summarily inflicted; and this court was held, to the last, at the Hand and Shears, Cloth Fair, by the Steward of the Lord of the Manor.

"Thus we have in the most ancient times of the Fair, a church full of worshippers, among whom were the sick and maimed, praying for health about its altar; a

graveyard full of traders, and a place of jesting and edification; where women and men caroused in the midst of the throng; where the minstrel and the storyteller and the tumbler gathered knots about them; where the sheriff caused new laws to be published by

loud proclamation in the gathering places of the people;

where the young men bowled at nine-pins, while the clerks and friars peeped at the young maids; where mounted knights and ladies curvetted and ambled, pedlars loudly magnified their wares, the scholars met for public wrangle, oxen lowed, horses neighed, and

sheep bleated among their buyers; where great shouts

of laughter answered to the 'Ho! ho!' of the devil on the stage, above which flags were flying, and below which a band of pipers and guitar bearers added music to the din. That stage also, if ever there was presented on it the story of the Creation, was the first Wild Beast Show in the Fair; for one of the dramatic effects connected with this play, as we read in an ancient stage

direction, was to represent the creation of beasts by unloosing and sending among the excited crowd as great a variety of strange animals as could be brought together, and to create the birds by sending up a flight of pigeons. Under foot was mud and filth, but the

wall that pent the city in shone sunlit among the trees, a fresh breeze came over the surrounding fields and brooks, whispering among the elms that overhung the moor glittering with pools, or from the Fair's neighbour, the gallows. Shaven heads looked down on the scene from the adjacent windows of the buildings bordering the Priory inclosure, and the poor people whom the

friars cherished in their hospital, made holiday among the rest. The curfew bell of St. Martin's-le-Grand, the religious house to which William the Conqueror had given with its charter the adjacent moorland, and within whose walls there was a sanctuary for loose people, stilled the hum of the crowd at nightfall, and

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be extended to fourteen days, the Sword-bearer and other City officers being paid out of the emoluments. Hentzner, in 1578, describes a tent pitched for the proclamation of the Fair, and wrestling after the ceremony, with the crowd hunting wild rabbits, for the sport of the Mayor and Aldermen. Here was also formerly a burlesque proclamation on the night before, by the drapers of Cloth Fair snapping their shears and loudly shouting all through Smithfield.

Fair, tell us of its motions, or puppet-shows, Ben Jonson, in his play of Bartholomew of Jerusalem, Nineveh, and Norwich; and the "Gunpowder Plot, presented to an eighteen or twenty pence audience nine times in an afternoon. The showman paid three shillings for his ground; and a penny was charged for every burden of goods and little bundle brought in or carried out. A rare tract, of the year 1641, describes the "variety of Fancies, the Faire of Wares, and the several enormityes and misdemeanours" of the Fair of that period. At these the sober-minded Evelyn was shock

ed. Pepys (Aug. 30, 1667) found at the Fair "my Lady Castlemaine at a puppet-show," her coach waiting, "and the street full of people expecting her." The sights and shows included wild beasts, dwarfs, and other monstrosities; operas, and tight-rope dancing, and sarabands; dogs dancing the Morrice, and the hare beating the tabor; a tiger pulling the feathers from live fowls; the humours of Punchinello, and drolls of every degree. An ox roasted whole, and piping-hot roast pig, sold in savoury lots, were among the Fair luxuries: the latter, called Bartholomew Pigs, were railed at by the Puritans, and eating

Bartholomew Fair. By Henry Morley. 1858.

After the Reformation, Bartholomew Fair flourished with unabated vigour, the clergy having no longer any interest in veiling its debaucheries. The Priory, together with the rights formerly exercised by the monks, had been granted to the founder of the Rich family, who was Solicitor-General to Henry VIII., and afterwards Lord Chancellor; they were enjoyed by his descendants till the year 1830, when they were purchased from Lord Kensington by the Corporation of London. The Fair greatly declined, as a cloth fair, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth; and the mysteries and moralities being succeeded by productions more nearly resembling the regular drama, the Corporation granted licences to mountebanks, conjurors, &c., and allowed the Fair to

market was at Pye Corner, and pig was not out of fashion in Queen Anne's time.

