reports first, they are so much more instructive than what is done in the other place. If it wasn't for the look of the thing I'd go and practise before Sir Peter. Let me see-"House of Lords.-Fifty Bills were read a third time and passed, but there was no business of any public interest.' Think of thatfifty Bills passed and no public interest! I can tell you it is a good deal for my interest though; I look upon each of these bills as so much clear gain. It's very considerate of these Parliament lawyers; but they are coming it a leetle too strong. Things will get into such an eternal mess presently, that Cobham will sweep us away like cobwebs some fine morning, and bring the Code Napoléon across the water.'

Too precious a blessing to be prayed for. The nation wouldn't consider itself safe for a day, if it understood either its laws or its religion.'

'Like old Widow Murphy. "Unerstan' the sermon, sir? Na, na, I wudna presume." But don't be profane. I hate the superficial way in which you laymen sneer at the most lucrative system of jurisprudence in the world.' And Darcy relapsed into the newspaper. 'Hullo! Here's the Great Man been at it again. "Mr. Mowbray's motion on the Partington disabilities." By Jove, how he walks into them! Listen to this. "You may resist to-day and to-morrow, but the time will come when you must give way. Look at the noble lord! He has pledged himself to put down the movement. O devout imagination! The noble lord against the people of England! Let him try it." And so your cousin sits down-his lip curled with that supreme scorn of hisand the House cheers him vociferously, and

'Divides clean against him, as of old?

'Not a bit. 200 for, 225 against -majority against 25, in immense capitals, and great cheering from the minority thereat.'

'Things are coming to a crisis. A dissolution, I suppose. Mowbray will be Minister next year.'

13

'And Miles Warrender an UnderSecretary, or something better." 'No, thank you. I am not a politician, and don't mean to be

one.

I saw a good deal of the farce last year, and didn't like it.'

"Tush, 'tis a good play, and I want you to make me Solicitor. Let us have All the Talents.'

'Be Solicitor, O my friend, but I will sit under my own vines, if you please.'

'Your own cabbages, you mean.' 'Very well. But a Secretary of State-what a destiny! The man ceases to be man, and becomes an abstraction-War, Justice, the Colonies. And an Under-Secretary is the shadow of a shade-an Under-Secretary can't smoke-an Under-Secretary isn't allowed a latch-keyan Under-Secretary must keep regular hours, and have no inconvenient convictions. And so and so what a glorious night!'

The moonlight lies on the water, which heaves like molten silver. Lights are moving among the cottages in the village-'tis the fishers preparing to 'catch' the morning tide. Already the first boat has left, and crosses the lane of light that lies athwart the bay; its brown sail is set, but the warm night wind is soft and fickle; so the rowers pull, and the ear catches distinctly the regular beat of the heavy oars.

'Hawkstone is still as the dead,' said Darcy, looking across the bay. Very sweet pretty creatures these girls are. Corry is an old friend of mine, but she is as wild and shy as one of her own ponies. My dear Miles, I caught an expression in these eyes to-day, which I tried to keep to myself, only I fear it was meant for some one else. However, that yellow-haired, blue-eyed friend of hers, with her infectious laugh, is more to my taste. A simple man like myself would be afraid of the other; he would be perpetually hurting her, without knowing it; and then she would break away like a wounded fawn, and bleed to death in the woodland all alone, too shy to seek for help. A pretty image, is it not? I sometimes fancy Providence de

signed to make a poet of me. Chance has given the world a Chancellor.'

'Corry is a good child, and wouldn't do anything so absurd. But Alice would make an excellent helpmeet for Mr. Darcy Langton, and we'll go and call to-morrow at Hawkstone.'

'Heaven forbid! I am an anchorite, a pilgrim,-the scallop-shell and green bag are my only possessions. No income under a thousand per annum should have leave

to enter the drawing-room. I don't go to Paradise till I quit my garret. Then, but then I will be crowned with age, if not with wisdom, and some of the blue will have melted out of these blue eyes. Alack! alack! Vanity of vanities! I wonder if the Chancellor sleeps as well as plain Darcy does. And so, my lord, good-night, or rather good-morrow, for good-morrow, for "the Lady of the Light, the rosy-finger'd Morn," stirs over yonder,-an' I mistake not.'

motion.

The Commonwealth was the popular club with the younger men. It was not Whig, and it was not Conservative. Frequented by those who were not tied to the Ministry nor bound to the Opposition, who had little sympathy with the obsolete traditions of the Tory, and none with the doctrinaire antidotes of modern Liberalism, it was a club of good birth and good breeding a club of parts, culture, and ability, but at the same time a club better suited for the critic than for the worker, for the wit and the satirist than for the practical politician.

Yet the Commonwealth was moved. The Ministry had been virtually defeated the previous evening and even the still waters of the Commonwealth were rippled. 'Have you heard the news? His Grace has been at Windsor.'

'But the King won't let him resign.'

I beg your pardon-I have it on the best authority-his resignation has been accepted. The Ministry is out.'

'Well, I suppose the world will
Who comes in?'
'Don't know. Mowbray's the

wag on.

man; but they don't like him up there. Easyhavers threatens to tell the Emperor.'

