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-too young to marry, some would say. I am forty in experience and trouble, and Esther forty in consideration and thoughtfulness. "A poor doll," that wretch Nixon says she is, simply meaning not good at bargaining for butter and groceries, and such like, I suppose. A horrible fiendish woman, Nixon; what will she say when she hears I am married?.... Leaving Lindford yesterday morning I dropped the wedding-ring which I bought, in a clandestine way, through a London jeweller; I had not courage to go into a shop at Lindford for it. How is it we can all do and say things on paper that we are too bashful to do or say in person. I was wearing this dear ring, and dropped it on the Lindford platform. "What is it, sir?" the porters asked. "A ring," I said; "I must find it ;" and thereupon everybody began to search. For a moment I thought, "It is a bad omen to lose that ring," and I felt quite miserable for ten minutes, at the end of which time I spied the ring near a few bright rose leaves that had fallen from a lady's bouquet. "If it is a bad omen to lose the ring," I said unto myself, "it is a good one that I am the person to find it. In the 'Language of Flowers,' what do rose-leaves signify?" I asked Esther the question; she did not know, but was sure the sentiment was a happy one.. .. I tried the ring upon her finger this afternoon, and felt like a long-expectant heir who had come into a splendid heritage. . . . . This chamber is evidently the spare bedroom of the house; it has been used by Esther. There are a few trinkets about; a toilet bottle and a ring stand that I could swear are hers; some little womanly touches here and there a pretty mat on the dressing-table and another on the drawers, which are like her handiwork; and on the mantelpiece a small bouquet of freshly gathered mignonette, daisies, and lilies of the valley..... Good-night, most sweet, most rare wench! be thy happiness my constant care; an' I make thee not a good, true husband, fillip me with a three-manned beetle, as that sack-and-sugar rascal in the play hath it. What, O all-potent prompter, Time, wave thy magic wand, and whilst I sleep, and dream, perchance, let the transformation scene gradually disclose its rare and magic beauties. Let the music play gentle, propitious, inviting airs, whilst Little Boy Blue, or some other happy wight of fairy romance, lies down in his work-a-day clothes, and rises up in the morning sunshine a true prince of the blood royal, with a ready-made darling princess at his side. Away, away, dark sober mists of Bachelorhood! Come, come amain, the sunny light of love and sweet hymeneal hours.

(To be continued.)

THE TOWER OF LONDON.

HERE is not one of the public buildings of the metropolis, not even the old Abbey of St. Peter's, Westminster, for which Englishmen cherish so intense a pride—for it is a feeling of pride rather than of affection with which they regard it, as the noble pile which for eight centuries has been known as the Tower of London, and which Mr. Hepworth Dixon calls "Her Majesty's Tower." And well may this be the case: for is not its history interwoven most closely with the fates and the fortunes of our Norman, Plantagenet, and Tudor sovereigns? was it not the home and residence of most of the kings of the two former lines? and did it not share with its owners in the vicissitudes of those wars of the Roses, which more than decimated the flower of our English nobles, and paved the way for the tyranny of the Tudors? Further still, were there no other memories attaching to the Tower of London, the fact of Shakspeare having chosen various localities in and around it for some of his finest historical plays, would be enough to invest it with a more than common interest. That such is the case is one inference obviously to be drawn from the fact that within the last two or three years "The Tower" has formed the subject of two important works, both more or less historical, antiquarian, and topographical, by Lord de Rosa and by Mr. W. Hepworth Dixonb respectively. The contents of these works are so varied and so full of detail, that we think our readers will be disposed to thank us for introducing them to their notice in a paper which certainly can claim little or no other regard to their attention beyond the fact that it is mainly based on the materials gleaned by those two authors, who at all events have brought together the first popular accounts of this venerable palace and fortress which have ever been offered to the public; for Bailey's work on the subject, in two large quarto volumes, is far too extensive and too full of dry details to suit the wants of the ordinary reader, while Mr. W. Harrison Ainsworth's romance of

Memorials of the Tower of London, by Lieut-Gen. Lord de Ros, Lieut.Governor of the Tower. 2nd edition. (Murray, 1867.)

