1859.] A Bunch of Song-Flowers. Whether the slant lines of the rain And ever in that under world Round which the weary clouds are furled, As smoke that drowns the city's spires When earth is free from mist and haze, And purely gleams the crystal well And favour of his maiden bright Whence come the waters garnered up They come from regions higher far, Where blows the wind and shines the star. The silent dews that heaven distils At midnight on the lonely hills; 165 The shower that all the mountain dims, Are swallowed by the thirsty ground, III. RETURN. Ah me! as wearily I tread The winding hill-road, mute and slow, The sweetness of that happy dream, On which the white sails come and go Ye look the same; thou sound'st the same Thou ever falling, falling stream— Ye are the changeless dial-face, And I the passing beam. IV. BLAAVIN. As adown the long glen I hurried, Like the torrent from fall to fall, Seemed ever on me to call; As I passed the red lake fringed with rushes, A duck burst away from its breast, And before the bright circles and wrinkles Had subsided again into rest, At a clear open turn of the roadway, My passion went up in a cry, For the wonderful mountain of Blaavin Was heaving his huge bulk on high, ALEXANDER SMITH. HOLMBY HOUSE: A Tale of Old Northamptonshire. BY G. J. WHYTE MELVILLE, AUTHOR OF 'DIGBY GRAND,' 'THE INTERPRETER,' ETC. CHAPTER XXIII. 'THE TRUE DESPOTISM.' TEVER to bear arms against NEVE the Parliament!-never to be a soldier again!-scarcely to have a right to draw a sword! Ah, Mary! life would be dear at such a price, were it not that you had offered it; were it not that your will, your lightest word, is omnipotent with me. But oh! how I long to hear the trumpets sounding a charge again, and to see the sorrel in headstall and holsters shaking his bit as he used to do. He's too good for anything but a charger. Oh, if I could but ride him alongside of Prince Rupert once more!' Half ashamed of his enthusiasm, the speaker's colour rose, and he laughed as he glanced almost timidly at the lady he addressed. She was tending some roses that drooped over the garden bench on which he sat. There was this attraction about Mary Cave that perhaps endeared her to the imagination more than all her wit and all her beauty-she was constantly occupied in some graceful womanly task, and fulfilled it in such a graceful womanly way. Were she writing a letter, or threading a needle, or engaged in any other trifling occupation, her figure seemed to take insensibly the most becoming attitude, her rich brown hair to throw off the light at the exact angle you would have selected for a picture, the roseate bloom to deepen into the very tint that accorded best with her soft winning eyes. It was not her intellect, though that was of no inferior class; nor her form and features, though both were dangerously attractive: it was her ways that captivated and enslaved, that constituted the deadliest weapon in the whole armoury of which, womanlike, she knew so well the advantage and the use. As she pruned the roses and trained them downwards from their stems, shaking a shower of the deli cate pink petals into the sun, she looked like a rose herself-a sweet, blooming moss-rose, shedding its fragrance on all that came within its sphere; the type of pure loveliness and rich, bright, womanly beauty. He thought so as he looked up at her, and his heart thrilled to the tones of her melodious voice. It was all over with him now— Inch thick, knee-deep, o'er head and ears,-a forked one. She knew her power, too, and made no sparing use of it. They must be either slaves or tyrants, these women; and like fire, they make good servants but bad mis tresses. 'You are better here than wasting your life in Gloucester gaol,' answered Mary, and you can serve the King as well with your head as with your hands. Any man with the heart of a man can be a soldier; there is not one in a million that will make a statesman. Do you think I would have taken such care of you if I had thought you fit for nothing better than the front-rank of one of Prince Rupert's foolhardy attacks ?' She asked the question with an inexpressibly mischievous and provoking air. She could not resist the temptation of teasing and irritating him on occasion; she loved to strike the keys, so to speak, and evoke its every sound, at whatever cost of wear and tear to the instrument itself. He winced, and his countenance fell at once, so she was satisfied, and went on. 'If you cannot serve the King on the sorrel's back, do you think you are of no use to the Queen at her need here in Exeter? That poor lady, with her infant daughter, has but few friends and protectors now. A loyal and chivalrous gentleman always finds his post of honour in defending the weak. If you seek for danger you will find enough, and more than enough, in doing your duty by your Royal mistress -in fulfilling the orders, Major Bosville, that I shall have the honour of conveying to you.' She laughed merrily and made him a grand courtesy as she spoke, spreading out her white robes with a mock and playful dignity. Mary did not often thus. unbend, and he could not but confess to himself that she was inexpressibly charming so; yet would he have been better pleased had she been in a more serious mood too. He rose from the garden-bench and stood by her, bending down over the roses, and speaking in a low grave tone 'I am ready, as you know, none better, to sacrifice life and all for the King's cause. Do me the justice to allow that I have never yet flinched a hair's-breadth from difficulty or danger. I desire no better fate than to shed my blood for his Majesty and the Queen. If I may not draw my sword with my old comrades, I may yet show them how to die like a Cavalier. My life is of little value to any one,' he added in a somewhat bitter tone, 'least of all to myself; and why should I be regretted when so many that were nobler and wiser and better are forgotten!' It was a random shaft, but it quivered in the bull's-eye. She shot a sharp quick glance at him. Did he mean it ? Was he too thinking, then, of Falkland? No! that pained, sorrowing countenance forbade the suspicion of any arrière pensée. Her heart smote her as she scanned it. She looked kindly and fondly at him. 'Are you nothing to me?' she said. 