at the brilliant masque at Kenilworth, to listen alone to the blandishments of handsome, falsehearted Dudley. Alas! for her favourites! Leicester's life was scarcely a happy one; the brilliant and accomplished Earl of Essex died on the scaffold; and Raleigh, the hero of the cloak and muddy puddle, was reserved to taste the ingratitude of Elizabeth's successor. Truly the heroine of Tilbury Fort, who could look a lion down, had much of her bluff father's fondness for the axe and the morning entertainment on Tower Hill. Well, they have all passed away now: Elizabeth, with her stately form and haughty bearing; Leicester, with his peaked beard and high ruffles; Mary Stuart, with her white neck severed by the cruel axe; Raleigh, in his lonely prison in the Tower. All past now! let us pass on too. Not far off was the brief resting-place of the great Protector, Oliver Cromwell. lis repose in the Abbey was not of long duration. The zeal of the Royalists-when "the King came home again," and they were al heartily sick of Puritan prayers and psalmsinging "Iron Sides"-led them to dig up the dead Protector's bones and bury them under the gibbet a poor piece of revenge, surely, to desecrate those miserabie relics and burn a few mouldering bones. And yet, truly, the venerable Abbey, where Plantagenets and Tudors and Stuarts lie sleeping, was scarcely a fit place for the man whose life was a lie successfully carried out. But we must not linger longer among the tombs of dead royalty, but take our pilgrimage to the thrice-hallowed ground of Poet's Corner, where le all that remains of those who made our literature glorious, those of whom it is the fashion now-a-days to speak disrespectfully, and to compare disparagingly-God save the mark!—with the little poetasters and magazine fledglings of the all-praised present. Surely this is the place for a moralist and a dreamer to stand and look at the little mark left here by the bright spirits who have taught us that

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, Its loveliness increases, it will never Pass into nothingness."

Who can read here the names so familiar to us from childhood, so associated in our minds with all that is great and beautiful, without feeling a flood of old thoughts and fancies pouring in upon him, pictures of the days that are gone for ever, of the days when we first learnt Gray's "Elegy," or "The Deserted Village," ere yet we understood their beauties; or, of that evening when a mother's voice read to our childish ears some marvellous knightly tale of faery mystery from Spenser, or some grand episode, not of earth, from Milton! The first four poets who found a resting-place within the Abbey were Chaucer, the father of English poetry, the courtier of Edward III.'s time, who discourses so pleasantly about the goodly company who started from the old Tabard Inn at Southwark, and told some merry stories on the

road to Canterbury: the Knight, the Monk the Wife of Bath, and the Miller, of whom the poet says

"The miller was a stout carl for the nones, Full big he was of brawn and eke of bones; His berd, as any sowe or fox, was rede And thereto brode as though it were a spade. Upon the cop, right of his nose, he hade A wert, and thereon stude a tuft of heres Rede as the bristles of a sowe's eres." It was at his own particular wish that Spenser was laid side by side with Geoffrey Chaucer; and they are fit company. We may think of Spenser, in his ruined castle of Kilcolman, surrounded by the most beautiful and romantic scenery. Richly wooded hills, a wide, sparkling lake, and the light waters of the river Mulla which flowed by the poet's grounds; all these objects of natural beauty furnished many of the descriptions which are so peculiar to the poetry of Spenser. It is pleasant to picture him as he describes himself in "Colin Clouts come home again," keeping his flock under the shadows of the mountain Mole, among “the coolly shade of green alders" by the shore of Mulla.

Alas for the breath of fame! The nation which was justly proud of Spenser, which lauded his poems in the ears of Elizabeth, suffered the poet to die starving and brokenhearted. The rebellion of Tyrone, in Ireland, drove Spenser to London, in 1598, heartbroken at the loss of his house and an infant child who was burnt in the castle by the rebels; and so, in the bleak January snows of 1599, in an obscure street in London, perished miserably one of the greatest poets and most amiable men that the world has ever seen. Doubtless the great and gifted men of that highly-favoured age stood sadly by the tomb of Spenser as he was laid to sleep under the shadow of Chaucer's tomb; but, in truth, it is easier to weep at a man's burial than to give him a crumb while living. A certain writer has said (some affirm unjustly) that Sterne, who could weep over a dead donkey, left a living mother to starve. Do we, I wonder, never ignore the virtues of the good till they are gone from us, and "their place knows them no more?"

