of the little garden, and listen to a nightingale, whose melancholy cadence harmonised with our feelings. Whenever you are at Esher,' said the devoted daughter, the last time we conversed with her, do visit my mother's tomb.' We did so. A cypress flourishes at the head of the grave; and the following touching inscription is carved on the stone:— HERE SLEEPS IN JESUS A CHRISTIAN WIDOW, JANE PORTER, OBIIT JUNE 18TH, 1831, ÆTAT. 86; THE BELOVED MOTHER OF W. PORTER, M.D., OF SIR ROBERT KER PORTER, AND OF JANE AND ANNA MARIA PORTER, WHO MOURN IN HOPE, HUMBLY TRUSTING TO BE BORN AGAIN RESPECT HER GRAVE, FOR SHE MINISTERED TO THE POOR. THE GRAVE OF SIR RICHARD LOVELACE. Fall the visitations of ill-fortune with which Old London has been afflicted, the one most deplored by the historian and the antiquary is the great fire of 1666. The mementos of early ages, the memorials of great men, the localities on which the mind might dwell with pleasure, and conjure up the inhabitants who had made them famous, were all swept away, and with them many a written record, the want of which will be felt for ever; many a work of ancient Art, with which the piety of our ancestors delighted to decorate the churches or the halls of the civic companies; many a 'flower of history' was withered and lost in that desolating flame. In the pages of that noble old antiquary, John Stow, we have the best picture of ancient London. The patient and ill-rewarded chronicler has noted its ancient features with a minute truthfulness that will render his labours precious to all time. To understand the destruction which was spread amid the flame-girt city, we must know his pages well, and contrast them with the little that is left to us. Of the churches he describes, how few remain; of the tombs he notes, how rare are they now to look upon; the many memorials of great men which adorned St. Paul's are reduced to a few simple fragments. Little, indeed, did the fire leave but blackened and shapeless ruins. Such churches as were spared are therefore doubly dear to us; and St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, and a few others, hence assume an additionally sacred character. How truly great are the names which connect themselves with the churches of London. Statesmen, churchmen, warriors, historians, legal and civic dignitaries, merchants, who made the city glorious and its trade world-renowned, are in the list, with the names of painter, poet, and dramatist, whose minds were engrossed by all that make mental life captivating. But of many we know only the whereabouts of their last resting-place; no storied urn or monumental bust' remains to do them honour; the last tribute of affectionate regard placed over their graves has fallen for ever amongst the ruins of burned London, and the pages of the older historians must be our guide merely to the spot. It is thus with the tomb of Sir. Richard Lovelace; we know only that he was buried at the west end of St. Bride's Church,' in Fleet Street.* But the church was burned in the great fire, and no memorial of his restingplace remains; nor do we know of any other view of the sanctuary where he reposed after a toil-worn life, except that afforded by Hollar's view of London before the fire, where the steeple of St. Bride's is seen above Baynard's Castle.† The present church was built by Sir Christopher Wren, and completed in 1680. The steeple was originally thirty-two feet higher than the Monument, but having been struck by lightning in 1805, it was lowered to its present standard. Of the old church we obtain glimpses in such views as that given at p. 439. The doorway into Mr. Holden's vault, erected April, anno 1657,' with his arms above, has been engraved as one of the few relics after the fire of 1666.' Pennant thus slightly speaks of it: It was dedicated to St. Bridget; whether she was Irish, or whether she was Scotch, whether she was maiden, or whether she was wife, I will not dare to determine.' The church was originally small, but by the piety of William Viner, warden of the Fleet, about the year 1480, it was enlarged with body and side aisles, and ornamented with grapes and vine leaves, in allusion to his name.' + Baynard's Castle was one of the two castles built on the west side of the city, with walls and ramparts, as mentioned by Fitz-Stephen. It was originally built by Baynard, a nobleman, who, according to Stow, came in with the Conqueror. It was situated in Thames Street, and has been rendered immortal by Shakespeare, who makes it the scene of the Duke of Glo'ster's deceptive morality in his play of Richard III., when the citizens, with the mayor at their head, solicit him to be king. The Baynard's Castle of the time of Richard III.,' says Mr. Knight, was built by Humphrey, Duke of Glo'ster; and it was subsequently We had spent our morning hunting through the books, the registers of St. Bride's Church, for the entry of the burial of Sir Richard Lovelace, the very pink of cavalier-chivalry, differing, perhaps from the ancient chivalry of England, in being not so deep-seated and intense, but undoubtedly more glossy and brilliant-more of the light burnished armour, the velvet, and plume, and broidered glove, than of casque and iron spear, heavy helmet, and weighty battle-axe; but the swords of both were of granted by Henry VI. to Richard's father, the Duke of York.' It is frequently named by early writers as the place of embarkation for the mayor and nobility on solemn occasions. It was destroyed in the great fire; but Stevens, in one of his notes to Shakespeare says, 'part of its strong foundations are still visible at low water.' well-tempered steel, and if the cavalier were perfumed in the drawingroom, he was brave and faithful in the field. We had been hunting, we say, for this last sad entry, and afterwards, at home, when pondering over his chequered life, our cogitations naturally ran upon a contrast of the past with the present. If our minds have been improved by the march of intellect, there certainly has been no improvement during these latter days in our manners; on the contrary, no one who has been much in the society of some of the young men of the present time, and can remember those of even the later period of George III.'s reign, but must confess that manner generally has imbibed a sort of roughshod egalité,' utterly at variance with right feeling and good taste. Impudence is too frequently confounded with ease-rudeness with frankness-the amalgamation of dress has caused an unfortunate amalgamation of persons, and, somehow or other, both persons and things have got misplaced. We have almost as much want of keeping in society as if we were a new country. The aristocracy of wealth has intruded its grossness upon the aristocracy of birth and talent, and we gaze upon it as we would upon a Chinese jos placed amid Grecian statues, wondering at its rich but gaudy hues and uncouth form, and, above all, how it got where it is. We are opening our mouths in loud condemnation of American coarseness, while our middle class is getting into the same go-a-head' way, and losing the refining belief that for the well-being of society good manners are only second to good morals; we never were altogether a polished people, John Bull having some strange idea that his nature would be worn out if he attended too much to the courtesies of life; and particularly of late he has, we imagine, begun to fancy that the graces, the small cares, the attentions and etiquettes of society-the politeness' which Lord Shaftesbury defines to be benevolencé in trifles,'-interfere with his civil and religious liberty. He thinks himself more independent in a frock than in a dress coat, and will chuckle half the evening over his own cleverness, if he has succeeded in baffling the scrutiny of the doorkeepers, and getting into the pit of the opera in boots. He does not understand that he puts a slight upon the lady of the house if he enters the drawing-room in what he terms a friendly way,' but what she cannot fail to consider a palpable inattention to the duties— for they are duties of the toilet, and duties which, if once rendered, as |