THE last month of spring was passing, and the warm breath and genial influence of summer were shortly to be heralded by the blithe and bonny May. Those who wrote, dated the year as 1688, a period of deep and exciting, and now of immortal, interest in our nation's history. At the time our narrative commences, the second James had just been compelled to submit to an investigation touching the legitimacy of his son; but with history, or historical personages, we have at present little to do, our details being devoted chiefly to private individuals and private events. The morning was clear and mild, sufficiently so to tempt forth Sir Everard Sydney and his constant attendant, Ralph Bradwell, as soon as the sun had risen. Sir Everard was seldom long at his toilet; his dressing-room, indeed, would have seemed a den of horrors to a modern gentleman, or even to a fashionable baronet of the period. We will endeavour to describe it. A small apartment, panelled with black and shining oak, each division studded with hooks and nails and VOL. I.-B pegs of various dimensions, opened upon a green and extensive lawn the fretted framework and coloured glass of the narrow casement were in excellent keeping with the antique chamber. There was a huge chimney-piece extending along the half of one of its sides, directly opposite the window; this also was of oak, and wreaths of flowers, twined by lusty cupids, and interspersed with fantastic heads, were carved upon it with greater liberality than good taste; but the seats within its embrasure, intended in days long gone for very different purposes, were now occupied by strange and grotesque objects, which at once bespoke the habits and feelings of the venerable gentleman who was master of Sydney Pleasance. On one side, and at the end next the fireplace, a cushion of tarnished blue damask served as a bed for an enormous white Persian cat, whose red eyes gleamed like balls of living fire when turned towards a diminutive ape, that, sitting gravely and silently on his haunches, contemplated with an expression of lurking mischief the gambols of two kittens, whose short fur and moderate-sized tails bespoke their English birth and mixed descent. A curious table stretched its unwieldy length along another side of this eccentric chamber; upon its colour and quality it would have been impossible to determine, shrouded as it was by dust and cobwebs, and covered with various portions of decayed plants, birds' nests, fishing-tackle, mole-traps, fly-cages, butterfly-nets, and distorted-looking insects, stuck on clumsy pieces of cork; while here and there a huge mass of spar, a moonstone, an elf-arrow, or some such specimen of geology, proved that "To no one science was his taste confined." Over this medley a glass case extended its awkward height almost to the ceiling, but its multifarious contents were too numerous and too complicated for us to attempt their arrangement: suffice it to say, that they consisted of Indian arrows, stuffed birds, s culls and skins of various animals, dried sea-weed and shells, all huddled together without care or skill, and forming a combination that would have irritated beyond all control the temper of a modern naturalist. There was a shelf, too, within this receptacle, appropriated for books; and among them a superbly bound copy of Eve |