Among the celebrities of the Fair was Tom Dogget, the old comic actor, who "wore a farce in his face," and was famous for dancing the Cheshire Round. One Ben Jonson, the actor, was celebrated as the grave-digger in Hamlet, in which he introduced a song preserved in Durfey's Pills. Tom Walker, the original Macheath, was another Bartholomew hero. William Bullock, from York, is alluded to by Steele, in The Father, and is censured for "gagging:" in 1739 he had the largest booth in the Fair. Theophilus Cibber was of the Fair, but there is no evidence that Colley Cibber ever appeared there. Cadman, the famous flyer on the rope, immortalized by Hogarth, was a constant exhibitor at Bartholomew as well as Southwark Fair. William

Phillips was a famous Merry Andrew, and some time fiddler to a puppet-show, in which he held many a dialogue with Punch. Edward Phillips wrote Britons Strike Home for the Fair; and Kitty Clive played at the booth of Fawkes, Winchbeck, &c., in that very farce. Harlequin Phillips was in Mrs. Lee's company, and afterwards became the celebrated Harlequin at Drury-lane, under Fleetwood. Penkethman and Dogget, though of very unequal reputation, are noticed in the Spectator. The first in that humorous account of the Projector, in the 31st number, where it is proposed that "Penkethman should personate King Porus upon an elephant, and be encountered by Powell, representing Alexander the Great, upon a dromedary, which, nevertheless, Mr. Powell is desired to call by the name of Bucephalus." Dogget is commended (No. 502) as an admirable and genuine actor.

The public theatres were invariably closed at Bartholomew Fair time; drolls, like Estcourt and Penkethman, finding Bartholomew Fair a more profitable arena for their talents than the boards of Dorset-garden or old Drury-lane. Here Elkanah Settle, the rival for years of Dryden, was reduced at last to string speeches and contrive machinery; and here, in the droll of St. George for England, he made his last appearance, hissing in a green leather dragon of his own invention.

Here we may mention another class of sights, "a large and beautiful young camel from Grand Cairo, in Egypt," says the advertisement: "this creature is twenty-three years old; his head and neck are like that of a deer,' and he "was to be seen or sold at the first house on the pavement from the end of Hosierlane, during Bartholomew Fair." And we read that later, Sir Hans Sloane employed a draughtsman to sketch the wonderful foreign animals in the Fair.

Henry Fielding had his booth here, Dr. Rimbault tells us, after his admission into the Middle Temple. That Fielding should have turned "strolling actor," and have the audacity to appear at Bartholomew at the very moment when the whole town was ringing with Pope's savage ridicule of the "Smithfield Muses," would of course be an unpardonable offence. Fielding's last appearance at Bartholomew Fair was in 1736, as usual, in the George Inn Yard, at "Fielding and Hippisley's Booth." Don Carlos and the Cheats of Scapin, adapted from Molière, were the two plays; and Mrs. Pritchard played the part of Loveit, in which she had made her first hit at Bartholomew. Other celebrities, who kept up the character of

the Fair for another quarter of a century, were Yates, Lee, Woodward, and Shuter, the two last well known for their connection with Goldsmith's comedies. Shuter played Croaker in the Good-natured Man, and Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. Woodward played Lofty in the former piece. With Shuter, "the history of the English stage" (says Mr. Morley) "parted entirely from the story of the Fair." Garrick's name is connected only with the Fair by stories which regard him as a visitor: although Edmund Kean is stated to have played here when a boy.

Among the notorieties of the Fair was Lady Holland's Mob (Lord Rich having been ancestor of the Earl of Warwick and Holland),hundreds of loose fellows, principally journeyman tailors, who used to assemble at the Hand and Shears, in Cloth Fair. They were accustomed to sally forth knocking at the doors and ringing the bells of the peaceable inhabitants, and assaulting and ill-treating passengers. These ruffians frequently united in such strength as to defy the civil power. As late as 1822, a number of them exceeding 5000 rioted in Skinner-street, and were for hours too powerful for the police.

