Ministers to that of Sejanus, who made the reign of Tiberius hateful to the old Romans. Stanhope, in rising to reply, spoke with such vehemence in vindication of himself and his colleagues, that he burst a blood-vessel, and died the next day. May it be eternally remembered,' says the British Merchant, to the honour of Earl Stanhope, that he died poorer in the king's service than when he came into it. Walsingham, the great Walsingham, died poor; but the great Stanhope lived in the time of the South Sea temptations.'

Philip, the second Earl Stanhope, died in 1786, aged seventy-two. His eldest son Charles (the third Earl) married Lord Chatham's eldest daughter, Hester Pitt, of which marriage was born the eccentric Lady Hester Stanhope. Both the above Earls were exceedingly liberal in their political opinions, and both were excellent mathematicians. The first was so in spite of his guardian, the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, who prohibited him when a boy from the pursuit of his favourite study. He was also an accomplished linguist, a sound classical scholar, with so retentive a memory that he could repeat the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey by rote. Earl Philip was a munificent patron of learning and learned men. As a statesman, he was one of the most independent of his day. That day was one of splendid extravagance; but Earl Philip did not follow the mode. On one of his occasional visits to the House of Lords from Geneva, where he long resided, a new door

keeper seeing him about to pass into the House in a dress. of extreme simplicity, impeded his entrance, with the remark, 'Now, then, honest man, go back! You can have no business in such a place as this, honest man!' The Earl was a determined republican, and made his son (Lord Mahon) offer himself to the citizens of Westminster in 1774, engaging to promote all popular causes, and to declare for all Wilkes's self-denying articles in their largest. latitude. He was then only twenty-one years of age.

Earl Charles was a more advanced republican than his father; and when the French Revolution burst forth, he laid aside all the external ornaments of the peerage. But he is remembered for better things than this. When a young man, he gained a prize from the Society of Stockholm for a Memoir on the Pendulum. He was, perhaps, too universal a genius to be very useful to mankind; and among his projects, rather than his achievements, may be mentioned his arithmetical machine; his plan for securing buildings from fire; his new printing-press; his monochord for tuning musical instruments; and his designs for a vessel to sail against wind and tide (Dr. Doran's Notes to Walpole's Last Journals).

R

HORSE-SHOES AT OAKHAM CASTLE.

R

UTLAND, the smallest county in England,-— little more than half the size of Middlesex,

has its excellences thus sung by Drayton :

'Love not thyself the less, although the least thou art ;
What thou in greatness wants, wise Nature doth impart
In goodness of thy soil; and more delicious mould,
Surveying all this isle, the sun did ne'er behold.
Bring forth that British vale, and be it ne'er so rare,
But Catmose with that vale for richness shall compare.
What forest nymph is found, how brave soe'er she be,
But Lyfield shows herself as brave a nymph as she?
What river ever rose from bank or swelling hill
Than Rutland's wandering Wash, a delicater rill?
Small shire that canst produce to thy proportion good,
One Vale of special name, one Forest, and one Flood.'

In our fine old author's Alexandrines we do not, however, find certain odd things for which this small shire is or has been noted-as Stilton cheese, trenchers, and Jeffrey Hudson, the dwarf of Oakham, served up at table in a cold pie; to which must be added the curious custom of nailing a horse-shoe on the castle-gate, which dates some seven centuries back.

Oakham, the county town, had anciently a Hall, which had been taken by the Conqueror into his own hands; since Edward the Confessor beoueathed the demesne in this county to his wife conditionally, that after her death it should descend to the Monastery of St. Peter at West minster, which donation was confirmed by a charter dated 1064. A Hall was the usual appendage to a manor, and differed in its architectural character as well as in its nature from a castle. These Halls answer to the manorhouses of a later period; and in the Conqueror's record they are denominated caput manerii, thus marking the connection between the demesne and the residence and the feudal chief before he had received the king's licence to build an embattled dwelling. A Ferrers crossed the sea with the Conqueror, and upon his descendant Henry II. bestowed the manor of Oakham. Robert Ferrers was settled in Derbyshire, and in the 3d of Stephen (1137) created the first Earl. His son, Walkeline de Ferrers, held the barony of Oakham by the service of one knight's fee and a half in 12 Henry II.; and in 22 Henry 11. he paid 100 marks for trespassing in the king's forests in these parts. His ancestors bore arms semée of horseshoes, as designative of Master of the Horse to the Duke of Normandy. It is to him that the erection of the Hall, still existing, has been attributed; and upon evidence, says the Rev. C. H. Hartshorne, which there seems no reasonable ground for disputing. The style of architecture alone affords the strongest presumption that the building was