the order of the silken bowstring, or that Christian kings have ceased to regard their nearest and dearest as greedy plotters, intent on snatching away the diadem from the brows that wore it. Coronets have exercised a wider-spread, but, at the same time, a much less potent form of fascination; and the same may be said of stars of knighthood, of crosses and medals, of the gold key of a court chamberlain, of the velvet baton of a marshal, and of many another variety of those glittering gewgaws which Mephistopheles gives to Faust wherewith to awake the dawning vanity of Marguerite.

Sometimes such berries take the enticing shape of a rich man's caprice, the ungratified desire for something-a trifle, very likely, which is not in the market. It is, not seldom, out of pure wantonness, that Ahab craves for Naboth's little patch of vineyard to add to his own stately demesne. Idleness, ease, and the habit of finding deference everywhere, cause such a wish, once formed, to grow to portentous proportions, like Jonah's gourd. It is well when the land-hunger of some, mighty magnate only leads him to press a fancy price upon the petty owner of the few poor coveted acres, that the Marquis of Carabas pines to include within his seigneurial ring-fence. The old chroniclers give us a pithy illustration now and then of the manner in which the Carabas of some centuries since was wont to rectify his frontiers. Three cold-blooded conspiracies, culminating in two treacherous assassinations and a judicial murder of unblushing effrontery, went to the score of a single Scottish earl in the process of winning the estate of one small priory. It would take a library-full of law reports to catalogue the fashion in which many a princely property was rounded off to its present fair dimensions.

Publicity, an improved police, and the gradual abolition of class-privilege, have combined to render impossible the old high-handed fashions of wrong-doing. We are very far, as yet, from a millennium of peace and goodwill; but, at least, there is an end of riding rough-shod over the lowly and the weak. The old oppressor of the widow and the fatherless-he of whom the Hebrew prophet and psalmist spoke so often-no longer arrives with shining spears and trampling horsemen, to drive off the little flock, and break down the modest landmark, and despoil the household gear, of his unwarlike victims. He

wears black broadcloth now, a broadbrimmed hat and ecclesiastical necktie, and, but for his bunch of gold seals and drab gaiters, might be mistaken for a dean. If one of the companies of which he is chairman does occasionally collapse, the trusting relicts and spinsters whom his spotless repute has led to place their little all in his sleek hands, are never quite sure whether or no they have been swindled out of the money that they miss so sorely.

The desire to be rich is so natural that some suspicion of insincerity is apt to attach itself to the moralist who, out of the pulpit, carps at it. But wealth may be bought too dear in the world's great mart, where the price paid for a new purchase is not always commensurate with its value. The woman who has bartered away her hand for money does not invariably enjoy the good things with which a mercenary match has endowed her. Somehow, the stalled ox, with its sauce of conjugal indifference at best, palls on the jaded palate. The high-stepping carriagehorses in their silver-plated harness cannot trot fast enough to leave care behind. The rare exotics in the costly conservatory scarcely fill the void in a heart, whose owner has deliberately chosen that it should be starved and stinted in the matter of human emotions; and sometimes prudent Mrs. Croesus is weak enough to envy her former friend, who married, as the phrase is, for love, and was thereupon very properly put under the ban of Belgravia.

Poison-berries, for many energetic natures, take the form of rank, or power, or renown, sometimes singly longed for, sometimes inseparably linked in thought with the riches that to most of us seem the fitting meed of success. The dazzling goal may be reached too late. The waters of the well, sand-begirt, for which the wayfarer has thirsted with such fierce intensity of eagerness as he plodded over leagues of scorching desert, may mock the parched lip with their exceeding bitterness. It has often been computed that any healthy man, of average intellect, might grow moderately rich after a quarter of a century's exclusive devotion to money making; but very few are they who have the stubborn courage to be deaf and blind to all earthly or heavenly considerations but one, for fiveand-twenty years. Nor does it by any means follow that the something more than competence, once attained, brings with it a large amount of gratification. It is easier to raise, than to exorcise, the

familiar demon that points to swelling money-bags. As the worn-out war-horse never forgets the trumpet calls of the old regiment, so does the veteran cash-hunter continue, when the need for exertion has ceased to exist, to weary out his latter span of days in adding to the useless heap.

