AMONG the vast mass of papers and correspondence collected by Carte, and now deposited in the Bodleian Library, are numerous letters addressed to the Duke of Ormonde during the reign of Charles II., by friends whose care it seems to have been to keep him informed of occurrences at the Court, or of the state of parties in Parliament. These letters convey a lively image of the manners and events of the time. Colonel Daniel O'Niell, Colonel Edward Vernon, Colonel Legg, Colonel Cooke, and others detail some of the scandals of the day. Sir Robert Southwell, Sir William Temple, Sir George Lane, and others, apprise him of the political occurrences at Whitehall, or describe practices, designs and intrigues of the parties at Court or in Parliament, from Oxford or Westminster. In a letter of Sir George Lane, dated December 29, 1674, there is an account of the death of Lord Clarendon, at his place of exile in France, of apoplexy,

the last fitt whereof was soe violent that his tongue being caught between his teeth they pierced it thorough, insomuch as when he came to himself, as he did for a while before he died, he could hardly make use of it for sorenesse whereof he complained very much, but his phisitians kept him in ignorance how it happened, least the knowledge of it should administer discouragement unto him. One passage I have heard is very extraordinary and remarkable, which is that about a month before his death, writeing in his closet, his pen fell suddenly out of his hand, and being in no discomposure at all, endeavouring to resume it, he found himself for a while unable; which they say he reflected upon as an omen of the shortenesse of his life, and therefore from that moment neglected all the concearns of this life, and betook himself to the serious thoughts of that which is eternal.

letter we have seen, written in December,
1752, to "Mr. John Mason, at Peter House,
Cambridge," are not unworthy of notice from
a student of social history :-

had a pleasanter or more satisfactory one in my life,
With regard to my journey into the north, I never
the company that went along with me being very
agreeable, and the inhabitants of the northern parts
simplicity of manners, and most other qualities that a
far exceeding the southern in points of hospitality,
stranger could wish to meet with. The gentry even of
the highest rank are plain, familiar, hospitable men,
and extremely civil to strangers, and the meaner sort
according to their abilities equally the same, but seem
rather given to merriment than industry; and though
the southern generally boast of exceeding them in
points of religion, yet this I dare to affirm that the
those of the southern.
virtues of the northern further exceed their vices than
And this encomium I can

justly add to their honour, which can be attributed but
to too few about us, that is, in going from Bradford in
Yorkshire till we got thither back again, I did not hear
so much as one oath sworn, save by the soldiers in the
garrison at Carlisle. I know this account of their
simplicity and integrity is far contrary to the common
opinion.

Butter [at Carlisle] seldom is above two-pence per pound, though it sold at Carlisle for a 1-2 when I was there, but was reckoned very dear. Salmon abounds in great plenty, there being very large quanti ties caught in the river Eden, just by the walls of Carlisle, and seldom sells at above id. or 1 1-4d. per pound, and often under. Here is greater plenty of coal than in Westmoreland, there being several great coal-works in the county, and much more wood both for timber and fuel; but the meaner sort that live within a mile of the coal-pits seldom burn any, but fetch peats (elding as they call them), perhaps two or three miles, and affirm them to be better fuel. Their butter exceeds ours for sweetness, but their cheese is stark naught chiefly owing to their bad way of making it. The sol in Cumberland being for the most part good pastureland, their cows are larger than ours in Derbyshire and long-horned, much like the breed at Skipton is Craven, Yorkshire, and though they have a great many We print the following letter as an admira-Scotch cattle, but buy them only to feed, kill, and really ble instance of the delicate manner in which, their beef exceeds ours both for fatness and sweetness. at the same time, a gift may be conferred and a substantial favour sought after in re

turn:

Noble Sr

I doe not write this to putt you to the trouble of an Answer, because I know yr employments are so great, and weightye; But my wife hath Á minde you should tast of a country dish, and therefore presents you with a chine of Porke and A Turkey; I call it A Turkey because it hath no fellow, But it had one, before Reynard surpriz'd her; And therefore wee dare not keepe this any longer, for Feare shee should follow her many Brothers and sisters that have gone before her: I heare Dr Gillingham Prebend of Winsor hath bin dead these five weekes; I once supplyed his moneth for him, and the charges attending, But I shall not looke to bee repaid by succeeding him, especially if all bee true that I heare, that there is A mandate lyes ready for the Place; I am Sr Yr troublesome and much obliged Servant

Academy.

