therefore wholly impossible that he drowned, was not a shareholder in the could have shot the head of his vessel, and have an antipathy to courtsship into the mud of the left bank of martial, I turned from the brawling the Thames on his thousandth tran- of the present, to the bulletins of the sit. The fact, however, seemed rather past, and thought of Dog-land in its against the theory. But as I was not glory. THE ISLE OF DOGS. 6 On Linden when the sun was low." Ten thousand years the Isle of Dogs, The tenants of its scenery. No pic-nic parties came from town, Neglecting all its greenery.) Dut Dog-land saw another sight, Were seen upon its tenantry. Then tents along the shore were seen, All bustle, show, and pennantry. Three nations in their rivalry. There bugle rang, and rattled drum, The prize of Spanish chivalry. At last, Blue-Peter mast-high shone, By process sure and summary. The bold battalions sail'd for Spain, To live on Spanish flummery. A cloud of smoke, which the wrath loves of a figurante. We rounded of Æolus poured upon our vessel, a point of land, emerged into blue as a general contribution from all the stream and bright sky, and left the forges. along shore, here broke my whole Cyclopean region behind, rudreverie, by nearly suffocating the died with jets of flame, and shrouded ship’s company. But the river in this with vapour, like a re-rehearsal of the quarter is as capricious as the fa- great fire of London. shions of a French milliner, or the I had scarcely time to rejoice in the consciousness that I breathed many other things ;" or, as Dr. Parr once more, when my ear was caught would tell mankind, - the product by the sound of a song at the fore- of nights of driving and days of inpart of the deck. The voice was of dulgence ; of facing the wintry storm, that peculiar kind, which once be- and enjoying the genial cup, the labours longed to the stage coachman, (a of the Jehu, and the luxuries of the race now belonging alone to history,) Sybarite," - it was to Moore's me-strong without clearness; full with lody, – out force; deep without profundity, My dream of life and, as Sydney Smith says, a great From morn till night, many other things without a great Was love, still, love." THE SONG OF THE MAIL-COACHMAN. Oh, the days were bright The cabins prance, When, young and light, The hedgerows dance, I drove my team, Like gnats in Evening's beam : My four-in-hand Oh, there's nothing half so quick in life Along the Strand, As steam, still, steam. You hear a sound, You feel a bound, You all look blue. You've split a horse, A man's a corse. As steam, still, steam. All's one to you. The Bristol Mail, Upon the road You meet a load, In vain you wildly scream. Oh, there's nothing half so quick in life Is but a stool As steam, still, steam. You come full front Upon a hunt, You hear a yell; You crush the throng, Along the sky Dogs, squires, pell-mell. You see a van; The signal man Is snugly in a dream, Oh, there's nothing half so quick in life As steam, still, steam. You see a flash, You feel a crash, From toe to chin. You touch a bank, You top a tank, You all plump in. You next engage The three-mile stage, And long for my old team, You see a plough, Your trial's o'er, you trust no more, All shooting by. To steam, steam, steam! The romantic disappears from the story as romantic as that of Romeo world every day. Canals and docks and Juliet; excepting the masquerade, now vulgarize this tract of the shore, the moonlight, and the nightingales of and the whole scene will yet undergo Verona. the fate of Billingsgate. But it has a The Isle flies from me, and I must tively asked him, “Where were his give but the outline. wife and children ?" a question The daughter of the old Baron de which, though put in all innocence, Bouvraye, one of the followers of so perplexed the good father, that, not William the Norman, and lord of the desiring to be the penitent instead of country for leagues along the northern the confessor, he returned with all shore of the Thames, was the court possible speed to his convent. beauty of the time. With the Nor- Yet the Lady Blanche's eye often man dignity of form, she had the exhibited the signs of weeping, and Saxon beauty of countenance ; for the her cheek grew pale. All was a proBaron had wedded a Saxon heiress. blem, until a handsome youth, the son The charms of the Lady Blanche de of a knight on the Kentish shore, was Bouvraye, were the theme of the seen one night touching a theorbo whole race of troubadours; and the under her window, and singing one of most popular poem of Guido de the Tuscan love songs, which the trouSpezzia was written on the incident badours had brought into England. of her dropping her wimple at a court This was enough for the suspicions ball. It was said that she had a of the Baron. The young minstrel thousand lovers; but it is certain, was seized, and sent to join the Cruthat suitors crowded from every part saders then embarking for the Holy of Christendom to claim her hand—a Land; and the lady was consigned to number probably not diminished by the Baron's castle in Normandy. As the knowledge that she was to succeed Shakspeare said four hundred years to the immense possessions of the after, barony. But, to the sorrow of some, the in The course of true love never does run smooth. dignation of others, and the astonishment of all, the Lady Blanche laughed