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PHILIP SIDNEY AND FULKE GREVILLE.

HERE has been high revelry in Shrewsbury in 1569. Sir Henry Sidney, Lord President of the Council of the Marches, as made his annual visit, during an interval in his governent of Ireland, in which he had returned to his favourite udlow Castle. Philip Sidney, his son, is a boy of fifteen, t the Free Grammar School of Shrewsbury. In the same rm-of the same age-is his devoted friend, Fulke Greville. 'he ceremonies are over. Sir Henry has sat in the acient hall of the Council House, to hear complaints and dispense justice. He has gone in solemn procession to t. Chad's Church, with bailiffs, and aldermen, and wardens. f companies. He has banqueted with the masters of the hool in the great library. He has been present at a age-play in the Guildhall-the Mayor's play. But more elcome than all the pomp of office is a quiet hour with is boy Philip, as they sit in the cool of a May morning on ae terrace of the Council House, and look over the bright evern towards Haughmond Hill, and muse in silence, as hey gaze upon one of those unrivalled combinations of atural beauty and careful cultivation, which have been the lory of England during many ages of comparative freedom nd security. It is the last of Philip's school years. He to proceed to Oxford. His friend Greville afterwards rote of him:-'I lived with him and knew him from a hild, yet I never knew him other than a man, with such aidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as carried race and reverence above greater years.' Proud is the ther of his noble son. He is the light of his family.' hey talk as friend to friend. The father-a statesman and ldier-is not displeased to see that, beneath the gravity

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of the precocious boy, are fiery glances of feeling almost approaching to rashness. They become one who in after years exclaimed, 'I am a Dudley in blood-the duke's daughter's son,'

The Lord President has departed. There is holiday at the school; and Sidney and Greville walk forth to the fields in that spring-time. Shrewsbury is a place in which the young Sidney lives in the memories of the past. Fer of the public buildings and private houses of the town an of the more recent Tudor architecture. The Market Square and Pride Hill are rich in the black oaken timbers, and gabled roofs, and panelled carvings of the fifteenth century. The deserted abbey is not yet in ruins. The castle has s character of crumbling strength. The High Cross is per fect. There, were beheaded the last of the British Princes of Wales; and there, suffered some who had the misfortun not to fall with Hotspur in the battle of Hateley Field. A the Augustine Friars, and the Grey Friars, are still seer the graves of many who had perished in that fight. T Welsh Bridge, with its great gate to enter into by the town, and at the other end, towards Wales, a mighty strong tower, to prohibit enemies to enter into the bridge' (as de scribed by old Leland), has its associations of border hostilities. Sidney's mind is formed to luxuriate in the poetry of history.

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The young men take their course into the country by the Castle Foregate. They are in earnest talk.

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What a monster these players make of Richard the Third,' says Sidney. Mangre my loyal reverence for her Highness's grandfather, I have a liking for the venomo little Yorkist. Even the players couldn't show him as a coward.'

Not when they make him whimper about revenge suns, moons, and planets; silly lambs and croaking ravens -all crying for revenge upon him? Heavens! what

stuff!'

Rare stuff! How is it that these play-writers canne

make their people talk like Englishmen and Christians? When the board is up- -"Bosworth Field "--and two armies -fly in, represented by four swords and bucklers-and the usurper dashes about, despite his wounds,-hear how he wastes his precious time. Do you remember?'

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"Fly, villain! look I as though I would fly?
No, first shall this dull and senseless ball of earth
Receive my body cold and void of sense.

Yon watery heavens scowl on my gloomy day,
And darksome clouds close up my cheerful sound.--
Down is thy sun, Richard, never to shine again.-
The bird whose feathers should adorn my heal
Hovers aloft and never comes in sight."

There's a Richard for you.'

Bravo, Philip! You should join a fellowship of players. You would beat the varlet with the hump that mouthed it on Tuesday. But why so hard upon the rhetoric of the vagabonds? Your favourite Gorboduc is full of such

trash!'

Yes, and faulty even as this True tragedy of Richard the Third, in time and place. In two hours of the Mayor's play, we had Shore's wife in Cheapside, and poor dead Richard about to be drawn through Leicester on a collier's horse.'

'Suppose there were painted scenes, as some of the playhouses have, instead of the door painted in great letters -couldn't the imagination go from Cheapside to Leicester in spite of Aristotle? and can't it, even with the help of the painted board? But here we are at Battlefield.'

'I never walk over these meadows,' exclaimed Sidney, ⚫ without deep emotion. I was reading Hall just before my father came. How graphic these chroniclers are, compared with the ranting players.'

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What you read, I read, Philip.'

As we walked through the Eastgate, I could not be think of that day when Henry came with his host int Shrewsbury, and being advertised that the earls were hand with banners displayed and battles ranged, marched suddenly out by the Eastgate, and there encamped.' 'An evening of parley and defiance, followed by a bloody morning.'

The next day, in the morning early, which was the vig of Mary Magdalene, the king set his battle in good orderand so his enemies. There, on that gentle rise, Greville. must the rebel hosts have been arrayed. Then sudden)” the trumpets blew. The cry of St. George went up on the King's part-and that cry was answered by Esperancé Pery By Heaven, the tale moves me like the old song of Perry and Douglas!'

Here is a theme for the players. Write the tragedy Hotspur, Philip.'

'Nonsense. What could I do with it, even if I were maker? The story begins with the deposition of Richar It is an epic, and not a tragedy. And yet, Fulke, when!. see the effect these acted histories produce upon the people. I am tempted, in spite of Aristotle, to wish that some real poet would take in hand our country's annals. The teach ing of our day is taking that form. The Players are successors of the Bards.'

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What a character is that young Harry of Monmouththe profligate and the hero! Something might be made d these contending elements.'

Yes, the players would do it bravely. How they woul make him swagger and bully-strike the chief justice an slaughter the Welshmen. Harry of Monmouth was a gentleman, and the players could not touch him.'

If the stage is to teach the people, surely right teacher will arise. Look at our preachers. They stir the d clowns and the sleepy burgesses with passionate eloquence. and yet they preach as scholars. They never lower the

selves to their audiences. And why should the stage be the low thing which we see, when it addresses the same classes?'

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There may be a change some day; but not through any theorick about it. England may have her Eschylus--when the man comes; perchance in our age-more likely when all the dust and cobwebs of our semi-barbarism are swept away-for we are barbarians yet, Greville.'

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Come, come-your fine Italian reading has spoiled you for our brave old English. We have poetry in us if we would trust to nature. There is the ancient blind crowder that sits at our school-gate, with his ballads of love and war, which you like as much as I do. Has he no poetry to tell of? As good, I think, as the sonnets of Master Francis Petrarch.'

'Don't be a heretic, Greville. But see; the sun is sinking behind that bosky hill, from which Hotspur, looking to the east, saw it rise for the last time. We must be homeward.'

'And here, where the chapel-bell is tolling a few priests to evensong, forty thousand men were fighting, a century and a half ago-for what?"

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And for the same doubtful cause went on fighting for three-quarters of a century. What a sturdy heart must our England have to bear these things and yet live!'

Times are changed, Philip! Shall we have any civil strife in our day?"

Papist and Puritan would like to be at it. But the rule of the law is too strong for them. Yet my father says that the fighting days will come over again-not for questions of sovereign lineage, but of vulgar opinion. The reforms of religion have produced sturdy thinkers. There is a beast with many heads called the Commonalty, growing stronger every day; and it is difficult to chain him or pare his claws.'

'Well, well, Philip, we are young politicians, and need not trouble our heads yet about such matters. You are

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