measures which, after his demise, no one, | period. Some idea of the nature of the rightly or wrongly, thought it worth while to sustain. The heirs of Charles Brandon, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, sold Arbury Hall and the estates to Sir Edmund Anderson, chief justice of the common pleas. He, possibly out of respect for the stern Protestantism of his royal mistress, and with a desire to win her favor, demolished the old monkish house, and built from the ruins what Dugdale called, “a fair structure of quadrangular form." No sooner was this building completed, which it was in the twenty-eighth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, than the legal knight fostered a dislike to it, and passed the estate away in exchange to John Newdegate for the manor of Harefield in Middlesex, where the Newdegate family had been located since the days of Edward III.. The Newdegates thus made Arbury Hall their family seat, and began to spell their name with an i. In 1734 the estates descended to Sir Roger Newdigate, who acquired the title from an ancestor. He seems to have been a gentleman of much note, attached very strongly to literature and the fine arts, and particularly devoted to the study of archæologian architecture. He, as George Eliot points out in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,' ," had made the "grand tour" of European cities, and returned, doubtless, deeply in love with the mansions of Italy, and rather ashamed of the "fair structure of quadrangular form" at Arbury, to which he had succeeded when only sixteen years old. Sir Roger, indeed, would seem in many respects to have been endowed with exceptional abilities. He was born in 1718, presumably at Harefield, for in the very year of his majority he was elected member of Parliament for Middlesex in the Tory interest. At Oxford, where he won the highest honors, and formed the most distinguished friendships, Sir Roger Newdigate secured enviable popularity. After being the Parliamentary representative of Middlesex for six years, he was elected member for the University, and held the position for thirty years. During that period he made the "grand tour" already spoken of, and in conjunction with Sir Horace Walpole, to whom he was much attached, worked energetically to revive the beauties of the Gothic style in architecture. Scarcely a better building for the titled architect to try his hand upon could have been found than the Arbury Hall of that building may be gathered from a survey of the present stablings, which form a considerable portion of the "fair structure" erected by Sir Edmund Anderson. From each front of the house there were piles of projecting chimneys, and these, together with the unsightly chambers and bare brick walls, could not fail to offend the fastidiously cultivated eye of Sir Roger Newdigate, Italianized as it was by many years of foreign travel. So the baronet set about converting the old and uncouth Arbury Hall into the Cheveral Manor of to-day. He laboriously drew up his own designs which for an amateur architect were considered to be extremely clever, in spite of the mixture of ecclesiastic and richly ornate styles and entered into a contract with a well-known builder to carry out the scheme. At that time, which would be about the year 1770, there was a young man employed on the ground, evidently a sort of right-hand man to Sir Roger, for in the renovation and remodelling of the Hall he was eminently useful and constantly in request. This young man's name was Robert Evans, the subsequent father of George Eliot; and it was well for Sir Roger Newdigate, in more ways than one, that he had so trusty a servant upon whom he could rely in his hour of need. Before the unsightly chambers were hidden by turrets the beautiful mullioned windows put in, the outer walls cased with stone, the vast courtyard environed with a cloister-in short, some time before Arbury Hall was metamorphosed into its present attractive shape, the man who had contracted to build the place became a bankrupt, and brought a sudden cessation to the active work then in progress. Sir Roger, for the moment, was in a state of great perturbation, but the remarkable tact and ability of Robert Evans stood him in good stead, and the Cheveral Manor as it appears to-day was finished under the watchful eyes of the titled architect and his excellent steward. Arbury Hall was probably finished in or about 1773, as in that year Sir John Astley, of the adjoining Astley Castle, made Sir Roger Newdigate a present of the famous painting depicting the celebrated exploits of Sir John de Astley, who flourished in the early part of the fifteenth century. The outside of the mansion with its castellated grey-tinted front and mullioned windows is easily recognized by all readers of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story; it is in the inside, however, that the de scriptions of George Eliot force themselves upon the mind, as the visitor looks with a curious eye upon the ecclesiastical and other adornments, placed in their respective positions by the lavish hand of Sir Roger. The saloon ornaments are copied from the fan tracery in Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster. In a similar manner the ceiling of the drawing room is elaborately carved with tracery, in which are inserted different armorial bearings on small shields. The room