the civil wars in the seventeenth century, when
it was besieged for a fortnight, but did not surrender.

Few persons have made a greater figure in history than the earls of
Warwick, from the renowned

---- Sir Guy of Warwicke, as was weten
In palmer wyse, as Colman hath it wryten;
The battaill toke on hym for Englandis right,
With the Colbrond in armes for to fight.[4]

up to the accomplished Sir Fulk Greville, to whom the castle, with all
its dependencies, was granted by James I., after having passed through
the successive lines of Beauchamp, Neville, Plantagenet, and Dudley.

L.L.

[4] Hardynge's "Chronicle," p, 211, edit. 1812.

* * * * *

ODE TO THE LONDON STONE.

_(For the Mirror.)_

Mound of antiquity's dark hidden ways,
Though long thou'st slumber'd in thy holy niche,
Now, the first time, a modern bard essays
To crave thy primal use, the what and which!
Speak! break my sorry ignorance asunder!
City stone-henge, of aldermanic wonder.

Wert them a fragment of a Druid pile,
Some glorious throne of early British art?
Some trophy worthy of our rising isle,
Soon from its dull obscurity to start.
Wert thou an altar for a world's respect?
Now the sole remnant of thy fame and sect.

Wert thou a churchyard ornament, to braid
The charnel of putridity, and part
The spot where what was mortal had been laid,
With all thy native coldness in his heart?
Thou sure wert not the stone--let critics cavil!--
Of quack M.D. who lectur'd on the gravel.

Did e'er fat Falstaff, wreathing 'neath his cup
Of glorious sack, unable to reel home,
Sit on thy breast, and give his fancy up,
The all that wine had given pow'r to roam,
And left the mind in gay, but dreamy talk,
Wakeful in wit when legs denied to walk?

Did e'er wise Shakspeare brood upon thy mass,
And whimsey thee to any wondrous use
Of sage forefathers, in his verse to class
That which a worse bard had despis'd to choose,
Unconscious how the meanest objects grow,
Giants of notice in the poet's show?

Canst thou not tell a tale of varied life,
That gave Time's annals their recording name?
No notes of Cade, marching with mischief rife,
By Britain's misery to raise his fame?
Wert thou the hone that "City's Lord" essay'd[5]
To make the whetstone of his rebel blade?

Wert thou--'tis pleasant to imagine it,
Howe'er ab