ARISTOCRATIC ANNALS.12

"If ever maid or spouseAs fair as my Olivia, cameTo rest beneath thy boughs,"

The oak makes answer:—

"O Walter, I have sheltered hereWhatever maiden graceThe good old summers, year by year,Made ripe in summer-chase:"Old summers, when the monk was fat,And, issuing shorn and sleek,Would twist his girdle tight, and patThe girls upon the cheek;"And I have shadow'd many a groupOf beauties, that were bornIn teacup-times of hood and hoop,Or while the patch was worn;"And leg and arm, with love-knots gay,About me leap'd and laugh'dThe modish Cupid of the day,And shrill'd his tinsel shaft."I swear (and else may insects prickEach leaf into a gall)This girl for whom your heart is sickIs three times worth them all;"I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain,(And hear me with thy ears,)That though I circle in the grainFive hundred rings of years—"Yet since I first could cast a shadeDid never creature passSo slightly, musically made,So light upon the grass:"For as to fairies, that will flitTo make the greensward fresh,I hold them exquisitely knit,But far too spare of flesh."

"O Walter, I have sheltered hereWhatever maiden graceThe good old summers, year by year,Made ripe in summer-chase:

"Old summers, when the monk was fat,And, issuing shorn and sleek,Would twist his girdle tight, and patThe girls upon the cheek;

"And I have shadow'd many a groupOf beauties, that were bornIn teacup-times of hood and hoop,Or while the patch was worn;

"And leg and arm, with love-knots gay,About me leap'd and laugh'dThe modish Cupid of the day,And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

"I swear (and else may insects prickEach leaf into a gall)This girl for whom your heart is sickIs three times worth them all;

"I swear by leaf, and wind, and rain,(And hear me with thy ears,)That though I circle in the grainFive hundred rings of years—

"Yet since I first could cast a shadeDid never creature passSo slightly, musically made,So light upon the grass:

"For as to fairies, that will flitTo make the greensward fresh,I hold them exquisitely knit,But far too spare of flesh."

The lover proceeds to inquire when it was that Olivia last came to "sport beneath his boughs;" and the oak, who from his topmost branches could see over into Summer-place, and look, it seems, in at the windows, gives him full information. Yesterday her father had gone out—"But as for her, she staid at home,And on the roof she went,And down the way you use to come,She look'd with discontent."She left the novel, half uncut,Upon the rosewood shelf;She left the new piano shut;She could not please herself."Then ran she, gamesome as a colt,And livelier than a lark;She sent her voice through all the holtBefore her, and the park."A light wind chased her on the wing,And in the chase grew wild;As close as might be would he clingAbout the darling child."But light as any wind that blows,So fleetly did she stir,The flower she touch'd on dipt and rose,And turn'd to look at her."And here she came, and round me play'd,And sang to me the wholeOf those three stanzas that you madeAbout my 'giant bole;'"And, in a fit of frolic mirth,She strove to span my waist;Alas! I was so broad of girthI could not be embraced."I wish'd myself the fair young beech,That here beside me stands,That round me, clasping each in each,She might have lock'd her hands."It is all equally charming, but we can proceed no further. Of the comic, we have hinted that Mr Tennyson is not without some specimens, though, as will be easily imagined, it is not a vein in which he frequently indulges.Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologueis not a piece much to our taste, yet that"Head-waiter of the chophouse here,To which I most resort,"together with the scene in which he lives and moves, is very graphically brought before us in the following lines:—"But thou wilt never move from hence,The sphere thy fate allots:Thy latter days, increased with pence,Go down among the pots.Thou battenest by the greasy gleamIn haunts of hungry sinners,Old boxes, larded with the steamOf thirty thousand dinners."Wefret,wefume, would shift our skins,Would quarrel with our lot;Thycare is under-polish'd tinsTo serve the hot-and-hot.To come and go, and come again,Returning like the pewit,And watch'd by silent gentlemenThat trifle with the cruet."But this is not the extract we promised our readers, nor the one we should select as the best illustration of our author's powers in this style. In a piece calledWalking to the Mail, there occurs the following description of a certain college trick played on some miserly caitiff, who, no doubt, had richly deserved this application ofLynch law. It is not unlike the happiest manner of our old dramatists,—

"I was at school—a college in the south:There lived a flay-flint near; we stole his fruit,His hens, his eggs; but there was law for us;We paid in person. He had a sow, sir: sheWith meditative grunts of much content,Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud.By night we dragg'd her to the college towerFrom her warm bed, and up the cork-screw stair,With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow,And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd.Large range of prospect had the mother sow,And but for daily loss of one she lov'd,As one by one we took them—but for this,As never sow was higher in this world,Might have been happy: but what lot is pure?We took them all, till she was left aloneUpon her tower, the Niobe of swine,And so returned unfarrow'd to her sty."

The Princess; a Medley, now claims our attention. This can no longer, perhaps, be regarded as a new publication, yet, being the latest of Mr Tennyson's, some account of it seems due from us. With what propriety he has entitled it "A Medley" is not fully seen till the whole of it has come before the reader; and it is at the close of the poem that the author, sympathising with that something of surprise which he is conscious of having excited, explains in part how he fell into that half-serious, half-bantering style, and that odd admixture of modern and mediæval times, of nineteenth century notions and chivalrous manners, which characterise it, and constitute it the medley that it is. Accident, it seems, must bear the blame, if blame there be. The poem grew, we are led to gather, from some chance sketch or momentary caprice. So we infer from the following lines,—"Here closed our compound story, which at first,Perhaps, but meant to banter little maidsWith mock heroics and with parody;But slipt in some strange way, cross'd with burlesqueFrom mock to earnest, even into tonesOf tragic."——However it grew, it is a charming medley; and that purposed anachronism which runs throughout, blending new and old, new theory and old romance, lends to it a perpetual piquancy. Speaking more immediately and critically of its poetic merit, what struck us on its perusal was this, that thepicturesit presents are the most vivid imaginable; that here there is an originality and brilliancy of diction which quite illuminates the page; that everything which addresses itself to the eye stands out in the brightest light before us; but that, where the author falls intoreflectionandsentiment, he is not equal to himself; thathere a slow creeping mist seems occasionally to steal over the page; so that, although the poem is not long, there are yet many passages which might be omitted with advantage. As to that peculiar abrupt style of narrative which the author adopts, it has, at all events, the merit of extreme brevity, and must find its full justification, we presume, in that half-burlesque character which is impressed upon the whole poem.

The subject is a pleasing one—a gentle banter of "the rights of woman," as sometimes proclaimed by certain fair revolutionists. The feminine republic is dissolved, as might be expected, by the entrance of Love. He is not exactly elected first president of the republic; he has a shorter way of his own of arriving at despotic power, and domineers and scatters at the same time. In vain the sex band themselves together in Amazonian clubs, sections, or communities; he no sooner appears than each one drops the hand of his neighbour, and every heart is solitary.

The poem opens, oddly enough, with the sketch of a baronet's park, which has been given up for the day to some mechanics' institute. They hold a scientific gala there. Rapidly, and with touches of sprightly fancy, is the whole scene brought before us—the holiday multitude, and the busy amateurs of experimental philosophy.

