leaving an unspotted pedant character, and innumerable Manuscripts behind him. Some Ninety and odd Volumes of his Papers in the British Museum. His Notes of the Long Parliament, perhaps the most interesting of all the Manuscripts that exist there. Our sorrowful Dryasdust Printing Societies; and what they might do towards a real History of England. (422).

TWO-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY YEARS AGO:

A FRAGMENT ABOUT DUELS.

Duelling, one of the sincerities of Human Life, capable of taking many forms. A background of wrath does lie in every man and creature: Deadliest rage, and tenderest love, different manifestations of the same radical fire whereof Life is made. The elaboration an immense matter! (p. 427).

No. I. Holles of Haughton.

How John Hollis married the fair Anne Stanhope, and so gave offence to the Shrewsburys. High feud between the two houses; the very retainers biting thumbs, and killing one another. John Holles and Gervase Markham: Markham, guard yourself better, or I shall spoil you!' Loosetongued, loose-living Gervase Markham could not guard himself; and got 'spoilt' accordingly. (p. 428).

No. II. Croydon Races.

Scotch favourites of King James, and English jealousies. Scotch Maxwell, and his insolent sardonic humour: Fashionable Young England in deadly emotion. How his Majesty laboured to keep peace. At the Croydon Races there arose sudden strife; and the hour looked really ominous: Philip Herbert (beautiful young man), of the best blood in England, switched over the head by an accursed Scotch Ramsay! And Philip Herbert's rapier - did not flash-out. (p. 432).

No. III. Sir Thomas Dutton and Sir Hatton Cheek.

How unthrifty everywhere is any solution of continuity, if it can be avoided! Peace here, if possible; over in the Netherlands is always fighting enough. Swash-buckler duels had now gone-out: Fifty years ago, serious men took to fighting with rapiers, and the buckler fell away: A more silent duel, but a terribly serious one. Hot tempers at the siege of Juliers: Under military duty; but not always to be so. Two gentlemen on Calais sands, in the height of silent fury stript to the shirt and waistband; in the two hands of each a rapier and dagger clutched: A bloody burial there that morning. Ill-fated English human creatures, what horri ble confusion of the Pit is this? (p. 435).

THE OPERA.

Music the speech of Angels; raising and admitting the soul to the Council of the Universe. It was so in old earnest times, whatever it may have come to be with us. The waste that is made in music among the saddest of all our squanderings of God's gifts. David's inspired Psalms; and the things men are inspired to sing now at the Opera. (p. 441). — The Haymarket Opera, with its lustres, painting, upholstery: Artists, too, got together from the ends of the world; capable of far other work than squalling here. The very ballet-girls, with their muslin saucers and mad ugly caperings, little short of miraculous. And to think of some Rossini or Bellini in the rear of it! (443). — All this to afford an hour's dreary amusement to a high-dizened select populace not worth amusing. The Rhythmic Arts, with their magical accessories, a mere accompaniment; the real service of the evening Paphian rather. Wonderful to see, and sad if we had eyes, what the Modern Aristocracy of men can deliberately do! A world all calculated for strangling of heroisms; and the ages have altered strangely: They will alter yet again. (444).

PROJECT OF A NATIONAL EXHIBITION OF SCOTTISH

PORTRAITS.

Historical interest in good Historical Portraits. Any representation by a faithful human creature of a Face and Figure worth knowing, which he saw, which we can never see, is invaluable. (p. 448). · All this apart from the artistic value of the Portraits. Historical Portrait-Galleries might far transcend in worth all other kinds of National Collections of Pictures whatsoever. In selecting Portraits, the grand question, What would the best-informed and most ingenuous soul like most to see, for illuminating and verifying History to himself? At the end of the account, to have served him, will be to have served everybody. The thing can by no means be done by Yankee-Barnum methods; nor should it, if it could. (450). No portrait of any living man admitted, however Historical' it promised to be; The space of a generation required, to discriminate between popular monstrosities and Historical realities. Engravings, coins, casts; any genuine help to conceive the actual likeness of the man, should be welcome. No modern pictures of historical events: Infatuated blotches of insincere ignorance: Wilkie's John Knox; Battle of Worcester, by some famed Academician or other. All that kind of matter, as indisputable 'chaff,' to be severely purged away. Considerations respecting a plurality of portraits of the same person. The question, Who is a Historical Character? The Catalogue, if well done, one of the best parts of the whole concern. (453).

