was his uppermost garment, and he heartily wished it was of more worth. As he was being led out of the Tower to his execution, a woman reproached him for detaining some deeds when he was in office. "Good woman," said he, "have patience a little, for the King is so generous unto me, that within this half hour, he will discharge me of all my business, and help thee himself." As he ascended the scaffold, he asked one of the officers to help him up, adding, " and when I come down again, let me shift for myself." And this scoffing manner accompanied him to the moment of his death. After he had prayed, and had laid his head upon the block, the executioner begged his forgiveness. "I forgive thee," said he, but prithee, let me put my beard aside, for that hath never committed treason"-adding, " Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office; my neck is very short; take heed, therefore, that thou strike not wrong for the saving of thine honesty.' The wit of these speeches scarcely seems bright enough to carry off the gloominess of the period he chose for their utterance; but they show, perhaps, that his conscience was at rest, and that he was satisfied with the cause for which he died.

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After a victim so noble had been sacrificed for so slender a cause, people were on the watch for the next stretch of the King's hand, and shuddered as the monster roused himself for a new display of his power. In his own house-in his own bedchamber-the blow fell; and the fate of his young and beautiful wife, the hapless Anne Boleyn, was sealed. Till the age of seven, or as others say, of thirteen, she was brought up by her father's fireside in the county of Kent-a lively, playful, pretty child.

"Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laughed.

A rosebud set in little wilful thorns, And sweet as English air could make her, she."

It was an old English family this of the Boleyns, descended originally from a lord mayor of London, but by many ambitious marriages now allied with the chief nobility: and its present representative, Sir Thomas

Boleyn, the father of Anne, married Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Norfolk. While yet extremely young, Anne was appointed maid of honour to the Princess Mary, the sister of Henry VIII., when she went over to Paris and married the French king. At this court, the gayest at that time, and long after, of all the courts in Christendom, Anne played the part that loveliness, youth, and vanity are generally desirous of performing. She attracted great observation by her beauty-won many hearts by her engaging manners, and delighted all listeners with her cleverness and wit. Enemies she had who spread rumours against her character, but with no convincing proof; and on her return to England, she was advanced to the post of lady of honour to the formal and religious Queen Catherine, who would certainly not have admitted into her service and companionship a person against whom these accusations were well founded. The appearance of a young and lively girl, so beautiful and so amusing, in the hitherto dull apartments of the Spanish zealot, must have been like sunshine in a shady place; and it was not long before the ill-omened eyes of Henry fell upon the new attendant of his wife. The enemies of Anne Boleyn-who are also the enemies of the Reformationtry to persuade us, that in order to gain her object and ascend the throne as Henry's wife, she laid down the following plan. First, To get the King to fall in love with her, which might not be difficult. Secondly, To hold him at a distance and keep him constant by virtue and beauty alone. Thirdly, To upset the religion of England, overthrow the authority of the Pope, and introduce a new ecclesiastical system, from the archbishops in Lambeth and York down to the curates in country parishes, and even clerks and bell-ringers. Fourthly, To get the Queen divorced. And, finally, To procure the execution of the Lord Chancellor, a change in the whole policy of Europe, and war with the Emperor of Germany. Why don't we see the causes that produced her advancement? She was young enough not to take a very desponding, or perhaps a very sensible view of life; and ambitious enough to allow the

splendour of a throne to blind her eyes to the bad qualities of the King who filled it. But even with regard to his bad qualities, in the year 1527, we must talk with many grains of -allowance. He had not yet had an opportunity of showing many of them to any observable extent. If Nero had died at twenty-two, he would have had the reputation of the best of men; at thirty-seven Henry was known as a man of bluff manners, high notions of his own abilities, and having what is commonly called a will of his own; but nobody gave him credit at that time for being little more than a sort of amateur executioner with a crown on.

