court of France, and

their fear that he would favour the Pretender. During Macartney's

absence in Holland, £800 were offered for his apprehension--£500 by the

government of the day, and £300 by the Duchess of Hamilton; and Swift

tells an anecdote of a gentleman who, being attacked by highwaymen,

told them he was Macartney, "upon which they brought him to a justice

of peace in hopes of a reward, and the rogues were sent to gaol."

But the most wanton and persevering brawler of that quarrelsome period

was no less a person than Philip, seventh Earl of Pembroke, and

fourth of Montgomery. Head-breaking and rib-piercing were his daily

diversions: for in those days, when all gentlemen wore swords, the

superabundant pugnacity of bloods about town did not exhale itself on

such easy terms as in the present pacific age. Now, the utmost excesses

of "fast" youths--whether right honourables or linen-shopmen--when,

after a superabundance of claret or gin twist, a supper at an

opera-dancer's, or a Newgate song at a night-tavern, they patrol the

streets, on rollicking intent, never exceed a "round" with a cabman,

the abstraction of a few knockers, or a "mill" with the police; and are

sufficiently expiated by a night in the station-house, and a lecture

and fine from Mr Jardine the next morning. But with the Pembrokes, and

Mohuns, and Walters, when the liquor got uppermost, it was out bilbo

directly, and a thrust at their neighbours' vitals. And, doubtless, the

lenity of the judges encouraged such rapier-practice; for unless malice

aforethought was proved beyond possibility of a doubt, the summing-up

was usually very merciful for the prisoner, as in the trial of Walters

for Sir Charles Pym's death, when Mr Baron Jenner told the jury that

"he rather thought there was a little heat of wine amongst them," (the

evidence said that nine or ten bottles had been drunk amongst six of

them, which, in the case of seasoned topers, as they doubtless were,

might hardly be considered an exculpatory dose;) "and this whole action

was carried on by nothing else but by a hot and sudden frolic; and

he was very sorry that it should fall upon such a worthy gentleman."

Between merciful judges and privilege of peerage, Lord Pembroke got

scot-free, or nearly so, out of various scrapes which would have been

very serious matters a century and a half later. The first note taken

of his eccentricities is an entry in the Lords' journals, dated the

28th January 1678, recording that the house was that day informed by

the Lord Chancellor, in the name of his majesty, of "the commitment of

the Earl of Pembroke to the Tower of London, for uttering such horrid

and blasphemous words, and other actions proved upon oath, as are

not fit to be repeated in any Christian assembly." After four weeks'

