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come, and whither he was going. This counsel she followed, and at the prescribed hour went into the garden, her husband, for some reason or other, refusing to accompany her, in spite of her urgent entreaties. The stranger was there, the questions were asked, and by way of answer, the poor old lady received from an icy cold hand a slap which levelled her with the ground. When her husband came to look for her, she lay extended on a spot in the garden where two paths crossed. The stranger was not to be seen."

"It is a strange feature in this story, that the spectre, contrary to precedent, selects noon for the time of his appearance," observed Laurence.

"And perhaps it is still more strange," added Maximilian, "that the red man should reappear within the last forty years. The death of the poor old lady, who expired three days after her encounter with the apparition, and carried to the grave five black finger-marks on her cheek, occurred long ago; but according to popular belief, a little girl, of two years, belonging to more recent owners of that house, could never be prevailed upon to walk on the cross-path, but always chose some other way, and when asked for her reason, exclaimed, 'Red man! Red man!' The child died at the age of five, and they accounted for her terror by affirming that she had actually seen a red man standing on the indicated spot."

"Did

"This red man seems to be very fond of killing people," observed Edgar. he box the ears of the little girl?"

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"On the contrary," replied Maximilian, though he was seen in the garden after the death of the old woman, he never molested anybody."

"He must have been intensely goodhumoured," said Laurence, " to allow the old man to walk through him.”

"True-and all things considered," remarked Edgar, "I think the old woman had better have left him alone. But after all, what is this red man supposed to be ?"

"That I cannot say," replied Maximilian, "but there is a story connected with that apparition, which, perhaps, you would like to hear, though it is possibly a comparatively recent invention. You are to suppose that ages ago, the son of one of the great men of Tangermünde fell in love with a girl of humble condition, though his father had chosen for him a lady to whose family he was deeply indebted.'

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"The identical garden, afterwards tenanted by the old couple," echoed Maximilian. "Suddenly, in the full light of the moon, she saw standing in the cross-path a little red man, who, bidding her not to be alarmed, asked her to come to the same spot on the following evening. She complied with the request, and at the appointed place found the little man, who, seating himself beside her, narrated his own history. He was, it seemed, the ghost of a Wendish prince, who, by birth a heathen, had become a Christian through his love for a Christian lady, and had deserted a bride of his own race in consequence. Having overheard his declaration of love made to her rival on the banks of the Elbe, the forsaken damsel flung herself into the stream and perished. The prince buried her with all honour; but her father condemned him to wander upon earth until he was released from the spell by a pair of faithful lovers, whom no consideration could separate. Not having been fortunate enough to find a couple answering to this description, he had had recourse to other expedients. He had, for instance, built a convent, endowed it with all his wealth, and even died in it; but all this had been to no purpose, and since the hour of his decease he had been a miserable wanderer. Now, however, deliverance seemed at hand, and he bade the girl meet him on the following evening with a spade in her hand."

"That will make three evenings," interposed Edgar; "he would have economised time if he had told his story, and given his orders for the spade on the first.'

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"Have you forgotten that predilection for the number three which is visible in so many legends and popular tales ?" asked Laurence.

"I stand corrected," said Edgar.

"The girl came as required, although there was a violent storm, and though an oak on the cross-path was struck by lightning, she boldly used her spade, and dug the ground till she came to an iron chest full of gold and precious stones. This treasure she presented on the following morning to her lover, who, releasing his father from all pecuniary difficulties, mar

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"Here we have the picture that was seen by the old woman," remarked Edgar; "but altogether this pretended introduction does not accurately fit the popular story. The red man ought not have reappeared, after he had assisted the girl to marry her lover, and yet it is to account for his appearance at an after date that the tale is

told."

"At all events we understand why he slapped the old woman's face," said Laurence. "The ghost of a man, who has built a convent, and ended his life in penitence, is, from the legendary point of view, an honest ghost, and would, therefore, naturally dislike to be exorcised like an evil spirit."

"Nevertheless," objected Edgar, "he

need not have hit so hard."

