of surpassing rigidity. We all take great
interest in the weapons here. The "morning
star" and "the holy water sprinkle," or the
balls of wood armed with spikes and hanging
loosely from a pole, which were in use from the
Conquest to Henry the Eighth's time, give us
infinite delight. The deaf man is made to prod
himself descriptively, and his interpretess
explains that she thinks he'll understand that: the
children are asked patronisingly whether they'd
like to feel such a morning star on their heads, as
if the superiority of the people talking made them
indifferent to physical pain. We spend quite
five minutes in this armoury, and leave it with a
confused sense that we have been fierce soldiers
at some previous stage of our existence, and
that we have carried halberts and pounded our
enemies with the military flail; afterwards losing
our heads on the block upon which Kilmarnock
and Lovat suffered. The narrow prison of Sir
Walter Raleigh, with its thick and gloomy
walls, and the cell in which he slept; the ancient
chapel of St. Peter, containing the dust of
Lady Jane Grey; and the vast armouries filled
with recently converted breechloaders, and
swords and bayonets tastefully arranged, all
come in rotation. We follow one another up and
down turret-stairs, across courtyards, and into
chambers, like so many sheep, asking few
questions, and with a certain distrust, as if each
were afraid of exposing his ignorance to his
neighbour. The warder treats us like children
with an uncontrollable propensity to do the
wrong thing at the wrong time. "Now, then,
step a little forward, and take a good look
upward now, and round about you, if you be so
minded; but on no account don't touch
anything, because that's strictly forbidden. There's
a pretty design for you now—a passion-flower
that is, and made up entirely of pistols and
sword-blades. That one overhead is taken from
the top of the Prince of Wales's wedding-cake,
and is made up of three thousand pieces—pistols,
bayonets, and sword-blades. Then there's
sunflowers, and yonder's the rising sun and some
serpents, all made out of arms, and as pretty
designs as you might wish to see." These
substantial efforts of fancy are interspersed
throughout a room holding sixty-five thousand
stand of arms, and are really not unlike what
they purported to be. They vie with the
regalia in arousing interest, and utterly outshine
the historical portions of the Tower. Indeed,
it was difficult to ascertain from the demeanour
of my fellow sight-seers whether they knew
anything concerning these, except what they
learnt then and there from the warder. "Does
the Queen ever live here now?" and "Wasn't
there some prisoners to be seen as well?" did
not convey a high idea of the knowledge of the
visitors, and, from the manner of our guide's
reply, we judged such questions to be common
to his experience.

But the regalia rouses everybody into sighs
and grunts of admiration. Passing through
an ante-room, we are face to face with the
British crown, and with a variety of baubles
which are gaudy and commonplace enough,
save for their intrinsic value and associations.
Then a female custodian comes forward to
explain. She puts us in position round the
glass and iron cage, and repeats her little
lesson with the liveliness of a funeral dirge.
From the "crown worn by her present Majesty,
with heart-shaped ruby in the centre" to the
"staff of Edward the Confessor, four feet long,
and of pure gold," and the "swords of Justice
and Mercy, that of Mercy having a blunt edge,"
her manner never altered, and we rejoined the
jolly warder outside, convinced that
contemplating other people's jewels, even when
regal, all day and every day has in it
something crushing to the soul. From the
regalia we pass to Beauchamp Tower, across
a damp yard, where the site of the old
beheading block, and some three square yards of
grimy turf are railed off as the "Tower Green,"
on which Anne Boleyn and others were
beheaded. The warder carefully remains at the
foot of the stairs while we rush up to gaze
ignorantly at inscriptions, and, if we choose, to
purchase a special handbook with the inscribers'
names. This is the last thing shown, and it
elicited the most animated comment I heard:
"Why the doose don't they light up the stoopid
old place with gas, instead o' makin' one
stumble up stone stairs with no more light in
'em than my coal cellar at home?"

We are at Traitors' Gate again, as our guide
reminds us, in exactly one hour and five minutes
from the time when we left it. If we ever
return to the Tower, we should prefer to re-visit
it without companions, save of our own choosing,
and to plod slowly through its dungeons and
chambers with no other assistance than the
history of our country affords.

THE DRAMATIC CARDINAL.

THAT the great Cardinal de Richelieu took
so lively an interest in the drama that he may
almost be looked upon as the father of French
tragedy, is a fact pretty generally known; also
that he tried his hand as a dramatic author,
and produced plays, the weakness of which
contrasted remarkably with the strength of his
political operations. With his habitually nice
discrimination of the minute details of character
that are proper to every one of the illustrious
personages of history whom, by the magic of
his pen, he recalls to life, Lord Lytton, in his
admirable play, has set down among the causes
that induced the cardinal to eye with favour
the somewhat suspicious De Mauprat, the
circumstance that the latter was one of the
chosen few who applauded the tragedy written
by the former, and the allusion to his
eminence's weak point is always thoroughly
appreciated by the audience. But that many
persons are aware of the important figure made
by the cardinal in the early history of the
French stage we very much doubt.
Nevertheless there is a certain period in the chronicles