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patrimony -some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two or three acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the term of twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. The remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. Shortly after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his property. He bethought himself for a while as to what course he should take, and finally he chose the profession of arms, and went out to Spain, to break crowns and to win spurs.

He saw

In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. enough of hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard drinking. He was wild, almost savage of temper, and he never rose to a command which gave him any chance of gaining admission on the roll of chivalry. There was a knight, however, named Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the latter clung to him as a means whereby to become as great as that to which he clung. Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain; and, subsequently, in Flanders, he fought with such distinguished valor, that when Catesby and his associates in England were considering where they might find the particular champion whom they needed for their particular purpose in the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of the reckless soldier flashed across the mind of Catesby, and Guy was at once looked after as the "very properest man" for a very improper service.

The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, found the latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroying king and parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again in England. The English soldier in Flanders came over to London, put up at an inn, which occupied a site not very distant from that of the once well-known "Angel" in St. Clement's Danes, and made a gay figure in the open Strand, till he was prepared to consummate a work which he thought would help himself to greatness.

Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be observed, however, that knight never went more coolly to look death in the face than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the parliament. At the same time it must be added, that Guy had not the slightest intention of hoisting himself with his own petard. He ran a very great risk, it is true, and he did it fearlessly; but the fact that both a carriage and a boat were in waiting to facili

tate his escape, shows that self-sacrifice was not the object of the son of the York proctor. His great ambition was to rank among knights and nobles. He took but an ill-method to arrive at such an object; but his reverence for nobility was seen even when he was very near to his violent end. If he was ever a hero, it was when certain death by process of law was before him. But even then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair there was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance of the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under the perfect conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his quality!

Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page, and squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one who has dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and Overbury. In this tragedy bearing the latter knight's name, and produced at the Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the hero, Sir Thomas. His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an honest livelihood by his industry, was the only act of his life of which Savage was ever ashamed. In this piece the only guilty persons are the countess and her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. This is in accordance with the once-prevailing idea that Northampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas, in his residence, which occupied the site of the present Northumberland house. The play was not successful, and the same may be said of it when revived, with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan, the actor, furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his be lief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of knights and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical.

"Too great for pity, they inspire respect,

Their deeds astonish rather than affect.

Proving how rare the heart that we can move,
Which reason tells us we can never prove."

Guy Faux, who, when in Spain, was the 'squire of the higherborn Catesby, has inspired but few dramatic writers. I only know of two. In Mrs. Crouch's memoirs, notice is made of an afterpiece, brought out on the 5th of November, 1793, at the Hay

market. A far more creditable attempt to dramatize the story of Guy Fawkes was made with great success at the Coburg (Victoria) theatre, in September, 1822. This piece still keeps possession of the minor stage, and deservedly; but it has never been played with such effect as by its first "cast." O. Smith was the Guy, and since he had played the famous Obi, so well as to cause Charles Kemble's impersonation at the Haymarket to be forgotten, he had never been fitted with a character which suited him so admirably. It was one of the most truthful personations which the stage had ever seen. Indeed the piece was played by such a troop of actors as can not now be found in theatres of more pretensions • than the transpontine houses. The chivalric Huntley, very like

the chivalric Leigh Murray, in more respects than one, enacted Tresham with a rare ability, and judicious Chapman played Catesby with a good taste, which is not to be found now in the same locality. Dashing Stanley was the Monteagle, and graceful Howell the Percy, Beverly and Sloman gave rough portraits of the king and the facetious knight, Sir Tristam Collywobble— coarse but effective. Smith, however, was the soul of the piece, and Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley, might have witnessed the representation, and have been proud of his descent from the dignified hero that O, Smith made of his ancestor.

I have given samples of knights of various qualities, but I have yet to mention the scholar and poet knights. There are many personages who would serve to illustrate the knight so qualified, but I know of none so suitable as Ulrich Von Hutten.

ULRICH VON HUTTEN.

"Jacta est alea."— Ulrich's Device.

ULRICH VON HUTTEN was born on the 21st of April, 1488, in the castle of Stackelberg, near Fulda, in Franconia. He was of a noble family-all the men of which were brave, and all the women virtuous. He had three brothers and two sisters. His tender mother loved him the most, because he was the weakest of her offspring. His father loved him the least for the same reason. For a like cause, however, both parents agreed that a spiritual education best accorded with the frame of Ulrich. The latter, at eleven years old, was accordingly sent to learn his humanities in the abbey school at Fulda.

His progress in all knowledge, religious and secular, made him the delight of the stern abbot and of his parents. Every effort possible was resorted to, to induce him to devote himself for ever to the life of the cloister. In his zealous opposition to this he was ably seconded by a strong-handed and high-minded knight, a friend of his father's named Eitelwolf von Stein. This opposition so far succeeded, that in 1504, when Ulrich was sixteen years of age he fled from the cloister-academy of Fulda, and betook himself to the noted high-school at Erfurt.

Among his dearest fellow Alumni here were Rubianus and Hoff, both of whom subsequently achieved great renown. In the Augustine convent, near the school, there was residing a poor young monk, who also subsequently became somewhat famous. Nobody, however, took much account of him just then, and few even cared to know his name-. -Martin Luther. The plague breaking out at Erfurt, Rubianus was accompanied by Ulrich to Cologne, there to pursue their studies. The heart and purse Ulrich's father were closed against the son, because of his flight

of

from Fulda; but his kinsman Eitelwolf, provided for the necessities of the rather imprudent young scholar.

The sages who trained the young idea at Cologne were of the old high and dry quality-hating progress and laboriously learned in trifles. At the head of them were Hogstraten and Ortuin. Ulrich learned enough of their manner to be able to crush them afterward with ridicule, by imitating their style, and reproducing their gigantic nonsense, in the famous " Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum." In the meantime he knit close friendship with Sebastian Brandt, and Ecolampadius-both young men of progress. The latter was expelled from Cologne for being so, but the University of Frankfort on the Oder offered him an asylum. Thither Ulrich repaired also, to be near his friend, and to sharpen his weapons for the coming struggle between light and darknessGermany against Rome, and the German language against the Latin.

At Frankfort he won golden opinions from all sorts of people. The Elector, Joachim of Brandenburg; his brother, the priestly Margrave Albert; and Bishop Dietrich von Beilow were proud of the youth who did honor to the university. He here first became a poet, and took the brothers Von Osthen for his friends. He labored earnestly, and acquired much glory; but he was a very free liver to boot, though he was by no means particularly so, for the times in which he lived. His excesses, however, brought on a dangerous disease, which, it is sometimes supposed, had not hitherto been known in Europe. Be this as it may, he

was never wholly free from the malady as long as he lived, nor ever thought that it much mattered whether he suffered or not.

He was still ill when he took up for a season the life of a wandering scholar. He endured all its miserable vicissitudes, suffered famine and shipwreck, and was glad at last to find a haven, as a poor student, in the Pomeranian University of Griefswalde. The Professor Lötz and his father the Burgomaster, were glad to patronize so renowned a youth, but they did it with such insulting condescension that the spirit of Ulrich revolted; and in 1509, the wayward scholar was again a wanderer, with the world before him where to choose. The Lötzes, who had lent him clothes, despatched men after him to strip him; and the poor, half-frozen

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