of the bedchamber, and that same evening assisted at the royal toilette. But when James went to England the appointment was not confirmed, and worse still, "whereas I was promised one hundred pounds in fee farm, it was cut down to one hundred marks."

The truth is, the council were mortally incensed at him for having anticipated them in the tidings of Elizabeth's death. Their address to James contains two topics; the first congratulating him on his accession, and the second bitterly accusing Cary for his want of "all decency, good manners, and respect," in not waiting for an authorised report of the death of " the bright occidental star." The document was signed by the lord mayor and thirtythree members of the council, amongst whom was Cary's own brother, Lord Hunsdon, who was irritated at having been made the instrument of his escape.

Lady Cary (her husband had received military knighthood from Essex) found more favour from the new queen than her lord from his majesty, she having obtained the office of mistress of her "sweet coffers," an appointment corresponding to the post now held by the mistress of the robes. But as a set off against this, Cary lost his wardenship. Still even at this low ebb his habitual composure did not desert him, and his after success affords a good lesson to courtiers, as well as to others, never to despair, even when encompassed by the darkest clouds. Our courtier went down to Norham to arrange for the transfer of his wardenship (for which he was to receive compensation), when, as he rather profanely alleges," God put it into my mind to go to Dunfermline to see the king's second son. I found him a very weak child." This was the then Duke of York, and afterwards Charles the First. Next season the young duke was to be removed from Scotland to England, and Cary exerted himself that his wife should become custodier of his royal highness. "There were

many great ladies, suitors for the keeping of the duke; but when they did see how weak a child he was, and not likely to live, their hearts were down, and none of them was desirous to take charge of him." Lady Cary obtained the appointment. Those who wished me no good were glad of it, thinking that if the duke should die in our charge (his weakness being such as gave them great cause to suspect it), then it would not be thought fit that we should remain in court after." Here follows some more profane garrulity on the subject of the convalescence of the duke, wherein Master Cary would have it to appear that Providence preserved the life of Charles the First in order that the enemies of Cary might be disappointed! What a commentary does the after-history of England throw on this wretched hypothesis! Nevertheless Cary and his wife did run a serious risk in undertaking the He was charge of a child so rickety as Charles was at the time. above four years of age when entrusted to their keeping, and yet he could not speak or walk; and in fact, from excessive weakness in the ankle joints, he could not even stand upright without assistance. James, in his impatience, wished an operation to be

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performed on the tongue, and to have the limbs encased in iron boots; but Lady Cary had more faith in nature than in surgical art, and being at length permitted to have her own way, the child became strong before he attained his eleventh year. For the care of the duke, 66 my wife got me a suite of the king that was worth to me afterwards four or five thousand pounds. I had the charge given me of the duke's household, and none allowed to his service but such as I gave way to; by which means I preferred to him a number of my own servants. * My daughter was brought up with the king's daughter (the Princess Elizabeth, afterwards the unfortunate Queen of Bohemia). * * My wife had four hundred pounds a-year pension during her life, and by being in the privy lodgings of the duke, got better esteem of the king and queen.”

* *

So far all was sunshine for Master Cary, but a storm was at hand. For at eleven years of age it was judged expedient that the duke should have a formal establishment, and Prince Henry, the heir apparent, who had begun public life, undertook the ordering of the arrangements. Being probably of opinion, that the Carys, while very good nurses, were not the fittest persons to form the mind of a prince of the bloodroyal, he resolved that a Scotch gentleman, whom Cary admits to have been "of great learning and very good worth," should be sent for "out of Ireland from his service there," and placed at the head of the new household, while Cary should be reduced to the rank of "second violin." Of course providence again interfered on behalf of its especial favourite. The King in council was about to ratify the Prince's plan, when Lord Chamberlain Suffolk interposed on behalf of Cary, and the facile monarch consented that the arrangement should be exactly reversed; Cary to be first, and the Caledonian gentleman from the Emerald Isle to be second in authority. The Prince endeavoured to upset this decision, but the utmost that he could accomplish was to obtain permission from the King, that no alterations should be made except such as Cary would consent to. The alteration of offices proposed by the Prince would have made the Scots gentleman" chief of the bed-chamber and master of the robes; and Cary master of the privy purse and surveyor-general of his lands. Our hero, very adroitly, and with assumed humility, protested that his objection to the arrangement of his royal highness proceeded from his inability to survey lands, while "if he had skill in anything, he thought he could tell how to make good clothes," and by this manœuvre he carried his point, even with the prince.

Shortly after this transaction Prince Henry died, and then a new disappointment was in store for Cary. We have seen that he was at the head of the bed-chamber in the household of Charles while Duke of York; but when Henry died, Charles, of course, became Prince, and the chief in the Prince of Wales's establishment was a chamberlain, and not a gentleman of the bed-chamber. Master Cary's parasites, like the weird sisters in Macbeth, had prophesied that he should be chamberlain; but Master Cary was not content with this; he wished to retain the

bed-chamber appointment in addition: in other words, to be a pluralist. When the vacancy took place, Cary urged the precedent of Lord Somerset, who was the king's chamberlain, and yet kept the bed-chamber. "True," replied the opposition, "but he is a favorite, and never any before had them both." "But there is the Scots gentleman," pleaded our friend, "he is surveyorgeneral, and yet holds his place in the bed-chamber." "True again," retorted the opposition, "but his is a petty office, and the chamberlain's is of a high nature."

By stratagem Cary was induced to declare before the prince that he would not give up the bed-chamber for the chamberlainship; then the king was got over to the opinion that one man should not hold both offices; and ultimately, but in a secret manner, Lord Roxburgh was appointed chamberlain. Cary having got scent of the foul deed, went to the queen, and excited her majesty's jealousy by insisting largely on the secrecy of the election. This was a happy conception, as at first the queen would not believe that such an important office could have been filled up by the king and the prince without her knowledge and consent." But when, by Roxburgh's wife, she was assured of it, she sent for me again, and told me it was true that I had said; but bade me trouble myself no further: her wrong was more than mine, and she would right both herself and me." Her majesty was graciously pleased to keep her royal word. Roxburgh was ingloriously sent back to his native north, and Cary was made chamberlain; a consummation which is duly and devoutly acknowledged as a special act of Divine interference" on my part."

Lady Cary waited on the queen till the death of her majesty"ber house was then dissolved, and my wife was forced to keep house and family, which was out of our way a thousand pounds a-year that we saved before." But meanwhile Cary was securing good marriages for his sons and daughters, and thrusting them into every orifice of court preferment that chanced to be open. In 1661 he was created Baron of Peppington, and accompanied Charles to Spain, on the occasion of his fruitless love-expedition to that country. Two years afterwards, James died, and Charles reigned in his stead, and Cary anew lifted his eyes in expectation of promotion, but now his hopes were crushed effectually. Charles broke up his own establishment, and adopted the household of his father with scarcely any change. Cary was allowed to retain his connection with the bed-chamber, and in lieu of other offices, abolished and prospective, he received a pension of five hundred a-year, and obtained a further rise in the peerage, under the title of the Earl of Monmouth. He predeceased his last master, otherwise it is just possible that we might have seen him submerged during a portion of the civil wars, and then again floating on the surface as a functionary in the suite of Old Noll. His title became extinct in his direct male line, and was revived again in the person of the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth. The peerage of his father, Lord Hounsdon, has been longer-lived, and is still perpetuated in an existing noble house.

ART: A DRAMATIC TALE.

BY CHARLES READE, ESQ.,

66
AUTHOR OF CHRISTIE JOHNSTONE,"
," "PEG WOFFINGTON," ETC.

THE lady had on what might, without politeness, but with truth, be called a dressing gown; it was ostentatiously large everywhere, especially at the waist. The lady's hair, or what seemed her hair, was rough, and ill done up, and a great cap of flaunty design surmounted her head. On her feet were old slippers.

"Good day, sir!" said she, drily.

Alexander bowed. "Madam! I await Mrs. Oldfield."

"Tête-à-tête with your muse." Alexander's poetical works were in her hand.

"She is my muse, madam!" replied he; "she alone. Are you not proud of her, madam? for I see by your likeness that you are some relation."

The lady burst out laughing: "That's a compliment to my theatrical talent; I am the party."

"You Mrs. Oldfield! the great Mrs. Oldfield !"

"Why not? What, you come from the country, I suppose, and think we are to be always on stilts, when we are not paid for it. You look as if you were afraid of me."

"Oh, no! madam; and, as you say, it shows how great your talent is."

"You want to speak to me, my lad."

Alexander blushed to the temples. "Yes, madam!" faltered he," you have divined my ambition. I have been presumptuousbut I saw you on the tragic scene-the admiration you inspiredI fear I have importuned you-but my hope, my irresistible desire."

66

There, I know what you mean," said she with an affectation of vulgar good nature, "you want an order for the pit?"

"I want an order for the pit?" gasped Alexander, faintly. 'Well, ain't I going to give you one," answered she, as sharp as a needle; "but mind, you must-" here she imitated vehement applause.

Oh! madam! I need no such injunction," cried Alexander, "each of your achievements on the stage seems to me greater than the last." Then, trembling, blushing, and eloquent as fire, he poured out his admiration of her, and her great art: "The others are all puppets, played by rule around you, the queen of speech and poetry; your pathos is so true, your sensibility so profound; yours are real tears; you lead our sorrow in person; you fuse your soul into those great characters, and art becomes nature. You are the thing you seem, and it is plain each lofty emotion

passes through that princely heart on its way to those golden lips!"

Oldfield, with all her self-command, could not quite resist the eloquence of the heart and brain. She, too, now blushed a little, and her lovely bosom heaved slowly, but high, as the poet poured the music of his praise into her ears: then she stole a look at him, from under her long lashes, and sipped his beauty and his freshness. She could not help looking at this forbidden fruit. As she looked, she did feel how hard, how cruel it was, that she was not to be allowed to play with this young, fresh heart; to see it throb with hopes and fears, and love, jealousy, anguish, joy, and finally to break it, and fling the pieces to the devil; but she was a singular character-she was the concentrated essence of female in all points, except one: she was a woman of her word, or, as some brutes would say, no woman at all in matters of good faith. She stood pledged to the attorney, and therefore, recovering herself, she took up Alexander thus:

"No, thank you, emotions pass through my, what's the namewell, you are green-you don't come from the country-you are from Wales. I must enlighten you; sit down, sit down, I tell you. The tears, my boy, are as real as the rest-as the sky, and that's pasteboard-as the sun, and he is three candles, smirking upon all nature, which is canvas-they are as real as ourselves, the tragedy queens, with our cries, our sighs, and our sobs, all measured out to us by the five-foot rule. Reality, young gentleman, that begins when the curtain falls-and we wipe off our profound sensibility along with our rouge, our whiting, and our beauty spots."

"Impossible!" cried the poet, "those tears, those dew-drops on the tree of poetry!"

He was requested not to make her "die of laughing" with his tears; his common sense was appealed to. "Now, my good soul, if I was to vex myself night after night for Clytemnestra and Co., don't you see that I should not hold together long? No thank you! I've got 'Nance Oldfield' to take care of, and what's Hecuba to her? For my part," continued this frank lady, “I don't understand half the authors give us to say."

"Oh, yes, you do! you write upon our eyes and ears more than half of all the author gains credit for-the noblest sentiments gain more from your tongue than the pen, great as it is, could ever fling upon paper-I am unworthy to be your companion!"

"Nonsense! do you really think I am like those black parrots of tragedy?-fine company I should be!-he, he!-No! we are like other women, you can court us without getting a dagger stuck into you." She then informed him that the representatives of Desdemona, Belvidera, Cordelia, and Virgin Purity in general, had all as many beaus as they could lay their hands on-that she had twenty at the present moment; that he could join that small, but select band, if he chose, secure of this, that whether a fortunate or unfortunate lover, there would be companions of his fate -then suddenly interrupting her disclosures, she offered him a snuff-box, and said, drily, "D'ye snuff?"