The mind should not be too full of one object, be it what it may. Such an engrossing topic is almost sure, by imperceptible degrees, to put forth hurtful qualities, and ultimately develope into a poison-berry. A passion for notoriety of any sort has a terrible reactive power over him who hugs it to his bosom. The boundary-line which separates the far-seeing statesman, the silver-tongued orator, the lucid preacher, from blatant charlatanism is perilously thin, and easily crossed. The merest trifle will make a speech, a sermon, a pamphlet, doubly effective-but at the cost of wilful dishonesty, of a slight transgression of the immutable canons of truth. To win-honestly, if possible, but at any rate to win-is a maxim that has in all ages brought in its substantial rewards, but with the flavour of the honey sadly marred by gall. The bright prize is grasped, only to be found not worth the getting.

All property-and titles, and high degree, and personal fame, are as much property as consols or real estate can be becomes a poison-berry when it turns into the master, instead of the slave, of him who nominally owns it. This is a truth which, nineteen hundred years ago, just before the Christian era, a Roman patrician, named Nennius, had leisure in his barbarian exile to realise. Poor Nennius had preferred banishment and confiscation to the surrender of the matchless opal, worth eighty thousand pounds of our money, that he wore in his thumb-ring, and which Mark Antony wished to transfer to the queenly brow of gem-loving Cleopatra. The unhappy senator had his opal ring, as he shivered in the chilly blast that waved the birch-trees of the Danube, in exchange for Rome and its feasts and its forum, for the marbles of his pillaged villa on the noble Neapolitan bay, for the fertile estate within sight of the towers and mounds of the huge brick-built mistress of the earth, which Augustus had not as yet transmuted into marble. But the glorious jewel, thus worn, was a poison-berry at the best.

The last instance of an absolute slavery to wealth, in a material form, which has

been seen in our own time, was displayed, not long ago, by a Serene Highness, now deceased. This poor Transparency was cursed by the accredited possession of between three and four million pounds' worth of diamonds, and he suffered all the penalties, short of the last, which accrue to the reputed keeper of so much crystallised carbon. It would be more correct to say that the diamonds possessed him than he the fatal diamonds. The monstrous iron safes, triply secured with ingenious locks, were in his bedroom when he slept, brooding, like so many hideous idols, till the worshipper should awake to do them homage. For their sake the dressingroom was an armoury; the bed-room a fortress, impregnable to mere burglars; the stair a drawbridge that fell away at night; the valets half guards, half suspected thieves, who might at any moment make away with the princely booty; as, indeed, some of the younger and rasher at times tried to do. But, though he feared for his life, though he trembled for his wealth, though his existence was embittered by their presence, H.R.H. clung to his diamonds until the very last.

The

Of such berries the upas-tree of military glory bears a plenteous crop. The most sluggish pulse is apt to quicken, the dullest eye to brighten, as with flaunting flags and measured tramp, with blare of trumpet and beat of drum, the marching troops go by. The grim and bloody trade of war has in all ages had need of gorgeous trappings and a fair outside, to make men forget to what all this pageant of waving plumes and bright colours, of gay uniforms and gleaming steel, really leads. very horse that prances in time to the stirring clangour of the music, moving proudly, as if vain of the embroidered housings and jingling bridle, shall one day lie moaning on the midnight turf of a battle-field, maimed by cannon-shot, and feebly striving, with stiffening limbs and ebbing veins, to rise. The most hopeful aspirant for martial laurels would be staggered, could he but see set before him the statistics of the many blanks and the few prizes in that tremendous war-lottery, in which so much is staked for such a poor return. The successful soldier, who has won his way to the top of the ladder, and finds the padded breast of his tunic all too narrow for the stars and crosses that dangle and glitter there, is indirectly the cause of a quick and violent death to thousands of ardent lads, whose hearts

throbbed high as first they donned the warrior's garb, only to swell the casualties in some obscure skirmish or nameless sortie.

