To the full accounts in the Every-Day

Book of the celebration of Easter Mon

day and Tuesday, and the Easter holidays, in ancient and modern times, there is not anything of interest to add, unless this may be an exception-that there is a custom at this season, which yet prevails in Kent, with young people to go out holiday-making in public-houses to eat "pudding-pies," and this is called "going a pudding-pieing." The pudding-pies are from the size of a tea-cup to that of a small tea-saucer. They are flat, like pastrycooks' cheese-cakes, made with a raised crust, to hold a small quantity of custard, with currants lightly sprinkled on the surface. Pudding-pies and cherry beer usually go together at these feasts. From the inns down the road towards Canterbury, they are frequently brought out to the coach travellers with an invitation to

"taste the pudding-pies." The origin of the custom, and even its existence, seem to have escaped archæological notice. is not mentioned by Hasted.

It

On the 24th of March, 1603, queen Elizabeth died at Richmond Palace, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. She had been raised from a prison to a throne, which

she filled with a dignity peculiar to her character, and a sufficiency that honored her sex. She completed the reformation, restored the coin of the realm to its just value, settled the state of the kingdom, and lived, in the affections of the people, a terror to Europe. It was her policy to select ministers of great ability and address, by whom, so great was her knowledge and penetration, she never suffered herself to be overruled.

DRESS, TEMP. ELIZABETH.

We are informed by Hentzner, that the English, in the reign of Elizabeth, cut the hair close on the middle of the head, but suffered it to grow on either side.

As it is usual in dress, as in other things, to pass from one extreme to another, the large jutting coat became quite out of fashion in this reign, and a coat was worn resembling a waistcoat.

The men's ruffs were generally of a moderate size; the women's bore a proportion to their farthingales, which were

enormous.

We are informed that some beaux had actually introduced long swords and high ruffs, which approached the royal standard. This roused the jealousy of the queen, who appointed officers to break every man's sword, and to clip all ruffs which were beyond a certain length.

The breeches, or, to speak more properly, drawers, fell far short of the knees, and the defect was supplied with long hose, the tops of which were fastened under the drawers.

William, earl of Pembroke, was the first who wore knit stockings in England, which were introduced in this reign. They were presented to him by William Rider, an apprentice near London Bridge, who happened to see a pair brought from Mantua, at an Italian merchant's in the city, and made a pair exactly like them.

Edward Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford, was the first that introduced embroidered gloves and perfumes into England, which he brought from Italy. He presented the queen with a pair of perfumed gloves, and her portrait was painted with them upon her hands.

At this period was worn a hat with a broad brim, and a high crown, diminishing conically upwards. In a print of Philip II., in the former reign, he seems to wear one of these, with a narrower brim than ordinary, and makes at least

as grotesque an appearance, as his countryman Don Quixote with the barber's bason.

The Rev. Mr. John More, of Norwich, one of the worthiest clergymen in the reign of Elizabeth, gave the best reason that could be given for wearing the longest and largest beard of any Englishman of his time; namely, "that no act of his life might be unworthy of the gravity of his appearance." Mr. Granger wishes that as good a reason could always have been assigned for wearing the longest hair and the longest or largest wig.

It was ordered, in the first year of Elizabeth, that no fellow of Lincoln's Inn "should wear any beard of above a fortnight's growth."

As the queen left no less than 3000 different habits in her wardrobe when she died, and was possessed of the dresses of all countries, it is somewhat strange that there is such a uniformity of dress in her portraits, and that she should take a pleasure in being loaded with ornaments.

At this time the stays, or boddice, were worn long-waisted. Lady Hunsdon, the foremost of the ladies in the engraving of the procession to Hunsdon House, appears with a much longer waist than those that follow her. She might possibly have been a leader of the fashion, as well as of the procession.

Beneath an engraved portrait on wood of queen Elizabeth in Benlowe's "Theophila, or Love's Sacrifice, 1652,” are these lines :—

"Shee was, shee is, what can there more be said?

In earth the first, in heaven the second maid." Theophilus Cibber says these lines were an epigram by Budgell upon the death of a very fine young woman: they are the last verses of an inscription mentioned, in the "View of London, 1708," to have been on a cenotaph of queen Elizabeth in Bow church.

A proclamation, dated 1563, in the hand-writing of secretary Cecil, prohibits "all manner of persons to draw, paynt, grave, or pourtrayit her majesty's personage or visage for a time, until, by some perfect patron and example, the same may be by others followed, &c., and for that hir majestie perceiveth that a grete nomber of hir loving subjects are much greved and take grete offence with the errors and deformities allredy committed

by sondry persons in this behalf, she straightly chargeth all hir officers and ministers to see to the due observation hereof, and as soon as may be to reform the errors already committed, &c.”

