I was unexpectedly struck, on entering the armoury at the Tower. The walls, three hundred feet in length, covered with arms for two hundred thousand men, burnished arms, glittering in fancy figures on the walls, and ranged in endless piles from the ceiling to the floor of that long gallery; then the apartment with the line of ancient kings, clad in complete armour, mounted on their steeds fully caparisoned-the death-like stiffness of the figures-the stillness- the silence of the place-altogether awe the imagination, and carry the memory back to the days of chivalry. When among these forms of kings and heroes who had ceased to be I beheld the Black Prince, lance couched, vizor down, with the arms he wore at Cressy and Poictiers, my enthusiasm knew no bounds. The Black Prince, from my childhood, had been the object of my idolatry. I kneeled-I am ashamed to confess it-to do homage to the empty armour.

"Look at him!-Look at Mr. Harrington, kneeling," exclaimed the child.

Mr. Montenero, past the age of romantic extravagance, could not sympathize with this enthusiasm, but he bore with it. He looked down upon me benignantly, and waited till I had finished my ecstasies. Berenice, with a knowledge of our English history, which I could scarcely have expected from a foreigner, and which at this instant was peculiarly grateful to my feelings, explained to the little girl why my hero,. the Black Prince, deserves to have homage done to him for his generosity and humanity more than for his victories.

We passed on to dark Gothic nooks of chambers, where my reverence for the beds on which kings had slept, and the tables at which kings had sat, much increased by my early associations formed at Brante

field Priory, was expressed with a vehemence which astonished Mr. Montenero; and, I fear, prevented him from hearing the answers to various inquiries, upon which he, with better regulated judgment, was intent.

An orator is the worst person to tell a plain fact; the very worst guide, as Mowbray observed, that a foreigner can have. Still Mr. Montenero had patience with me, and supplied the elisions in my rhetoric, by what information he could pick up from the guide, and from Mowbray, with whom, from time to time, he stopped to see and hear, after I had passed on with Berenice. To her quickness and sympathy I flattered myself that I was always intelligible.

We came at last to the chamber where Clarence and the young princes had been murdered. Here, I am conscious, I was beyond measure exuberant in exclamations, and in quotations from Shakspeare.

Mr. Montenero came in just as I was ranting, from Clarence's dream

"Seize on him, furies! take him to your torments!

—With that, methought a legion of foul fiends
Environ'd me, and howled in mine ears

Such hideous cries! that with the very"

noise I made, I prevented poor Mr. Montenero from hearing the answer to some historic question he was asking. Berenice's eye warned me to lower my voice, and I believe I should have been quiet, but that unluckily Mowbray set me off in another direction, by reminding me of the tapestry-chamber and sir Josseline. I remember covering my face with both my hands, and shuddering with horror.

Mr. Montenero asked, "What of the tapestrychamber ?"

And immediately recollecting that I should not, to him, and before his daughter, describe the Jew, who

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had committed a deed without a name, I with much embarrassment said, that "it was nothing of any consequence-it was something I could not explain." I left it to Mowbray's superior presence of mind, and better address, to account for it, and I went on with Berenice. Whenever my imagination was warmed, verses poured in upon my memory, and often` without much apparent connexion with what went before. I recollected at this moment the passage in Akenside's" Pleasures of the Imagination" describing the early delight the imagination takes in horrors: -the children closing round the village matron, who suspends the infant audience with her tales breathing astonishment.

The little girl who was with us breathed astonishment, while I recited all I knew of

"Evil spirits! of the deathbed call

Of him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd
The orphan's portion of unquiet souls
Ris'n from the grave, to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life conceal'd-of shapes that walk
At dead of night, and clank their chains, and wave
The torch of Hell around the murd'rer's bed!"

Mowbray and Mr. Montenero, who had staid behind us a few minutes, came up just as I was, with much emphasis and gesticulation,

"Waving the torch of Hell."

I am sure I must have been a most ridiculous figure. I saw Mowbray on the brink of laughter; but Mr. Montenero looked so grave, that he fixed all my attention. I suddenly stopped.

"We were talking of The Pleasures of Imagination,'" said Berenice to her father. "Mr. Harrington is a great admirer of Akensidę."

Is he?" replied Mr. Montenero coldly, and with a look of absence. 66 But, my dear, we can have the pleasures of the imagination another time. Here are some realities worthy of our present attention.”

He then drew his daughter's arm within his. I followed; and all the time he was pointing out to her the patterns of the Spanish instruments of torture, with which her politic majesty queen Elizabeth frightened her subjects into courage sufficient to repel all the invaders on board the invincible armada-I stood silent, pondering on what I might have said or done to displease him whom I was so anxious to please. First, I thought he suspected me of what I most detested, the affectation of taste, sensibility, and enthusiasm; next, I fancied that Mowbray, in explaining about the tapestry-chamber, sir Josseline, and the bastinadoed Jew, had said something that might have hurt Mr. Montenero's Jewish pride. From whichever of these causes his displeasure arose, it had the effect of completely sobering my spirits. My poetic fit was over. I did not even dare to speak to his daughter. I let the little girl in between us, and holding the child's hand, I applied myself diligently to point out to her "all the realities so worthy of

notice."

During our drive home, Berenice, apropos to something which Mowbray had said, but which I did not hear, suggested to her father some lines of Akenside, which she knew he particularly admired, on the nature and power of the early association of ideas. Mr. Montenero, with all the warmth my heart could wish, praised the poetic genius, and the intimate and deep knowledge of the human mind, displayed in this passage. His gravity gradually wore off, and I began to doubt whether the displeasure had ever existed. At

night, before Mowbray and I parted, when we talked over the day, he assured me that he had said nothing that could make Mr. Montenero displeased with me or any living creature; that they had been discussing some point of English history, on which old Montenero had posed him. As to my fears, Mowbray rallied me out of them effectually. He maintained that Montenero had not been at all displeased, and that I was a most absurd modern self-tormentor. "Could not a man look grave for two minutes without my racking my fancy for two hours to find a cause for it? Perhaps the man had the toothache; possibly the headache; but why should I, therefore, insist upon having the heartache ?"

CHAPTER XI.

MOWBRAY'S indifference was often a happy relief to my anxiety of temper; and I had surely reason to be grateful to him for the sacrifices he continued daily to make of his own tastes and pleasures to forward my views.

One morning in particular he was going to a rehearsal at Drury-lane, where I knew his heart was ; but finding me very anxious to go to the Mint and the Bank with Mr. Montenero and Berenice, Mowbray, who had a relation a bank director, immediately offered to accompany us, and procured us the means of seeing every thing in the best possible manner.

Nothing could, as he confessed, be less to his taste; and he was surprised that miss Montenero chose to be of the party. A day spent in viewing the Mint and