GRATITUDE.-John Brognier, bishop of Geneva, was a swineherd in his youth. Being one day at Geneva, he went to the Tarconnerie to purchase a pair of shoes, but found, upon examining his scrip, that he had not sufficient money. The shoemaker observing his confusion, took compassion upon his poverty; "Go friend," said he, "you shall pay me when you become a car dinal." Not long after a cardinal taking a liking to Brognier, carried him to Avignon, and made him a learned man. He came at last to be in reality a cardinal, when he made the kind-hearted shoemaker his house-steward. ***

A CHARM. In a small volume of "Choice and Experimental Receipts," published in 1688, and affiliated upon the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby, is the following recipe for the tooth-ache. "With an iron nail, raise and cut the gum from about the teeth till it bleed, and that some of the blood stick upon the nail; then "drive it into a wooden beam up to the head;" after this is done, you shall never have the toothache in all your life. But whether the man used any spell or said any words while he drove the nail, I know not. This is used by several certain per

sons. Our dentists have done some good in the present day by lancing the gums of "several certain persons,' and the cure has been as effectual without driving the instrument with which the experiment was performed, up to the handle into a "wooden beam."

I RODE from Rotherham to Wentworth House, the seat of Lord Fitzwilliam, a truly regal domain, for extent, richness, and splendour; but (like many English parks) melancholy and monotonous; the immense tracts of grass, with a few scattered trees, and the tame sheep-like deer grazing upon them, in time become intolerable. Certainly, it is a most tasteless custom, to have these green deserts extend on one side to the very houses; it makes them look like enchanted palaces, inhabited by deer instead of men. It is the easier to give one's self up to this notion, since there is seldom a human being to be seen outside the house, which is usually shut up, so that you are often obliged to ring at the door for a quarter of an hour before you can get admittance, or the lady "Chatelain" appears to play the Cicerone, and receive her fee. Tour of a German Prince.

Wednesday, April 25.

Duchess of Glocester, born 1776.

ST. MARK.-The evangelist and patron saint of Venice, by birth a Jew, but becoming a convert to Christianity, he was sent by St. Peter into Egypt to propagate his new faith. During his residence at Alexandria, the populace dragged him from the church, and through the streets, till he expired. Numerous ceremonies are observed on this day, in various Catholic countries, particularly at Venice.

Thursday, April 26.

Sun rises 43m, aft. 4. sets 18m. aft 7.

Friday, April 27.

This is a busy time for Astronomers, in watching the conjunctions of the moon with the fixed stars, the fine nights being peculiarly favourable for telescopic observation of those beautiful planets, Venus and Mercury.

Saturday, April 28.

the odour of budding flowers and all the fra grance of the maiden spring; up from your nerve-destroying down bed, and from the foul air pent within your close drawn curtains, and with the sun, walk o'er the dew of the far eastern hills." But we must defend the morning air from the aspersions of those who sit in their close airless studies, and talk of the chilling dew and the unwholesome damps of the dawn. We have all the facts in our favour that the fresh air of the morning is uniformly wholesome; and, having the facts, we pitch such shallow philosophy to fools who have nothing else for a foot-ball.Times' Telescope for 1832.

Monday, April 30.

Sweet April, farewell to thee!

Thou art dear as the daughter of Spring; Smiling nature receives thee with glee, Whilst the woodlands with melody ring. Tuesday, May 1.

bloom;

Her voice is wild music, her breath is perfume; Lightly touch'd by her wand, buds and blossoms

unfold,

And the meadows are dress'd in her livery of gold.

See P. 291

imagined to have been told, in the winter, after supper, in a castle, when the family of a rich man, as was the custom with the Great, were sitting round the fire, and recounting antique transactions.*

Our ancestors shut up by winds and storms in their great and gloomy battlehouses, wanted something, besides the festal table and the roaring chimney-vault, to overpower the melancholy drifting of the gusty snow against the windows. The interminable diversions that these enlightened times afford, to relieve the monotony of a tedious evening, they knew not. Consequently, whenever a company was assembled, if a jongleur or minstrel were not present, they made it a practice, either in the castle hall, or by detached groups in their several bedchambers, to entertain each other with a mutual recitation of the romantic-the terrible and the strange.

