letters of introduction; one from Burroughs, the other from Younger; and both in high praise of the young bearer, for whom they were especially written. My limits will only allow me to say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season at the Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in "She Stoops to Conquer." She was Miss Hardcastle, and Edwin made his first appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman would have brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed it. That dignified gentleman, however, insisted on reserving his debût for Shylock, on the 11th of the same month. And what a

joyous season did Lizzy make of it for our then youthful grandfathers. How they admired her double talent in Miss Hardcastle! How ecstatic were they with her Maria, in the "Citizen!" How they How ravishedly did they listen to her Rosetta! laughed at her Miss Tittup, in "Bon Ton !" and how they extolled her playfulness and dignity as Rosina, of which she was the original representative, in the "Barber of Seville!" It may be remarked that Colman omitted the most comic scene in the piece, that wherein the Count is disguised as a drunken trooper as injurious to morality!

When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she was declared the first, and she was then almost the youngest of living actresses. And when she joined the Drury Lane company in the succeeding season, the principal parts were divided between herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P. Hopkins, and Perdita Robinson. Not one of this body was then quite twenty years of age! Is not this a case wherein to exclaim ·

66

"O mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos?"

Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle. Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas private plays at the Duke of Richmond's, in which the Earl of Derby, Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her; and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which ultimately

made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage, Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who still wears her coronet.

Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an eminent man indeed.

Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage, containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the

distress which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As the two drove off together in the gentleman's carriage toward Windsor, the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been thinking of old times.

“How many years is it, my lady countess," said he, “since I stood at my father's shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over the market-place, with a bowl of milk ?"

"Not so long at all events,” she answered with a smile, "but that I recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but for your assistance."

"The time is not long for memory," replied the Judge, "nor is Salisbury as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba; yet how wide the distance between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salisbury, and the Christmas dinner to which we are both proceeding, in the palace of the king!"

"The earl is already there," added the countess, "and he will be happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who has done such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the Bath."

To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, we will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves behaved in their character as knights.

THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.

FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS.

“Un roi abstrait n'est ni père, ni fils, ni frère, ni parent, ni chevalier, ami. Qu'est il donc ? Roi, méme quand il dort."-DIDEROT.

If we judge some of our kings by the strict laws of chivalry, we shall find that they were but sorry knights after all. They may have been terrible in battle; but they were ill-mannerly in ladies' bower.

William the Conqueror, for instance, had none of the tender sentiment of chivalry; in other words he showed little gentleness in his bearing toward women. It is said by Ingerius, that after Matilda of Flanders had refused his hand, on the ground that she would not have a bastard for a husband, he waylaid her as she was returning from mass in one of the streets of Bruges, dragged her out from among her ladies, pommelled her brutally, and finally rolled her in the mud. A little family difference arose in consequence; but as it was less bitter than family quarrels usually are, a reconciliation took place, and Matilda gave her hand to the knight who had so terribly bruised her with his arm. She loved him, she said, because he had shown more than the courage of common knights, by daring to beat her within sight of her father's own palace. But all's well that ends well; they were not only a handsome but a happy couple, and Matilda was head of the household at the Conqueror's hearth. The general's wife was there the general.

How William bore himself in fight is too well known to need recapitulating here. He probably never knew fear but once, and that was at the sounds of a tumult in the street, which reached his ears as he was being crowned. Then, indeed, "'tis true this god

did shake," for the first and only time. His successor, who was knighted by Archbishop Lanfranc, was in the field as good a knight as he, and generous to an adversary, although he was never so to any mortal besides. But Rufus was nothing of a knight in his bearing toward ladies. His taste with regard to the fair sex was of the worst sort; and the court of this royal and reprobate bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and knighthood, to Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or rather the knights of his time and country, with having introduced into England the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. The chivalrous magnanimity of Rufus is exemplified in the circumstance of his having, in disguise, attacked a cavalier, from whom he received so sound a beating, that he was at length compelled to avow himself in order to induce his conqueror to spare his life. The terrified victor made an apology, in the very spirit of the French knight of the Holy Ghost to a dying cavalier of the Golden Spur, whom he had mortally wounded in mistake: "I beg a thousand pardons," said the polite Frenchman, "but I really took you for somebody else." So William's vanquisher began to excuse himself for having nearly battered the king's skull to a jelly, with his battleaxe, on the ground of his having been unacquainted with his rank. "Never heed the matter," said the king, "you are a good fellow, and shall, henceforth, be a follower of mine." Many similar instances might be cited. Further, Rufus was highly popular with all men-at-arms; the knights reverenced him as the very flower of chivalry, and I am glad that the opprobrium of having slain him in the New Forest no longer attaches itself to a knight, although I am sorry an attempt has been made to fix it upon the church. No one now believes that Sir Walter Tyrrel was the author of the crime, and chivalry is acquitted of the charge against one of its members of having slain the flaxen-haired but rubicundnosed king.

Henry Beauclerc was more of a scholar than a knight, without, however, being so very much of the first. The English-born prince was far less chivalrous of spirit than his former brother Robert; that is, if not less brave, he was less generous, especially

to a foe. When he was besieged on St. Michael's Mount by Robert, and reduced to such straits. that he was near dying of thirst, Robert supplied him with water; an act for which Rufus called the doer of it a fool; but as poor Robert nobly remarked, the quarrel between him and their brother was not of such importance that he should be made to perish of thirst. "We may have occasion," said he, "for a brother hereafter; but where shall we find one, if we now destroy this?" Henry would hardly have imitated conduct so chivalrously generous. He was more knightly in love, and it is recorded to his honor, that he married Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, for pure love, and not for "filthy lucre," preferring to have her without a marriage portion, than to wait till one could be provided for her. This would have been praiseworthy enough had Henry not been, subsequently, like many other persons who marry in haste. -for ever looking for pecuniary assistance from other resources than his own. especially lacked too what was enjoined on every knight, a love of truth. His own promises were violated with alacrity, when the violation brought profit. He wanted, too, the common virtue of fidelity, which men of knightly rank were supposed to possess above all others. The fact that fifteen illegitimate children survived him, speaks little for his respect for either of his consorts, Matilda of Scotland, or Adelicia of Louvain. Generally speaking, however, the character of the royal scholar may be described in any terms, according to the view in which it is taken. With some historians, he is all virtue, with others all vice.

He

Stephen had more of the knightly character about him. He was an accomplished swordsman, and loved the sound of battle as became the spirit of the times, which considered the king as the first knight in the land. He had as little regard as Henry for a sense of justice when disposed to seize upon that to which he had no right, but he was incontestably brave, as he was indefensibly rash. Stephen received the spurs of knighthood from his uncle, Henry I., previous to the battle of Tinchebray; and in that fray he so bore himself as to show that he was worthy of the honor that had been conferred upon him. But Stephen was as faithless to his marriage vow as many other belted knights, and Matilda of Boulogne had to mourn over the faithlessness of one who had