of opening the moor may be altered. There is no boundary fence between the raps and doles; they lie between the rhines or ditches in open country.

see how many of their neighbors who defile | number or description in every case. By in are spared to come out again. Those mutual agreement, the time and condition who remain behind will die the ensuing year. Instead of asking whether service has begun in church, the rustic folk will say, "Has prayer gone in yet?" Not far from the Parrett are three or four places where grafts of the Holy Thorn from Glastonbury are supposed to grow, and the people go to see them blossom on old Christmas day. There is a tradition amongst many old people that it is better to celebrate old Christmas day than the new one. Until recently there was quite a mass of local traditions, songs, and literature; but the national schools are doing their levelling work.

Although the West Somerset folk are often hearty enough in their way, a tone of pessimism is prevalent among them when they speak of one another. When a good man has departed this life they rarely speak of him in ecstatic language, or apply such adjectives as "splendid" or "capital to his virtues; the utmost they say is, "Woll, you never heard nairer zoul speak bad o un." Two negatives are often used where one would do.

The question seems to be: How did the ownership of a Sharp Ham right, for example, give the owner the communal privileges over adjoining moors? Perhaps it may have arisen from the fulfilment of a common duty; and this would be either draining the moor by the rhines, or helping to dam back the inroads of the tides. For ages the problem of diking and draining was before the dwellers in the valley of the Parrett; the pastures of their flocks, their houses, and their very existence depended upon its being done successfully. The tide has long since encroached upon the land, and right opposite the mouth of the Parrett there is said to be a submerged forest and lands, for which tithe rent-charge used to figure for the benefit of the neighboring clergyman, with power to distrain upon Father Nep tune if he thought fit. In these raps and doles the Church was not forgotten. The On the marshes close to the mouth of rector of a parish distant nearly thirty the Parrett a very curious land tenure, miles, and he of another distant eight peculiar to this neighborhood, is found. miles, have a Sharp Ham right, and a The moors or marshes are valued highly privilege to stockage if they choose. as affording most nutritious food for stock, These rights show in their way the history and from miles round sheep and oxen are of church endowments, and their haphazsent there for change of herbage, the salt ard and sporadic character. There are and sea breezes having a most wonderful also in existence in these curious moors effect upon them. On the east side of certain rights called Hopping Rights. the river the tract known as Pawlett Hams This is when the ownership and rights of used to let at £7 or £8 an acre yearly in stockage passes from one rap to another, the good days. On the west side the so that the owner seems to "swop" (exmoors known as Wick Moor, North Ham, change) with a neighbor from one year to and Sharp Ham, comprising about two another. These hopping rights can only hundred and twenty-five acres, are owned exist, of course, when there is a ditch or by twenty to thirty proprietors. But their rhine between the raps. Here, therefore, proprietorship is exercised in a very pe- along this portion of the valley of the culiar way. It is a kind of communal Parrett there is a tract of land where, in tenure of a very unique and puzzling the ordinary sense, there is no freehold, character. The ownership of a rap or no leasehold, no copyhold. Nor is there dole in one moor will give stockage rights a common; nor are there common rights, in the adjoining moor. For example, a as usually understood; nor is there any Sharp Ham right will carry with it a stock-lord of the manor. Were some valuable age right in Wick Moor. Further, there is a distinction between the "Foresheer" and the stockage right. A proprietor may have the exclusive right to cut a sheer of grass on one lot, and yet not have the stockage to himself afterwards. The time when "stockage " begins varies in the different moors, and here and there no mowing or foresheer is allowed. Further, the ownerships of a "rap" in one place and of a "dole" in another do not involve the right to pasture stock of the same

der very far up the valley of the Parrett they thought were glittering gold mines in and trace its head waters, which rise in the Arctic seas, and so for many weeks North Parrett, within sight of the English they ballasted their ships with the fallaChannel. But its most interesting reaches cious heaps shining only with mica, imag. are the lower ones, where the tide ebbs ining that the true Eldorado was not in and flows. Far back in the magic pages Mexico or in Peru, which they left to the of history are the heroic figures of the Spaniards, but under the Pole. The good King Arthur and of Alfred, with all Bridgwater captains, one of whom, by the the glamour of chivalric deeds. The mists way, was almost wrecked in the ice-floes that curl round the osiers and rhines, and of the north, were, as might be guessed, slowly ascend the feet of the Polden hills, bitterly disappointed when, in company seem, to the imaginative mind, like a white with the ships of Fowey and Barnstaple, shroud that folds upon ancient men and they returned empty-handed. Sad at heart days, and gives stately proportions to the they must have drifted back again up the figures that then moved upon the earth. Parrett, to be awakened, however, shortly (1588) by the great Armada stir, and win The knights are dead, and their swords are gold ducats and fame from the Spaniards. rust, Does not Bridgwater boast of an Armada chest, taken, doubtless, full of gold, and treasured now for all men to see in the Custom House by the banks of the Parrett?

Their souls are with the saints - I trust.