"Somewhat lower down,A man with knobs and wires and vials firedA cannon: Echo answered in her sleepFrom hollow fields: and here were telescopesFor azure views; and there a group of girlsIn circle waited, whom the electric shockDislinked with shrieks and laughter: round the lakeA little clock-work steamer paddling plied,And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls,A dozen angry models jetted steam;A petty railway ran; a fire-balloonRose gem-like up before the dusky groves,And dropt a parachute and pass'd:And there, through twenty posts of telegraph,They flash'd a saucy message to and froBetween the mimic stations; so that sportWith science hand in hand went: otherwherePure sport: a herd of boys with clamour bowl'dAnd stump'd the wicket;babies roll'd aboutLike tumbled fruit in grass; and men and maidsArrang'd a country-dance, and flew through lightAnd shadow."——

Here we are introduced to Lilia, the baronet's young and pretty daughter. She, in a sprightly fashion that would, however, have daunted no admirer, rails at the sex masculine, and asserts, at all points, the equality of woman.

"Convention beats them down;It is but bringing up; no more than thatYou men have done it; how I hate you all!O were I some great princess, I would buildFar off from men a college of my own,And I would teach them all things; you would see.'And one said, smiling, 'Pretty were the sight,If our old halls could change their sex, and flauntWith prudes for proctors, dowagers for deans,And sweet girl-graduates in their golden hair.. . . . Yet I fear,If there were many Lilias in the brood,However deep you might embower the nest,Some boy would spy it.'"At this upon the swardShe tapt her tiny silken-sandal'd foot:'That's your light way; but I would make it deathFor any male thing but to peep at us.'Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh'd;A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,And sweet as English air could make her, she."

Hereupon the poet, who is one of the party, tells a tale of a princess who did what Lilia threatened—who founded a college of sweet girls, to be brought up in high contempt and stern equality of the now domineering sex. This royal and beautiful champion of the rights of woman had been betrothed to a certain neighbouring prince, and the poet, assuming the character of this prince, tells the tale in the first person.

Of course, the royal foundress of a college, where no men are permitted to make their appearance, scouts the idea of being bound by any such precontract. The prince, however, cannot so easily resign the lady. He sets forth, with two companions, Cyril and Florian. The three disguise themselves in feminine apparel, and thus gain admittance into this palace-college of fair damsels.

"There at a board, by tome and paper, sat,With two tame leopards couch'd beside her throne,All beauty compass'd in a female form,The princess; liker to the inhabitantOf some clear planet close upon the sun,Than our man's earth. She rose her height and said:'We give you welcome; not without redoundOf fame and profit unto yourselves ye come,The first-fruits of the stranger; aftertime,And that full voice which circles round the graveWill rank you nobly, mingled up with me.What! are the ladies of your land so tall?''We of the court,' said Cyril. 'From the court!'She answered; 'then ye know the prince?'And he,'The climax of his age: as tho' there wereOne rose in all the world—your highness that—He worships your ideal.' And she replied:'We did not think in our own hall to hearThis barren verbiage, current among men—Light coin, the tinsel clink of compliment:We think not of him. When we set our handTo this great work, we purposed with ourselvesNever to wed. You likewise will do well,Ladies, in entering here, to cast and flingThe tricks which make us toys of men, that so,Some future time, if so indeed you will,You may with those self-styled our lords allyYour fortunes, justlier balanced, scale with scale.'At these high words, we, conscious of ourselves,Perused the matting."

In this banter is not unfairly expressed a sort of reasoning we have sometimes heard gravely maintained. We women will not be "the toys of men." We renounce the toilette and all those charms which the mirror reflects and teaches; we will be the equal friends of men, not bound to them by the ties of a silly fondness, or such as a passing imagination creates. Good. But as the natural attraction between the sexes must, under some shape, still exist, it may be worth while for these female theorists to consider, whether a little folly and love, is not a better combination, than much philosophy and a coarser passion; for such, they may depend upon it, is the alternative which life presents to us. Love and imagination are inextricably combined; in our old English the same word,Fancy, expressed them both.

Strange to say, the princess has selected twowidows, (both of whom have children, and one an infant,)—Lady Blanche and Lady Psyche—for the chief assistants, or tutors, in her new establishment. Our hopeful pupils put themselves under the tuition of Lady Psyche, who proves to be a sister of one of them, Florian. This leads to their discovery. After Lady Psyche has delivered a somewhat tedious lecture, she recognises her brother.

"'My brother! O,' she said;'What do you here? And in this dress? And these?Why, who are these? a wolf within the fold!A pack of wolves! the Lord be gracious to me!A plot, a plot, a plot to ruin all!'"

All three appeal to Psyche's feelings. The appeal is effectual, though the reader will probably think it rather wearisome: it is one of those passages he will wish were abridged. The lady promises silence, on the condition that they will steal away, as soon as may be, from the forbidden ground on which they have entered.

The princess now rides out,—

"To takeThe dip of certain strata in the north."

The new pupils are summoned to attend her.

"She stoodAmong her maidens higher by the head,Her back against a pillar, her foot on oneOf those tame leopards. Kitten-like it rolled,And paw'd about her sandal. I drew near:My heart beat thick with passion and with awe;And from my breast the involuntary sighBrake, as she smote me with the light of eyes,That lent my knee desire to kneel, and shookMy pulses, till to horse we climb, and soWent forth in long retinue, following upThe river, as it narrow'd to the hills."

Here the disguised prince has an opportunity of furtively alluding to his suit, and to his precontract—even ventures to speak of the despair which her cruel resolution will inflict upon him.

"'Poor boy,' she said, 'can he not read—no books?Quoit, tennis-ball—no games? nor deals in thatWhich men delight in, martial exercises?To nurse a blind ideal like a girl,Methinks he seems no better than a girl;As girls were once, as we ourselves have been.We had our dreams, perhaps he mixed with them;We touch on our dead self, nor shun to do it,Being other—since we learnt our meaning here,To uplift the woman's fall'n divinityUpon an even pedestal with man."

Well, after the geological survey, and much hammering and clinking, and "chattering of stony names," the party sit down to a sort of pic-nic. And here Cyril, flushed with the wine, and forgetful of his womanly part, breaks out into a merry stave "unmeet for ladies."

"'Forbear,' the princess cried,'Forbear, Sir,' I—And, heated through and through with wrath and love,I smote him on the breast; he started up;There rose a shriek as of a city sack'd."

That "sir," that manly blow, had revealed all; there was a general flight. The princess, Ida, in the tumult is thrown, horse and rider, into a stream. The prince is, of course, there to save; but it avails him nothing. He is afterwards brought before her, she sitting in state, "eight mighty daughters of the plough" attending as her guard. She thus tauntingly dismisses him:—

"'You have done well, and like a gentleman,And like a prince; you have our thanks for all:And you look well too in your woman's dress;Well have you done and like a gentleman.You have saved our life; we owe you bitter thanks:Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood;Then men had said—but now—You that have dared to break our bound, and gull'dOur tutors, wrong'd, and lied, and thwarted, us—Iwed with thee!Ibound by precontract,Your bride, your bond-slave!not tho' all the goldThat veins the world were packed to make your crown,And every spoken tongue should lord you.'"

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough usher them out of the palace. We shall get into too long a story if we attempt to narrate all the events that follow. The king, the father of the prince, comes with an army to seek and liberate his son. Arac, brother of the princess, comes also with an army to her protection. The prince and Arac, with a certain number of champions on either side, enter the lists; and in themêlée, the prince is dangerously wounded. Then compassion rises in the noble nature of Ida; she takes the wounded prince into her palace, tends upon him, restores him. She loves; and the college is for ever broken up—disbanded; and the "rights of woman" resolve into that greatest of all her rights—a heart-affection, a life-service, the devotion of one who is ever both her subject and her prince.

This account will be sufficient to render intelligible the few further extracts we wish to make. Lady Psyche, not having revealed to her chief these "wolves" whom she had detected, was in some measure a sharer in their guilt. She fled from the palace; but the Princess Ida retained her infant child. This incident is made the occasion of some very charming poetry, both when the mother laments the loss of her child, and when she regains possession of it.

"Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah my child!My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more;For now will cruel Ida keep her back;And either she will die for want of care,Or sicken with ill usage, when they sayThe child is hers; and they will beat my girl,Remembering her mother. O my flower!Or they will take her, they will make her hard;And she will pass me by in after-lifeWith some cold reverence, worse than were she dead.But I will go and sit beside the doors,And make a wild petition night and day,Until they hate to hear me, like a windWailing for ever, till they open to me,And lay my little blossom at my feet,My babe, my sweet Aglaïa, my one child:And I will take her up and go my way,And satisfy my soul with kissing her.'"

After the combat between Arac and the prince, when all parties had congregated on what had been the field of battle, this child is lying on the grass—

"Psyche ever stoleA little nearer, till the babe that by us,Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede,Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the grass,Uncared for, spied its mother, and beganA blind and babbling laughter, and to danceIts body, and reach its fatling innocent arms,And lazy lingering fingers. She the appealBrook'd not, but clamouring out, 'Mine—mine—not yours;It is not yours, but mine: give me the child,'Ceased all in tremble: piteous was the cry."

Cyril, wounded in the fight, raises himself on his knee, and implores of the princess to restore the child to her. She relents, but does not give it to the mother, to whom she is not yet reconciled—gives it, however, to Cyril.

"'Take it, sir,' and soLaid the soft babe in his hard-mailèd hands,Who turn'd half round to Psyche, as she sprangTo embrace it, with an eye that swam in thanks,Then felt it sound and whole from head to foot,And hugg'd, and never hugg'd it close enough;And in her hunger mouth'd and mumbled it,And hid her bosom with it; after thatPut on more calm."

The two kings are well sketched out—the father of Ida, and the fatherof our prince. Here is the first; a weak, indulgent, fidgetty old man, who is very much perplexed when the prince makes his appearance to demand fulfilment of the marriage contract.

"His name was Gama; crack'd and small in voice;A little dry old man, without a star,Not like a king! Three days he feasted us,And on the fourth I spoke of why we came,And my betroth'd. 'You do us, Prince,' he said,Airing a snowy hand and signet gem,'All honour. We remember love ourselvesIn our sweet youth: there did a compact passLong summers back, a kind of ceremony—I think the year in which our olives failed.I would you had her, Prince, with all my heart;—With my full heart! but there were widows here,Two widows, Lady Psyche, Lady Blanche;They fed her theories, in and out of place,Maintaining that with equal husbandryThe woman were an equal to the man.They harp'd on this; with this our banquets rang;Our dances broke and hugged in knots of talk;Nothing but this: my very ears were hotTo hear them. Last my daughter begg'd a boon,A certain summer-palace which I haveHard by your father's frontier: I said No,Yet, being an easy man, gave it.'"

The other royal personage is of another build, and talks in another tone—a rough old warrior king, who speaks through his beard. And he speaks with a rough sense too: very little respect has he for these novel "rights of women."

"Boy,The bearing and the training of a childIs woman's wisdom."

And when his son counsels peaceful modes of winning his bride, and deprecates war, the old king says:—

"'Tut, you know them not, the girls:They prize hard knocks, and to be won by force.Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to themAs he that does the thing they dare not do,—Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comesWith the air of trumpets round him, and leaps inAmong the women, snares them by the score,Flatter'd and fluster'd, wins, tho', dash'd with death,He reddens what he kisses: thus I wonYour mother, a good mother, a good wife,Worth winning; but this firebrand—gentlenessTo such as her! If Cyril spake her true,To catch a dragon in a cherry net,And trip a tigress with a gossamer,Were wisdom to it.'"

With one charming picture we must close our extracts, or we shall go far to have it said that, with the exception of scattered single lines and phrases, we have pillaged the poem of every beautiful passage it contains. Here is a peep into the garden on the college-walks of our maiden university:

"ThereOne walked, reciting by herself,and oneIn this hand held a volume as to read,And smooth'd a petted peacock down with that.Some to a low song oar'd a shallop by,Or under arches of the marble bridgeHung, shadow'd from the heat."

It may be observed that we have quoted no passages from this poem, such as we might deem faulty, or vapid, or in any way transgressing the rules of good taste. It does not follow that it would have been impossible to do so. But on the chapter of his faults we had already said enough. Mr Tennyson is not a writer on whose uniform good taste we learn to have a full reliance; on the contrary, he makes us wince very often; but he is a writer who pleases much, where he does please, and we learn at length to blink the fault, in favour of that genius which soon after appears to redeem it.

Has this poet ceased from his labours, or may we yet expect from him some more prolonged strain, some work fully commensurate to the undoubted powers he possesses? It were in vain to prophesy. This last performance,The Princess, took, we believe, his admirers by surprise. It was not exactly what they had expected from him—not of so high an order. Judging by some intimations he himself has given us, we should not be disposed to anticipate any such effort from Mr Tennyson. Should he, however, contradict this anticipation, no one will welcome the future epic, or drama, or story, or whatever it may be, more cordially than ourselves. Meanwhile, if he rests here, he will have added one name more to that list of English poets, who have succeeded in establishing a permanent reputation on a few brief performances—a list which includes such names as Gray, and Collins, and Coleridge.

Here are three books analogous in subject, and nearly coincident in publication, but of diverse character and execution. We believe the vein to be rather a new one, and it is odd that three writers should simultaneously begin to work it. Mr Craik claims a slight precedence in date; his work differs more from the other two than they from each other, and is altogether of a higher class. He is very exact and erudite—at times almost too much so for the promise of amusement held out by his attractive title-page. In his preface he explains, that it is with facts alone he professes to deal, and that he "aspires in nowise to the airy splendours of fiction. The romance of the peerage which he undertakes to detail is only the romantic portion of the history of the peerage." He has adopted the right course; any other, by destroying the reality of his book, would have deteriorated its value. And the events he deals with are too curious and remarkable to be improved by imaginative embellishment. He is occasionally over-liberal of genealogical and other details, which few persons, excepting those to whose ancestors they relate, will care much about; but as a whole, his book possesses powerful interest, and as he goes on—for he promises four or five more volumes—that interest is likely to rise. Of the two volumes already published, the second is more interesting than the first. Both will surely be eagerly read by the class to which they more particularly refer, but probably neither will be so generally popular as Mr Peter Burke's compilation of celebrated trials. Here we pass from historical to domestic romance. There is a peculiar and fascinating interest in records of criminal jurisprudence; an interest greatly enhanced when those records include names illustrious in our annals. Mr Peter Burke has done his work exceedingly well. He claims to have assembled, in one bulky volume, all the important trials connected with the aristocracy, not of a political nature, that have occurred during the last three centuries, "divested of forensic technicality and prolixity, and accompanied by brief historical and genealogical information as to the persons of note who figure in the cases." He has been so judicious as to preserve, in most instances, in the exact words in which they were reported, the evidence of witnesses, the pleadings of counsel, and the summing up of the judges; thus presenting us with much quaint and curious narrative as it fell from the lips of the noble persons concerned, and with many eloquent and admirable speeches from the bar and the bench. The volume, wherever it be opened, instantly rivets attention. We can hardly speak so laudatorily of the third book under notice. "Flag is a big word in a pilot's mouth," says Cooper's boatswain, when Paul Jones forgets his incognito—and Burke is an imposing name to stand in initialless dignity on the back of Mr Colburn's demy octavo. The Burke here in question is well known as the manufacturer of a Dictionary of Peers, of a Baronetage, and so forth. As a relief from such mechanical occupation, he now strays into "those verdant and seductive by-ways of history, where marvellous adventure and romantic incident spring up, as sparkling flowers, beneath our feet." The sparkle of the flowers in question is, as his readers will perceive, nothing to the sparkle of Mr Burke's style.Ne sutor, &c., means, we apprehend, in this instance,let not Burke, whose prename is Bernard, go beyond his directories. Instead of wandering into picturesque cross-roads, he should have pursued the highway, where his industry had already proved useful to the public, and doubtless profitable both to himself and to his worthy publisher. Better far have stuck to Macadam, instead of rambling amongst the daisies, where he really does not seem at home, and makes but a so-so appearance. Not that his book is dull or unamusing; it would have been difficult to make it that, with a subject so rich and materials so abundant. But it certainly owes little to the style, which, although quite of the ambitious order, is eminently mawkish. Of the legends, anecdotes, tales, and trials, composing the volumes, some of the most interesting are unduly compressed and slurred over, whilst others, less attractive, are wearisomely extended by diluted dialogues and insipid reflections. People do not expect namby-pamby in a book of this kind. They look for striking and amusing incidents, plainly and unpretendingly told. They do not want, for instance, such inflated truisms and sheer nonsense as are found at pages 194 to 196 of Mr Burke's first volume. We cite this passage at random out of many we have marked. We abstain from dissecting it, out of consideration for its author, who, we daresay, has done his best, and whose chief fault is, that he has done rather too much. We have read his book carefully through with considerable entertainment. It is full of good stories badly told. Fortunately, being chiefly a compilation, it abounds in long extracts from better writers than himself. But every now and then we come to a bit that makes us exclaim with the old woman in the church, "that's his own!"