'Should not I miss you and mourn you, and oh! do you think I could do without you at all? Hush! here comes Lady Carlisle.' In effect that lady's graceful figure, with its courtly gait and rustling draperies, was seen advancing up the gravel path to put an end to the tête-à-tête. Such interruptions are the peculiar lot of those who have anything very particular to communicate; but we do not take upon ourselves to affirm that Mary's quick ear had not caught the sound of a door opening from Lady Carlisle's apartments ere she permitted herself to bestow on Humphrey such words of encou ragement as made the June sunshine and the June roses brighter and sweeter than roses and sunshine had ever seemed before. With his loyal heart bounding happily beneath his doublet, and a light on his handsome face that Lady Carlisle-no mean judge of masculine attractions regarded with critical approval, he followed the two ladies into the antechamber of his Royal mistress, now seeking with her new-born baby an asylum in the still faithful town of Exeter, one of the few strongholds in the kingdom left to the Royal cause; and yet, alas! but a short distance removed from the contamination of rebellion, for Essex was already establishing his head-quarters at Chard, and but two-and-twenty miles of the loveliest hill and dale in Britain intervened between the stern Parliamentary General and the now vacillating and intimidated Queen. It was a strange contrast to the magnificence of Whitehall, even to the more chastened splendours of Merton College, that quiet residence of majesty in the beautiful old town -the town that can afford to challenge all England to rival it in the loveliness of its outskirts and the beauty of its women. Exeter has always particularly plumed itself on the latter qualification; and many a dragoon of the present day, whose heart is no harder under its covering of scarlet and gold than was that of the chivalrous Cavalier in buff and steel breastplate, has to rue his death-wound from a shaft that penetrated all his defences, when shot deftly home by a pair of wicked Devonshire eyes. Of the pic-nics in its vicinity, of the drives home by moonlight-of the strolls to hear our band play,' and the tender cloakings and shawlings, and puttings on of goloshes afterwards (for in that happy land our natural enemies likewise enjoy the incalculable advantage of an uncertain climate and occasional showers), are not the results chronicled in every parish register in England ?-and 1859.] The Queen's Court at Exeter. do not the beadle at St. George's, Hanover-square, and other hymeneal authorities, know the reason why?' 6 The Queen occupied a large quiet house, that had formerly been a convent, on the outskirts of the town. Its roomy apartments and somewhat secluded situation made it a fitting residence for Royalty, particularly for Royalty seeking privacy and repose; while the large garden adjoining, in which the holy sisters had been wont to stroll and ponder, yearning, it may be, for the worldly sunshine they had left without the walls, formed a pleasant haunt for the Queen's diminished household, and a resort on the fine June mornings of which Mary and Humphrey, who were both early risers, did not fail to make constant use. Their duties about the Queen's person had of late been unusually light. The birth, under circumstances of difficulty and danger, of a daughter, whose arrival on the worldly stage seemed to augur the misfortunes that, beautiful and gifted as she was, dogged her to her grave, had confined Henrietta to her chamber, and precluded her from her usual interference in affairs of State. The instincts of maternity were in the ascendant, and what were crowns and kingdoms in comparison with that little pink morsel of humanity lying so helplessly in her bosom? Well is it for us that we cannot foresee the destinies of our children; merciful the blindness that shuts out from us the long perspective of the future-the coming struggles we should none of us have courage to confront. Could Henrietta have foretold that daughter's fate, bound in her beauty and freshness for a weary lifetime to the worst of the evil dukes who bore the title d'Orleans, would she have hung over the tiny treasure with such quiet happiness? Would she have neglected all besides in the world at the very faintest cry of the little new-born Princess? We must return to Humphrey Bosville and Mary Cave, and the terms of close friendship, to call it by no softer name, on which they now found themselves. Since his 169 rescue from imminent death by her exertions, his devotion to her had assumed, if possible, a more reverential character than before. To owe his life to a woman for whom he had felt a slight attachment, would have been an obligation rather galling and inconvenient than otherwise; but to owe his life to the woman whom alone of all on earth he had loved with the deep absorbing fervour of which such a nature was capable, brought with it a sensation of delight which was truly intoxicating. It was such an additional link to bind him to her for ever; it made him seem to belong to her now so thoroughly; it was such a good excuse for giving way to her most trifling caprices, and obeying her lightest whim. Come what might, he felt that they could never now be entirely independent of each other; so he entered the Queen's service immediately on his return to Oxford, giving up his commission in the royal army, and resigning his right to wear a sword, as indeed the terms of his parole enjoined, with as little hesitation as he would have displayed in jumping with his hands tied into the Isis, had Mary only told him to do the one instead of the other. It was no small inducement either to serve his Royal mistress assiduously, that his situation in her household brought him into close and daily contact with his ladyelove. Probably at no period of his life before had Humphrey been so happy as during the few golden weeks of Henrietta's confinement at Exeter. To meet Mary day by day in the performance of his duty; to see her in every phase of courtly life, from the strict observance of etiquette to the joyous moments of relaxation, over which, nevertheless, the atmosphere of Royalty shed a certain refinement and reserve; to admire her ready tact and winning bearing in all the different relations of a courtier's life; and above all, to walk with her morning after morning in those happy gardens, feeling that she too enjoyed and counted on their half-hour of uninterrupted conversation, and was little less punctual at the trystingplace than himself; all this constituted an existence for which it was |