1829.J A Ramble in Lomhu. 541 



king, Richard the Second^ and his queen, Anne of Bohemia, in the 

 palmy days when fortune shone upon him, " When they presented him 

 with a mylk-whyte stede, sadled and bridled, and trapped with cloth 

 of golde and redde, parted togedre ; and the queue a palfrey all whyte, 

 and in the same way trapped in whyte and redde, Avhile all the condites 

 were ronnen with wyne both whyte and redde, for all manner of peple 

 to drynke of." Little did he dream, amidst the splendour and festivity 

 of the scene, of that other and dismal entry which he was yet to make 

 into that self-same city, when 



" As in a theatre, the eyes of men. 



After a well-graced actor leaves the stage. 



Are idly bent on him that enters next. 



Thinking his prattle to be tedious. 



Even so, or with much more contempt, men's eyes 



Did scowl on Richard : no man cried ' God save him !' 



No joyful tongue gave him his welcome home; 



But dust was thrown upon his sacred head. 



Which with such gentle sorrow he shook off. 



His face still combating with tears and smiles — 



The badges of his grief and patience — 



That had not God, for some strong purpose, steeled 



The hearts of men, they must perforce have melted. 



And barbarism itself have pitied him !" 



Change we the theme ; it grows too melancholy ! 



In the year of grace, 1536, when London Bridge was covered with 

 houses overhanging the pent-up turbulent stream — as if the ordinary 

 dangers of life were not sufficient, that men should, out of their inge- 

 nuity, invent new ones, desert terra-Jirma, and, like so many beavers, 

 perch their dwellings upon a crazy bridge — Sir William Hewitt, 

 citizen of London and cloth- worker, inhabited one of those temptations 

 of Providence. His only child, a pretty little girl, was playing with a 

 servant at a window over the water, and fell into the dangerous rapids, 

 which even now-a-days it is counted a kind of feat to shoot. Many a 

 one beheld the fearful sight, in the helplessness of terror, without dream- 

 ing of venturing into the stream. But there was one to whom the life 

 of the perishing child was dearer than his own, and that was the appren- 

 tice of Sir William Hewitt. He leaped into the perilous water after his 

 youthful mistress, and, by the aid of a bold heart and a strong arm, bore 

 her in safety to the shore ; — and he had his reward. Years rolled on, 

 and each succeeding one brought wealth to the father, and grace and 

 loveliness to the noble-minded daughter. Such was the fame of her 

 beauty, that even in that aristocratic age, the gallant and far-descended 

 cliivalry of the land were rival suitors for the hand of the merchant 

 queen of hearts. But fairer in her eyes was the 'prentice-cap of the 

 daring youth who had snatched her from the whirling waters, than the 

 coronet of the peer ; and, with the single-minded disinterestedness of 

 a genuine woman, she gave to her entitled preserver, Edward Osborne, 

 the hand and the heart which the Earl of Shrewsbury, the heir of the 

 lofty house of Talliot, had sighed for in vain. Well did her lover vindi- 

 cate her choice ! Edward Osborne was a nobleman born — of God's 

 creation, not man's : — he rose, by successful industry, to tlie highest 

 honours of that city whose merchants are the paymasters of the rulers of 

 the earth. And from the city-beauty, to whom faith and love were 

 dearer than titles and wealth, and the merchant-'prentice, wlio perilled 