THE following little account of an eye-wit ness of the execution of Lord William Russell letter addressed by Sir Charles Lyttleton to seems worth printing. It is to be found in a Lord Viscount Hatton, governor of Guernsey -a portion of the Hatton collection lately added to the British Museum:

My Lord,

"London, July 21, '83.

I have only time to tell you that my Ld Rus sell was beheaded this morning, he sayd not much but that he did not design to murder ye Kg, nor ye Govmt, but to keepe out poperie. he sayd the evidence agst him was true as to ye place and company, he was in, but he took that to be but misprision, for wch he did not ask God or ye Kg pardon. I saw him die at a distance and he seemed very stout. The Hangman gave him 3 blows besides sauing wth ye ax before he cut his head of. he came to ye scaffold in his own coach wch was not in mourning nor his livery; himself was in black. Doctor Tillotson, Mr Burnet, and ye

The subjoined extracts from an original sherrife was wth him.

Academy.

I. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. By Henry Kingsley,. New Quarterly Review,
II. THE STORY OF VALENTINE; AND HIS

Blackwood's Magazine,

Fraser's Magazine,

IV. THREE FEATHERS. By William Black, au-
thor of 66
The Strange Adventures of a
Phaeton," "The Princess of Thule," etc.
Part XI.,

V. OLD LETTERS,

VI. NATIONAL "STEADINESS,"

VII. EGOTISM,

771

784

794

**Title and Index to Volume CXXIV.

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From The New Quarterly Review.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

BY HENRY KINGSLEY.

pleasant stream, giving no more sign that lower down it would float the greatest navy in the world, than did the boy-life DRIVING westward through the beauti- of Philip Sidney, who bathed and fished ful dark elm-shadowed roads of Kent, in it, foreshadow the glorious death at past the hop-grounds, the rich-looking Zutphen. rose-embowered farmhouses, and the Standing in front of the lych-gate, and handsome country churches, the travel- looking away from the church, you see ler becomes at one place aware that he is the junction of the valleys of the Eden passing a very large park filled with state- and Medway at your feet, then turning ly oak, some of which overhang the high-into the churchyard, all the world seems way, mingled with the elms. Suddenly, left behind. Entering the silent church, at a turn in the road, something bursts you are entirely at leisure to examine on the sight which generally elicits from every tomb for yourself, but it is as well the least sensitive and thoughtless an to have some one to point out at least exclamation of pleasure; for close by one. Here, singularly enough, and not him, on the same level as the road, and at Hever, lies Sir Thomas Boleyn, removed from it only about two hundred brother of the queen. In the Sidney yards, stands the vast gray Tudor façade chapel, now, under the care of the presof Penshurst, the home of the Sidneys, ent owner, a beautifully decorated shrine, which is kept by the present Sidney, you come first on the Sidneys, in the Lord De Lisle, like a great hereditary tomb of Sir Henry Sidney, worried to jewel, each stone of which, when it be- death and half ruined by one of the most comes necessary, is replaced in its old exacting, mean, and selfish of sovereigns. site with the most pious care. We con- Space, however, prevents our lingering sider Penshurst to be one of the most in the church; so, passing out of the old striking objects in this wonderful land of porch, much such a one as George Herbert must have written in, you turn to Ben Jonson uses exactly the epithet the right and stand before the house for it which we should use ourselves; in itself, which rises sheer out of level, spite of its vast size and magnificence, it smooth-shorn lawns, large enough for is "homely" in the best sense of the fifty games at bowls at once. You pass word. On one side of the house, the through the gateway under the tower, oak-studded park rolls away over hill and and into the first quadrangle. At the dale, hemmed in all round by the Kent-end of this you proceed into the great ish woodlands; on the other side the hall, built in Edward III.'s reign, long pleasance, my lady's flower-garden, opens before the Sidneys themselves held Penson the churchyard; the church, which hurst. It is much in the same state now would be worth seeing, even if the hall were not there, is hemmed in by tombs, some of which are so old as to be beyond human knowledge. The beautiful little village begins in the churchyard itself, with a wonderful post and peltry house of the twelfth century; and the entrance to the churchyard from the village is under an unique lych-gate, composed of two houses connected by a loft, under which you walk. Here stands an elm which, judging from those in ChristAn admirable gazetteer, church Walk must have been old when whose article we turned over the other Philip and Mary Sidney were young. day, makes a most singular mistake about Beyond the little street, the land slopes this hall; he says that "it is remarkdown to the Medway, here a gentle, able for its enormous fireplace." It is re

ours.