'Yes; Mowbray's the man,' was unanimously echoed from the bay window. Wherever else he might be disliked, the surpassing merits of the English Cicero were frankly admitted by that critical and fastidious assembly.

Mowbray, indeed, was very popular at the Commonwealth. He had taken a first-class at Oxford, and his prize poem was better than the Laureate's. He had written epigrams once he spoke them now -and they were terse, brilliant, and sparkling with wit and scholarly point. He came of an old race, and the bar-sinister which crossed his coat did not do him any harm with critics who were better up in their horses' than in their statesmen's pedigrees. For many years he was the petted Benjamin of his party. But at length he freed himself from the traditions in which he had been nursed, and assumed a higher position. At home he was now regarded as the most dangerous enemy of antique wrongs; from abroad, as the most sagacious advocate of an intelligent foreign policy, and the last sighs of na

tions, perishing with their gods,' were borne to the patriot politician. Only by the fools and bigots of political life was he hated. That party, however, is always a large one-one not unfrequently in the majority holding office with peculiar tenacity, difficult to resist, and dangerous to assail. The triple brass of an English fool furnishes invincible armour,

As the evening fell, members gathered in to learn the rumours. The chances of the competitors were discussed, and the odds against the favourite, or in favour of the field, taken and given. At length a well-known figure, compact as a lady's glove, wiry as a Skye terrier, saunters along the pavement towards the club-door.

'Here's Maurice-Maurice will know.'

'What's up, Maurice; what's the news?'

The gentleman addressed slowly raises his eyes to the eager inquirers, composedly glances along the line, and answers

'Nothing I know of; there never is any news now. It was different It was different when I was a boy. Then we had a new prince every six months or so-six months to a day, upon my honour. Now it takes twice the time, it seems, and we don't care about it as we used to when it does come. By the way, what kind of fellow is this Mowbray I hear people begin to talk about?

Begin to talk! Why, they have been at it for thirty years. But what of Mowbray?

'Let me see, what was it? Yes, I recollect. He has been with the King, who shed tears-good old soul!-when he found Mowbray didn't mind being scolded, and ended by making him Minister. He is now forming a government; and I do trust you may be in the Cabinet, my dear Ashby! if you like that kind of thing.'

15

'I begsh to gi-give you a tosht. Fill your glashes to the b-brim. The Whi-Wigs be deed-yesh, I say de-eed!' (he was evidently used to the word, and ever and again returned to it as to a leading landmark on terra firma.) BogelshBogelsh, du you tush my coat? Ca-ant come yet, Bogelsh--ca-ant, Bogelsh, 'pon my wud. I am gigiving a tosht. Gen'elmen, it is the tosht of my fuiend-my boosham fuiend, Misser Boo-boo-booray. Oh, Boglsh! you are a gu-ud fellow, but' (with pathos), 'shlow, doos'd shlow. I objects on prinsherple to-to'-after a pause, with a tremendous effort-Fa'er Mashew. I'm a timp'rate man, d'ye see, but not a tee-tee-tol-ler.'

VOL. LXV. NO. CCCLXXXV.

B

us.

* We are glad that it has been published. It supplies a want that has been long felt. Dr. Irving was a thorough antiquary, and knew his subject better perhaps than any other man-Mr. Laing always excepted. His critical appraisements, if never brilliant, are always sound and discriminating. He hates no man (saving Mackenzie, against whose Lives of Scots Worthies he discharges volleys of involved and elaborate irony), and he can feel admiration without falling into hysterics. The 'passionless tranquillity' of the Pallas Parthenos is animation indeed when compared with the bland dignity of the Doctor. The editor observes that the entire volume is written with deliberate and steadfast coherency and compactness,' which is quite true; but does not sufficiently describe the intensely Johnsonian rotundity of much of the writing. Some of the sentences might have come direct from the pen of the great lexicographer. Grief is a disease which rarely proves mortal; the heart of man, which is exposed to many sorrows, is likewise provided with many remedies; nor is the vivacity of youth more efficacious than the torpor of age in resisting the severest calamities incident to human life.' 'The merit of Barbour is more circumscribed; but it cannot reasonably be expected that he should have performed what he never attempted.' The Doctor, in fact, belongs to a generation of critics which has passed away-critics who sententiously alluded to the author of The Reliques as 'the late

worthy Bishop of Dromore,' and who took a lively interest in controversies about the Picts, Macpherson's Ossian, and the Roman wall. There is, as we might expect, a vast amount of rather unavailable erudition displayed, not in the text alone, for the notes are stored with references to quaint and oldfashioned lore. One of King James's ballads, for instance, opens with the words At Beltayn, and we are immediately furnished with the following commentary :