next to the saloon contains the picture before alluded to. It commemorates the exploits of Sir John de Astley, a famous knight who vanquished in a duel at Paris one Peter de Maise, and in the thirtieth year of Henry VI.'s reign fought with, and defeated, at Smithfield, an Aragonian knight, named Sir Philip Boyle, who seems to have been a kind of Don Quixote, anxious to cross lances with some great fighter. A replica of this painting is preserved at Patshull, the seat of the Earl of Dartmouth, a descendant of the Astleys of Arbury. Here and there, in the adjacent rooms, are many evidences of Sir Roger Newdigate's classical tastes. There are niches filled with casts from the antique, all breathing of the days when the Gothicloving baronet was drinking in the architectural inspirations of Florence. You can see the Venus de Medici under an elaborate Gothic canopy; and the top of a sarcophagus, brought from Rome by Sir Roger, upon which is finely sculptured the marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne. George Eliot has herself well described the dining-room. In her day it was so bare of furniture that it impressed one with its architectural beauty like a cathedral. "The slight matting and a sideboard in a recess did not detain the eye for a moment from the lofty groined ceiling, with its richly carved pendants, all of creamy white, relieved here and there by touches of gold. On one side this lofty ceiling was supported by pillars and arches, beyond which a lower ceiling, a miniature copy of the higher one, covered the square projection which with its three pointed windows formed the central feature of this building. The room looked less like a place to dine in than a piece of space inclosed simply for the sake of beautiful outline; and the small dining table seemed a small and insignificant accident, rather than anything connected with the original purpose of the apartment." During the long lifetime of the late Charles N. Newdigate, this room had an air of conservatism about it as rigid as that possessed by its owner. It was, with the smallest variations, the same room as that so carefully described in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story." Sir Roger Newdigate, the man of cultivated mind and exquisite taste, died in 1806 at the age of eighty-eight. With his death the title became extinct. In his will Sir Roger bequeathed Arbury Hall and the estates to Mr. Francis Parker, on condition that he adopted the name of Newdigate; and with a reversion to the father of the late C. N. Newdigate, who had then come into possession again of the estates at Harefield, and who was enjoined to add the old spelling of the name of "Newdegate" to that of the Charles Newdigate received at the baptismal font. The name of the late owner of Arbury Hall therefore was Charles Newdegate Newdigate. The little village of Griff, in the vicinity of which George Eliot was born, and in which, as already written, lived her brother, Isaac Pearson Evans, late agent to Mr. Newdigate, to Lord Aylesford, and to the governors of Chamberlain's Charity at Bedworth, and afterwards agent to the Dowager Countess of Aylesford, was at the Conquest survey involved with Chilvers Coten. In the third year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Griff was purchased by John Giffard, whose grandson, in Dugdale's time, passed it on to Sir John Newdigate, father of Sir Roger; it thus became the property of the Newdigates, and the little parish has continued in their family to the present time. Mining has been the chief industry carried on at Griff. For more than two centuries coal mines have been known and worked in this neighborhood; Bedworth being spoken of by Dugdale as "a place very well known in regard to the coal mines there." When the father of the late Charles N. Newdigate settled at Arbury he went energetically into the mining work, and appointed John Evans, uncle to George Eliot, as his colliery agent. That was a golden time for the Warwickshire coal-owners. Railways had not then stretched their feelers into "the heart of England," as Michael Drayton calls Warwickshire; indeed the only railway near Griff or in the shire was one known as the Stratford and Moreton Railway, which extended from Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire to Moreton-in-the-Marsh in Gloucestershire. Even this one was not for passengers; so that our good ancestors, as can be seen in George Eliot's "Silas Marner," only a little more than | Mr. Newdigate was so strongly imhalf a century ago, were obliged to travel pressed with the idea that canals were to chiefly by stage coach and packhorse. be the future travelling courses of the The Stratford and Moreton Railway Com-world that he had a communication with pany was incorporated in 1821. The the Grand Junction cut right up to his length of the main line was about sixteen hall at Arbury; and it is said that upon miles, and the branch lines two and a half more than one occasion he has travelled miles. The capital embarked in this en- to and from London by boat. This was a terprise was £50,000. The principal use piece of good humor about which the late made of this railway was the supplying Charles N. Newdigate chose to be silent with coal, brought from the Griff and as much as possible, and when he did Bedworth pits, of Moreton, Stow-on-the- speak of it he sought to convey the imWold, and