recover from his surprise, the attendants disappeared, the door closed, and the key turned; and, amidst the loud shouts of laughter from without, he heard the voice of the pitanciary, declaring that he should never taste a second course until he had done justice to the first, the dainty dish set before him upon the table. And the threat was carried into effect without the slightest mitigation; for of no other food did he partake, neither bite nor sup could he obtain, until, after two whole days of solitude and abstinence, the cravings of hunger compelled the unlucky representative of the Chancery to swallow both the affront and the process." These recollections did not frighten the Porte-joye, perhaps they animated him with the mixed feeling of revenge for past insults, as well as the desire to do his duty. He seized the palfrey's rein with one hand, with the other he attempted to force the writ into the abbot's hand. The abbot pleaded certain patents exempting him from attendance on parliament, or from giving any advice or counsel to the king, his heirs or successors, on any matter whatsoever," Well do I know," he added, "how anxious my lord chancellor is to fill the parliament house with the like of me; but with this patent I defy him-let him do his worst I won't come to parliament." The Porte-joye muttered something of a commission of rebellion. "But all further discussion between those parties was prevented by the high sheriff, who commanded his clerk to read the whole of the writ, by which he was commanded to cause two knights to be elected for the shire; and from every city within his bailiwick two citizens; and from every borough two burgesses, all of the more discreet and wiser sort, and to cause them to come before the king in his parliament at the before-mentioned place and day, with full powers from their respective communities, to perform and consent to such matters as by common counsel shall be then and there ordained; and this you will in no wise omit, as you will answer at your peril."" The anxiety to escape all interference in the election was strongly manifested by the spokesman of the assembled rustics. The sheriffs contrive to win over to their party the most clamorous of the brawlers, and Sir Richard de Pogeys is declared to be chosen as one of the representatives. Sir Richard is called upon to give good bail,-i. e. two substantial freeholders," that he will duly attend in his place among the commons, according to the usage of parliament." Sir Richard, before the words were well uttered, was already galloping at full speed across the fields. An unsuccessful chase after him, by the bailiffs, is described, and Sir Francis Palgrave, from an office copy of the sheriff's special return to the writ, records the escape of Sir Richard into the Chiltern Hundreds. After the excitement subsides, the sheriff contrives, by a juggle, to declare Sir Thomas de Turberville the second member. "This declaration excited a universal outcry of discontent and indignation amongst the shiresmen. They whooped, scolded, groaned; and John Trafford, again acting as spokesman, loudly accused the sheriff with jobbing and collusion, employing the most uncourteous and unmeasured language. It is a repetition of the fraud and deceit which you practised at the last parliament, when you levied seven pounds sterling for the wages of your ally and cater-cousin, Sir Mar maduke Vavasour, being at the enormous rate of four shillings and eight pence a day-two groats above the settled allow ance e-whereas he was never duly elected by us, and we could have hired as good a member, ay, and a better one, who would have been glad to do all the work of the county for five pounds, yea, even five marks, and who would have agreed in the lump, to accept the said sum for all his expenses going and returning, and for all his keep at Westminster, let the parliament sit as long as it mightyea, even for a whole month.' Voices were rising louder and louder, and there was every appearance of a new storm. But the banner of Sir Giles de Argentein, emblazoned with the bearing allusive to his name the three cups of silver-was elevated, the trumpets sounded, the horses were in motion, and the spearmen and knights, closing round the sheriff, pierced through the crowd, and the meeting was dissolved." Our travellers, after witnessing this scene, proceed to London. They are fortunate enough to see the election of a lord-mayor, and the funeral of an alderman. Our author indulges in a detailed account of his theory of the civic rights of Aldermanbury, and takes some pains to prove that the aldermen were the representatives of an ancient and remote victorious race, and the citizens at large the descendants of a vanquished race a mixed, plebeian, multitude. The office of alderman descended from father to son, and might be the subject of sale if the son were disposed to alienate his birthright; in fact the aldermanship was more like a barony or manor, with its appurtenant jurisdiction, than a corpo ration office. A power, however, of obtaining the office of alderman by election even then existed, and in the struggles of the free citizens of London, and of those whom marriage or apprenticeship enfranchised, are we to trace the first germs of that liberty which is certainly a greater practical blessing, as now understood and enjoyed in England, than ever elsewhere on the face of the earth. The whole condition of society was ultimately altered by elements which it is not difficult to exhibit in analyzing the