tar, richer than the gold.
The cunning caterer still must share
The dainties which his toils prepare;
The page's lip must taste the wine
Before he fills the cup for thine!--
Wilt feast with me on Hecate's cheer?
I dread no royal hemlock here!

"And night will come; and thou wilt lie
Beneath a purple canopy,
With lutes to lull thee, flowers to shed
Their feverish fragrance round thy bed,
A princess to unclasp thy crest,
A Spartan spear to guard thy rest.--
Dream, happy one!--thy dreams will be
Of danger and of perfidy;--
The Persian lance,--the Carian club!--
I shall sleep sounder in my tub!

"And thou wilt pass away, and have
A marble mountain o'er thy grave,
With pillars tall, and chambers vast,
Fit palace for the worm's repast!--
I too shall perish!--let them call
The vulture to my funeral;
The Cynic's staff, the Cynic's den,
Are all he leaves his fellow men,--
Heedless how this corruption fares,--
Yea, heedless though it mix with theirs!"

* * * *

[From Household Words.]

THE LAST OF A LONG LINE.

CHAPTER I.

Sir Roger Rockville of Rockville was the last of a very long line. It
Extended from the Norman Conquest to the present century. His first known
ancestor came over with William, and must have been a man of some mark,
either of bone and sinew, or of brain, for he obtained what the Americans
would call a prime location. As his name does not occur in the Roll of
Battle Abbey, he was, of course, not of a very high Norman extraction;
but he had done enough, it seems, in the way of knocking down Saxons, to
place himself on a considerable eminence in this kingdom. The center of
his domains was conspicuous far over the country, through a high range of
rock overhanging one of the sweetest rivers in England. On one hand lay a
vast tract of rich marsh land, capable, as society advanced, of being
converted into meadows; and on the other, as extensive moorlands, finely
undulating, and abounding with woods and deer.

Here the original Sir Roger built his castle on the summit of the range
of rock, with huts for his followers; and became known directly all over
the country as Sir Roger de Rockville, or Sir Roger of the hamlet on the
Rock. Sir Roger, no doubt, was a mighty hunter before the lord of the
feudal district: it is certain that his descendants were. For generations
they led a jolly life at Rockville, and were alway