bosom friend of Georgiana, and who, strangely enough, after the death of the duchess became herself her successor in the affections of the duke as the second duchess, and was also painted by Sir Joshua. Besides many pretty trinkets albums, Sèvres and Dresden cups and saucers, lockets and locks of hair, and bouquets of flowers dead this hundred years, there were a considerable number of autograph letters from eminent persons.

Among these were several from Lady Byron to her husband, the poet, and one of great interest, which would seem entirely to confirm the views of Mr. Jeaffreson in the latest life of Byron, although it has not hitherto been publicly seen. There were also some poems in the autograph of Byron, one, Hear my Prayer,” probably unpublished, dated 1812 ; this sold for £22 ios. (Bain). The packet with Lady Byron's letters sold for £21 (Thibaudeau). A letter from George Iv to the duchess, referring to her being presented at Court, dated March, 1810, sold for £11 155. One from Lady Hamilton (Nelson's “ Emma ") to Lady Foster, sold for 610 155. One from Lady Caroline Lamb, sister to Lord Melbourne, the Premier, brought £22 (Thibaudeau). Various letters of Lord Melbourne sold for £45, and his gold-headed walking cane, inade from Hampden's tree, sold for £5, while his

travelling writing.desk brought 622. All of these relics of Lord Melo bourne were bought by Mr. Wilson. Five letters of Madame Recamier, two of which were to Lady Foster, brought 4.10 5s. Five very interesting letters of the great Duke of Wellington to the Duchess of Devonshire, 720 1os. The most interesting of the personal relics was, perhaps, the album containing the poem by Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, called the “Passage of St. Gothard," illustrated by drawings by her friend and travelling companion, Lady Elizabeth Foster, daughter of the Marquis of Bristol. The value of this album was, however, chiefly in the extremely beautiful miniature in oils by Angelica Kauffman, R.A., of the two ladies, which has been engraved. This album sold for £ 105. Another album contained poems by Georgiana and others, with various drawings, and the cover bore a charming miniature on ivory of the Duchess Georgiana, by R. Cosway, R.A. This sold for £65. A small library of books brought the total to a little under £1,000.

easy and cheap transfer of land, extended irrigation, and im. proved agriculture, the enhanced wealth and prosperity of the island would be soon manifest. With the present uncer. tain tenure, no capital can be safely invested, not even in the providing of proper hotel and other accommodation. The unsanitary condition of the towns and villages is very apparent. It is hoped that a great naval arsenal may yet be formed at Famagosta, a permanent camp at Limasol, with a southcoast railway.' connecting the two vid Lanarca.”—[Whether Dr. Bird holds any official post we do not know, but the appointment of qualified and trained medical officers of health, with sufficient power, in such places as Cyprus, would save much money and many lives. The British army, from the days of Walcheren to the last war in Egypt, and in every region, has suffered terribly from the absence of medical officers of health, men specially devoted to the prevention of disease, as the ordinary medical officers are to its cure.]

Too Bad.—Mr. Lowe underwent the common lot in 1836. “I can't make out,” Mr. Lowe is said to have reflectively observed after the wedding, “what they mean in the marriage service by ‘With my worldly goods I thee endow,'for I took all yours instead.” “Ah ! but you brought your abilities and eloquence. “Yes, my dear ; but I didn't endow you with them.” We do not believe this anecdote, but another saying of Mr. Lowe deserves commendation. Speaking at Edinburgh, when he obtained the freedom of that city, he referred to Sydney Smith's saying that " it required a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman ! " " We must remember,” said Mr. Lowe, “that he referred to English jokes!"

Brewer's Drugs.--Some time since the brewers showed virtuous indignation when charged with using deleterious drugs to doctor their beer. Such practices may not be known in a few of the leading breweries, but beer is frequently doctored somehow before it reaches the consumer. In a speech by Mr. Plimsoll, at a temperance meeting at Derby, he said: “It will give you an idea of some of the things that are used if I read to you the schedule of the things prohibited, and which we may therefore assume were used, for I do not suppose Parliament or the Government would prohibit these things unless they had good reason for knowing they were used. In 35 and 36 Victoria, the following things are mentioned :-Coculus indicus, darnel seed, chloride of sodium (which is, of course, common salt), copperas, opium, strychnine, tobacco, extract of logwood, sulphate of zinc or lead, and alum, or any extract or compound of the above ingredients. These were the things prohibited.”

