Thistlewood. The Tower gas knows not
where the posts of the scaffold stood, or
how many stones have been bedewed with
blood. It cannot point out the spot where
the ghost of Ann Bullen was said to walk.
It lighted not to their work, Dighton
and Forrest creeping to murder the
princes. It shone not on the brazen
countenance of the King-honored Blood,
as, arrayed in sham canonicals, he
compassed the plunder of the crown. The
gas knows not where Jane saw the headless
body of her husband, or how much
good and gentle, and pious, as well as
guilty and ambitious, dust, moulders beneath
the chancel flags of the little church of Saint
Peter ad Vincula. Yet has the Tower gas
seen the hideous range of brick armouries
built by the third William, with their tens of
thousands of swords and bayonets and
muniments of war, blazing up into one grand
conflagration, and driving it, potent gas
as it is, into obscurity for a time. It has
seen the slow but absorbing footstep of the
blessed by-gone years of peace dismantle
ramparts and brick up portcullises, and
rust the mouths of the howling dogs of
war and fill up the mouth. Its mission is
more peaceful now. It glistens on the
gold and crimson of the warders as the
ceremony of delivering the Queen's keys
is nightly performed. It winks at the
spruce young Guardsmen officers as they
dash up to the gates in Hansom cabs
just before shutting-up time, or saunter
jauntily to mess. It lights up the clean pots
and glasses in the stone kitchen, and glows
upon the rubicund countenances of thirsty
grenadiers. It has an eye— a silent, watchful
eye—upon a certain strong room where there
is a great cage, and in that cage scintillating
the precious stones of the Imperial Crown of
England, the gold and silver and jewels of
the sceptre, the orb, the ampulla, the great
salt-cellar and all the stately regalia. The
gas is a guardian of all these, and defies the
Colonel Bloods of 'fifty-four. (Oh degenerate
'fifty-four, where are the good old Bloods,
and where the good old monarchs who were
so fond of them!) An impartial gas, it
shines as brightly on the grenadier's quart
pot as on the queenly crown. A convivial
gas, it blazes cheerfully in the mess room of
the Beauchamp Tower. A secretive gas, it
knows that beneath, the curtains and flags
of that same mess room there are dark
words and inscriptions cut into the aged
wall—the records of agony and hopeless
captivity, anagrams of pain, emblems of
sorrow and hopes fled and youth and joy
departed.

So, from where the town begins to where it
ends; from the twinkling lights of Putney
and Kew, to the marshy flats below Deptford;
the gas shines through the still night
and is the repository of secrets known
to few, but which all who choose to make
the gas their friend, may read, to the
softening of their hearts, perhaps, even as they
run.

BREAKFAST WITH THE BLACK
PRINCE.

WE were going ten and a half, the lee top-
sail braces and top-gallant bowlines checked,
three reefs out; the ship lying down to the
land-breeze, but the water smooth as a mill-
pond. It was a fine-weather evening; the
sun gone to bed, the moon rising. We
vere not far from Cape St. Nicholas Mole,
and standing northward along the west shore
of St. Domingo. Navassa lay far to leeward,
and Cape Tiburon—which is Cape Shark—
was long out of sight astern.

Ahead sailed the Sybille frigate, flag-ship of
Sir Home Popham, commander-in-chief on
the West India Station, and our design was
to pay a visit of ceremony to his sable majesty
King Christophe, whose dominions constituted
the northern portion of the island.

By carrying much sail, our little sloop of
war kept up with the frigate, and we entered
the roadstead of Cape Henry at the time
predicted. Those of us who desired it, were
allowed next day to join the officers of the
Sybille, and at seven a.m. we were all present
at a grand parade of the garrison, which
numbered three or four thousand men.

But who was Christophe? One of the most
extraordinary people of his time. He had a
black court, and maintained an orthodox Red
Book, with a "peerage," and a ministry of
able men with French titles, such as the
Due de Marmalade, and the Comte de
Limonade. But these ministers were saved
much trouble in administration of affairs by
his Majesty's own wonderful capacity for
business. Politic, astute, he was governing
Haïti with more wit than was displayed by
many an European monarch. He drew the
string rather too tightly, as after events
showed. But his reign followed that of the
bloody Dessalines, one of whose generals he
had been.

I found all the world speaking French
in his dominions; for as all the world that
has heard of Toussaint l'Ouverture knows,
the negro kingdom has been based on a
French colony. Buildings, fountains, fish-
ponds, parks, bridges, all were French. The
royal palace was the Tuilleries in miniature.
It had its gardes de corps, its sentries en
grande tenue, its parade ground, levelled and
in the trimmest order. The town, however
seemed to be made up of the remains of
former grandeur—a place of melancholy
squares and grass-grown streets, now half in
ruin. In the old times St. Domingo was
tropical France, and Cape Henry—then Cape
François—little Paris, having for rival only
Fort Royal of Martinique. I speak here of
the northern portion of the island; for the
south-eastern is Spanish—that is to say,
Spanish-negro.