advanced quickly to meet me with a faint flush on her face which came and died away again in a moment. I happened to have visited the picture gallery at Dresden in former years. As she approached me, nearer and nearer, I was irresistibly reminded of the gem of that superb collection-the matchless virgin of Raphael, called "The Madonna di San Sisto." The fair broad forehead; the peculiar fulness of the flesh between the eyebrow and the eyelid; the delicate outline of the lower face; the tender, sensitive lips; the colour of the complexion and the hair-all reflected, with a startling fidelity, the lovely creature of the Dresden picture. The one fatal point at which the resemblance ceased was in the eyes. The divinely-beautiful eyes of Raphael's Virgin were lost in the living likeness of her that confronted me now. There was no deformity, there was nothing to recoil from, in my blind Lucilla. The poor, dim, sightless eyes had a faded, changeless, inexpressive look-and that was all. Above them, below them, round them to the very edges of her eyelids, there was beauty, movement, life. In them-death! A more charming creature-with that one sad drawbackI never saw. There was no other personal defect in her. She had the fine height, the well-balanced figure, and the length of the lower limbs, which make all a woman's movements graceful of themselves. Her voice was delicious-clear, cheerful, sympathetic. This, and her smile-which added a charm of its own to the beauty of her mouthwon my heart, before she had got close enough to me to put her hand in mine. "Ah, my dear!" I said, in my headlong way, "I am so glad to see you!" The instant the words passed my lips, I could have cut my tongue out for reminding her in that brutal manner that she was blind.

To my relief, she showed no sign of feeling it as I did. "May I see you in my way?" she asked gently—and held up her pretty white hand. "May I touch your face?"

I sat down at once on the window-seat. The soft rosy tips of her fingers seemed to cover my whole face in an instant. Three separate times she passed her hand rapidly over me, her own face absorbed all the while in breathless attention to what she was about. Speak again!" she said suddenly, holding her hand over me, in suspense. I said a few words. She stopped me by a kiss. "No more!" she exclaimed joyously. "Your voice says to my ears what your face says to my fingers. I know I shall like you. Come in, and see the rooms we are going to live in together."

As I rose, she put her arm round my waistthen instantly drew it away again, and shook her fingers impatiently as if something had hurt them.

"A pin?" I asked.

"Ah! I knew it ! Pray don't wear dark colours. I have my own blind horror of anything that is dark. Dear Madame Pratolungo, wear pretty bright colours, to please me!" She put her arm caressingly round me again-round my neck, however, this time, where her hand could rest on my linen collar. "You will change your dress before dinner-won't you?" she whispered. "Let me unpack for you, and choose which dress I like." The brilliant decorations of the corridor were explained to me now!

We entered the rooms; her bed-room, my bedroom, and our sitting-room between the two. I was prepared to find them--what they proved to be -as bright as looking-glasses, and gilding, and gaily-coloured ornaments, and cheerful knickknacks of all sorts could make them. They were more like rooms in my lively native country than rooms in sober colourless England. The one thing which, I own, did still astonish me, was that all this sparkling beauty of adornment in Lucilla's habitation should have been provided for the express gratification of a young lady who could not see. Experience was yet to show me that the blind can live in their imaginations, and have their favourite fancies and illusions like the rest of us.

To satisfy Lucilla by changing my dark purple dress, it was necessary that I should first have my boxes. So far as I knew, Finch's boy had taken my luggage, along with the pony, to the stables. Before Lucilla could ring the bell to make inquiries, my elderly guide (who had silently left us while we were talking together in the corridor) reappeared, followed by a boy and a groom, carrying my things. These servants also brought with them certain parcels for their young mistress, purchased in the town, together with a bottle, wrapped in fair white paper, which looked like a bottle of medicine-and which had a part of its own to play in our proceedings later in the day.

"This is my old nurse," said Lucilla, presenting her attendant to me. "Zillah can do a little of everything-cooking included. She has had lessons at a London Club. You must like Zillah, Madame Pratolungo, for my sake. Are your boxes open?"

She went down on her knees before the boxes as she asked the question. No girl with the full use of her eyes could have enjoyed more thoroughly than she did the trivial amusement of unpacking my clothes. This time, however, her wonderful delicacy of touch proved to be at fault. Of two dresses of mine which happened to be exactly the same in texture, though widely different in colour, she picked out the dark dress as being the light

ALF-A-MILE below London Bridge, on ground which was once a bluff, commanding the Thames from St. Saviour's Creek to St. Olave's Wharf, stands the group of buildings known in our common speech as the Tower of London, in official phrase as Her Majesty's Tower; a mass of ramparts, walls, and gates; the most ancient and most poetic pile in Europe.

Seen from the hill outside, the Tower appears to be white with age and wrinkled by remorse.. The home of our stoutest kings, the grave of our noblest knights, the scene of our gayest revels, the field of our darkest crimes, that edifice speaks at once to the eye and to the soul. Grey keep, green tree, black gate, and frowning battlement, stand out, apart from all objects far and near them, menacing, picturesque, enchaining; working on the senses like a spell; and calling us away from our daily mood into a world of romance, like that which we find painted in light and shadow on Shakespeare's page.

Looking at the Tower as either a prison, a palace, or a court,-picture, poetry, and drama crowd upon the mind; and if the fancy dwells most frequently on the state prison, this is because the soul is more readily kindled by a human interest than fired by an archaic and official fact. For one man who would care to see the room in which a council met or a court was held, a hundred men would like to see the chamber in which Lady Jane Grey was lodged, the cell in which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, the tower from which Sir John Oldcastle escaped. Who would not like to stand for a moment by those steps on which Ann Boleyn knelt; pause by that slit in the wall through which Arthur De la Pole gazed; and linger, if he could, in that room in which Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley searched the New Testament together?