But floating down the stream of time come other men, more in touch with us, and more apparent in their influences as builders up of our national history. In 1492 a Generation upon generation of advennew world had sprung into light across turers have floated over Parrett's flood, the seas far to the westward down the borne up and down, like the flotsam and Channel, and the breasts of the sailors of jetsam of the tide in their brief span of the West were moved. There were ru-life. The Briton, in his rude skin coracle, mors of the discovery of Newfoundland, glided between the tall osier beds, snaring and all the visions of Transatlantic riches. the wildfowl, and fled, it may be, along Long had the Bristol pilots guided their the narrow lanes of water to some island ships to the fisheries of Iceland; and now, refuge from a foreign foe; the strong, fairbeyond the boundaries of that former Ul-haired viking from the north, in his long tima Thule, placed in the North Atlantic, in the wake of Lief the Lucky, the bold Scandinavian explorer, the desire arose to solve that one great geographical problem of the age- the North-West Passage. Sebastian Cabot, at the end of the fifteenth century, lived in Bristol, and enlisted the aid and sympathy of the sailors of the Bristol Channel, both up the Severn and up the Parrett. "The sailors of Bridg water were renowned for their love of enterprise," we are told, and joined in that expedition under one of the Cabots, which gave us Newfoundland, our earliest Transatlantic colony. The eastern peninsula of Newfoundland was called "The Peninsula of Avalon." Might not this name be a trace of the Western mariners, and a memorial of a west-country valley.

Then in pious old Martin Frobisher's days there is another expedition to find the "Straits of Anian" and the kingdom of the great khân, and the passage by way of the north to the eastern seas. Here again the sailors of the Parrett are to the fore. There is the Ema of Bridgwater, and the Emanuel of Bridgwater, vessels found in Frobisher's third expedition. It may be mentioned that at Meta Incognita, at the entrance of Hudson's Straits, Frobisher and his fleet turned aside to what

boat, flashing the proud crest of the Raven from his bows, was a rover southward to the farthest Gades; the sailors of great King Alfred, on their warlike galleys from Athelney, swept along by the measured stroke of sixty stout oarsmen, a patriot crew, were charged by the king to saily forth and ask and give no quarter in the fight. Then, later still, at the new birth of the Western world, in brave Plantagenet times, when religion had stirred men's hearts to the very core, haply a crusader passed onward with face sternly set towards the Holy Land, and bound by vow to win the sepulchre from the Moslem foe. After him, in stately Tudor days, there swept down the retreating flood the adven turous bark of some gallant Elizabethan captain, bound northwards to the fishing banks of distant Iceland, or to the glit tering Eldoradoes of hyperborean seas, invading in his turn the homes of the ancient vikings for fish or gold. Or, perhaps, half in fear of Moorish outrage, and of Algerine pirates, there stole down the stream a Western merchant's sole venture, a tall carrack, made to fight or trade, bound on the southern tack, where the Portuguese showed the way, past Cape Bojador and Cape Verde, to the Gulf of Guinea, for oil and ivory.

Here, too, the great Blake, watching in struggle on bravely and devotedly as he his boyhood the tide ebb and flow daily did, yet we must ever remember what past his feet, nurtured his bold spirit, and great things we have received from him, bardened his iron nerve, destined in time, and loyally acquiesce in his expressed by both sea and land, to carve a deathless desire. name, carrying to haughty Moor at Tunis Happily there is no limit placed upon and at Tangier, and to boasting Spaniard our use of that part of him which he chose at Santa Cruz, an example of bull-dog to give to the world. Whatever the circourage and fearlessness, and an intima cumstances of his life may have been with tion of England's destiny. Here, too, not which the world is not to be made familiar, far from Parrett's banks, as an undertone whatever the joys, the triumphs, the bitterof grief in the midst of sounding pæans, nesses, the despairs which he encountered were heard the baleful sounds of civil (and he was as human as any of us) which war and here, on Sedgmoor's fatal field, are never destined to be disclosed, yet, was the site of the last battle fought on maugre these, what a priceless legacy of English soil, when brother slew brother at human sympathy and appreciation le has the bidding of rival kings. Then we come made us beirs to! Do you suppose it within the times of spoken tradition. Old cost him nothing to tell us what he has of men tell of what they have heard from himself under the thin guise of his favorite others, and we emerge into the " light of heroes? Do you suppose that he has only common day." WILLIAM GRESWELL. given us of his head, and that his heart's

blood is not circulating and palpitating beneath those immortal pages which stir us with their hidden meaning? I tell you

no one need regret that he knows not the From Murray's Magazine.

man Thackeray. He is there for the findTHACKERAY'S PORTRAITS OF HIMSELF.

ingin “ Vanity Fair,"in “Esmond," “ Pen. " He was a cynic! You might read it writ

dennis,” “ Philip,” and perhaps even more In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair, In those blue eyes, with childlike candor lit,

in the * Roundabout Papers," if you only In that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear." take the trouble to look for him. You may

TOM TAYLOR.