LOVE'S REASONS.

WHY do I love my darling so?
Good faith, my heart, I hardly know,
I have such store of reasons;
"Twould take me all a summer day-
Nay, saying half that I could say

Would fill the circling seasons.

Because her eyes are softly brown, My dove, who quietly hath flown

To me as to her haven? Because her hair is soft, and laid Madonna-wise in simple braid,

And jetty as the raven?

Because her lips are sweet to touch,
Not chill, nor fiery overmuch,

But softly warm as roses.
Dear lips that chasten while they move,
Lips that a man may dare to love,

Till earthly love-time closes ?

Because her hand is soft and white,
Of touch so tender and so light,

That where her slender finger
Doth fall or move, the man to whom
The guards of Eden whispered, "Come!"
Beneath its spell might linger?

Because her heart is woman-soft,
So true, so tender, that I oft

Do marvel that a treasure,
So rich, so rare, to me should fall,
Whose sole desert-so small, so small,

Is-loving past all measure?

Because she has such store of moods,
So archly smiles, so staidly broods,
So lovingly caresses;
So that my heart may never tire
Of monotone, or more desire

Than she, my love, possesses?

Ah me! what know or what care I?
Or what hath love to do with "why"?
How simple is the reason!

I love her-for she is my love,
And shall while stars shall shine above,
And season follow season.

CHRONICLES OF LONDON STREETS.

OLD ST. PAUL'S.

THE Somewhat credulous and simplehearted antiquaries of Charles the Second's reign fought hard with Sir Christopher Wren, because he would not allow that a Roman temple to Diana ever stood on the

site of St. Paul's. There had indeed been a vague tradition among the learned for many centuries that in the reign of Edward the Third an incredible quantity of staghorns, boars' tusks, and skulls of oxen had been dug up in St. Paul's Churchyard, and these bones, the antiquaries insisted, were remains of ancient sacrifices to Diana. Moreover, they pointed with triumph to a small household image of the chaste god

dess that had been found between the deanery and St. Paul's. But Wren would listen to none of these things. He stuck steadily to facts, and assured the Scribleruses of the day that in all his excavations he had not found a single bone or horn.

But what he did find was curious. Inside the old Roman prætorian camp he discovered, deep below the aisles of the old church, rows of Saxon graves lined with slabs of chalk, and Saxon stone coffins. Below these, in due sequence, came the British graves, with here and there among the earth ivory and wooden pins that had fastened the woollen shrouds. In the same level, and deeper (eighteen feet from the surface) were Roman funeral urns, lamps of red Samian ware, vessels for holding tears, and vessels used in sacrifices. Outside the old prætorian camp, therefore, according to the Roman custom, there had evidently been a Roman cemetery. Yet, singularly enough, the old theory of the Temple of Diana cropped up again in 1830, for in that year a rude stone altar, with an image of Diana upon it, resembling in form and attitude the Diana of the Louvre, turned up under the foundation of Goldsmiths' Hall (Foster-lane, north side of Cheapside). So that those who love old traditions can still believe that during the Diocletian persecution the first Christian church on the site of St. Paul's was pulled down, and a temple to Diana built on its ruins, while at Westminster a shrine to Apollo displaced St.

Peter and his keys. One thing, at least, is certain, that in the old times, when the north of London was all swamp and forest, the Romans on the banks of the Thames frequently erected shrines to the divine huntress.

