of Beaulieu, should here be recorded the fact that no sooner was he installed in possession of the estate, than he secured the services of a trained nurse from the London hospitals, to whom he has given a house and a salary, strictly charging her to see that no poor person on the 'manor' is without proper food and medical attendance in case of illness or sudden distress. Would that all large landowners would learn by his example to be equally considerate to their poorer neighbours and brethren!! How few of our wealthier owners of broad acres would miss the hundred pounds a-year that such an arrangement must entail; and how many would find it answer, even as a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, by raising the value of the leases which they grant, and securing for themselves a better class of tenantry and a more grateful and attached set of dependants on those estates, of which, after all, in the sight of heaven, they are not really owners but stewards and trustees!

It is only right to add that the lords of the manor for this century past have always supported excellent schools at Beaulieu, and at a considerable cost.

259

MEMORIES OF KENILWORTH.

To treat of Kenilworth seems to amount to presumption in the face of Sir Walter Scott's beautifully woven web of truth and fiction, of which Kenilworth is at once the scene and the name. But he spoke of only one short, though brilliant, epoch in its eventful story; and closely as that grand old castle is associated in the minds of the lovers of history and romance with the haughty Earl of Leicester and his stately queen and guest, there is many another tale besides, and many another royal name connected with it; and many a doughtier deed of arms has roused the echoes of the stronghold than the jousts and tourneys of the tilt-yard, which formed part of the 'princely pleasures of Kenilworth,' in the times of Robert Dudley.

Few who now visit the ruins of the castle can help asking themselves what those noble walls have seen, what they have enclosed, and whom they have resisted; and many are the secrets which they have

kept but too well; for there have been mysteries which shall never be disclosed, and the beginning of many a story has found there an end, known but to very few besides the victim himself!

But, setting aside that which tradition darkly hints at, the broad page of authentic history unfolds much of the deepest interest to those who gaze on those massive walls; and while the solid masonry of Cæsar's tower invokes a feeling of reverence, the lighter grace of Lancaster's building-whose endurance proves its strength-forms a midway step between the sternness of the earlier period and the now perishing and crumbling structure of the Earl of Leicester-the latest built, yet doomed to earliest decay.

There is a wonderful majesty about the most ancient part of the castle-that called Cæsar's tower; and the perfect plainness and rigidity of the architecture would almost authorise the belief, which some entertain, that it dates from the time of the Romans. It is built of the rich red-coloured stone of the country, and the lines of the stone-work are now almost as sharp and clear as if newly hewn; the depth of the windows shows the thickness of the walls, which cannot be otherwise examined, as there is now no means of getting into the interior of this part, though it appears to be little more than a shell; and imagination is free to people its deep dungeons with forgotten skeletons and rust-worn fetters. This lies to the north, and, facing the west, rises the most beautiful part of all