The late Mr. W. Spottiswoode.—The Dean of Westminster, in his letter in reply to the request for permission for the burial in the Abbey, happily expressed the general estimate of his claims to that honour : "I recognise in the late Mr. Spottiswoode not merely a man of special scientific attainments, but one who from his interest in and sympathy with all the many branches and departments of scientific knowledge was peculiarly fitted to represent English science in its widest aspect, and who was at the moment of his death the chosen and the honoured President of the Royal Society. I recognise in him also a man of the very highest and most stainless character-one whose great gifts were only equalled by the purity and attractiveness, and, I may be allowed to add, the devoutness and humility, of his daily life. And, not least of all, I feel that in honouring him we are not only honouring one whose name is dear to men of science and of literature, and of eminence in every sphere of public and of social life, but one whose memory will long be treasured by the working classes, to whose highest interests and welfare he was so deeply devoted.”

How to Loosen a Tight Screw.-The “Builder" says “One of the most simple and readiest methods for loosening a rusted screw is to apply heat to the head of the screw. A small bar or rod of iron, flat at the end, if reddened in the fire and applied for a couple or three minutes to the head of the rusted screw, will, as soon as it heats the screw, render its withdrawal as easy by the screwdriver as if it was only a recently inserted screw. As there is a kitchen poker in every house, that instrument, if heated at its extremity, and applied for a few minutes to the head of the screw or screws, will do the required work of loosening, and an ordinary screwdriver will do the rest, without causing the least damage, trouble, or vexation of spirit. In all work above the common kind, where it is necessary to use screws, and particularly in hinge work and mountings, fancy fastenings and appliances affixed to joinery or furniture work, we would advise the oiling of screws or the dipping their points in grease before driving them. This will render them more easy to drive and also to withdraw, and it will undoubtedly retard for a longer time the action of rusting.”

Cyprus from a Sanitary Point of View. We have received from Dr. Hinckes Bird, formerly Medical Officer of Health at Lytham and Blackpool, an account of a tour in Cyprus, where he is now residing. The description of the island does not contain much that is new apart from the personal incidents, but the report of an experienced observer as to climate and sanitary conditions is of value. Dr. Bird says : “Cyprus presents attractions for the establishment of winter health-resorts superior to those afforded by Italy, France, Spain, or Algiers. The climate is perfect in spring and winter, and in the heat of summer there is admirable facility for establishing residences on the cool heights of Troodos, where a sanatorium for the troops is already projected. Certain places are dangerous from malarial influences, but these are capable of vast improvement by drainage and engineering works, and by plantation. With certainty of tenure under British rule, abolition of the iniquitous tribute,

Blunders of the Wiseacres.-In the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, in the poultry department of zoology, may be seen a pen of fowls labelled “Poule d'Orking." In the museum at Bordeaux are some bones given by M. Joannet, a former librarian, said to have been found in Dauphiny, and to be the bones of Teutobochus, king of the Cimbrians. Will it surprise our readers to be told that the bones once belonged to a mammoth ?

F

EW of the travellers of the many multitudes

perhaps resting for a few moments in the presence of the little town of Hatfield, some eighteen miles from the great metropolis, are aware that they are in the immediate neighbourhood of one of the very oldest authentic sites of an ancient Saxon village, and one of the almost incomparably interesting and ancient palatial homes of England. Few, even of our great houses, can boast such illustrious associations; scarce another, we suppose, has amongst its family records such a variety of letters and journals from the most eminent

among English names, shedding a strong light not only on some of the by-paths but the highways of English history. Circumstances con

. nected with its story attach to it a peculiarly tender importance, and it cannot be without emotions of singular interest that any cultivated Englishman finds himself listening to the story of the home of the Cecils.

