ing; the roar of Atlantic gales breaks into his pages, and they show, up and down, splashes of storm-driven brine.

Nigel and Harrison.

In going back now to the earlier years of King James' reign, I shall make no apology for calling attention to that engaging old story of the Fortunes of Nigel. I know it is the fashion with many of the astute critics of the day to pick flaws in Sir Walter, and to expatiate on his blunders and shortcomings; nevertheless, I do not think my readers can do better-in aiming to acquaint themselves with this epoch of English history — than to read over again Scott's representation of the personality and the surroundings of the pedant King. There may be errors in minor dates, errors of detail; but the larger truths respecting the awkwardness and the pedantries of the first Stuart King, and respecting the Scotch adventurers who hung pressingly upon his skirts, and the lawless street scenes which in those days did really disturb the quietude of the great metropolis, are pictured with a liveliness which will

make them unforgetable. Macaulay says that out of the gleanings left by historic harvesters Scott has made "a history scarce less valuable than theirs." Nor do I think there is in the Fortunes of Nigel a deviation from the truth (of which many must be admitted) so extravagant and misleading as Mr. Freeman's averment, that in Ivanhoe "there is a mistake in every line." There are small truths and large truths; and the competent artist knows which to seize upon. Titian committed some fearful anachronisms, and put Venetian stuffs upon Judean women; Balthasar Denner, on the other hand, painted with minute truthfulness every stubby hair in a man's beard, and no tailor could have excepted to his button-holes: nobody knows Denner; Titian reigns.

Among those whom Scott placed under tribute for much of his local coloring was a gossipy, kindly clergyman, William Harrison * by name, who was

*William Harrison, b. 1534; d. 1593. It is interesting to know that much has come to light respecting the personal history of William Harrison, through the investigations of that indefatigable American genealogist, the late Colonel J. L. Chester.

born close by Bow Lane, in London, who studied at Westminster, at Oxford, and Cambridge (as he himself tells us), and who had a parish in Radwinter, on the northern borders of Essex; who came to be a canon, finally, at Windsor; and who died ten years before James came to power. He tells us, in a delightfully quaint way, of all the simples which he grew in his little garden-of the manner in which country houses were builded, and their walls white-washed-of the open chimney vents, and the smoke-burnished rafters. "And yet see the change," he says, "for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, but a great manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration."

When the old parson gets upon the subject of dress he waxes eloquent; nor was he without fullest opportunities for observation, having been for much time private chaplain to the Earl of Cobham.

"Oh, how much cost," he says, "is bestowed now-a-daies upon our bodies, and how little upon our soules! How many sutes of apparel hath the one, and how little furniture hath

the other! How curious, how nice are the men and women, and how hardlie can the tailer please them in making things fit for their bodies. How many times must they be sent back againe to him that made it. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman's locks, manie times cut off above or under the ears, round, as by a wooden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varieties of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of the Turks, not a few cut like to the beard of Marquess Otto; some made round, like a rubbing brush, others with a pique devant ( fine fashion!).

"In women, too, it is much to be lamented that they doo now far exceed the lightness of our men, and such staring attire as in times past was supposed meet for none but light housewives onelie, is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons. What should I say of their doublets with pendant pieces on the brest, full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colors. I have met with some of these trulles in London, so disguised, that it hath passed my skill to discerne whether they were men or women."

If this discerning old gentleman had shot his quill along our sidewalks, I think it would have punctured a good deal of bloat, and stirred up no little bustle. The King himself had a great liking for fine dress in others, though he was himself a sloven. Lord Howard, a courtier, writes to a friend who is hopeful of preferment:

"I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new Jerkin well bordered, and not too short: the King liketh it flowing. Your ruff should be well stiffened and bushy. The King is nicely heedful of such points. Eighteen servants were lately discharged, and many more will be discarded who are not to his liking in these matters." And again, speaking of a favorite, he says:-"Carr hath changed his tailors, and tiremen many times, and all to please the Prince, who laugheth at the long-grown fashion of our young courtiers, and wisheth for change everie day.

A London Bride.

One other little bit of high light upon the everyday ways of London living, in the early years of King James, we are tempted to give. It comes out in the private letter of a new-married lady, who was daughter and heiress of that enormously rich merchant, Sir John Spencer, who was Lord Mayor of London; and who, in Elizabeth's time (as well as James'), lived in Crosby Hall, still standing in the thick of London city, near to where Thread and Needle Street, at its eastern end, abuts upon Bishopsgate. Every voyaging American should go to see this best type of domestic architecture of the fifteenth century now existing in London; and it will quicken his interest in the picturesque old pile