concluded with an enactment, that, " if the king
or his descendants should despise the laws of
the country, then the magnates and freemen
should be entitled to resist the authority of
such a king, without thereby incurring the
penalties of high treason." After wearisome
resistance and debate, "The Golden Bull"
was finally confirmed, by Andreas, at a Diet
held in the year 1231.

FAMILIAR THINGS.

THERE is a truth that travel brings,
A truth of homely birth;
We dwell among familiar things,
And little know their worth.
The emigrant in distant lands,
The sailor on the sea,
For all that, round us, silent stands,
Have deeper hearts than we.

We dwell among familiar things;
And daily, with dull sight,
We touch a thousand secret springs
Of sorrow and delight:
Delight and reverential bliss
To those who, exiled far,
Stretch dreaming arms to clasp and kiss
Each little household star.

We dwell among familiar things;
We know them by their use ;
And, by their many minist'rings,
Their value we deduce :
Forgetful each has had an eye,
And each can speak, though dumb ;
And, of the ghostly days gone by,
Strange witness might become.

We dwell among familiar things;
But should it be our lot
To sever all the binding-strings
That form the household knot;
To wander upon alien mould,
And cross the restless foam;—
How clearly should we then behold
The Deities of Home !

JACK ALIVE IN LONDON.

COMING from Greenwich or Blackwall,
radiant with " Badminton," or " Cider cup;"
or, perchance, coming home very satiated
and sea-sick from foreign parts, tired, jaded,
used-up, as a man is apt to be under such
circumstances, the Pool always pleases, enlivens,
interests me. I pull out the trumpet-stop of
my organ of veneration; my form dilates with
the tall spars around me; I lose all count of
the wonders of the lands I have seen, of the
coming cares and troubles—the worrying and
bickering—awaiting me, perhaps, in that
remorseless, inevitable London yonder. I forget
them all in the Pool. If I have a foreigner with
me, so much the better. "Not in crimson-
trousered soldiery," I cry, "oh! Louis or Alphonse
—not in the constant shouldering of arms,
and the drumming that never ceases,—not in
orders of the day, or vexatious passports, are
the glories of Britain inscribed. See them in
that interminable forest of masts, the red sun
lighting up the cupolas of Greenwich, the
tarry hulls, the patched sails, the laden
hayboats, the trim wherries, the inky waters of
the Pool. Read them in the cobweb rigging ;
watch them curling from the short pipes of
red-capped mariners lounging on the
bulwarks of timber ships ! Ships upon ships,
masts everywhere, even in the far-off country,
among trees and churches ; the commerce of
the world jammed up between these cumbered,
wharves, and overflowing into these narrow
creeks ! "

I propose to treat, as shortly as I can
consistently with accuracy, of maritime London,
and of " Jack " (alluding, under that cognomen,
to the general " seafaring " class) alive
in London.

"Jack " is " alive," to my knowledge and
experience, in East Smithfield, and in and
about all the Docks; in Poplar, Limehouse,
Rotherhithe, Shadwell, Wapping, Bermondsey,
and the Island of Dogs. He is feebly alive in
Fenchurch Street and the Minories; but he
shows special and vigorous symptoms of
vitality in Ratcliife Highway. If it interest
you at all to see him alive, and to see how he
lives, we will explore, for some half-hour or
so, this very muddy, tarry, salt-water smelling,
portion of the metropolis.

You can get to Ratcliffe Highway through
the Minories; you may attain it by a devious
route through Whitechapel and Mile End
New Town; but the way I go, is from London
Bridge, down Thames Street, and through the
Tower, in order to come gradually upon Jack
alive, and to pick up specimens of his saline
existence bit by bit.

London Bridge is densely crowded, as it has
been, is, and always will be, I suppose. The
wheels of the heavy wagons, laden with bales
and barrels, creak and moan piteously; while
the passengers, who are always certain of
being too late (and never are) for a train on
the South-Eastern Railway, goad cabmen into
performing frantic pas de deux with their
bewildered horses. The sportive bullocks, too,
the gigs, knackers' carts, sheep, pigs,
Barclay's drays, and cohorts of foot-passengers,
enliven the crowded scene.

Comfortably corn-crushed, jostled, and dust-
blinded, I descend the flight of stairs on the
right of the King William Street side of the
bridge. I have but to follow my nose along
Thames Street to Ratcliffe; and I follow it. I
elbow my way through a compact mass of
labourers, porters, sailors, fishwomen, and spruce
clerks, with their bill books secured by a
leather-covered chain round their waists.
Room there, for a hot sugar-broker tearing by,
towards the Exchange, bursting with a recent
bargain! Room for a spruce captain (he had
his boots cleaned by one of the "brigade"
opposite Billingsgate market) in an
irreproachable state of clean-shirtedness, navy-
blue-broadclothedness and chimney-pot-hat-