Gesta, Romanorum.

241

In the glorious reign of King Edward the Third, the Lady Blauncheflor de Ridware became, by the death of her father, at Crecy, the mistress of Hamstal Hall in Staffordshire, as well as of several feudal dependencies in other counties.

Even in those golden days of pictorial building, when England was one vast treasure-house of proudly fortified cities, of pinnacled monasteries nestled by the river's meadowy marge, of towered castles glittering over their forests from the hill-brow, and of ample hostelries, with their red lattices and open galleries basking in the sun, -a fairer mansion than the Ridware Hamstal was rarely to be seen.

It stood on a gentle green acclivity, laved by the blue abounding Blythe, on the same spot where the widely scattered remains of a much later manor hall still exhibited their bay-windows dim with stained glass, their porches, their pools, their gateway, and their watch tower, a great mass of brickwork grey with lichens and muffled with ivy, the whole occupying, with wall and court, upwards of two acres.

At the time of our tale, however, a very different building occupied that situation. It was a majestic and mighty fabric, adorned with towers and battlements, and enriched with all those new decorations which so beautifully distinguish the architecture of that period, intermingled with and overshadowed by woods and groves. Such a house Chaucer loved to describe:

With many subtill compassings,
As barbicans and pinnacles,
Imageries and tabernacles,

I saw, and full eke of window is,
As Bakis fallen in grete show is,
And of a sute were al the towris,

Subtily carven after flowris,

The towris hie, ful plesante shal ye finde,
With fannis fresh turninge with everie
winde,

The chambris and parlirs of a sorte,
With bay windowes goodlie as may be
thoughte;

As for daunsing or otherwise disporte,
The galeries be all right wel ywrought.

The knightly house of De Ridware had ever been celebrated for a display of hospitality remarkable even in those days, worthy of their opulence and far transcending their rank in society. The bread and the ale of Hamstal were for ever in requisition. Nowhere were vaults so stored with wines. The house was always steaming with the savoury odours of baked meats, venison, fish, and fowl of every description; so that, to use a contemporary phrase,

"it snewed in that house of mete and drink, and of all deintees ;" and to give the last touch to the picture of a baronial homestal in the fourteenth century, a mighty board stood in the great hall, which was termed the Table Dormant, and remained covered night and day with supplies of provisions.

The slain Sir Bertram had signalized himself in the wars of the barons, and long before his heroic death, which of course had considerably strengthened the connection, both he and his family were in high favour with Edward and Philippa. The Lady de Ridware had been nurse and foster-mother to the young Prince of Wales; and various members of the royal family had not unfrequently been lodged and feasted at Hamstal..

Of this noble abode was Blauncheflor de Ridware left at the age of nineteen sole mistress, under the wardship of her widowed mother. Born, as it were, in the meridian of royal favour, and educated in all the high toned ideas of the chivalric court of the Plantagenets, it need scarcely be said, that the beautiful Blauncheflor, added to all the softest affections of a very woman, a romantic grandeur and resolution of heart, that in those days was exalted as heroic, and in ours would be ridiculed as enthusiastic, or rejected as false.Thus much it was needful to premise, that our story may not be deemed extravagant.

The noontide meal was finished at Hamstal Hall. Blauncheflor and her lady mother had retired to the bower; a pleasant chamber in one of the highest towers, wainscotted in minute pannels of cedar and cypress wood; the cornice being a deep ribwork painted with scarlet, olive-green, and gold.Each pannel contained a highly coloured landscape or portrait painted by an artist from Brabant, who had been sent from the court, as a mark of especial favour by Queen Philippa herself. The richly wrought mullions of a narrow, tall, and extremely deep oriel, were filled up with the flushed enamel of painted glass, except where the open lattice admitted flakes of May sunshine, far milder than the coruscant splendours that gushed upon the floor through the robes of prelates or the canopies of kings. The pavement in small glazed quarries of crimson and white, each emblazoned with an armorial coat, was only partially covered with fresh and large rushes.

