space. There was a tremendous crash, and that is all that I remember about it.

When I came to myself, I was lying on a grassy slope, with JeanPierre pouring brandy down my throat, and an assemblage of whitefaced Pierres and Jeans kneeling round me. I was pretty well knocked about; but I was not broken anywhere, and Jean-Pierre began to praise the saints loudly when I sat up and asked for some water.

"You gave us a fine fright, monsieur," he said. "A pretty thing it would have been for us if we had had to go back to France and say that both our gentlemen were killed!”

"Both!" I ejaculated. "You don't mean to say that Mr. Percival

is dead!

"Mon Dieu! monsieur," returned Jean-Pierre in a tone of gentle remonstrance, "how would you have a man drop down a sheer three hundred feet upon his head, and live?"

Whether it was accident or design that brought about poor Percival's death, I cannot, of course, say. That he was not accountable for his actions on that last morning of his life I am quite convinced. I had to give some explanation to the guides of the circumstance that I had been found with my arms tied behind me, and I did so by telling them that my unfortunate friend had gone out of his mind before treating me in that way. This I firmly believe to have been the truth; and they agreed with me that he had for some time past been more mad than They further concurred in my opinion that it could do no possible good, and would probably only cause troublesome complications, to make all the facts known to the authorities. Luckily for us, the authorities were less troublesome than an English coroner's jury would have been, and it was neither supposed nor suggested that my own fall had been due to any other causes than the inexperience and foolhardiness which, as I was told, had proved fatal to my companion.

sane.

When I next saw Mrs. Lacy-which was rather more than a year afterwards-she expressed a great deal of concern at the fate of the hapless man with the red hair, and was eager for fuller particulars than she had as yet been able to obtain. I gratified her curiosity as well as I could, and dwelt a good deal upon Percival's recklessness; but I did not think it necessary to say anything about the letter which we had no small difficulty in forcing out of his stiffened fingers when his body was carried back to camp.

W. E. N.

The Boke of St. Albans.

THERE is a cycle in the favourite quotations which do duty at political meetings or in the House of Commons, according to which certain lines of poetry recur after a lapse of, it may be, a few years, it may be a generation. Such a couplet, for instance, as

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them as a breath has made,

appears about once in ten years; and it needs not the memory of a Macaulay to assign it to its speaker, and even to name the debate which it illustrated. Other quotations, however, are universally in favour, especially with the Conservative county member who has not forgotten all that Eton and "Smalls" taught him. We could almost predict the exact point in any county meeting when the caution of some rustic Nestor will clothe its sentiments in the trite words "Timeo Danaos," &c., or its equally well-known brother, "Rusticus expectat." An article might easily be written on this phenomenon, and on the political complexion assumed by the stock quotations of the reviews and of Parliament. But our purpose is rather to point out an analogy to this curious fact in the singular law of mental association by which some book becomes especially dear to an age or a brotherhood of literature. Thus, Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy fell in with the predominant literary taste of the latter part of last century and the beginning of this, and it has since gone out of favour till our own time. In Sir W. Scott's and Mr. Scrope's days, numerous references were made in popular writings to the Boke of St. Albans. Many books, however, are oftener talked about than known, and the Boke is certainly one of these. Indeed, until the last few months, it was not always easy even for the student to acquire any knowledge of this celebrated volume. The originals of the first edition yet in existence might probably be counted on the fingers of one hand, while the later ones are themselves scarce and costly. Haslewood's reproduction, in the year 1812, soon became practically unattainable, and the same hateful fate in the eyes of book-buyers overtook Pickering's charming reprint of the "Fysshynge with an Angle" of the date 1827. In the last few months an admirable reproduction of the Boke has been issued by an enterprising London publisher, so that for the time being the quaint black-letter pages and sententious wisdom of Danie Juliana Berners are within the reach of all book-lovers. We say for the present, advisedly, as the edition will certainly be speedily exhausted, the present being peculiarly the age of such reproductions of old books.

