'I will not altempt to reason with Frazer," said Gemand. 'about the pleasures of M.atem; but to an Etomian if as enough that in brings pure and ennobling recollections calls up assocuamics of Epe and happiness and makes even the wise feel that there is something better than was dom, and the great that there is something nebler than greatness. And then the faces that come about us at such a time, with their tales of old friendships or genevie rivalries. I have seen to-day fifty fellows of whom we member only the nicknames;-they are now degenerated into scheming M.P.'s, or clever lawyers, or portly doctors, -but at Montem they leave the plodding world of wality for one day, and regain the dignities of sixth term Etonians."

ITEMS OF THE OBSOLETE.

THE changes that are constantly going forward in the external aspects of society require the lapse of a generation or two to make a due impression upon our senses and our reason. One form of life so imperceptibly slides into another, that we observe no striking contrasts till we look back from our age to our youth, or study, with a purpose of comparison, the pictures which the novelists or dramatists of one period have painted, and then turn to the same occasional records of another period, by the same class of true historians. Thus we see distinctly that Defoe lived in a condition of society very different from that in which Fielding lived, and that Smollett was describing scenes and characters which could never have offered themselves to the observation of Dickens. It is the same with the painters. Hogarth's men and women are essentially unlike those of Gillray, and Gillray's notabilities never to be confounded with those of Doyle or Leech. As a boy, I was familiar with Hogarth. But as pictures of a life that was patent to me, how could I comprehend the cassocked par son on his lean horse, and his daughter alighted from the York Waggon?* A fine lady beating hemp in Bridewell was equally incomprehensible.t I had never seen such a smart industrious apprentice working at a hand-loom Hogarth showed me; nor such an idle one, gambling with blackguards upon a tombstone, while sober people were going to church. Never beheld I a little boy in a laced cocked-hat, nor saw a bonfire in the middle of the streets

on a rejoicing-night.§ Grenadiers wore other caps than I

Harlot's Progress, plate 1.
Evening.

Harlot's Progress, plate 4. § Night.

observed in The March to Finchley;' and in the stage coach of my early days there was no literal basket hung behind, in which sat an old woman smoking a pipe.* As a painter of living manners Hogarth was obsolete in the first decade of this century. But how priceless as a painter of domestic history!

I look back upon my native town as I remember it as a schoolboy. How changed is it in its everyday life in a hundred minute changes that are not peculiar to my birth place, but which belong to the universal revolutions of fifty years! How obsolete are many of the familiar things that seemed a part of my early being! A more list of them would suggest many thoughts not unprofitable to those who know that the progress of a generation is to be read in other memorialists than Hansard.

Windsor was an ill-built town-a patchwork town of encroachments upon the castle, and of lath and plaster tenements run up cheaply upon collegiate and corporate leaseholds. There was nothing ancient in the town, except the church, which was swept away some thirty years ago, 'Mine host of the Garter' had no antique hostelry; and 'Herne's Oak' was a very apocryphal relic, Inns there were, with historical signs; but the Royal Oak' of Charles II., The Queen's Head' of Anne, and The Duke's Head' of the Culloden executioner, wore only antique in premature decay. The usual neglect of all country towns clung to Windsor-filthy gutters and unswept cansoways.

My native town was a Corporate Borough. The Corpora tion was no abstract authority. It was on all possible occasions visible to the public eye, in solemn processions of red gowns and blue, with the mace-bearer in the front,

* Country Inn-yard.

6

In Windsor, as it was,' I have attempted a picture of the Court-Windsor -the Castle. The present paper has reference solely to the Borough. Windsor, as I knew it as a youth, was a singular mixture of the poetical and the prosic of the poetical in its antiquities and its regalities of the prosaic in its mean modern town and its very narrow society.

Of its ancient Black Ditches I have spoken elsewhere, P. 417.

and the beadle in the rear. The Corporation marched to church in toged state; and three times a year it astonished the children by this array of grandeur, when it proclaimed a gingerbread fair at street corners, and not a hot spice-nut could be sold till the mace-bearer had shouted 'Oh yes! I fear all this glory is departed from the land. Elective corporators now go to church in frock coats; and the charter of Charles II., which bestowed upon the Borough three fairs and two market-days, and regulated the buyers and sellers, is held to be as little worth preservation as the edict of Jack Cade that seven halfpenny loaves should be sold for a penny.'

The market-bell! Is that rung now? I fear not. There was something deeply impressive in that bell. It spoke loudly of the majesty of the law, which then aspired to re gulate some domestic as well as all foreign commerce. The stalls were duly set. The butchers had hung up their joints; the farmer's wife had spread her fowls and her butter upon a white cloth; onions and apples stood temptingly on the pavement side. But not an atom could be sold till the market-bell had rung.

There were laws then against 'forestalling,' with cognate crimes termed 'badgering,' 'regrating,' ' engrossing.' Bu in the seventh and eighth years of Queen Victoria suct statutes were repealed, as being 'made in hinderance and in restraint of trade.' What a solemn thing it appeared t my juvenile understanding to be assured that it was unsw ful even to handle a goose till the bell said, 'you may bar gain!' There was a board exhibited, which told of heavy penalties, if early housewives were disobedient to the mandates of that bell, and dared to chaffer before othe housewives were awake. I used to ponder upon the wis dom of our ancestors, that so regulated the common affair of life; and forbade the lieges to buy and sell in the same market, which was 'regrating;' or to buy wholesale at al which was engrossing;' or to buy before the whole wor was awake and ready to buy, which was forestalling That market-bell is silent for ever, even though Black

stone proclaimed how wise were the laws of which it was the voice.

And then there was the Pie-Powder Court, upon the evening of the fair. In the Town Hall sat the justices in state till midnight. There was a supper, no doubt; but they sat there for the public good, that offenders might be summarily dealt with before the dust of the foot---pied poudre -was shaken off. That was the interpretation which the learned imparted to me-the official etymology, which showed what a noble instrument was the law, when mayor and aldermen kept out of their beds to make offence and punishment go together. A truer etymology shows that the Pie-Powder Court was the court to determine disputes bo tween pedlar and pedlar, the pied puldreur, of Scotland as well as England. The dustifoot' himself is nearly gonda and the court of the dustifoot' is gone before him. Yet it was an inoffensive court. Like Chancery it did hitle, but unlike Chancery it charged little.

The shops of the Borough were not in those days very brilliant. The window-panes were small; and the show in the windows not greatly attractive. There were no tempt ing tickets of this chaste article only 14, 10d Customora

went to the shop for what they wanted, and seldom disputed the price if they had an account. Everybody has an au count; for there was a very queer and limited currency A guinea was a rarity; and so was a shilling with a visible King's head. The sixpences, shillings, and half orowna were thin pieces of metal, not always silvor, which passtal rather as counters than as money. Intrinsically, when good, they were worth about half their nominal amount How has my boyish heart rejoiced at the usoloss gift of a pretty shilling, that is, a shilling with a porfoot obvorsp and reverse! I would put such a rarity to my small stores of handsome half-crowns of the first and second Georges, which we used to call 'pocket-pieces,' and gaze at them as mivered things, which it would be profanation to employ as money. It is difficult to look back upon such a state of affairs and comprehend how the business of life went on. Cautious