The Lady de Ridware, a noble-look

ing dame of the house of Waldeshef, was attired in widow's weeds, and sate on a high selle of elaborate carvings, resembling the tabernacle work we see in old shrines ;-she had a faldstool of embroidery; and, over her head, projecting from the back of her chair, was a square tester variegated with stripes of red and blue, having in its centre, azure an eagle displayed argent, the arms of Ridware. She was looking affectionately on her only child, who, also in deep mourning, with an air of much respect, seemed listening;-her lovely face was half averted towards the window; but the crimson mantling on her cheek, the glistening of her eye, and the compression of her lip, shewed that some speech of more than ordinary interest had just proceeded from her parent.

At length, turning on her mother's eyes, where the mists of anguish seemed dried up by the splendour of high resolve, and with a smile that overcame the painful hectic amidst which it played

"Urge me not, my beloved mother! mother tempt me not," she said, "thy Blauncheflor will neither be foolish enough to let her hopes soar so near the sun, that they be blasted, nor greedy enough to grasp at more than her due." "Ah! my child! reflect-it is no every day difficulty; to relinquish is often as hard as to achieve, and royalty hath a power to command, even though love hath no voice to plead."

"Love has a voice," replied Blauncheflor, in a very low but clear tone; "love has a voice, but not unanswerable. Mother, the prince, you tell me loves your poor child honourably-of that I am assured, for he never knew 'dishonour.' You say his love amounts to dotage, that too I can believe, since mine for him is adoration!"

"Why then, avoid him! and whence this mighty difficulty with which you have permitted him to visit you once more in the castle of your ancestors?"

"Oh mother! is there not cause?would you provoke the anger, and wound the royal pride of two such sovereigns? and, when men ask What is the cause that the king veils his helm from the battle, and the queen sits weeping in her bower?'-would ye have them answer that Blauncheflor of the Hamstal had, like a churl plunder ing the palace which she was admitted to admire, inveigled the affections of their princely heir, and confined to a peakish grange-what was meant for Europe!"

"The House of Ridware!" haughtily replied the knightly widow, "is not wont to produce scions unworthy of graftage on the loftiest tree. And thou, untrue to thy dignity, unjust to thy deserts,-art thou not Lady of the broad woods of Hamstal and Seil ?-is it not for thee that the Mease washes the fairest meadows of Edinghale? Think of the fertile vales of Rossington and Boyleston-of Fridlesham of Callingwood-of Retelberstone! A knight's daughter, a comely virgin with vassals in five provinces, might exchange rings methinks with any prince in Christendom !"

"But Christendom contains not a prince that is Edward's pheere! and mother, had I a dukedom at my girdle, know that I would not presume to barter it with the surpassing qualities, and the world's hopes of the Prince of Wales."

"Blauncheflor! thou art either too proud, or too meanhearted!"

"Both! beloved mother, both-too meanhearted to be wooed by the heir of my Suzerain-too proud to dare permit myself to be won."

"At least, child, if thine own interests stir thee not in this matter, shew compassion on thy royal lover. His Highness is even now pining with his concealed passion. The change it has produced in his cheer-the effects it betrays in his person, have astonished the court, and penetrated the king and queen with the most lively grief. When I left Tutbury yesterday, the prince's melancholy was the theme of every tongue. Marry, but when he poured his tale into the ears of his old fostermother, she gave him an opiate."

"And that was?" said Blauncheflor eagerly.

"Why what should it be, but the truth? that, in spite of all your coyness, you loved his Highness, and that so well, that you would not long know how to conceal it."

"The Lady of Hamstal did not surely say that of Sir Bertram's daughter?" said Blauncheflor, her maiden honour kindling the colour and tone of grave displeasure, which her habitual respect could not altogether controul.