The first section of Mr Craik's book extends over nearly a century, "that most picturesque of our English centuries which lies between the Reformation and the Great Rebellion," and owes its priority to its length and importance, not to chronological precedence, which is due rather to some of the narratives in the second volume. The history of the Lady Lettice Knollys, her marriages and her descendants, occupies nearly the whole volume, including much interesting matter relative to various noble English families, as well as to Queen Elizabeth, Amy Robsart, Antonio Perez, and other characters well known in history or romance. Here there is temptation enough to linger; but we pass on to a most interesting chapter of the second volume, which illustrates, as well and more briefly, the merits of Mr Craik's book. It is entitledThe Old Percys—a name than which none is more thoroughly English, none more suggestive of high and chivalrous qualities. Mr Craik begins by a tilt at Romeo's fallacy of there being nothing in a name, instead of which, he says, "names have been in all ages among the most potent things in the world. They have stirred and swayed mankind, and still do so, simply as names, without any meaning being attached to them. Of two sounds, designating or indicating the same thing, the one shall, by its associations, raise an emotion of the sublime, the other of the ridiculous. There can hardly be a stronger instance of this than we have in the two paternal names, the assumed and the genuine one, of the family at present possessing the Northumberland title. The former, Percy, is a name for poetry to conjure with; it is itself poetry of a high and epic tone, and may be said to move the English heart 'more than the sound of a trumpet,' as Sidney tells us his was moved whenever he heard the rude old ballad in which it is celebrated; but when Canning, or whoever else it was, in theAnti-Jacobinaudaciously came out with—'Duke Smithson of NorthumberlandA vow to God did make,'he set the town in a roar." The case is neatly made out, and the writer then investigates the etymology of the name of Percy. The popular version is, that a Scottish king, the great Malcolm Canmore, was slain in the latter part of the eleventh century whilst assaulting the castle of Alnwick, whose lord ran his spear into the monarch's eye, and thence derived the surname of Pierce-eye. This is so pretty and romantic a derivation that one is loath to relinquishit, but unfortunately the Percys were Percys fully two centuries before Malcolm's death. Geoffrey, son of Mainfred the Danish chieftain, accompanied Rollo in his invasion of France, and became lord of the town ofPercyorPersy, in Lower Normandy, and this became hissur-name—originallysieur-name or lord-name—an appellation derived from territorial property. Two of thede Percys, fifth in descent from Geoffrey, followed William the Conqueror to England, where the elder of them became one of the greatest lords in the country. "About a hundred and twenty lordships in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and other parts, are set down in Domesday Book as his property. He was, of course, a baron of the realm. His family name being probably reserved for occasions of form and ceremony, he was familiarly known in his own day asGuillaume al gernons—that is, Will with the Whiskers—which puts us in possession of at least one point in the personal appearance of this founder of the English house of Percy. HenceAlgernonbecame a common baptismal name among his descendants.... Will with the Whiskers must have been a good fellow, if it be true, as we are told by an old writer, that his wife, Emma de Port, was the Saxon heiress of some of the lands bestowed upon him by the Conqueror, and that 'he wedded her in discharging of his conscience.'" We here observe a variance between Mr Craik and Mr Bernard Burke, who devotes more than one chapter to anecdotes of the house of Percy, which he states to have enjoyed an uninterrupted male descent from the date of the Conquest to the death of Jocelyn Percy, the eleventh earl, in 1670. Mr Craik, on the other hand, whilst noticing that the line has thrice ended in a female, and been revived through the marriage of the heiress, fixes the date of the first of these extinctions and revivals in 1168, or rather later, about a century after the Conquest, when the death, without male heirs, of the third Lord Percy, left the wealth and honours of the house to his two daughters. Maud, the eldest, died without issue; Agnes, the younger, married Jocelyn of Loraine, whose house was one of the most illustrious in Europe, boasting relationship with the dukes of Hainault, and collateral descent from the emperor Charlemagne, but whom she took for her husband only on condition of his assuming her ancestral name. Mr Craik gives Collins'Peerageas his authority; Mr Burke would probably refer us to his own: but we do not feel enough interest in the subject to attempt to decide where doctors of this eminence differ. Amongst his celebrated "Peerage Causes," Mr Burke gives some curious particulars of the claim made by a Dublin trunkmaker to the titles and estates of the Percys, on the extinction of the male line in 1670. This man, whether the blood of the Percys flowed in his veins or not, showed no small share of the pluck and boldness for which that family was so long distinguished, by upholding his pretensions for fifteen years—at first against the dowager Countess of Northumberland, and afterwards against the proud and powerful Duke of Somerset, who had married the heiress, Lady Elizabeth Percy. When it is remembered that this occurred in the reign of Charles II., whose tribunals were not renowned for their equity, (and when a long purse was often better than the clearest right,) and that the influence and position of the countess and duke gave them incalculable advantages, it may be thought that the box-builder from Ireland was almost as bold a man as the Hotspur he claimed for an ancestor. He got hard measure from the House of Lords, and was rebuked for presuming to trouble it. He tried the courts of law, suing persons for scandal who had stated him to be an impostor—an indirect way of establishing his descent. After one of these trials, Lord Hailes, dissatisfied with the decision of the court, which was unfavourable to the plaintiff, is stated to have said to Lord Shaftesbury, when entering his coach—"I verily believe he (James Percy) hath as much right to the earldom of Northumberland as I have to this coach and horses, which I have bought and paid for." In the reign of James II., Percy again petitioned the Lords, but ineffectually. His final effort was in the first year of William and Mary, when his petition was read and referred toa Committee of Privileges, whose report declared him insolent; and ultimately he was condemned to be brought "before the four courts in Westminster Hall, wearing a paper upon his breast, on which these words shall be written:The false and impudent pretender to the Earldom of Northumberland." This was accordingly done, and, thus disgraced and branded as a cheat, the unfortunate trunkmaker was heard of no more.

