selves blazé men of the world, but who are in bondage to their exceedingly narrow white ties, and who add to the already formidable group about the door; and one audacious Lieutenant, who, having seen something of the world, boldly charges the group of petticoats in the middle of the room, and makes as much fun as is possible for himself under the circumstances. This bold warrior is a great talker. He talks during the playing and during the singing, and pays no attention to the warning glances of his fair companions who are divided between their dread of scaring him from their side, and their dread of affronting the performer by indifference to her efforts. If a dance can be "got up," an evening of this kind drags less heavily. Woe to the party condemned to the pastime of "squails!" To be sure, if the room is small the furniture (although it is rolled into corners) and the people who do not dance are dreadfully in the way. It is really piteous to see an aggrieved matron sitting up against the wall, and trying to believe that she enjoys looking on while the muslin skirts of her own daughter, or the daughter of her neighbour, are whirled into her face as the young lady and her partner fly round and round in a galop! Then peradventure there is a crash. Some flying petticoat has caught the fire-irons, and dragged them from their place with a hideous noise. One of the partnerless young men at the door rushes forward to pick up poker and tongs before some one is tripped up, two of the dancers galopping along the reverse way come bump up against him, and narrowly escape a fall; the young lady, much aggrieved, stops at once and says, panting, "How awkward!" And all this happens a dozen times during the night. The supper is decidedly the most successful part of the entertainment, although the jelly is made at home and is neither very clear nor very stiff, and the lobster-salad is badly mixed, and the officers secretly turn up their nosesconnoisseurs as they are-at the sherry. So the whole thing comes to an end, and there is nothing left for the hostess who had worked so hard, but a dismantled house and a general impression that her guests did not thoroughly enjoy themselves. And the guests discuss the party, and decide that "Mrs. Smith did her best, as she always does, poor woman!" but that Fanny was "stuck up" and Maria “neglectful,” while the officers vote the whole thing "A dossid boar!" and wonder, "by Jove, where Old Smith gets his sherry!" MEETING AND PARTING, BY ADA TREVANION, Leaf-laden was the swollen stream, RAMBLES AND REVERIES OF A MODERN MORALIST. No. IV.-AMONG THE TOMBS. "E'en in our ashes live their wonted fire."-GRAY. It is pleasant sometimes, for us who live amid the rush and roar of this busy, noisy, moneygetting world, to retire to some of those quiet haunts which are found in the midst of London, and there to rest awhile from the engrossing thoughts, the whirl of anxious speculations, and the round of hopes and fears which beset us in the turmoil of life without. There are, as everybody knows, in the very heart of the inetropolis, little out-of-the-way nooks, quiet city churches, and long-disused burying-grounds, where one may ramble and ponder with little fear of interruption; and yet within five minutes' walk the stream of noisy humanity rolls on, bringing to our minds the sad, truthful words "in the midst of life we are in death." Not long ago, filled with such thoughts as these, I rambled to the venerable Abbey, within whose quiet precincts repose the ashes of so many of the great and gifted ones of our land. Westminster Abbey, as a show place, is common enough to the stranger and holiday-seeker in London; but it was not with any intention of hurrying through the various chapels or enduring the greatest of social inflictions, a conventional guide, that I entered the Abbey. The day was dull and sunless, few people were abroad and the Abbey was almost deserted, so that I was free to roam about unmolested, to examine the different monuments after my own fashion. How different a scene, I thought, from that without! There, all was noise, hurry, and excitement; there, were men and women struggling along in the rude current of daily life, their minds agitated by a thousand conflicting emotions; there, were politicians, whose deep-laid schemes were brought to light not many yards from where I stood; there, were anxious, money-getting men, whose souls were chained to the great golden Calf of Mammon, hoping and fearing, grinding the poor, pressing the miserly, growing rich yet still dissatisfied, always, like poor Oliver Twist, "asking for more;" there, were the proud and the ambitious, building up bright futures or raising themselves to imaginary pinnacles of greatness; and there, were the young, full of hope and expectation for the years to come, careless of the days that are; and there, too, were the ruined and lost ones, full of despair, tired of the present, shuddering at the past, hopeless of the future. All this is in the world without, but here, how different! Here, all is peace; here, the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest! All these conflicting passions of the heart which are agitating the living world without, are here ended, and for ever. Little, indeed, matter ambition or pride, or hope