Roses, fought near that town named after the saint. The blood of the third Earl helped to color the roses, which are said to have grown redder from the gore of the slain on Towton's hard-fought field. The forfeited title was transferred, in 1465, to Lord John Nevill Montagu, great Warwick's brother; but Montagu soon lay among the dead in the battle near Barnet. The tital was restored to another Henry Percy, and that unhappy Earl was murdered, in 1489, at his house, Cocklodge, near Thirsk. In that fifteenth century there was not a single Earl of Northumberland who died a peaceful and natural death.

In the succeeding century the first line of Earls, consisting of six Henry Percys, came to an end in that childless noble whom Anne Boleyn called "the Thriftless Lord." He died childless in 1537. He had, indeed, two brothers, the elder of whom might have succeeded to the title and estates; but both brothers, Sir Thomas and Sir Ingram, had taken up arms in the "Pilgrimage of Grace." Attainder and forfeiture were the consequences; and in 1551 Northumberland was the title of the dukedom conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who lost the dignity when his head was struck off at the block, two years later.

Then the old title, Earl of Northumberland, was restored in 1557, to Thomas, son of that attainted Thomas who had joined the "Pilgrimage of Grace." Ill-luck still followed these Percys. Thomas was beheaded-the last of his house who fell by the hands of the executioner-in 1572. His brother and heir died in the Tower in 1585.

None of these Percys had yet come into the Strand. The brick house there, which was to be their own through marriage with an heiress, was built in the lifetime of the Earl, whose father, as jus mentioned, died in the Tower in 1585. The son, too, was long a prisoner in that gloomy palace and prison. While Lord Northampton was laying the foundations of the future London house of the Percys in 1605, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, was being carried into durance. There was a Percy, kinsman to the Earl, who was mixed up in the Gunpowder Plot. For no other reason than relationship with the conspiring Percy the Earl was shut up in the tower for life, as his sentence ran, and he was condemned

to pay a fine of thirty thousand pounds. The Earl ultimately got off with fifteen years' imprisonment and a fine of twenty thousand pounds. He was popularly known as the Wizard Earl, because he was a studious recluse, companying only with. grave scholars (of whom there were three, known as "Percy's Magi"), and finding relaxation in writing rhymed satires against the Scots.

There was a stone walk in the Tower which, having been paved by the Earl, was known during many years as "My Lord of Northumberland's Walk." At one end was an iron shield of his arms; and holes in which he put a peg at every turn he made in his dreary exercise.

One would suppose that the Wizard Earl would have been very grateful to the man who restored him to liberty. Lord Hayes (Viscount Doncaster) was the man. He had married Northumberland's daughter, Lucy. The marriage had excited the Earl's anger, as a low match, and the proud captive could not "stomach" a benefit for which he was indebted to a son-in-law on whom he looked down. This proud Earl died in 1632. Just ten years after, his son, Algernon Percy, went a-wooing at Suffolk House, in the Strand. It was then inhabited by Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Theophilus, Earl of Suffolk, who had died two years previously, in 1640. Algernon Percy and Elizabeth Howard made a merry and magnificent wedding of it, and from the time they were joined together the house of the bride has been known by the bridegroom's territorial title of Northumberland.

The street close to the house of the Percys, which we now know as Northumberland Street, was then a road leading down to the Thames, and called Hartshorn Lane. Its earlier name was Christopher Alley. At the bottom of the lane the luckless Sir Edmundsbury Godfrey had a stately house, from which he walked many a time and oft to his great wood wharf on the river. But the glory of Hartshorn Lane was and is Ben Jonson. No one can say where rare Ben was born, save that the posthumous child first saw the light in Westminster. "Though," says Fuller, "I cannot, with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, where his mother married

nor country." Of this union came a son, Algernon Seymour, who in 1748 succeeded his father as Duke of Somerset, and in 1749 was created Earl of Northumberland, for a particular reason. He had no sons. His daughter Elizabeth had encouraged the homage of a handsome young fellow of that day, named Smithson. She was told that Hugh Smithson had spoken in terms of admiration of her beauty, and she laughingly asked why he did not say as much to herself. Smithson was the son of "an apothecary," according to the envious, but, in truth, the father had been a physician, had earned a baronetcy, and was of the good old nobility, the landowners, with an estate, still possessed by the family, at Stanwick, in Yorkshire. Hugh Smithson married this Elizabeth Percy, and the earldom of Northumberland, conferred on her father, was to go to her husband, and afterwards to the eldest male heir of this marriage, failing which the dignity was to remain with Elizabeth and her heirs male by any other marriage.