THE PRINZENRAUB:

A GLIMPSE OF SAXON HISTORY.

English ignorance of foreign history. German history, especially, quite wild soil, very rough to the ploughshare. (p. 458).- The Wettin Line of Saxon Princes (Prince Albert's line); and its lucky inheritance and force of survival: Through the earlier portion of the fifteenth century, one of the greatest houses in Germany. Coalescings, splittings, never-ending readjustments. Frederick the Pacific and his brother Wilhelm rule conjointly;' till they quarrel and take to fighting. Kunz von Kaufungen, a German condottiere, employed by Frederick. The fighting over, Kunz is dissatisfied with his bargain: Exasperations, and threats of revenge. Frederick's two children left at home unguarded: Here is the opportunity we have hungrily waited-for! A midnight surprise in the venerable little town of Altenburg: The two Princes (but with a mistake to mend) carried-off: Sudden alarms, shrieks, a mother's passionate prayer: Away, rapidly, through the woods. All Saxony, to the remotest village, from all its belfries ringing madly. (459). — Kunz, with Albert the younger Prince, within an hour of the Bohemian border. A grimy Collier, much astonished to find such company in the solitudes: The Prince rescued, and Kunz safe-warded under lock-and-key. The rest of his band supposing their leader dead, restore Prince Ernst, and are permitted to fly. Kunz and others soon after tried, and all their transactions ended. The Collier also, not allowed to go unrewarded. This little actual adventure worthy of a nook in modern memory, for many reasons. (464). — Inextricable confusion and unintelligibility of Saxon princely names; each person having from ten to twenty, to hide among. Our two little stolen Princes the heads of two main streams or Lines, which still continue conspicuously distinct. The elder, or Ernestine Line, got for inheritance the better side of the Saxon country: They had Weimar, Altenburg, Gotha, Coburg, above all, Wartburg; of all places the sun now looks upon, the holiest for a modern man: Immortal remembrances, influences and monitions. Ernst's son, Frederick the Wise; who saved Luther from the Diet of Worms: A man less known to hereditary governing persons, and others, than he might be. His brother, John the Steadfast, succeeded him; with whose son the Line underwent sad destinies. (470). Of the younger, or Albertine Line, there was 'Duke George;' much reverenced by many, though Luther thought so little of him: A much-afflicted, hard-struggling, and not very useful man. One of his daughters a lineal ancestress of Frederick the Great. Elector Moritz, and his seemingly-successful jockeyship: The game not yet played-out. However that may be, the Ernestine Line has clearly got disintegrated: Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous, then head of that elder line, all now in a reduced condition: Why did he found all that imbroglio of little dukes! The thrifty Brandenburg Hohenzollerns; and their fine talent of annihilating rubbish.' Moritz, the new Elec

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tor, did not last long: No cage big enough to hold a Kaiser: Beats Albert Alcibiades; and gets killed. The present King of Saxony a far-off nephew of jockeying Moritz: A most expensive progeny; in general not admirable otherwise. August the Strong, of the three-hundred-and-fifty-four bastards: More transcendent king of gluttonous flunkeys seldom stalked this earth. His miscellany of mistresses, very pretty some of them, but fools all: The unspeakably unexemplary mortal! Protestant Saxony spiritually bankrupt ever since. One of his bastards became Maréchal de Saxe, and made much noise for a time: Like his father, an immensely strong man; of unbounded dissoluteness, and loose native ingenuity. (474). The elder or Ernestine Line, in its undecipherable, disintegrated state. How the pious German mind holds by the palpably superfluous; and in general cannot annihilate rubbish: The Ernestine Line was but like its neighbours in that. Cruel to say of these Ernestine little Dukes, they have no history: Perhaps here and there they have more history than we are aware of. Pity brave men, descended presumably from Witekind and the gods, certainly from John the Steadfast and John Frederick the Magnanimous, should be reduced to stand thus inert, amid the whirling arena of the world! (485). — Bernhard of Weimar, a famed captain in the ThirtyYears' War, whose Life Goethe prudently did not write: Not so easy to dig-out a Hero from the mouldering paper-heaps. Another individual of the Ernestine Line; notable to Englishmen as 'Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He also a late, very late, grandson of that little stolen Ernst; concerning whom both English History and English Prophecy might say something. The Horologe of Time goes inexorably on. (488).