full of tricks and merriment, and have a thousand ingenious arts to divert their company. The play is truly a most polite form of entertainment, and would be more delightful if the parterre could be by any means induced to remain quiet, and if the actors could have the stage to themselves, without the three rows of gentlemen who interrupt the performance by loud talking, and encumber the movements of the actors. Mr. Hilyard, I beg that you will allow no seats upon our stage. We will all sit in front.'

At Dilston, as everywhere, Mr. Hilyard was entrusted with the management of our amusements.

'I appoint you, sir,' said my lord, if I may, our Master of the Revels; and I require but one thing of you that you please Miss Dorothy.'

I was so much pleased that never since have I lost the memory of that fortnight, and dwell upon it with such delight in the recollection as I cannot express in words. Oh! sad it is (if we do not apply the thought to our spiritual advantage) that youth and beauty must fade, that love cannot always follow a

smooth and easy course, and that the things we most desire should so often be snatched from our grasp just as we think them within our reach! To meditate upon the fleeting and momentary nature of earthly happiness is now my lot. The thought of the past would be too much for me, were it not for the heavenly blessing and divinely given hope that there is another and a more lasting youth before us. Why, what is it to pass through a few years of old age and solitary decay, when there awaits us another life in which I shall meet again my lord, with that same noble face which I remember so well, and those kindly eyes which, like the eyes in a portrait on the wall, follow me still, though they are long since closed in death! The face and the eyes will be the same, but oh! glorified, and in the living image of God. And as for me, my poor beauty that I loved so well, yet lost without a sigh when my friends were gone, that, too, will be given back to me and more, with such heavenly graces as are vouchsafed to those who believe. There will be no marrying nor giving in marriage; but a pure and innocent love will

flow from one soul to another, so that my lord will meet me again with such a look in his sweet eyes as he wore in those old days at Dilston Hall. Therefore weep no more, poor Dorothy; but patience, and tell thy story.

The play which Mr. Hilyard chose for us was Congreve's 'Mourning Bride.' He had read it to me more than once; but although the situation, even to one who reads or listens to the poem, is full of horror, and the unravelling of the plot keeps the mind agreeably on the stretch of expectation, I was not prepared for the emotions caused by the actual representation of the piece before my eyes. Mr. Hilyard arranged for the performance in the great hall, providing a curtain and footlights as in a real theatre, with scenery to help the imagination. Thus the scene in the temple or church was an awful representation of aisles and columns which one was easily persuaded to regard as real, though they were nothing in the world but rolls of canvas or linen daubed with grey paint. And thus (but I ought to have expected something from Mr. Hilyard's vast

importance) a most agreeable surprise awaited Not only did our Master of the Revels pronounce a prologue, beginning

us.

himself

'Far from the London boards we've travelled here, Bringing with us, to make you better cheer,

Great Dryden, Congreve, Shakespeare, Farquhar, Rowe, To raise your mirth and bid your tears to flow;'

and ending

'Do thou, my lord,

Fresh from the splendour of a Court, bestow
(Though all our art be simple, and our show
But rustic) gracious audience; and while

We strive to please, do thou be pleased to smile.
Of ye, O fair! we ask, but not in vain,

To think 'tis London and in Drury Lane.

See Osmyn hug his chains, and Zara say,

"Blest be the death which whiles for you this night away.",

Upon my word,' said my lord, Mr. Hilyard is a much more ingenious gentleman than I thought.'

'He is well enough,' said Tom. 'But this verse-writing is mighty silly skimble skamble stuff.'

Then the curtain drew up, and the play began. Everybody knows this most beautiful tragedy, in which Almeria mourns the bride

The

groom torn from her at the very hour of her marriage, and drowned by being wrecked. But--and here is the dramatist's art-her father is not to know of the marriage, therefore it is supposed that Almeria was a prisoner in Valentia, and that her husband was none other than the King of Valentia's son; but that the town town was taken by Almeria's father, and the King and Prince Alphonso were forced to fly, and so taken captive or perished in the waves. actress was a young woman of some beauty set off by art. She was of light complexion, with very fair hair and blue eyes, which I dare say are common among the Spaniards, and it showed very well under her black mourning habits. She spoke her part so naturally, telling the story of her hasty marriage and the loss of her groom so movingly, that we were all in tears from the beginning. And picture our astonishment when we discovered in the second scene that the prisoner, Osmyn, was none other than Mr. Hilyard himself! Instead of a wig, he wore a Moorish turban ; instead of a coat and waistcoat, a suit of chain-armour (borrowed from the wall of the