constitution of the ancient guilds or incorporations of craftsmen. The condition of the apprentice a state between servitude and freedom, involving the relation of master and pupil, as well as something of the famulus of the old universities was one that, beyond all controversy, in those days prepared the young man in the best possible way for the future exercise of the duties of his station. The tendencies of trade to create something like the inferior castes in Hindostan, where particular occupa tions become hereditary, were corrected, on the one hand, by the principle of adoption which apprenticeship involves, and, on the other, by the eligibility to high office and rank, which was among the important privileges of those who had thus earned their freedom. The admission of the apprentice into the guild, was evidence of his good conduct during that period of life in which the moral character is formed; and the relation in which he and his master stood, during the five or seven years of youth passing into the stage of manhood, was one calculated to influence the mind in that "twilight-time 'twixt good and ill," by better elements than those that enter into the calculations of profit and gain of the mere political economist. The operative, through this kindly relation, belonged to the same order as his employer. "In old time," says our author, "the workman was the 'brother,' the 'compagnon,' the 'gesell' of his employer; perhaps poorer in purse, inferior in station, younger in age, but all united by the most kindly and social bonds. They repeated the same creed, met in the same church, lighted their lamp before the same altar, feasted at the same board. Thus they constituted the elements of that burgher aristocracy, which equally withstood the levelling anarchy of the infuriated peasantry, and yet, at the same time, assisted in destroying the abuses which had sprung out of the servitude of the soil." The advantages of this system, common to all the states of Europe, were the subject of conversation with our travellers, when the discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Sir William de Ormsby, the chief justice of the king's bench. The travellers are conducted to the guild-hall, at the moment the sergeants were compelling, by main force, a manacled criminal to stand at the bar. The malefactor had been apprehended in the very act of cutting a purse from the girdle of Sir John de Stapleford, vicar-general of the bishop of Winchester. The chief justice, according to the severe laws of the day, intimated to the officers that, as he had been taken in the fact, and as they therefore might-and, indeed, ought to have struck off the head of the prisoner before the conduit, it was unnecessary thus to have given the court the trouble of passing judgment. "Let him be hanged upon the elms at Tyburn," said Sir William. As the sergeants dragged him across the threshold, he clung to a pillar which divided the portal, shrieking, in a voice of agony-" I demand of holy church the benefit of my clergy." The vicar-general, who had through the proceedings exhibited manifest distress at his enforced participation in the scene, produced his breviary for the purpose of trying the truth of the plea. He held the page close to the eyes of the kneeling prisoner. The bloodless lips were seen to move-" Legit ut clericus," exclaimed the good priest, and the declaration freed the criminal from death, though not from captivity, and the severe punishments of the church, which were, however, administered in mercy, and in the hope of thus promoting the amendment of the offender, and leading the transgressor to repentance. Our travellers witness other trials. In one case the culprit "wages his law as a freeman of London, as one of the burgesses to whom it is granted by the Conqueror, that they should be worth the same law as in the days of good King Edward. Therefore he is entitled to refute the accusation by the declaration of his friends. Seven shall be the compurgators chosen and named by the prisoner, according to the old Anglo-Saxon law. If they all concur in testifying his innocence-if their oath declares him guiltless-he is quitted for ever of the transgression which the king has laid to his charge." The plea is overruled—a jury of the witnesses to the fact is sworn, and give in their vere dictum or verdict-the summing up of their own testimony. The verdict, which is special, finds some half dozen facts very unfavourable to the prisoner in addition to that which would alone seem to be the issue they had to try. When the culprit is asked why judgment be not passed against him, his counsel is allowed to insist that "the indictment is altogether void, inasmuch as the prisoner has been forced, by artifice and deception, from the sanctuary of the Black friars." The next chapter is entitled "Parliament." It is not quite equal to the last, and the subject is one which cannot easily be discussed within the limits to which Sir Francis Palgrave has confined himself. The most valuable part of it is a highly picturesque description of the contests between the archbishops of York and Canterbury, and their respective standard-bearers and attendants, for precedence on their way to the parliament-house. The chapter entitled " The Friar's Study" is a curious picture of the learning of the middle ages; and the next and last embodies Sir Francis Palgrave's own speculations on the tendency of the studies at present popular. His anticipations are oppressive and disheartening. We trust that he is