A

In Walpole's "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors," there is a curious head of queen Elizabeth, when old and haggard, done with great exactness from a coin, the die of which was broken. striking feature in the queen's face was her high nose, which is not justly represented in many pictures and prints of her. She was notoriously vain of her personal charms, and, affirming that shadows were unnatural in painting, she ordered Isaac Oliver to paint her without any. There are three engravings of her after this artist, two by Vertue, and on ea whole length by Crispin de Pass, who published portraits of illustrious persons of this kingdom from the year 1500 to the beginning of the seventeenth century.

might almost compass the world; and the most trifling incident awaken associations which if carried out into all their ramifications would furnish materials for a twelvemonth's meditation.

This propensity forms my constant "consolation in travel," and, wherever I may direct my wanderings, I am sure to find many sources of pleasure opening before me, which arise either directly or indirectly from the scenes through which I pass. To illustrate my meaning I have subjoined a few remarks connected with a short journey undertaken in the spring of last year, at which enchanting season, having obtained a temporary respite from the fatigues of the counting-house, I secured a place by one of the Maidstone coaches, and started in high spirits.

Many of your readers may smile at the idea of such a “chronikyľ” as I have here "compilit," but, as the whole scene is laid within a reasonable distance of this mighty metropolis, I dare say some may be found who will thank you for its insertion.

It is not easy for a mind perpetually harassed to throw off its fetters instantaneously, and for this reason I suppose it was that I made no note of my proceedings till I was fairly out of sight of London. But the clear sunshine and the deep blue heavens, studded with masses of cloud, in brightness approaching to molten silver, soon exercised their witchery upon me, and forgetting the perplexities of life, amidst the gentle scenery by which I was surrounded, I first "came to myself" on the brink of a little hollow scooped like that of Cowper, by Kilwick's echoing wood,

-I judge in ancient time, For baking earth, or burning rock to lime. A small mud-walled cottage, partially white-washed, stood at the bottom, upon a little plot of chalky ground, part of which had been fenced about and planted with cabbages and potatoes; and just at the foot of a tall perpendicular cliff, on a small round grassy hill, the verdure of which grew more and more scanty towards its extremities, till it barely powdered the rigid soil, an ill-favored mongrel lay sleeping in the sunshine. The upper edge of this cliff was fringed with coppice wood, and a straggling hazel hung carelessly over its brink, the shadows of which, as it swayed to and fro in the wind, danced upon its white ramparts, just

where the light steamy smoke, from the little hovel below, curled gracefully upwards.

In none of these details was there any thing pleasing, and yet with the whole, throwing into the scale the circumstances under which I viewed it, and the associations which it awakened, I was so delighted that I would make no ordinary sacrifice for the sake of another glimpse. We passed briskly by a considerable plantation of firs, and my head grew dizzy as their tall grey stems changed places with each other, alternately forming long and regular vistas, at the end of which enchanting glimpses of the sky were for a moment visible, and then disappeared behind the forest of bare stems, whose green leafy summits left not the grassy avenues below as garish as the brown slopes beyond, but shed over them so soft a twilight, that I looked into it with feelings of no common interest, contrasted as it was with the calm sun-light crossing here and there a solitary stem, whose festoons of foliage had been thinned by time or accident. As I saw the cones and broken twigs sprinkling the green sward, I thought of Wordsworth's "sheddings of the pining umbrage," and properly to weigh the merits of these few words was no unpleasant nor shortlived employ. I thought of those firs which live in his graphic verse, and their "composing sound," and detected myself almost involuntarily quoting these lines"Above my head,

At every impulse of the moving breeze, The fir-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound." I thought of "lively Hood," and his Plea of the Midsummer fairies, as "blue snatches of the sky" became visible at intervals through an artless break in the foliage; and of Bloomfield, when I looked on the "half-excluded light" sleeping in patches on the shadowy verdure below. From these pictures, naturally arising out of the circumstances in which I found myself, my fancy led me into a long di-, gression, in which I called to mind those beautiful figures, in the poets quoted, which had often haunted my day dreams, and now came up successively upon "that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude," like stars peeping through the cool twilight, or young hopes, hallowed in their birth by those boyish tears not unfrequently shed over a fan d disappoint

ment.

The coach suddenly drew up where a by-road branches off to the right, and the clattering of hoofs, and rumbling of wheels, were in an instant exchanged for a silence which seemed deeper from the quick transition by which we had passed into it. A beautiful meadow, sloping down with a tolerably sharp declivity from the road, and intersected by a narrow path, led toward a coppice on which the young moon looked through the dim haze surrounding it, serving by its feeble light rather to foster than dissipate the pleasing illusion which lent to the distant landscape charms to which it could not in truth lay claim. A line of stately elms stood at considerable distance from each other at the bottom of this twilight green, and, from a rustic stile by the road side, a countryman hailed us in a voice graced with the twang peculiar to that part of the world; a dialogue, conducted for a few seconds in a low tone, and ended by the customary "good night, formed no unpleasing contrast to the repose which breathed around us.