A little further on we see the brief, but alleloquent epitaph of the author of “ Sejæuus," "O rare Ben Jonson!" though all his plays are now unknown on the stage except "Every man in his humour." The man who could raise himself from the drudgery of bricklaying to the post of poet-laureate deserves the praise of his epitaph. Drummond gives a character of the "rare" dramatist which we, who are charitable, will hope may not be true: "He was a great lover and praiser of himself; a contemner and scoffer of others; rather given to lose a friend than a jest; jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially after drink, which was one of the elements in which he lived; a dissembler of the parts which reign in him, a bragger of some others that he

wanted, thinking nothing well done but what he himself or some of his friends had said or done." A pleasant biographer worthy Master Drummond must have been-what if he had written of some of us! There is Cowley's monument, raised by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham-what a medley of scenes and fancies his name calls up! He it was whom Dryden immortalized as

"A man so various, that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome;
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by turns, and nothing long;
Who, in the course of one revolving moon,

Was fiddler, chymist, statesman, and buffoon!"

The Duke had "glorious John" cudgelled for another lampoon which he never wrote, but which that graceless wit, Wilmot Earl of Rochester, perpetrated. Close by Cowley's monument is that of Dryden himself, and the tomb of Thomas Shadwell, once the rival of glorious John, and satirized by him as Mac Flecknor.

Let us pause a moment by the tomb of Dr. Johnson, and pay a tribute to the manes of him who was once a Jove among the literati of his age. Personally, I confess, I do not like the great Samuel. That he was a learned man, and a great man, and a kindly-natured man I am ready to admit; but this does not excuse him, in my humble opinion, from being a rude man, a coarse msn, a conceited man, and altogether an unpleasant man in a decent drawing-room. Can you not see him, sitting in his snuffcoloured coat and ill-kept wig, writing his letter to Lord Chesterfield, administering to his lordship what the great Dick Swiveller aptly styled "a clincher," and smiling grimly to himself the while? How little reeks either of them now of praise or censure! Of a verity

“Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
May stop a hole to keep the wind away!"

Hard by Johnson and the witty and accomplished Sheridan-who is said to have written the best farce and the best comedy, and to have made the best speech in our language-rests Sir John Denham, the courtly poet of Charles the First's time, though his grave is unmarked by name or date. The poem which has given Denham all his fame is that called " Cooper's Hill," and the subject is well worthy of his muse. The hill stands about midway between Staines and Windsor, and commands a glorious prospect of flood and field. The rich pastures round Windsor, and Datchet-where Sir John Falstaff endured the indignities of the clothesbasket-the royal towers of the Castle in the distance, and the calm, smooth Thames rolling among its little green islets, make a scene which may well excuse the most prosy man of our essentially prosy age for feeling romantic.

There are yet a few monuments to be noticed ere we quit the Abbey, and they are raised to

well-known writers, whose bodies rest in other and less magnificent tombs than those of Westminster. Some, perhaps, who come to do homage at the monument of Shakespeare, forget that the poet lies far away in the quiet church at Stratford-on-Avon, among the scenes of his boyhood and dawning genius, where he wandered along the green margin of Avon, and never dreamed that his name should be one day immortal. Milton is buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate, and not where his young fancy seemed to delight, as he tells us in "Il Penseroso":

"But let my due feet never fail

To walk the studious cloisters pale,
And love the high embowered roof,
With antique pillars mossy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light."

It was thus that he wrote before the stern aspects of the times had contracted his great intellect into the narrow mould of puritanism; before he had "fallen upon evil days, and evil tongues," and, as a sightless old man, was meditating on "Paradise Lost," or listening to the readings of Friend Ellwood, the Quaker.

Hear what the poet Waller said, in 1667, of Milton's mighty epic: "The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the Fall of Man. If its length be not considered a merit, it has no other." For all thy sneers, worthy Master Waller, the blind schoolmaster's poem will live when all thine are forgotten, though the first edition did but bring five pounds.

