Woe to you, vain child of clay! Queens might envy them! You with jewels overdone, Her have robbed who had but one No words of mine could add to the force and eloquence of this pleading-I had almost said of this fulmination. What I would add, should go rather in mitigation of the crime imputed to the courtly beauty. Selfish as vanity is-dangerous as leading to all the sins that follow upon frivolity, I have a true faith in the general kindliness and the general good training of our young countrywomen, whether of the village green, or of the palace circle. I do not believe that any English lady would knowingly purchase a splendid dress at the cost of health to the artificer. Let them once think-let them once be brought to think whether they can reasonably expect their orders to be executed within a given time, and what may be the amount of suffering caused by such execution, and, my life upon it, our Lady Maudes would give up their furbelows, and their embroideries, and trust to their native charms of grace and modesty to win as much admiration as they know what to do with. But then they must be taught to think; and in all matters of humanity, they could hardly find finer precepts than in the poems of Miss Day. These lady poets are all my friends: I add yet another, personally a stranger, but still a friend, to the list-Mrs. Robert Dering. CHURCH SERVICES. The chimes from yonder steeple Ring merrily and loud, And groups of eager people Toward their music crowd. Before the altar's railing A bride and bridegroom stand, And every ear is trying, The soft "I will" is spoken, A glance as soft exchanged,That vow shall ne'er be broken, Nor those fond hearts estranged. Another train advances No bridal train is this, With youthful pride and pleasure Their babe is now receiving Sweet babe! this world is hollow, A world of woe and strife. Take up thy cross and follow Where leads the Lord of Life. Another train is wending Within the church its way, While prayers are still ascending For blessings on that day. But here no bride is blushing; And here no babe is blest; But mourners' tears are gushing For one laid down to rest. Bright dawns the bridal morning; A blight may soon be falling And then the day of sorrow Than that which saw our birth. The sweetness and melody of these stanzas, as well as their pervading holiness, render them no unfitting conclusion to this little garland of verses, varying in manner, but of which we may truly say that they are in tone and feeling most English and most feminine. XXIII. CAVALIER POET S. RICHARD LOVELACE, ROGER L'ESTRANGE, THE MARQUIS OF MONTROSE. If there be one thing more than another in the nice balance of tastes and prejudices (for I do not speak here of principles) which inclines us now to the elegance of Charles, now to the strength of Cromwell-which disgusts us alternately with the license of the Cavaliers and the fanaticism of the Roundheads; it would be the melancholy ruin of cast-down castles and plundered shrines, that meet our eyes all over our fair land, and nowhere in greater profusion than in this district, lying as it does in the very midst of some of the most celebrated battles of the Civil Wars. To say nothing of the siege of Reading, which more even than the vandalism of the Reformation completed the destruction of that noble abbey, the third in rank and size in England, with its magnificent church, its cloisters, and its halls, covering thirty acres of buildings—and such buildings! within the outer courts; -to say nothing of that most reckless barbarity just at our door —we in our little village of Aberleigh lie between Basing-House to the south, whose desperately defended walls offer little more now than a mere site-and Donnington to the west, where the ruined Gate towers upon the hill alone remain of that strong fortress, which overlooked the well-contested field of Newbury—and Chalgrove to the north, where the reaper as he binds his sheaf, still pauses to tell you the very place where Hampden fell; every spot has its history! Look at a wooden spire, and your companion shakes his head, and says that it has been so ever since the Cavaliers were blown up in the church-tower! Ask the history of a crumbling wall, and the answer is pretty sure to be, Cromwell! That his Highness the Lord Protector did leave what an accom plished friend of mine calls "his peculiar impressions" upon a great many places in our neighborhood is pretty certain; on so many, that there is no actual or authentic catalogue of all; and in some cases there is nothing but general tradition, and the nature of the "impressions" in question, to vouch for the fact of their destruction at that period. Among these, one of the edifices that must have been best worth preserving, and is even now most interesting to see, is the grand old castellated mansion, which in the reign of Elizabeth belonged to one of her favorite courtiers, and was known as Master Comptroller's House, at Grays. The very road to it is singularly interesting. Passing through the town, which increases in growth every day, until one wonders when and where it will stop, and looking with ever-fresh admiration at the beautiful lace-work window of the old Friary, which I long to see preserved in the fitliest manner, by forming again the chief ornament of a church, and then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads-a proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head, dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two-we arrive at the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges that cross the Thames, so narrow that no two vehicles can pass at once, and that over every pier triangular spaces have been devised for the safety of foot-passengers. On the center arch is a fisherman's hut, occupying the place once filled by a friar's cell, and covering a still existing chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, now put to secular uses a dairy or a cellar. A little way down the river is one of the beautiful islands of the Thames, now a smooth and verdant meadow, edged round with old willow pollards calmly reflected in the bright, clear waters, but giving back in the twelfth century a far different scene. Here was fought a wager of battle between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex, hereditary Standardbearer of the Kings of England, defendant, by command, and in the presence of Henry the Second. nutely and graphically by Stowe. struck down his adversary, "who "after receiving many wounds; and the King, at the request of The story is told very miRobert de Montford at length fell," says the old historian, |