more honourable to the dames of the court of

Carlisle :

"Cradocke called forth his lady,
And bade her come in ;

Saith, Win this mantle, lady,
With a little din.

Win this mantle, lady,
And it shall be thine;
If thou never did amiss

Since thou wert mine."

With a modest air Sir Cradocke's lady took up the mantle all the court looked eagerly on, expecting shame to the knight; and it seemed at first as if their expectations were to be gratified: :

"When she took up the mantle,
And cast it her about,

Up at her great toe

It gan crinkle and crowt;
She said, Down, down, mantle,
And shame me not for nought.

For once I did amiss,

I tell you certainly;

When I kiss'd Sir Cradocke's mouth

Under a great tree;

When I kiss'd Cradocke's mouth
Before he married me."

On this confession the mantle fell into folds as elegant and decorous as a virtuous dame could desire; on seeing this Queen Gunever came from her chamber bursting with envy, exclaiming, "She virtuous! I have seen in her chamber" She was interrupted by the stran

"Sir

ger to whom the mantle belonged. Knight," said he, "your wife is much too bold: I can give you other proofs of her misconduct and of the purity of the wife of Sir Cradocke, whom she defames." A wild boar, as he spoke, ran by; he seized it, killed it, and laying the head down before the court, said, "No man whose wife has done him wrong can carve that." Some hid their knives, others pretended they had none, and King Arthur saw with dismay, that all those who tried. failed, for the edges of their knives of Milan steel turned up like lead :

"Sir Cradocke had a little knife

Of iron and of steel;

He brittled the boar's head,

Wondrous quick and weel,

That every knight in the king's court
Had a morsell."

All owned that this second proof was conclusive. "I have a third," said the lad of the mantle, producing a golden horn and filling it with wine. "Let any knight whose wife hath erred try to drink out of that." The wine was spilt on the shoulder of one, on the knee of another, and in the eyes of a third, and refused to run into any mouth save that of Sir Cradocke, who won the horn and the boar's head, while his lady carried off the mantle amid the envy and the acclamations of the court.

182

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.

OLD ENGLAND AND YOUNG ENGLAND.

It was a chosen spot of fertile land
Amidst wild waves, set like a little nest
As if it had, by Nature's cunning band,
Been choicely picked out from all the rest,
And laid forth for ensample for the best;
No dainty flower, or herb, that grows on ground,
No arboret with painted blossoms drest,

And smelling sweet, but there it might be found
To bud out fair, and her sweet smells throw all around.

No tree whose branches did not bravely spring-
No branch whereon a fine bird did not sit-
No bird but did her shrill songs sweetly sing-
No song but did contain a lovely ditt.

SPENSER'S FAIRY QUEEN, BOOK II.

Have I

But now it is time to close the book. given to the reader any interest? have I presented to him any pictures of real things, in old times? For this was certainly my design, to picture some of the things our fathers suffered

some of the things from which we have escaped-the times of old, with their farms and castles, monks and abbeys, foresters and forests;

but how many things have been left unsaid, and how many thousand topics would be untouched upon, if the little book were expanded to a folio? so we can only speak in hints, and leave the reader to travel from a mere suggestion to real knowledge. It would have been very pleasant to have rambled through old churches and churchyards, with quaint old epitaphs, sheltered beneath the sombre yew; or old halls, embowered behind their ancestral trees, with their famous rookery, of which old Sir Hubert Wyvil was as proud as the crest upon his escutcheon. Ah! that old hall! and to close the book and say nothing of it—its huge quadrangular shapelessness-its innumerable gables, and long winding passages, and lantern towers, and the royal chamber, where Queen Elizabeth slept; with the old oaken furniture so sumptuous and costly; the high bedstead, with the plumed head and the vallances, so strangely wrought; and the hangings, now, alas! tattered; yet never to be removed, from the veneration borne to the memory of the Virgin Queen. And then to step from the long passages of the hall into the garden of that old day-a knotted garden, as it was calledstepping down from the esplanade and balustrades around the building, to wind our way through the mazes of that old garden, through its dark avenues, through its winding walks, and by its fountains flashing in the clear bright light; and then again to the church, the old Saxon church; and now we see, as we pass along, that it was not built so much to

the glory of God as to the glory of the Wyvil family. Within tomb, beyond tomb, commemorates their ancestry. This is the armour of Sir Wilfred Wyvil, who fought beneath the banners of Charles I., in the Civil Wars; and this is the banner of Sir Eustace de Wyvil, who died in the Field of Agincourt. That is the Wyvil pew, with the purple linings, the costly gildings on the volumes, and the arms and the shield over the hangings. You walk over the vault of the Wyvils, and the churchyard, stone after stone reminds you of the services of some steward or servant of the family, to whom the monument is reared. Thus everywhere, the whole village over, the same ovations are offered to the shades of the dead. It is not wonderful that at last the Wyvils have reached the belief that their family blood is of quite a different composition and colour to any other, and that all of them affect to treat all around them with a marked condescension of manner, by way of punishment for not keeping good recollection of all their grandfathers.

OLD HOUSES were full of strange passages and hiding-places: there were few places of any size or repute, but they were so contrived as to be the means of secreting any persons of the family who might have fallen beneath the vengeance of government. Many of our readers will remember the search for the conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, at Hendlip Hall, near Worcester this place was the seat of Mr. Abingdon, a brother of the Lord Monteagle. Mr. Abingdon regarded the life of his friends