FOR A CHARITY ANNUAL

was solely lighted and ventilated by a wicket in the door, seven inches by five, and to this contracted breathing-hole three prisoners under sentence of transportation" came by turns for air." At Gosport, Newport, Portsmouth, and Southampton the jails were equally horrible and evil-smelling, while at Horsham Bridewell the wretched captives had but one room, with the result that the keeper himself had died of the distemper. Other houses of correction revealed similar enormities. There were stories of prisoners who were, or had become, insane; of hopeless lunatics hidden for years in subterranean cells. And overcrowding, bad air, starvation, and cruelty were not the only or the worse defects of the prevailing system, which, where money was obtainable and the keepers "in a concatenation accordingly," favoured and fostered all kinds of intemperance, immorality, gambling, and profanity. But for the present purpose it is time to cry "Enough."

(Later Essays, 1917-1920.)

FOR A CHARITY ANNUAL

IN Angel-Court the sunless air

Grows faint and sick; to left and right
The cowering houses shrink from sight,
Huddled and hopeless, eyeless, bare.

Misnamed, you say? For surely rare
Must be the angel-shapes that light
In Angel-Court

BERTOLINI'S

Nay! the Eternities are there.

Death at the doorway stands to smite;
Life in its garrets leaps to light;

And Love has climbed that crumbling stair
In Angel-Court.

BERTOLINI'S

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, however, contained other memorable buildings besides Newton House. On its left, and extending to Orange Street, came the Orange Street Congregational Chapel, where Toplady occasionally preached; and of which that vivacious ecclesiastic, the Rev. Charles de la GuiffardièreQueen Charlotte's French reader and the "Mr. Turbulent" of Fanny Burney's Diary-was once minister. At the opposite corner stood, in later years, the "Newton's Head" or "Bertolini's," a popular tavern and resort of the early Victorian literati, by whom it was sometimes irreverently designated "Dirtolini's," though rather by inevitable suggestion than absolute appropriateness, since it is said to have been clean enough, and the cooking was good and cheap, while the "seasoning" was unsurpassed. The proprietor, a dignified and assiduous Italian in a black wig, who always received the money himself, eventually retired with a fortune. Its "local notoriety," or show-guest, was an ancient Mr. Seymour, who, in 1868, had dined there every day for fortythree years, invariably occupying, from five till eight, the same box on the left-hand side of the fireplace, which was religiously reserved for him, speaking

MADAME ROYALE

to no one but the waiters, reading the Daily News for so long, sleeping for so long, and punctually repairing, at a fixed hour, to the vehicle which carried him to his remote home in the suburbs. Whether it was in this hostelry that Tennyson once heard the waiter "breathing short-winded accents" to the underworld concerning "Two gravies, three mocks and a pea "(the last word sonorously drawn out), I know not; but he certainly frequented Bertolini's in his younger London days, as did David Masson, William Allingham, Edward FitzGerald and Edmund Yates, from whom some of the above details are borrowed.

(A Bookman's Budget.)

THE EARLY DAYS OF MADAME ROYALE MADAME ROYALE, the first child and only daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was born at Versailles on the 19th of December, 1778. The tradition of her earlier years, doubtless coloured by the circumstances of her after experiences, represents her as, even in her girlhood, already unusually sedate, very reserved, and abnormally alive to her high position as the descendant of Louis le Grand and the Empress Maria-Theresa. To these characteristics was presently added a growing air of sadness ("la petite Madame est trieste," says a contemporary), which was not likely to decrease as time went on. Almost from her birth, the air was filled with disquieting premonitions of the forthcoming upheaval. In 1789 came the fall of the Bastille. She was then eleven. On the night of the subsequent 6th October,

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE

she was roused suddenly to see her mother escaping half-dressed from the furious Femmes de la Halle, who slashed the vacant bed to tatters. With her parents and her brother, she made that humiliating progress from Versailles to Paris, in which the royal carriage was preceded by the pike-borne heads of murdered bodyguards. She took part in the momentous but ill-managed flight to Varennes of June 1791: she was a witness of the attack of the 20th June 1792 on the Tuileries, and of the terrible scenes in August following. Clinging to the Princess Elizabeth, and with the Dauphin on the other side listlessly kicking the dead autumn leaves, she walked in the mournful procession which made its way across the Tuileries gardens when the King sought unblessed sanctuary with the Legislative Assembly. Then came the long, stifling sojourn in the reporters' box of the Logographe, and the subsequent transfer of the party to the tender mercies of the Paris Commune. 44 How old is Mademoiselle? a National Guard had asked Marie Antoinette a few days before; and the Queen had answered, " She is of an age when such scenes are only too horrible!" As a matter of fact, she was not yet fourteen.

(Rosalba's Journal and Other Papers.)

44

A FANCY FROM FONTENELLE

De mémoires de Roses on n'a point vu mourir le Jardinier."

THE Rose in the garden slipped her bud,

And she laughed in the pride of her youthful blood, As she thought of the Gardener standing by

"He is old, so old!

And he soon must die !"

93

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BATH

The full Rose waxed in the warm June air,
And she spread and spread till her heart lay bare;
And she laughed once more as she heard his tread-
44 He is older now! He will soon be dead ! "

But the breeze of the morning blew, and found
That the leaves of the blown Rose strewed the ground;
And he came at noon, that Gardener old,
And he raked them gently under the mould.

And I wove the thing to a random rhyme,
For the Rose is Beauty, the Gardener, Time.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BATH ACCORDING TO M. BARBEAU

ONE seems to see the clumsy stage-coaches depositing their touzled and tumbled inmates, in their rough rocklows and quaint travelling headgear, at the "Bear" or the "White Hart," after a jolting two or three days' journey from Oxford or London, not without the usual experiences, real and imaginary, of suspiciouslooking horsemen at Hounslow, or masked “gentlemen of the pad "on Claverton Down. One hears the peal of five-and-twenty bells which greets the arrival of visitors of importance; and notes the obsequious and venal town-waits who follow them to their lodgings in Gay Street or Milsom Street or the Parades,— where they will, no doubt, be promptly attended by the Master of the Ceremonies, " as fine as fivepence," and a very pretty, sweet-smelling gentleman, to be sure, whether his name be Wade or Derrick. Next day will probably discover them in chip hats and