Winter had given place to gladsome spring, | It must be he has heard so." She had, for the and, with the earliest May, Helen and I had accompanied Alice to her country home, and had turned our route southward. July had come, with its glowing mornings and balmy evenings. Alice sat once more in the deep window by the piazza. One year ago Philip was there beside her. The sweet morning air came stealing over her warm cheek, and the wild, exulting song of the birds fell on her ear as pleasantly as then, and a feeling of renewed trust and peace came to her heart as she inhaled the breath and listened to the voice of nature, man and thought of Him who had thus made for "all nature beauty to his eye and music to his ear;" and, not only yielding anew her own heart to His trust and keeping, she rejoiced that He, too, would preserve the misguided wanderer whom she still mourned and loved. Directly her father entered the room and seated himself by her side, handing her a letter, without a word. Alice took it, starting as she looked at the superscription. Did she not know that well? She had received one letter written by that hand, and she needed not to open this to know it was from Philip Howe. She broke the seal, and read "MY BELOVED ALICE,-Once more, though for the last time, I must call you thus-I am here, near the spot where you live, and I could not leave again without once more writing to you. 66 Alice, I have found it-that faith for which you sacrificed your love-and it is you to whom I am indebted for it. That religion which could prompt an impassioned, warm-hearted woman to sacrifice what she confessed were her dearest hopes-I knew that religion could not be all a dream. Since that I have thought, I have studied, I have read, and conversed with the wisest and best divines. I have always believed in a Creator; I knew the world did not come by chance; but I believed not in the God of your love. I said, 'He is only an all-powerful God who can create and destroy.' The Bible and its glorious truths were nothing to me. "Now, thanks be to Him, I believe, fully and fervently, all. But all this has come too late for my joy in this world, though I trust not too late for my peace in another. "You are another's now. I had not thought you could so soon forget your love; yet I do not reproach you. It was right that you should struggle against your love for an infidel. Were you still free and loving me, I might now claim you, since that bar to our happiness is removed. Yet now I must once more bid you farewell! And, deeply and faithfully as I still love you, still I rejoice that you once refused my love, as without that I might never have learned a nobler than even worship of you. My still loved, but lost Alice, 'God bless you!' P. H." Alice's face grew absolutely radiant with joy. Unmindful of her father's presence, she fell on her knees, and fervently thanked the Being who had thus answered her prayers. At length, when she had somewhat recovered from her emotion, she handed her father the note. "What means this, Alice?" said he "you are another's now!" "Indeed," exclaimed Alice, "I do not know. moment, forgotten the last part of the note in her joy at the intelligence contained in the first. She thought some time. "I will write to him," said she finally, "and tell him, father, that I am still free." The words are wise and truthful ones And the white lips with anguish dumb Are there not words we should have said, Whose cherish'd links are broken? No dream of bygone years, Thick on whose brightness lies the rust Of unavailing tears? Alas! we all are haunted by Some shade that ne'er departs; Is there no love-lit eye, of which But there are graves amid the past, A CHAPTER ON CHAINS AND BRACELETS. BY MRS. WHITE. Without falling back upon the theory of Tertullian, who gives an antediluvian antiquity to the ornaments which form the subject of our paper, attributing the discovery of their materials, and the invention of the trinkets themselves, to the love of the fallen angels for the daughters of men, we find them mentioned in Hebrew history as early as the days of the Patriarchs, and trace them thence to the Egyptian, Chaldean, and Persian nations, whence their transit to the Lacedemonians and Phoenicians, and subsequently to the Gauls and Celts, was a natural result of war and commerce. In the East, the chain appears to have been strictly a badge of honour and authority conferred at the hands of a king, and except where Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem under the similitude of a woman, we do not remember an instance in holy writ in which it is referred to as an article of feminine adornment. The prophet Jeremiah includes necklaces and bracelets amongst the tinkling ornaments of which the haughty daughters of Israel were to be despoiled, but chains are not mentioned. The investiture of Joseph by the Egyptian Pharaoh, and of Daniel at the hands of Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, will occur to every one. Bracelets, on the contrary, were worn by both sexes, and were possibly more distinctive of wealth than rank; though amongst the Jewish men, we read that Judah, the head of a tribe, wore them; and