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any material prolongation of life. With the issue of the magazine for March 1845, there was given an engraving of the bust of the Editor, and it was this portrait, specially printed on large plate paper, which Hood chose as his farewell gift to his friends. Between the attacks of pain, he sat up in bed to inscribe on each copy his signature and a few affectionate words, the number in the end reaching upwards of a hundred. These were to be his last messages to those who knew and loved him. He died on the 3rd May, 1845, and on a July day, nine years later, Monckton Milnes unveiled the monument which rests above his grave in Kensal Green Cemetery. Beneath the bust there runs the legend "He sang the Song of the Shirt," and on either side of the pedestal are bas-relief medallions of "Eugene Aram's Dream," and "The Bridge of Sighs" all pertinent reminders of the fact that there was a serious as well as a humorous side to the genius of Hood.

He himself, there can be no doubt, would have elected to live by his serious verse, for when the public refused to purchase his "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," did he not buy up the edition to "save it from the butter-shops"? If, even after death, there can be no dissolution

of the dual domination of Humour and Pathos, at least let it be confessed that, in his graver moods, Thomas Hood achieved work which is not unworthy to be garnered with the choicest fruits of English poesy.

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XI

ROYAL WINCHESTER

XI

ROYAL WINCHESTER

"Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,
The pious ALFRED, King to Justice dear!
Lord of the harp and liberating spear;
Mirror of Princes! Indigent Renown
Might range the starry ether for a crown
Equal to HIS deserts."

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

TIME was when Winchester, the "royal city," as Kingsley called it, far out-rivalled London in prosperity and business activity, and if for many generations the Hampshire capital has been left hopelessly behind by the great metropolis, it can still boast a fascination to which London can make no claim. Indeed, of all the ancient cathedral cities of England, over which the peace of the old-time world seems perpetually to brood, there is not one which can compete with Winchester for richness of historical interest. And, as is not usually the case, that historic interest becomes more living and intense with every passing generation. "It is not in death, but in the

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