Samuel Butler, the witty author of "Hudibras," is interred in St. Paul's, Covent Garden; while one of the sweetest of our poets rests far removed from the noise and dust of London, among the sweet Buckinghamshire meadows in the green church-yard of StokePogis:

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!"

DICK

"Take it coolly? How the deuce is a man, to take it coolly when he's pestered with duns as I am?" roared Dick Onslow, vehemently, dropping and smashing simultaneously a small jet-black clay pipe, his pet and pride. "There," said I, aggravatingly; you see, my irritable friend, the results of being in a passion." Dick looked savagely at me, gnawed his moustache, and finally opened a bottle of sodawater, which he drank with a sigh of relief.

Dick Onslow's rage arose from the fact of his father having sent him a letter declining to pay (for a fourth time) his debts, and washing his hands of further responsibility. Dick was of good family, but the old Yorkshire Hall was entailed on his elder brother, and his sisters' dowries had to be looked to. So Master Dick, having had his patrimony expended in liquidating his heterogeneous liabilities, was forced to face the world on his own account.

He was a genial and clever fellow, and aufait at field sports and billiards. He had been called to the bar, and his name stood in the law list as attached to the Northern Circuit, but his legal appetite for work was not a keen one. He wrote a little, chiefly reports of flower-shows and the like, which were taken and paid for by the favour of his old friend at Oxford (where Master Dick had not taken his degree), Reginald Blager the great leader-writer on the Daily Rocket.

"Aint I in a mess? I've about twenty sovereigns in my desk, and, those gone, where on earth am I to get more?" said Dick, disconsolately.

'There's your profession," said I, mildly. "Profession, you ass!" said Dick, brutally. "Don't stand there in your white waistcoat and lemon kids, doing the Foreign Office swell, and maunder about my profession. What do

red-tape butterflies like you know about it? Get away to yout titled friends."

I certainly had dressed carefully as I was going to one of the pleasantest Richmond Villas to a lawn party, but there was no reason for Onslow's attack on my appearance. However, he was always impetuous.

"Profession," continued he, sullenly, "as if I knew enough for any attorney to trust me with a common action for a tradesman's bill. I was only called because the governor thought his cousin, the Indian Judge, would have given me a berth, and he didn't. Profession, indeed!"

Here Dick commenced examining a file of unpaid bills, with much disgust on his goodlooking face.

"I shall emigrate, or borrow money and start a tobacconist's divan," said he. "That's about my mètier."

"Stuff," said I. "Surely you might try to pick up briefs."

"Pick up briefs," said Dick, with great dis dain. "Where from-a billiard table?"

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Well," said I, "since all my suggestions appear unpalatable, I'll leave you to your own devices. I've promised to go to Lady Aspenell's croquet party."

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Croquet?" growled Dick-(the reader must remember this was some years back). "What's that? Oh I know that idiotic game with hoops and sticks."

"Idiotic game?" said I warmly. "It's as scientific as billiards any day."

"Bosh!" said Dick, with a volume of scorn compresed into a monosyllable, and I left his rooms to the melody of a shower of uncompli mentary epithets.

Ere long I was landed from a railway carriage about half-a-mile from Lady Aspenell's charming cottage. Everything that could make a little

place perfect was there. A velvet lawn, rare Bowers, effects of light and shade, cool rooms, exquisite wines, and a bevy of radiantly pretty girls were always at dear Lady Aspenell's. She was the widow of a Foreign Secretary and a very great lady indeed in the world of fashion, where she reigned by virtue of her own fascinations. Her son, a subaltern in a crack Hussar regiment, had been a friend of mine of long standing, and it was to him-for magna est veritas-I was indebted for the entree to Aspenell Cottage, where as a rule, no lower rank than a rich county squire was admitted.