The originals of any celebrated or scarce work can now be bought in most cases only by the wealthy. Every sale shows this more decisively than the last, though the prices obtained for rarities at the late Mr. Laing's sale cannot, it may be thought, be well exceeded in this generation. But such books may now be regarded not only as the natural prey of the bibliomaniac, but as being a valuable investment. Should the very improbable contingency ever occur of their price falling in our country, America, with its eager legion of book-lovers, their purses well filled with gold, will only too gladly purchase them; while Australia, New Zealand, and several other vigorous young colonies are waiting to take their part in the competition for old books before many years have elapsed. The demand for reproductions, therefore, may be considered as yet to be only in its infancy. Leaving the great publishing clubs-such as the Camden, Surtees, and the like-out of the question, the lover of scarce books owes much gratitude to the two præsentes divi, Mr. Arber and Mr. E. Stock, for their reproductions of rare books and editions. Impecunious book-hunters gladly cherish, as second only to the originals, such books as the copy of the first edition of Walton's Compleat Angler, the reprint of Elyot's the Governour, and by no means least, the reproduction of the Boke of St. Albans by an indelible photographic process.

It would have been of little use last year to have written an account of the Boke. Now that it is generally accessible, however, no apology is needed for a survey of a volume so celebrated and yet so little known, round which a halo of romance hangs in regard to its supposed writer, which has so greatly contributed to form the conception of sports held in honour ever since its publication by English gentlemen, and which possesses many other points of interest to every student of his own language. The manners and tone of thought of the higher classes at the close of the Wars of the Roses are clearly reflected in it. A sharp line yet divides the aristocrat and "gentilman" from the "ungentill men." The "artycles of gentilnes," the pride of old and high lineage, and bearing of coat armour are strongly insisted upon throughout the book; common men, hinds, and "rascal" are scarcely named. Their very existence is alien to the theory of royal and high-bred sport which is here expounded. It needed many a doughty conflict, both in argument at Westminster and in blows, which have often proved superior to argument, on English ground, before the middle class was able to assert not merely its liberties but its corporate existence; and before still humbler men, by fighting side by side with their lords, engendered that sense of brotherhood which only died out in the chilling apathy of last century. It is seldom, however, that a nobler and better book has been written from a distinctly aristocratical standpoint than this of which it is our purpose to treat.

About a quarter of a mile south-east of the abbey of St. Alban, not far from the little river Ver, in which Dame Juliana Berners may have fished, and which is yet renowned for its trout, lie the scanty ruins of

Sopwell nunnery. The ancient well from which the name was derived is yet in existence-situated nearly in the line between St. Albans and the Daughter House-and is indicated by a protecting arch of brickwork, and a tree planted hard by it. Of this nunnery the authoress of the Boke was certainly an inmate, and most probably, as tradition has handed down, its prioress. Her name, indeed, does not appear in the list of the prioresses of Sopwell; but there is a gap in their enumeration between 1430 and 1480, in which upholders of the time-honoured belief may legitimately insert the Dame, if they will. The nunnery itself had been founded, under the rule of St. Benedict, about 1140, and was subject to the abbot of St. Albans. Its rule of life was very strict, and at first the nuns had been enclosed under lock and key, made additionally secure by the seal of the abbot for the time being upon the door; but gradually the discipline was relaxed, and, without accusing the inmates of Sopwell of the license and ill-living which has earned an evil notoriety for many religious houses prior to the Reformation,† it is quite conceivable that the prioress of this house and her favoured dames might have allowed themselves a decent liberty during which the sports of the field alternated with the holier exercises of devotion. At the dissolution of St. Albans abbey in 1540, when one Richard Boreman (or Stevynnacke) was abbot, the monastic buildings and all connected with them were granted to Sir Richard Lee, and he at once commenced demolishing the whole. Sopwell escaped this fate for the time, and was even repaired from the ruins of the Mother House, but itself fell into decay in the reign of Charles II. A legend mentioned by Camden relates that Henry VIII. had married Anna Boleyn in the nunnery of Sopwell, but Shakespeare follows a different account. Many celebrated historic scenes surround it, without having recourse to doubtful glories. Lord Bacon's name is imperishably connected with St. Albans. Battle-fields, where the best blood of England was spilt in civil strife, environ it. Ostorius has left his name upon a hill hard by; while Hatfield House may be seen in the distance, where Elizabeth, as the story runs, heard, while sitting under an oak tree, of the death of her sister Mary. If we are most impressed by the size and architecture of St. Albans abbey, the prioress of Sopwell may perhaps have found in the well-watered, well-wooded neighbourhood where her lot was cast, an incentive to follow the field sports which are so characteristically connected in the Boke with her memory. The wellknown character of Mary, Queen of Scots, shows the passionate enthusiasm with which, a century after Dame Juliana's time, high-born ladies devoted themselves to hunting and hawking.

