intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live
the Queen, Long live everybody and everything!
as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques
in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards,
terraces, fountains, green banks, more
King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords
and ladies, more Long live they all! until he
absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole
of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he
had plenty of shouting and weeping and
sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held
him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying
at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing
them to pieces.

"Bravo!" said Defarge, clapping him on the
back when it was over, like a patron; "you are
a good boy!"

The mender of roads was now coming to
himself, and was mistrustful of having made a
mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

"You are the fellow we want," said Defarge,
in his ear; "you make these fools believe that
it will last for ever. Then, they are the more
insolent, and it is the nearer ended."

"Hey!" cried the mender of roads, reflectively;
"that's true."

"These fools know nothing. While they
despise your breath, and would stop it for ever
and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather
than in one of their own horses or dogs, they
only know what your breath tells them. Let it
deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot
deceive them too much."

Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the
client, and nodded in confirmation.

"As to you," said she, "you would shout and
shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a
noise. Say! Would you not?"

"Truly, madame, I think so. For the
moment."

"If you were shown a great heap of dolls,
and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces
and despoil them for your own advantage, you
would pick out the richest and gayest. Say!
Would you not?"

"Truly yes, madame."

"Yes. And if you were shown a flock of
birds unable to fly, and were set upon them to
strip them of their feathers for your own
advantage, you would set upon the birds of the
finest feathers; would you not?"

"It is true, madame."

"You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,"
said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand
towards the place were they had last been
apparent; "now, go home!"

DRIFT.

THE reader who swears by the "good old days,"
will, perhaps, be satisfied to accept the following
amusing picture of domestic life in the beginning
of the fifteenth century, which is drawn from
the " Inquisitions ad quod damnum," a series of
documents forming an important portion of the
Chancery division of our National Records.
These Inquisitions are most of them taken to
show the King whether it will be to "the damage
or injury of him or any one else," if he allow
lands to be given in mortmain; but, as in the
case before us, inquiries upon other matters
have been interpolated with this class of records.

King Henry the Fifth having been given to
understand that an outrage had been committed
on the person of one of his subjects, John
Mortimer, of Grendon, in Northamptonshire, issued
his writ, on the third day of December in the
first year of his reign, to his beloved and faithful
John Cokayn, Sir John Reynes, Thomas
Wydeville, John Barton, junior, William Palmer,
William Wakefield, and John Geffard, appointing
them his Commissioners to inquire into the case;
which they, having duly summoned a jury,
accordingly did at Northampton Castle, on the
Thursday before Christmas. Christmas, in that
year, 1413, fell on a Monday.

The result of their researches appears below,
translated from the Latin; and I pray all who
read it, to take breath for an awfully involved
sentence. Latin scribes were always a long-
winded race.

The jurors say, that whereas John Mortimer,
of Grendon, Esquire, was sitting in his mansion
house of Grendon aforesaid, at the dawn, busy
about the shaving of his beard, his beard being
in part shaved and in part not shaved, clothed in
his doublet only, without a hood or any other
covering to his body, a certain William Trussell,
Esquire, of Eston Maudyt, Junior, John Malpas,
otherwise Kettell, and others, varlets of the aforesaid
William Trussell, with many other malefactors
of the counties of Chester and Stafford, whose
names at present are unknown, in great multitude
and armed in force, led on by the conspiracy,
confederacy, and malice prepense of the
aforesaid William Trussell and others, to the
terror and perturbation of the Lord the King's
people, riding on horseback, with force of arms,
and arrayed in warlike manner, namely, with
coats of fence, jakkes, bows, arrows, swords, one-
handed and two-handed, hoods of mail, and
daggers, on Sunday (these were the days when
the clergy possessed great moral influence) next
after the feast of St. Hugh the Bishop, in the
first year of the reign of King Henry the Fifth
from the Conquest, broke into the closes and
mansion house of the aforesaid John Mortimer,
at Grendon aforesaid, against the peace of the
Lord the King, and then and there insulted the
said John Mortimer, beat, imprisoned, and ill-
treated him, some of the aforesaid malefactors
shouting, " Slee, slee, slee," and others of the
aforesaid malefactors shouting, "Houghsynowehym,
Houghsynowehym" (Hock, sinew, ham
string him! for which the incomplete state of
his costume afforded a tempting facility), and
(evidently confident in the justice of their cause
and the strength of their jakkes, &c.) "let us
hastily depart."

And they the said John Mortimer thus made
prisoner, led, with daggers and other weapons
pointed to his heart, and violent and malicious
threats of death, away with them to Eston
aforesaid, and him there as well as at Grendon