know nothing of her father. She must, of
course, communicate with her friends
immediately. I will call to-morrow to see you, and
we can talk about this, as well as many other
matters.
"With kind love, your brother,
"ARCHIE MUNRO."

"Archie Munro!" cried Hester, aloud, in her
amazement, and turned her head quickly over
her shoulder to look after the retreating coach.
It just passed out of sight, the sound of the
wheels died away, and a large old rook, on a
morning excursion far from his home in one of
the parks, alighted almost at her feet, and
hopped round and round her. But at the same
moment the last of the bolts was withdrawn
inside the queer old dingy house, the faint
flame of the lamp was suddenly quenched
overhead, and the great black door shuddered,
groaned, and swung back upon its hinges.

LEAVES PROM THE MAHOGANY TREE.
A JUG OF ALE.

CLEAR and golden as sherry; creaming up
as white as swans' down, in the long taper
glass; fresh, bright, sparkling; with the pleasant
aroma of the Kentish hop pervading the draught,
gratefully nourishing and gently exhilarating
—that is what a glass of good English ale
should be—ale that Autolycus, a great judge on
such matters, declared stoutly, as he went singing
along the road to the shepherd's cottage,
was " a dish for a king."

We can fancy the artful rascal, with oblique
eyes and greasy cap with broken feather, sitting
at the ale bench outside the Peal of Bells, ale-
fellow well met, with Christopher Sly, whose
illustrious family came in with " Richard Con-
queror." Sly, being thirsty and more dry even
than usual, has just called for a " pot o' small
ale." He is telling Autolycus of his descent
from old Sly of Burton Heath, and has also
informed him that he (Christopher) was by birth
a pedlar, by education a card-maker, by
transmutation a bear herd, and now, by recent
profession, a tinker. Fourteen-pence is the score
for sheer ale chalked against him by the fat ale
wife of Wincot.

Picture the scene at an Ostade alehouse. The
sunset is red on the old faded sign, and on the
dusty waggon at the door, red on the vine-leaves
over the porch, red on the cups on the ale bench.
It makes the face of Autolycus to glow with the
cunning of a Mercury, and Sly's Bardolphian
countenance to blaze again, as if he were peeping
in at a furnace door. The fat Falstaff of a landlord
breaks out laughing over the red curtain of
the open lattice window; the fat landlady and
the buxom servant roar from the upper window,
at the jokes of the two merry guests. The
waggoner and the ostler and the harvestmen
laugh too, while a great bear of a shepherd's dog
barks with delight, as Autolycus clears his pipes
and sings his favourite song of

THE JUG OF ALE.

As I was sitting one afternoon
Of a pleasant day in the month of June,
I heard a thrush sing down the vale,
And the tune he sang was " the jug of ale,"
And the tune he sang was the jug of ale.

The white sheet bleaches on the hedge,
And it sets my wisdom teeth on edge,
When dry with telling your pedlar's tale,
Your only comfort's a jug of ale,
Your only comfort's a jug of ale.

I jog along the footpath way,
For a merry heart goes all the day;
But at night, whoever may flout and rail,
I sit down with my friend the jug of ale,
With my good old friend the jug of ale.

Whether the sweet or sour of the year,
I tramp and tramp though the gallows be near.
O while I've a shilling I will not fail
To drown my cares in a jug of ale,
Drown my cares in a jug of ale!

This song is very unjustly confounded by some
commentators with Mr. Lover's old Irish song,
The Jug of Punch. As to the lines in it, which
somewhat resemble those in The Winter's Tale,
there can be no doubt that Shakespeare stole
them. Our copy of The Jug of Ale dates back
to at least 1520, and is generally attributed to
Bishop Still, that convivial prelate, worthy
descendant of earnest Walter Map's Bishop Golias,
who wished "in taberna mori," and, what's
worse, rhymed that disreputable wish with
"angelorum chori." The Bishop Still we allude
to, was the writer of the old farce comedy Gammer
Gurton's Needle, which contained the
bacchanalian chant,

        I cannot eat but little meat,
           My stomach is not good;
        But sure I think that I can drink
           With him that wears a hood.

That fine old song of The Ex-ale-tation of
Ale, draws one of the earliest distinctions
between beer and ale: a distinction still regarded
in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire and Staffordshire,
where ale is the common liquor and beer
is the gentleman. The writer observes quaintly:

But now, as they say, beer bears it away,
The more is the pity, if right might prevail;
For with this same beer came up heresy here,
The old Catholick drink is a pot of good ale.

And in very deed, the hop's but a weed,
Brought over 'gainst law and here set to sale.
Would the law were renewed, and no more beer brewed,
But all good men betake them to a pot of good ale!

Too many, I wis, with their deaths proved this,
And therefore (if ancient records do not fail)
He that first brewed the hop was rewarded with rope,
And found his beer far more bitter than ale.

This is one of the earliest denunciations of
the newly invented drink, flavoured with the
Flemish hop, introduced in Henry the Eighth's
time, and denounced at first by the physicians
as unwholesome. The old English ale must