finem. W. D." How brief, and yet how full of meaning!

The Beauchamp-tower is perhaps the saddest place in England. It stands in the centre of the inner ballium on the west, and consists of three stories; the rooms octagon in shape, and furnished with recesses cut in the solid wall, deep enough to hold beds. On both sides, the windows are grated. It was built in the time of King John, the period when most, if not all of the small towers used as state prisons, in the inner line of fortifications, were erected. The basement floor, now used as a kitchen for the officers, was formerly occupied by prisoners. Several remains of inscriptions are still to be seen on the walls; but the frequent whitewashings have rendered them almost illegible. There is no Old Mortality in the Tower to keep such memorials fresh. The following couplet was, until lately, to be read by the visitor :— "The man whom this house cannot mend, Hath evil become, and worse will end."

The satirical rogue who cut these lines has left no name, no date, to spell him out by. From this story you ascend into the chief apartment-now used as a mess room for the garrison-by a narrow and much worn circular stone stair, the sides of which have been scratched over with names, dates, and pious sentences; but time, the great destroyer, has succeeded in rendering most of them illegible. The walls of the great octagon room have been almost covered with these memorials: few now remain, and yet enough to invest the chamber with a fearful interest.

It is a curious subject to seek into the motives which impel men to write their names on the stones of their prison-houses. Men of all ranks and characters do it the noble in the Beauchamp-tower; the felon in the house of correction; the murderer in the cell at Newgate. Perhaps it is the mere instinct of activity, denied every other mode of expending itself. When political offenders were most numerous, the greatest hardships and indignities were heaped upon them in the Tower. Except as a special grace, no books, paper, or pens were allowed to the prisoners; no visitor, no friend, wife or child, no physician, no minister of religion, could obtain admission without an order in council; and this was granted very sparingly. The original orders still lie in the Record Office, and they make but a small handful of papers for two centuries, during which time many hundreds of wretched beings inhabited the dungeons of the Tower. Then there was what was termed close confinement. Under orders of this nature prisoners were not suffered to leave their narrow dungeons, for air, rest, exercise, or the wants of nature. As a sample of this, may be quoted the act of commitment of the Marquis of Argyle, Marquis of Antrim, Sir Henry Vane, and Sir Arthur Haselrig. They are ordered to be kept in close confinement, no person to have access to any of them, except one servant, to be shut up in the same room with each of them respectively, and to be strictly debarred from receiving letters, or using pen, ink, or paper.

The story of the sufferings borne by the great Duke of Norfolk serves still better as an illustration of the condition of prisoners confined in the Tower in the days of the Tudors. Norfolk was the first nobleman in England; he was uncle to Catharine Howard, and therefore nearly related to the king; he had served his country by his wisdom in the council chamber and at foreign courts-by his valour at sea and on the field of Flodden; he had even been appointed by Henry as one of his executors, during the minority of Prince Edward. His son, Lord Surrey the poet, was one of the most graceful and accomplished men of the age, and one of the writers of whose fame England is still proud. Father and son were both arrested in one day, and, unknown to each other, sent to separate dungeons in the Tower. The crime laid to their charge was, that they had quartered on their shields the arms of Edward the Confessor: this they justified by showing that their ancestors had done the same without challenge, and by producing a decision from the Heralds' College. Not being a peer of the realm, Surrey was tried at Guildhall, where, in spite of the clearest evidence, the court obtained, by its foul practices, a verdict of guilty; and the brilliant young noble was conducted at once to the block. A dark day in the annals of England was the day of his execution !

The same fate was intended for the father; but, being a peer of the realm, it was necessary to get a judgment against him from his peers. This was not

difficult to a king like Henry VIII. and ministers like the Seymours; but it was a work of time. Parliament was called together and a bill of attainder hurried through the houses with indecent haste. On the 27th of the month-eight days after the death of Surrey-it received the royal assent, and orders were despatched to the Tower to have the duke executed next morning. But during the night the tyrant died; and in the confusion caused by that event, Norfolk was forgotten. During the whole reign of Edward VI. he languished in prison. A letter written by him during this reign is still extant, in which he humbly craves permission to have some books, which were laid up at Lambeth, sent to him; for he says most pathetically, that unless he has some book to engage his attention, he cannot keep himself awake—he is always dozing, and yet never able to sleep, nor has he ever done so for a dozen years! He also beseeches his masters to allow him to walk in the day-time, in the outer chamber, for the sake of his health, which has suffered very severely by his close confinement. With a touching simplicity, he observes that they can still lock him up, as at present, in his small dungeon at night. He also begs that he may be allowed sheets to lie on!

Such was the economy of an English state-prison ; such the usage to which the first baron of the realm was subjected, at a period when the laws did not even pretend to be impartial towards the great and the obscure !

Look round the walls of this Beauchamp-tower.

Most of these inscriptions were made by men of whom no other trace is left.. Like beings of an older order of creation, they have completely passed away, a few marks in the granite alone remaining to tell the brief story of their lives. Yet, read by the light of such memorials as Fisher and Howard have left behind, how full of saddest eloquence they seem ! How strangely laden with a sense of desolation, of heart-weariness, of abandoned hope, are those rudelycut, old Italian words, in the shield on the right hand of the first recess in the wall :-"Dispoi : che: vole la fortuna: che la mea speranza: va: al vento: pianga: ho volio: il tempo: perdudo e semper: stel: mea: tristo e discontēto;" which may be thus rendered into English :—

Since Fortune has scattered all my Hopes to the winds, I wish that Time itself were no more, my star being ever sad and unpropitious." The signature appended to these words is, "Willm Tyrrel. 1541." But history has left us no clue to the person or crime of any one so named. Fancy will picture him in various guises. From the genuine agony of his utterance, one could readily believe he was lying at the time under sentence of death. Another unknown, of the name of William Rame, has left his wisdom printed on the wall, under date of 1559, in the following pious proverbs :—“Better is it to be in the house of mourning than in the house of banqueting. The heart of the wise is in the mourning house. It is better to have some chastening than over-much liberty. There is a time for all things: