number of cars were drawn up together at a particular point, where we also halted, as we understood they were blowing a rock, and the shot was expected presently to go off. After waiting two minutes or so, a fellow called out something, and our carriage as a planet, and the cars for satellites, started all forward at once, the Irishmen whooping and the horses galloping. Unable to learn the meaning of this, I was only left to suppose that they had delayed firing the intended shot till we should pass, and that we were passing quickly to make the delay as short as possible. No such thing; by dint of making great haste, we got within ten yards of the rock just when the blast took place, throwing dust and gravel in our carriage; and had our postillion brought us a little nearer (it was not for want of hollowing and flogging that he did not), we should have had a still more serious share of the explosion. The explanation I received from the drivers was, that they had been told by the overseer that as the mine had been so long in going off, he dared say we would have time to pass it, so we just waited long enough to make the danger imminent. I have only to add, that two or three people got behind the carriage, just for nothing but to see how our honours got past."

It is curious, let me remark, to observe how a form of expression which is essentially a bull, may be lifted out of the region of the ridiculous, as in that truly poetic expression of Keats:

"So the two brothers and their murdered man,▲
Rode toward fair Florence."

Now, if that be looked at in a prosaic point of view, it becomes a downright blunder; but, poetically, you see in it the activity of the imagination darting forward to the murder, a "ghastly foregone conclusion," as Leigh Hunt has well called it.

I have spoken of the incongruity of style; there may also be such incongruity of time as to make the anachronism laughable. Washington Irving, one of the finest of modern humorous writers, has shown this in that practical anachronism, "Rip Van Winkle." It is, I believe, Horace Walpole, who tells of one of the family pictures of the De Levis, a French family that prided itself on its great antiquity; it was a picture of an antediluvian. scene, in which Noah was represented going into the ark with a bundle of the archives of the house of De Levi under his arm. I have myself seen in a private library in this city an old Bible, with engravings, Dutch, I believe they were; one of which pictured an Old Testament event. In the foreground Samson slaying the lion, if I remember rightly, and in the background a man with a fowling-piece shooting snipe.

These are broad incongruities, bordering upon the farcical; there are others, either wilful or unconscious, which are more delicate in their impression. When Lady Sale made in her diary the simple entry, "Earthquakes as usual," the humour was in the coolness of the womanly courage, and the notion of the frequency coupled with one of the rarest and most appalling of earthly perils. It was not unlike the advertisement beginning, "Any

I can

body in want of a diving-bell," as if a diving-bell was one of the common wants in society. A quaint example recurs to my mind in this connection: it is in Horrebou's History of Ireland, an old folio volume, which is divided into chapters according to various subjects. One of these is headed (chapter forty-seven) "Concerning Owls." quote the whole chapter without fatiguing you, for it is in these words: "There are in Ireland no owls of any kind whatever." Yet the historian seems to have considered himself under some obligation to that species of birds, so far as to devote a chapter to their absence.

H. Reed.

XXXIV.

THE DEPOSITION OF RICHARD II.

K. Richard. Give me the crown. Here, cousin, seize

the crown;

Here, cousin;

On this side my hand, and on that side yours.

Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes 2 two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen and full of water :

That bucket down and full of tears am I,

Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

Bolingbroke. I thought you had been willing to resign.

K. Rich. My crown I am; but still my griefs are

mine :

You may my glories and my state depose,

But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

crown.

Boling. Part of your cares you give me with your [down. K. Rich. Your cares set up do not pluck my cares My care is loss of care, by old care done; Your care is gain of care, by new care won : The cares I give I have, though given away; They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.

3

Boling. Are you contented to resign the crown? K. Rich. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be; 3 Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.

Now mark me, how I will undo myself;

I give this heavy weight from off my head,
And this unwieldly sceptre from my hand,
The pride of kingly sway from out my heart;
With mine own tears I wash away my balm,*
With mine own hands I give away my crown,
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state,
With mine own breath release all duty's rites:
All pomp and majesty I do forswear;
My manors, rents, revenues5 I forego;
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny :
God pardon all oaths that are broke to me!
God keep all vows unbroke that swear to thee!
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing grieved,
And thou with all pleased, that hast all achieved!
Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to sit,
And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit!

God save King Harry, unking'd Richard says,
And send him many years of sunshine days!-
What more remains ?

Northumberland.
These accusations and these grievous crimes
Committed by your person and your followers
Against the state and profit of this land;
That, by confessing them, the souls of men
May deem that you are worthily deposed.

No more, but that you read

K. Rich. Must I do so? and must I ravel out
My weaved-up folly? Gentle Northumberland,
If thy offences were upon record,

Would it not shame thee, in so fair a troop,
To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst,
There shouldst thou find one heinous article,
Containing the deposing of a king,

And cracking the strong warrant of an oath,
Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven:
Nay, all of you that stand and look upon,
Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself,
Though some of you with Pilate wash your hands,7
Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates
Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross,
And water cannot wash away your sin.

North. My lord, dispatch; read o'er these articles. K. Rich. Mine eyes are full of tears, I cannot see : And yet salt water blinds them not so much

But they can see a sort of traitors here.
Nay, if I turn mine eyes upon myself,
I find myself a traitor with the rest;
For I have given here my soul's consent,
To undeck the pompous body of a king;
Made glory base and sovereignty a slave,
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant.
North. My lord-,

K. Rich. No lord of thine, thou haught insulting

man