the long room are filled with students and per- this orator proceeded, with every profession of formers, and quite a little crowd is congregated respect, to contradict most of the chief's statements, at the door and in a room adjacent until places can be found for them in the presence-chamber. • Established 1755' is inscribed on the ornamental signboard above us, and Instituted 1756' on another signboard near. Dingy portraits of departed Grands and Deputies decorate the walls. Punctually at nine My Grand opens the proceedings amid profound silence. The deputy buries himself in his newspaper, and maintains as profound a calm as the Speaker 'in another place.' The most perfect order is preserved. The Speaker or deputy, who seems to know all about it, rolls silently in his chair: he is a fat dark man, with a small and rather sleepy eye, such as I have seen come to the surface and wink lazily at the fashionable people clustered round a certain tank in the Zoological Gardens. He re-folds his newspaper from time to time until deep in the advertisements. The waiters silently remove empty tumblers and tankards, and replace them full. But My Grand commands profound attention from the room, and a neighbour, who afterwards proved a perfect Boanerges in debate, whispered to us concerning his vast attainments and high literary position. "This chieftain of the Thoughtful Men is, we learn, the leading contributor to a newspaper of large circulation, and, under his signature of 'Locksley Hall,' rouses the sons of toil to a sense of the dignity and rights of labour, and exposes the profligacy and corruption of the rich to the extent of a column and a quarter every week. A shrewd, hard-headed man of business, with a perfect knowledge of what he had to do, and with a humorous twinkle of the eye, My Grand went steadily through his work, and gave the Thoughtful Men his epitome of the week's intelligence. It seemed clear that the Cogers had either not read the newspapers, or liked to be told what they already knew. They listened with every token of interest to facts which had been published for days, and it seemed difficult to understand how a debate could be carried on when the text admitted so little dispute. But we sadly underrated the capacity of the orators near us. The sound of My Grand's last sentence had not died out when a fresh-coloured, rather aristocratic-looking elderly man, whose white hair was carefully combed and smoothed, and whose appearance and manner suggested a very different arena to the one he waged battle in now, claimed the attention of the Thoughtful ones. Addressing 'Mee Grand' in the rich and unctuous tones which a Scotchman and Englishman might try for in vain, to ridicule his logic, and to compliment him with denunciations, a tall pale man, with a Shakespeare only to waste his fortune in Royalist plots. He forehead, rose suddenly, with a determined air, as if about to fiercely interrupt; but it turned out he only wanted to catch the waiter's eye, and this done, he pointed silently to his empty glass, and remarked, in a hoarse whisper, 'Without sugar, as before."" Gunpowder Alley, a side-twig of Shoe Lane, leads us to the death-bed of an unhappy poet, poor Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier, who, dying here served in the French army, raised a regiment for Louis XIII., and was left for dead at Dunkirk. On his return to England, he found Lucy Sacheverell-his "Lucretia," the lady of his lovemarried, his death having been reported. All went ill. He was again imprisoned, grew penniless, had to borrow, and fell into a consumption from despair for love and loyalty. "Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood, "he grew very two years before the Stuart Restoration, in a very mean lodging, was buried at the west end of St. Bride's Church. The son of a knight, and brought up at Oxford, Anthony Wood describes the gallant and hopeful lad at sixteen, when presented at the Court of Charles I., as "the most amiable and beautiful youth that eye ever beheld. A person, also, of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but specially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex." Presenting a daring petition from Kent in favour of the king, the Cavalier poet was thrown into prison by the Long Parliament, and was released melancholy, which at length brought him into a consumption; became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants." There is a doubt, however, as to whether Lovelace died in such abject poverty, poor, dependent, and unhappy as he might have been. Lovelace's verse is often strained, affected, and wanting in judgment; but at times he mounts a bright-winged Pegasus, and with plume and feather flying, tosses his nand up, gay and chivalrous as Rupert's bravest. His verses to Lucy Sacheverell, on leaving her for the French camp, are worthy of Montrose himself. The last two lines"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not honour more contain the thirty-nine articles of a soldier's faith. And what Wildrake could have sung in the Gate House or the Compter more gaily of liberty than Lovelace, when he wrote, "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Whenever we read the stanza that begins,— "When love, with unconfinèd wings, Hovers within my gates, To whisper at my grates," the scene rises before us; we see a fair pale face, with its aureole of golden hair gleaming between the rusty bars of the prison door, and the worn visage of the wounded Cavalier turning towards it as the flower turns to the sun. And surely Master Wildrake himself, with his glass of sack half-way to his mouth, never put it down to sing a finer Royalist stave than Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison," "When, linnet-like, confined, I And glories of my king; When I shall voice aloud how good In the Cromwell times there resided in Gunpowder Alley, probably to the scorn of poor dying Lovelace, that remarkable cheat and early medium, Lilly the astrologer, the "Sidrophel" of "Hudibras." This rascal, who supplied the King and Parliament alternately with equally veracious predictions, was in youth apprenticed to a mantua-maker in the Strand, and on his master's death married his widow. Lilly studied astrology under one Evans, an ex-clergyman, who told fortunes in Gunpowder Alley. Besotted by the perusal of Cornelius Agrippa and other such trash, Lilly found fools plenty, and the stars, though potent in their spheres, unable to contradict his lies. This artful cheat was consulted as to the most propitious day and hour for Charles's escape from Carisbrook, and was even sent for by the Puritan generals to encourage their men before Colchester. Lilly was a spy of the Parliament, yet at the Restoration professed to disclose the fact that Cornet Joyce had betrayed Charles. Whenever his predictions or his divining-rod failed, he always attributed his failures, as the modern spiritualists, the successors of the old wizards, still conveniently do, to want of faith in the spectators. By means of his own shrewdness, rather than by stellar influence, Lilly obtained many useful friends, among whom