'It might easily happen,' says Mr. Sibbald, that more than one song or poem should begin with these two words for At Beltayne means on May-day.' (Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, vol. i. p. 123.) But May-day is the first, and Beltane the second of the month. 'Bellenden, the translator of Boete, points out what day is here meant, b. 17, c. 2: "On Beltane day, in the year next following, callit the Invention of the haly Croce," etc. The feast of the Invention of the Cross is celebrated by the Latin church on the 2nd May.' (Hailes's Specimen, part 1. p. 7.) The same editor has drawn a very extraordinary argument from an Act of Parliament, passed in 1457, and enjoining the wives and daughters of men within burowis, and commonys to land wart,' to refrain from the use of sumptuous apparel, and dress themselves in a manner suitable to their condition; that is to say, on their hedis schort curches with litell hudis, as ar vsyt in Flanderis, Inglande, and vther cuntreis.'-(Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 49.) From these expressions he thinks himself entitled to infer that curchies and hudes were either not known, or not commonly used by "landwart" girls in Scotland, before the date of this Act;' and as curches and a hude are mentioned in Peblis to the Play, he concludes that the Act must be of an earlier date than the poem.(Sibbald, vol. i. p. 137.) It is however sufficiently obvious that the country wives and wenches are not referred to England and Flanders for patterns of hoods and tippets, but the propriety of confining themselves to a plain and decent

garb is illustrated by the example of Flanders, England, and other countries.

Mair has informed us that the king's ballad, beginning At Beltayn, was the subject of a certain parody; 'quem alii de Dalketh et Gargeil mutare studuerunt; quia in arce aut camera clausus servabatur, in qua mulier cum matre habitabat.' From this statement, Mr. Sibbald thinks it may be collected that the subject of the poem 6 was the confinement of a person, otherwise there would not have been that correspondence between the original and the parodies which Major particularly specifies.' This notion of a parody is singular enough: Philips is commonly understood to have written a parody of Milton; but what reader expects to find in the Splendid Shilling an exact counterpart of Paradise Lost? He proceeds to remark that the historian 'cantus or song; with the definisays, tion of which it does not seem to correspond.' But I can perceive no impropriety in applying the word to such a poem as Peblis to the Play: this word may signify a ballad as well as a song ; and to denote a shorter composition, intended to be sung, Mair seems to employ the term cantilena. It would not have been amiss if Mr. Sibbald had specified some more appropriate word by which the poem in question might have been described.

Or take this upon the allusion to 'Wadlying Strete' in Henryson's Orpheus:

Watling-street is a name given to one of the great Roman ways in Britain.(Horsley's Roman Antiquities of Britain, p. 387. Lond. 1732, fol.) This passage, which to some persons may appear so unintelligible, will be best explained by a quotation from Chaucer's House of Fame, book ii. :—

Lo, quod he, caste up thyne eye,
Se yonder, lo, the Galaxie,
The whiche men clepe the Milky Way,
For it is whyte; and some parfay
Callen it Watlynge Strete.

In the Towneley Mysteries, p. 308, one demon thus addresses another :

Let us go to this dome up Watlyn Strete. Bishop Douglas has employed the same expression in translating a passage in the third book of the Eneid, where the original contains no corresponding term :— Sidera cuncta notat tacito labentia cœlo, Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones, Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona.

17

Of euery sterne the twynkling notis he, That in the stil heuin moue cours we se, Arthurys hufe, and Hyades betaiknyng

rane,

Syne Watling Strete, the Horne and the Charle wane,

The feirs Orioun with his goldine glaue.

An ancient Roman building, which once stood on the banks of the Carron, but was long ago demolished by the Gothic owner of the soil, bore the name of Arthur's Hof or Arthur's Oon. 'It is remarkable,' says Mr. Ritson, that Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, a noted poet, has described this erection in the milky way'-(Life of King Arthur, p. 96. Lond. 1825, 8vo.) But it is necessary to recollect that Virgil mentions the star Arcturus, and that his translator could make no reference to the hero of the Round Table.

Or this upon the proverbial expression John Thomson's man :

'This,' says Mr. Pinkerton, 'is a proverbial expression, meaning a hen-pecked husband. I have little doubt but the original proverb was Joan Thomson's man.' There is indeed a ballad entitled 'John Thomson and the Turk,' to which Mr. Motherwell supposes this expression to bear an allusion. 'Pinkerton,' he remarks, was ignorant of the existence of the ballad: had he been acquainted with it, he would have saved himself the trouble of writing a foolish conjecture.'(Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, intr. app. p. ix. Glasg. 1827, 4to.) But according to this ballad, John Thomson was a Scotch warrior who fought against the Turks; and when his lady forsook him for a Turkish gallant, he inflicted ample vengeance upon both :

This Turk thee in his castel burnt,

That stood upon yon hill so hie; John Thomson's gay ladie they took,

And hanged her on yon green-wood tree. Where then do we find John Thomson's man, or the husband complying with the humours of his wife? Better be John Thomson's man, than Ringand Dinn's, or John Knox's,' is a proverb which Kelly has thus explained: John Thomson's man is he that is complaisant to his wife's humours; Ringand Dinn's is he whom his wife scolds; John Knox is he whom his wife beats.'-(Collection of Scottish Proverbs, p. 72. Lond. 1721, 8vo.) This explanation, which is irreconcilable with the incident of the ballad, is completely applicable to the prayer of Dunbar's 's petition. The same proverbial