Connected with the early years of the heiress whose rights were thus disputed, are some singularly romantic incidents, of which a long account is given by both Burkes. Before the Lady Elizabeth Percy attained the age of sixteen, she was thrice a wife, and twice a widow. She was not yet thirteen when the ceremony of marriage was performed between her and the Earl of Ogle, a boy of the same age, who died within the year, leaving the heiress of Northumberland to be competed for by new suitors. Amongst these was Thomas Thynne, Esq., of Longleat in Wiltshire, known, from his great wealth, as Tom of Ten Thousand, member of parliament for his county, a man of weight in the country, and living in a style of great magnificence. He had been an intimate friend of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., but, having quarrelled with that prince, he turned Whig, and courted the Duke of Monmouth, who frequently visited him at his sumptuous mansion of Longleat, and to whom he made a present of a team of Oldenburg carriage—horses of remarkable beauty. Thynne was soon the accepted suitor of Lady Elizabeth Percy, and they were married in 1681, but separated immediately after the ceremony on account of the youth of the bride, who went abroad for a tour on the Continent.

"It was then, as some say, that she first met Count Konigsmark at the court of Hanover; but in this notion there is a confusion both of dates and persons. The count, in fact, appears to have seen her in England, and to have paid his addresses to her before she gave her hand, or had it given for her, to Thynne. On his rejection, he left the country; but that they met on the Continent there is no evidence or likelihood. Charles John von Konigsmark was a Swede by birth, but was sprung from a German family, long settled in the district called the Mark of Brandenburg, on the coast of the Baltic. The name of Konigsmark is one of the most distinguished in the military annals of Sweden throughout a great part of the seventeenth century."—(Celebrated Trials, p. 41.)

Count Charles John did honour, at a very early age, to the warlike reputation of his family, upon whose scutcheon he was subsequently to cast the shadow of a foul suspicion. When eighteen years old, he greatly distinguished himself in a cruise against the Turks, undertaken in company with the Knights of Malta. Early in 1681, he returned to England, and the probabilities are that it was then, during Lady Elizabeth's widowhood, that he became an aspirant for her hand. Her second marriage apparently destroyed the chance of the desperate Swede, but without extinguishing his hopes. In the month of February 1682, the position of the three personages of the drama was as follows: Lady Elizabeth, or Lady Ogle, as she was styled, was abroad; Konigsmark had been lost sight of, having gone none knew whither; Tom Thynne, with the heiress of Northumberland his own by legal title, if not in actual possession, was at the zenith of his personal and political prosperity. His friend Monmouth was the idol of the mob, the Duke of York had gone to Scotland to avoid the storm raised by the absurd popish plot, and by the murder of Sir Emondbury Godfrey; Shaftesbury had been released from the Tower, amidst acclamations and illuminations: party-spirit, in short, ran so high, and Thynne was so prominent a figure at the moment, that the crime to which he presently fell a victim has been thought by many to have been instigated by political enemies, at least as much as by a disappointed rival for the hand of the heiress of the Percys. Be that as it may, (and at this distance of time it were a hopeless undertaking to elucidate a deed which the tribunals and annalists of the day failed to clear up,) "on the night of Sunday, 12th February 1682, all the court end of London was startled by the news that Thynne had been shot passing along the public streets in hiscoach. The spot was towards the eastern extremity of Pall-Mall, directly opposite to St Alban's Street,—no longer to be found, but which occupied nearly the same site with the covered passage now called the Opera Arcade. St Alban's Place, which was at its northern extremity, still preserves the memory of the old name. King Charles, at Whitehall, might almost have heard the report of the assassin's blunderbuss; and so might Dryden, sitting in his favourite front-room on the ground-floor of his house, on the south side of Gerrard Street, also hard by, more than a couple of furlongs distant." Sir John Reresby, the magistrate and memoir-writer, took an active share in the arrests and examinations that followed, and gives the details of the affair. He was at court that evening, and declares the king to have been greatly shocked at news of the murder—"not only for horror of the action itself, (which was shocking to his natural disposition,) but also for fear of the turn the anti-court party might give thereto." Three persons were arrested—a Pole, a German, and a Swedish lieutenant; and Borosky, the Pole, declared that he came to England by the desire of Count Konigsmark, signified to him through his Hamburg agent, and that on his arrival the count informed him what he had to do, supplied him with weapons, and put him under the orders of a German captain, by whose command he fired into Mr Thynne's carriage. The murderers were determined their enterprise should not miscarry for want of arms, and got together an arsenal. "There were a blunderbuss, two swords, two pair of pistols, three pocket-pistols, &c., tied up together in a sort of sea-bed, and delivered to Dr Dubartin, a German doctor, who received them at his own house." Active search was made for Konigsmark, who had arrived in Englandincognitosome days before the murder, and after a while he was discovered in hiding at Gravesend. The Duke of Monmouth and Lord Cavendish were particularly active in the affair, and a reward of £200 was offered for the count's apprehension. He was carried before the king. "I happened," says Reresby, "to be present upon this occasion, and observed that he appeared before his majesty with all the assurance imaginable. He was a fine person of a man, and I think his hair was the longest I ever saw." Nothing was elicited at this examination, which was very superficial, but on the 27th February the four accused persons were put on their trial at Hick's Hall. Konigsmark was acquitted for want of evidence (that of his three accomplices and servants not being receivable against him,) and by reason also, says Mr Peter Burke, of the more than ordinarily artful and favourable summing up of Chief-Justice Pemberton, who seemed determined to save him. The others were hanged in Pall-Mall, and Borosky, who fired the blunderbuss, was suspended in chains at Mile End. Although Konigsmark slipped through the fingers of justice, the moral conviction of his guilt was so strong, and the popular feeling so violent against him, that he was glad to leave England in all haste. "The high-spirited Lord Cavendish," says Mr Bernard Burke, "the friend and companion of the murdered Thynne, indignant at what he deemed a shameful evasion of justice, offered to meet Konigsmark in any part of the world, charge the guilt of blood upon him, and prove it with his sword. Granger records that the challenge was accepted, and that the parties agreed to fight on the sands of Calais, but before the appointed time arrived, Konigsmark declined the encounter." Such backwardness is rather inconsistent with the count's high reputation for bravery—somewhat inexplicable in the leader of the Maltese boarders, and in the man who subsequently greatly distinguished himself at the siege of Cambray and Gerona, at Navarin and Modon, and at the battle of Argoo, where he was either killed in fight, or died of a pleurisy brought on by over-exertion. On this last point authorities differ. It is not improbable, however, notwithstanding his approved valour, that conscience may have made a coward of him in the instance referred to by Granger, and that the man who never flinched before the Turk's scimitar or the Spaniard's toledo, may have shunned crossing his sword with the vengeful blade of Cavendish.

If, as may be supposed, it was Konigsmark's intention, by the assassination of Mr Thynne, to clear the way for his own pretensions to the hand of Lady Elizabeth, that part of his scheme was frustrated by the discovery of his complicity in the crime. There could be no hope of a renewal of the favour with which the lady has been said to have regarded the handsome Swede previously to her contract with Thynne—the work apparently of her restless matchmaking grandmother and guardian, rather than the result of any inclination of her own. Twice married, and still a maid, the Lady Ogle returned to England, immediately after the execution of her second husband's murderers, and soon (only two months afterward, we are told) she was led to the altar, for the third time, by Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, commonly known as the Proud Duke of Somerset, by reason of his inordinate arrogance and self-esteem. He outlived her, and married Lady Charlotte Finch, daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea. "Madam," he is reported to have said, with infinite indignation, to this lady, when she once ventured to tap him familiarly on the shoulder with her fan—"Madam, my first wife was a Percy, and she never would have dared to take such liberty." The Proud Duke, who not infrequently made himself a laughingstock by his fantastical assumption, attended the funerals of three sovereigns, and the coronation of five. On all such state occasions the precedence was his, the first peer of the realm (Duke of Norfolk) being a Roman Catholic. His only surviving son, out of seven borne him by his first duchess, left but one daughter, married to Sir Hugh Smithson, to whom the earldom of Northumberland descended, and who, in 1776, became the first duke of Northumberland.