The Fair was annually proclaimed by the Lord Mayor, on the 2d of September, his lordship proceeding thither in his gilt coach, "with City Officers and trumpets;" and the proclamation for the purpose read before the entrance to Cloth Fair. It was the custom for the Lord Mayor, on this occasion, to call upon the keeper of Newgate, and partake, on his way to Smithfield, of "a cool tankard of wine, nutmeg, and sugar." This custom, which ceased in the second mayoralty of Sir Matthew Wood in 1818, was the cause of the death of Sir John Shorter, Lord Mayor in 1688. In holding the tankard, he let the lid slip down with so much force, that his horse started, and he was thrown to the ground with great violence. He died the next day.

The Fair dwindled year by year: the writer remembers it at midnight, before gas had become common: viewed from Richardson's, the shows, booths, and stalls, with their flaring oil-lamps and torches, shed a strange glare over the vast sea of heads which filled the area of Smithfield and the adjacent streets. As lately as 1830, upwards of 200 booths for toys and gingerbread crowded the pavement around the Fair, and overflowed into the adjacent streets. Richardson, Saunders, and Wombwell were late in the ascendant as showmen. Among the latest "larks" was that of young men of caste disguising themselves in working

clothes, to enjoy the loose delights of “Bartlemy" Fair, in September.

For 300 years the Lord Mayor and Aldermen had in vain attempted to suppress the Fair; when, in 1840, upon the recommendation of the City Solicitor, Mr. Charles Pearson, having purchased Lord Kensington's interest, they refused to let the ground for the shows and booths but upon exorbitant prices, and limited the Fair to one day; and the State proclamation of the Lord Mayor was given up. In 1849, the Fair was reduced to one or two stalls for gingerbread, gambling-tables for nuts, a few fruit-barrows and toy-stalls, and one puppet-show. In 1852, the number was still less.

THE FLOWERS OF MAY.1
(BLEUNIOU MAE.)

[Tom Taylor, born at Sunderland, 1817. Educated at Glasgow University and Cambridge; for two years professor of English literature at the University College, London; called to the bar in 1845; in 1850 appointed assistant-secretary to the board of health, and afterwards secretary to the local government act office. He is most widely known as a dramatist, having written over a hundred plays, of which the most notable are: The Fool's Revenge; Still Waters Run Deep; Victims; Our American Cousin: An Unequal Match; 'Twixt Axe and Crown; Joan of Arc; Clancarty; &c. &c. He has also written and edited the biographies of Benjamin Robert Haydon, historical painter; C. R. Leslie, R.A.; Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c.; and he has given a spirited English version of the most popular Ballads and Songs of Brittany, with some of the original melodies harmonized by Mrs. Tom Taylor, who as Miss Laura Barker won much favour by her musical compositions. From the latter book the following is taken. He latterly edited Punch. Died 12th July, 1880.]

"In the districts of Cornouaille and about Vannes they have a pretty funeral fashion, of covering with flowers the biers of young girls who die in the month of May. Such deaths are regarded as ominous of happiness hereafter, and sick girls pray to be spared till the flowers of May come back, if death seem to be darkening over them before the month; or to be taken before the flowers of May are withered, if life and flowers are waning together. The following song on this touching theme is much sung in Cornouaille, and is ascribed to two peasant sisters. The delicacy, tenderness, and piety of this pathetic idyll are characteristic of the Breton; and these qualities are found among the peasantry of Brittany-rude and stern almost to gloom as they are-more than among any other class of the country."-Tom Taylor.

But he that had seen her on her bed,
Had tears of pity for her shed,

To see the sweet sick maiden laid,
Pale as a lily in summer-shade.
To her companions she said,

That sat beside her on her bed:

"My friends, if loving friends ye be, In God's name, do not weep for me. "You know all living death must dree; God's own self died-died on the tree."

II.

As I went for water to the spring
I heard the nightingale sweetly sing:

"The month of May is passing e'en now, And with it the blossom on the bough.

"The happiest lot from life they bring,

The young whom death takes in the spring.

"Ev'n as the rose drops from the spray,

So youth from life doth fall away.

"Those who die ere this week is flown, All with fresh flowers shall be strown;

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"And from those flowers shall soar heaven-high, As from the rose-cup the butterfly."

III.

