of pensive joy playing about his lips, and his eyes are lighted up with a fond recollection of happiness that is past away. I dare be sworn that George Canning, the first of living orators, the statesman whose genius is piercing its way through the dark clouds of Europe's destiny, is even now looking back with more real pleasure to the triumphs of Gregory Griffin, than to the honours of the most successful policy; and is feeling, with a true philosophy, that the swords and plumes of Montem are worth as much-perhaps much more-than the ribbons and stars of a riper age—' a little louder, but as empty quite."'"

"And there," said Holyoake, "stands his fearless and all-knowing rival ;—and he, too, is pleased. I see no frown gathering like a whirlwind about the brows of Henry Brougham. He is chatting with a happy little hero of buckles and silk-stockings, as delighted himself as if he were perfectly unconscious of briefs and Brookes's. Montem for ever, say I, if it were only that it can make two such men forget the cares and passions of their ordinary life, even for a few hours."

"Come," said Gerard, "politicians are everyday persons on such occasions as these ;-I can see these foremost men of all the world' for half-acrown, any night between this and the prorogation. Look yonder-there is a mother kissing her boy who is just arrived to the dignity of the fifth form, and the privilege of a Corporal's coat-while his lovely sister gazes on him with a speechless admi

ration, and wishes that 'heaven had made her such a man.' That trio alone redeems Montem from all its folly."

"I can behold such a piece of the pathetic any day," said Frazer, "at an 'establishment' at Islington, or a 'seminary' at Camden Town."

"I will not attempt to reason with Frazer," said Gerard, "about the pleasures of Montem ;-but to an Etonian it is enough that it brings pure and ennobling recollections-calls up associations of hope and happiness-and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than wisdom, and the great that there is something nobler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or generous rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom I remember only the nicknames; -they are now degenerated into schemimg M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors;-but at Montem they leave the plodding world of reality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth-form Etonians."

ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE.

THE changes that are constantly going forward in the external aspects of society require the lapse of a generation or two to make a due impression upon our senses and our reason. One form of life so imperceptibly slides into another, that we observe no striking contrasts till we look back from our age to our youth, or study, with a purpose of comparison, the pictures which the novelists or dramatists of one period have painted, and then turn to the same occasional records of another period, by the same class of true historians. Thus we see distinctly that Defoe lived in a condition of society very different from that in which Fielding lived, and that Smollett was describing scenes and characters which could never have offered themselves to the observation of Dickens. It is the same with the painters. Hogarth's men and women are essentially unlike those of Gillray, and Gillray's notabilities never to be confounded with those of Doyle or Leech. As a boy, I was familiar with Hogarth. But as pictures of a life that was patent to me, how could I comprehend the cassocked parson on his lean horse, and his daughter alighted from the York Waggon?* A fine lady beating

* Harlot's Progress, plate 1.

hemp in Bridewell was equally incomprehensible.* I had never seen such a smart industrious apprentice working at a hand-loom as Hogarth showed me; nor such an idle one, gambling with blackguards upon a tombstone, while sober people were going to church. Never beheld I a little boy in a laced cocked-hat,† nor saw a bonfire in the middle of the streets on a rejoicing-night. Grenadiers

wore other caps than I observed in 'The March to Finchley;' and in the stage-coach of my early days there was no literal basket hung behind, in which sate an old woman smoking a pipe.§ As a painter of living manners Hogarth was obsolete in the first decade of this century. But how priceless as a painter of domestic history!

I look back upon my native town as I remember it as a schoolboy. || How changed is it in its everyday life—in a hundred minute changes that are not peculiar to my birth-place, but which belong to the universal revolutions of fifty years! How obsolete are many of the familiar things that seemed a part of my early being! A mere list of them would suggest many thoughts not unprofitable to those who know that the progress of a genera

*Harlot's Progress, plate 4.

† Evening.
§ Country Inn-yard.

Night. In Windsor, as it was,' I have attempted a picture of the CourtWindsor the Castle. The present paper has reference solely to the Borough. Windsor, as I knew it as a youth, was a 'singular mixture of the poetical and the prosaic-of the poetical in its antiquities and its regalities of the prosaic in its mean modern town and its very narrow society.

VOL. II.

R

tion is to be read in other memorialists than Hansard.

Windsor was an ill-built town-a patchwork town of encroachments upon the castle, and of lath and plaster tenements run up cheaply upon collegiate and corporate leaseholds. There was nothing ancient in the town, except the church, which was swept away some thirty years ago. "Mine host of the Garter" had no antique hostelry; and 'Herne's Oak' was a very apocryphal relic. Inns there were, with historical signs; but the 'Royal Oak' of Charles II., 'The Queen's Head' of Anne, and The Duke's Head' of the Culloden executioner, were only antique in premature decay. The usual neglect of all country towns clung to Windsor-filthy gutters and unswept causeways.*

6

My native town was a Corporate Borough. The Corporation was no abstract authority. It was on all possible occasions visible to the public eye, in solemn processions of red gowns and blue, with the mace-bearer in the front, and the beadle in the rear. The Corporation marched to church in toged state; and three times a year it astonished the children by this array of grandeur, when it proclaimed a gingerbread fair at street corners, and not a hot spice-nut could be sold till the macebearer had shouted "Oh yes." I fear all this glory is departed from the land. Elective corporators now go to church in frock coats; and the charter of Charles II., which bestowed upon the Borough

*Of its ancient Black Ditches I have spoken elsewhere, p. 157.