Once more we heard her of her husband speak,
     As though he stood all clothed in light before her.
We thought the pleasant spell was growing weak,
     But the child said 'twas Heaven was opening o'er her.
And so she died; and on her grave we set
Only the primrose and the violet.

SHADOWS.

THE SHADOWS OF PHILIP SIDNEY AND FULKE
GREVILLE.

THERE has been high revelry in Shrewsbury
in 1569. Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President
of the Council of the Marches, has made his
annual visit, during an interval in his government
of Ireland, in which he had returned to
his favourite Ludlow Castle. Philip Sidney,
his son, is a boy of fifteen, at the Free Grammar
School of Shrewsbury. In the same form—of
the same age—is his devoted friend, Fulke
Greville. The ceremonies are over. Sir Henry
has sate in the ancient hall of the Council
House, to hear complaints and to dispense
justice. He has gone in solemn procession to
St. Chad's Church, with bailiffs, and aldermen,
and wardens of companies. He has
banquetted with the masters of the school in the
great library. He has been present at a
stage-play in the Guildhall—the Mayor's play.
But more welcome than all the pomp of office
is a quiet hour with his boy Philip, as they
sit in the cool of a May morning on the terrace
of the Council House, and look over the bright
Severn towards Haughmond Hill, and muse
in silence, as they gaze upon one of those
unrivalled combinations of natural beauty
and careful cultivation, which have been the
glory of England during many ages of
comparative freedom and security. It is the last
of Philip's school years. He is to proceed to
Oxford. His friend Greville afterwards wrote
of him:—"I lived with him and knew him
from a child, yet I never knew him other than
a man, with such staidness of mind, lovely
and familiar gravity, as carried grace and
reverence above greater years." Proud is the
father of his noble son. He is "the light of
his family." They talk as friend to friend.
The father—a statesman and soldier—is not
displeased to see that, beneath the gravity of
the precocious boy, are fiery glances of feeling
almost approaching to rashness. They become
one who in after years exclaimed, "I am a
Dudley in blood the duke's daughter's son,"

The Lord President has departed. There
is holiday at the school; and Sidney and
Greville walk forth to the fields in that
spring-time. Shrewsbury is a place in which
the young Sidney lives in the memories of the
past. Few of the public buildings and private
houses of the town are of the more recent
Tudor architecture. The Market Square and
Pride Hill are rich in the black oaken timbers,
and gabled roofs, and pannelled carvings of
the fifteenth century. The deserted Abbey is
not yet in ruins. The Castle has a character
of crumbling strength. The High Cross is
perfect. There, were beheaded the last of the
British Princes of Wales: and there, suffered
some who had the misfortune not to fall with
Hotspur in the battle of Hateley Field. At
the Augustine Friars, and the Grey Friars,
are still seen the graves of many who had
perished in that fight. The Welsh Bridge,
with its "great gate to enter into by the town,
and at the other end, towards Wales, a mighty
strong tower, to prohibit enemies to enter into
the bridge" (as described by old Leland), has
its associations of border hostilities. Sidney's
mind is formed to luxuriate in the poetry of
history.

The young men take their course into the
country by the Castle Foregate. They are in
earnest talk.

"What a monster these players make of
Richard the Third," says Sidney. "Maugre
my loyal reverence for her Highness's
grand-father, I have a liking for the venomous little
Yorkist. Even the players couldn't show him
as a coward."

"Not when they make him whimper about
revenge, suns, moons, and planets; silly
lambs and croaking ravens—all crying for
revenge upon him? Heavens! what stuff!"

"Rare stuff! How is it that these play
writers cannot make their people talk like
Englishmen and Christians? When the
board is up—'Bosworth Field'—and two
armies fly in, represented by four swords and
bucklers—and the usurper dashes about,
despite his wounds,—hear how he wastes his
precious time. Do you remember?"

"Yes, yes—"

"' Fly, my lord, and save your life.'

"I have it—"

'Fly, villain! look I as though I would fly?
  No, first shall this dull and senseless ball of earth
  Receive my body cold and void of sense.
  Yon watery heavens scowl on my gloomy dny,
  And darksome clouds close up my cheerful sound.—
  Down is thy sun, Richard, never to shine again.—
  The bird whose feathers should adorn my head
  Hovers aloft and never comes in sight.'

There's a Richard for you."

"Bravo, Philip! You should join a
fellowship of players. You would beat the varlet
with the hump that mouthed it on Tuesday.
But why so hard upon the rhetoric of the
vagabonds? Your favourite Gorboduc is full
of such trash!"

"Yes, and faulty even as this True tragedy
of Richard the Third, in time and place. In
two hours of the Mayor's play, we had Shore's
wife in Cheapside, and poor dead Richard
about to be drawn through Leicester on a
collier's horse."

"Suppose there were painted scenes, as
some of the playhouses have, instead of the
door painted in great letters—couldn't the
imagination go from Cheapside to Leicester in
spite of Aristotle? and can't it, even with