All difficulties, though apparently insuperable, were at last overcome, and Anne became Queen of England, and mother of Elizabeth, and might have expected a long life of happiness and popularity. But it was now 1537, and the hinges of the Tower began to grate. Among her maids of honour was a young and high-born damsel of the name of Jane Seymour, with the two great requisites in Henry's eyes of novelty and youth. How was Anne to be got rid of? He accused her of unguarded words of improper conduct of a previous contract of marriage with a young Lord Percy,-and on one or other of these accusations he was determined to destroy the queen -the mother of his child. The servile courts found her guilty on every plea. She was condemned to the Tower, to be burnt or beheaded according to the good pleasure of the King. It was very great pleasure, indeed, to that affectionate husband, to order her only to have her head cut off. On the 19th of May she was brought out on a scaffold erected on the Green within the Tower. "She approached," the historian says, with a firm and graceful step; her beauty shone in all its wonted brightness, and every one seemed disarmed by the sweet benignity that beamed in her looks; even the executioner had not for a while the heart to do his office. Anne alone on this trying moment seemed to retain her selfpossession;" and, after a few words, in which she commended her soul to Christ, she laid her fair head upon the block, and the small and grace

ful neck was severed at a blow. Without even a coffin, her body lay stiff and cold on the blood-stained Green in the Tower; and as her head fell to the ground, a gun was fired from the walls. With anxious ear the King had been watching for the signal on an elevation in the Park at Richmond. When the sound reached him, he knew that all was over; but no compunction seized his heart. He carried the triumphant news to the object of his passion, and on the following day was married to Jane Seymour.

A more melancholy record than this is not in the annals of crime and baseness. The person who presided at the court which condemned her was her uncle-the victim with whom she was falsely accused of guilt was her brother-the villain who gave the word for her murder, and actually furnished the orders for the scaffold and block, was her husband! The last subject of her thoughts was her helpless child. Her remains were hurried into a common chest, and buried in the chapel of the Tower.

After this display of the King's disposition, it is not to be supposed that any rank or services were a security against imprisonment and death. Queen Jane escaped the family fate by dying in childbed. Anne of Cleves avoided it also by consenting to a dissolution of the marriage; but the tide flowed on its usual channel, when he gave his hand to a daughter of the house of Norfolk, the Lady Catherine Howard. Scarcely had he time to get tired of her, when rumours reached his ear that her character was very bad-that she was worse, a thousand times, than he had endeavoured to make Anne Boleyn appear-a monster of profligacy and vice; and, in short, as sensual, wicked, and degraded as himself. The Tower gates opened once more for a queen. No sympathy this time was felt for the sufferer, for her guilt was manifest, and could not be denied. Some few, who cared for the justice of the case, thought it hard that a woman should be put to death by her husband for actions committed before she was married; but with Henry it was all the same. He even condemned the relations of the guilty woman for having concealed her guilt, and a blow of the headman's axe stain

ed once more the soil of this dreadful prison-house with royal blood, and enabled him to look out for another wife. There are now, fortunately, but a few months left of the reign of this Bluebeard on a throne; and we begin to look well pleased on the dismal Tower, which soon will have a holiday when a gentler reign succeeds. But Henry had two friends,-the most faithful in the kingdom, the highest in rank, the brightest in virtue, and therefore they must die. These were the Duke of Norfolk, and the Earl of Surrey his son. We will follow the fortunes of the young man first, and end this catalogue of Henry's victims with the father's fate. The Earl of Surrey was the most accomplished man of his age; not only in the knightly arts of riding in a tournament, or even commanding in a battle, but he is beyond all doubt the most polished author and best poet of his time. All his studies were devoted to peaceful ends. He translated part of Virgil, part of Ecclesiastes, and some of the Psalms, into very elegant verse, and his original sonnets are still quoted for their gracefulness and sweetness. His crime, however, was so heinous in the eyes of Henry, that it would have outweighed the merits of all the muses. He had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor-that is, had had his shield ornamented with Edward the Confessor's arms; and though he showed from the Herald's College that his ancestors had always done so, the King considered it treason, as implying a claim to the throne. On this plea, the gallant young nobleman and gentle poet was put into the Tower. His father was there already. They were not allowed to meet; but as if to add bitterness to the father's cup, the son was tried before him, and again the blood of the Howards was spilt upon the grass of Tower Hill, and the illustrious Surrey left the poor old Duke to battle with his enemies alone. The trial of the Duke came on. Thirty years before this he had been the great soldier of England. He had always conquered, by land or by sea-for the services were not at that time divided-and especially had served under his father at the great battle of Flodden, which so weakened the power of Scotland that

she could never more cope on equal terms with her more powerful sister.

