Commons, and said: 'Pollock, we lawyers receive the highest wages of an infamous profession.'

Sir Nicholas Bacon was so learned in the law that he was appointed attorney in the Court of Wards, and made a Privy Councillor and Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth. When the Queen visited him at Redgrave, she observed, alluding to his corpulence, that he had built the house too little for himself. Not so, madam,' he answered; but your Majesty has made me too big for my house.' A man was brought before Sir Nicholas accused of a crime which, under the Draconian laws then in force, involved the penalty of death. He was found guilty, and, asked whether he had anything to say for himself, appealed to the judge's compassion, seeing that he was a kind of relation to him, his name being Hogg. "True, replied Bacon; but Hog is not Bacon till it's hung.' And hung, or hanged, to speak correctly, he was, and thus did not save his bacon. But the jest was a cruel one.

VII.

SOME FAMOUS LONDON ACTRESSES.

DISTANCE lends enchantment to the view, but the

view frequently does not return it, a common

practice with borrowers! Distance alone invests the East with a halo of romance and beauty, to which it really can lay no claim. The romance is the invention of Western imagination, and the beauty, if not tawdry, is monstrous. In no respect is this excess of imagination over the reality more apparent than in the eidolon the European forms in his mind of Eastern female beauty. He hears or reads of houris, and nautchgirls, and bayaderes, and the dancing-women of Japan and Burmah; but if ever he sees any of them he will be disenchanted, for awkward figures they are, wrapped up in clothes like so many sacks, twisted and tied over one another-if not old, at least middle-aged women with rings in their noses. Pooh! enough of them! The real beauties the European never gets a sight of, they are shut up in harems. But still he thinks the East the region of beauty, and longs for it, even when he sees beauty in perfection in the West, where alone it is to be found, because in Western lands alone physical and

intellectual or perfect beauty exists in combination. And this combination is most frequently seen, as may be surmised from the nature of her avocation, in the actress. Women first appeared on the English stage in 1660. On December 6 in that year, at the performance of Othello' at the Duke's Theatre, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the prologue spoken is entitled: A prologue to introduce the first woman that came to act on the stage.' Pepys went to see The Beggar's Bush' at the same theatre on January 3, 1661, and reports: 'Here the first time that ever I saw a woman come upon the stage.' But the Queen had long before then, namely, in 1633, acted in a pastoral given at Court. The practice having, however, been introduced at the Duke's Theatre, was continued, to the disgust of moralists, who looked upon the enormous shamefulness' of female acting as a sinful practice. Even the intelligent and generally liberal-minded Evelyn speaks of the drama as abused to an atheistical liberty,' by the circumstance of women being suffered to become performers. In his Diary, October 18, 1666, he writes: "This night was acted my Lord Broghill's tragedy, called "Mustapha," before their Majesties at Court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public theatres for many reasons now, as they were abused to an atheistical liberty, foul and indecent women now (and never till now) permitted to appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants, became their misses, and to some their wives, witness ye Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, P. Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to ye reproach of their noble families, and ruin

of both body and soul.' By another greater person," Evelyn no doubt intended the King himself, Charles II., who had at least three avowed mistresses taken from the stage-Madam Davis, Mrs. Knight, and Nell Gwynne. Miss Davis was, according to Pepys, a natural daughter of the Earl of Berkshire. He went to see her perform on March 7, 1666, in The English Princess,' and 'little Miss Davis did dance a jigg after the end of the play, and there telling the next day's play, so that it came in by force only to see her dance in boy's clothes.' Mrs. Knight was a famous singer. Kneller painted her portrait. Of Nell Gwynne we shall have occasion to speak further on. At the same theatre Mrs. Davenport, the lady who played the part of Roxalana in "The Siege of Rhodes,' was taken to be the Earl of Oxford's misse, as at this time they began to call lewd women, as Evelyn says. But Evelyn evidently was badly informed. Mrs. Davenport for a long time refused the Earl of Oxford's presents and overtures, but, on his offering to marry her, she consented. The ceremony was performed, and they lived together for some time, and then the Earl informed her that the marriage was a sham, and that the mock parson was one of his trumpeters. In vain the deluded woman appealed to the laws, in vain she threw herself at the King's feet to demand justice. She might consider herself lucky to obtain a pension of £300. Pepys saw her afterwards at the theatre, and says: "Saw the old Roxalana in the chief box, in a velvet gown, as the fashion is, and very handsome, at which I was glad.'

Moll Davies was another of the King's favourites, and he is said to have fallen in love with her through her

singing My Lodging is on the Cold Ground' in 'The Rivals,' a play altered by Davenant from Beaumont and Fletcher's 'The Two Noble Kinsmen.' Pepys frequently mentions her as a rival to Nell Gwynne. She had one daughter by Charles, who was christened Mary Tudor, and was married in 1687 to the son of Sir Francis Ratcliff, who became Earl of Derwentwater. When the King grew tired of her he settled a pension on her of £1,000 a year. It was as a descendant of this Earl that the lady who called herself Amelia, Countess of Derwentwater, in 1868 took possession of the old baronial castle of Devilstone, or Dilston, claiming it and the estates belonging thereto, but then and now vested in Greenwich Hospital, as hers. But the Lords of the Admiralty, in 1870, defeated her claim, and she disappeared from public view.

Another famous actress in the days of Charles II. was Margaret Hughes, of whom Prince Rupert became enamoured. At first she pretended to be fiercely virtuous, so as to secure a higher price for her favours. And, in fact, the Prince settled on her Brandenburgh House, near Hammersmith, in which she lived about ten years. The house afterwards became the residence of Queen Caroline, who died there, shortly after which it was demolished.

Whatever may be said against women appearing on the stage, there is something more repulsive in men and boys taking female parts in a play, at least, so it seems to our moral feelings, and æsthetically the practice is still more objectionable. Male performers can never represent the spontaneous grace, melting voice, and tender looks of a female, and the ludicrous contretemps