imprisonment, his lordship was set free upon his humble petition,

in which he asked pardon of God, the King, and the House of Peers,

and declared his health "much impaired by the long restraint." His

convalescence was rather boisterous, for exactly one week after his

release, a complaint was made to the house by Philip Rycaut, Esq., to

the effect that, on the evening of the preceding Saturday, "he being

to visit a friend in the Strand, whilst he was at the door taking his

leave, the Earl of Pembroke, coming by, came up to the door, and with

his fist, without any provocation, struck the said Philip Rycaut such a

blow upon the eye as almost knocked it out; and afterwards knocked him

down, and then fell upon him with such violence that he almost stifled

him with his gripes, in the dirt; and likewise his lordship drew his

sword, and was in danger of killing him, had he not slipped into the

house, and the door been shut upon him." One cannot but admire the sort

of ascending scale observable in this assault. The considerate Pembroke

evidently shunned proceeding at once to extreme measures; so he first

knocked the man's eye out, then punched his head, then tried a little

gentle strangulation, and finally drew his sword to put the poor wretch

out of his misery. A mere assault and battery, however, was quite

insufficient to dispel the steam accumulated during the month passed

in the Tower. Twenty-four hours after the attack on Rycaut, and before

that ill-used person had time to lodge his complaint, the furious earl

had got involved in an affair of a much more serious nature, for which

he was brought to trial before the Peers, in Westminster Hall. The

Lord High Steward appointed on the occasion was the Lord Chancellor,

Lord Finch, afterwards Earl of Nottingham, for whose address to the

prisoner we would gladly make room here, for it is a masterpiece, of

terse and dignified eloquence, and one of the most striking pages of

Mr Peter Burke's compilation. The crime imputed to Lord Pembroke was

the murder of one Nathaniel Cony, by striking, kicking, and stamping

upon him; and the evidence for the prosecution was so strong that a

verdict of guilty was inevitable. But it was brought in manslaughter,

not murder; and the earl, claiming his privilege of peerage, was

discharged. It is difficult to say what was considered murder at

that time; nothing, apparently, short of homicide committed fasting,

and after long and clearly established premeditation. A decanter of

wine on the table, or the exchange of a few angry words, reduced the

capital crime to a slight offence, got over by privilege of peerage

or benefit of clergy. The death of Cony was the result of most brutal

and unprovoked ill-treatment. "It was on Sunday the 3d of February,"

said the Attorney-General, Sir William Jones, in his quaint but able

address to the peers, "that my Lord of Pembroke and his company were

drinking at the house of one Long, in the Haymarket, (I am sorry to

hear the day was no better employed by them,) and it was the misfortune

of this poor gentleman, together with one Mr Goring, to come into this

house to drink a bottle of wine." The said Goring was one of the chief

witnesses for the prosecution, but his evidence was not very clear, for

he had been excessively drunk at the time of the scuffle, and indeed

poor Cony seems to have been the same; and it was his maudlin anxiety

to see his friend home, and to take a parting-glass at Long's, "which

it _seems_," said Goring, "was on the way," (he, the said Goring, being

anything but confident of what had been _on_ or _off_ the way on the

night in question)--that brought him into the dangerous society of Lord

Pembroke. Goring got into dispute with the earl, received a glass of

wine in his face, had his sword broken, lost his hat and periwig, and

was hustled out of the room. "Whilst I was thrusting him out of doors,"

deponed Mr Richard Savage, one of Lord Pembroke's companions, "I saw

my Lord of Pembroke strike Cony with his right hand, who immediately

fell down, and then gave him a kick; and so upon that, finding him not

stir, I took Mr Cony, being on the ground, (I and my lord together, for

I was not strong enough to do it myself,) and laid him on the chairs,

and covered him up warm, and so left him." The tender attention of

covering him up warm, did not suffice to save the life of Cony, who

had evidently, from his account and that of the medical men, received

a vast deal more ill-usage than Savage chose to acknowledge. The earl

got off, however, as already shown, and was in trouble again before the

end of the same year--this time with a man of his own rank, Charles

Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the wit and poet, who received a message

late one night, to the effect that Lord Pembroke was desirous to speak

with him at Locket's tavern. After inquiring whether Pembroke were

sober, and receiving an affirmative reply, Dorset went as requested,

but only to be insulted by his very drunken lordship of Pembroke, who

insisted on his fighting him forthwith for some imaginary affront.

The matter came before the House of Peers, and the disputants were

put under arrest in their respective dwellings, until Lord Pembroke,

declaring himself unconscious of all that had passed on the night in

question, tendered apologies, and craved to be allowed to retire to

his house at Wilton, whither he accordingly was permitted to go, and

where he may possibly have remained--as no other frolics are related of

him--until his death, which occurred three or four years afterwards.

Few of the remarkable trials given in the _Anecdotes of the

Aristocracy_ will obtain much attention from persons who have read Mr

Peter Burke's book, whence most of them are borrowed and condensed,

with here and there a slight alteration or addition. In a note towards

the close of his second volume, Mr Bernard Burke somewhat tardily

acknowledges his obligations to his brother. Considering the recent

publication of the _Celebrated Trials, &c._, it would perhaps have

been judicious of him to have altogether omitted the criminal cases

in question. As told by him, they do not constitute the best portion

of his book, whose most interesting chapters, to our mind, are those

including such wild old fragments as _A Curious Tradition_, _The

Mysterious Story of Littlecot_, _An Irish Waterfiend_, and others of a

similar kind. The short anecdotes are generally better than those that

have been worked up into a sort of tale. Many of the stories have of

course been already thrice told; but by persons who have not met with

them, and who are not likely to take the trouble of hunting them up in

old memoirs and magazines, they will be read with pleasure, and duly

prized. And whilst Mr Craik's book may fairly claim to rank as history,

and Mr Peter Burke's as a well-arranged and interesting compilation,

it were hardly fair to refuse brother Bernard the modicum of praise

usually awarded to a painstaking and amusing gossip.

