lighted, and so high roofed within; so seemly to sight by due proportion without; in day-time on every side so glittering by glass; at nights, by continual brightness of candle, fire, and torch-light, transparent through the lightsome windows, as it were the Egyptian Pharos relucent unto all the Alexandrian coast," who that considers (we finish the sentence) what Kenilworth thus was in the year 1575 will not contrast it with its present state of complete ruin? Never did a fabric of such unequalled strength and splendour perish so ingloriously. Leicester bequeathed the possession to his brother the Earl of Warwick for life, and the inheritance to his only son, Sir Robert Dudley, whose legitimacy was to be left doubtful. The rapacious James contrived, through the agency of the widow of the Earl of Leicester, to cheat the son out of the father's great possessions. The more generous Prince Henry, upon whom Kenilworth was bestowed, negotiated for its purchase with Sir Robert Dudley, who had gone abroad. A fifth only of the purchase-money was ever paid; yet upon the death of his brother, Charles took possession of the castle as his heir. A stronger than Charles divided the castle and lands, thus unjustly procured by the Crown, amongst his captains and counsellors; and from the time of Cromwell the history of Kenilworth is that of its gradual decay

and final ruin. No cannon has battered its strong walls, "in many places of fifteen and ten foot thickness;" no turbulent soldiery has torn down the hangings and destroyed the architraves and carved ceilings of "the rooms of great state within the same;" no mines have exploded in its "stately cellars, all carried upon pillars and architecture of freestone carved and wrought." The buildings were whole, and are described, as we have just quoted, in a survey when James laid his hand upon them. Of many of the outer walls the masonry is still as fresh and as perfect as if the stone had only been quarried. half a century ago. Silent decay has done all this work. The proud Leicester, who would have been king in England, could not secure his rightful inheritance to his son, undoubtedly legitimate, whom he had the baseness to disown whilst he was living. No just possessor came after him. One rapacity succeeded another, so that even a century ago Kenilworth was a monument of the worthlessness of a grovelling ambition.

The historian of Warwickshire has given us the ground-plot of Kenilworth Castle," as it was in 1640. By this we may trace the pool and the pleasance; the inner court, the base court, and the tilt-yard; Cæsar's Tower and Mortimer's Tower; King Henry's Lodgings and Leicester's Buildings; the Hall, the Presence Chamber, and the Privy Chamber. There was an old fresco painting, too, upon a wall at Newnham Padox, which was copied in 1716, and is held to represent the castle in the time of James I. Without these aids Kenilworth would only appear to us a mysterious mass of ruined gigantic walls; deep cavities whose uses are unknown; arched doorways, separated from the chambers to which they led; narrow staircases, suddenly opening into magnificent recesses, with their oriels looking over corn-field and pasture; a hall with its lofty windows and its massive chimneypieces still entire, but without roof or flooring; mounds of earth in the midst of walled chambers, and the hawthorn growing where the dais stood. The desolation would probably have gone on for another century; the stones of Kenilworth would still have mended roads, and been built into the cowshed and the cottage, till the ploughshare had been carried over the grassy courts; had not, some twenty-five years ago, a man of middle age, with a lofty forehead and a keen grey eye, slightly lame but withal active, entered its gatehouse, and, having looked upon the only bit of carving left to tell something of interior magnificence, passed into those ruins, and stood there silent for some two hours.* Then was the ruined place henceforward to be sanctified. The progress of desolation was to be arrested. The torch of genius again lighted up "every room so spacious," and they were for ever after to be associated with the recollections of their ancient splendour. There were to be visions of sorrow and suffering there too; woman's weakness, man's treachery. And now Kenilworth is worthily a place which is visited from all lands. The solitary artist sits on

Some five and twenty years ago there was a venerable and intelligent farmer, Mr. Bodington, living in the Gatehouse at Kenilworth. He remembered Scott's visit, although he knew not at the time of the visit who he was; and the frank manners and keen inquiries of the great novelist left an impression upon him which he described to us. The old man is dead.

the stone seat of the great bay-window, and sketches the hall where he fancies Elizabeth banqueting. A knot of young antiquarians, ascending a narrow staircase, would identify the turret as that in which Amy Robsart took refuge. Happy children run up and down the grassy slopes, and wonder who made so pretty a ruin. The contemplative man rejoices that the ever-vivifying power of nature throws its green mantle over what would be ugly in decay; and that. in the same way, the poetical power invests the desolate places with life and beauty, and, when the material creations of ambition lie perishing, builds them up again, not to be again destroyed.

thereof

crowds

CHAPTER VIII.

