and totals at the foot of each column quite indisputable. A wise scribe of a former age advises that "to make each of these important anniversaries lucky, each man should thereon commence an account with himself, and keep it in such a clerkly manner that on the closing day of the 365 he may declare with a safe conscience, 'It has been a good year."

After turning over various household books, in order to present the reader with some veritable specimens of bills of fare, settled by competent authority as the right thing for a New Year's feast, I can find nothing half so amusing as the one immortalized by Whistlecroft, as placed before King Arthur:

"The bill of fare, as you may well suppose,
Was suited to those plentiful old times,

Before our modern luxuries arose,

With truffles, and ragouts, and various crimes.
And therefore, from the original, in prose,
I shall arrange the catalogue in rhymes.
They served up salmon, venison, and wild boars,
By hundreds, and by dozens, and by scores.
Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard;
Muttons, and fatted beeves, and bacon swine;
Herons and bitterns, peacocks, swan, and bustard,
Teal, pigeons, mallard, widgeons, and, in fine,
Plum puddings, pancakes, apples, and custard-
And here, withal, they drank good Gascon wine,
With mead, and ale, and cyder of cur own-
For porter, punch, and negus were not known."

We must not omit the summary of the guests

"All sorts of people there were seen together,
All sorts of characters, all sorts of dresses;
The fool, with fox's tail and peacock's feather,
Pilgrims, and penitents, and grave burgesses;
The country people with their coats of leather,
Vintners and victuallers with cans and messes;
Grooms, archers, valets, falconers, and yeomen,
Damsels, and waiting maids and waiting women.

We shall have infinite cause to lament the wearing out of long-remembered usages, as indicated even yet in our calendars and almanacks. Such red-letter sections of time have a far deeper interest than any arising out of mere externals. As the heart of a people, of a city, of a nation, may be found in the rudest songs and poorest pamphlets ever printed with blocks, or mercilessly screamed out of tune, so a fantastic procession, a grotesque dance, a wild carol, or a rude mumming—the bringing in of the boar's head, or the scold's airing on a black ram -things often seen and cordially approved when London rejoiced in her Edwards or Henries, may better express the inward mind and character of those long-departed ages than the most elaborate dissertations. When we stand before Holbein's great picture at Barber-Surgeons' Hall, that strange furred assembly of priest-like doctors kneeling under the sword of their broad-straddling, parchment-in-hand master, the very "form and presence "" of the Tudor period is vividly brought to the mind's eye, and we realise much of its grandeur, and all its oppressive unescapable tyranny. In like manner the quaint histories and chronicles left to us from such periods-occasions of festival and national celebrations-seem resumed in their primeval glory Feudal observances · the rude but solemn oath-taking of the crowned captain to his armed followers-the feast in civic hall or carousal castle-May morning, Christmas-tide, and New Year's Day, in the fashion of our ancestors, are all outlined with startling fidelity. We paint with water-colours, and write with perishable ink, now; our progenitors used unfading tints, and what they wrote was "leaded into the rock for ever.” Both were often out of taste, and strangely, nay painfully, rude; but they were lasting, or at least we earnestly hope they will prove so.

And now of the Christmas and New Year tide so

hastily fleeing from us while we write; who does not feel that a heavy cloud has settled down upon them? Yet let us listen to our noble dramatist :

ours.

"Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes,
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:

And then they say no spirit stirs abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planet strikes,
No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time."

May the holy influence of the season be with us and If there must be less mirth and more reflectionless boisterous jollity, and more refreshing calm-the change may work like a heavenly panacea on our overwrought minds; and looking forth from the watch-tower of the resting, but not enfeebled soul, over the stormy prospect of the approaching year-war looming in the distance, and mourning at home-we shall draw supplies of unfailing strength and courage from the unwavering assurance that there is an Omnipotent Being "who reigneth over the kingdoms of men," and that the ark of England, with the Queen and our sacred laws aboardthough the trusted earthly pilot has been summoned to his rest-has still a celestial Guide, who

"Rides on the whirlwind and directs the storm."

172

DRAPERS' HALL.

THIS Hall, though very inferior as a building to such splendid examples of civic taste as the Goldsmiths' or Clothworkers', has such an air of respectability and solidity about it that it well deserves notice, and I accord it the rather because I pay the Company a yearly groundrent, and feel pleased to bear testimony to the importance of my landlords.

Drapers' Hall is situate in Throgmorton-street, though there is nothing to indicate the spot save a high brick wall, which encloses it from the footway. This Company, third on the list of the twelve great Corporations, received a charter in 1439, and settled in the present locality in 1541, when they purchased the house and gardens of Thomas Cromwell, the attainted Earl of Essex, under Henry VIII. Stow in his "Chronicle," p. 68, thus describes the place: The house being finished, and having some reasonable plot of ground left for a garden, he (Cromwell) caused the pales of the gardens adjoining to the north part thereof on a sudden to be taken down, twenty-two feet to be measured forthright into the north of every man's ground, a line there to be drawn, a trench to be cast, a foundation laid, and a high brick wall to be built. My father had a garden there, and a house, standing close to his south pale. This house they loosed from the ground,

of

and bore upon rollers into my father's garden twenty-two feet, ere my father heard thereof; no warning was given him, nor other answer, when he spoke to the surveyors that work, but that their master, Sir Thomas, commanded them so to do.* No man durst go to argue the matter; but each man lost his land; and my father paid his whole rent, which was 6s. 6d. a year, for that half that was left." Truly a most pestilent piece of tyranny; the Earl having much less conscience than Ahab, who was willing to purchase the orchard he coveted, or to give the owner a better one in lieu of it, while this upstart peer would not trouble himself with any negotiations, but took possession in the summary way detailed.

Mr. Froude, in his history, takes infinite pains to prove that the Commons, in the reign of Henry VIII., were a singularly comfortable class, well paid and equitably governed. How do such facts agree with the notion? How would the meanest proprietor of the soil in England now deal with such trespassers? The rent-charge, too, deserves remark; 6s. 6d. per annum for a house and garden within sight of the Bank! What would the site be worth now?

The first Drapers' Hall (Cromwell's mansion) was burnt in the Great Fire, 1666, and in the following year the present building was erected, from the designs of Jerman, after whose plans the second Royal Exchange was built. The ornaments in Throgmorton-street were added by the brothers Adam. The gardens originally extended northwards as far as London-wall, and, doubtless, commanded

Only

The fact here mentioned deserves notice on another account. a few years since we heard with astonishment that our Yankee cousins, when the situation of any building proved inconvenient, were able to move it by means of levers to a more suitable spot; and yet we find the supposed novelty spoken of without surprise so early as the fifteenth century. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.