the Amalekite who slew Saul took as part of his spoil the bracelet that was upon his arm: this is the first instance in which the armilla is recorded as being worn by a warrior. Hereafter we shall perceive, that not only was the custom of wearing these ornaments, but even the dictation of the occasions on which they should be worn and presented, continued from nation to nation, down to comparatively modern times. From the Chaldeans the Persians are said to have adopted the chain as one of the insignia of office; but no man was permitted to assume it who had not been invested by royal hands. Homer, who wrote 997, some say 994, years before Christ, mentions the bracelet; and Keating tells us, that by royal command, in the reign of Muirheanhoin, King of Ireland, anno mundi 3070, the Irish gentlemen were distinguished from the common people by wearing a chain of gold around their necks. Always a favourite ornament with the Medes and Persians, the bracelet appears to have played the same part at the latter court that royal snuff-boxes and portraits have done in later times at others; for Arlian informs us that * 18th Book of the Iliad. the Persian kings rewarded all ambassadors, whether from Greece or other nations, with presents of bracelets; but though worn as badges of rank, and given as rewards of valour, we do not find them in use amongst the Greek men, who regarded them as only fitted for women's wear. And it would have been thought effeminate at Rome (where, according to Pliny, the gift of the golden bracelet was reserved especially for her citizens) to have worn them ordinarily. The ladies of both these nations appear to have been particularly fond of the use of this ornament, which sometimes glittered on the wrist, and at others circled the arm almost as high as the shoulder. Amongst the relics of Pompeii, a lava-buried lady was found, wearing two bracelets of gold upon one arm; and many skeletons have been discovered in tumuli in this country, with a single bracelet worn, as Livy tells us the Sabine women wore theirs, on the left arm. Speaking of these ladies reminds us that the same authority states that their bracelets of gold were of great weight, a circumstance perhaps not wholly overlooked by the wily Romulus in the prospectus of those games which were to end in their forcible abduction. But the Roman ladies, who adopted the bracelet as a badge of rank, appear to have emulated their maternal ancestors in the massiveness of this adornment; for, according to Petronius Arbiter the satirist, who was put to death A. D. 66, some of them wore bracelets of many pounds in weight!* and several of a very solid description, and on that account supposed to be military armillia, have been discovered amongst Roman antiquities in this country. Those of the ancient inhabitants of Magna Græcia, which the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum have brought to light, though elegant in form, are far from massive. The snake-shaped bracelet, so frequent in our days, was a favourite form with the ladies of antiquity, possibly because these creatures were sacred to Esculapius, and were supposed to counter-charm witchcraft and the evil eye (superstitions which the people of the Campania to this day believe in), besides that they had been held sacred by the Egyptians as the symbols of prudence and foresight. But the form of the bracelet was as varied as the materials that composed it, being sometimes made of amber, brass, and ivory, but more frequently of gold, silver, and bronze. Sometimes it was studded with jewels; at others it appears as a simple band of precious metal, with a rosette in the centre, and two starlike flowers at the sides; while very frequently we find it made of gold wire, twisted together in * Petronius asserts that some weighed six-and-ahalf, and others ten pounds. the form of a cable, thicker in the middle than at the ends, and of a curved form, so as to fasten by compressing the arm of the wearer, whence they received in Latin the name of Spinther. Occasionally they resembled a coil of golden rope, and required, when put on, to be slightly expanded, by having the ends drawn apart; these encircled the arm twice or thrice, according to their length; and a drawing of one of this description, of solid gold, found, if we remember right, in Cheshire, is given in the Archaelogia, which must have gone twelve times round the arm of the wearer, and is supposed to have belonged to a warrior. Plutarch, Xenophon, Herodian, Isidorus, and others, all allude to them as military gifts; the Draconarii, or standard bearers, wore them; and amongst many other instances we may cite that of Aulus Gellius, the Roman Achilles, as he was called from his invincible valour, whom Lucius Siccius Dentatus tells us received, amongst other honours, more than a hundred and sixty bracelets. Nor was the use of them confined to the Greek and Roman nations: with the Norwegians, Gauls, Celts, and Saxons they were also the rewards of bravery: the fragmentary compositions of the Scaldic bards which remain to us are full of allusions to this custom and in the Saxon chronicle, under the year 975, the English Edgar is expressly