It is at this point that the present line of Smithson-Percys begins. Of the couple who may be called its founders so many severe things have been said, that we may infer that their exalted fortunes and best qualities gave umbrage to persons of small minds or strong prejudices. Walpole's remark, that in the earl's lord-lieutenancy in Ireland their vice-majesties scattered pearls and diamonds about the streets," is good testimony to their royal liberality. Their taste may not have been unexceptionable, but there was no touch of meanness in it. In 1758 they gave a supper at Northumberland House to Lady Yarmouth, George the Second's old mistress. The chief ornamental piece on the supper table represented a grand chasse at Herrenhausen, at which there was a carriage drawn by six horses, in which was seated an august person wearing a blue ribbon, with a lady at his side. This was not unaptly called "the apotheosis of concubinage." Of the celebrated countess notices vary. Her delicacy, elegance, and refinement are vouched for by some; her coarseness and vulgarity are asserted by others. When Queen Charlotte came to England, Lady Northumberland was made one of the ladies of the queen's bedchamber. Lady Townshend justified it to people who felt or feigned surprise, by remarking, "Surely nothing could be more

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. I

proper. The queen does not understand English, and can anything be more neces sary than that she should learn the vulgar tongue ?" One of the countess's familiar terms for conviviality was "junkitaceous," but ladies of equal rank had also little slang words of their own, called things by the very plainest names, and spelt physician with an "f."

There is ample testimony on record that the great countess never hesitated at a jest on the score of its coarseness. The earl was distinguished rather for his pomposity than vulgarity, though a vulgar sentiment marked some of both his sayings and doings. For example, when Lord March visited him at Alnwick Castle, the Earl of Northumberland received him at the gates. with this queer sort of welcome: "I believe, my lord, this is the first time that ever a Douglas and a Percy met here in friendship." The censor who said, "Think of this from a Smithson to a true Douglas," had ample ground for the exclamation. George the Third raised the earl and countess to the rank of duke and duchess in 1766. All the earls of older creation were ruffled and angry at the advancement; but the honor had its drawback.. The King would not allow the title to descend to an heir by any other wife but the one then alive, who was the true representative of the Percy line.

The old Northumberland House festivals were right royal things in their way. There was, on the other hand, many a snug, or unceremonious, or eccentric party given there. Perhaps the most splendid was that given in honor of the King of Denmark in 1768. His majesty was fairly bewildered with the splendor. There was in the court what was called a "pantheon," illuminated by 4000 lamps. The King, as he sat down to supper, at the table to which he had expressly invited twenty guests out of the hundreds assembled, said to the duke, "How did you contrive to light it all in time?" "I had two hundred lamplighters," replied the duke. "That was a stretch," wrote candid Mrs. Delany; "a dozen could have done the business;" which was true.

The duchess, who in early life was, in delicacy of form, like one of the Graces, became, in her more mature years, fatter than if the whole three had been rolled into one in her person. With obesity came an exposition to sleep," as Bottom

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has it. At drawing-rooms" she no sooner sank on a sofa than she was deep in slumber; but while she was awake she would make jokes that were laughed at and censured the next day all over London. Her Grace would sit at a window in Covent Garden, and be hail fellow well met with every one of a mob of tipsy and not too cleanly-spoken electors. On these occasions it was said she "signalized herself with intrepidity." She could bend, too, with cleverness to the humors of more hostile mobs; and when the Wilkes rioters besieged the ducal mansion, she and the duke appeared at a window, did salutation to their masters, and performed homage to the demagogue by drinking his health in

ale.

Horace Walpole affected to ridicule the ability of the Duchess as a verse writer. At Lady Miller's at Batheaston some rhyming words were given out to the company, and any one who could, was required to add lines to them so as to make sense with the rhymes furnished for the end of each line. This sort of dancing in fetters was called bouts rimés. "On my faith," cried Walpole, in 1775, "there are bouts rimés on a buttered muffin by her Grace the Duchess of Northumberland." It may be questioned whether anybody could have surmounted the difficulty more cleverly than her Grace. For example:

To return to the house itself. There is no doubt that no mansion of such pretensions and containing such treasures has been so thoroughly kept from the vulgar eye. There is one exception, however, to this remark. The Duke (Algernon) who was alive at the period of the first Exhibition threw open the house in the Strand to the public without reserve. The public, without being ungrateful, thought it rather a gloomy residence. Shut in and darkened as it now is by surrounding buildingscanopied as it now is by clouds of London smoke it is less cheerful and airy than the Tower, where the Wizard Earl studied in his prison room, or counted the turns

one.