and despair within these solemn resting-places of the dead; the little drama of the lives of those who lie around us has been played out long ago, and the curtain has long since fallen for ever. I am passing through the "dim religious light" of Henry VII.'s Chapel. Dim shadows of royalty seem rising amid the banners of the Knights of the Bath which decorate the chapel. Many a great actor on the eventful stage of English history is slumbering here. Close by me is the monument of the first of the Tudors, the conqueror of Bosworth field; the unloved, cold, selfish, yet eminently politic and successful Henry. Near, is the grave of the "boy King," Edward VI., so early cut off from his high place, though not, as we may safely believe, as we recall that period of intrigue and blood, before he had learnt that "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." As I look at these time-worn tombs I can picture the men as they lived and spoke: cold Henry seems standing by my side, and smooth-faced gentle Edward is shuddering at the execution on Tower Hill. But they are but shadows, and “ come like shadows, so depart." Another page in the Tudor's history is opened to us as we stand by the adjacent tombs of the fairest, most accomplished, most unhappy, and would that I could add most innocent of the Stuarts, and of her powerful enemy Queen Elizabeth. At our feet rests the bride of Bothwell, the murderess of Darnley, the lover of Rizzio, the prisoner of Lochleven, and the fugitive of Pinkie. "Alas! for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun!" Hers was a sad, chequered life, a cruel and unjust death. Little did she dream, on that 8th of February, 1587, when she was led forth to die at Fotheringay Castle, that the author of her doom should one day rest quietly beside her in the calin precincts of the Abbey. Surely it had been better for the fame of Elizabeth had she been less inveterate towards her erring sister in royalty; but she could bear no rival near her throne, she desired all the power and homage for herself, to shine with unrivalled splendour 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 fond, ness 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. His 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 he 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 faëry mystery from Spenser, or some grand episode, not of earth, froin 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 com pany 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 describes himself in "Colin Clouts come home Spenser. It is pleasant to picture him as he 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 Rambles and Reveries of a Modern Moralist. 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 He it was whom fancies his name calls up! Dryden immortalized as "A man so various, that he seem'd to be one, Not but all mankind's epitome; cudgelled for The Duke had "glorious John" 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. Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, Hard by Johnson and the witty and accom- muse. There are yet a few monuments to be noticed ere we quit the Abbey, and they are raised to and less magnificent tombs than those of West- "But let my due fcet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, It was thus that he wrote before the stern Samuel Butler, the witty author of "Hudibras," is interred in St. Paul's, Covent Garden; while one of the sweetest of our poets London, among the sweet Buckinghamshire rests far removed from the noise and dust of meadows in the green church-yard of StokePogis: Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!" And with them sleeps the scholar-poet who has Not far from the Abbey, in the quiet, unfreleft us so goodly a monument of his genius. quented precincts of the Temple, the careless wanderer may strike his foot against a plain stone which marks the last resting-place of Oliver Goldsmith. Dear, good-hearted, generous, foolish Goldsmith! how fondly we think of his life! not too bright, and yet always burning with his own high spirits and joyous recklessness! This was the man whose daily life was seldom unmarked by some kind deed, and as often by some outrageous act of absurdity; his friends, yet wrote his "Traveller" and this same Oliver, who was universally loved by "Vicar of Wakefield" in a miserable lodging in Green Arbour Court, by the Old Bailey (how And yet there is a calm and tranquillity about the Temple not altogether unsuited for the resting-place of him whose life was often sad and stormy and careworn. The still secluded nooks, the fresh green grass under the old frowning walls, the company of dead-and-gone knights, and the cool splash of the fountain, make no bad asylum for poor Oliver's remains. But we have been long enough dreaming among the things that are not; let us home as fast as we may, for our ramble is ended. DICK ONSLOW'S GOLDEN SECRET. "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. 66 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 y métier." 66 Stuff," said I. "Surely you might try to pick up briefs." "Pick up briefs,” said Dick, with great disdain. "Where from-a billiard table?" "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.' 66 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." |