"

We passed rapidly onward, without any material occurrence, until we observed, from the high ground above the town whither we were destined, innumerable lights,somefixed and others disappearing at intervals, the warm glow of which suffered in contrast with the mild glories of the heavens, now powdered with living sapphires. I was roused from a long reverie into which these considerations led me by a sudden jolt, as we passed on to the rugged pavement, which reminded us that we had arrived at the end of our journey. As we crossed the bridge, I looked over the melancholy waters towards the church which stood above their brink, and, in an old ivy-grown mansion adjoining, noticed the glimmer of a lonely taper struggling through the dusky panes of an arched casement, and thought of the aptness of that simile of my favorite Wordsworth

"Like to a dragon's eye, that feels the stress Of a bedimming sleep,-&c."

The following morning I was up betimes and enjoying the freshness of a glorious Spring morning as I stood in the dim shadows projected by a street irregularly built, with three or four neat white gables (between which a young lime or lilac glanced and shivered in the clear cool sun light) looking into it. At its farther

end, the narrow river swept sluggishly onward, though that amusing trifler Pepys had given it credit for greater vivacity when he chronicled it as "passing swiftly by." On the opposite side the green pastures sloped down to bathe their fringes in its tide, and beyond their clear crisp rims the heavens glowed with such transcendant beauty that the veriest dolt must have felt and owned "the witchery of the soft blue sky." We passed along its margin through a dingy looking meadow, in the centre of which a noble row of elms towered high above us. The clamor of a colony of rooks, which had fixed on this spot for their habitation, though harsh in itself, formed not the least pleasing of those melodies of morn which now greeted us, and I thought of Bloomfield's "Burnt-hall" environed by tall trees, and cheered by the day-break song of woodland birds, as its smoke rose upwards in the still morning air. Under the influence of such pleasing cogitations, I attempted to “do” the scene into English metre, but stuck fast after hammering out the following stanza,— A sun-beam slants along that line of trees, Mottling those frosty boughs with beauteous shade,

Whose leafy skirts, swayed by the passing breeze,

Appear in starry gossamer arrayed; Whilst o'er the spare-clad summits, ill at ease. The rocks wheel round their noisy cavalcade, Or, as on some tall treach'rous spray they swing, Scream out their fears, and spread the cautious wing.

Our walk led us by a hedge of scented briar towards a commanding height, partially covered with clover, on the dewy surface of which I noticed about our shadows that beautiful refraction which the fancy of Benivenuto Cellini conjured into a supernatural appearance. A lovely scene stretched around us, and, in the valley below, the town which we had just left, partially hidden by the early smoke, blending as it streamed upwards with earth's morning incense, presented an appearance so enchanting, as the sun-slants struck through the silvery mists which hung over it, that, unsightly as I had thought it in detail, I looked on it now with feelings approaching to rapture. Turning to the right, I gazed on the old church tower, which, seen in shade, exhibited a bold outline against the misty amphitheatre of hills beyond it.

I had wandered oftentimes up and down its long-drawn aisles, and whilst I admired the grace and beauty of its Gothic arches and lace-work windows, now despoiled of those heraldries, the warm glow of which had slept on the massive columns separating them from the nave, had thought of Byron and of Newstead with its mighty window,

"Shorn of its glass of thousand colorings, Through which the deepened glories used to enter,

Streaming from off the sun-like seraph's wings.

I had heard the noble organ scattering its dulcet strains and rolling its harmonious thunders along the lofty pile, and had gazed with feelings of awe and mystery on the strange effigies, and memorials to departed greatness, with which the chancel and its side aisles abound. Amongst them I had seen two large alabaster figures, which, though habited in grave

#

Beside the altar, between two upright marble figures beautifully executed, representing Sir

clothes, were placed side by side in an upright position, beside the altar; and I fancied that around them there breathed such an air of sanctity as had been strange to earth, since the period when they were consecrated in tears to the memory of beings superhuman both in the stature of their minds and bodies. Below them a large slab of polished marble, ornamented with their arms, stood in all its original freshness and beauty, though possibly placed there when the first faint glimmering of that day-spring from on high, which dazzled and confounded the advocates of popery, had beamed upon us, that in its light we might see light clearly.

This idea I was pleased to entertain,

John Astley and his lady, is a verbose epitaph on the defunct. Above it, in two recesses, are similar effigies, although considerably smaller, with inscriptions on stones, projecting from the monument, and fronting each other, commemorative of the right worshipful John Astley, and Margaret his wife, one of the Grey family." Summer Wander ings."