e of my own youth, so that my name was not strange to them;
and they had the kindness to allow me to walk over their beautiful
grounds and gardens, to see their charming Swiss dairy, with its marbles
and its china, and, above all, to satisfy my curiosity by looking over
the towers which still remain of the old castle,--piles whose prodigious
thickness of wall and distance from each other give token of the immense
extent and importance of the place. It is said to have been built round
two courts. Alnwick and Windsor rose to my thoughts as I contemplated
these gigantic remains, and calculated the space that the original
edifice must have covered. One of these towers is still occupied by the
well of the castle, a well three hundred feet deep, which supplies the
family with water. It will give some idea of the scale of the old
mansion, to say that the wheel by which the water is raised, is
twenty-five feet in diameter. Two donkeys are employed in the operation.
One donkey suffices for the parallel but much smaller well at
Carisbrook, where the animal is so accustomed to be put in for the mere
purpose of exhibiting the way in which the water is raised to the
visitors who go to look at the poor king's last prison, that he just
makes the one turn necessary to show the working of the machine, and
then stops of his own accord. The donkeys at Grays, kept for use and not
for show, have not had a similar opportunity of displaying their
sagacity.

One cannot look at the place without a feeling of adaptedness. It is the
very spot for a stronghold of the Cavaliers: a spot where Lovelace and
Montrose might each have fought and each have sung, defending it to the
last loaf of bread and the last charge of powder, and yielding at last
to the irresistible force of Cromwell's cannonade.

[From the Keepsake for 1851.]

STANZAS.

Come not, when I am dead,
To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave,
To trample round my fallen head,
And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save.
There let the wind sweep, and the plover cry;
But go thou by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest;
Wed whom thou wilt; but I am sick of time,
And I desire to rest.
Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie.
Go by--go by!

ALFRED TENNYSON.

[From Blackwood's Magazine.]

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRA