Holinshed assures us, it was not safe to ride unarmed, even upon the most-frequented road, a small bridle-path, such as that which the traveller pursued, was not likely to afford much greater security. However, he did not appear to have furnished himself with more than the complement of offensive arms usually worn by every one above the rank of a simple yeoman-namely, the long straight double-edged sword, which, thrust through a broad buff belt, hung perpendicularly down his thigh, with the hilt shaped in form of a cross, without any further guard for the hand; while in the girdle appeared a small dagger, which served also as a knife: added these was a dag or pistol, which, though small, considering the dimensions of the arms then used, would have caused any horse-pistol of the present day to blush at its own insignificance. In point of defensive armour he carried none, except a steel cap, which hung at his saddle-bow, while its place on his head was supplied by a Genoa bonnet of black velvet, round which his rich chestnut hair curled in thick profusion. . . . Very different, however, were his mental sensations, if one might believe the knitted look of thought that sat upon his full broad brow, and the lines that early care seemed to have busily traced upon the cheek of youth. Deep meditation, at all events, was the companion of his way; for, confident in the surefootedness of his steed, he took no care to hold his bridle in hand, but suffered himself to be borne forward almost unconsciously, fixing his gaze upon the line of light that hung above the edge of the hill before him, as if there he spied some object of deep interest; yet, at the same time, with that fixed intensity which told that, whilst the eye thus occupied itself, the mind was far otherwise employed.

A Mêlée.

(From Darnley.)

In an instant Sir Osborne's visor was down, his spear was in the rest, and his horse in full gallop. 'Darnley ! Darnley!' shouted he, with a voice that made the welkin ring. 'Darnley to the rescue! Traitor of Shoenvelt, turn to your death!'

'Darnley! Darnley!' shouted Longpole, following his lord.

'St George for Darnley! Down with the traitors!' The shout was not lost upon either Shoenvelt or the traveller. The one instantly turned, with several of his men, to attack the knight; the other, seeing unexpected aid at hand, fell back towards Darnley, and with admirable skill and courage, defended himself with nothing but his sword against the lances of the marauders, who -their object being more to take him living than to kill him-lost the advantage which they would have otherwise had by his want of armour.

Like a wild beast, raging with hatred and fury, Shoenvelt charged towards the knight, his lance quivering in his hand with the angry force of his grasp. On, on, bore Sir Osborne at full speed towards him, his bridle in his left hand, his shield upon his breast, his lance firmly fixed in the rest, and levelled in such manner as to avoid its breaking. In a moment they met. Shoenvelt's spear struck Sir Osborne's shield, and, aimed firmly and well, partially traversed the iron; but the knight, throwing back his left arm with vast force, snapped the head of the lance in twain. In the meanwhile his own spear, charged at the marauder's throat with unerring exactness, passed clean through the gorget-piece and the upper rim of the corslet, and came bloody out at the back. You

might have heard the iron plates and bones cranch as the lance rent its way through. Down went Shoenvelt, horse and man borne over by the force of the knight's course. 'Darnley, Darnley!' shouted Sir Osborne, casting from him the spear which he could not disengage from the marauder's neck, and drawing his sword. 'Darnley, Darnley to the rescue! Now, Wilsten, now!' And turning, he galloped up to where the traveller, with Longpole and Frederick by his side, firmly maintained his ground against the adventurers. (From Darnley.)

Douglas Jerrold (in full, Douglas William Jerrold; 1803-57) was a Londoner born, youngest son of an actor who was from 1807 lessee of the theatre at Sheerness. Even as a child he began to manifest a voracious appetite for books; in 1809 he was at school in Sheerness; in 1813 he went on board the Namur guardship as a midshipman, not a little proud of his uniform. At the close of the war his ship was paid off; and in 1816, settled with the rest of the family in London, the eager book-loving boy started life anew as a printer's apprentice. He was diligent in business, but seized every moment of his leisure time for selfinstruction. In 1819, a compositor on the Sunday Monitor, he had been to see Der Freischütz, and, having written a criticism on it, dropped it into his employer's letter-box. Next morning he had his own copy handed to him to set up, with an editorial note to the anonymous correspondent requesting further contributions. Jerrold was not yet fairly launched on literature. His capacity for study was enormous, and his perseverance indefatigable; night and morning he worked at Latin, French, and Italian, besides getting through a vast amount of English reading; and erelong he was dramatic critic, as well as compositor, on the Monitor. Before his marriage in 1824 he had made a start as a dramatist; four of his pieces had been produced, the first of which, More Frightened than Hurt (written when its author was about fifteen), came out in 1821. In 1825 he was engaged at a weekly salary to write dramas, farces, and other 'entertainments' for the Coburg Theatre. years later he was engaged at five pounds a week in a like capacity at the Surrey Theatre, where in 1829 Black-eyed Susan was acted for the first time. From this date up to 1854, when The Heart of Gold came out at the Princess's Theatre, a long series of plays (including Bubbles of the Day, 1841, and Retired from Business, 1851) was produced, every one of them characterised by Jerrold's sprightly style and sparkling dialogue. His contributions to periodical literature began soon after he commenced life in London, with occasional verses and sketches in the various magazines of the day; as his position became more assured he contributed to the Monthly, the New Monthly, the Athenæum, Blackwood, and other periodicals. To Punch he was a constant and important contributor from its second number in 1841 up to the time of his death. Between 1843 and 1848 he edited one after another two magazines

Four

and a weekly paper of his own, and in these and in Punch much of his best work appeared. In politics a Liberal, in 1852 he accepted the editorship of Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper; 'he found it in the street, and annexed it to literature.' For his peculiar kind of wit, for his 'flashing insight,' Jerrold stands alone. The conversations in his novels are perhaps too witty, too much like dramatic dialogue. The incidents and characters in his plays are well managed and arranged for dramatic effect, but lack breadth and simplicity. In social conversation Jerrold was brilliant and unique, and from keen sarcasm could pass lightly to touching pathos. As a journalist he was a zealous advocate of reform, a passionate hater of cant, given to speaking at times unadvisedly with his pen as with his lips, and nowise infallible, but an honest man and a generous friend. His humour was spontaneous and overflowing, if some of his fun was farther fetched; he was a genial wit rather than an intentional satirist, though it must be admitted that some of his brightest sayings seem acrid and rude, if not cruel. But, as has been justly said, 'there are men who can and do say the sharpest things without wounding. The look, the manner, the twinkle in the eye, the known character of the man- - these turn bitterness to merry banter in the very utterance.' A collected edition of Jerrold's works, in eight volumes, was published during his lifetime; it contains his principal writings, St Giles and St James, A Man made of Money, The Story of a Feather, Cakes and Ale, Punch's Letters to his Son, Punch's Complete Letter-writer, Chronicles of Clovernook, and the inimitably funny and enormously popular Mrs Caudle's Curtain Lectures, and fewer than half of Jerrold's dramatic works. It is said that he tired of making professional fun: confessedly he would greatly have preferred to see one of his more considerable stories, or of his most successful plays, accounted his masterpiece rather than Mrs Caudle.

Fancy Fair for Painting St Paul's.

Sir Phenix Clearcake. I come with a petition to you -a petition not parliamentary but charitable. We propose, my lord, a fancy fair in Guildhall; its object so benevolent, and more than that, so respectable. Lord Skindeep. Benevolence and respectability! Of course, I'm with you. Well, the precise object?

Sir P. It is to remove a stain-a very great stain -from the city; to give an air of maiden beauty to a most venerable institution; to exercise a renovating taste at a most inconsiderable outlay; to call up, as it were, the snowy beauty of Greece in the coalsmoke atmosphere of London; in a word, my lordbut as yet 'tis a profound secret-it is to paint St Paul's! To give it a virgin outside-to make it so truly respectable.

Lord Skin. A gigantic effort!

Sir P. The fancy fair will be on a most comprehensive and philanthropic scale. Every alderman takes a stall; and to give you an idea of the enthusiasm of the city

Sir P. A stupendous speculation! I should say that, when its countless advantages are duly numbered, it will be found a certain wheel of fortune to the enlightened capitalist.

Smoke. Now, sir, if you would but take the chair at the first meeting-(Aside to Chatham: We shall make it all right about the shares)-if you would but speak for two or three hours on the social improvement conferred by the lucifer-match, with the monopoly of sulphur secured to the company--a monopoly which will suffer no man, woman, or child to strike a light without our permission.

Chatham. Truly, sir, in such a cause, to such an auditory-I fear my eloquence.

Smoke. Sir, if you would speak well anywhere, there's nothing like first grinding your eloquence on a mixed meeting. Depend on 't, if you can only manage a little humbug with a mob, it gives you great confidence for another place.

Lord Skin. Smoke, never say humbug; it's coarse. Sir P. And not respectable.

Smoke. Pardon me, my lord, it was coarse. But the fact is, humbug has received such high patronage that now it's quite classic.

Chat. But why not embark his lordship in the lucifer question?

:

Smoke. I can't I have his lordship in three companies already. Three. First, there's a company-half a million capital-for extracting civet from asafœtida. The second is a company for a trip all round the world. We propose to hire a three-decker of the Lords of the Admiralty, and fit her up with every accommodation for families. We've already advertised for wet-nurses and maids-of-all-work.

Sir P. A magnificent project! And then the fittingsup will be so respectable. A delightful billiard-table in the ward-room; with, for the humbler classes, skittles on the orlop-deck. Swings and archery for the ladies, trap-ball and cricket for the children, whilst the marine sportsman will find the stock of gulls unlimited. Weippert's quadrille band is engaged, and

Smoke. For the convenience of lovers, the ship will carry a parson.

Chat. And the object?

Smoke. Pleasure and education. At every new country we shall drop anchor for at least a week, that the children may go to school and learn the language. The trip must answer: 'twill occupy only three years, and we've forgotten nothing to make it delightful— nothing from hot rolls to cork jackets.

Brown. And now, sir, the third venture? Smoke. That, sir, is a company to buy the Serpentine River for a Grand Junction Temperance Cemetery. Brown. What! so many watery graves?

Smoke. Yes, sir, with floating tombstones. Here's the prospectus. Look here; surmounted by a hyacinth -the very emblem of temperance-a hyacinth flowering in the limpid flood. Now, if you don't feel equal to the lucifers-I know his lordship's goodness-he'll give you up the cemetery. (Aside to Chatham: A family vault as a bonus to the chairman.)

Sir P. What a beautiful subject for a speech! Water-lilies and aquatic plants gemming the translucent crystal, shells of rainbow brightness, a constant supply of gold and silver fish, with the right of angling secured to shareholders. The extent of the river being necessarily limited, will render lying there so select, so very respectable. (From Bubbles of the Day.)

Time's Changes. Florentine. O sir, the magic of five long years! We paint Time with glass and scythe-should he not carry harlequin's own wand? for, oh, indeed Time's changes! Clarence. Are they, in truth, so very great?

Flor. Greater than harlequin's; but then Time works them with so grave a face that even the hearts he alters doubt the change, though often turned from very flesh

to stone.

Clar. Time has his bounteous changes too, and sometimes to the sweetest bud will give an unimagined beauty in the flower. (From Time Works Wonders.) Retirement.

Tackle. Kitty, see what you'll get by waiting! I'll grow you such a garland for your wedding.

Kitty. A garland, indeed! A daisy to-day is worth a rose-bush to-morrow.

Puffins. But, Mr Pennyweight, I trust you are now, in every sense, once and for ever, retired from business? Gunn. No; in every sense, who is? Life has its duties ever; none wiser, better, than a manly disregard of false distinctions, made by ignorance, maintained by weakness. Resting from the activities of life, we have yet our daily task-the interchange of simple thoughts and gentle doings. When, following those already passed, we rest beneath the shadow of yon distant spire, then, and then only, may it be said of us, retired from business. (From Retired from Business.)

Winter in London.

The streets were empty. Pitiless cold had driven all who had the shelter of a roof to their homes; and the north-east blast seemed to howl in triumph above the untrodden snow. Winter was at the heart of all things. The wretched, dumb with excessive misery, suffered, in stupid resignation, the tyranny of the season. Human blood stagnated in the breast of want; and death in that despairing hour, losing its terrors, looked in the eyes of many a wretch a sweet deliverer. It was a time when the very poor, barred from the commonest things of earth, take strange counsel with themselves, and in the deep humility of destitution, believe they are the burden and the offal of the world.

It was a time when the easy, comfortable man, touched with finest sense of human suffering, gives from his abundance, and, whilst bestowing, feels almost ashamed that, with such widespread misery circled round him, he has all things fitting, all things grateful. The smitten spirit asks wherefore he is not of the multitude of wretchedness; demands to know for what especial excellence he is promoted above the thousand thousand starving creatures; in his very tenderness for misery, tests his privilege of exemption from a woe that withers manhood in man, bowing him downward to the brute. And so questioned, this man gives in modesty of spirit— in very thankfulness of soul. His alms are not cold, formal charities, but reverent sacrifices to his suffering brother.

It was a time when selfishness hugs itself in its own warmth, with no other thoughts than of its pleasant possessions, all made pleasanter, sweeter, by the desolation around; when the mere worldling rejoices the more in his warm chamber, because it is so bitter cold without; when he eats and drinks with whetted appetite, because he hears of destitution prowling like a wolf around his well-barred house: when, in fine, he bears his every comfort about him with the pride of a conqueror. A time when such a man sees in the misery of his fellowbeings nothing save his own victory of fortune-his own successes in a suffering world. To such a man the poor are but the tattered slaves that grace his triumph.

It was a time, too, when human nature often shows its true divinity, and, with misery like a garment cling. ing to it, forgets its wretchedness in sympathy with suffering. A time when, in the cellars and garrets of the poor, are acted scenes which make the noblest heroism of life; which prove the immortal texture of the human heart not wholly seared by the brandingiron of the torturing hours. A time when in want, in anguish, in throes of mortal agony, some seed is sown that bears a flower in heaven.

(From St Giles and St James, Chap. I.)

Emigrants and the Empire.

Some dozen folks, with gay, dull, earnest, careless, hopeful, wearied looks, spy about the ship, their future abiding-place upon the deep for many a day. Some dozen, with different feelings, shown in different emotions, enter cabins, dip below, emerge on deck, and weave their way among packages and casks, merchandise and food, lying in labyrinth about. The ship is in most seemly confusion. The landsman thinks it impossible she can be all taut upon the wave in a week; her yards are all so up and down, and her rigging in such a tangle, such disorder, like a wench's locks after a mad game at romps. Nevertheless, Captain Goodbody's word is as true as oak. On the appointed day, the skies permitting, the frigate-built Halcyon, with her white wings spread, will drop down the Thames-down to the illimitable sea.

She carries a glorious freightage to the antipodes— English hearts and English sinews-hope and strength to conquer and control the waste, turning it to usefulness and beauty. She carries in her the seeds of English cities, with English laws to crown them free. She carries with her the strong, deep, earnest music of the English tongue-a music soon to be universal as the winds of heaven. What should fancy do in a London dock? All is so hard, material, positive. Yet there, amid the tangled ropes, fancy will behold-clustered like birds-poets and philosophers, history-men and story-men, annalists and legalists-English all-bound for the other side of the world, to rejoice it with their voices. Put fancy to the task, and fancy will detect Milton in the shrouds, and Shakespeare looking sweetly, seriously down, pedestaled upon yon mainblock. Spenser, like one of his own fairies, swings on a brace; and Bacon, as if in philosophic chair, sits soberly upon a yard. Poetic heads of every generation, from the half-cowled brow of Chaucer to the periwigged pate of Dryden, from bonneted Pope to night-capped Cowper-fancy sees them all-all; ay, from the longdead day of Edward to the living hour of Victoria; sees them all gathered aloft, and with fine ear lists the rustling of their bays. (From A Man made of Money.)

