twisting their long necks to crop the of towered masonery formed by Lambeth blades of the flowering flags, or lifting Palace and Church. As we zigzag from their red beaks to the leaves of the over- side to side, the mist-bordered reaches hanging trees. The lazy ripple of the of the river look like wide lakes. We river on the pebbly strand at the foot of run in so close to the Houses of Parlia the water-side of the park so trim in ment that, in spite of the mist, we can its core, so rough at its edges-sug- see the scaled-off look of the stones of gests a trip upon the water. Let us take that magnificent modern-antique readyboat at the pier hard by. Old Chelsea made to one who has crossed the line, Church and the old trees and houses of the noses of some of the sculptured Cheyne Walk have a Fata Morgana look. figures suggest a memory of the time Two white wager-boats, pulled by white-when the skin peeled off his nose in clad spectres, dart out of the mist ahead, curly shavings, though from a very differand dart into the mist astern - emblems ent cause. Red and white St. Thomas's reversed in life. A train thunders over Hospital on the other side might serve the railway-bridge, adding a coil of slug- for a dyspeptically despondent butcher's gishly curling snowy vapour to the mouse- dream of vanishing raw beef. When, coloured mist. A black lighter-one under graceful Westminster-Bridge, the long sweep sprawling like a broken fin, funnel comes down, like a hemlock-stalk the other tugged at, doggedly though half cut in two by stick of idle wanderer seemingly lazily, by the lighterman, practising sword exercise-most ungenwhose sulky features are indistinguish-erously making use of its monopolized able-flounders past like a wounded privilege to smoke abaft itself, by clogwhale. Tiers of black lighters, as gloomy ging our nostrils and defiling our shirtas if they were meant for Titans' floating fronts with unconsumed carbon-the hearses, loom alongside the shore's fog is thickening so that we begin to blurred higgledy-piggledy of piles and doubt whether our boat will get beyond wharfs and cranes, and travellers" on Hungerford; but, just as we have gaunt timber skeletons, and coal, and passed Hungerford Bridge, brick and stone, and chimney-pots and drain-pipes. At Nine Elms there is a maze of curving and crossing rails that look like half-obliterated fork-scratches

on a

Apollo's arrow flashes through the murk,
And flashes back in shattered gold.

greasy plate, with stumbling The sudden sunbeam gleams but for a horses straining at lead-coloured and few moments, but it has turned the emmud-coloured trucks, and men-clad bankment granite, and Somerset House presumably in green corduroy, but and Waterloo Bridge into shimmering looking exactly like chimney-sweeps snow, the embankment gardens into shouting huskily to the horses and glistening emerald; it has lit up church One another under the supervision of vanes and windows in dusty brick houses, mist-magnified overseers, also leaden- glorified straw-laden barges, even grimy hued. The extinguisher turrets of Milbury Penitentiary perk up, blurred, above the blurred jumble of its dirtydrab brick the mist gives the place a Bastille look of mystery. The Lambeth embankment glimpses through the murky air like a long line of pale ghosts drawn up along the banks of Styx; it is just possible to make out that builders are somewhere at work in the dark jumble

coal-barges and then it vanishes as suddenly as it came. As we flap the brown waters into dingy cream on our way to our City wharf, we pass biliouslooking blotches of artificial light in Temple chambers and riverside ware houses: fog in her sober drab livery hath once more all things clad when our skipper sidle his boat like a shying horse up to the Allhallows pier.

A PROJECT has been set on foot by Colonel fifty specimens of each species, so as to be able Grant, so well known from his African travels, to form groups representing every stage in the to form a loan exhibition of skulls and horns life of each, as also to show the varieties of of hollow-horned animals, in order that by species in different localities. When from observation and comparison of a large number three to five thousand specimens of the one of characteristic specimens, facts may be ob- hundred and fifty existing species have been tained regarding the form, sexual characters, promised, means will be taken to secure the and locality of each particular species. It is most suitable place in London for their exhi proposed to have as many as from twenty to

bition.

Nature.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY
LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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And from our shadowed life take all the joy Around them bloomed primrose and violet,

Your labours ye beguile with blithesome song. Will shew green tissues where the leaflets lie

Yet winter-held, and to the bluer sky Which never glowed beneath the sun's warm Still howls the northern wind with angry Give fragrance fresher than the scents of June.

The cattle haste their milky draughts to pour. Pouring a mirthful wisdom in our ears;

Bring long surcease to all your summer mirth, Responsive to the presage of thy lay.

And let the draughts of wine to joy give birth. Breasted by softer clouds, and flowers and

From The Edinburgh Review.
THE TREVELYAN PAPERS.*

thought and similarity of will is testified no less by the records of their actions than by their features in the family portraits.

