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the council, touching his having said he would go abroad poorly and would return in glory, which he did speak concerning his health; but they would have it meant treason."

      "Methinks, Master Basil," said his father, "thou art not like to be taxed for silence; unless indeed on the rack, which the freedom of thy speech may yet bring thee to, an thou hast not more care of thy words. See now, thy brother keeps his lips closed in modest silence."

      "Ay, as if butter would not melt in his mouth," cried Basil, laughing.

      And I then noticed the countenance of the younger brother, who was fairer and shorter by a head than Basil, and had the most beautiful eyes imaginable, and a high forehead betokening thoughtfulness. Mr. Rookwood drew his chair further from the table, and conversed in a low voice with Mrs. Ward, touching matters which I ween were of too great import to be lightly treated of. I heard the name of Mr. Felton mentioned in their discourse, and somewhat about the Pope's Bull, in the affixing of which at the Bishop of London's gate he had lent a hand; but my ears were not free to listen to them, for the young gentlemen began to entertain me with divers accounts of the shows in London; which, as they were some years older than myself, who was then no better than a child, though tall of mine age, I took as a great favor, and answered them in the best way I could. Basil spoke mostly of the sights he had seen, and a fight between a lion and three dogs, in which the dogs were victorious; and Hubert of books, which he said, for his part, he had always a care to keep handsome and well bound.

      "Ay," quoth his brother, "gilding them and stringing them like the prayer-books of girls and gallants, which are carried to church but for their outsides. I do hate a book with clasps, 'tis a trouble to open them."

      "A trouble thou dost seldom take," quoth Hubert. "Thou art ready enough to unclasp the book of thy inward soul to whosoever will read in it, and thy purse to whosoever begs or borrows of thee; but with such clasps as shut in the various stores of thought which have issued forth from men's minds thou dost not often meddle."

      "Beshrew me if I do! The best prayer-book I take to be a pair of beads; and the most entertaining reading, the 'Rules for the Hunting of Deer;' which, by what I have heard from Sir Roger Ashlon, my Lord Stafford hath grievously transgressed by assaulting Lord Lyttleton's keepers in Teddesley Haye."

      "What have you here?" Hubert asked, glancing at Mr. Fox's Book of Martyrs, and another which the landlady had left on the table; A profitable New Year's Gift to all England.

      "They are not mine," I answered, "nor such as I do care to read; but this," I said, holding out Mr. Page's gift, which I had in my pocket, "is a rare fund of entertainment and very full of pleasant tales."

      "But," quoth he, "you should read the Morte d'Arthur and the Seven Champions of Christendom."

      Which I said I should be glad to do when I had the good chance to meet with them. He said, "My cousin Polly had a store of such pleasant volumes, and would, no doubt, lend them to me. She has such a sharp wit," he added, "that she is ever exercising it on herself or on others; on herself by the bettering of her mind through reading; and on others by such applications, of what she thus acquires as leaves them no chance in discoursing with her but to yield to her superior knowledge."

      "Methinks," I said, "if that be her aim in reading, may be she will not lend to others the means of sharpening their wits to encounter hers."

      At the which both of them laughed, and Basil said he hoped I might prove a match for Mistress Polly, who carried herself too high, and despised such as were slower of speech and less witty than herself. "For my part," he cried, "I am of opinion that too much reading doth lead to too much thinking, and too much thinking doth consume the spirits; and often it falls out that while one thinks too much of his doing, he leaves to do the effect of his thinking."

      At the which Hubert smiled, and I bethought myself that if Basil was no book-worm neither was he a fool. With such like discourse the evening sped away, and Mr. Rookwood and his sons took their leave with many civilities and pleasant speeches, such as gentlemen are wont to address to ladies, and hopes expressed to meet again in London, and good wishes for the safe ending of our journey thither.

      Ah, me! 'tis passing strange to sit here and write in this little chamber, after so many years, of that first meeting with those brothers, Basil and Hubert; to call to mind how they did look and speak, and of the pretty kind of natural affection there was betwixt them in their manner to each other. Ah, me! the old trick of sighing is coming over me again, which I had well-nigh corrected myself of, who have more reason to give thanks than to complain. Good Lord, what fools you be! sighing heart and watering eyes! As great fools, I ween, as the Mayor of Coventry, whose foolish rhymes do keep running in my head.

      The day following we came to London, which being, as it were, the beginning of a new life to me, I will defer to speak of until I find myself, after a night's rest and special prayers unto that end, less heavy of heart than at present.

      CHAPTER VII

      Upon a sultry evening which did follow an exceeding hot day, with no clouds in the sky, and a great store of dust on the road, we entered London, that great fair of the whole world, as some have titled it. When for many years we do think of a place we have not seen, a picture forms itself in the mind as distinct as if the eye had taken cognizance thereof, and a singular curiosity attends the actual vision of what the imagination hath so oft portrayed. On this occasion my eyes were slow servants to my desires, which longed to embrace in the compass of one glance the various objects they craved to behold. Albeit the sky was cloudless above our heads, I feared it would rain in London, by reason of a dark vapor which did hang over it; but Mistress Ward informed me that this appearance was owing to the smoke of sea-coal, of which so great a store is used in the houses that the air is filled with it. "And do those in London always live in that smoke?" I inquired, not greatly contented to think it should be so; but she said Mr. Congleton's house was not in the city, but in a very pleasant suburb outside of it, close unto Holborn Hill and Ely Place, the bishop's palace, in whose garden the roses were so plentiful that in June the air is perfumed with their odor. I troubled her not with further questions at that time, being soon wholly taken up with the new sights which then did meet us at every step. So great a number of gay horsemen, and litters carried by footmen with fine liveries, and coaches drawn by horses richly caparisoned and men running alongside of them, and withal so many carts, that I was constrained to give over the guiding of mine own horse by reason of the confusion which the noise of wheels and men's cries and the rapid motion of so many vehicles did cause in me, who had never rode before in so great a crowd.

      At about six o'clock of the afternoon we did reach Ely Place, and passing by the bishop's palace stopped at the gate of Mr. Congleton's house, which doth stand somewhat retired from the high-road, and the first sight of which did greatly content me. It is built of fair and strong stone, not affecting fineness, but honorably representing a firm stateliness, for it was handsome without curiosity, and homely without negligence. At the front of it was a well-arranged ground cunningly set with trees, through which we rode to the foot of the stairs, where we were met by a gentleman dressed in a coat of black satin and a quilted waistcoat, with a white beaver in his hand, whom I guessed to be my good uncle. He shook Mistress Ward by the hand, saluted me on both cheeks, and vowed I was the precise counterpart of my mother, who at my age, he said, was the prettiest Lancashire witch that ever he had looked upon. He seemed to me not so old as I did suppose him to be, lean of body and something low of stature, with a long visage and a little sharp beard upon the chin of a brown color; a countenance not very grave, and, for his age, wanting the authority of gray hairs. He conducted me to mine aunt's chamber, who was seated in an easy-chair near unto the window, with a cat upon her knees and a tambour-frame before her. She oped her arms and kissed me with great affection, and I, sliding down, knelt at her feet and prayed her to be a good mother to me, which was what my father had charged me to do when I should come into her presence. She raised me with her hand and made me sit on a stool beside her, and stroking my face gently, gazed upon it, and said it put her in mind of both of my parents, for that I had my father's brow and eyes, and my mother's mouth and dimpling smiles.

      "Mr. Congleton," she cried, "you do hear what this wench saith. I pray you to bear it in mind, and how near in blood she is to me, so that

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