That the gambler's passion is a poisonberry few will care to dispute. There is, however, some divergence of opinion as to the classes to be reckoned under that generic name. Of the gentleman who is on affable terms with the croupiers and bankers at Monaco, he who pricks up his ears, when first, on entering the great playpalace for the séance of the day, he hears the melody of tinkling gold and rattling silver, little need be said. He is a gamester confessed, a man whose waking thoughts are busy with fantastic calculations of chances, and who still hearkens in his dreams to the clatter of the rake as it sweeps the green cloth clear of piled up coin and rustling bank notes. As little doubt exists of the mental condition of the youth with a golden horseshoe in his cravat and a morocco-bound betting-book protruding from his pocket-he whose literature consists of sporting newspapers, and whose principal correspondents are turf-agents, and who never gets his bemuddled brain quite clear from the Grand National or the Cesarewitch.

There are very many persons by far too respectable to toss their Napoleons on the black and red at M. Blanc's pleasant Pandemonium, and who neither know nor care which racehorse is at the head of the betting at Tattersall's, yet who are as arrant gamblers as the most hackneyed votary of roulette can be. It is possible to play for a run on Eries, or to "plunge in Turkish Sixes or Spanish Deferred. Time bargains on the Royal Exchange may make or mar a fortune, at least as easily as can be effected by the cards or the dice. A shaky finance company can bring its backers to grief as readily as an over-rated Derby favourite can do, and, indeed, the gambling in public securities, if more decorous, is, beyond a doubt, the more ruinous variety of the vice.

Very deserving of pity are certain classes of sufferers by the poison-berries that twinkle temptingly on the branches of a tree, which is labelled "high interest." These honest investors have not a particle of the gambling spirit, and merely seek to impart a welcome elasticity to a narrow income. Prices rise, and the country clergyman, and the retired Indian officer, and the widow, and the spinster, grow more and more discontented with the

frugal three per cent. which the Old Lady of Threadneedle-street doles out to them, in Britannia's name. They begin to hanker after Japanese Nines, and Khedive Loans, and Imperial Ottomans. Transatlantic railways tempt them; the flaming prospectus of some company for supplying gas or water to earthquake-ridden municipalities in South America makes their innocent mouths water for the gains which seem ready to drop, like a ripe plum, into any outspread hands that care to receive them. How can these worthy people, who seek as a permanent investment what shrewder practitioners buy only to sell, know of the nice question as to whether, by the aid of native usurers, the next half-yearly coupon will be paid in full. As little do they dream how busy is the Vizier, or the Dewan, or the Captain of the Bastinado, in squeezing and wringing enough small coin out of the taxpaying peasantry, so that the state machine may work smoothly until the next foreign loan be launched. The interest is the one thing they look to, and they are blind to the gaunt spectre of national or commercial bankruptcy that hovers in the background.

Poison-berries, of one kind and another, are so numerous, that even to catalogue them would require a volume of goodly size. A seat in Parliament, the honour, such as it is, of M.P.-ship, has exercised a mischievous fascination over many a man who is proof against coarser temptations to do wrong. There is something unwholesome to the moral fibre, in the constant study of how near to the legal wind it is possible to sail without being unseated on petition. It is not good for the conscience of a candidate, to be for ever engaged in delicate casuistry as to the precise borderland between nursing a borough, and venturing into the forbidden paths of treating or intimidation. To bribe would, of course, be monstrous, but to ask no questions as to a thumping sum left in the hands of the experienced Parliamentary agent, who drills the phalanx of Blue or Yellow voters, is only to show a gentlemanly confidence in a professional adviser. As with the rival candidates, their committees, caucuses, and canvassers, so it is with the more corruptible sort of electors, to whom a vote would appear a worthless privilege, but for its intimate connection with beer unpaid for, eleemosynary cabs, half-crowns to compensate for time lost at the ballot-booth, and not seldom unacknowledged sovereigns, slily

cester rode Robert, Earl of Gloucester, on the arrival of his sister, the Empress Maud. Hot and swift he dashed through the enemy's country, with only twelve lances and twelve mounted archers at his back, to drive out King Stephen's garrison and levy an army. To Gloucester, wounded Stephen was brought, to see Maud; and thither Maud herself, in one of her hair-breadth escapes, was carried, in a horse litter, as a corpse.