What a change as by harlequin's wand it was from poor Dick Onslow's rooms-handsome and airy, and overlooking the famed chrysanthemums, as they were, to the fairy scene I was in the midst of! An hour back I was in a room littered with books, bills, papers, hats, coats, a gridiron, a tankard, sundry pipes, and tenanted by a moustached shirt-sleeved individual, who swore and sneered by turns, and grinned horribly at his empty purse. And now I was on a geranium-belted lawn, with a vision of gauzy dresses, shadowy bonnets, and fluttering ribbons surrounding lovely faces, while the ring of laughter, the pop of champagne corks, and the clatter of the croquet mallets resounded on all sides. Certainly I flirted desperately, and employed myself as recklessly as though I had been a millionaire instead of a Foreign Office clerk, and it seemed an extraordinary revulsion when I found myself deposited at the door of Dick Onslow's chambers, where I had promised to spend the evening.

His laundress met me with a letter, and, as I opened it, I saw through the half-opened door a mélange of litters, all of which betokened a speedy flight, which was further elucidated by Dick's hurried note.

"Off. Duns en masse. To Cousin in North. Then New Zealand. R. O."

I looked at the old woman, stared at the note, shook my head, and drove down to the Polyan thus, the club to which Dick and I belonged, one or two men had met him at the Eustonsquare Station, and had witnessed his speedy flight.

"Sewed up," said Verwood of the Guards, always knew he would be, poor fellow-s'pose he's gone to Baden. Roulette sometimes recoups one."

I heard no more of Dick. He had I knew a farmer-cousin in Cumberland who was in his way both a wealthy and good-natured man. There I supposed Dick to be learning agriculture, unless he had done as Verwood surmised. A year passed, and Dick's name had faded in the Temple and at the brilliant Polyanthus. Society's waters soon close over the head of a drowning man, and his case was no exception to the rule.

I received one June day an invitation from young Aspenell to another croquet party at Richmond. Vivid recollections of the last thronged on me as I dressed for this one.

I

compared the fairy-scene I was going to form a part of, with the Cumberland wilds where Onslow was probably directing, habited in cords, and boots reeking with wet earth, the draining of his cousin's yards, and I smiled half sorrowfully as I thought of poor Dick's useless taste for still Moselle and Clos Vougeot.

Arrived at Richmond, I found "a brilliant galaxy of beauty" as the Post put it, assembled. Having paid my respects to the gracious Lady Aspenell, I turned and surveyed the broad lawn, where were erected several sets of hoops.

At one of these a party, including a Duke, two Earls, and an Ambassador, were standing kept in countenance by the reigning beauties of the season. They seemed waiting. Never deficient in assurance, I asked my neighbour, a county baronet, and member great in his own sphere, but here only in the second rank, the cause of our vis a vis delay.

Don't you know?" said he pityingly. "They're waiting for the Captain."

I was as ignorant as before, and, not wishing to shew my deficiency in the freemasonry of fashion, I held my tongue.

A slight murmur from our aristocratic neighbours shewed a new arrival, a man who advanced with an easy air of aplomb, and a dash of dignified importance. The Duke alluded to shook his hand warmly, and the new comer seemed very much accustomed to deferential treatment. He was dressed very fashionably and wore a heavy twisted moustache and imperial, while his cheeks, in the French fashion, were clean-shaved.

He took his place with the prettiest clusters of girls circulating round him, and watching the artistic style in which he begun to play. The group appeared silent as if studying some noted work of art; while the Duke got red in the face, and loose as to necktie, in his earnest endeavours to imitate the Crichtonian Captain.

Presently, as the game ended, Lady Aspenell herself came up with the same smile and empressement as she would have shewn towards the best parti of the year, and took the Captain's arm to the refreshment beauffet.

"Shall you be at Lord Averley's next week?" she said, while trifling with her ice.

"Yes," said the Captain, drinking his iced champagne slowly. "Yes, Lady Aspenell, one of the Austrian Archdukes is to be there to meet me."

My eyes opened. Who was this prodigy whose voice sounded curiously familiar?

"Oh, Captain Onslow," said Lady Aspenell: "I believe a good many of the best set will be there."

Captain Onslow! This would be Dick's soldier-cousin then. I had heard of his gallantry at Delhi, but I never knew how world-wide his fame was so much so that a Prince of the House of Hapsburg was staying at a great Marquis's to meet him.