Opposite the title-page of Mr Craik's second volume smiles the sweet face of Mary Tudor, the daughter, sister, and widow of kings, the wife of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the grandmother of the hapless Lady Jane Grey. No English princess, so little remarkable for high mental qualities, occupies so conspicuous a place in our annals. Her life was a romance; and the portion of it passed in France, as the bride of the infirm Louis XII., has been more than once availed of by the novelist. But the truth is here far too picturesque for embellishment. The utmost efforts of fiction could scarcely enhance singularity of the chain of circumstances entwined with Mary's girlhood, in the course of which she was near becoming an empress, as she afterwards became Queen. In January 1506 Mary was eight years old, Philip, Archduke of Austria, and, in right of his wife, King of Castile, was compelled by stress of weather to put in at Falmouth, during a voyage from the Netherlands to Spain, whereupon Henry VII. detained him at his court, and would not let him go, till he had extorted his consent to a marriage between the infant princess and Prince Charles of Castile, afterwards the Emperor Charles V. Philip died in the autumn of the same year, but the marriage was not the less solemnised by proxy in London early in 1508, to the great contentment of Henry, to whose felicity, Bacon says, there was then nothing to be added. "Nevertheless, the marriage of Mary of England with the Spanish prince, though it had gone so far, went no farther; nor does her father seem to have counted upon the arrangement being carried out with absolute reliance. When he died, in 1509 he was found to have directed in his will that the sum of £50,000 should bestowed as a dower with Mary, whenever she should be married either to Charles, King of Castile, or to any other foreign prince. In October 1513, after the capture of Tournay by Henry VIII., it was stipulated by a new treaty, concluded at Lisle, between him and Maximilian Emperor of Austria, that Charles should marry the Princess Mary at Calais before the 15th May next." The match, however, hung fire on the part of the Austrian, who had been tempted by the offer for his grandson of the French princess Renée, and although nothing came of this project, it enabled the King of France to connect himself as closely with the royal family of England, as he had been desirous of doing with that of Castile, but in another manner. His queen, Anne of Bretagne, died just about that time, and a few months afterwards thedecrepid valetudinarian of fifty-three proposed marriage with the blooming sister of Henry VIII., then in her seventeenth year. Mary, attaching apparently little importance to the contract with the Prince of Castile, had fixed her affections on the handsome and chivalrous Charles Brandon, her brother's favourite, and the best lance of his day."Le premier des rois fut un soldat heureux,"says the French ballad; and Brandon, whose pedigree was a blank previously to his father's father, may be said to have had almost equal fortune. For if not a king himself, he was a queen's husband, and a king's brother-in-law. He must have been some years older than Mary, for he had already been twice married, and had been talked of as the proposed husband of various illustrious ladies, and amongst others, of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria, whose heart he is said to have won by his prowess in a tournament. At last Mary Tudor cast her eyes upon him, apparently with the full approval of her brother, whose most intimate friend Brandon long had been, and who now created him Duke of Suffolk, in anticipation of his marriage with his sister. Just then came Louis XII.'s offer. "The temptation of seeing his sister queen of France," says Mr Craik, "was not to be resisted by Henry; and the prospect of such an elevation may not perhaps have been without its seductions for the princess herself:" an illiberal supposition, refuted, if there be aught in physiognomy, by Mr Craik's own artist. The owner of those frank, fair features can never have preferred ambition to love, a decrepid French king to a gallant English duke. She consented, however, to the alliance; and if there were tears and overruling in the matter, they are certainly not upon the record. Old Louis—who, although not much past what is generally the full vigour of life, had already a foot in the grave—had planned the marriage as a matter of policy, but soon became exceedingly excited by the accounts he got of Mary's great beauty. A letter from the Earl of Worcester, sent to Paris as her proxy at the ceremony of marriage, to Cardinal Wolsey, exhibits the French monarch in a fever of expectation, "devising new collars and goodly gear" for his bride. "He showed me," says the earl, "the goodliest and the richest sight of jewels that ever I saw. I assure you, all that I ever have seen is not to compare to fifty-six great pieces that I saw of diamonds and rubies, and seven of the greatest pearls that I have seen, besides a great number of other goodly diamonds, rubies, balais, and great pearls; and the worst of the second sort of stones to be priced, and cost two thousand ducats. There is ten or twelve of the principal stones that there hath been refused for one of them one hundred thousand ducats." It seemed as if Louis, diffident of his own powers of captivation, had resolved to buy his wife's affection with trinkets; and Lord Worcester, duly appreciating the glittering store, and overrating, perhaps, its power of conferring happiness, doubts not "but she will have a good life with him, with the grace of God." The respectable and uxorious old sovereign was too wise to hand over the entire treasure at once, and planned, as he told Worcester, to have "at many and divers times kisses and thanks for them." He accordingly doled them out in daily morsels, which, although minute enough when compared with the coffers' full of which Lord Worcester speaks, were yet sufficiently considerable to satisfy an ordinary appetite. On the day of their marriage, which took place at Abbéville, he gave her "a marvellous great pointed diamond, with a ruby almost two inches long, without fail." And the following day he bestowed upon her "a ruby two inches and a half long, and as big as a man's finger, hanging by two chains of gold at every end, without any foil; the value whereof few men could esteem." At the same time he packed off her English attendants, which at first greatly discomposed her, but after a time she appears to have become reconciled to it, when a new cause of embarrassment arose in the arrival at Paris of the Duke of Suffolk in the character of English ambassador. "The attachment understood to have so recently existed between her majesty and Suffolk was of course well-known in France. The story of theEnglish chroniclers is, that Suffolk was on this account regarded with general jealousy and dislike by the French; and the Duke of Bretagne, in particular, is charged with having actually sought his life."—(Romance of the Peerage, vol. ii. p. 245.) The Duke of Bretagne, also called the Dauphin, was son-in-law of Louis, and afterwards Francis I. One feels unwilling to credit the imputation cast on so chivalrous a king. Mr Burke generalises the matter, making no mention of Francis, and attributing the foul play to "the French, envious of the success of Brandon." But Mr Burke, who will gossip by the hour about an apocryphal legend, huddles over the romantic career of Charles Brandon in half-a-dozen pages, and can hardly be looked upon as a serious authority. The alleged unfair attempt on Suffolk's life occurred on the occasion of a tournament, which began at Paris, on Sunday 12th November, "before the king and queen, who were on a goodly stage; and the queen stood so that all men might see her, and wondered at her beauty, and the king was feeble, and lay upon a couch for weakness." In this tourney, the Duke of Suffolk and Marquis of Dorset and other Englishmen bore a gallant part, doing, says a chronicler, "as well as the best of any other." And a trifle better, too, judging from results; but old Hall, in his quaintness, is a friend to anything but exaggeration. And Suffolk himself, in a letter to Wolsey, after the tournament, merely says, with praiseworthy modesty, "blessed be God, all our Englishmen sped well, as I am sure ye shall hear by other." He himself was the hero of the jousts. It was no bloodless contest, with bated weapons, but a right stern encounter, with sharp spears. "Divers," says the cool chronicler, in a parenthesis, "were slain, and not spoken of." The felony charged on Francis was, that on the second day of the tourney, when he himself, by reason of a hurt in the hand, was compelled to leave the lists, he "secretly had a certain German, who was the tallest and strongest man in all the court of France, brought and put in the place of another person, in the hope of giving Suffolk a check." The bulky champion met his match, and more. After several fierce encounters, "Suffolk, by pure strength, took his antagonist round the neck, and pummelled him so about the head that the blood issued out of his nose." This "coventry" practice, then adopted, we believe, for the first time, settled the German, who was conveyed away in lamentable plight—by the dauphin, Hall affirms, and secretly, lest he should be known. The supposed motive of Francis, in seeking Suffolk's life, was his passion for his father-in-law's bride, which Brantome and other French writers have asserted to have been reciprocated by Mary—a base lying statement, there can be little doubt. There is every reason to believe the French queen's conduct to have been irreproachable. At any rate, her husband found no fault with her, declaring, on the contrary, in a letter to Harry the Eighth, how greatly pleased and contented he was with her, and lauding at the same time, in the highest terms, his excellent cousin of Suffolk. Four days after writing this letter, and twelve weeks after his marriage, Louis, who was much troubled with gout, and who, for the sake of his young queen, had completely changed his habits, dining at the extravagantly late hour of noon, and remaining out of bed sometimes until nearly midnight, departed this life. Upon which event Mr Craik strikes another splinter out of the romantic lens through which we have always loved to contemplate Mary Tudor, by insinuating she may have been not quite pleased to lose the dazzling position of queen-consort of France; and that it would have been equally satisfactory to her if Suffolk and Louis had lingered a little longer—the one in the pangs of disappointed love, the other in those of the gout. But if a diadem had such charms for Mary, that of Spain was at her command, by Mr Craik's own confession. "Both the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Spain would now have been glad to secure her hand for her old suitor the Prince of Castile." Now, as ever, her behaviour was correct, proving both good sense and good feeling. She remained several weeks in Paris without giving the least indication of an intention to marry again, although Wolsey had nosooner heard of her being a widow than he wrote to her on the subject of a second union. Of course, nobody expected she would allow the usual term of mourning to expire before bestowing her hand on Suffolk, for their mutual and long-standing attachment was well known. Exactly three months after the death of Louis, they were privately married. At the last moment Suffolk hesitated, through fear of offending Henry VIII.; and although Francis himself advised him to marry the queen, he still demurred, with a degree of irresolution hardly to have been expected in one of his adventurous character, until Mary herself took energetic measures, giving him four days, and no more, to make up his mind. Thus urged, he ran the risk, and had no cause to repent. Henry was easily reconciled to the marriage, which he had doubtless foreseen as inevitable; and Mary, the French queen, as she continued to sign herself, was happy with the husband of her choice until her early death at the age of thirty-five.