other parts of the country pression that in cutting it his father had through which it passed, and for convey the drainage of his coal mines in view; ing back to Stratford-on-Avon stone and but among those old Griff miners the agricultural produce. story is still current of how "Old Charley's feyther went to Lunnon up the cut." Perhaps Mr. Newdigate may only have been a few decades in advance of his time, though the incident at that period was certainly one worthy to be noted down by the hand of George Eliot; but having already described the foibles of one member of the family, the gifted novelist prob. ably deemed it prudent to stay her hand. To the commercial interests of Warwick This was the only enterprise, in the shape of a railway, then in use in Warwickshire. It is still to be seen, but it is now disused and overgrown with grass and weeds; a striking instance of a work that soon served its purpose and became obsolete. value, and one cannot think of the many advantages which have been gained to mankind by the use of these well-planned water-courses that glide through our fields and streets without thanking their con structors, and wondering why the canals are not more generally used. If the Griff miner, or the Bedworth ribbon weaver, or the Astley worker in bead and jet embroidery were at all bookish, and would read George Eliot's "Scenes of Clerical_Life,” they would be disposed to say, when next visiting Chilvers Coten Church, "Eh! inna it like;" for during the tenure of the Rev. Mr. Chadwick, the present vicar, the church is being stored" back to something like the old condition of Shepperton Church. 66 Though taking a great interest in the work of railways as a means of carrying the coal from his Griff collieries into the world in and beyond the shire, Mr. New-shire, however, canals are of the greatest digate, father of the late member for North Warwickshire, was also keenly alive to the importance of canals, which at that time were being introduced. The miles upon miles of navigable watercourses that flow so placidly through this beautiful and classic shire tell of the foresight, knowledge, and skilful engineering abilities of our forefathers. Something may be said of a canal that passes near George Eliot's neighborhood, which was constructed in 1830, and in which the old Mr. Newdigate took a large share of in terest. During the Parliamentary session of 1829 the Oxford Canal Company obtained powers to improve that part of their canal which lies between Braunston in Warwickshire and Longford in Northamptonshire, and which communicated with the Grand Junction and Coventry canals. The construction of the works in this canal was upon the most approved methods in the practice of civil engineering. The bridges and tunnels were made sufficiently capacious to admit of a towing path on either side, and two boats to pass. The canal passed through the highlands at Brinklow-the nearest point to Bed. worth and Griff-and Newbold, by means of tunnels twenty-four feet inside diameter, and over the turnpike road from Rugby to historic Lutterworth upon an aqueduct of cast iron. A considerable portion of these works was completed and navigable in 1831. re The little village of Chilvers Coten, in the parish of which George Eliot was born, is about one mile from Griff. In the Conquest survey it was rated at eight hides; the woods were one mile and a half in length, and one mile in breadth; the whole parish being valued at fifty shillings. At the Dissolution Chilvers Coten came to the crown, and was sold to John Fisher and Thomas Dalbridgecourt in the fourth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign. These gentlemen, in 1630, ob. tained a grant of Court Leet to be held there, so that in those days it must have been a somewhat important parish. In course of time Chilvers Coten, along with the village of Griff, came into the hands 0 of the Newdigates. The Rev. Henry | fault concerning his next move, must not From Temple Bar. MY SECOND MARRIAGE. I AM one of those people who have made a mistake in life, and thinking that a short account of this mistake may be profitable and interesting to others, now that I have in a measure recovered from the effects thereof, I am going to narrate, as briefly as possible, all that happened to me during those miserable months of my second marriage. I was born of humble parents, who, after emigrating from Ireland, met with a fair share of success in the New World; and, when I was but little over sixteen, I was married to a well-to-do farmer in Michigan, U.S.A., who treated me very well during the five years of our married life, and left me, at his death, quite comfortably off, and with two tiny children to look after. I grieve to say that I never properly lamented my first husband's death until the misery into which I was plunged by my subsequent folly made me realize how much I had lost when he was taken from me. I enjoyed my freedom, my money, and the attention that my good looks secured for me, but I don't think I should ever for a moment have thought of again plunging into the risks of matrimony, had not a handsome young fellow, whom they called Mr. Kelly, come to our village and taken my heart by storm with his fair face and lying lips. It never struck me in those days of my ignorance, that it was odd that Mr. Kelly, who was a Greek by birth, should have an Irish name; what knew I of