No memory connected with Hatfield is more pleasing to the English mind than that which associates it with Queen Elizabeth. During the time of her residence there it was a royal palace. Henry vir had seized upon this delightful and desirable nook, so pleasantly near to London. It had continued an ecclesiastical property of considerable importance even from Saxon times until then, when it became the favourite residence of four English sovereigns-Henry viii, Edward vi, Elizabeth, and James I. It was in fact not less a royal prison than a palace when Elizabeth had her home here during the reign of Queen Mary. Here Sir Thomas Pope was her keeper, and in that relation he appears to have acted with all possible kindness, so that while no doubt Mary exercised over her great restraint, there is no authentic proof that her condition was that of imprisonment and oppression, as it has been frequently represented. Elizabeth, the young princess, was not less wise and wary in her retirement at Hatfield than in after years, when the strong sovereign of the English nation, careful to avoid all cause for suspicion, she prudently declined in any way interfering with, or expressing much opinion upon, public business. Like many other great ladies of her time, she had plentiful resources in. herself—books, and favourite studies, and innocent amusements; and when Queen Mary died, on the 17th of November, 1558, the news found her, winter as it was—we may suppose the day to have been bright and fine-sitting under the celebrated Oak which has ever since been associated with her name. It almost seems as if in her great elevation she was still loth to leave Hatfield, the place of her peaceful sequestration, for she remained there several days while all London was glowing and sounding with joyful acclamations, bells clanging in the steeples and towers of all the churches, te deums sounding down their aisles, stalls set out in all the streets, and bonfires blazing at night in every broadway. It was not till the 23rd of November that she set forth from Hatfiel to London, the first of her many great royal progresses, surrounded by more than a thousand lords, knights, and gentlemen and ladies, who in this way were escorting her from her confinement to her crown and the throne which she was to fill for so many years. Arrived at Highgate it seemed as if the whole city, with the Lord Mayor and aldermen and sheriffs, had come forth to greet the sovereign whose reign, whatever its faults, was to inaugurate a new era and a mighty change in English history and in the destinies of England. But at Hatfield, before she left its memorable rooms, her mind had certainly been exercising itself upon the difficulties she was to encounter; the wise and celebrated Sir Thomas Gresham had been with her, and through him she had arranged the furnishing of her exhausted exchequer, borrowing £25,000 to pay for the expenses of her coronation, and £25,000 for the new and necessary demands upon her impoverished purse.

It may be thought that little remains now of the venerable tree, beneath whose branches Elizabeth received the tidings of her elevation. At the end, however, of the long avenue the visitor is conducted to what is said to be that which forms the subject of so much historic gossip. It is still called Queen Elizabeth's Oak, which has thus survived from the feudalism of the

times preceding the Tudors to our own democratic days. If we could doubt the identity of the object in which we wish so much to believe, it would be when introduced to the very straw hat which the princess is reputed to have worn on the occasion, and which is also religiously preserved among the relics and memories of the past in the noble mansion where so many such are to be found. But Hatfield Park is full of noble old trees, and is one of the most ideal of the ancient aristocratic homesteads of England.

Splendid circumstances and scenes and characters are called up naturally by the memories of old Hatfield, many of them in the far-off nighttime of remote history. Do our readers remember the quite romantic story of the marriage of Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, with Mary, the widowed French queen ?

It was an old-love relationship, which thus came right at last. It is curious that in the old episcopal palace of Hatfield their first child, Lady Frances Brandon, was born on the 17th of July, 1517. It was singular how this could come about in a home of bishops and priests who themselves were not permitted to marry and have children. But West, the Bishop of Ely, whose was this palace at Hatfield, had been a friend of Suffolk, and, it is further said, had probably helped him in his wooing. And so, for old acquaintance' sake, the palace of Hatfield had been sent to the illustrious pair. The birth, of course, was followed by the “christening,” and this took place in Hatfield Church, and the magnificent ceremonial, as recited in the Calendar of State Papers of Henry VIII, is something to read. Did the old church ever put on such grandeur again ? Did it ever receive such an illustrious company? The road to the church all strewn with rushes, the church porch hung with rich cloth of gold and needlework, the church with rich tapestry, the chancel with tapestry of silk and gold, the altar blazing with jewels, the font hung with a canopy of crimson satin and powdered with roses, and the French queen's arms (Mary's) in rich needlework. And then the procession to the church-lighted torches borne by yeomen, eight by gentlemen; and the young lady herself who was to be baptized carried by noble arms, and surrounded by sixty ladies and gentlemen and prelates and priests. This little old thorpe of Hatfield has known stirring and remarkable incidents in its early days; and it is yet more interesting to remember that this little Lady Frances, thus ushered into the world at Hatfield, and borne to her baptism with all this pomp and ceremonial, became herself in due time the mother of the beautiful and beloved Lady Jane Grey:

