not produced until after her death? Why was she not plainly and honourably asked either to acknowledge or disprove them ?" "In the first place, the letters did not come into Lord Elton's possession until after your mother's decease; and, in the second, was it likely that he or any one else in his senses would think of wanting to prove what there was not the least reason to doubt ?" "There was reason to doubt in this case," said Wentworth. "And why, pray?" cried Danvers, the colour on his brown cheek mounting to scarlet. "She had many enemies," returned Wentworth, "and bitter and remorseless ones, too. Even some of those who had in the days of sunshine and prosperity professed themselves her warm and devoted friends, failed to come forward boldly in her defence in the time of her distress and wretchedness." "If you mean that I did not come forward as I ought," returned Danvers, "which I suppose you do by fixing your eyes upon me in that manner, let me remind you that I have a conscience, and that I could not act contrary to its dictates. I supported your unfortunate mother's cause as long as I felt it right to do so. But surely no honourable man can blame me for refusing to swear black was white-to declare that a person was innocent when convinced by overwhelming proofs that she was guilty?" "Danvers," said Wentworth, with great emotion, "you could not-it was impossible that you could believe her guilty." "That is begging the question, my good friend," replied Danvers; "and allow me to say, that it does not prove anything, nor support your argument in the least, to tell me that I must believe this, or I could not possibly think so and so. But, perhaps, you have other and more cogent arguments. I am quite ready to be convinced, although it would of course be against my own interest as heir-at-law. But there is nothing like justice in this world, and if I conscientiously believed you to be legitimate, I would not hesitate a moment in giving up my own rights. Now, to begin at the beginning, could you bring forward any proof of your own legitimacy, besides the very slight one you mentioned, namely, a few words dropped by your mother just at the close of her life?" "Can you call that a slight proof?" said Wentworth. "Scarcely will the most hardened criminal dare to leave the world with a lie on his lips. Surely, if there is any period when a person would speak the truth, and only the truth, it is on his death-bed." Danvers shook his head. "My dear sir," he replied, "your attachment to your mother makes you substitute sophistry for reason, and feeling for argument." "Your speech plainly proves," said Wentworth, "either that you cannot discern reason from sophistry, or else, which I believe to be the case, that you will not.” "Pardon me," said Danvers," and believe that, though I may be showing stupidity, I am really most anxious to find out the truth." "As you challenge me to produce proofs," returned Wentworth, "know that I have written ones as well as you." "You, written proofs !" exclaimed his companion. How came you by them?" "What are they? "They consist of letters written by Howard, our favourite old housekeeper, who, as you are aware, lived in the family before my father's marriage, and did not quit Elton Hall until I was about thirteen years old. It chanced that when in Yorkshire, some months ago, a violent storm drove me for shelter to a farm-house. During the couple of hours I passed there, the farmer happened to mention an aunt of his, who used occasionally to send him money at the time she lived with Lady Elton, and who was with him for three years after leaving her service, at the end of which time she died. He then stated that he had still got some of her letters, which, with the characteristic simplicity of his class, he brought out to show me. I was so much struck by their contents, that, making a slight connexion with the family my plea, I begged to be allowed to make several extracts." "And pray," said Danvers, "have you any objection to allowing me to see those extracts?" Wentworth hesitated a moment; and then unlocking a writing-desk, took from it some sheets of manuscript, which he laid before Danvers. That gentleman, although at first he affected to turn the papers over carelessly, soon became absorbed in their perusal. "She seems to have been quite in your mother's story," he observed, as he returned the papers to Wentworth; "I suppose, poor old woman, she found it for her interest to be so." "That supposition carries absurdity with it," said Wentworth. "What person ever found it for his interest to support the weaker cause? Besides, suppose, as you insinuate, that her good opinion was purchased, must it not have been for the sake of bringing that opinion before the world? And how could this purpose be served by letters written to an obscure relation, hundreds of miles away, of the existence of which no one connected with the family was aware until many years after they were written, and then by the merest accident?" "And do you," said Danvers, after a short pause, "think