know him as well as, nay better than, your NEARLY thirty years ago the Times most inimical friends or your most friendly rendered itself remarkable by being the enemies, and, in his portrayals, be sure he only daily paper to refrain from making has never spared himself, though with othspecial critical allusion to the genius of a ers he has dealt how gently, how tenderly! man just dead, who was the greatest artist Nor is it only in his writings that we io his own line the world has ever seen, find this laying bare of himself, consciously and probably ever will see. Yes, Thack of his foibles, bis weaknesses, his cyoieray lay silent forever in his house on cism, unconsciously of his manliness, his Palace Green, and Printing House Square reverence, his sympathy. As all who know afforded him an obituary notice which, him are aware, before taking to literature by its length, would hardly have gratified it was his intention to become an artist, the relatives of a defunct city alderman. and he studied in Paris with that object. “God," said Charlotte Brontë, “made Mighty little, however, of the art did he him second to no man," and the world learn there. Indeed I suppose no one ever knows how just was her estimate. made half such good pictures with less

To those of us who hold his memory technical skill than he did. That his green, and I own myself in this respect books, illustrated by his own hand, are second to none, perhaps no purely selfish among the most satisfactory wedding of disappointment was ever keener than that pen and pencil in the language is a re. with which we learnt that no exhaustive markable fact of which have written biography of this greatest of all novelists elsewhere. As Trollope has most approwould ever be written. The reasons for priately remarked: “How often have I this are well known, and as honorable to wished that characters of my own creating the man himself as to those nearest and might be sketched as faultily!" dearest who have survived him. But, It was characteristic of the man to be pungent and heartfelt though our regret able to do with worse tools what a skilled must ever be that we, who never knew workman with every modern appliance him or even saw him in the flesh, cannot would very probably fail in, because of live, weep, laugh, sympathize, and fight the strength of inspiration which lay bebis battles o'er again in an authentic biog-hind. Where the inspiration failed, the raphy, and so gain grace and strength to result was hopelessly bad. For example,

On the title-page to "Our Street," the | Miss Fanny. On page 175 he is making intent observer will again discover Mr. a wry face over the natural waters of Titmarsh's portrait. Miss Clapperclaw is Rougetnoirburg. On page 183 he gives here represented looking out of her accusa withering glance of scorn at the incontomed window and keeping her eye on the stant Fanny Kicklebury, who has thrown doings of her neighbors. She has screwed him over for the heavy dragoon. Whilst against that window, at a convenient angle, on page 193 we find him contemplating one of those detective-looking glasses by that German bed which eventually he was which an occupant of the room can see not destined to enjoy alone, but to pass without herself being seen. In that mirror the night in company with anthropopha behold the reflection of an infinitesimal gous wretched reptiles who took their gentleman walking down the street, so horrid meal off an English Christian. small indeed that three of him, top-hat, spectacles, and all might easily be accommodated on one's little finger-nail.

As early as 1842, before his permanent connection with Punch, we find in the "Irish Sketch Book" two or three portraits of himself with uncurtailed body. The first and only noticeable one is a picture of Mr. Titmarsh sitting on a crowded Irish car, with his arm encircling the waist of a demure little Irish lass, and it was not until a hideous row of houses informed them that they were at Killarney that his companion suddenly let go his hand and, by a certain uneasy motion of the waist, gave him notice to withdraw the other too. "And so," he goes on, rattled up to the Kenmare Arms; and so ended, not without a sigh on my part, one of the merriest six hours' rides that five

On page 70* of the same Christmas book we find him drinking tea in the background, whilst the detestable Clarence Bulbul in the foreground is telling the lovely Miss Pim that she would fetch twenty thousand piastres in the market at Constantinople. On page 76 we find him talking to the charming Miss Short, whilst | Charley Bonham, near at hand, is pouring out his fulsome rhapsodies in the ears of Diana White. "Lovely, lovely Diana White; were it not for three or four other engagements, I know a heart that would suit you to a T." On page 78, the incorrigible Michael is flirting in the doorway yachtsmen-one Cockney, five women with Clarissa Newboy, who is in a pink paletôt trimmed with swansdown. That is the last we have of him as a gay bachelor in "Our Street."

66

He next turns up in "Doctor Birch and his Young Friends" as assistant master in the academy at Rodwell Regis, and professor of the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute. On page 87 we find him engaged in teaching the young idea how to shoot." On page 100 he is discovering Miss Birch eating jam with a spoon out of Master Wiggins's trunk in the box room. On page 113 he witnesses Lord Gaunt's eldest son, the noble Plantagenet Gaunt-Gaunt and nephew of the Most Honorable the Marquis of Steyne, flirting with Miss Rosa Birch. "What a pretty match it would make! It is true she has the sense on her side, and poor Plantagenet is an idiot; but there he is, a zany with such expectations and such a pedigree!"

"we

and a child, the carman, and a countryman with an alpeen, ever took in their lives.' But life is not always rosy, and woman is not always kind, and the next day he gets a severe snubbing from his yesterday's fair and kind companion. Sic transit.

In his drawings for Punch we are not often favored with his "counterfeit presentment." Indeed in only one of his larger pictures does he make use of himself as a model. The scene is laid in a railway carriage on the Great Western Railway. Thackeray is represented, apparently reading the Sunday Times, but in reality listening to a conversation between an old gentleman and a Miss Wiggetts. By Thackeray's side is a cocontributor to Punch. Who this is I have not discovered.