Shortly after the death of Bishop West Hatfield Palace changed hands; the king had set his mind upon it, and Henry viii was not one to trouble his mind or conscience very much concerning rights of property when they stood in the way of his desires. So whatever were the particulars of the arrangement, Hatfield came into the possession of the Crown, and so remained until 1607; then James I, preferring Theobalds-a far more magnificent house, belonging to Lord Salisbury-he offered him Hatfield in exchange,

thirty thousand vines were brought over from France with innumerable other fruit-trees, and gardeners were sent over from France by the French queen; also rare trees were contributed from the various parks and gardens of England, all adding to the dendrological wealth of the demesne. Nor is it uninteresting to remember that one of the gardeners from France was John Tradescant, afterwards horticulturist to Charles I, who was father to the celebrated John Tradescant, to whom we owe the foundation of the Tradescant Museum of Oxford, now more popularly known as the Ashmolean. Such is in truth the origin of the present Hatfield House and Park.

The remark has often been made that the old monks well knew where to pitch the sites for their habitations, and Hatfield illustrates the truth of the observation. Perhaps in these days, when civilisation has reduced all various scenes into such uniformity, the delightful situation is not so distinctly realised. Wood and water abounded in monastic times, and they give verdure and fertility and grace to the scene still, reminding us in several particulars of Byron's glowing and graphic description of his own mansion in the picture of Norman Abbey:

of both of these eminent statesmen. Here is a draft in Burleigh's own hand of the settlement of England on the accession of Elizabeth, and here is the correspondence of Elizabeth with Mary Queen of Scots. Here are letters in French, said to be Mary's, but which are described as cluinsy and suspicious manipulations of her hand; they are numbered by Burleigh himself; and here are all the letters concerning the proposed marriages of Elizabeth, all the preparations for the Armada, the passionate career of Essex; here too are correspondence and documents connected with the Gunpowder and the Bye Plots, touching the whereabouts of Garnet, and all the various movements of the Jesuits, and the marriage and attempted escape of unhappy Arabella Stuart. All these circumstances, and innumerable others scarcely less interesting, are presented in unbroken succession before the eyes so fortunate as to obtain a glimpse of these papers; letters traced by the hands of Wolsey, by the fingers of Essex the night before his execution, surely affecting; the hands which traced all these various lines long since dust; the agonising wives and relatives anxiously sighing for the remotest hope of mercy long since decayed; but these pages over which has passed the breath of centuries surviving still, reciting intrigues and disappointments, hopes and sorrows, the story of the ambition and the fall. All else has perished,” says the interesting writer in the

Quarterly,” “but poor sheets of paper, once warm beneath the hands of those who traced the characters inscribed upon them, of kings, queens, princes, statesmen, the prosperous and the miserable, the triumphant and the dying, the noble and the ignoble these form a visible and material bond that brings the present by undying sympathy into close proximity with the past." Surely very wonderful books of chronicles indeed, history in very pre-Raphaelitic lines, sincere, unalloyed, and undisguised.

As the pedestrian walks through the quaint little village of Hatfield, turning from its splendid grounds and stately house, he may perhaps remember that it became a theme of universal gossip towards the close of the reign of Charles II, when the alleged revelations and hallucinations of Elizabeth Freeman, called the Maid of Hatfield, aged twenty-one years, excited considerable attention. It was the age of plots, and she was no doubt one of the most impudent of impostors; but she made deposition before the magistrates and the vicar of Hatfield that she had been several times visited by an apparition, a woman in white, with a white veil over her face, who told her that on the 15th of May following the king would be poisoned, and charged her again and again to tell him; and this apparition appeared to her at various times and in various circumstances.

And after having recited the story to Mr. Richard Wilkinson, the schoolmaster of Hatfield, and other of the inhabitants, the magistrates received her deposition, and did actually obtain for her an audience with the king in council : they all accompanied her, with her mother and other persons. And the king really manifested great good sense; he heard her story very patiently, very kindly asked her

But the grandeur of the extensive grounds, and the munificence of the splendid apartments, yield in interest to that which to curious and antiquarian tastes will be regarded as the chief wealth of Hatfield-its surprising store of ancient letters and documents. The “ Quarterly Review,” in a very interesting paper on Hatfield House some years since, by the Rev. J. S. Brewer, and now reprinted in the collected volume of his Essays, refers at length to this wonderful collection, which includes original papers from the time of Edward III to the accession of the House of Hanover, the correspondence of the great

ord Burleigh and his son from the time of Henry vili to James 1. It is said that there is scarcely an event or a personage of interest during all those troubled times of which or of whom we may not obtain some clearer light, some more distinct and graphic touch, from these papers. Especially we are introduced to the inner minds