said, and, with their carts or "in" any other peaceable way, to carry away the said Soldiers to such places as they shall think fit:-provided they meddle not with, or take away, any the Arms there. And all Officers and Soldiers are to take notice that the same is permitted.

Given under my hand, at Dunbar, 4th September, 1650.
OLIVER CROMWELL.

To be proclaimed by beat of drum.

From REMINISCENCES

Frank Dickson

FRANK was a notable kind of man, and one of the memorabilities, to Irving as well as me; a most quizzing, merry, entertaining, guileless, and unmalicious man; with very considerable logic, reading, contemptuous observation and intelligence, much real tenderness too, when not obstructed, and a mournful true affection especially for the friends he had lost by death! No mean impediment there any more (that was it), for Frank was very sensitive, easily moved to something of envy, and as if surprised when contempt was not possible; easy banter was what he habitually dwelt in; for the rest an honourable, bright, amiable man; alas, and his end was very tragic! I have hardly seen a man with more opulence of conversation, wit, fantastic bantering, ingenuity, and genial human sense of the ridiculous in men and things. Charles Buller, perhaps, but he was of far more refined, delicately managed, and less copious tone; finer by nature, I should say, as well as by culture, and had nothing of the fine Annandale Rabelais turn which had grown up, partly of will and at length by industry as well, in poor Frank Dickson in the valley of Dryfe amid his little stock of books and rustic phenomena. A slightly built man, nimble-looking and yet lazy-looking, our Annandale Rabelais; thin, neatly expressive aquiline face, grey genially laughing eyes, something sternly serious and resolute in the squarish fine brow, nose specially aquiline, thin and rather small. I well remember the play of point and nostrils there, while his wild home-grown Gargantuisms went on. He rocked rather, and negligently wriggled in walking or standing, something slightly twisted in the spine, I think; but he made so much small involuntary tossing and gesticulating while he spoke or listened, you never noticed the twist. What a childlike and yet half imp-like volume of laughter lay in Frank; how he would fling back his fine head, left cheek up, not himself laughing much or loud even, but showing you such continents of inward gleesome mirth and victorious mockery of the dear

stupid ones who had crossed his sphere of observation. A wild roll of sombre eloquence lay in him too, and I have seen in his sermons sometimes that brow and aquiline face grow dark, sad, and thunderous like the eagle of Jove. I always liked poor Frank, and he me heartily. After having tried to banter me down and recognised the mistake, which he loyally did for himself and never repeated, we had much pleasant talk together first and last.

De Quincey

He was a pretty little creature, full of wire-drawn ingenuities, bankrupt enthusiasms, bankrupt pride, with the finest silver-toned low voice, and most elaborate gently-winding courtesies and ingenuities in conversation. "What wouldn't one give to have him in a box, and take him out to talk!" That was Her criticism of him, and it was right good. A bright, ready, and melodious talker, but in the end an inconclusive and long-winded. One of the smallest man figures I ever saw; shaped like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in all. When he sate, you would have taken him, by candlelight, for the beautifullest little child; blue-eyed, sparkling face, had there not been a something, too, which said "Eccovi-this child has been in hell."

Wordsworth

DURING the last seven or ten years of his life, Wordsworth felt himself to be a recognised lion, in certain considerable London circles, and was in the habit of coming up to town with his wife for a month or two every season, to enjoy his quiet triumph and collect his bits of tribute tales quales. The places where I met him oftenest, were Marshall's (the great Leeds linen manufacturer, an excellent and very opulent man), Spring-Rice's (i.e., Lord Monteagle's, who and whose house was strangely intermarried with this Marshall's), and the first Lord Stanley's of Alderly (who then, perhaps, was still Sir Thomas Stanley). Wordsworth took his bit of lionism very quietly, with a smile sardonic rather than triumphant, and certainly got no harm by it, if he got or expected little good. His wife, a small, withered, puckered, winking lady, who never spoke, seemed to be more in earnest about the affair, and was visibly and sometimes ridiculously assiduous to secure her proper place of precedence at table. One evening at Lord Monteagle's-Ah, who was it that then made me laugh as we went home together: Ah me! Wordsworth generally spoke a little with me on those occasions; sometimes, perhaps, we sat by one another; but there came from him nothing considerable, and

sorrow.

happily at least nothing with an effort. "If you think me dull, be it just so!"—this seemed to a most respectable extent to be his inspiring humour. Hardly above once (perhaps at the Stanleys') do I faintly recollect something of the contrary on his part for a little while, which was not pleasant or successful while it lasted. The light was always afflictive to his eyes; he carried in his pocket something like a skeleton brass candlestick, in which, setting it on the dinner table, between him and the most afflictive or nearest of the chief lights, he touched a little spring, and there flirted out, at the top of his brass implement, a small vertical green circle which prettily enough threw his eyes into shade, and screened him from that In proof of his equanimity as lion I remember, in connection with this green shade, one little glimpse which shall be given presently as finis. But first let me say that all these Wordsworth phenomena appear to have been indifferent to me, and have melted to steamy oblivion in a singular degree. Of his talk to others in my hearing I remember simply nothing, not even a word or gesture. To myself it seemed once or twice as if he bore suspicions, thinking I was not a real worshipper, which threw him into something of embarrassment, till I hastened to get them laid, by frank discourse on some suitable thing; nor, when we did talk, was there on his side or on mine the least utterance worth noting. The tone of his voice when I got him afloat on some Cumberland or other matter germane to him, had a braced rustic vivacity, willingness, and solid precision, which alone rings in my ear when all else is gone. Of some Druid-circle, for example, he prolonged his response to me with the addition, "And there is another some miles off, which the country people call Long Meg and her Daughters"; as to the now ownership of which "It" etc.; "and then it came into the hands of a Mr. Crackenthorpe;" the sound of those two phrases is still lively and present with me; meaning or sound of absolutely nothing more. Still more memorable, is an ocular glimpse I had in one of these Wordsworthian liondinners, very symbolic to me of his general deportment there, and far clearer than the little feature of opposite sort, ambiguously given above (recollection of that viz. of unsuccessful exertion at a Stanley dinner being dubious and all but extinct, while this is still vivid to me as of yesternight). Dinner was large, luminous, sumptuous; I sat a long way from Wordsworth; dessert I think had come in, and certainly there reigned in all quarters a cackle as of Babel (only politer perhaps), which far up in Wordsworth's quarter (who was leftward on my side of the table) seemed to have taken a sententious, rather louder, logical and quasi-scientific turn, heartily unimportant to gods and men, so far as I could judge of it and of the other babble reigning. I look upwards,

leftwards, the coast being luckily for a moment clear; then, far off, beautifully screened in the shadow of his vertical green circle, which was on the farther side of him, sate Wordsworth, silent, slowly but steadily gnawing some portion of what I judged to be raisins, with his eye and attention placidly fixed on these and these alone. The sight of whom, and of his rock-like indifference to the babble, quasi-scientific and other, with attention turned on the small practical alone, was comfortable and amusing to me, who felt like him but could not eat raisins. This little glimpse I could still paint, so clear and bright is it, and this shall be symbolical of all.

In a few years, I forget in how many and when, these Wordsworth appearances in London ceased; we heard, not of ill-health perhaps, but of increasing love of rest; at length of the long sleep's coming; and never saw Wordsworth more. One felt his death as the extinction of a public light, but not otherwise. The public itself found not much to say of him, and staggered on to meaner but more pressing objects.