called the bestower of bracelets, the rewarder of heroes. Dion Cassius, and other writers who have described the dress of the warlike Queen of the Britons, Boadicea, inform us that she wore a chain of gold about her neck, and bracelets on her arms. And William of Malmsbury, complaining of the luxury of the English in the time of the Confessor, says that they adorned their arms with massive bracelets of gold. From Bartholimus we learn that it was not usual for maidens to wear these ornaments, but that they were frequently birth-day and spousal presents; a fashion which would seem to date back to the offering of Eliezar to the fair Rebekah, at the well without the city of Nehor, when sent to choose a wife for Isaac. Like the ring, a bracelet was considered to have a binding charm for lovers; and a superstition existed, that, if placed amongst treasure, it would cause it to increase. Bracelets were frequently offered in the Roman temples, as they had been by the ancient Israelites towards the adornment of the Tabernacle; and Matthew Paris, in his description of King Henry III.'s visits to St. Alban's Abbey in 1244 (where he stayed three days each time), tells us that the first was on the Feast of St. Bartholomew, and the last on that of St. Thomas, when he gave a rich pall or cloak at the high altar, and three bracelets of gold at the shrine of the saint. Thus under three phases of religion we find this ornament appearing as a votive gift. A century later, and we find them instrumental in ending one of the most romantic episodes which history records, or Rome ever witnessed--the death of Rienzi. This "last of the Tribunes," who restored in his own person the state of these ancient dignitaries, wore these ornaments; and it is recorded in the curious memoir by the Fathers Brumoy and Cerceau, that having (with the hope of escaping from the Capitol when the conspirators surrounded it) disguised himself in a peasant's coat which he found in his porter's lodge, and covered his face with charcoal, and his head and shoulders with a quilt and bed-covering, as if he had come for plunder, he would in all probability have made his escape, "but, that either by chance, or his kinsman's treachery, a man having perceived him on the steps, after looking very earnestly at him, took him by the arms and held him fast. Unfortunately for the senator, the golden bracelets he used to wear upon his arms, and which he had imprudently neglected, or forgot to take off, betrayed him in spite of his disguise." From the bracelets of Rienzi (in spite of the lapse of time) we come almost naturally to the chain of Masaniello, who, at the head of a Neapolitan mob in July 1647, succeeded in overthrowing the impost on all articles of consump tion, and restoring to the people the privileges granted to the city by Charles V. Whereupon the governor, Duke d'Arcos, whose oppressive taxation had given rise to the tumult, and whose few German and Spanish troops had been defeated, after signing the treaty, and granting an amnesty to all concerned in the insurrection, put a chain of gold round Masaniello's neck, and saluted the young fisherman of Amalfi by the title of Duke of St. George. But long prior to this there is an anecdote told in the life of Bellini Gentile, an artist of considerable merit born at Venice 1421, which shows that the antique use of the chain, as a mark of kingly favour, had been perpetuated in the East to this period. Some of this artist's pictures had found their way by the hands of commercial speculators to Constantinople, where having been seen by the Sultan Mohammed II., Bellini was invited by this monarch to visit his court. The invitation was accepted, and besides the Sultan's portrait the artist was commissioned to paint several pictures, and amongst the rest the decollation of St. John: this picture, upon its completion, was greatly admired by Mohammed, who nevertheless discovered a defect in the appearance of the dissevered neck, and to prove the accuracy of his criticism, ordered the head of a slave to be struck off in the presence of the horrified artist, who never enjoyed another moment's tranquillity till he had obtained leave to return to Venice. Mohamined dismissed him with letters to the Senate, expressing his admiration of his talents, and, amongst other proofs of his favour, placed, in the fashion of another Pharaoh, a golden chain about his neck. We learn from Livy that chains as well as bracelets were sometimes given as rewards to soldiers by the Romans; they were called by them catena, and the diminutive catella was used as well for those of superior value, from the fineness and delicacy of their workmanship as in reference to size. They were worn by women, either on the neck or round the waist, and were used, as Pliny tells us, to suspend pearls, jewels set in gold, keys, lockets, and other trinkets; so that the chatalaine of our great great grandmothers in all probability had a classic origin. The Roman chains exhibit a great variety of beautiful and ingenious patterns, and occasionally vie in fineness of workmanship with those now made at Venice. In the exhumations of antiquities at Pompeii some very beautifully