THE LIFE OF THE SEA.

BY B. SIMMONS.

"A very intelligent young lady, born and bred in the Orkney islands,

who lately came to spend a season in this neighbourhood, told me

nothing in the mainland scenery had so much disappointed her as woods

and trees. She found them so dead and lifeless, that she never could

help pining after the eternal motion and variety of the ocean. And so

back she has gone; and I believe nothing will ever tempt her from the

wind-swept Orcades again."--SIR WALTER SCOTT. _Lockhart's

Life_, vol. ii.--[Although it is of a female this striking anecdote

is related, it has been thought more suitable to give the amplified

expression of the sentiment in the stanzas a masculine application.]

I.

These grassy vales are warm and deep,

Where apple-orchards wave and glow;

Upon soft uplands whitening sheep

Drift in long wreaths.--Below,

Sun-fronting beds of garden-thyme, alive

With the small humming merchants of the hive,

And cottage-homes in every shady nook

Where willows dip and kiss the dimples of the brook.

II.

But all too close against my face

My thick breath feels these crowding trees,

They crush me in their green embrace.--

I miss the Life of Seas;

The wild free life that round the flinty shores

Of my bleak isles expanded Ocean pours--

So free, so far, that, in the lull of even,

Naught but the rising moon stands on your path to heaven.

III.

In summer's smile, in winter's strife,

Unstirr'd, those hills are walls to me;

I want the vast, all-various life

Of the broad, circling Sea,--

Each hour in morn, or noon, or midnight's range,

That heaves or slumbers with exhaustless change,

Dash'd to the skies--steep'd in blue morning's rays--

Or back resparkling far Orion's lovely blaze.

IV.

I miss the madd'ning Life of Seas,

When the red, angry sunset dies,

And to the storm-lash'd Orcades

Resound the Seaman's cries:

Mid thick'ning night and fresh'ning gale, upon

The stretch'd ear bursts Despair's appealing gun,

O'er the low Reef that on the lee-beam raves

With its down-crashing hills of wild, devouring waves.

V.

How then, at dim, exciting morn,

Suspense will question--as the Dark

Is clearing seaward--"Has she worn

The tempest through, that Bark?"

And, 'mid the Breakers, bulwarks parting fast,

And wretches clinging to a shiver'd mast,

Give funeral answer. Quick with ropes and yawl!

Launch! and for life stretch out! they shall not perish all!

VI.

These inland love-bowers sweetly bloom,

White with the hawthorn's summer snows;

Along soft turf a purple gloom

The elm at sunset throws:

There the fond lover, listening for the sweet

Half-soundless coming of his Maiden's feet,

Thrills if the linnet's rustling pinions pass,

Or some light leaf is blown rippling along the grass.

VII.

But Love his pain as sweetly tells

Beneath some cavern beetling hoar,

Where silver sands and rosy shells

Pave the smooth glistening shore--

When all the winds are low, and to thy tender

Accents, the wavelets, stealing in, make slender

And tinkling cadence, wafting, every one,

A golden smile to thee from the fast-sinking sun.

VIII.

Calm through the heavenly sea on high

Comes out each white and quiet star--

So calm up Ocean's floating sky

Come, one by one, afar,

White quiet sails from the grim icy coasts

That hear the battles of the Whaleing hosts,

Whose homeward crews with feet and flutes in tune

And spirits roughly blithe, make music to the moon.

IX.

Or if (like some) thou'st loved in vain,

Or madly wooed the already Won,

--Go when the Passion and the Pain

Their havoc have begun,

And dare the Thunder, rolling up behind

The Deep, to match that hurricane of mind:

Or to the sea-winds, raging on thy pale

Grief-wasted cheek, pour forth as bitter-keen a tale.

X.

For in that sleepless, tumbling tide--

When most thy fever'd spirits reel,

Sick with desires unsatisfied,

--Dwell life and balm to heal.

Raise thy free Sail, and seek o'er ocean's breast

--It boots not what--those rose-clouds in the West,

And deem that thus thy spirit freed shall be,

Ploughing the stars through seas of blue Eternity.

XI.