It would take the pen and song of ten at the idea of love. William, not troubadours to tell the adventures of accustomed to have his orders dis- the lady and the youth. In the puted, commanded the beautiful heir- fashion of the age, they had each coness to fall in love with some one or sulted an astrologer, and each had other without a moment's delay. But been told the same fortune, that they she laughed at the herald who bore should constantly meet, but be conthe command, and bade him tell his stantly separated, and finally be master, that though armies might be happy. commanded, and crowns conquered, In Normandy, the Baron's castle Blanche de Bouvraye would be neither. and the lady had fallen together William was indignant, and ordered into the hands of the troops who the herald to prison for a month, and had rebelled against William, when to be fed on bread and water, for the a band of the crusaders on the audacity of bringing back such an march, commanded by her lover, answer. But the lady was unchanged. rescued her. The lady was next The Baron remonstrated, and de- ordered to take up her abode in a manded whether she was prepared to convent in Lombardy, of which her see his line extinguished, and his father's sister was the abbess. The lands go to strangers. She laughed vessel in which she embarked was and said, that as the former could not driven up the Mediterranean by a be while she lived, and the latter storm, and wrecked on the shore could take place only after she was where the army of the crusaders was dead, she saw no reason why she encamped. Thus the lovers met should concern herself on the subject. again. By the Baron's order, the The abbess of the famous convent of lady returned once more to Europe; the Celestines, near the ford of the but when in sight of the Italian coast, river Rom, where the town of Rom- the felucca was captured by an Algeford has since grown up, was sent to rine, and, to her astonishment, she argue with her. But her answer was found in the pirate's vessel her lover, the question, “Why had not the abbess who had been wounded and taken herself married ?" Her father confessor prisoner in battle with the Saracens, was next sent to her. But she spor- and sold into slavery. Again they were separated; the lady was ran- groom rushed in, making wild bounds, somed by her father; and the lovers running to and fro, and dragging the seemed to have parted for ever. guard by their mantles to go forth. But the stars were true. The They followed ; and he sprung before lover broke his Moorish chains, and them to the door of a hut in a swampy the first sight which the lady saw on thicket a league from the castle. her landing at Ancona, was the fugi- On bursting open the door, they tive kneeling at her feet. fonnd a man in bed, desperately torn, I hasten on. As the vessel in which and dying from his wounds. At the they sailed up the Thames approached sight, the noble hound flew on him; the baronial castle, they saw a black but the dying man called for a conflag waving from the battlements, and fessor, and declared that he had disheard the funeral bell toll from the charged the arrow by which the murder abbey of the Celestines. The Baron was committed, that he had dug a had been laid in the vault of the grave for the dead, and that the dog abbey on that day. Their hopes were had torn him in the act. The next now certainty: but the lady mourned demand was, where the body had been for her father; and the laws of the laid. The dying man was carried on church forbade the marriage for a year the pikes of the guard to the spot ; and a day. Yet, this new separation the grave was opened ; the body was was soothed by the constant visits of taken up; and, to the astonishment her lover, who crossed the river daily of all, it was found still with traces of to bask in the smiles of his betrothed, life. The knight was carried to the who looked more beautiful than ever. castle, restored, wedded, and became The eve of the wedding-day ar- the lord of all the broad acres lying rived; and fate seemed now to be betweeen the Thames and the Epping disarmed of the power of dividing the hills. faithful pair ; when, as the lover was He had been waylaid by one of his passing through a dark grove to re- countless rivals, who had employed a turn to the Kentish shore for the last serf to make him the mark for a clothtime, he was struck by an arrow shot yard shaft, and who, like the Irish from a thicket, fainted, and saw no felon of celebrated memory, "saved his life by dying in jail.". The dog was, The morning dawned, the vassals by all the laws of chivalry, an uniwere in array, the bride was in her versal favourite while living; and when silk and velvet drapery, the bride's dead, was buried under a marble maids had their flower-baskets in their monument in the Isle ; also giving his hands, the joy-bells pealed, a hundred name to the territory; which was more horsemen were drawn up before the than was done for his master; and castle gates,—all was pomp, joy, and hence the title of the Isle of Dogs. Is impatience, --but no bridegroom came. it not all written in Giraldus Cam At length the mournful tidings were brensis ? brought, that his boat had waited for Enter Limehouse Reach. - The him in vain on the evening before, sea-breeze comes “wooingly,” as we and that his plume and mantle, dabbled wind by the long serpent