somewhat different now. The gimcracks, the old curiosities of the don, have dwindled away to two which still ornament the walls, an old map of London and its environs; a painting of a ferocious Welshman with a Bardolphian nose riding on a goat, and armed with a leek and a red-herring, instead of sword and gun; and a label here and there about ginger-beer and soda-water. Instead of the meagre-looking sage, a bluff waiter enters at your summons, upon whose character you cannot speculate, so dull is he, and so like the thousands you may daily meet. The old host offered, on the contrary, a very fertile subject for the theorist. 'Why," said the Tatler," should a barber, and Don Saltero among the rest, be for ever a politician, a musician, and a physician?" Ah, why, indeed? -who can tell? To this day the barber is still the same. Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or a guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere. You will also find him a politician; or if not a politician, a great friend and small critic of the drama. Had we space, and it were part of our subject, we could discourse upon this matter lengthily if not learnedly, and also upon another question equally luminous, which has puzzled philosophers for many ages, "Why do all poor old women wear red cloaks?" But we refrain, and continue our reminiscences of Chelsea.

In a house fronting the river, the site of which, to our no little mortification, we could not ascertain, resided Sir Thomas More, about the year 1520. Erasmus, who was his frequent guest, describes it as having been "neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough. There he conversed with his wife, his son, his daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There was not any man living," continues Erasmus, "who was so affectionate to his children as he; and he loveth his old wife as well as if she were a young maid." Here Holbein shared this great man's hospitality for three years; and here also the royal brute his master, when he was in the mood to do him honour, came in regal state, and sometimes privately, to dine with him. Here also the noble-minded daughter of the philosopher buried the grey head of her unfortunate father, after having at great risk stolen it from the pike on which it was fixed at London Bridge, by the order of the blood-thirsty Henry VIII. If there are occasions in which the insensible sod can become hallowed and consecrated, an incident like this ought in all true hearts to render it holy for evermore,— thither should pilgrims resort, and there should monuments be erected. Never did soil receive a more affecting deposit than when the head of that sage and Christian, with its long white beard, was laid by filial hands in the garden at Chelsea. Pity it is that there is no memorial on the spot to guide the steps of the thousands who would think it a labour of love to visit it. The body was buried at Chelsea, in the south side of the chancel.

Of the bridge connecting Chelsea with Battersea, useful, no doubt, but certainly not very ornamental, it is unnecessary to say more than merely mention the fact of its existence. Battersea, whose simple unpretending church-steeple peeps modestly from amid surrounding houses, requires more notice. Here at one time Pope had a favourite study fronting the Thames, and here was born the celebrated Lord Bolingbroke. Some portraits of the St. Johns, ancestors of

this nobleman, adorn the windows of the church. There is also a monument to his memory executed by Roubiliac.

The etymology of the word Battersea has often puzzled commentators. Doctors have differed as to whether St. Patrick or St. Peter, or plain Batter-pudding, or even butter, should have the honour of bestowing a name upon the village. Aubrey derives it from St. Patrick, it having, in William the Conqueror's time, been written Patrice-cey, afterwards Battrichsey, and then Battersea. Lysons battles in favour of St. Peter, and the etymology seems plain enough ;Petersea, Pattersea, Battersea; which is rendered more likely to be the true one, by the manor having once belonged to the abbey of St. Peter's, at Chertsey. This village used to be famous for asparagus, and that the following song was written in praise of some brighteyed daughter of the spot, real or imaginary.

Of all the broad rivers that flow to the ocean,

There's none to compare, native Thames ! unto thee;
And gladly for ever,

Thou smooth-rolling river,

I'd dwell on thy green banks at fair Battersea.

"T was there I was born, and 't is there I will linger,

And there shall the place of my burial be,

If fortune, caressing,

Will grant but one blessing,

The heart of the maiden of fair Battersea.

I seek not to wander by Tyber or Arno,

Or castle-crown'd rivers in far Germanie ;
To me, Oh, far dearer,

And brighter, and clearer,

The Thames as it rimples at fair Battersea.

Contentment and Hope, spreading charms all around them,
Have hallow'd the spot since she smil'd upon me—

O Love! thy joys lend us,

O Fortune, befriend us,

We'll yet make an Eden of fair Battersea.

