, in the North, as thou knowest, we recognize men by their
forms, not faces,--as in truth we ought, seeing that it is the sinews
and bulk, not the lips and nose, that make a man a useful friend or
dangerous foe."

Montagu smiled at this soldierly simplicity. "And heard you the name the
raptrils shouted?"

"Robin, my lord. They cried out 'Robin,' as if it had been a 'Montagu I
or a 'Warwick.'"

"Robin! ah, then I guess the man,--a most perilous and stanch
Lancastrian. He has more weight with the poor than had Cade the rebel,
and they say Margaret trusts him as much as she does an Exeter or
Somerset. I marvel that he should show himself so near the gates
of London. It must be looked to. But come, cousin. Our steeds are
breathed,--let us on!"

On arriving at the More, its stately architecture, embellished by the
prelate with a facade of double arches, painted and blazoned somewhat in
the fashion of certain old Italian houses, much dazzled Marmaduke. And
the splendour of the archbishop's retinue--less martial indeed than
Warwick's--was yet more imposing to the common eye. Every office that
pomp could devise for a king's court was to be found in the household
of this magnificent prelate,--master of the horse and the hounds,
chamberlain, treasurer, pursuivant, herald, seneschal, captain of the
body-guard, etc.,--and all emulously sought for and proudly held by
gentlemen of the first blood and birth. His mansion was at once a court
for middle life, a school for youth, an asylum for age; and thither, as
to a Medici, fled the letters and the arts.

Through corridor and hall, lined with pages and squires, passed Montagu
and Marmaduke, till they gained a quaint garden, the wonder and envy of
the time, planned by an Italian of Mantua, and perhaps the stateliest
one of the kind existent in England. Straight walks, terraces, and
fountains, clipped trees, green alleys, and smooth bowling-greens
abounded; but the flowers were few and common: and if here and there a
statue might be found, it possessed none of the art so admirable in our
earliest ecclesiastical architecture, but its clumsy proportions were
made more uncouth by a profusion of barbaric painting and gilding. The
fountains, however, were especially curious, diversified, and elaborate:
some shot up as pyramids, others coiled in undulating streams, each jet
chasing the other as serpents; some, again, branched off in the form of
trees, while mimic birds, perched upon lead