executed specimens of the chain have been discovered; Mrs. Starke speaks of one partly enamelled, but no silver ones are mentioned. Virgil speaks of the chains worn by the ancient Gauls, in describing the workmanship of the shield presented by Venus to her son, in that section of its prophetic embossments which represented their approach to the walls of Rome at the very moment that the cackle of the silver goose, at the gate of the temple, discovered them. "The gold dissembles well their yellow hair, And chains of gold on their white necks they wear." From various sources we learn that with this nation the chain made the principal ornament of persons in power, and was worn on all occasions -even in battle, as Virgil describes it, to distinguish them from the common soldiers. Something of the same kind existed formerly in this country, and still lingers with us in the gold chains which distinguish the chief magistrates of cities, and make so important an item in the state dresses of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, the Provost and Bailiffs of Edinburgh, &c., &c. In olden times it was the custom for stewards in great men's houses to wear a chain as the badge of their authority; even other domestics appear sometimes to have worn them, as we may gather from the old ballad of "King John and the Abbot of Canterbury." "A hundred men the king did heare say bility this antique badge of servitude and authority only became exploded with the interruption the Puritan period offered to such pomps and vanities. In Edward III.'s reign, when fashion was fettered, as it has been long since, by Act of Parliament, we find all ornaments of gold and silver forbidden to those who could not spend £10 a year; but the chain remained a badge of power and nobility. In Smith's costumes we find William Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny, Captain of Calais, Custos of the County of Pembroke, in the reign of Richard II., wearing a cross pattee of gold suspended by a golden chain, and over his left shoulder a superb belt of gold and precious stones (1392). And in the same reign we find that the custom of burying these ornaments with persons of rank (a custom which the archæologists have traced from the Irish, Saxon, Roman, and Gallic tumuli, to those of Tartary) was still continued; for Grattan, describing the obsequies of Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland, expressly mentions that King Richard caused him to be arrayed in princely garments, garnished with a chain of gold. In the reign of James II. the chest which contains the body of Edward the Confessor was opened, and under one of the shoulder bones was found a crucifix of fine gold, richly enamelled, suspended to a gold chain, 24 inches in length, which passing round the neck was fastened by a locket of massive gold adorned with four large red stones. In the splendid, but neglected tapestry in St. Mary's Hall, Coventry-a beautiful and curious specimen of the drawing, dyeing, and embroidery of 1450--Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou are represented at their devotions; the king wearing on his neck a gold chain of huge dimensions and clumsy workmanship; while the queen and some of her attendant ladies are adorned with smaller ones of the same material. A few years later than the royal visit commemorated in the Coventry tapestry, in the reign of Henry VII., this trinket figured in one of the most curious scenes that the picturesque history of Scotland retains for us. Like his namesake, James I. of England, James II. of Scotland was odious through his favourites, at the head of whom was Cochran Olivia's steward, Malvolio, was not without this Earl of Mar, the magnificent upstart, as Lindsay appendage of office. calls him, who, coming from the king to the council (which council was holden in the kirk of "Go sir, rub your chain with crums :" Lawder for the time), was accompanied with a band of men-of-war to the number of three hunexclaims Sir Toby, by way of defiance and con- dred light axes, all clad in white livery, and tempt, in "Every Man out of his Humour," black bands thereon, that they might be known Carlo advising Soligardo how to appear as a court for Cochran the Earl of Mar's men. Himself gallant, tells him he must have a fellow with a was clad in a riding-pie of black velvet, with a great chain (though it be copper), to bring him great chain of gold about his neck of the value letters, messages, &c. We find this custom still of three hundred crowns; and four blowing existing in the reign of Charles I., when the stately horns (heralds, we presume, of his state), with steps of the Duchess of Richmond were wont to both ends of gold and silk, set with precious be preceded by three gentlemen ushers, bearing stones. His horn (of which by the way he apwhite wands, and wearing, like the abbot's pears to have made little use) was tipped with attendants in the ballad quoted above, "velvet fine gold at either end, and a precious stone gowns and gold chains," so that in all proba- | called a beryle hanging in the midst. Coming thus to the Council, Cochran, according to Lindsay, knocked rudely at the door of the