Mellitus, a companion of St. Augustine, was the first bishop of London, and Ethelbert, King of Kent, founded and endowed a cathedral, which he dedicated to St. Paul, who, as ecclesiastical tradition asserts, first brought Christianity to Britain. For thirtyeight years the pagan Londoners resisted the Christian bishops, nor, till the brother of St. Chad of Lichfield arrived at St. Paul's did their shouts cease to Wodin and Thor. Erkenwald, the fourth successor of Mellitus, brought, however, wealth and saintly glory to the cathedral. His greatest miracle was this. The worthy man used to preach in the forests round London; after a certain rough drive one of the two wheels of the cart that conveyed him on his rounds came off, and there he must have remained water-logged had not the sound wheel miraculously moved on alone, and carried him safely to his savage congregation. Even a greater miracle happened after his death, at his sister's nunnery at Barking. Directly they heard of his death the monks of his abbey at Chertsey made forced marches to Barking to secure his holy body; but the canons of St. Paul's, equally anxious to found a profitable shrine, pushed for Chertsey too, and arriving there first, bore off the body in triumph towards London. The Chertsey monks and the nuns of Barking followed, weeping and protesting. Heaven seemed to hear their cries; a tempest came on, and the River Lea rose in fury. A pious man present adjured both claimants to leave the matter to the decision of Heaven. The London clergy burst forth into a litany. The Lea at once calmed down, the procession passed over to Stratford, and from thence marched in sunshine to St. Paul's. The shrine soon became famous; pilgrims began to pour in, and with the richer pilgrims came costly offerings. King Stephen translated the body of Erkenwald from the crypt to a spot behind the high altar. Three goldsmiths of London were employed a whole year at the shrine. The relics of St. Mellitus were for ever eclipsed. The dust from the new tomb, mingled with water, wrought remarkable cures, and brought in many a penny to the dean and chapter. When King John of France was taken prisoner at Poictiers he presented four basins of gold

at the high altar, and twenty-two nobles at the shrine of St. Erkenwald.

William the Conqueror is said to have bestowed valuable privileges and immunities on St. Paul's; at all events, the cathedral clergy claimed them as real. The very year the stern Norman died a great fire swept away the Saxon cathedral, and probably reduced to ashes the bodies of Mellitus and Erkenwald. Bishop Mauritius set strenuously to work to rebuild his cathedral, and the Conqueror, almost on his death-bed, gave towards the restoration the stone of the Palatine tower, perhaps a Roman fort, that stood where the Blackfriars monastery afterwards arose. For forty years Mauritius and his frugal suc cessor, De Belmeis, went on building St. Paul's, and Henry the First granted exemption to all vessels which entered the Fleet laden with stone for the new cathedral.

During the strife between King Henry and the ambitious Becket, Gilbert Foliot, Bishop of London, and Becket's rival, was excommunicated by Becket, one of whose emissaries had the courage during high mass to approach the altar and thrust the sentence into the hands of the officiating priest, shouting at the same time:

"Know all men that Gilbert, Bishop of London, is excommunicated by Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury."

In the troublous reign of Edward the Second, the threshold of St. Paul's was first stained with the blood of a murdered man. Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, and lord high treasurer of England, who held London for the king, had demanded the keys of the City from the lord mayor, who was swerving to the queen's side. The citizens rose in arms and frightened their mayor into treason. The cry was raised, "Death to the queen's enemies!" The mob fell on a servant of the Despensers and cut off his head. Then rushing to the bishop's palace (Exeter-street, Strand), they broke down the gate and destroyed all the jewels and plate. The bishop riding out in armour towards Islington, galloped back to St. Paul's to claim sanctuary. At the north door he was dragged from his horse, and with two of his retainers beheaded in Cheapside. The bishop's body was tossed contemptuously into the Thames.

The reforms of Wycliffe brought fresh uproar into St. Paul's. In the last year of Edward the Third's reign, when the old king was fast dying, Wycliffe was summoned to St. Paul's for his heretical

opinions. Bishop Courtenay, proud and inflexible, was bearded by Wycliffe's friends and supporters, John of Gaunt and the Earl Marshal Percy. They forced a way for Wycliffe through the scowling crowd, and demanded a soft seat for the culprit in the Lady Chapel. They taunted the bishop with pride, and the earl was said to have threatened to drag him out of the church by the hair of his head. The people complaining of the earl-marshal's assumption within the lord mayor's jurisdiction, a tumult rapidly spread through the City, and a priest, mistaken for the earl-marshal, was murdered. John of Gaunt's palace in the Savoy was attacked, and would have been burned but for the bishop's inter

cession.