The nobility of Great Britain need no advocate to vaunt their virtues and exalt their fame. Ever foremost in the field and at the council-board, they long since achieved, and still maintain, the first place amongst the world's aristocracy. Their illustrious deeds are blazoned upon the page of history. Ready alike with purse and blade, they have never flinched from shedding their blood and expending their treasure in the cause of loyalty and patriotism. Measure them with the nobility of other countries, and they gain in grandeur by the comparison. Whilst in nearly every other European land the aristocracy is fallen, as in France, by its vices and heartlessness; degenerate and incapable, as in Spain; or, as in Russia, but lately emerged from barbarism, and with its reputation yet to make, the nobles of Great Britain proudly maintain their eminent position, not by factitious advantages alone, but because none more than they deserve it—because they are not more conspicuous for high rank and illustrious descent, than for dignified conduct and distinguished talents. We have heard of self-styled liberals scowling down from the gallery of the House of Lords upon the distinguished assembly, and with an envious grimace pledging their utmost exertions to its extinction. Fortunately the renown of such gentlemen is not equal to their spite, or the British constitution, there can be little doubt, would soon be abrogated in favour of some hopeful scheme, coined in a Brummagem mint. Fortunately there is still enough right feeling and good sense in the country to guard our institutions against Manchester machinations.

Accustomed as we have been of late years to meet all manner of radicalism and mischievous trash, in the disguise of polite literature, in weekly parts and monthly numbers, in half-guinea volumes and twopenny tracts, tricked out, gilt, and illustrated, just as a cunning quack coats his destructive pills in a morsel of shining tinsel, we took up Mr Peter Burke's book with a slight mistrust, which did not, however, survive the perusal of his preface. Therein he disclaims all intention of depreciating the character of the British aristocracy. Had such been his view, he says, it had been signally defeated by the statistics contained in his book, which proves to be a most triumphant vindication of the class referred to. "The volume embraces a period of three hundred years, and during the whole of that time we find but three peers convicted of murder: the very charge against them, if we except Lord Ferrers' crime—the act of a madman—and some cases of duelling, is unknown for more than two hundred years back. Moreover, setting aside these murders, and also the night-broils peculiar to the beginning of the last century, the aristocratic classes of society have scarcely a single instance on record against them of a base or degrading nature, beyond the misdemeanour of Lord Grey of Werke, and the misdeeds of two baronets.... The judgments pronounced against them are the judgments, not of felony, but of treason. Crimes they may have committed, but they are almost invariably the crimes, not of villany, but of misapplied honour and misguided devotion." Mr Burke steers clear of politics, and limits his investigations to the offences against society. The first trial he records took place in 1541—the lastoccurred in 1846. Besides treasonable offences, he has excluded such cases as could not be given, even in outline, without manifest offence to his reader's delicacy. With these exceptions, he intimates that he has noticed all the trials connected with the aristocracy that have occurred during the last three centuries. We cannot contradict him, without more minute reference to authorities than we at this moment have opportunity to make; but we thought the criminal records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been richer in this respect; and indeed his brother Bernard's book of anecdotes reminds us of two or three cases—that of the Countess of Strathmore, and of Mure of Auchindrane—which, it seems to us, would have been in their place in his collection. The trials given by Mr Peter Burke are thirty-three in number, and it is not uninteresting to sort them according to the offences. In many instances, it is to be observed, the members of the aristocracy concerned were sinned against, not sinning, as in the murder of Lord William Russell, the singular attempt to extort money from the second Duke of Marlborough, the recent action for breach of promise against Earl Ferrers. There are nine cases of murder, most of them of ancient date; five duel cases, beginning with Lord Mohun and terminating with the Earl of Cardigan; two trials for bigamy, (Beau Fielding and the Duchess of Kingston;) two parricides, and sundry brawls. First in the list is the trial of Sir Edmond Kneves, knight, of Norfolk, arraigned before the king's justices "for striking of one Master Clerc, of Norfolk, servant with the Earle of Surrey, within the king's house in the Tenice-court." Sir Edmond was found guilty, and condemned to lose his right hand. In cases of decapitation, a headsman and his aid, or two aids at most, have generally been found sufficient. The cutting off of a hand involved much more ceremony, and a far greater staff of officials. A curious list is given, from the state trials, of the persons in attendance to assist in Sir Edmond's mutilation. "First, the serjeant chirurgion, with his instruments appertaining to his office; the serjeant of the woodyard, with the mallet and a blocke, whereupon the hand should lie; the master cooke for the king, with the knife; the serjeant of the larder, to set the knife right on the joynt; the serjeant farrier, with his searing-yrons to seare the veines; the serjeant of the poultry, with a cocke, which cocke should have his head smitten off upon the same blocke, and with the same knife; the yeoman of the chandry, with seare-clothes; the yeomen of the scullery, with a pan of fire to heat the yrons, a chafer of water to cool the ends of the yrons, and two fourmes for all officers to set their stuffe on; the serjeant of the seller, with wine, ale, and beere; the yeoman of the ewry, in the serjeant's steed, who was absent, with bason, ewre, and towels." A dozen persons or more to assist at poor Sir Edmond'smanumission. Everybody remembers Sir Mungo Malagrowther's charitable visit to Lord Glenvarloch, when he had incurred a like penalty, and his description of the "pretty pageant" when one Tubbs or Stubbes lost his right hand for a "pasquinadoe" on Queen Elizabeth. Sir Edmond Kneves was more fortunate. When condemned, he prayed that the king, (Henry VIII.,) "of his benigne grace, would pardon him of his right hand, and take the left; for, (quoth he,) if my right hand be spared, I may hereafter doe such good service to his grace, as shall please him to appoint." A request which his majesty, "considering the gentle heart of the said Edmond, and the good report of lords and ladies," was graciously pleased to meet with a free pardon. Sir Edmond was a man of high rank and consideration, and his descendants obtained a peerage and a baronetcy, both now extinct.