"Jeffik! Jeffik! did you not hear

The nightingale's song so sweet and clear? ""The month of May is passing e'en now, And with it the blossom on the bough.'" When this she heard, the gentle maid, Crosswise her two pale hands she laid : "I will say an Ave Marie,

Our Ladye sweet, in honour of thee: "That it may please our God, thy Son, To look with pity me upon;

"That grace to pass quick me be given, And wait for those I love in Heaven."

The Ave Marie was hardly said,
When gently sank her gentle head:

The pale head sank, no more to rise;
The eyelids closed upon the eyes.

Just then beyond the courtyard pale
Was heard to sing the nightingale:
"The happiest lot from life they bring,

The young whom death takes in the spring.

"Happy the young whose biers are strown

With spring-flowers, fair and freshly blown."

[John Earle, Bishop of Worcester and Salisbury, born in York about 1601; died 17th November, 1665. He obtained his preferments from Charles II. after the Restoration. He was the author of Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters, 1628.]

A plain country fellow is one that manures the ground well, but lets himself lie fallow and untilled. He has reason enough to do his business, and not enough to be idle or melancholy. He seems to have the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar, for his conversation is among beasts, and his talons none of the shortest, only he eats not grass, because he loves not salads. His hand guides the plough, and the plough his thoughts, and his ditch and landmark is the very mound of his meditations. He expostulates with his oxen very understandingly, and speaks gee and ree better than English. His religion is a part of his copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, and refers it wholly to his discretion; yet if he give him leave, he is a good Christian to his power, that is, comes to church in his best clothes, and sits there with his neighbours, where he is capable of only two prayers, for rain and fair weather. His compliment with his neighbour is a good thump on the back, and his salutation commonly some blunt curse. He is a niggard all the week, except only market-day; when, if his corn sell well, he thinks he may be drunk with a good conscience. For death he is never troubled, and if he get in but his harvest before bad weather, let it come when it will he cares not.

WISHES OF YOUTH.

Gaily and greenly let my seasons run;
And should the war-winds of the world uproot
The sanctities of life, and its sweet fruit
Cast forth as fuel for the fiery sun;
The dews be turned to ice-fair days begun
In peace wear out in pain, and sounds that suit
Despair and discord keep hope's harp-string mute;
Still let me live as love and life were one:
Still let me turn on earth a childlike gaze,
And trust the whispered charities that bring
Tidings of human truth; with inward praise
Watch the weak motion of each common thing,
And find it glorious-still let me raise
On wintry wrecks an altar to the spring.

S. LAMAN BLANCHARD.

A CORSICAN CHIEF.

[James Boswell, born in Edinburgh, 29th October, 1740; died in London, 19th May, 1795. The biographer

of Dr. Johnson. Besides the work which has rendered his name famous, he wrote several legal, political, and social essays, and An Account of Corsica, the Journal of a Tour in that Island, 1768. This work is now little known, but it contains various indications of the qualities which rendered the life of Johnson so popular. From it the following passages are quoted.]

Pascal Paoli, was second son to the old chief Giacinto Paoli. He had been educated with great care by his father, who formed his taste for letters, and inspired him with every worthy and noble sentiment. He was born in Corsica, where he remained long enough to contract a love and attachment to his country, and to feel the oppression under which it groaned.

When the patriots were totally crushed by the Marquis de Maillebois, his father took young Paoli to Naples, where he had the advantage of attending the academy, got a commission as an officer in that service, and was much about court.

Here he lived twelve or thirteen years, cultivating the great powers with which nature had endowed him, and laying the foundation of those grand designs which he had early formed for the deliverance of his country.

His reputation became so great among the Corsicans, that he received the strongest invitations to come over and take the command. He embarked in the glorious enterprise, stimulated by generous ambition, and undismayed by a consideration of the dangers, the cares, and the uncertainty which he was about to encounter.

There was something particularly affecting, in his parting from his father; the old man, hoary and gray with years, fell on his neck and kissed him, gave him his blessing, and with a broken, feeble voice, encouraged him in the undertaking on which he was entering; "My son," said he, "I may possibly never see you more; but in my mind I shall ever be present with you. Your design is a great and a noble one; and I doubt not, but GOD will bless you in it. The little which remains to me of life I will allot to your cause, in offering up my prayers and supplications to Heaven for your protection and prosperity." Having again embraced him, they parted.