he made when pacing his prison yard. The Duke last referred to was in his youth at Algiers under Exmouth, and in his later years a Lord of the Admiralty. As Lord Prudhoe, he was a traveller in far-away countries, and he had the faculty of seeing what he saw, for which many travellers, though they have eyes, are not qualified. At the pleasant Smithsonian house at Stanwick, when he was a bachelor, his household was rather remarkable for the plainness of the female servants. Satirical people used to say the youngest of them was a grandmother. Others, more charitable or scandalous, asserted that Lord Prudhoe was looked upon as a father by many in the country round, who would have been puzzled where else to look for It was his elder brother Hugh (whom Lord Prudhoe succeeded) who represented England as Ambassador Extraordinary at the coronation of Charles the Tenth at Rheims. Paris was lost in admiration at the splendor of this embassy, and never since has the hôtel in the Rue de Bac possessed such a gathering of royal and noble personages as at the fêtes given there by the Duke of Northumberland. His sister, Lady Glenlyon, then resided in a portion of the fine house in the Rue de Bourbon, owned and in part occupied by the rough but cheery old warrior, the Comte de Lobau. When that lady was Lady Emily Percy, she was married to the eccentric Lord James Murray, afterwards Lord Glenlyon. The bridegroom was rather of an oblivious turn of mind, and it said that when the wedding morn arrived, his servant had some difficulty in persuading him that it was the day on which he had to get up and be married.

There remains only to be remarked, that as the Percy line has been often represented only by an heiress, there have not been wanting individuals who boasted of male heirship.

Two years after the death of Joscelin Percy in 1670, who died the last male heir of the line, leaving an only child, a daughter, who married the Duke of Somerset, there appeared, supported by the Earl of Anglesea, a most impudent claimant (as next male heir) in the person of James Percy, an Irish trunkmaker. This individual professed to be a descendant of Sir Ingram Percy, who was in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and was brother of

the sixth earl. The claim was proved to be unfounded; but it may have rested on an illegitimate foundation. As the pretender continued to call himself Earl of Northumberland, Elizabeth, daughter of Joscelin, "took the law" of him. Ultimately he was condemned to be taken into the four law courts in Westminster Hall, with a paper pinned to his breast, bearing these words: "The foolish and impudent pretender to the earldom of Northumberland."

In the succeeding century, the wellknown Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, believed himself to be the true male representative of the ancient line of Percy. He built no claims on such belief; but the belief was not only confirmed by genealogists, it was admitted by the second heiress Elizabeth, who married Hugh Smithson. Dr. Percy so far asserted his blood as to let it boil over in wrath against Pennant when the latter described Alnwick

Castle in these disparaging words: "At Alnwick no remains of chivalry are perceptible; no respectable train of attendants; the furniture and gardens inconsistent; and nothing, except the numbers of unindustrious poor at the castle gate, excited any one idea of its former circumstances."

"Duke and Duchess of Charing Cross,"

or "their majesties of Middlesex," were the mock titles which Horace Walpole flung at the ducal couple of his day who resided at Northumberland House, London, or at Sion House, Brentford. Walpole accepted and satirised the hospitality of the London house, and he almost hated the ducal host and hostess at Sion, because they seemed to overshadow his mimic feudal state at Strawberry! After all, neither early nor late circumstances connected with Northumberland House is confined to memories of the inmates. Ben Jonson comes out upon us from Hartshorn Lane with more majesty than any of the earls; and greatness has sprung from neighboring shops, and has flourished as gloriously as any of which Percy can boast. Half a century ago, there was a long low house, a single storey high, the ground floor of which was a saddler's shop. It was on the west side of the old Gold-en Cross, and nearly opposite Northumberland House. The worthy saddler founded a noble line. Of four sons, threewere distinguished as Sir David, Sir Frederick and Sir George. Two of the workmen became Lord Mayors of London; and an attorney's clerk, who used to go in at night and chat with the men, married the granddaughter of a king and became Lord Chancellor.-Temple Bar.

THE death of Captain Maury, the great American Hydrographer and Meteorologist, which took place at Lexington in Virginia on the 1st of March, deserves something more than an ordinary obituary; for of all the benefactors to the commercial world, in respect of the transit of merchandise from one port to another, the name of Maury stands first and foremost.

His important researches into Oceanic Meteorology, and the happy idea of turning this branch of science to practical account, resulted in a valuable series of wind and current charts, by which the shortest and best routes over the great ocean thoroughfares were indicated-the

Instead of adding another to the numerous sketches of Captain Maury's life which have appeared in American publications, we have thought it well to reproduce the following cordial tribute to the great scientist from an influential English scource.-EDITOR OF ECLECTIC.

voyage to Australia or California, for example, to and fro, having been shortened by a month, and other voyages in proportion. Thus an annual saving to the commerce of the world, it is estimaetd, of no less than several millions sterling, has been effected.

Matthew Fontaine Maury was born in the year 1806 in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, from whence he removed with his parents, at an early age, to the adjoining State of Tennessee.

Manifesting a predilection for maritime pursuits, he entered the United States navy as a midshipman, at the age of nineteen; and in the sloop-of-war Vincennes circumnavigated the globe.

During this cruise, which lasted four years, he wrote a 'Treatise on Navigation,' which, with some subsequent revisions, passed through many editions, and is used as a text-book in the United States navy. It was while on this expedition that his