Her Majesty's Tower, by W. Hepworth Dixon. 5th edition. (Hurst and Blacket, 1869.)

"The Tower of London," so far from satisfying our wants, is calculated rather to excite our curiosity as to the annals of that building to which Gray alludes when he writes,

Ye Towers of Julius, London's ancient shame,

With many a foul and midnight murder fed.

Although we may not be disposed to place much credit in old writers who identify the Tower with the work of Julius Cæsar,-a

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legend taken up by Shakspeare and other poets, down to Thomas Gray, and handed on by the tradition which speaks of "Cæsar's Tower"-still, as Mr. Dixon eloquently urges on its behalf, it is the most ancient and historic of all the fortresses and palaces of Europe, save and except the Castle of San Angelo at Rome, to which, indeed, it stands in a very analogous position. The Roman Wall, and other remains which have been found in situ, show that the place was occupied by the Romans two thousand years ago, as defending the entrance of "Augusta Colonia" or Londinium; but the silence of all Saxon chronicles as to the existence of any extensive fortification goes far to prove that if any fortress stood here before the Conquest,

it must have been a poor and mean one, and that we must look to the Norman era for its real foundation. It can now be only just celebrating the eighth century of its existence; but still, as Mr. Dixon remarks,

"Set against the Tower of London-with its eight hundred years of historic life—all other palaces and prisons appear like things of an hour. The oldest bit of palace in Europe, that of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of the time of Henry III. The Kremlin in Moscow, the Doge's Palazzo in Venice, are of the Fourteenth century. The Seraglio in Stamboul was built by Mohammed II. The oldest part of the Vatican was commenced by Borgia, whose name it bears. The old Louvre was commenced in the reign of Henry VIII; the Tuileries in that of Elizabeth. In the time of our civil war Versailles was yet a swamp. Sans Souci and the Escurial belong to the Eighteenth century. The Serail of Jerusalem is a Turkish edifice. The palaces of Athens, of Cairo, of Tehran, are all of modern date. Neither can the prisons which remain in fact as well as in history and drama-with the one exception of St. Angelo, in Rome-compare against the Tower. The Bastile is gone; the Bargello has become a museum; the Piombi are removed from the Doge's roof. Vincennes, Spandau, Spilberg, Magdeburg, are all modern in comparison with a jail from which Ralph Flambard escaped so long ago as the year 1100, the date of the First Crusade.”

No doubt William the Conqueror would not allow very much time to slip by after winning the battle of Hastings, before taking means to secure and command the port and city of London; and to Gundulph, a Benedictine monk, the pupil of Lanfranc and friend of Anselm, and afterwards Bishop of Rochester, London owes the commencement of that Tower which was destined to be at once its glory and (if we follow Gray) its "ancient shame." Those who have visited Rochester will not have been slow to notice the sisterly likeness, both in plan and detail, between the great Keep which that prelate raised on the banks of the Medway and that which stands on the northern bank of the Thames below London Bridge.

The great Norman Keep, now commonly called the White Tower, formed a main part of the royal palace from the reign of Henry I., or at all events from that of Stephen down to the age of the Tudors; so that the story of the White Tower is in some sort that of English society, as well as of our sovereigns. "Here," says Mr. Dixon, "were kept the royal wardrobe and the royal jewels; hither came with their goodly wares the tiremen, the goldsmiths, the chasers and embroiderers from Flanders, Italy, and Almaigne. Close by were the Mint,

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queting Hall: so that art and trade, science and manners, literature and law, sport and politics, here found themselves equally at home." Henry III. spent much of his time in the Tower, and much of his wealth in adding to its strength and beauty; his name is associated

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the lions' dens, the old archery grounds, the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, the Queen's Gardens, and the Royal Ban

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