The extraordinary deference with which he was treated, and something about the beak which seemed familiar to me, made me ask young As

penell whether he could secure me an invitation. He did secure it by his mother's influential assis

tance.

Arrived at the Marquis's I soon found three or four men whom I knew, and, save at the grand dinner at eight, the bulk of the visitors rarely met together. We found different circles, the centre of the highest being His Imperial Highness. The wonderful Captain, who reminded me of one of Dumas' Musketeers, did not make his appearance for a day or two.

One afternoon, however, a troop of servants came out on the lawns, and set np various croquet sets. The centre one was reserved for the créme de la créme, and the Archduke listened attentively to the Marquis's explanation. "It's quite a national game, your Highness, but Captain Onslow can explain its difficulties best."

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"Aha!" said the Arch-duke, turning and greeting the Captain, who was imperturbable as usual.

"You weel tell,-abec Sie können, Deutich spiechen?" he added, gliding with relief into his own language.

The Captain bowed assent, and began in accurate Viennese-German an explanation of the wonderful game.

The Imperial learner then took his station at a hoop under the Captain's guidance, while the aristocratic surrounders looked on in equal awe of teacher and pupil.

"By jove," said I, half aloud, "Dick should get his swell cousin to give him a lift."

Even though some distance off, my words seemed partly heard by Capt. Onslow, who glanced for a moment at me, thereby making me look rather confused.

I soon however forgot this incident in the play necessary for my own circle, and I saw no more of the Captain till we all assembled in the smoking room. Here the Captain was regarded as an oracle, and his judicial utterances on horses, play, politics, and croquet, were eagerly listened to by his aristocratic admirers-peers, commoners, and M.P's.

He outstayed them all till he and I were left alone. The wreaths of smoke curled gracefully round our heads, and under their soothing influence I plucked up courage to address the great

"You're singularly unlike the world then, old boy," said the Captain, speaking in his full voice and shaking my hand, "and Dick Onslow must thank you!"

Yes! it was Dick in peopriá personá; his foreign moustache and military dress had disguised him well; but now I looked at him, and marvelled that my stupidity had prevented my discovering him before.

"But how are you such a swell, Dick? How a Captain? Why such an authority in croquet?" said I, bewildered.

"In the wilds of Cumberland," said Dick solemnly, "I learned croquet of the Rector's daughters, whose health I drink in this soda and brandy. A good stroke at billiards, I soon became a crack croquet player. Seeing the fashion, an idea struck me that a professor of croquet might pay, and it has !"

But your rank as Captain ?" "In a regiment of Volunteers!" "Your German?"

"Remains of my Bonn education. I trained my moustache, and let a certain trail of foreign soldiering hang about me as it were-voila tout!"

"I may add, old fellow," said Dick, leisurely, "that Carry Hastings, the heiress, was so devoted to croquet at Lady Aspenell's as to become a little devoted to its Professor. And we're duly engaged."

"You're a fortunate fellow," I said; and my open mouth testified my bewilderment. "Yes," said Dick, calmly. "You see I discovered a Golden Secret!"

WM. READE, JUN.

THE TULIPS IN HYDE PARK.-One of the most interesting sights in London has been the beautiful beds of tulips in Hyde Park, during the months of April and the early part of May. The beds extended the whole length of Park-lane, from Stanhope Gate to the Marble Arch, and at their prime were one blaze of magnificent colours. These were all planted under the direction of Mr. Mann, the Superintendent of the Parks. The principal sorts grown here, and which succeeded so well, are-Tournesol, double, scarlet and yellow; Rex Rubrorum, double, scarlet; La Candeur, double, white; Yellow Prince, single, yellow; and White Pottebaker, single, white. In the selection of these, great care is required; and much credit is due to Messrs. George Gibbs and Co., 25 and 26, Downsupplied the tulips, hyacinths, and crocuses for the street, near Hyde Park Corner, who, we are informed, Parks. It is worthy of record, as gratifying evidence of the love of floral display that especially belongs to the London "people," no damage has been sustained to the beds of flowers by the large gatherings of the working classes, who entered the Park from all quarters to take part in the recent demonstrations."