to establish your legitimacy by means of these letters? Is it your intention to contest the point?" "I decline answering both those questions," said Wentworth, coldly. "I would not advise you to make the attempt," said Danvers. "You have not an inch of firm ground to stand on; and would only incur useless expense, besides placing yourself in a very equivocal position in the eyes of your friends and the world." "I did not ask for your advice," said Wentworth, turning from him, haughtily, "neither do I choose to listen to it." "I know it's a commodity one never gets thanked for," rejoined Danvers. "But I cannot help thinking you would find it almost impossible even to prove your identity in a court of law, and thus you would be topped at the very onset." "Once again," said Wentworth, sternly, "I tell you that I do not want your advice, and that I will not discuss the subject further." "Nay, be not so ungracious," said his companion. "Although you rebuff me at every turn, I wish you well, and am sorry beforehand for the disappointment you must bring upon yourself if you attempt to prove what I have not the least doubt you honestly believe to be true, but which I am perfectly well aware is false." Wentworth preserved a disdainful silence, and glanced impatiently at the door. Danvers seemed preparing to depart; when, as if a sudden thought struck him, he said, carelessly, "By-the-by, I have just recollected, that the last time I was at Elton Castle a man at the county bank mentioned that there was a sum of money, about thirty pounds, I think, which had been standing for years unclaimed in the name of old Mrs. Howard. If you will just take the trouble of telling me the address I will have her nephew informed of the circumstance." Wentworth pointed to the farmer's address on the back of one of the extracts, and, Danvers having made a memorandum of it, wished Wentworth good night, which courtesy the young man merely acknowledged by a slight inclination of the head, and took his departure. SHAKSPEREANA.-No. I. Shakspeare was the man who of all modern, and perhaps all ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. DRYDEN. WHAT do we know of Shakspeare?-the name of his birthplace and the date of his death. His works are his life, and yet we want more; of him we have apochryphal anecdotes, traditional fragments, and legendary miscellanea, but not a scrap of real biography. O for another Boswell for this giant! How microscopical is our knowledge! That he was the son of a gentleman of thrifty means, living in a Warwickshire village, himself descended from one who did some service to the miser king, and was rewarded with--estates, wealth-no, a coat-of-arms, when he'd hardly a coat to his back but a hard one of mail-and thanks, the only thing niggards give liberally. William-called in his wonderful infancy, the little Hercules-like other Williams, Billy, Willy, Bill, grew up a scapegrace, wrote epigrams, wedded at nineteen a maiden of Shotover, aged twentysix, and bearing the name of Hathaway, on which he loved to pun. A child was born rather before its time, his first-born, and he called her Susanna. A year or two passed, and twins followed: one he named Hamnet, spelt Hamlet in his will, who died young, and Judith, who lived long, and was married the very year of her father's death. He was no puling Byron; he revelled in the enjoyment of life, drank small beer with Sly, and sack with Sir Toby Belch, a great frequenter of the Stratford taverns. He dared to quiz good Justice Shallow, to write sonnets on Anne Page his daughter, banter Master Slender and his puissant friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and at last, O extremity of youthful daring, to slay his deer, and kiss his keeper's daughter. But Justice Shallow threatened to make "a Star Chamber of it," so the young scapegrace, who had imbibed somewhat of a love of the stage from a fellow-townsman already shining in the Globe, took to his heels one moonlit night When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, And they did make no noise; told not even his wife or his old father of his purpose; Made the firstlings of his heart the firstlings of his hand; took one glance at his sleeping children, and was soon on the high-road to London, singing the merry song of Autolychus right lustily— Jog, jog, on the footpath way, And merrily hent the stile a, But, first, let it never be forgotten he stuck with a sharp thorn upon Shallow's gates-the very gates of the Goodly dwelling and the rich, a rough lampoon, importing that Lucy was "lowsie," as some folk miscall it, and in fact writing down his pompous worship, like Dogberry, an ass. A keeper brought it Shallow in the morning, and he read it, and swore, and fumed, and stamped, and ordered out the posse comitatus, and called in Henley-street on Master John Shakspeare, senior, but all to no use. And what did the vagabond do in London ?