It would be unfair to the reader not to tell him that Dame Juliana Berners is a somewhat legendary personage, and that a keen literary

*See Chauncy, quoted by Mr. Blades (Preface to Boke of St. Albans, page 13). † See, however, Abp. Morton's letter to the Abbot of St. Albans in 1489 (Froude's History of England, Vol. II. cabt. edit., p. 307).

Dr. Nicholson's Guide to the Abbey of St. Alban, pages 36 and 86.

battle has been fought over her life. The usual belief is that mentioned above, which relates that having been a Dame of the House (that is, a sister able to pay for her maintenance, and so placed on a higher footing in the establishment than the ordinary nuns who performed the menial tasks of the little community), she was at length chosen prioress. Chauncy and Haslewood assign her a distinguished lineage, drawing out her pedigree from Sir John Berners, of Berners Roding, county Essex, who died in 1347. His son, Sir James, was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1388. The family branched out into Sir Humphrey Bourchier, who was slain at Barnet, fighting for Edward IV., and was a son of one Margery Berners. His son is the translator of Froissart. Thence it stretches to Jane, who was mother of Sir Thomas Knyvet, whose great-great-grandson left a sole heir, Katharine. She married Richard Bokenham, Esq.; to whom the barony of Berners was adjudged in 1720. The Dame herself is supposed to have been the daughter of Sir James Berners. The legend continues that she probably spent her youth at the court, and shared in the woodland sports then fashionable, thus acquiring a sound knowledge of hunting, hawking, and fishing. Having withdrawn from the world, and finding plenty of leisure time in the cloister, it is next believed that she committed to writing her memories of these fascinating sports. Indeed, if she were an active prioress, the exigencies of fast days would demand that she should busy herself in the supply of fish required for the sisterhood; so that it is quite possible that, like all other observant anglers, she grew old daily learning more of that craft whereof she treats more fully and in a clearer order than the other subjects of the Boke are handled. Be this as it may, no enthusiastic disciple of angling need disabuse himself of his time-honoured belief that Dame Juliana was a patroness of his sport; while if any will be a sceptic and apply the destructive criticism which is so fashionable in our times to these details of the Dame's life, he, too, is at perfect liberty so to please himself. Facts are of the scantiest for both alike. Let us hope, however, that few will carry their disbelief to the same point as does Mr. Blades: "What is really known of the Dame is almost nothing, and may be summed up in the following few words. She probably lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and she possibly compiled from existing MSS. some rhymes on hunting." It is quite possible to indulge a spirit of destructive criticism beyond the limits of good sense. The treatise of hunting in the Boke ends: "Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng;" while the extremes of practical acumen and rampant agnosticism meet amusingly enough in his further dictum: "Had the Dame Julyans Barnes of the fifteenth century lived now, she would have been just 'Mrs. Barnes.'"* But, in any case, we may picture the Dame solacing herself with her treatises among the ruthless battles, treasons, and executions which marked the Wars of the Roses, from which her own kith and kin had not escaped scot-free. And as the fairer vision of an Eng

* See Mr. Blades's Introduction to Mr. Stock's Reproduction.