church, just after the assembly had finished their consultation; and upon Sir Robert Douglas, of Lochleven, who was appointed to watch the door, informing them that the Earl of Mar demanded admittance, the Earl of Angus ordered the door to be opened, and rushing upon Cochran, he pulled the massive gold chain from his neck, saying that a rope would become him better! While Sir Robert Douglas stripped him of the costly blowing horn he wore by his side (as was the manner of the times), telling him he had too long been a hunter of mischief! Cochran, with astonishinent, asked them if they were in jest or earnest, and for answer had his arms pinioned with a common halter, till he should be carried to execution. He was hanged with the king's six other favourites over Lawder Bridge. This burglarious anticipation of the executioners' perquisites, on the part of these noblemen, is not the least curious incident in this semi- savage tragedy. In the times of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, admirals and other high officers wore chains of gold in all probability, graduating in massiveness according to rank. The peculiar mark which distinguished a lord high admiral, before uniforms were worn, was a magnificent chain, to which was attached a large whistle of the same precious metal-the boatswain's badge of our own times. one of his epigrams to the military use of this "Great Captain Medon wears a chain of gold The point of the epigram is apart from our subject, but there is a neatness about it which persuaded us to give it whole; and after all it is not so irrelevant, considering that there are not a few Captain Medons amongst the wearers of gold chains at the present day. In Shakspere's time the chain made some figure as an article of luxe it plays a conspicuous part in the Comedy of Errors;" and according to Ben Jonson (his junior by ten years), a Savoychain was a necessary appendage to the dress of a finished beau: without it the smart thing would have been as incomplete as a butterfly with half a wing gone. About this time, says Strutt (the reign of Charles I.), and long before, the common wearing of chains by the gentry was in fashion; and some, like Captain Medon's, were of great value. In the "Puritan," Sir Godfrey, an old knight, when he had lost his, exclaims that it had at least three thousand links, and cost full three hundred crowns! In Lord Herbert's history of Henry VIII., it is mentioned that Sir Edward Howard, second son of the Earl of Surrey, and Admiral of England (Lord High Admiral), having boarded a French galley near Conquet, a little below Brest, on the coast of Brittany, with about In a warrant of indemnity and discharge to seventeen English gentlemen, his own galley Lionel Earl of Middlesex, Lord High Treasurer, falling off from alongside by some accident, this and to the other commissioners of jewels, for noble person was left in the hands of his having delivered certain jewels to James I., enemies, of whom there could be no other ac- which were sent by his majesty into Spain to count given by his own men than that, when he the Prince of Wales and Duke of Buckingham, was past all hope of recovering his galley, he July 7, 1623, mention is made of "a chayne of took the chain and whistle from his neck, and gould of eight-and-forty pieces, whereof twentythrew them into the sea. Hall, too, in de-four are great and twenty-four small, garnished scribing the English escort setting out on the with dyamonds; and a great George of gould Calais road to meet the Lady Anne of Cleves, hanging thereat, garnished with dyamonds tells us that it was led by the Earl of South- of sundry sortes; also one faire chayne ampton, Great Admiral of England, apparelled in of gould, having three score pieces with a coat of purple velvet, cut in cloth of gold, and foure dyamonds in each piece, and threescore tied with great aiglets, and trefoils of gold, to great round pearles, delivered to our own handes the number of four hundred; while baldrick-by the Lord Brooke, and by us given to our wise he wore a chain of the same costly metal, at which did hang a whistle of gold, set with rich stones of great value. And in the same chronicle which gives us a description of the Earl of Surrey mounted on a great courser, richly trapped, and accompanied by a hundred and forty gentlemen, magnificently apparelled, on goodly horses, going forth to meet the French Ambassadors at Blackheath, mention is again made of these official appendages-the massive gold chain and whistle, worn baldricwise, over a coat of rich tissue, cut in cloth of silver. Sir John Davis, who flourished in the times of Elizabeth and her successor, alludes in dear cosen the late Marchionesse, and now In this manner were the rich jewels of previous reigns frittered away, in gifts to the haughty favourite and his wife. Chains and bracelets are still occasionally employed as royal presents, and of late years very magnificent specimens of the latter kind have found their way to the jewel-cases of several fair artistes at the hands of kings and emperors. Its ancient use under the name of Armillia has no type in modern times, unless the good conduct stripes on a |