But all these services were forgotten; forgotten also was the obedience-we may almost call it servility

displayed by this chief of the Howards to the wishes and caprices of the King. We wish we could forget them too, for they are the only blots upon his character. Out of an overstrained feeling of the duty of submission, he had acquiesced in the execution of his two nieces, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the wives of the tyrant who now was intent on his own destruction. With a clinging to life, which was, perhaps, natural at his years, he begged for pardon-confessed guilt, where no guilt existed, in hopes of softening the obdurate heart of his destroyer-and found services, submission, confession, supplication, all in vain. On the 28th of January an order was sent to the Lieutenant of the Tower for his execution on the following morning. What gloom was in the Duke's chamher that night we need not say; what grief to find his white hairs dishonoured, his petition disregarded, his son murdered almost before his eyes, and the hour approaching that was to carry him to the fatal block.But there was another chamber that night that was as full of gloom as the prisoner's dungeon in the Tower. On a stately bed lay a sufferer groaning with pain, and tormented, as we may suppose, with the upbraidings of an uneasy conscience. Fretful, irritable, and unsubdued, it was the King who was now at wrestlings with death. With trembling hands his wife administered the opiates recommended to soothe his pain; the page at the door counted the cries of anguish without a sigh of compassion; and silently the physician went through the ceremony of feeling the pulse, and could give no prospect of recovery. Here were two men, the Tyrant and the Victim, both struggling with the terrible hour. Grey dawn began to light up the turret tops of the Tower; it also rested on the roof of the Palace at Westminster. The early morn was to see the Duke of Norfolk fall before the stroke of the executioner; but before that time a surer blow fell upon the exhausted Tyrant. A

hurried noise of feet sounded at the prisoner's door-the key is turneda voice gives him the news-the King is dead, and the Duke was saved. It shows how completely these cruelties were the work of the individual King, that his decease was the signal for the abrogation of a law; the sentence was never carried into execution, and in peace and quiet the remainder of the emancipated prisoner's days were past.

It would be easy to follow the gloomy history through the persecuting years of Mary, and the firm administration of Elizabeth. Herself a visitor to its darkened portals in her sister's days, she might have been less ready to open them for the reception of her foes. But the Tower was one of the institutions of the State, and asserted its importance under Tudors, and Stuarts, and Hanoverians; closing its grim jaws upon the victims of the hatred of James and Charles, and then in 1715 and 1745 enacting the same part towards the gallant loyalists who adhered to their descendant's cause. But enough has been said to identify this ancient edifice with the worst and most indefensible incidents in our history. As time went on, however, its character began to improve. With the same grim features outside, it has gradually got softened and civilised within like a man we sometimes meet who has a very harsh countenance but a very warm heart. It opened its doors-on the usual payment-to crowds of gaping Cockneys and country visitors, and displayed all its curiosities, its racks, now rusty and out of use-its mus. kets, which looked like fossil remains of some extinct species of small cannon-its suits of armour and trophies of all kinds. A tremendous fire in the year 1837 reduced some of those strange but useless collections to cinders; and from that time it has assumed the appearance of a very peaceful dwelling indeed. Its moat is filled up and planted with choice shrubs; its frowning loopholes are covered with climbing wall-fruit; and it is difficult to believe that these stones and bricks are the same which echoed long ago to such appalling sounds, or were such words of fear to whole generations of men.