beach ; the with blood, had been found on the Pool is left behind, and we see at last the sands. All now was agony. The surface of the river. Hitherto it has bank, the grove, the river, were been only a magnified Fleet-ditch. The searched by hundreds of eager eyes Thames, for the river of a grave and hands, but all in vain. The people, is one of the most frolicsome bride cast aside her jewels, and vowed streams in the world. From London to live and die a maid. The castle Bridge to the ocean, it makes as many was a house of mourning ; the vas- turns as a hard-run fox, and shoots sals returned to their homes: all was round so many points of the shore, that stooping of heads, wringing of hands, vessels a few miles off seem to be like and gloomy lamentation. ropemakers working in parallel lines, But, as the castle bell tolled or the dancers in a quadrille, or Mr. midnight, a loud barking was heard Green's balloon running a race with at the gate. It was opened ; and the his son's (the old story of Dædalus and favourite wolf-hound of the bride- Icarus renewed in the 19th century); a more. or those extravaganzas of the Arabian rather than singing, in the rude joy Nights, in which fairy ships are hold- of his work, I was roused by a cry of ing a regatta among meadows strewn “Deptford ! — Any one for Deptford ? with crysolites and emeralds, for prim- Ease her ; stop her!" roses and the grass-green turf. I sprang from the bench on which I But what new city is this, rising on had been reclining, and the world the right ? What ranges of enormous burst upon me again. penthouses, covering enormous ships “Deptford-any one for Deptford ?" on the stocks ! what sentinels parad- cried the standing on the ing! what tiers of warehouses ! what paddle-box. None answered the call, boats rushing to and fro! what life, but a whole fleet of wherries came tumult, activity, and clank of ham- skimming along the surge, and threw a mers again? This is Deptford. crowd of fresh passengers, with trunks " Deep forde,” says old Holinshed, and carpet-bags numberless, on board. * alsoe called the Goldene Strande, The traveller of taste always feels himfrom the colour of its brighte sandes, self instinctively drawn to one object the whiche verilie do shine like new out of the thousand, and my observagolde under the crystalle waters of the tion was fixed on one foreign-featured Ravensbourne, which here floweth to female, who sat in her wherry wrapt old Father Thamis, even as a younge up in an envelope of furs and possessdaughtere doth lovinglie fly to the ing a pair of most lustrous eyes. embrace of her aged parente." A sallow Italian, who stood near But Deptford has other claims on me, looking over the side of the vessel, posterity. Here it was that Peter exclaimed, " FANNI PELLMELLO, the Great came, to learn the art of and the agility with which she building the fleets that were to cover sprang up the steps was worthy of the Euxine and make the Crescent the name of that most celebrated grow pale. At this moment I closed daughter of “the muse who presides my eyes, and lived in the penultimate over dancing," as the opera critics year of the 17th century. The scene have told us several million times. had totally changed. The crowds, The sallow Italian was passed with the ships, the tumult, all were gone ; a smile of recognition, which put him I saw an open shore, with a few wooden in good spirits at once. Nothing vividwellings on the edge of the water, fies the tongue of a foreigner like the and a single ship in the act of build- memory of the Coulisses, and he overing. A group of ship carpenters were flowed upon me with the history of this standing in the foreground, gazing at terrestrial Terpsichore. It happened the uncouth fierceness with which a that he was in Rome at the time of that tall wild figure among them was driv- memorable levee at which Fanny, in ing bolts into the keel. He wore a all her captivations, paid her obeisance common workman's coat and cap; but at the Vatican; an event which notothere was a boldness in his figure, and riously cost a whole coterie of prina force in his movement, which showed cesses the bursting of their stay-laces, a superior order of man. His coun through sheer envy, and on whose tenance was stern and repulsive, but gossip the haut ton of the “ Eternal stately; there was even a touch of City have subsisted ever since. insanity in the writhings of the mouth The Italian in his rapture, and with and the wildness of the eye; but it the vision of the danseuse still shining did not require the star on the cloak, before him at the poop, began to which was flung on the ground beside improvise the presentation. All the him, nor the massive signet ring on world is aware that Italian prose slides his hand, to attest his rank. I saw into rhyme of itself,—that all subjects there the most kingly of barbarians, turn to verse in the mind of the Italian, and the most barbarian of kings. and that, when once on his Pegasus, There I saw Peter, the lord of the he gallops up hill and down, snatches desert, of the Tartar, and of the polar at every topic in his way, has no world. mercy on antiquity, and would introWhile I was listening, in fancy, to duce King Solomon and the Queen of the Song of the Steppe, which this Sheba, dancing a quadrille with Prince magnificent operative was shouting, Albert and Queen Victoria. 66 |