one:

In

forgetting all wife-like pride, I seem to yearn over the boy. But is this strange ? my first girlish dreams, many a time I have taken a book he had touched—a flower he had gathered-hid it from my sisters, kissed it, and wept over it for days. It was folly; but it only showed how precious I held everything belonging to him. And should I not hold precious what is half himself-his own son?

I will go and see the child to-morrow.

Weeks have passed, and yet I have had no strength to tell what that to-morrow brought. Strange book of human fate! each leaf closed until the appointed time,-if we could but turn it, and read. Yet it is best not.

I

I went to the cottage-alone, of course. asked the old woman to let me come in and rest, for I was a stranger, weak and tired. She did so kindly, remembering, perhaps, how I had once noticed the boy. He was her grandson she told me her daughter's child.

Her daughter! And this old creature was a coarse, rough-spoken woman - a labourer's wife. Laurence Shelmerdine-the elegantthe refined-what madness must have possessed him!

"She died very young, then, your daughter?" I found courage to say.

"Ay, ay; in a few months after the boy's birth. She was but a weakly thing at best, and she had troubles enow."

Quickly came the blood to my heart-to my cheek-in bitter, bitter shame. Not for myself, but for him. I shrank like a guilty thing before that mother's eye. I dared not ask-what I longed to hear-concerning the poor girl, and her sad history.

"Is the child like her ?" was all I could say, looking to where the little one was playing, at the far-end of the garden. I was glad not to see him nearer. "Was his mother as beautiful as he ?"

"Ay, a good-looking lass enough; but the little lad's like his father, who was a gentleman born:

: though Laurence had better ha' been a ploughman's son. A bad business Bess made of it. To this day I dunnot know her right name, nor little Laurence's there; and so I canna make his father own him. He ought, for the lad's growing up as grand a gentleman as himself: he'll never do to live with poor folk like granny."

"Alas!" I cried, forgetting all but my compassion; "then how will the child bear his lot of shame!"

"Shame!" and the old woman came up

fiercely to me. "You'd better mind your own business: : my Bess was as good as you."

I trembled violently, but could not speak. The woman went on :

"I dunnot care if I blab it all out, though Bess begged me not. She was a fool, and the young fellow something worse. His father tried-may-be he wished to try, too—but they couldna undo what had been done. My girl was safe married to him, and the little lad's a gentleman's lawful son."

Oh! joy beyond belief! Oh! bursting, blessed tears! My Laurence! my Laurence! I have no clear recollection of anything more, save that I suppose the woman thought me mad, and fled out of the cottage. My first consciousness is of finding myself quite alone, with the door open, and a child looking in at me in wonderment, but with a gentleness such as I have seen my husband wear. No marvel I had loved that childish face: it was such as might have been his when he was a boy. I cried, tremulously, "Laurence! little Laurence!" He came to me, smiling and pleased. One faint struggle I had-forgive me, poor dead girl!—and then I took the child in my arms, and kissed him as though I had been his mother. For thy sake-for thy sake-my

husband!

I understood all the past now. The wild, boyish passion, making an ideal out of a poor village girl-the unequal union-the dream fading into common day-coarseness creating repulsion—the sting of one folly which had marred a lifetime-dread of the world, selfreproach, and shame-all these excuses I could find: and yet Laurence had acted ill. And when the end came: no wonder that remorse pursued him, for he had broken a girl's heart. She might, she must, have loved him. I wept for her I, who so passionately loved him too.

He was wrong, also, grievously wrong, in not acknowledging the child. Yet there might have been reasons. His father ruled with an iron hand; and, then, when he died, Laurence had just known me. Alas! I weave all coverings to hide his fault. But surely this strong, faithful love was implanted in my heart for good. It shall not fail him now it shall encompass him with arms of peace: it shall stand between him and the bitter past it shall lead him on to a worthy and happy future.

There is one thing which he must do : I will strengthen him to do it. Yet, when I tell him all, how will he meet it? No matter; I must do right. I have walked through this cloud of misery-shall my courage fail me now?

He came home, nor knew that I had been away. Something oppressed him: his old grief, perhaps. My beloved! I have a balm even for that, now.

I told him the story, as it were in a parable, not of myself, but of another--a friend I had. His colour came and went-his hands trembled in my hold. I hid nothing: I told of the wife's first horrible fear-of her misery-and the red flush mounted to his very brow. I could have fallen at his feet, and prayed forgiveness; but I dared not yet. At last I spoke of the end, still using the feigned names I had used all along.

He said, hoarsely, "Do you think the wife -a good and pure woman-would forgive all this?"

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Forgive! Oh! Laurence-Laurence!" and I clung to him and wept.

A doubt seemed to strike him. "Adelaidetell me "

66 I have told. Husband, forgive me! I know all, and still I love you--I love you!"

I did not say, I pardon. I would not let him think that I felt I had need to pardon. Laurence sank down at my feet, hid his face on my knees, and wept.