—who knows? The choice lies between some odd dozen dozen odd hypotheses. He was either a call-boy at the Globe, or he held the gallants' horses at the door, or he became an actor under Green, in such parts as the Ghost in his own "Hamlet," or he sold some poems that he had brought to London in his pocket, and dedicated them to the noble Earl of Southampton, a patron of literary men, a haunter of green-rooms and the Mermaid and the Devil taverns, and the young noble acted nobly and gave him 10007. in angels, worth half as much again as now, and with this probably he bought a share in the Globe Theatre, having already vamped and heeltapped some old plays, much to the admiration of the noisy "groundlings." At twentythree he came to London; at twenty-six he was part proprietor of the first theatre in London. He spent thirty-four years in the capital. In 1611 he returned to Stratford, to a peaceful retirement in the prime of life. For five years only he enjoyed it. In 1616 he died, in April of that yearApril, that pleasant time-fresh, fair April, "the only pretty ring time❞— the very month in which he was born. On the same day, I think-certainly in the same year-died Cervantes, whose insight into man was as keen, but less extended. To his eldest daughter, who had married a physician of Warwick, he left his two houses and the bulk of his property; to his fellow actors many of his personals; to Mr. Coombe, son of the old miser whom he squibbed, a small legacy: Ten in the hundred the statute allows, But Coombe will have twelve he swears and he vows: To his wife, the poor furniture of a single bed alone. And why? Can there have been an alienation? Had his love been misplaced, and is Othello the remembrance of those bitter moments when he thought it -The very arch fiend's mock, To lip a wanton and suppose her chaste. An entry in the register of a child born during Shakspeare's absence, and named Thomas Green, alias Shakspeare, is all we have to throw light upon the mystery. Anne Hathaway survived him six years, dying at the age of sixty-seven, her husband having been only fifty-two when he left this world to go he knew not where. Of Shakspeare's life in London we know absolutely nothing; that, at the Devil, Ben Jonson and Shakspeare had wit combats, Fletcher, Suckling, &c., egging them on; that Queen Bess suggested one play, witnessed many, and applauded all; that King James wrote him a letter with his own hand; that his fame as an actor was scarcely less than that as a writer; that he was moderately learned and read much and extensively, knew French, and perhaps spoke it; that he wrote hastily-too hastilyand printed a few of his plays in single volumes as he wrote them; and that's our all-a poor all. THE LANCASHIRE WITCHES; A Romance of Pendle Forest. BY W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ. BOOK II. CHAPTER III. THE BOGGART'S GLEN. THE manor of Read, it has been said, was skirted by a deep woody ravine of three or four miles in length, extending from the little village of Sabden, in Pendle Forest, to within a short distance of Whalley; and through this gully flowed a stream, which taking its rise near Barley, at the foot of Pendle Hill, added its waters to those of the Calder, at a place called Cock Bridge. In summer, or in dry seasons, this stream proceeded quietly enough, and left the greater part of its stony bed unoccupied; but in winter, or after continuous rains, it assumed all the character of a mountain torrent, and swept everything before it. A narrow bridle road led through the ravine to Sabden, and along it, after quitting the park, the cavalcade proceeded, headed by Nicholas. The little river danced merrily past them, singing as it went, the sunshine sparkling on its bright clear waters, and glittering on the pebbles beneath them. Now the stream would chafe and foam against some larger impediment to its course; now it would dash down some rocky height and form a beautiful cascade; then it would hurry on for some time with little interruption, till stayed by a projecting bank it would form a small deep basin, where, beneath the far-cast shadow of an overhanging oak, or under its huge twisted and denuded roots, the angler might be sure of finding the speckled trout, the dainty greyling, or their mutual enemy, the voracious jack. The ravine was well wooded throughout, and in many parts singularly beautiful, from the disposition of the timber on its banks, as well as from the varied form and character of the trees. Here might be seen an acclivity covered with waving birch, or a top crowned with a mountain ash-there, on a smooth expanse of greensward, stood a range of noble elms, whose mighty arms stretched completely across the ravine. Further on, there were chestnuts and walnuttrees, willows, with hoary stems and silver leaves, almost encroaching upon the stream, larches upon the heights, and here and there, upon some sandy eminence, a spreading beech-tree. For the most part the bottom of the glen was overgrown with brushwood, and where its sides were too abrupt to admit the growth of larger trees, they were matted with woodbine and brambles. Out of these would sometimes start a sharp pinnacle, |