wrong in his bodings of evil. The progress of society has been, through the whole history of man, from good onward to good-severer trials, no doubt, in each advancing stage, but in each for the species and for the individual higher triumphs,-evil for ever existing and for ever overruled and conquered, and lost in higher good, which, but for the evil-we say it in hesitation, and reverentially-were, perhaps, impossible,the trials being in all cases proofs of man's increased strength-and pledges of the continuing support of Him whose children we are, and who will not suffer us to be tempted above our powers of resistance. FEMALE PORTRAITS. NO. 1. AUNT EMILY." INTRODUCTION. I HAVE seldom had the momentary shock which an ample black seal infallibly occasions, more agreeably compensated, than by the invitation I lately received, to accompany a valued young friend in taking possession of a noble family inheritance, which had unexpectedly opened to him by the death of a very worthless relation. For centuries-almost since the Conquest-the name of Shad been handed down irreproachably, in a line, “all the sons of which were brave, and all the daughters virtuous". -so that it was with more than a father's usually outraged feelings in similar cases, that Sir John Sbeheld its spotless escutcheon first stained by the reckless profligacy of his own eldest son, and the blot then, as it were perpetuated, by his disgraceful union with a woman of abandoned character. The birth of an heir to this inauspicious marriage had been marked (for the first time in the annals of S Hall) with no even external rejoicings. The grandfather's sick heart recoiled from the usually grateful title; and the greyhaired servants saw little cause for exultation, in the intrusion into the family with which they had long been identified, of what they termed, in their homely phraseology," a bird of a bad nest." Nor were their prognostics unverified. Old Sir John went down to the grave, unconsoled by one gleam of amendment in his reprobate heir; and baffled in repeated attempts to rescue from similar degradation the unfortunate boy who was destined to succeed both. The only subject of congratulation (and a sad one!) in the whole affair, was the early desertion of her husband by his profligate mother, which secured the family against a further progeny of congenial disposition and promise. It is a dreadful thought when the only tacit hope of redemption for an ancient house lies in the death of the heir to its honors; and a rare thing to have that hope realized-for the proverb, that "ill weeds grow apace," does not always, alas! involve the concomitant of their early decay! It was thus, however, with young William S. Premature initiation into his father's vices cut him off while that father was yet almost in the prime of life; and the decease, about the same time, of his unhappy mother, opened for Sir George the way to a second marriage, by which all the chance my young friend possessed of the succession would in all probability have been for ever blighted. A slave for wealth and title, even when burdened with a profligate incumbent, is ever readily found; and all the preliminaries were settled with a city heiress-nay, even (with a mockery of kindness) the heir presumptive-Sir George's nephew by an only sister had been invited to S Hall, to witness the ceremony which might close its possession against him for ever, when a fit of apoplexy, brought on by a course of civic banqueting among his intended bride's connexions, carried off the prematurely aged bridegroom, and left his young heir the striking task of conducting obsequies, when he had been summoned to witness nuptials. It was an office in which, of course, he felt a novice, and there were many circumstances in his new position which made the young and diffident baronet cling on the occasion to a friend. I was selected, perhaps from being just so much older than himself as to have acquired experience of the world without a sufficient disparity in our ages to produce formality, or stifle implicit confidence. I flew to obey his summons with an alacrity which, on any other similar occasion, would have been unfeeling. But regret for Sir George (even had I ever seen him) was out of the question; and it was not till the beautiful "hope in death" of the church service awakened—by its awful incongruity with the life and habits of the deceased-thoughts of Christian pity for the unimportant prodigal, that I could share the subdued and sobered feelings with which one of the most amiable and disinterested of youths entered on his brilliant possessions. They were just such as to realize not only the natural wishes of mankind for affluence and distinction, but the dreams of refined and classical enjoyment peculiar to the mind of their youthful heir. Kept more chivalrously honorable than even nature had made him, by the beacon of opposite vices, it was his bright aspiration to restore, in his own person, the tarnished honors of the ancestry whose minutest deeds of glory were "familiar" to him as "household words." Passionately fond of the country, he saw his fairest visions of dignified retirement realized in the possession of the most extensive park and noblest woods ofshire. The mansion, which his grandfather had too much taste, and his uncle, happily, too little money to injure by modernizing, was the beau ideal of an ancient English baronial hall; while a library, which, even to a frequenter of the Bodleian, would have seemed well furnished-and a picturegallery, which