"By our lady of Lapley but she did!" rejoined the dame, slightly blushing; "nay, Mignon, look not such reproach on your mother! If I said you loved him, I hid not from his view all that fine coloured tissue of romance forsooth, which makes true love treason:"

"And the prince ?" Blauncheflor.

faltered "Changed from the rosy hue of glittering hope, to the wan ashiness of blank despair! but by all the saints," ejaculated lady Joanna, starting from her stately siege, "Thou art following his example." Blauncheflor had turned deathy white, and tottering against the window, caught at a cluster of wild roses to prevent her falling; for, during this dialogue, she had continued standing, in strict accordance with the respectful usage of the period, in the presence of her lady mother.

Starting, we say, from her stately siege, Lady de Ridware caught Blauncheflor as she was sinking, and her eyes involuntarily glancing out of the open window, a share of the daughter's emotion (but, as heralds say, with a difference), immediately communi

cated itself to the mother.

Unless one had lived in that refulgent æra of romance, it would be impossible to image forth the extent to which it coloured over the kingdom with its ambrosial tints. It hung over the country like a gorgeous canopy, from cliff to vale.

Speaking of the multifarious glitter and solemn pomps of the chivalric age, thus writes a Benedictine monk of Ely Monastery:

Some men delighteth beholding to fight,
Or goodly knightes in pleasaunt apparayle,
Or sturdie souldiers in bright harness and
mail,

A number of people appoynted in like wise,
In costly clothing after the newest guise;

Sportes disguising; fayre coursers mount and

praunce,

Or goodly ladies and knightes sing and

daunce;

To see fayre houses and curious picture,
Or pleasant hanging, or sumptuous vesture,
Of silke, of purpure, or golde moste orient
And other clothing divers and excellent.
High curious buildings, or palaces royall,
Or chapels, temples fayre and substantiall;
Images graven, or vaultes curious;

Gardeyns and meadowes, or places delicious,
Forests and parkes well furnished with dere,
Cold pleasaunt stremes, or welles fair and
clere.

If a man set forth from his home in the morning, his road led him through noble forests over glades and uplands of deep luxuriance, whose distances of misty sunlight glimmered the castle vane, in whose green holmes the brown buttresses of the abbey, or the dignified steeple of the Minster, courteously revealed their venerable piles; or in whose sequestered villages, the wide hostel nestled under its cluster of sycamores on the edge of the green.

If he chose to shelter in the monas

tery, there were the stately Abbatic hospitalities, the decorous abundance of the refectory, and the enlightened society of the monks, who, themselves the depositories of art and science, imparted of their stores with liberality to the stranger. If he preferred the place where knight or nobleman resided, Building royally.

Their mansions curiously.
With turrettes and with toures,
With halles and with bonres,
Streching to the starres;

With glasse windowes aud barres;
Hangyng about the walles,
Clothes of golde and palles;
Arras of ryche arrave,

Freshe as floures in Maye:

there he found the festive hall, the gallery of minstrels, the jester, the troubadour, the chess-board with its regal, pontifical, and chivalrous appurte nances, itself an epitome of the time; while promises of hawk and hound, tilting-match, or perhaps a tournament, were all urged, to induce the stranger to prolong his stay. Or if the hostel, with its enormous chimney-alcove, blazing in ruddy light, its raftered roof laden with rustic stores, its savoury messes, its ale-ambered flaggons, and its red-boddied Dorcas received his

weary feet, he was sure of enjoying the long stories and loquacious merriment of mine host, with almost a certainty of encountering some wandering Palmer or Disour, a walking cabinet of ballads and traditions.

Before the Lady Joan had time to summon a domestic to her daughter, the great bell was heard jangling over the lofty pile, then thundered the gateway and jarred the drawbridge, and last of all, horses' hoofs clattered over the pavement of the Bas-court. On the bridge close by the mill, leading over the Blythe from the woody hamlets of Sandburgh and Morhay, the cause of her sudden emotion had first caught the eye of Blauncheflor. That cause had now penetrated into her very castle-ah! had it not reached her heart itself?

It was a young man apparently about seventeen, bravely attired, and mounted on a large and beautiful red roan, whose caparisons were cloth of gold embroidered with scarlet and purple raised-work. His surcoat was of that costly cloth called Tartarian, on which were emblazoned the lilies of France, quartering the leopards of England, with a label of three points, thickly powdered with pearls of extraordinary size and whiteness. As he