Puns and Sayings of Jerrold. 'Call that a kind man,' said an actor of an absent acquaintance; 'a man who is away from his family, and never sends them a farthing! Call that kindness!' 'Yes, unremitting kindness,' Jerrold replied.

Some member of Our Club,' hearing an air mentioned, exclaimed: That always carries me away when I hear it.' 'Can nobody whistle it?' exclaimed Jerrold. A friend said to Jerrold: 'Have you heard about poor R-[a lawyer]? His business is going to the devil.' Jerrold answered: "That's all right: then he is sure to get it back again.'

If an earthquake were to engulf England to-morrow, the English would meet and dine somewhere just to celebrate the event.

Of a man who had pirated one of his jests, and who was described in his hearing as an honest fellow, he said, 'Oh yes, you can trust him with untold jokes.'

A selection from Jerrold's political writings in Lloyd's was pub lished in 1868 as Other Times. His Life and Remains, by his son, W. Blanchard Jerrold, was published in 1859. William Blanchard Jerrold (1826-84) succeeded his father as editor of Lloyd's. A facile and voluminous author, he wrote Children of Lutetia,

Cent. per Cent., George Cruikshank, Napoleon III., Doré, Bragebeaker with the Swedes (1854), &c. Of his dramatic writings the best known is Cool as a Cucumber (1851).

William John Thoms (1803-85), born at Westminster, after twenty years spent as a clerk in Chelsea Hospital became a clerk to the House of Lords, to which he served as deputy-librarian in 1863-82. F.S.A. and secretary of the Camden Society 1838-73, he was the founder of Notes and Queries (1849), and its editor down to 1872. He it was who in 1846 devised-as a 'good Saxon compound'-the now universally accepted word 'folklore.' His books include, besides collections of early romances and of lays and legends of many nations, The Book of the Court (1838), Anecdotes illustrative of Early English History and Literature (Camden Soc., 1838), a work on Human Longevity (1873), and an edition of Stow's London (1875).

Laman Blanchard (in full, Samuel Laman Blanchard; 1804-45), born at Yarmouth, became a journalist in London in 1831, and wrote for, or edited, a long series of papers, being mainly connected from 1841 on with the Examiner. He was an industrious and popular writer of light literature in prose and verse, and along with vers de société he published sonnets, now all alike forgotten. He died by his own hand. His prose essays were collected in 1846, with a Memoir by Bulwer Lytton, as Sketches of Life; and his poetry in 1876, with a Memoir by Blanchard Jerrold. -Another Blanchard, Edward Laman Blanchard (1820-89), the son of a popular London comedian, was a journalist and pantomime writer; there is a Life of him by Clement Scott (2 vols. 1891).

John Doran (1807-78), a Londoner born, of Irish parentage, began life as tutor on the Continent of the heir to the dukedom of Athole and other young noblemen, and, after bringing out a melodrama, Justice, or the Venetian Jew, at the Surrey Theatre in 1824, settled down as a journalist and miscellaneous author. His Sketches and Reminiscences appeared in 1828, and in 1835 a History of the town of Reading. In 1854 he published Habits and Men, followed by Table Traits, Queens of England of the House of Hanover (1855), Monarchs retired from Business (1857), History of Court Fools (1858), The Princes of Wales (1860), a Memoir of Queen Adelaide (1861), and Their Majesties' Servants (1864; new ed. by Lowe, 1887), a useful and popular history of the stage from Betterton to Kean. A Lady of the Last Century (1873) contains an interesting account of Mrs Montagu and the other blue-stockings of her day. Mann and Manners (1876) is an edition of the letters of Sir Horace Mann to Horace Walpole ; London in Jacobite Times (1877) and Memories of our Great Towns (1878) were followed by In and About Drury Lane (1885), a posthumous work. Dr Doran (he was Ph.D.) was repeatedly actingeditor of the Athenæum, edited the Church and State Gazette (1841-52), and at his death was editor of Notes and Queries.

