Through them, he says, "better than through any other medium, we may trace the mental portraits both of Richard and Henry. We see their hopes and fears, their ways of meeting danger, their demeanour towards their subjects, and towards other kings. We see also traces of the internal administration under both these sovereigns . and while we must always look to chronicles and histories for the events which time brought forth, it is to these records that we must turn to learn its real character."*

Whether these records will fully justify the estimate I have formed of the character of Richard is matter of opinion. All that I claim is to have advanced nothing that is inconsistent with them. That, owing to the exigencies of space, I have omitted some of the shadows which darken the character of Richard III. is true; but I believe that, however imperfect the portraiture I have presented, it approaches. nearer to the truth than the extravagant conception which Shakspere has made familiar to us, or that of the chroniclers, by whom it has been said "All his virtue is, by a malicious alchemy, subtracted into crime;" or, again, that of Bacon, who declares such virtues as he cannot deny, to have been "feigned and affected things to serve his ambition." Yet even his enemies are constrained to credit Richard with qualities that are inconsistent with their estimate of his character. They agree in representing him as a high-spirited youth "whom all praised." Grafton, a servile flatterer of Henry VII., speaks of "those good abilities, whereof he hath already right many, little needing my praise." His generosity is repeatedly noticed by More, who says, "With large gifts he got him unsteadfast friendships;" and, again, "Free was he to dispense, and somewhat above his power liberal." Bacon describes him as "a prince of military virtue, approved jealous of the honour of the

English nation."

He even calls him noble.

"Although

desire of rule did blind him, yet, in his other actions, like a true Plantagenet, he was noble." The Duke of Buckingham speaks of him as "without dissimulation; " whilst his most. unrelenting enemy, Morton, testifies to "his good qualities being fixed in his memory."* Edward IV. gratefully recorded "the gratuitous, laudable, and honourable services in many wise rendered to him by his most dear brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester." And, lastly, Parliament has inscribed upon its rolls a tribute to the "great wit, prudence, justice, princely courage, memorable and laudable acts done for the salvation and defence of this realm."+

The history of Richard III. is a warning of the perils of inordinate ambition. It has been said that he "marred the subject to make a monarch." It had been well for him if the crown, which he could not lawfully claim, had been out of his reach. In grasping it he tarnished. his fair fame, and found in its possession only Dead-Sea fruit, which served to obscure when it failed to annihilate his virtues. So that if we acknowledge with Hutton that "in him were united as many excellencies as would furnish several shining characters, and as many faults as would damn a troop," we are warranted in tracing. his errors and his crimes to that fatal ambition which "marred the subject" rather than to moral obliquity, and hypocrisy

Striving to make his evil deeds look fair.

"Surely," says Sir George Buck, "if men are taken to the life best from their actions, we shall find him in the circle of a character not so commaculate and mixt as passionate and purblinde pens have dasht it, whilst we squint not at those vertues in him which make up other princes absolute."

* Grafton, p. 147.

+ Roll Par. vi. p. 240.

L

The fabulous tales which Skakspere has interwoven into his splendid drama have been too long associated with the memory of Richard. Art is immortal and claims our reverential homage. But justice is divine, uncompromising, and, in the end, triumphant. Art at once gratifies and stimulates the imagination. But art "is second, not the first." Justice holds the scales in which the facts of history must be ultimately weighed. Fill them as we may with weeds and lumber, Justice serenely waits, whilst her impartial handmaiden TIME works the great assortment, and men echo the old, old saying, "The first shall be last, and the last first." The character of Richard III. no longer presents the enigma which perplexed historians, whilst the fabulous tales of Hall and Hollinshed remained unexploded. The hand of Time has ruthlessly weeded out this rubbish from the page of history. Justice has triumphed over Art, and rescued the character of Richard as a prince from the unjust charges of perjured sycophants and credulous chroniclers.

RAMBLES IN THE WEST RIDING

I

(WITH A GLANCE AT THE FLORA).

BY ABRAHAM STANSFIELD.

II. IN THE TRACK OF THE "WHITE Doe."

T was on a lovely mid-August morning, and in the midst of the stirrings occasioned by the annual "feast" at S, in the West Riding, that we started forth from that village on a drive through the classic and hitherto by us unvisited region indicated in a previous article by the title of the "White Doe Country." To use Wordsworth's phrase, it was the morning of

a day

With silver clouds, and sunshine on the grass,

And in the sheltered and the sheltering grove,
A perfect stillness.

Nor in the grove, as yet, was any sign of autumn, though already in smoke-begrimed towns of our work-a-day north the limes and planes had yellowed. Pleasant thus to catch. up, as it were, a season that is passing: decay in the town, life and freshness still in the country! So, at least, thought C., who had but lately

escaped

From the vast city, where he long had pined

A discontented sojourner.

But, indeed, who would not, if he could, spend his days where summer reigns longest-where the trees retain their rich

garniture till far into the autumn, casting broad shadows over the land, nor dream of decay till the setting of October Ferreus est, eheu ! quisquis in urbe manet.*

suns:

In towns such as the above, where almost constantly the air is laden with those sulphurous and other acids so much more fatal than mere smoke-clouds to vegetable life, what have we of summer? A few short weeks only, certainly not months a greening in June, a yellowing in July, a browning in August, and at the beginning of September-the end of the leafy reign and of the summer-the bare anatomies, and mere twiggy outlines, of trees whose congeners in the country still revel on in the plenitude of their vigour, and the fulness of their foliage.

Up the pleasant valley of the Aire lay our way, and after a journey sufficiently long to take us sheer out of the millstone grit into the heart of the limestone we entered the quaint old market-town of Skipton-the "town of sheep," as etymologists have it, "the chief town of the wild and mountainous district of Craven," "the metropolis of Craven," as a local writer euphemistically terms it, with its ancient church, and its castle, famous in Yorkshire story and in national history.

"

A "mountainous district," truly; and many a bloody battle, here among their native hills, must the brave Brigantes have sustained ere they fell before the "all-conquering Roman. Indeed, in describing the progress through their country of the Roman commander, Petilius Cerialis, Tacitus admits this (Agricola, Cap. XVII.). Multa prælia, et aliquando non incruenta, the words of the historian, in this connection, are words that may well be taken as signifying even more than they express. And to-day the indomitable pluck and energy of your West Yorkshireman, the "Nobbut"

* Tibullus.