questionable, as is also the episode as to the discovery of their remains under the stair-case of the Tower, for it is quite certain that the bones, said to be theirs, were found at a considerable depth beneath the stairs of the Chapel in the White Tower.

No one should leave London without visiting the Tower; the Horse Armoury is one of its most attractive features, and has within the last four or five years been arranged and classified by Dr. Meyrick, whose antiquarian researches well qualified him for the task. Previously, the whole was a series of blunders and anachronisms: the mailed coat of the 17th century, the helm, guantlet, and sword, being transferred to an era some hundreds of years nearer to the Norman line of our kings,--these have now fallen into their proper places, and Henry VIII. is no longer taken for Richard I.; Charles I. for Dudley Earl of Leicester; or Sir Henry Lee for William the Conqueror. There were many other delusive absurdities propagated by the warders who shew the Armoury, and none more glaring than their recapitulation of the Armada trophies, very few, if any of them, ever having belonged to that invincible effort of disappointed Spanish pride.

The large building on the north side of the Inner Court, which is called the Small Armoury, is one of the finest rooms in Europe; and contains nearly two hundred thousand stand of arms, fit for immediate service. It was the magnificent display of the "munitions of

war" in the Tower, and at Woolwich, that excited the admiration of the late Emperor of Russia and the Allied Sovereigns, during their visit to this country in 1815; the former expressing his surprise that there should remain such apparently exhaustless resources in England, after having supplied nearly all Europe during a war of unexampled duration, and adding, that it must be "worse than folly to think of subjugating such a country.'

The notions which our ancestors had of a royal palace, differed very materially from those we now entertain. The dark and gloomy turrets which here present themselves, seem but ill-adapted for scenes of royal hospitality and courtly carousal. Yet within these walls "solemn feasts" have been given; and from the frowning portals of the "Bloody Tower" and the grinning portcullis of the "By-ward Gate," have sallied forth gallant and splendid trains of England's nobles, and high-crested chivalry, and proceeding along the narrow and contracted streets of ancient London, astonished its inhabitants of that day in their progress 'to Westminster, with all the state and grandeur of a coronation cavalcade. But those days are gone by; nor is it very likely that the Tower of London will again be

* This anecdote has been communicated to us by the writer of the above notes, a gentleman who attended the Sovereigns in their "progress."

selected by any of our future monarchs as "a fit and proper place" for matrimonial festivities.

The annexed view is engraved from one of the happiest efforts of Turner's pencil, and represents the ancient palace of our kings as seen from the Thames. Traitor's Gate is in the foreground, and the "White Tower " forms a prominent object in the centre.

SONNET.

BY THE REV. R. F. BARBE.

BEAUTY of holiness, thou handmaid fair
Of acceptable worship! where and when
Lift'st thou thy brow among assembled men?
Is it beneath cathedral arches, where
A fretwork stall enshrines the worshipper,
Whose lips, in prayers and praises, not disdain
To intone their utterance by measured strain?
Or wendest thou with lowlier guise and air

To village church, where hinds and shepherd sires
Shape out their road to Heaven? Nay, hast thou not
Joined in the hymns of persecuted men

In central moor or labyrinthine glen?

"With all, with all; wherever faith inspires

The upright heart and pure, I haunt the spot.”

THE CONVERSAZIONE.

A FRAGMENT.

A truant, like that Pleiad fair,

That dropped from heaven the Lord knows where,
The Lord knows why, on earth to glimmer,

Unless for L. E. L. to hymn her;

To be by classic Hemans sainted,

And tasteful, graceful Howard painted;*

My gadding muse hath left the place

So many shining planets grace,—

And, somewhat tired of Gods and Goddesses,
"Whether in pantaloons or bodices;"

(For even those denizens of heaven,
To strife and quarrelling are given;
And oft with hate and envy swelling,

Can make their skies too hot to dwell in ;)

* Miss Landon has written a poem of considerable merit, on "The Lost Pleiad," and the same fallen divinity has also inspired the muse of Mrs. Hemans. Miss Landon's poem has suggested two very charming pictures to the imaginative pencil of Howard.

Hath fled that bright, immortal sphere,

To breathe a little quiet here,

In one of nature's leafiest nooks;

Where, mid her favourite thoughts and books,
She sits enthroned, like Jacky Horner,

Six scanty miles from Hyde Park Corner :
Just near enough the mighty city,
To be pronounced by Scotchmen witty,
A sort of cockney suburb ("blow it!"*)
Fit only for a cockney poet.

For 't is decreed, who runs may read,
We all are cockneys south of Tweed!
How strange, that Scottish bards by dozens,
With all their uncles, aunts and cousins,
Should leave the Muses' own domain,
To cluster round despised Cockaigne !
Here wield the goose's pliant quill,
"Claw and be clawed," in clover still!-
Like "Honest Allan," write in all
Our "cockney journals," great and small;
And eulogise with liberal vein,

All who've the power to puff again! +

A Cockney adjuration.

+ The system of " reciprocal panegyric" has, at length, reached such a pitch, as to render it no longer possible for its " practitioners " to carry on their trade unobserved. Mr. A. cannot indulge in exalted eulogiums on the work of his brother Editor, Mr. B., in his Magazine, a week or too previous to the publication of some splendid efforts of his own genius, without exciting