That the moment they come in
Raise an uproar and a din,
Rating all the servants round:
"If it's lost it must be found.
Why was all the garlic wasted?
There that honey has been tasted;
And these olives pilfered here.
Where's the pot we bought last year?

What's become of all the fish?

Which of you has broke the dish ?"

Thus it is; but heretofore

They sat them down to doze and snore.

Nothing is more remarkable in this scene than the skill with which the poet has made Euripides, all along the chief object of his satire, expose his own faults in the very speeches in which he affects to magnify his merits. The translation is far above my praise, but as a woman privileged to avow her want of learning, it may be permitted to express the gratitude which the whole sex owes to the late illustrious scholar, who has enabled us to penetrate to the heart of one of the scholar's deepest mysteries; and to become acquainted with something more than the name of Aristophanes.

XXXVII.

AUTHORS ASSOCIATED WITH PLACES.

LORD CLARENDON-GEOFFREY CHAUCER-JOHN HUGHES.

Or all places connected with the great civil war, none retains traces more evident and complete of its ravages than the beautiful district which a tolerable pedestrian may traverse in a morning walk, and which comprises the site of the two battles of Newbury, and the ruins of Donnington Castle, one of the most memorable sieges of the Parliamentary army.

I went over that most interesting ground (not, however, on foot) on one of the most brilliant days of the last brilliant autumn, with the very companion for such an excursion: one who has shown in his "Boscobel" how well he can write the most careful and accurate historical research with the rarer power which holds attention fixed upon the page; and who, possessing himself' a fine old mansion at the foot of the Castle Hill, and having a good deal of the old cavalier feeling in his own character, takes an interest almost personal in the events and the places of the story.

The first of these engagements took place, according to Clarendon, on the 18th of September, 1643, and has been most minutely related by cotemporary writers, the noble historian of the Rebellion, Oldwison, Heath, the anonymous author of "The Memoirs of Lord Essex," and many others, varying as to certain points, according to their party predilections, but agreeing in the main. A very brief summary must answer my purpose.

Charles commanded the Royalists in person, while the Parliamentary forces were led by Essex, the King's object being to intercept the enemy, and prevent his reaching London. The common, then and now called "The Wash," was, together with the neighboring lanes, the principal scene of the combat. The line of wood has been in some measure altered, still sufficient

indications remain to localize the several incidents of this hotlycontested field. Essex, assailed on his march from Hungerford by the fiery Rupert the evening before, encamped on the open common, "impatient," as one of the Commonwealth narrators says, "of the sloth of darkness," all the more so that the King is said to have sent the Earl a challenge to give battle the next day. On that day the great battle took place, when the valor of the raw and undisciplined train-bands, the citizen-soldiers, so much despised by the cavaliers, withstood the chivalry of the royal army, and enabled the general, although hotly pursued for several miles, and furiously charged by Prince Rupert, who had three horses killed under him that day, to accomplish his object, and conduct his troops to London.

Essex, previous to his advance toward Reading, sent a “ticket" to Mr. Falke, the minister of Enborne parish, commanding him to bury all the dead on either side; and three huge mounds still attest the compliance of the clergyman with an order worthy of a Christian soldier. His Majesty, hearing of the "pious wish" of the Lord-General, issued his warrant to the Mayor of Newbury for the recovery of the wounded. Rival historians differ as to the number of the killed. But it seems certain that the loss of the Parliamentarians amounted to more than five hundred; and that on the King's part not fewer than a thousand were wounded and slain. Among them fell many distinguished loyalists-above all, the young, the accomplished, the admirable Lord Falkland, he who, for talent and virtue, might be called the Hampden of his party, and who, like Hampden, left no equal behind.

Ac

The night before the battle he had slept at the house of Mr. Head, whom my companion (a man of ancient family and high connections) was proud to claim among his ancestry; and tradition says, that being convinced that an engagement the next day was inevitable, and being strongly impressed with the presentiinent that it would prove fatal to himself, he determined, in order to be fully prepared for the event, to receive the sacrament. cordingly, very early on the morning of the battle it was administered to him by the clergyman of Newbury, and Mr. Head, and the whole family, by Lord Falkland's particular wish, were present. It is also related that his corpse, a few hours afterward, was brought slung on a horse, and deposited in the Town Hall, from whence it was subsequently removed for interment.

**

Such strong impressions of coming death were not uncommon in that age to men of imaginative temperament. But it is not improbable that Lord Falkland, in that hour of danger, remembered a prediction which had come across him strangely not many years before, and which is thus related :

"While he was with the King at Oxford, his Majesty went one day to see the library, where he was showed, among other books, a Virgil,' nobly printed and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would have his Majesty make a trial of the Sortes Virgliaræ, a usual kind of divination in ages past, made by opening a 'Virgil.' The King, opening the book, the passage which happened to come up was that part of Dido's imprecation against Eneas, IV. 615, &c., which is thus translated by Dryden :

666

'Oppressed with numbers in the unequal field,
His men discouraged, and himself dispelled,
Let him for succor sue from place to place,
Torn from his subjects, and his son's embrace.'

King Charles seeming concerned at this accident, the Lord Falkland, who observed it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping that he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King's thoughts from any impression the other might make upon him; but the place Lord Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King's, being the following expressions of Evender upon the untimely death of his son, Pallas, En. XI. 152:

"O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word!
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword,
I warned thee, but in vain; for well I knew
What perils youthful ardor would pursue;
That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war.
O curst essay of arms! disastrous doom!
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!'"

Charles was notoriously superstitious; and we may well im agine, that besides the grief of losing the noble adherent, whose very presence conferred honor and dignity on his levee, a strong personal feeling must have pressed upon him as he recollected

the double prophecy, one half of which had been so fatally fulfilled.

I could not choose a better specimen of Clarendon, that great master of historical portrait-painting, than his character of Lord Falkland. The writer who so immortalizes another, gains immortality himself:

"In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss is, it must be most infamous and accursed to all posterity.

"Before his parliament, his condition of life was so happy that it was hardly capable of improvement. Before he came to twenty years of age he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grandfather. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where his father was Lord-Deputy; so that when he returned into England, to the possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow up by the custom of conversation, and therefore was to make a pure election of his company, which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And it can not be denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship, for the agreeableness of their manners and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship, for the most part, was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity, and such men had a title to his bosom.

"He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts in any man; and if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron toward them, even above his fortune; of which in those administrations he was such a dispenser as if he had been trusted with it to such uses; and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by an that were necessary to that end; and therefore havin solved not to see London, which he loved above all