we may specially particularise the King of Sweden, Lenthal the Puritan Speaker, Bulstrode, Whitelocke (Cromwell's Minister), and the learned but credulous Elias Ashmole. Lilly's Almanac, the predecessor of Moore's and Zadkiel's, was carried on by him for six-and-thirty years. He claimed to be a special protégé of an angel called Salmonæus, and to have a more than bowing acquaintance with Salmael and Malchidael, the guardian angels of England. Among his works are his autobiography, and his "Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late King of England." The remainder of his effusions are pretentious, mystical, muddle-headed rubbish, half nonsense, half knavery; as "The White King's Prophecy," "Supernatural Light," "The Starry Messenger," and "Annus Tenebrosus, or the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son, a tailor, whom he named Merlin Junior. The credulity of the atheistical times of Charles II. is equalled only by that of our own day. Lilly himself, in his amusing, half-knavish autobiography, has described his first introduction to the Welsh astrologer of Gunpowder Alley : "It happened," he says, "on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of peace's clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar-nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to me then was strange; one speech begot another, till, at last, he said he could bring me acquainted with one Evans, in Gunpowder Alley, who had formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an excellent wise man, and studied the black art. The same week after we went to see Mr. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed, if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he then lay. He roused up himself, and after some compliments he was content to instruct me in astrology. I attended his best opportunities for seven or eight weeks, in which time I could set a figure perfectly. Books he had not any, except Haly, 'De Judiciis Astrorum,' and Orriganus's Ephemerides;' so that as often as I entered his house I thought I was in 6 the wilderness. Now, something of the man. He was by birth a Welshman, a master of arts, and in sacred orders. He had formerly had a cure of souls in Staffordshire, but now was come to try his fortunes at London, being in a manner enforced to fly, for some offences very scandalous committed by him in those parts where he had lately lived; for he gave judgment upon things lost, the only shame of astrology. He was the most saturnine person my eye ever beheld, either before I practised or since; of a middle stature, broad forehead, beetle-browed, thick shoulders, flat-nosed, full lips, down-looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay-footed. To give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments; was much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye or one mischief or other. This is the same Evans who made so many antimonial cups, upon the sale whereof he chiefly subsisted. He understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue not all; he had some arts above and beyond astrology, for he was well versed in the nature of spirits, and had many times used the circular way of invocating, as in the time of our familiarity he told me." One of Lilly's most impudent attempts to avail himself of demoniacal assistance was when he dug for treasure (like Scott's Dousterswivel) with David Ramsay, one dark and stormy night, in the cloisters at Westminster. "Davy Ramsay," says the arch-rogue, "his majesty's clockmaker, had been informed that there was a great quantity of treasure buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; he acquaints Dean Williams therewith, who was also then Bishop of Lincoln; the dean gave him liberty to search after it, with this proviso, that if any was discovered his church should have a share of it. Davy Ramsay finds out one John Scott,* who pretended the use of the Mosaical rods, to assist him therein. I was desired to join with him, unto which I consented. One winter's night Davy Ramsay,t with several gentlemen, myself, and Scott, entered the cloisters; upon the west side of the cloisters the rods turned one over another, an argument that the treasure was there. The labourers digged at least six feet deep, and then we met with a coffin, but in regard it was not heavy, we did not open, which we after "This Scott lived in Pudding Lane, and had some time been a page (or such-like) to the Lord Norris." + "Davy Ramsay brought a half-quartern sack to put the treasure in." wards much repented. From the cloisters we went into the abbey church, where upon a sudden (there being no wind when we began) so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a wind did rise, that we verily believed the west-end of the church would have fallen upon us; our rods would not move at all; the candles and torches, all but one, were extinguished, or burned very dimly. John Scott, my partner, was amazed, looked pale, knew not what to think or do, until I gave directions and command to dismiss the demons, which when done all was quiet again, and each man returned unto his lodging late, about twelve o'clock at night. I could never since be induced to join with any in such-like actions. "The true miscarriage of the business was by reason of so many people being present at the operation, for there was about thirty-some laughing, others deriding us; so that if we had not dismissed the demons, I believe most part of the abbey church had been blown down. Secrecy and intelligent operators, with a strong confidence and knowledge of what they are doing, are best for this work." In the last century, when every shop had its sign and London streets were so many out-ofdoor picture-galleries, a Dutchman named Vandertrout opened a manufactory of these pictorial advertisements in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane, a dirty passage now laid open to the sun and air on the east of the new St. Bride's Street, running from Ludgate Circus to Holborn. In ridicule of the spurious black, treacly old masters then profusely offered for sale by the picture-dealers of the day, Hogarth and Bonnell Thornton opened an exhibition of shop-signs. In Nicholls and Stevens' "Life of Hogarth" there is a full and racy account of this sarcastic exhibition :- "At the entrance of the large passage-room was written, 'N.B. That the merit of the modern masters may be fairly examined into, it has been thought proper to place some admired works of the most eminent old masters in this room, and along the passage through the yard.' Among these are A Barge' in still life, by Vandertrout. He cannot be properly called an English artist; but not being sufficiently encouraged in his own country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp Alley. An original half-length of Camden, the great historian and antiquary, in his herald's coat; by Vandertrout. As this artist was originally colour-grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there are some of that great master's touches in this piece. 'Nobody, alias Somebody,' a character. (The figure of an officer, all head, arms, 6 |