PAGEANTS.

IT is "the middle summer's spring." On the day before the feast of Corpus Christi all the roads leading to Coventry have far more than their accustomed share of pedestrians and horsemen. The pageants are to be acted to-morrow, and perhaps for the last time. The preachers in their sermons have denounced them again and again; but since the Queen's Majesty was graciously pleased with the Hock-play at Kenilworth, that ancient sport, so dear to the men of Coventry, has been revived, and the Guilds have struggled against the preachers to prevent their old pageants from being suppressed. And why, say they, should they be suppressed? Have not they, the men of the Guilds, been accustomed to act their own pageants long after the Grey Friars had gone into obscurity? Has not the good city all that is needful for their proper performance? Do not they all know their parts, as arranged by the town-clerk ? Are not their robes in goodly order, some new, and all untattered? Moreover, is not the trade of the city greatly declined-its blue thread thrust out by thread brought from beyond sea-its caps and girdles superseded by gear from London; * and was not in the old time "the confluence of people from far and near to see this show extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this city?" + The pageants shall be played in spite of the preachers; and so the bruit goes through the country, and Coventry is still to see its accustomed on the day of Corpus Christi.

+Dugdale.

It requires not the imagination of the romance-writer to assume that before William Shakspere was sixteen, that is, before the year 1580, when the pageants at Coventry, with one or two rare exceptions, were finally suppressed, he would be a spectator of one of these remarkable performances, which were in a few years wholly to perish; becoming, however, the foundations of a drama more. suited to the altered spirit of the people, more universal in its range, the drama of the laity, and not of the church. What a glorious city must Coventry have been in the days when that youth first looked upon it-the "Prince's Chamber," as it was called, the "third city of the realm," a "shire-town,' of stately buildings of great antiquity, unequalled once in the splendour of its monastic institutions, full of associations of regal state, and chivalry, and high events! As he finally emerges from the rich woodlands and the elm-groves which reach from Kenilworth, there would that splendid city lie before him, surrounded by its high wall and its numerous gates, its three wondrous spires, which he had often gazed upon from the hill of Welcombe, rising up in matchless height and symmetry, its famous cross towering above the gabled roofs. At the other extremity of the wall, gates more massive and defying—a place of strength, even though no conqueror of Cressy now dwelt therein - a place of magnificence, though the hand of spoliation had been there most busy. William Shakspere and his company ride through the gate of the Grey Friars, and they are presently in the heart of that city. Eager crowding is there already in these streets on that eve of Corpus Christi, for the waits are playing, and banners are hung out at the walls of the different Guilds. The citizens gathered round the Cross are eagerly discussing the particulars of to-morrow's show. Here and there one with a beetling brow indignantly denounces the superstitious and papistical observance; whilst the laughing smith or shearman, who is to play one of the magi on the morrow, describes the bravery of his new robe and the lustre of his pasteboard crown that has been fresh gilded. The inns are full, "great and sumptuous inns," as Harrison describes those of this very day. "able to lodge two hundred or three hundred persons, and their horses, at ease, and thereto, with a very short warning, make such provision for their diet as to him that is unacquainted withal may seem to be incredible: And it is a world to see how each owner of them contendeth with other for goodness of entertainment of their guests, as about fineness and change of linen, furniture of bedding, beauty of rooms, service at the table, costliness of plate, strength of drink, variety of wines, or well using of horses." So there would be no lack of cheer; and the hundreds that have come into Coventry will be fed and lodged better even than in London, whose inns, as the same authority tells us, are the worst in the kingdom. Piping and dancing is there in the chambers, madrigals worth the listening. But silence and sleep at last fitly prepare for a busy day. Perhaps, however, a stray minstrel might find his way to this solemnity, and forget the hour in the exercise of his vocation, like the very ancient anonymous poet of the Alliterative Metre, whose manuscript, probably of the date of Henry V., has contrived to escape destruction :

• Coventry has altogether separate jurisdiction. It is "the County of the City of Coventry." It is called "a shire-town" by Dugdale, to mark this distinction.