A little farther on to the left, a small stream discharges itself into the Thames. This is the Wandle, the "blue transparent Vandalis" of Pope, and famous for trout. Pleasant places there are on its banks, between Carshalton and Wandsworth, where the angler may take his station, and be rewarded with something more substantial than mere nibbles. The stream is also renowned for the great number of dye-houses and manufacturing establishments upon its banks. Poetry, too, has striven to celebrate it. Witness the following ditty, made upon some charmer, whose beauty seems to have been the only witchcraft that she used:

Sweet little witch of the Wandle!
Come in my bosom and fondle,
I love thee sincerely,

I'll cherish thee dearly,

Sweet little witch of the Wandle!

Sweet little witch of the Wandle!

All our life long let us fondle;
Ne'er will I leave thee,

Ne'er will I grieve thee,

Sweet little witch of the Wandle!

Close by Wandsworth is a long lane, the name of which has become famous in all the country, since Foote wrote his admirable burlesque, "The Mayor of Garratt." Garratt Lane runs parallel for a considerable distance with the river Wandle, and used to be the scene in former years, of the election of a mock member of parliament, whenever there was a general election. The Mayor of Garratt was the name given to their president by a club of small tradesmen, who had formed an association about the year 1760, to prevent encroachments upon the neighbouring common. Afterwards, when Foote had given celebrity to the name, a mayor was elected by all the ragamuffins of the vicinity, who assembled in a public-house for that purpose; and later still, a member of parliament was elected instead of the mayor. Upon these occasions, there was generally a goodly array of candidates, who had their proposers and seconders, and made long burlesque speeches in the regular form. Thousands of persons from London used to meet in the lane, to the great profit of the innkeepers, who willingly paid all the expenses of flags, placards, and hustings. But these proceedings, which commenced in good humour, ended very often in broken heads and limbs; and the magistracy, scandalised by the scenes of debauchery, drunkenness, and robbery that were so frequent, determined to put a stop to the exhibition; and it was finally suppressed about the year 1796.

The next place we arrive at is Putney, famous as the head-quarters of Cromwell's army, when the royal forces were stationed at Hampton Court. Putney was also the birth-place of the other and less celebrated Cromwell, Earl of Essex, whose father was a blacksmith in the village. Drayton, in his Legend of Thomas Cromwell, says there was an unusual tide of the river at his birth, which was thought to predict his future greatness :

Twice flow'd proud Thames, as at my coming woo'd,
Striking the wondering borderers with fear,

And the pale Genius of that aged flood

To my sick mother, labouring, did appear,
And with a countenance much distracted stood,

Threatening the fruit her pained womb should bear.

There used to be a ferry at Putney in very early ages. It is mentioned in Domesday Book as yielding an annual toll of twenty shillings to the lord of the manor. When the bridge was built in 1729, the ferry yielded to the proprietor about four hundred pounds per annum, and was sold for eight thousand pounds. The spot has always been famous for its fishery, and, according to Lysons, is mentioned as early as the time of the Conquest. In 1663, the annual rent of the fishery was the three best salmon caught in the months of March, April, and May. When the estates of Sir Theodore Janssen, the noted South Sea Director, and lord of the manor of Putney, were sold, the fishery was let for six pounds per annum. It is still a favourite spot for anglers. The salmon are not reckoned very plentiful now-a-days; but there are great quantities of very fine smelts, as well as shad, roach, dace, barbels, gudgeons, and eels.

It was formerly the custom for persons travelling to the west of England from London to proceed as far as Putney by water, and then take coach. We learn from Stowe, that when Cardinal Wolsey was dismissed from the chancellorship, he sailed from York Place (Whitehall) to Putney, on his way to Hampton Court, to the great

disappointment" of the wavering and newfangled multitude," who expected that he would have been committed to the Tower. So great was the crowd when he embarked at Privy Stairs, that, according to Stowe, a man might have walked up and down on the Thames, so covered was it with boats filled with the people of London. The scene that took place on his arrival will always render Putney a memorable spot. As he mounted his mule, and all his gentlemen took horse to proceed to Hampton, he espied a man riding in great haste down the hill into the village. The horseman turned out to be one Master Norris, charged with a message from the king to the cardinal, bidding him be of good cheer, for that his present disgrace was not so much the result of the king's indignation as a measure of policy to satisfy some persons, over whose heads he should yet arise again in new splendour. "When the cardinal," to use the quaint and forcible language of Stowe, " had heard Master Norris report these good and comfortable words of the king, he quickly lighted from his mule all alone, as though he had been the youngest of his men, and incontinently kneeled down in the dirt upon both his knees, holding up his hands for joy of the king's most comfortable message. 'Master Norris,' quoth he, when I consider the joyful news that you have brought me, I could do no less than greatly rejoice. Every word pierces so my heart, that the sudden joy surmounted my memory, having no regard or respect to the place; but I thought it my duty, that in the same place where I received this comfort to laud and praise God upon my knees, and most humbly to render unto my sovereign lord my most hearty thanks for the same.' And as he was talking thus upon his knees to Master Norris, he would have pulled off a velvet night-cap, which he wore under his black hat and scarlet cap, but he could not undo the knot under his chin: wherefore with violence he rent his laces off his cap, and pulled his said cap from his head, and kneeled bareheaded. This done, he mounted again on his mule, and so rode forth the high way up into the town."