Last advancement of all, it was connected with the name and fortunes of the Great Duke. The Duke was constable of the Tower. There is surely a striking similarity in fate and character between that great warrior and the fortress which he commanded so long. The youth of both was passed amid wars and rumours of wars. Stern, cold, and unimpassioned, both did their duty, maintained their posts, and were bulwarks of the State and nation. If some harshness mingled with the earlier characteristics of our Duke, it is to be attributed to the manners of the time. A soldier in those days was considered to have reached perfection when he had expelled the softer feelings of the heart. But a change came over Wellington, as it has done over his gallant companions in arms, and their successors in the defence of the land. With every advancing year the great heart of the unrivalled Captain softened into human sympathy-his care fell with more tenderness on the comforts and advancement of the common soldier. The noble principle of justice, which had always been the regulator of his conduct, became mixed and mellowed with the feelings of charity and mercy, and ennobled by the sentiments of faith and hope; and these between them make up the perfect man. The grey old Tower, venerable with age, and stript of all its pomp and circumstance of war, with its placid walks and fruit-covered walls, is not so cheering a sight, not so characteristic of the happy change from the gloomy periods of our annals, as the sight of the time-honoured Wellington- the hero of a hundred fights-the arbiter of the fate of nations, and the wielder of the irresistible thunderbolts of England-living among us, a kind, humane, affectionate, peace-loving old man; and sinking at last to death amid the regrets of a whole nation, which loved and honoured him, and amid the fears of more secret and perhaps more sincere mourners, who looked to him for succour in their distress, and were relieved and comforted with the true sympathy of a Christian man, and the generosity of a hand "open as day to melting charity."

THE observation of a few weeks gradually opened my eyes to the true nature of the great speculative movement. To a casual observer, it doubt less must have appeared to be a mere scramble a reckless rush of a desperate mob, struggling for admission at the door of the temple of Fortune. Or, to use a more classical simile, it might have been thought to resemble one of Homer's battles, in which the champions are represented as fighting indiscriminately, without any regard being paid to disposition, military arrangement, or skilful marshalling of the forces. But although there was, no doubt, a good deal of desultory skirmishing, and many attempts at pillage by mercenaries and camp-followers, the railway movement had a distinct organisation of its own. Let me try to explain this briefly.

In the infancy of the railway system, the chief, indeed the sole object was to facilitate and expedite intercourse between large towns; and by the connection of lines, to establish a thoroughfare for passengers throughout England. The practicability of doing this, so as to economise both time and money to the public, and yet give a profitable return on their outlay to the projectors, had been demonstrated by the famous engineer Stephenson, who constructed the Manchester and Liverpool line; and then it became evident that the greater portion of the traffic of the land must in future pass along the vast arteries of iron. In order to accomplish this, new companies were formed, consisting chiefly of local capitalists; each of which broke ground in a fresh district, without being subjected to competition. And so long as the movement was confined to the construction of what may be called trunk railways, the only opposers were the landed gentry and

others, through whose properties the lines were to pass.

But in order to feed those great arteries, and bring traffic from a distance, it became necessary to make side or cross railways. Some of these were undertaken as extensions by the existing companies, others were projected by independent speculators; and as by means of them traffic could be diverted from one main line to another, a vigorous contest for their possession, or suppres sion as the case might be, arose among the proprietors of the existing lines. England became, as it were, mapped out into large districts, in each of which the whole traffic, direct and contingent, was claimed by a monster company to the exclusion of interlopers; and thus originated the strife which, though it brought vast profits to lawyers, engineers, and contractors, had a disastrous effect in lessening the dividends of the shareholders. Subordinate lines were purchased or leased at rates which were utterly exorbitant; and many, from which it was hopeless to expect that a remunerative return could be derived, were undertaken for the sole object of driving rivals from the field.

The affairs of these huge companies were ostensibly administered by the directors; but it invariably happens that, when a trust of this kind is committed to some ten or twelve gentlemen, the majority are little more than cyphers, and the real management devolves upon two or three, who act under the influence of the chairman, and are in fact his cabinet ministers. As a vast responsibility rested on the shoulders of the chairman, so was he allowed vast discretionary powers. his fiat was petty treason to interfere with his negociations was tantamount to absolute rebellion. The

To dispute