Street, Drury Lane, are not strokes of humour in street nomenclature, but point to the fact that vineyards, belonging to the Priories of Westminster and Ely, did once exist between Smithfield and Pimlico, and did actually yield wine for the drinking of the Prelates and Abbots of Westminster and Ely. It is not difficult for a man, who wanders as far as he can into the heart of the purlieux of Westminster Abbey, to imagine, as he stands in that old garden there, with the well in the midst, that the Abbot's orchard and vinery are close at hand somewhere, with a pond, fringed by fallen leaves blown from the beeches, and peopled by delicious fish-so strong is the sense that comes over you of shade and monastic stillness, and light subdued by verdure. Only you hear no chanting, and see no tonsured friar, and the silence of the place is not made into a cathedral silence, and deepened into a sort of audible brown twilight, by the cawing of rooks.

However, you must either be at a great distance from London, or must possess a lively imagination to conceive of the English capital as a place of gardens, such as it was in the time of the Plantagenets. Within my own memory, the area within which roses will not grow in the metropolis has been widening and widening in the most odious manner, in every direction. The great brick-giant marches out towards the fields; the roses fly before him; and you have to go nearly out of the sound of Big Ben, to see gardens no

sweeter and gayer than lay under the shadow of St. Paul's and the Savoy Palace in the days of John of Gaunt. These things are commonplaces; but let us weep while we may! When we have dried our eyes we will turn to the cold comfort proffered by those who remind us that grass will grow anywhere, and by Leigh Hunt, who puts us off with the melancholy consolation that there is not a street in London from which you cannot see a tree,-a tree! Better is it to turn to the Temple enclosure, with its stillness, its coolness, its beautiful lawn, and its beautiful chrysanthemums. There is a tradition about red and white rosebuds in that neighbourhood, but -

THE Shipman, or Sailor, is a picture which the modern eye at once recognises as true. Dartmouth has long ceased to be a port of such consequence that it is natural to make a sailor hail from it; but a seaman's horsemanship was then pretty much what it is now. He rode as he could,' in a cloth tunic reaching

VOL. II.

S

to his knee, and carried a knife slung to his side. His skin was brown with the warmth of many suns and the chafing of many winds. He was a deep drinker, had the conscience of a good fellow, and no other, and was, above all things, an expert in tides and shoals, and currents and harbours. His beard had been shaken in many a tempest, but he was skilled in 'lodemenage,' i. e. he was a good pilot, and he had weathered them all:

'A Schipman was ther, wonyng fer by weste: For ought I woot, he was of Dertemouthe.

He rood upon a rouncy, as he couthe,

In a gowne of faldyng to the kne.
A dagger hangyng on a laas hadde he

Aboute his nekke under his arm adoun.

The hoote somer had maad his hew al broun;

And certeinly he was a good felawe.

Ful many a draught of wyn had he drawe

From Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep. nyce conscience took he no keep.

Of

If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand.

By water he sente hem hoom to every land.

But of his craft to rikne wel the tydes,

His stremes and his dangers him bisides,
His herbergh and his mone, his lodemenage,
Ther was non such from Hull to Cartage.
Hardy he was, and wys to undertake;

With many a tempest hadde his berd ben schake.
He knew wel alle the havenes, as thei were,
From Scotlond to the cape of Fynestere,
And every cryk in Bretayne and in Spayne;
His barge y-clepud was the Magdelayne.'

This is certainly a very characteristic picture.

The

' good fellow' taps the wine he carries, while the merchant is asleep, and that is not the only instance of his recklessness, for, when he enters into a fight at a sea, he sends his defeated enemies home by water. The touch about his beard

'With many a tempest had his beard been shook '— is in Chaucer's best manner. The poet seizes upon a very simple matter of experience in a high wind,— the blowing aside of the hair or the beard, and at one stroke makes for us a picture of his shipman or captain in a storm at sea, and compels us to think of the rough fellow as a hero in his way, and not alien to the great forces of nature, though he had a conscience that was not nice."

II. The Merchant is a type not so easy to adjust to modern ideas of his vocation. He wears a forked beard, after the best fashion of his time, and he is dressed in motley! A broad Flanders beaver hat is on his head, and his boots are handsome. He understands the exchanges, so as to be able to negotiate his coins or 'shields' to advantage, and he is jealous of keeping up his credit, as all merchants are. It is chiefly in his dress and solemnity of speech that this Merchant is strange to us:

'A Marchaunt was ther with a forked berd, In motteleye, and high on horse he sat, Uppon his heed a Flaundrisch bever hat;