Henry the Second and his son, at the feast of Peter and Paul, held a great council here with Rees ap Griffin, and other petty kings of Wales, who, with the Earl of Gloucester, swore to keep back the incursions of the Welsh. William the Legate and Protector of England held a synod here in the absence of Richard Coeur de Lion. In the reign of John, and while that black-hearted usurper was at Gloucester, Gualo, the Papal Legate, excommunicated Lewis the French Prince and all the barons who had demanded the charter. There, says Holinshed, the Earl of Pembroke had the young king, Henry the Third, crowned, he being, as the earl justly remarked, a young child, pure and innocent of those his father's doings." Upon which the barons, with one consent, says the quaint historian, after some prudent silence and conference, "proclaimed the young gentleman king of England."

The history of Gloucester cathedral is so entirely interwoven with that of the city, that it is impossible altogether to disentangle them. All the kings and barons who came to Gloucester laid offerings on the cathedral altar, and no event that happened at the gates or on the walls of Gloucester but was whispered about at the monks' refectory, or in the long pacings in the cathedral cloister.

Henry the Third seems always to have regarded with affection the place of his coronation. After his unsuccessful Welsh expedition he often resided in this town. He held a melancholy Christmas here in 1234, when the Earl Marshal was spreading rebellion through the land. To Gloucester he repeatedly summoned his rebellious barons, who refused to assist him in subjugating Wales, at the invitation of Llewellin. Byand-by Edward the First held a Parliament at Gloucester in the long workhouse of the abbey, and summoned all persons to show by what authority they held their lands. The laws which were then enacted

went ever after by the name of the Statutes of Gloucester.

soon.

Weak and unfortunate Edward the Second was frequently at Gloucester during his troubles, and hung in this city the Sheriff of Hereford and several traitorous barons, little conscious that his own dismal end was coming so Edward's Queen, Isabella, "the she-wolf of France," came straight to Gloucester on her way to hunt down the Despensers, the evil favourites of the king, and here the northern and Welsh barons converged, to swell her army. Edward the Third, always generous and kingly, granted Gloucester a seven days' fair, beginning on the Eve of the Baptism, and Richard the Second confirmed the permission. The latter king also held a Parliament here in 1378, to be well out of the reach of the stormy Londoners.

Henry the Fourth also held a Parliament at Gloucester, which sat for forty-four days, according to Prynne, but Holinshed says it was soon removed to London. Henry the Sixth also held Parliament at Gloucester, and the townspeople complained to him that the Welsh of the Marches often seized the barges and floats of their merchants in the Severn, and compelled them to hire Welsh SCOWS at exorbitant rates.

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The Earl of March (afterwards Edward the Fourth), was lying at Gloucester when the overwhelming news came of the loss at Wakefield, and the beheading of his father. The Welsh, however, cheered him up, and urged him on to Shrewsbury to levy a new Yorkist army. Just before the battle of Tewkesbury, Queen Margaret attempted to surprise Gloucester, which was a Yorkist city, but the king sent Richard Beauchamp to put the town on its guard, and thus the Lancastrians on their arrival were baffled.

To Gloucester, too, came that evil man, cankered in mind and deformed in body, to tempt the Duke of Buckingham to help murder his nephews. When the Duke revolted he led his army of unwilling Welshmen through the Forest of Dean, intending to have forded the Severn at Gloucester, but a ten days' flood thwarted him, and he lost his head soon after.

Soon after Bosworth, Henry the Seventh rode from Worcester to Gloucester, and was received by the mayor and all the aldermen in scarlet gowns, and by the friars of all the parish churches. At the cathedral door the abbot and the