The tale of his youth was as I guessed. He told it me the same night, when we sat in the twilight gloom. I was glad of this that not even his wife's eyes might scan too closely the pang it cost him to reveal these long-past days. But all the while he spoke my head was on his breast, that he might feel I held my place there still, and that no error, no grief, no shame, could change my love for him, nor make me doubt his own, which I had won.

My task is accomplished. I rested not, day or night, until the right was done. Why should he fear the world's sneer, when his wife stands by him-his wife, who most of all might be thought to shrink from this confession that

must be made? But I have given him comfort -ay, courage. I have urged him to do his duty, which is one with mine.

My husband has acknowledged his first marriage, and taken home his son. His mother, though shocked and bewildered at first, rejoiced when she saw the beautiful boyworthy to be the heir of the Shelmerdines. All are happy in the thought. And I

I go, but always secretly, to the small daisymound. My own lost one! my babe, whose face I never saw! If I have no child on earth, I know there is a little angel waiting me in | heaven.

Let no one say I am not happy, as happy as one can be in this world: never was any woman more blessed than I am in my husband and my son-mine. I took him as such : I will fulfil the pledge while I live.

The other day, our little Laurence did something wrong. He rarely does so he is his father's own child for gentleness and generosity. But here he was in error: he quarrelled with his Aunt Louisa, and refused to be friends. Louisa was not right either: she does not half love the boy.

I took my son on my lap, and tried to show him the holiness and beauty of returning good for evil; of forgetting unkindness, of pardoning sin. He listened, as he always listens to After a while, when his heart was softened, I made him kneel down beside me, saying the prayer" Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.”

me.

Little Laurence stole away, repentant and good. I sat thoughtful: I did not notice that behind me had stood my Laurence-my husband. He came and knelt where his boy had knelt. Like a child, he laid his head on my shoulder, and blessed me, in broken words. The sweetest of all were:

"My wife! my wife who has saved her husband!"

"London is England," we should not meet so tacit an acquiescence, inasmuch as our provincial cities have an independent character of their own, and do not look up to the capital for their guidance so entirely; neither are they without the pride of provincialism, and are less inclined to honour the capital at the ex

pense of their own native city or town. Yet London may be taken as a fair epitome of England. Like the English Constitution, it has modified itself to every age, has adapted itself to every

"Change of many-coloured life,"

and thus preserved its supremacy in the nineteenth century, until the "Modern Babylon" has become the wonder of the world. Increasing in size, as England has increased in power, its warehouses are the receptacles of the industry of the world; its port the centre to which all vessels steer; it shops the mart for every trader of the universe. As England has possessions in every hemisphere, so is its cosmopolitan character shadowed in its streets; the very names which meet the eye show the mixed character of the population; and the still increasing vastness of the enormous city is but a type of the commercial greatness of the Nation. Is not, then, London-England?

It was far otherwise within comparatively recent times. We need not go back to the early or middle ages, when commerce was neglected or crippled by the most absurd of Custom-house regulations, when "Protection," in the fullest sense of the word, was accorded in the blindest manner to all who had a shadow of claim to it, and trade meant business bounded by our own seas. In those days, London was a small, snugly-walled city, with one bridge well fortified, and a Tower strongly formed to repel an enemy. Like England at that period, it was warlike and insecure; throwing around itself restrictive and mural protection. As England has progressed its capital has increased in wealth and importance; but where now are its wall and bastions, its gates and drawbridges-a true type of the nation, it has learned the wisdom of the moral strength of universal trustfulness based on native honour.

Any one who has the opportunity and inclination to look at the old "bird's-eye" view of London, executed in the reign of Elizabeth, will at once be struck with the small space it then occupied. Its walls were entire, and enclosed the ground east and west from the Tower to Blackfriars, reaching from the Thames northwardly to Smithfield, Barbican, and Finsbury; while, from Cripplegate to Bishopsgate, "the maidens of London dried their clothes" on the grass plots immediately under the walls, and the eye had an uninterrupted range over "fresh fields and pastures new," where the young men of London met to practise shooting with the bow, beyond which

were the windmills, where many a "lusty miller" drove a brisk trade with the city; and far away the villages of Islington and Hackney, and the hills of Hampstead and Highgate. Within the walls was a dense population in streets of narrow dimensions, the houses overhanging the pathways, on many of which the sun never shone, and which were ill-drained and ill-cleaned; some idea of them may be now formed by a visit to the still existing streets of the cité of Old Paris, or the wynds of Old Edinburgh. The pestilences which once depopulated Old London have departed with the manners which occasioned them.

