the help of the painted board? But here we
are at Battlefield."

"I never walk over these meadows,"
exclaimed Sidney, "without deep emotion. I
was reading Hall just before my father came.
How graphic these chroniclers are, compared
with the ranting players."

"What you read, I read, Philip."

"As we walked through the Eastgate, I
could not but think of that day when Henry
came with his host into Shrewsbury, and being
advertised that the earls were at hand with
banners displayed and battles ranged, marched
suddenly out by the Eastgate, and there
encamped."

"An evening of parley and defiance,
followed by a bloody morning."

"The next day, in the morning early, which
was the vigil of Mary Magdalene, the king
set his battle in good order—and so his
enemies. There, on that gentle rise, Greville,
must the rebel hosts have been arrayed. Then
suddenly the trumpets blew. The cry of
St. George went up on the King's part—and
that cry was answered by Esperancé Percy.
By Heaven, the tale moves me like the old
song of Percy and Douglas!"

"Here is a theme for the players. Write
the tragedy of Hotspur, Philip."

"Nonsense. What could I do with it, even
if I were a maker. The story begins with
the deposition of Richard. It is an epic, and
not a tragedy. And yet, Fulke, when I see
the effect these acted histories produce upon
the people, I am tempted, in spite of Aristotle,
to wish that some real poet would take in
hand our country's annals. The teaching of
our day is taking that form. The Players
are the successors of the Bards."

"What a character is that young Harry of
Monmouth—the profligate and the hero!
Something might be made of these contending
elements."

"Yes, the players would do it bravely.
How they would make him swagger and
bully—strike the chief justice and slaughter
the Welshmen. Harry of Monmouth was a
gentleman, and the players could not touch
him."

"If the stage is to teach the people, surely
right teachers will arise. Look at our preachers.
They stir the dull clowns and the sleepy
burgesses with passionate eloquence, and yet they
preach as scholars. They never lower
themselves to their audiences. And why should
the stage be the low thing which we see,
when it addresses the same classes?"

"There may be a change some day; but
not through any theorick about it. England
may have her Æschylus—when the man
comes; perchance in our age—more likely
when all the dust and cobwebs of our semi-
barbarism are swept away—for we are
barbarians yet, Greville."

"Come, come—your fine Italian reading
has spoiled you for our brave old English.
We have poetry in us if we would trust to
nature. There is the ancient blind crowder
that sits at our school-gate, with his ballads
of love and war, which you like as much as I
do. Has he no poetry to tell of? As good,
I think, as the sonnets of Master Francis
Petrarch."

"Don't be a heretic, Greville. But see;
the sun is sinking behind that bosky hill,
from which Hotspur, looking to the East, saw
it rise for the last time. We must be
homeward."

"And here, where the chapel bell is tolling
a few priests to even-song, forty thousand
men were fighting, a century and a half ago
—for what?"

"And for the same doubtful cause went on
fighting for three quarters of a century.
What a sturdy heart must our England have
to bear these things and yet live!"

"Times are changed, Philip! Shall we
have any civil strife in our day?"

"Papist and Puritan would like to be at
it. But the rule of the law is too strong for
them. Yet my father says that the fighting
days will come over again—not for questions
of sovereign lineage, but of vulgar opinion.
The reforms of religion have produced sturdy
thinkers. There is a beast with many heads
called the Commonalty, growing stronger
every day; and it is difficult to chain him or
pare his claws."

"Well, well, Philip, we are young politicians,
and need not trouble our heads yet
about such matters. You are going to
Oxford. What will the good mother make of you
—a statesman, a soldier, or a scholar?"

"Must the characters be separable?
Whatever I am, dear Fulke, I will not shame my
ancestry."

"And I, dear Philip, will never abate
my love for you; and that will keep me
honest."

LAW IN THE EAST.

IT is one of England's proudest boasts that
wherever her flag is unfurled, wherever her
supremacy is established, there she carries the
blessings of liberal institutions: she conquers
but to set free. The same justice which is
provided for the proudest son of Albion, is
sent forth across the waters to attend on the
meanest swarthy subject of Her Majesty,
in distant India. At the same time this
beautiful feature of our constitution, admirably
as it reads on paper, excellent as it sounds to
the ear, but too frequently fails in its mission
of mercy, and in one way or the other proves
rather the reverse of an unmitigated blessing
to those for whose especial benefit it was
wafted over the seas. In India Proper, as
we have endeavoured to point out in a
previous number,* the way to justice, open though
it is intended to be, becomes so overgrown
with rank bribery and extortion, that the
* No. 95.