the next man in seniority takes them.
Formerly it used to be that when a man died who
had rooms, the one appointed to fill his vacancy
stepped into them in his place; but that's
altered now, and very properly, and the warders
who've been longest here get them in their turn.
When shall we be going round? In exactly six
minutes from now. You see, we arrange it this
way: there's forty-four warders, and we take it
in turn to show visitors about. Every quarter
of an hour, from half-past ten to four a party
starts from this refreshment-room, and goes
right through the armouries and to the regalia-
room. But if, mind you, twelve people are
ready before the quarter's up, we just start
with them without waiting. You'll get two
tickets at sixpence each, and that's all the
expense you'll be at. Never bin here before, sir?
Well, that's wonderful that is. A stranger to
London, sir? No! and never seen the Tower!
Well, don't you bother yourself with that
guide-book while I'm with you. I'll show you
everything worth seeing, take my word, so you
keep the book to amuse yourself when you get
home." Out of the gorgeous scarlet and gold
upon the surpassing beauty of which my old
friend evidently loved to linger, and in their
work-a-day attire, the warders look like
something between a modern fireman and Gog and
Magog. A black velvet biscuit-box, or a stiff
inverted reticule adorned with the ribbons of
the recruiting-sergeant disfigures their heads
("time of Henry the Seventh—this hat is a part
of our regular uniform"), while the green cloth
tunic, patched with red and ornamented on the
chest by a crimson lion of acrobatic demeanour
and pursuits, and the dingy purple macintosh
cape which surmounted it are far more suggestive
of modern masquerading than ancient costume.

If our party of sight-seers had been bound
to deliver a verdict upon what our good old
warder showed us in his round, I venture to
think, we should have evolved something
startling and unusual. There was a deaf man,
with a shrewish wife, who repeated every
description as if it were a taunt, and darted
arrowy little sayings into her husband's ear
with a precision which showed the fine old
English custom of torture had not gone out
with the thumb-screw. There were three
sailors who either did not speak English or
disdained to avail themselves of a language which
was shared by the four private soldiers who
accompanied us; and there were some ladies
of mature age who convoyed two children—
emphasising our warder's sonorous words by
ingenious twistings of their victims' necks and by
nudges in their backs. Lastly, there was your
servant, the avidity of whose thirst for
knowledge compelled him to silence, that he might
hear the more. I have no doubt we all enjoyed
it immensely, but a less demonstrative dozen it
would have been difficult to find. The policemen
practising cutlass-drill in the dried-up moat
awakened as much expression of interest as the
Traitor's Gate; and the pencilled name of a
vulgarity of yesterday was grinned over with
more palpable sympathy than the autograph of
Dudley. The armoury, containing the mounted
knights, "with their armour and horses exactly
as they were in life," gave much quiet delight,
which, in my case, was not lessened by the
discovery that Edward the Fourth carried a striped
barber's pole as a lance, that the Duke of
Wellington's celebrated horse, Copenhagen, was of
a dull crimson hue, and that several of the other
steeds pranced and curveted under their riders
in a highly groomed condition from black lead.
If it be not irreverent to hint at " gnger" in
connexion with these fiery animals, it really
expresses their condition. All are of wood, and
of an abnormal friskiness, which has been
caught and fixed. Thus, one spirited animal
champs his bit, so as to show quite an array of
front teeth, and grins in ghastly fashion under
the weight of his rider's armour. Another
paws the ground impatiently and stands with
one foot in the air, like some highly trained
circus-steed suddenly impressed with the realities
of life; while a third is skittishly ambling,
as if meditating a bolt through the stained glass
window and intervening wall into the Thames.
Each horse has a different and distinct attitude
of its own, and this row of rigid painted animals,
all immovable and all imitating motion, has an
effect which is partly humorous and partly
ghostly. Six centuries have gone by since the
owner of the first suit drew his sword, as his
effigy is represented to be doing now; but the
armour does not seem to have missed him
much, and remains unmoved while our friend
the warder points out its deficiencies and
advantages as compared with the next suit. Past
tilting lances, vam-plates, war-saddles, spiked
chanfrons, ear-guards, cuirasses, helmets,
breast-plates, and leg-armour, all on effigies, and
all reminding one rather unpleasantly of death
in life—and we are facing the old mask formerly
worn by the headsman, and the false face and
grotesque ears of Henry the Eighth's fool.

We are here between two fires, for the door
by which we entered has just admitted another
party of twelve, headed by a warder, and from
the stairs above me a third party is having the
Tower treasures explained. The result, is that
the descriptions mingle, and "George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, in a full soot o' plate, a
wheel-lock petronel in his hands, and a spanner
or instrument to wind up the spring," blends
strangely with "Two kettles taken at Blenheim
in the year 1704," and "Suit belonging to
Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk—a tidy-sized
sort o' man to sit upon a horse." All is
given in the conventional showman voice, full of
sonorous monotony, and as at one time we are
three separate parties in one room, the confusion
of description is rather startling. "Knights
used to faint under their armour, and could not
rise," and, "Sword of the celebrated Tippoo
Sahib, captured at Seringapatam," sounded like
portions of the same sentence, and we don't get
rid of this anomaly until we are in Queen Elizabeth's
armoury in the White Tower, and gazing
on her effigy mounted on a carved white horse