Lord Lytton,

for the first thirty-five years of his life to be known as Edward Bulwer, and for twenty as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, was born at 31 Baker Street, London, on 25th May 1803. He was the third and youngest son of General Earle Bulwer of Heydon and Dalling in Norfolk, by Elizabeth Barbara Lytton, the heiress of Knebworth in Hertfordshire. As a child a devourer of books, his favourites Amadis de Gaul and the Faerie Queene, he took early to rhyming, and went to school at nine, though not, it may be unluckily, to a public one, but to six private tutors in succession (1812-21). In 1820 he published Ismael and other Poems, and about the

EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER, FIRST BARON LYTTON.

From the Drawing by Alfred E. Chalon, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.

same time was changed for life' by a hopeless, tragic first love. At Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1822-25), he read English history, political economy, metaphysics, and early English literature; spoke much at the Union; carried off the Chancellor's gold medal for a poem upon 'Sculpture,' but took only a pass degree. Meanwhile, in a long-vacation walking-tour (1824), he had visited the grave of his lost love in the Lake Country; and there, in Scotland, and in the north of England had strange adventures with cutthroats and most impossible Gypsies. His college life ended, he now alternated awhile between Paris and London; and in London in 1825 he met Rosina Wheeler (1802-82), a beautiful Irish girl, whom he married in 1827, despite his mother's strenuous opposition. It was a most unhappy

marriage; his wife bore him a daughter and a son, the future Earl of Lytton; in 1836 they separated. But his marriage may fairly be said. to have called forth in him a marvellous literary activity, for the temporary estrangement from his mother threw him almost wholly on his own resources. He had only £200 a year, and he lived at the rate of £3000; the deficiency was supplied 'out of his well-stored portfolio, his teeming brain, and his indefatigable industry.' During the next ten years he produced twelve novels, two poems, one political pamphlet, one play, the whole of England and the English; three volumes of Athens, its Rise and Fall, of which only two ever were published; and all the essays and tales collected in the Student, to which must be added his untold contributions to the Edinburgh, the Westminster, the New Monthly (of which he became editor in 1831), the Examiner, and other serials. His Wertherian Falkland, published anonymously in 1827, gave little promise of the brilliant success, both at home and abroad, of Pelham (1828), the clever persiflage of whose dandy hero is still delightful. No two readers agree on the relative merit of his books, and it may be argued that this very divergency of opinion as to which is really his masterpiece only illustrates his amazing versatility. Certainly Pelham is better than Paul Clifford (1830), an idealisation of the highwayman, as Eugene Aram (1832) is of the murderer; many, no doubt, rank it as inferior to the fanciful Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834) or to one or another of his four famous historical novels-The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi (1835), The Last of the Barons (1843), and Harold (1843). His unique domestic trilogy, The Caxtons (1850), My Novel (1853), and What will he do with it? (1859), Sterne-like yet strangely unlike Sterne, surpasses Thackeray for peasants and Dickens for gentlemen, and both in knowledge of the world of politics. Zanoni (1842), A Strange Story (1862), must not be forgotten, or, shorter but stronger than either, The Haunted and the Haunters (Blackwood's Magazine, 1859). No English story of the supernatural quite resembles this, for a very sufficient reason-the author was writing as a believer, as a serious student of astrology, chiromancy, occult lore generally.

In 1831, at the age of twenty-eight, Bulwer had entered Parliament as member for St Ives, and attached himself to the Reform party; but Lincoln next year returned him as a Protectionist Liberal, and that seat he held till 1841. At this time he was not merely still on most points a Radical, but, according to Cooper the Chartist poet, openly professed that he would prefer to see England under a Republican Government. In 1838 the Melbourne administration conferred on him a baronetcy for his brilliant services as a pamphleteer; in 1843 he succeeded, by his mother's death, to the Knebworth estate, and assumed the additional surname of Lytton. Sir Edward Bulwer