wrote the most delightful ballads, and made merry over the same hero. Contrast these with the writings of our present humourists! Compare those morals and ours--those manners and ours!

We can't tell-you would not bear to be told the whole truth regarding those men and manners. You could no more suffer in a British drawing-room, under the reign of Queen Victoria, a fine gentleman or fine lady of Queen Anne's time, or hear what they heard and said, than you would receive an ancient Briton. It is as one reads about savages, that one contemplates the wild ways, the barbarous feasts, the terrific pastimes, of the men of pleasure of that age. We have our fine gentlemen, and our "fast men;" permit me to give you an idea of one particularly fast nobleman of Queen Anne's days, whose biography has been preserved to us by the law reporters.

In 1691, when Steele was a boy at school, my Lord Mohun was tried by his peers for the murder of William Mountford, comedian. In "Howell's State Trials," the reader will find not only an edifying account of this exceedingly fast nobleman, but of the times and manners of those days. My Lord's friend, a Captain Hill, smitten with the charms of the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle, and anxious to marry her at all hazards, determined to carry her off, and for this purpose hired a hackneycoach with six horses, and a half-dozen of soldiers, to aid him in the storm. The coach with a pair of horses (the four leaders being in waiting elsewhere) took its station opposite my Lord Craven's house in Drury Lane, by which door Mrs. Bracegirdle was to pass on her way from the theatre. As she passed in company of her mamma and a friend, Mr. Page, the Captain seized her by the hand, the soldiers hustled Mr. Page and attacked him sword in hand, and Captain Hill and his noble friend endeavoured to force Madam Bracegirdle into the coach. Mr. Page called for help: the population of Drury Lane rose: it was impossible to effect the capture; and bidding the soldiers go about their business, and the coach to drive off, Hill let go of his prey sulkily, and waited for other opportunities of revenge. The man of whom he was most jealous was Will Mountford, the comedian; Will removed, he thought

Mrs. Bracegirdle might be his: and accordingly the Captain and his Lordship lay that night in wait for Will, and as he was coming out of a house in Norfolk Street, while Mohun engaged him in talk, Hill, in the words of the Attorney-General, made a pass and ran him clean through the body.

Sixty-one of my Lord's peers finding him not guilty of murder, while but fourteen found him guilty, this very fast nobleman was discharged: and made his appearance seven years after in another trial for murder-when he, my Lord Warwick, and three gentlemen of the military profession,. were concerned in the fight which ended in the death of Captain Coote.

This jolly company were drinking together in "Lockit's' at Charing Cross, when angry words arose between Captain Coote and Captain French; whom my Lord Mohun and my Lord the Earl of Warwick and Holland endeavoured to pacify. My Lord Warwick was a dear friend of Captain Coote, lent him a hundred pounds to buy his commission in the Guards; once when the Captain was arrested for 131. by his tailor, my Lord lent him five guineas, often paid his reckoning for him, and showed him other offices of friendship. On this evening the disputants, French and Coote, being separated whilst they were upstairs, unluckily stopped to drink ale again at the bar of "Lockit's." The row began afresh-Coote lunged at French over the bar, and at last all six called for chairs, and went to Leicester Fields, where they fell to. Their Lordships engaged on the side of Captain Coote. My Lord of Warwick was

* The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father of the young Earl, who was brought to his stepfather's bed to see "how a Christian could die." He was amongst the wildest of the nobility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks of the gay lord. He was popular in London, as such daring spirits have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison' for his second homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield's embassy to the Elector of Hanover when Queen Anne sent the Garter to his Highness. The chronicler of the expedition speaks of his Lordship as an amiable young who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable Baron's name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened him.

man,

severely wounded in the hand, Mr. French also was stabbed, but honest Captain Coote got a couple of wounds-one especially, "a wound in the left side just under the short ribs, and piercing through the diaphragma," which did for Captain Coote. Hence the trials of my Lords Warwick and Mohun: hence the assemblage of peers, the report of the transaction in which these defunct fast men still live for the observation of the curious. My Lord of Warwick is brought to the bar by the Deputy-Governor of the Tower of London, having the axe carried before him by the gentleman gaoler, who stood with it at the bar at the right hand of the prisoner, turning the edge from him; the prisoner, at his approach, making three Lows, one to his Grace the Lord High Steward, the other to the peers on each hand; and his Grace and the peers return the salute. And besides these great personages, august in periwigs, and nodding to the right and left, a host of the small come up out of the past and pass before us-the jolly captains brawling in the tavern, and laughing and cursing over their cups-the drawer that serves, the bar-girl that waits, the bailiff on the prowl, the chairmen trudging through the black lampless streets, and smoking their pipes by the railings, whilst swords are clashing in the garden within. Help there! a gentleman is hurt!" The chairmen put up their pipes, and help the gentleman over the railings, and carry him, ghastly and bleeding, to the Bagnio in Long Acre, where they knock up the surgeon-a pretty tall gentleman: but that wound under the short ribs has done for him. Surgeon, lords, captains, bailiffs, chairmen, and gentleman gaoler with your axe, where be you now? The gentleman axeman's head is off his own shoulders; the lords and judges can wag theirs no longer; the bailiff's writs have ceased to run: the honest chairmen's pipes are put out, and with their brawny calves they have walked away into Hades-all is irrecoverably done for as Will Mountford or Captain Coote. The subject of our night's lecture saw all these people-rode in Captain Coote's company of the Guards very probably-wrote and sighed for Bracegirdle, went home tipsy in many a chair, after many a bottle, in many a tavern-fled from many a bailiff.

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In 1709, when the publication of the Tatler began, our