The inhabitants of the Ancient Town, crowded thus within their walls-literally in "populous city pent"-escaped whenever they were able; those who could leave the alleys congregated in the wider principal thoroughfares, or met to talk and walk in the nave of St. Paul's; or if they could get beyond the walls, walked in Finsbury-fields, where the youths went to practise with pike or bow, and the maidens to dance; while those "on pleasure bent," crossed the Thames, and sought it on the Surrey side.

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"Southwark from an early time appears to have been to the Londoners what "the playing ground" was to the Indian-a place adjacent to his home, devoted to his amusement. Here were garden houses," selling cakes and ale for the old citizens; bear-baiting and plays for the younger ones- —and, by natural consequence, here also congregated the infamous of both sexes, who had aught to gain by the stimulus excited. Paris-garden achieved an early notoriety in evil; it frequently occupied the attention of satirists; one Crowley, a poet of the reign of Henry VIII., as quoted by Pennant, declares :

"At Paris Garden each Sunday a man shall not fail To find two or three hundred, for the bear-ward's vale,

One half-penny a-piece they use for to give."

But it was not the poor and vulgar only who patronized these debasing amusements. Collier, in his "History of the Stage," relates that the Earl of Northumberland went there to see bears baited in 1526; and a gentleman of the suite of the Spanish ambassador in 1544, narrates his visit to the same "fashionable" locality; he describes the bears as "driven into a circus, where they are confined by a long rope, while large and courageous dogs are let loose upon them, and a fight takes place." He narrates that horses were also baited there; and describes a pony thus tormented with a monkey on its back, com

G

placently saying, "that the shrieks of the monkey, when he saw the dogs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, rendered the scene very laughable.”

This place is said to have obtained its name from Robert de Paris, who had a house and grounds there in the reign of Richard II. The manor became royal property afterwards, and comprised the land lying opposite Blackfriars. Paris-garden Stairs, where Londoners debarked, were facing Puddle-dock, and were in existence till the year 1816, when the site was purchased by Mr. Devey, a coal merchant, and converted into a wharf.

Honest John Stow has left the best account of the neighbourhood, at a time when the success of the one bear-garden had caused the erection of another. Speaking of Southwark, he says, "on this bank is the beare-gardens, in nomber twain; to wit, the old bear-garden and the new, places wherein be kept bears, bulls, and other beasts, to be bayted at stakes for pleasure; also mastives to bait them in severall kennels are there nourished. These bears, bulls, and other beasts, are oft times baited in plots of ground, scaffolded about for the beholders to stand upon safe." Hentzner, the German traveller in England, whose itinerary relates to what he saw here in 1598, gives a still more minute description, when speaking of theatres near London, he says"There is still another place, built in the form of a theatre, which serves for the baiting of bulls and bears; they are fastened behind, and then worried by great English bull-dogs, but not without great risk to the dogs, from the horns of the one, and the teeth of the other, and it sometimes happens they are killed on the spot; fresh ones are immediately supplied in the place of those that are wounded or tired. To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men standing circularly with whips, which they exercise upon him without any mercy, as he cannot escape from them because of his chains. He defends himself with all his force and skill, throwing down all who come within his reach, and are not active enough to get out of it, and tearing the whips out of their hands and breaking them." He then dilates on the company who " constantly smoke tobacco,"

and adds, "in these theatres, fruits, such as apples, pears and nuts, according to the season, are carried about to be sold, as well as ale and wine." But for the tobacco-smoking, we might think he was describing the Southwark minor theatres of the present day.

In the old map of London, already noticed, these two theatres are clearly shown: they are circular, open at top to the sky, and spectators are represented seated all round, looking at the combats of beasts in the centre. Outside, the curious pry through windows and crannies, and rows of bears and dogs appear chained as a corps de reserve; large square pools of water are also provided, in which the animals were washed, after the fashion described by Brown, in 1656, of those he saw in the bear-garden at Dresden, where, he says, "they have fountains and ponds to wash themselves in, wherein they much delight." The gallery which ran round the old amphitheatre was double, and was calculated to hold a thousand people; and here, on Sundays, congregated masses of the idle and dissolute. Prynne has related the awful accident which happened here on the 13th of January, 1583, which "being the Lord's Day, an infinite number of people, men, women, and children, resorted unto Paris-garden to see beare-fighting, playes, and other pastyme," when, "being altogether mounted aloft upon these scaffolds and galleries, and in the middest of their jollity and pastyme," the building being old and rotten, the scaffolds fell; "five men and two women were slain outright, and above 150 persons were sore wounded and bruised, whereof many died shortly after." With the same taste for highflown terms to hide "blackguardism" chosen by modern prize-fighters, who term their doings "manly art" and "noble science," the old bear-garden proprietors termed their show "royal pastime!"