names or geography? I had some vague idea that Greece was a much grander country to belong to than the States. and that I might be called Mrs. Kelly just as well as anything else; and it was not until I actually got to this country, and heard everybody call him Kallicrates that I knew my second husband's real name. All my relations were much opposed to the marriage; my mother cried, and my father remonstrated, but Mr. Kelly spoke so much of his lovely palace on Lemnos, his vineyards, and his extensive property, that he fairly turned my head, and it re- | business it appeared to me would never quired but little of his soft persuasion to be finished. make me promise to become his wife. Just three months after I had first known him, we were quietly married; and, when we had realized all my property, packed up all that he represented as necessary for me in my future palatial home, we four, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, and my two dear little mites, set off on a Cunarder on our way to Turkey, and I think the only thing that annoyed me was having to call my husband Kelly, for he represented that, in his country, only one name was necessary; and, though I longed to call him Jack or Tom, yet I could not help reflecting that, if his one name had been like my maiden name, O'Shaughnessy, it would not have sounded half so affectionate as Kelly, and would have been a terrible mouthful to hurl at one's husband every time one addressed him. When once we had left America behind us I felt a little nervous about my future for the first time, and sad when I thought of the comfortable home and dear faces that I had left behind, probably forever. Kelly saw this, and gaily described the beauty of his home in the mountains of his native isle, the perpetual summer, and how I should love his sisters, and his brothers, and the dear simple people amongst whom we should live. In those days Kelly was very kind, and would play with Katie and Alfred on the deck, keeping them amused, when I was below not feeling well. Also he tried to give me a few lessons in the language I should have to speak; but I am always stupid and lazy at sea, and was glad to accept his theory, that it would all come quickly enough when I got there. At Liverpool we transferred ourselves on to another vessel of the Cunard line, comfortable enough, but very inferior to the magnificent liner we had left, and on this we ultimately reached Constantinople in safety, and I was straight away plunged into my new life and strange scenes. Kelly took us a room at a miserable inn down by the Golden Horn, as they call the harbor, which was full of vermin and horrible smells. This was my first shock, for hitherto on our journey we had travelled first class, and I could not help saying that I thought this accommodation beneath our position, and very disagreeable; but Kelly laughed, and said it would not be for long, and in this atrocious hole he left me and my children during the greater part of the day, putting off our departure for Lemnos on the plea of business, which All that I know is that during this pe riod all my money went, and that Kelly spent his time in the gambling hells of Pera with young Zaphyros, a Greek who also had been in America, and whose real history I only learned when I was on my way home; and, as he is a fair type of his race, I cannot do better than tell you the gossip I heard about him. Zaphyros, it appeared, was the most expert gambler in Constantinople, and lived on what he made in the gambling hells where all my money was lost. He was a wonderful linguist, as the Greeks all are, speaking five languages well, and fourteen sufficiently for all ordinary purposes, and he was capable of assuming any character or nationality that he chose. At the age of seventeen he had married a woman of thirty-five, but soon left her to seek his fortunes in America. There he won the heart of a girl as foolish and ignorant as myself; she eloped with him and they got married, but her relations followed her and caught her at Havre and took her home. Unfortunately for me, Kelly had not another wife, and my relatives were not energetic enough to look after me when I had left them. Zaphyros had seen better days, and came of a respectable Greek family. His two sisters, who lived at Constantinople, were devoted to him, and really, I believe, thought him honest. They have twice been into mourning for him, when it was found necessary to circulate well-authenticated reports of his death, and at one time, too, he had quite a respectable calling, namely, that of selling Nordenfeldt guns to the Turkish government; but on one occasion, as he was coming on an Austrian Lloyd steamer from Varna to Constantinople in pursuit of his calling, the ship was storm-stayed for five days, cards were produced, and Zaphyros won all before him, until his chief forbade him to play any more. But the silly Greeks and Bulgarians on board clamored for revenge, until Zaphyros was constrained to come out of his cabin and play; he cleared out everybody and won piles of gold, and then he bought up all the cham. pagne on the ship, with which he and his victims beguiled the hours till they reached their destination. Needless to say, when this conduct was reported to his employers in Sweden, he got his dismissal, and his career as a respectable man was at an end. Every night, that is to say, not every |