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A few years more, and old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," was buried in St. Paul's. The helmet, spear, and horn targe of the claimant of the crown of Castile was hung upon his sumptuous pinnacled tomb, and by the side of his calm, recumbent effigy lay that of his second wife, Constance of Castile. When Henry Bolingbroke (before his coronation as Henry the Fourth) came to St. Paul's to offer prayers for the success of his invasion, he paused to shed tears over the grave of his father, John of Gaunt. Soon after, when Richard the Second was starved to death, or murdered at Pontefract, his shrunken body was brought to St. Paul's, and there exhibited for three days, and Henry and his nobles spread cloth-of-gold upon the bier of the poor reckless spendthrift whom they had deposed.

During the Wars of the Roses, many of the historical pageants of those cruel times took place in the old cathedral. In March, 1451, Richard, Duke of York, took his oath of fealty to the young king, so soon after his deadliest enemy, and swore on the gospels to be a "humble subject and liegeman," and to bear "faith and trust to his sovereign liege lord," and as he stood there among the knights in their glistening armour, he appealed to the Host that stood on the high altar. Six years later, after the battle of St. Albans, the treacherous duke again came to St. Paul's to meet the weak and irresolute monarch, and knelt in feigned reconciliation. Two years later and the cruel and turbulent men who figure in Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth, once more gathered in St. Paul's. Again there was a feigned reconciliation, although the captive king had already been forced by Warwick to award the succession to the Duke of York, and his grim Queen Margaret was already

gathering her Lancastrian forces in the North. In 1461, St. Paul's welcomed King Edward the Fourth and Warwick his ally. Then the whirlpool of blood grew larger and more raging, till Warwick, the king-maker, fell at Barnet, and his naked body was exposed in St. Paul's for three days, to convince his London adherents that the Achilles of their party was really dead. In the following month the corpse of Henry himself was displayed in the cathedral, and in whispers the scared citizens hinted that Richard of Gloucester, the Crookback, had slain him with his own hand in the Tower.

Then comes that dark reign that Shakespeare has painted with all the gloom of Rembrandt. After the death of Edward the Fourth, Richard paid his ostentatious orisons in St. Paul's; and after the young prince was removed from the bishop's palace to the Tower, from which he was never to emerge, Doctor Shaw, a brother of the lord mayor, preached at Paul's Cross (in the churchyard), a hireling sermon, denouncing all the elder brothers of Richard as illegitimate. Jane Shore, another of the Crookback's victims, did penance in St. Paul's for witchcraft; and her exquisite beauty, as she walked, bowed down with shame, touched the hearts of the citizens. On his accession, the evil king, with suspicious eyes, his fingers, as the old chroniclers tell us, ever twitching at his dagger, rode with his spiritual and temporal peers to the London cathedral, and was there received with the usual vociferous welcome.

Bosworth came at last, and after Richard's gashed and mutilated body had been thrown over a horse and carried to Leicester, Henry the Seventh donned the crown. To St. Paul's the grave and cautious conqueror came after his defeat of Simnel, in two solemn processions, the cowed impostor (afterwards a scullion in the royal kitchen) riding in his train. And soon again St. Paul's was defiled with blood. Fitzjames, Bishop of London, hating Dean Colet, the friend of Erasmus, and furious against those early reformers, the Lollards, had two of them burned in Smithfield. One of them, named Hunn, who had contended against the abuses of the Ecclesiastical Court, he imprisoned in the Lollards' Tower, the bishop's private prison, at the south-west corner of the cathedral. One night the man was found hanged, and the bishop's chancellor, the sumner, and the cathedral bell-ringer were tried for the Lollard's murder. The king, however, pardoned

the fanatical criminals on their paying in Paul's Churchyard, and carted off five fifteen hundred pounds to the dead man's hundred tons of bones to Finsbury fields. family; and Fitzjames shielding his officers, He demolished also the long cloister within burned Hunn's body, sixteen days after, the precinct, and used the stones for his at Smithfield. Colet himself had a narrow new palace, called Somerset House, in the escape of the flames. The last time Henry Strand. the Seventh entered St. Paul's he was a passive spectator. On his death, at Richmond, in 1509, his body lay in state in St. Paul's; for his great carved casket of a chapel at Westminster was not yet ready for him.