The

The Drama at this time was weak and poor. The blustering of Tamburlaine was incomprehensible to the mass; clever writing, poetic thought, had not yet appeared naturally before them. No wonder, then, that, like Ben Jonson's gossips in the "Staple of Newes," they valued "no play without a foole and a devil in't!!" to cut capers and make sport with buffoonery of the lowest kind. attractions of the stage, however, triumphed, and four theatres occupied "the Bankside" in the early part of the seventeenth century, one ultimately becoming world-famous by its connexion with Shakespeare;-not, however, that bear-baiting ceased, for we find in the year 1682 it was still carried on, and " a horse baited to death," which " formerly belonged to the Earl of Rochester."

By the end of the sixteenth century there were eleven theatres opened in the suburbs of London; but the four in Southwark were the

Swan, the Hope, the Rose, and the Globe. The least celebrated was the Swan, which stood close to the water's edge, but the exact spot is not easily definable; it was the most westerly of the theatres on the Bankside, and stood near the Phoenix gas-works. In 1618 it was shut up; and we learn from an old pamphlet, published in 1632, that it had then fallen into decay. It was totally demolished, with several others, by order of the Parliament, at the commencement of the civil wars. The Hope, originally used as a bear-garden, was converted into a theatre early in the seventeenth century; but it was again made a bear-garden, and then again a theatre, in 1614, when Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair" was played there, he declaring "that therein the author hath observ'd a special decorum, the place being as dirty as Smithfield, and as stinking every whit." The Rose stood close to this theatre, but nearer the water; it was built before 1598, and Collier considers it "the oldest theatre on the Bankside;" it was deserted in 1613. The Globe nearly faced the Hope; it was erected about 1594, and was burned in June, 1613, when the wadding of a small cannon, shot off in "a play called 'All is True,' representing some principal pieces in the reign of Henry VIII." (and probably Shakespeare's), set fire to the thatched roof, and burned it to the ground in less than two hours. It was rebuilt shortly in an improved fashion, and here Shakespeare's finest works were first given to the world; the players were styled "the King's servants;" and it continued open till 1642, when the puritanical parliament issued an order for the suppression of stage plays. Collier thinks that "after 1647 it was most likely pulled down.”

The connexion of our greatest poet with the Globe, and his fortune therewith, are so frequently related as to need no fresh narrative here; we may, therefore, confine ourselves to

notes on the Southwark of his time.

The straggling houses that dotted the water's edge from Lambeth-marsh to Parisgarden grew thicker as they approached that place, and formed a line of houses, with gardens and groves of trees behind them, until they reached the three theatres last described, round which they appear to have clustered thickly. Close beside them were "the Stews," and the garden-house known as "Holland's Leaguer," a building with a pleasure-ground and arbours, surrounded by a ditch and approached by a drawbridge, and which was of infamous notoriety. The Stews, as Stow tells us, had signs painted on their fronts towards

the river, and their inhabitants are alluded to by Shakespeare as "Winchester geese," the place being under the protection of the Bishop of Winchester, whose palace and gardens stood close beside them, reaching nearly to St. Saviour's wharf, where the houses clustered thickly, until they formed the High-street of Southwark.

Much of this neighbourhood was inhabited by persons who did not altogether approve of these scenes; and we find them complaining of the incessant noise and tumult of the Beargarden, then the property of Edward Alleyne, the founder of Dulwich College. Among them occurs the name of Shakespeare, proving that in July, 1596, he was a resident in Southwark. At this time, the poet, though still a very young man, had been a successful adventurer in London; was part proprietor of the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres; and early in 1597 purchased one of the best houses in his native, town of Stratford (New Place, where he died). The biographical facts connected with the poet are few and far between, but all of them tend to prove he was by no means deficient in worldly wisdom. We find him purchasing houses and land at Stratford, and dealing with the corporation for stone and corn; applied to by friends there for loans of money on good security," and receiving letters of advice as to the purchase of land. In London, not again to speak of his property in theatres, we find him assessed in 1598 for property in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate; and the original counterpart of the conveyance to him of a house in Blackfriars is now in the library of the Corporation of London, signed by the poet himself. Some idea of his income may be formed from that portion obtained from his share of the Blackfriars, thus narrated in the document drawn up for the Corporation of London, when they wished to purchase and suppress it :

:

"Item. W. Shakespeare asketh for the wardrobe and properties of the same playhouse, 500li., and for his 4 shares the same as his fellowes, Burbidge and Fletcher, viz., 933li. 68. 8d... 1433li. 6s. 8d." Therefore, says Mr. Halliwell, in his admirable life of the poet, "the shares which Shakspeare possessed in the Blackfriars Theatre alone produced him, as it appears from this list, £133 68. Sd. a year; and Mr. Collier adds an annual £50 to this for the loan of 'properties; so that, supposing his income from the Globe were of the same amount, his theatrical property in 1608 was worth £366 138. 4d. per annum." In May, 1602, he purchased 107 acres of arable land in Old