as it was then. The massive and, apparently, indestructive tables on each side were once filled with servants, who heard the laughter from the high table at the dais when Ben Jonson made a joke. But the hall itself is so old that the Sidneys almost appear modern; long before their time the Pencesters feasted and fasted in this hall, and you see at this day the lord's gallery on the right, on which he could appear and stop the riot if it got too furious.

markable for having no fireplace at all in his time! Let the reader judge. After

speaking of the "broad beech and the chestnut shade," he goes on : —

That taller tree, which as a nut was set At his great birth where all the muses met. Judging from other famous oaks, we should say it was five hundred years old

if it was a day.

The first-known Sidney came from Anjou, as a knight in the train of Henry II., in 1154, so the origin of the family is lost in the mists of antiquity. Sir William Sidney, chamberlain to Henry VIII.,

the ordinary acceptation of the term; here, instead, is, we believe, the last reredos left in England (we speak under correction). In front of the dais, nearly equidistant between the high and side tables, is a slightly raised hearth about seven feet square. At each end are andirons, about four feet high, supporting a long cross-bar, against which are piled large billets of wood of about five feet long, like the eaves of a house; these being set fire to, their structure, and the fact of their having a draught from below was the first owner of Penshurst: he on all sides, cause the smoke to ascend commanded the right wing at Flodden, straight to the roof, where it was former- and from his time the Sidneys were interly caught by the louver, which was esting to all who, like Mr. Francis Galton, lanthorn-shaped, and open on all sides, believe in transmitted and hereditary taland so dispersed whichever way the wind ent. The fact is, that the breeding of might blow. All around the hall is Sir Philip Sidney, both on the father's armour; but you do not stay long here, and mother's side, was so fine that, had you ascend the stairs towards the gal-he been a race-horse, a speculative conlery. Philip, Robert, Mary, unhappy noisseur would have paid a thousand Algernon, Sacharissa, Ben Jonson, Wal- pounds for him as a yearling. ler how many hundred others known to the history of England? - have passed up here before; a door is opened, and suddenly you are among them. Probably, there is no more startling family gallery of portraits in England than that at Penshurst. You will probably be first arrested by that of an exquisitely beautiful blonde, in the first blush of her womanhood and genius; that is Mary "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother" - before that befell her which made her

write:

Never again let lass put garland on :
Instead of garland wear sad cypress now,
And bitter elder broken from the bough.

From the time of the original Sir William Sydney, who came with Henry II. from Anjou, and who died in 1188, the family history may be passed over; we understand, however, that some one peculiarly qualified for the task is about to write an exhaustive family history from sources unobtainable by the ordinary student. We have no doubt that a great deal remains to be written about the good Sir Henry Sidney's Irish administration, and also about the unfortunate Algernon (whose face, as seen at Penshurst, is one of profound unforgetable sadness). Thirteenth from the first Sidney comes William, the first of Penshurst, one of a race of finished courtiers in the It would be impossible to enumerate best sense of the term. The first Sir the other portraits here, and this would William of Anjou was chamberlain to not be the place to do so; we are only Henry II., and the first Sir William of concerned with two or three, which will Penshurst was chamberlain to King be noticed in their places; but before Henry VIII. The latter had a clear we leave this lovely spot, let us explode English pedigree of three hundred and once, and we hope forever, the idea that fifty years, when the king granted him the Sidney oak was planted on the day Penshurst for his services at Flodden when Philip Sidney was born. There is and elsewhere. He had other rewards, only vague tradition for it, and two lines however; he was governor and tutor to of Ben Jonson, which, if they prove any- Edward VI. from his birth to his coronathing, prove that the oak was nearly, if tion. We are, however, more interested not quite, the largest tree in the park in 'in his son Henry.