6

What a picture this would make !-and, were our voice potential with an artist, we would advise him to try his hand upon it. But we must conclude the story. When they arrived at Putney heath, Master Norris presented the cardinal with a ring, telling him that the king had sent it as a token of his good will. "Oh!" exclaimed

the ambitious old man, "if I were lord of all this realm, Master Norris, the one half thereof would be too small a reward to you for your pains and good news." He then presented him with a gold chain which he usually wore round his neck, with a gold cross, in which was inclosed a small fragment of the true cross on which Jesus was crucified, "wear this about your neck continually for my sake," said he, "and remember me to the king when ye shall see opportunity." Upon this, Master Norris took his departure; but the cardinal was still unsatisfied, and before he was out of sight sent one of his gentlemen in all haste after him to bring him back again. "I am very sorry," said he, "that I have no token to send to the king; but if you will at my request present the king with this poor fool, I trust he will accept him, for he is for a nobleman's pleasure, forsooth, worth one thousand pounds."-" So Master Norris," [we again quote Stowe,]" took the fool, with whom my lord was fain to send six of his tallest yeomen to help him to convey the fool to the

court; for the poor fool took on like a tyrant, rather than he would have departed from my lord. But, notwithstanding, they conveyed him, and so brought him to the court, where the king received him very gladly." This fool, from the value set upon him, appears to have been supereminent in his folly. A fool after the fashion of him in Shakspeare, whom Jacques met in the forest,

"A fool--a fool-a motley fool

A noble fool-a worthy fool."

The cardinal, for aught we know to the contrary, might have concealed a deep meaning under his present. "You will not take wise men into your favour, O king, therefore take this fool." His head, however, we are justified in believing, would not have been of much worth, if his master had perceived the satire. At all events the fool showed that he had some sense by his dislike to enter the service of a king whose propensity to taking off heads was so remarkable.

Among other reminiscences of Putney, we must not omit that it was the birth-place of the great historian Gibbon, and that Pitt died on Putney heath. Here also, in a small house near the bridge, resided the novelist, Richardson, and here he wrote "Sir Charles Grandison."

THE WITNESS-BOX.

THE nominal purpose of a court of justice is to seek the truth; but I question whether the truth is ever in other places more attacked, sneered at, brow-beaten, ridiculed, and put out of countenance. It is the truth, which every one in his turn finds it his interest to conceal. It is truth that every one is afraid of. Even the party most unequivocally in the right is anxious to exclude the truth from the other side, lest it may seem to contradict his own; and all the lawyers, and even the judge, seem as much on the watch to stop the witness's mouth every two minutes, as they have been to make him come there to open it. To me, one of the most ridiculous things in the world is a witness in the box, trying (poor fellow!) to give in his testimony. He is, we will suppose, not in the slightest degree interested in either of the parties, and, doubtless, wishes them both tied together by the neck, and at the bottom of the Thames. He comes into court, not voluntarily, but dragged if he resists, by two or three scowling ministers of the law, who, from the mere fact of his being presumed to know something about the pending suit, think themselves entitled to treat him as if he had been brought up for robbing a hen-roost. He is forced from his business or his amusements for the purpose of speaking the truth, and he inwardly resolves to tell the whole story as soon as possible, and get rid of the business. He thinks he knows the worst. He thinks the loss of time, and the awkwardness of speaking for the first time of his life in public, are the extent of his sufferings. Unsuspecting victim! He no sooner enters the box than he finds himself at once the centre of a circle of enemies, and holding a position not greatly unlike that of a prisoner in an Indian war-dance. He tries to tell his story.

WITNESS. I was going down Maiden-lane— ·