"SOME," says Boswell, in that sententious style which it was usually his pleasure to assume after having had the ben- It is therefore with some little regret efit of the great Doctor's conversation that we discover, as yet, such slight probfor some weeks, "some have affected to ability of accession to our existing malaugh at the History of the House of terials in this department from the Yvery'" (a production which seems never labours of the Commission on Historical to have got beyond the stage of private Manuscripts, of which the third Report printing and distribution). "It would be is now before us. It is needless to say well if many others would transmit their that the Appendix to this Report embodpedigrees to posterity, with the same ies a considerable variety of matter of accuracy and generous zeal with which importance to the antiquarian, the histothe noble lord who compiled that work rian, and the genealogist; and the Rehas honoured and perpetuated his ances-port itself promises much more. But of try. Family histories, like the imagines that particular kind of memorial of the majorum of the ancients, excite to vir- past of which we are now in search—the tue." We entirely agree with our favour- domestic correspondence and diaries of ite biographer, though not adopting the private families, continued from one genmagniloquence with which he announces eration to another - we find but slender his opinion. As the life of an individual trace. Such treasures are no doubt furnishes upon the whole the most agree- scarce, and perhaps they are somewhat able of all literary subjects, other than charily communicated. Possibly the exthe merely romantic, to the majority of plorations of the Commission may yet readers; so the life of a family, duly serve to disinter a few more of them. In traced and authenticated, ought to sup- the meantime we have abundant reason to ply matter not indeed of the same class be thankful to those few who have opened of interest, but still of no common utility for us the innermost recesses of their both for amusement and instruction. family archives, and enabled us, here and For the individual lives on in his family. there, to trace to our satisfaction the hisIt has often been remarked how the great tory of a knightly or gentle name through Gentes of Roman history the Valerii, some comprehensive period of time, the Claudii, the Scipios, and so forth and the position which it held towards seemed to prolong, generation after gen- the changing world around it. eration, particular types, not only of political sentiment and conduct, but of personal character. And the same specialty has been observed in respect of our noble English races, which have taken from father to son so large a share in our political and social life. Percys, and Mortimers, and Cliffords in old days; Howards, Russells, Grenvilles, and many more in later times, have constituted not merely households, but as it were castes lines of men in whom a certain identity of

1. The Paston Letters. A New Edition. Edited by JAMES GAIRDNER, of the Public Record Office. Vol. 1. 1872.

2. Trevelyan Papers. Part I. II. Edited by J. PAYNE COLLIER, Esq. Part III. (with introduction). Edited by Sir WALTER CALVERLEY TREVELYAN, Bart., and Sir CHARLES EDWARD TREVELYAN, K. C.B. Printed for the Camden Society. 1857-1872.

At the head of all English records of this description stands the collection commonly known as the "Paston Let

ters."

We have before us the first volume of it, in a handsome reprint,* edited by the thoroughly competent hand of Mr. James Gairdner of the Record Office, who has supplied it with a voluminous introduction, to which we can only take one objection that he has had it printed in so exceedingly minute a acter, that an antiquary duly solicitous about his eyesight would almost as soon encounter a roll of papyrus, or a monkish

char

This reprint forms part of a series of the English Classics of the sixteenth century, which are republished in excellent taste, and at a very low price, by Mr. Arber, of Queen's Square. They ought to be household books wherever the English tongue is spoken.

manuscript charter of the thirteenth cen- will, when he carried it off from council tury. The singular history of the "Pas- in his pocket, from his Majesty they ton Letters" has of late acquired re- never returned. "The originals of the newed interest. They found their way first two volumes are missing, though from divers repositories, previously to they were presented to the King in 1787, 1787, into the possession of Mr. Fenn of bound in three volumes, and, no doubt, East Dereham, in Norfolk, afterwards the binding was a handsome one." All Sir Richard; described by Horace Wal- search to recover them has hitherto pole as a "smatterer in antiquity, but a proved fruitless. "There is a tradition very good sort of man." Mr. Fenn ar- that they were last seen in the hands of ranged and published the two first vol- Queen Charlotte, who, it is supposed, umes, "with a very lengthy title." Their must have lent them to one of her ladies appearance at once excited considerable in attendance. (?) If so, it is strange attention, mainly owing to the interest taken in them by Walpole himself, who, whatever amount of frivolity may have attached to his tastes, was au fond a zealous and a discerning student of English antiquity. "These letters," he said, "make to me all other letters not worth reading." Hannah More, no doubt in common with many other literary personages at that time, was of a different opinion. The letters, she declared, were quite barbarous in style, with none of the elegance of their supposed contemporary Rowley! They might be of some use to correct history, but as letters and fine reading, nothing was to be said for them!" Nevertheless

"The Paston Letters" (Mr. Gairdner continues) were soon in every one's hands. The work appeared (1787) under royal patronage; for Fenn had got leave beforehand to dedicate it to the King as the avowed patron of antiquarian knowledge. A whole edition was disposed of in a week; and a second edition called for, which, after undergoing some little revision with the assistance of Mr. George Steevens, the Shakespearian editor, was published the same year. Meanwhile, to gratify the curious, the original MS. letters were deposited for a time in the library of the Society of Antiquaries; but the King having expressed a wish to see them, Fenn sent them to the palace, requesting that if they were thought worthy of a place in the royal collection, his Majesty would be pleased to accept them. They were accordingly added to the royal library, and as an acknowledgment of the value of the gift, Fenn was summoned to court, and received the honour of knighthood.

Here begins the problematical part of the history. To the King the letters certainly went; but, like George II.'s

of

that they should have been lost sight of. They are not in the library of King George III., which is now in the British Museum, nor do they appear in any the Royal palaces. The late Prince Consort, just before his death, instituted a search which he had great hope would at last bring them to light. I have been informed that it has since been com pleted, but the missing originals remain still unaccounted for."

Singularly enough, the history of the remaining part of the work is subject to difficulties and obscurities almost equally great. A third and fourth volume were published by Mr., now become Sir Richard, Fenn. The collective originals of these have never been recovered; but "it happens that the first document in volume iii, has been actually found, and is now in the British Museum."

Volume v. was published, several years afterwards, by the late Serjeant Frere: of this, also, the MS. was altogether lost strange deficiencies was, that "an insight of. The consequence of these genious littérateur," as Mr. Gairdner terms him, raised critical doubts, which were acknowledged by some as plausible, respecting the authenticity of the whole series. This was done in an article which appeared in "the Fortnightly Review." Its appearance set the descendant of the editor, Mr. Philip Frere, on a new search; and the originals of volume old box at his house in Norfolk. Those v. were actually discovered at last in an who were present at the following meeting of the Society of Antiquaries may well remember their triumphant production in the very presence of the unlucky sceptic,