" What
became of Mars and Minerva after the siege of Troy? Men die; but the
deities, infernal as well as celestial, live on. Fortunes may rise like
Satan's _chef d'oeuvre_ of architecture, may be transported from city to
city like the palace of Aladdin, or may sink into salt-water lots as did
the Cities of the Plain; success may wait upon commerce and the arts,
or desolation may cover the land; still, surviving all change, and
profiting alike by prosperity and by calamity, the secret, unfathomable
agents in all human enterprises will remain the BULLS AND BEARS.

* * * * *

THE SPHINX.

Go not to Thebes. The Sphinx is there;
And thou shalt see her beauty rare,
And thee the sorcery of her smile
To read her riddle shall beguile.

Oh! woe to those who fail to read!
And woe to him who shall succeed!
For he who fails the truth to show
The terror of her wrath shall know:

But should'st thou find her mystery,
Not less is Death assured to thee;
For she shall cease, and thou shalt sigh
That she no longer is, and die.

A CHARGE WITH PRINCE RUPERT.

"Thousands were there, in darker fame that dwell,
Whose deeds some nobler poem shall adorn;
And though to me unknown, they sure fought well,
Whom Rupert led, and who were British-born."

DRYDEN.

I.

THE MARCH. JUNE 17, 1643.

Last night the Canary wine flashed in the red Venice glasses on the
oaken tables of the hall; loud voices shouted and laughed till the
clustered hawk-bells jingled from the rafters, and the chaplain's fiddle
throbbed responsive from the wall; while the coupled stag-hounds fawned
unnoticed, and the watchful falcon whistled to himself unheard. In the
carved chairs lounged groups of revellers, dressed in scarlet, dressed
in purple, dressed in white and gold, gay with satins and ribbons,
gorgeous with glittering chains and jewelled swords: stern, manly faces,
that had been singed with powder in the Palatinate; brutal, swarthy
faces, knowing all that sack and sin could teach them; beautiful, boyish
faces, fresh from ancestral homes and high-born mothers; grave, sad
faces,--sad for undoubted tyranny, grave against the greater wrong of
disloyalty. Some were in council, some were in strife, many were in
liquor; the parson was there with useless gravity, and the jester with
superfluous folly; and in the outer hall men more plebeian drained the
brown October from pewter cans,