Henry the Eighth's pride, splendour, and tyranny were all illustrated in the pageants and ceremonials that took place in the cathedral of London. When the pope, little suspecting the future, sent the young king a hood and cap of maintenance, the king rode to the church door wearing a purple satin gown, chequered with gold, a doublet of gold brocade, a jewelled collar, “worth a well full of gold," and a jewelled purple velvet cap. Wolsey, too, took no mean part in many of the high days at St. Paul's. In 1518 we find him preaching a sermon on the proclamation of the peace between France, England, and Spain, when the choir was hung with gold brocade, heraldically emblazoned. The king's pew was formed of cloth of gold, and in front of it stood a small altar crowded with small silver-gilt images, amongst which stood a golden cross. On the other side in a raised chair, under a canopy, sat the proud cardinal. The king's tunic was studded with pearls and jewels, and on the collar he wore round his neck glowed carbuncles as large as walnuts. It was after a mass by Wolsey at St. Paul's, in the king's chapel, that Henry, standing between two legates, signed the marriage contract of his beautiful sister, Mary, and the French dauphin. A few years later the king's aversion to Luther (for he had not yet quarrelled with the pope) was proclaimed at St. Paul's by the public denouncement of Luther by Wolsey, the while a pile of Luther's books was blazing outside in the churchyard. When Charles the Fifth paid one of his artful business visits to England, Wolsey said mass before him in St. Paul's.

With Edward the Sixth, rough hands visited St. Paul's. One November night, the great rood in St. Paul's and the images were pulled down, and the walls whitewashed, to the destruction of all idolatrous paintings. The rich plate and vessels were seized, and the Protector Somerset pulled down the chapter and charnel-house

The promising young "imp of promise" died, and Queen Mary very quickly reclothed St. Paul's, and raised again the fallen statues. At the first sermon at Paul's Cross, Doctor Bourne the preacher prayed for the dead, denounced the recent imprisonment of Bonner, and railed at Bishop Ridley. The Protestant mob, chafing into a rage, shouted "He preaches damnation; pull him down, pull him down," and a dagger was thrown at Bourne, who was only saved by the interposition of two good Protestants; and soon after this a bullet was fired at Doctor Pendleton, another preacher. Then Bonner replaced the rood, and there were constant processions of coped men to the restored cathedral, and King Philip, grim and cold, came and heard Gardiner preach against heresy in St. Paul's. All through this cruel reign of blood and flame, the martyrs, sent to the Smithfield fires with terrible rapidity, were arraigned at St. Paul's before the lord mayor, sheriffs, the Bishop of London, and his gloomy doctors; to-day, Cardmaker, the vicar of St. Bride's, and a poor Walbrook cloth-maker; to-morrow, an upholsterer, a preacher, and a tallow-chandler's appren tice-all went the same way to the last great argument of Bonner and his priests.

With Elizabeth, sunshine again broke out upon St. Paul's. The old cathedral was purified of its mummery, down went Bonner's rood cross, and in many places bonfires were made of copes, banners, robes, and altar-cloths. Soon afterwards, Miles Coverdale, and several wellknown bold Reformers, preached at the Cross, and Veron, a popular preacher, fresh from the Tower, shouted from the pulpit, with justifiable exultation, "Where are the bishops and the old preachers! They hide their heads." In the midst of all this rejoicing, a more terrible purifier than the Tudor queen came to cleanse the sanctu ary. During a terrible storm in 1561, St. Martin's Church, Ludgate, was struck by lightning, and, at the same time, the cathedral steeple suddenly broke into a flame. For four hours the fire raged till the bells melted, stones crumbled to ashes, and the great leaden roof fell in. "A judgment; a manifest judgment," at once shouted

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