Fifteen years later, under the reign of Queen Mary, happened the trial and execution of Lord Stourton and four of his servants, for the murder of William and John Hartgill. The motive was a private grudge. Lord Stourton was a zealous Catholic, and great interest was made with Mary to save his life, but in vain: she would only grant him the favour to be hung with a silken rope. Next comes "The great case of the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury," concerning which much has been written; and then the investigation of a base anddisgraceful conspiracy got up by Sir John Croke of Chilton, Baronet, to accuse the Reverend Robert Hawkins of felony. We pass on to the case of Lord Mohun—twice tried for homicide, and finally slain in a duel, in which his antagonist also perished. Cases of brawling—not the offence to which the word is now generally applied, and of which Doctors' Commons takes cognisance, but bloody brawls, with sword-thrusts and mortal wounds—were of frequent occurrence towards the close of the seventeenth century, and several of the more important trials they gave rise to are related by Mr Peter Burke. Lord Mohun was one of the most turbulent spirits of a period when gentlemen carried swords, frequented taverns, drank deep, and swore high, and when a fray, with bare steel and bloodshed, was as common an occurrence in London streets as is now the detection of a pickpocket or the breaking-down of a hackney cab; when hot-headed young men—the worthy descendants of the Wildrakes of a previous reign—met on tavern stairs, primed with good liquor, quarrelled about nothing, rushed into the street, and slew each other incontinently. After this fashion did Sir Charles Pym of Brymmore, Somersetshire, lose his life, after a dinner at the Swan, upon Fish Street Hill; his decease extinguishing the baronetcy, and terminating the male line of an ancient and honourable house. The cause of quarrel was trivial in the extreme—a very dog's quarrel, it may be called, for the whole ground of dispute was a plate of meat. However fashionable a house of entertainment the Swan upon Fish Street Hill may in those days have been deemed, its larder seems to have been conducted upon a most economical scale; for on the trial, a Mr Mirriday deposed that, upon going there to dine in company with Sir Charles and other gentlemen, and asking for meat, they were told they might have fish, but there was no meat save what was bespoke by Mr Rowland Walters, a person of station and family, who was dining with some friends in another room. The evidence on this trial, which is given at length, is curious as a quaint illustration of the manners of the time. "He desired him (the tavern-keeper) to help us to a plate of it, if it might be got, which we had brought up stairs: after dinner we drank the gentlemen's health that sent it, and returned them thanks for it. A little while after, Sir Thomas Middleton went away, and about an hour after that, or thereabouts, Sir Charles Pym and the rest of us came down to go away; and when we were in the entry, Mr Cave met us, and asked Sir Charles how he liked the beef that was sent up—who answered, we did not know you sent it, for we have paid for it: then the boy that kept the bar told us that he did not reckon it in the bill; upon which Mr Cave seemed to take it ill; but, my lord, I cannot be positive whether Mr Bradshaw and Mr Palms were at any words. Then I took Mr Cave to one side into the entry, and he thought that I had a mind to fight him, but I did what I could to make an end of the quarrel. [Upon which the court highly commended. Mr Mirriday.]" The quarrel continued, however, and Sir Charles Pym was run through the body by Mr Walters, "and fell down crinkling (writhing) immediately," deposed a Mr Fletcher, who saw the fight. It was urged in extenuation, that Sir Charles had previously run Walters eight inches into the thigh. "'Pray, my lord,' said Walters, 'let Sir Charles' sword be seen, all blood.' [But that gave no satisfaction on either side.]" So much malice was shown, that the jury would fain have returned a verdict of wilful murder; but Justice Allibone overruled their wish, and laid down the law, and they brought it in manslaughter. The sentence is not given; but such offences were then very leniently looked upon, and it is not likely to have been severe. Lord Mohun's two trials were of a different nature from this one; for in the first—for the murder of Mountford, the actor, which has been often told, and which arose out of an attempt to carry off Congreve's friend, Mrs Bracegirdle, the beautiful actress—the blow was struck by Captain Hill, who escaped, and Mohun was indicted for aiding and abetting. "My Lord Mohun," the murdered man deposed, "offered me no violence; but while I was talking withmy Lord Mohun, Hill struck me with his left hand, and with his right hand ran me through before I could put my hand to my sword." Not only in street squabbles, but in encounters of a more regular character, foul play appears to have been not unfrequent. There was strong suspicion of it in the duel in which Lord Mohun met his death. After he had received his mortal wound, his second, Major-General Macartney, is said to have basely stabbed the Duke of Hamilton, already grievously hurt. Colonel Hamilton, the Duke's second, "declared upon oath, before the Privy Council, that when the principals engaged, he and Macartney followed their example; that Macartney was immediately disarmed; but the colonel, seeing the duke fall upon his antagonist, threw away the swords, and ran to lift him up; that while he was employed in raising the Duke, Macartney, having taken up one of the swords, stabbed his grace over Hamilton's shoulder, and retired immediately." This was one of the accounts given of the affair. "According to some," says the author ofAnecdotes of the Aristocracy, "Lord Mohun shortened his sword, and stabbed the wounded man to the heart while leaning on his shoulder, and unable to stand without support; others said that a servant of Lord Mohun's played the part attributed by the more credible accounts to Macartney." Some years later, Macartney stood his trial at the King's Bench; and as the jury found him guilty only of manslaughter, it is presumable they discredited Colonel Hamilton's evidence. The truth is now difficult to be ascertained, for the whole affair is mixed up with the fierce party-politics of the time. The Whigs are said to have instigated Mohun, "who had long laboured under the repute of being at once the tool and bully of the party," to provoke the duke, and force him into a quarrel. Mohun primed himself with wine, and took a public opportunity of insulting his grace, in order to make him the challenger: then, as the duke seemed disposed to stand upon his own high character, and treat the disreputable brawler with contempt, Mohun sent him a cartel by the hands of the above-named Macartney, a fire-eater and scamp of his own kidney. The motive of Whig hatred of the duke was his recent appointment as ambassador extraordinary to the court of France, and their fear that he would favour the Pretender. During Macartney's absence in Holland, £800 were offered for his apprehension—£500 by the government of the day, and £300 by the Duchess of Hamilton; and Swift tells an anecdote of a gentleman who, being attacked by highwaymen, told them he was Macartney, "upon which they brought him to a justice of peace in hopes of a reward, and the rogues were sent to gaol."

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