half the collectors of Europe might have envied, completed the heir-looms expressly adapted to the tastes of him on whom they had worthily descended. It was in vain I tried to get away, and leave the young heir to their enjoyment. It was not in Charles S's nature to enjoy any thing alone; and without a friend, even the old books he delighted to dig for in the obscurest recesses of the library, and the chests of old family papers which it was his darling hobby to rummage over and arrange, would have lost their zest. I am, both by disposition and profession, an idler, and while Sir Charles was secluded, alike by decorum and inclination, from general society, I felt it would be cruel both to him and myself, to desert him. The library-in which, from mutual predilection, we passed much of our time-did not owe its charms to musty tomes alone. The intervals in its richly filled shelves were occupied by metal more attractive still-a few choice family portraits, chiefly female, rescued, by the gallantry of successive baronets, from promiscuous association with the grim-mailed warriors, and buff-coated cavaliers, and periwigged judges, of the "gallery," properly so called. There reigned in all of those sweet female portraits-with every variety of feature and expression which alliance with the best blood of England could introduce -that inexpressible charm of modesty and virtue which would have made them shine amid the "beauties" of a Lely or a Kneller, like creatures of another and purer element. I pleased myself and Sir Charles, by fancifully naming them after the female ornaments of British story. One specimen of matronly dignity, from her heroic, though feminine expression, we christened “Lady Russell," Lady Jane Grey" we called a fair, serene young creature, of "more than mortal mould," whose Elizabethan costume half favoured the supposition. A lovely being, somewhat fancifully habited in the dress of the same periodwith an air of deep, and, as it were, prophetic melancholy-we transformed into the heroine of " Kenilworth❞—the early murdered wife of the ambitious Leicester. 66 In assigning names to these, and many more as interesting, fancy might freely expatiate, unrebutted, by the perhaps yet stranger realities of the fair subjects' actual history. For, beyond a simple title in a dry obsolete catalogue, or honoured place in a long family tree, what earthly record generally survives, after the lapse of centuries, of the unobtrusive virtues or silent sufferings of woman? But when in the same wantonness of imagination-I was about, one evening, to affix to a beautiful picture (the dress of which, though fanciful, was unquestionably of far later date) the cognomen of " Agnes de Meranie," from the lately published exquisite novel of "Philip Augustus," my young friend interrupted me, and said, with a smile Though duty obliges me to interpose and prevent your metamorphosing into a French queen of the middle ages, so modern a personage as my own good aunt, there really is so odd a coincidence (in some respects) between her feelings and history, and those of the heroine you fancy her to resemble, that, some day or other, I must give you her letters, (which I knew my grandfather always preserved, and which I found, after a long search, only yesterday,) to show you, what nobody doubts, that the romance of real life beats the art of the novelist hollow; and if you don't feel as much for our ' Agnes de Meranie' as for Mr. James's delightful creation, the fault will be in the telling. My poor aunt was her own historian; and the tale, as poured into the sympathising ear of a cousin, not much older than herself, who acted as a mother to the orphan girl, too unvarnished, perhaps, to excite interest in any one who has not known the family, or seen the picture." 66 ་ But I have done both," said I, eagerly-" and as it is just the dismal weather to give a tale of woe its most suitable accompaniments and as I know old Reynolds, the steward, has been waiting for you this half hour, with a bundle of accounts as thick as my arm, your vague promise must be fulfilled this moment, by your leaving me to an evening's tête-à-tête with your beautiful aunt." 66 "It is the best compensation I believe I can make for leaving you at all," said Sir Charles; "and here, just under her own lovely picture," added he, (unlocking an ebony cabinet), repose the letters you so much wish to see. They begin, I think, about the time of the French Revolution, for, if I remember right, on the arrival of emigrés at Lausanne hinged much of my poor aunt's uncommon and mysterious history. Look at her face, now and then, as you read it, and see if you don't think the handwriting of Nature there corresponds with Nature's eloquence in the simple paper before you. How it all ended, far be it from me to tell you; but I must be off to old Reynolds, to avoid the temptation of putting you out of pain." The Baronet vanished. I had the fire replenished and the lamps trimmed, that their soft radiance might fall fully on the lovely picture, in whose expressive features resignation predominated over a strong, though subsiding air of alarm and distress, reminding one of the gaze of a startled fawn. In the full light thus, for the first time, obtained, (for the picture in the day-time was thrown much into shadow by the projection of the old-fashioned cabinet over which it hung,) I observed that the back-ground was an Alpine landscape of uncommon and savage wildness; not the usual soft-purpled valley which, in Switzerland, so |