Pascal Paoli no sooner appeared in the island, than he attracted the attention of everybody. His carriage and deportment prejudiced them in his favour, and his superior judgment, and

patriotic spirit, displayed with all the force of eloquence, charmed their understandings. All this, heightened with condescension, affability, and modesty, entirely won their hearts. A way was opened for him to the supreme command, and he was called to it by the unanimous voice of his countrymen.

Though Paoli had long meditated on the importance of the charge he was to enter upon, its near approach struck him with awe; for his ideas were enlarged, his resolves were magnanimous, and the office appeared more momentous to him than it could appear to one of more confined views and more moderate plans. His hesitation and diffidence when called to the supreme command was not affected. He balanced the consequences, and he could not but be seriously moved. For he could not divine with certainty the astonishing influence which his government was to have on the happiness of his country. But the representations made to him were so earnest, and, in some measure so peremptory, that he thought himself bound in duty to accept of the arduous task.

When he inquired into the situation of the affairs of Corsica, he found the utmost disorder and confusion. There was no subordination, no discipline, no money, hardly any arms and ammunition; and, what was worse than all, little union among the people. He immediately began to remedy these defects. His persuasion and example had wonderful force; all ranks exerted themselves in providing what was necessary for carrying on the war with spirit; whereby, in a short time, the Genoese were driven to the remotest corners of the island.

Having thus expelled the foe from the bosom of his country, he had leisure to attend to the civil part of the administration, in which he discovered abilities and constancy hardly to be paralleled. He rectified innumerable abuses, which had insinuated themselves during the late times of trouble and confusion. He, in a manner, new-modelled the government upon the soundest principles of democratical rule, which was always his favourite idea.

The Corsicans having been long denied legal justice, had assumed the right of private revenge, and used to assassinate each other upon the most trivial occasions. He found it extremely difficult to break them off this practice, by which it was computed that the state lost 800 subjects every year. The disease was become so violent that it seemed almost incurable. However, by seasonable admonition, by representing to them the ruin of this practice to the cause of liberty, at a time when they had occasion for all the assistance they could lend to

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each other, joined to a strict exercise of criminal justice; he gradually brought them to be convinced that the power of dispensing punishment belonged to the public; and that, without a proper submission and a regular system of administration, they never could make head against an enemy, or, indeed, be properly speaking a state. So effectual were the measures he took, that a law was passed, making assassination capital, let it be committed on any pretence whatever.

The Corsicans are naturally humane; but, like the Italians, and most southern nations, are extremely violent in their tempers. This is certainly the effect of a warm climate, which forms the human frame to an exquisite degree of sensibility. Whatever advantages this sensibility may produce, by cherishing the finer feelings and more exalted affections, it is at the same time productive of some disadvantages, being equally the occasion of impatience, sudden passion, and a spirit of revenge, tending to the disorder of society.

Paoli, by his masterly knowledge of human nature, guided the Corsicans to glory, and rendered the impetuosity of their dispositions, and their passion for revenge, subservient to the noble objects of liberty, and of vindicating their country. His wise institutions had so good an effect, that, notwithstanding their frequent losses in action, it was found that in a few years the number of inhabitants was increased 16,000.

When a proper system of government was formed, and some of the most glaring abuses rectified, Paoli proceeded to improve and civilize the manners of the Corsicans. This was a very delicate task. They had been brought up in anarchy, and their constant virtue had been resistance. It therefore required the nicest conduct to make them discern the dif ference between salutary restraint and tyrannic oppression. He was no monarch, born to rule, and who received a nation as a patrimonial inheritance. It was, therefore, in vain to think of acting with force like the Czar Peter towards the Russians. It was not, indeed, consistent with his views of forming a free nation; but, had he been inclined to it, he could not have executed such a plan. He was entirely dependent upon the people, elected by them, and answerable to them for his conduct. It was no easy matter to restrain those of whom he held his power. But this Paoli accomplished.

He gradually prepared the Corsicans for the reception of laws, by cultivating their minds, and leading them, of their own accord, to desire the establishment of several regulations,