Standing on Tower Hill, looking down on the dark lines of wall-picking out keep and turret, bastion and ballium, chapel and belfry-the jewelhouse, the armoury, the mounts, the casements, the open leads the Bye-ward Gate, the Belfry, the Bloody Tower--the whole edifice seems alive with story; the story of a nation's highest splendour, its deepest misery, and its darkest shame. The soil beneath your feet is richer in blood than many a great battle-field; for out upon this sod has been poured, from generation to generation, a stream of the noblest life in our land. Should you have come to this spot

alone, in the early day, when the Tower is noisy with martial doings, you may haply catch, in the hum which rises from the ditch and issues from the wall below you -broken by roll of drum, by blast of bugle, by tramp of soldiers-some echoes, as it were, of a far-off time; some hints of a May-day revel; of a state execution; of a royal entry. You may catch some sound which recalls the thrum of a queen's virginal, the cry of a victim on the rack, the laughter of a bridal feast. For all these sights and sounds-the dance of love and the dance of death - are part of that gay and tragic memory which clings around the Tower.

From the reign of Stephen down to that of Henry of Richmond, Cæsar's Tower (the great Norman keep, now called the White Tower) was a main part of the royal palace; and for that large interval of time the story of the White Tower is in some sort that of our English society as well as of our English kings. Here were kept the royal wardrobe and the royal jewels; and hither came with their goodly wares, the tiremen, the goldsmiths, the chasers and embroiderers, from Flanders, Italy, and Almaigne. Close by were the Mint, the lions' dens, the old archery-grounds, the Court of King's Bench, the Court of Common Pleas, the queen's gardens, the royal banqueting hall; so that art and trade, science and manners, literature and law, sport and politics, find themselves equally at home.

Two great architects designed the main partof the Tower: Gundulf the Weeper and Henry the Builder; one a poor Norman monk, the other a great English king.

Gundulf, a Benedictine friar, had, for that age, seen a great deal of the world; for he had not only lived in Rouen and Caen, but had travelled in the East. Familiar with the glories of Saracenic art, no less than with the Norman simplicities of Bec, St. Ouen, and St. Etienne; a pupil of Lanfranc, a friend of Anselm; he had been employed in the monastery of Bec to marshal, with the eye of an artist, all the pictorial ceremonies of his church. But he was chiefly known in that convent as a weeper. No monk at Bec could cry so often and so much as Gundulf. He could weep with those who wept; nay, he could weep with those who sported; for his tears welled forth from what seemed to be an unfailing

source.

As the price of his exile from Bec, Gundulf received the crozier of Rochester, in which city he rebuilt the cathedral, and perhaps designed the castle, since the great keep on the Medway

has a sister's likeness to the great keep on the Thames. His works in London were-the White Tower; the first St. Peter's Church; and the old barbican, afterwards known as the Hall Tower, and now used as the jewel-house.

The cost of these works was great; the discontent caused by them was sore. Ralph, Bishop of Durham, the able and rapacious minister who had to raise the money, was hated and reviled by the Commons with peculiar bitterness of heart and phrase. He was called Flambard, or Firebrand. He was represented as a devouring lion. Still the great edifice grew up; and Gundulf, who lived to the age of fourscore, saw his great keep completed from basement to battlement.

Henry the Third, a prince of epical fancies, as Corffe, Conway, Beaumaris, and many other fine poems in stone attest, not only spent much of his time in the Tower, but much of his money in adding to its strength and beauty. Adam de Lamburn was his master mason; but Henry was his own chief clerk of the works. The Water Gate, the embanked wharf, the Cradle Tower, the Lantern, which he made his bedroom and private closet, the Galleyman Tower, and the first wall, appear to have been his gifts. But the prince who did so much for Westminster Abbey, not content with giving stone and piles to the home in which he dwelt, enriched the chambers with frescoes and sculpture, the chapels with carving and glass; making St. John's Chapel in the White Tower splendid with saints, St. Peter's Church on the Tower Green musical with bells. In the Hall Tower, from which a passage led through the great hall into the king's bedroom in the Lantern, he built a tiny chapel for his private use-a chapel which served for the devotion of his successors until Henry the Sixth was stabbed to death before the cross. Sparing neither skill nor gold to make the great fortress worthy of his art, he sent to Purbeck for marble, and to Caen for stone. The dabs of lime, the spawls of flint, the layers of brick, which deface the walls and towers in too many places, are of either earlier or later times. The marble shafts, the noble groins, the delicate traceries, are Henry's work. Traitor's Gate, one of the noblest arches in the world, was built by him; in short, nearly all that is purest in art is traceable to his reign.

Edward the First may be added, at a distance, to the list of builders. In his reign the original church of St. Peter fell into ruin; the wrecks were carted away, and the present edifice was built. The bill of costs for clearing the ground is still extant in Fetter Lane. Twelve men, who were paid twopence a day wages, were employed on the work for twenty days. The cost of pulling down the old chapel was forty-six shillings and eightpence; that of digging foundations for the

new chapel forty shillings. That chapel has suffered from wardens and lieutenants; yet the shell is of very fine Norman work.

From the days of Henry the Builder' down to those of Henry of Richmond, the Tower, as the strongest place in the south of England, was by turns the magnificent home and the miserable jail of all our princes. Here Richard the Second held his court, and gave up his crown. Here Henry the Sixth was murdered. Here the Duke of Clarence was drowned in wine. Here King Edward and the Duke of York were slain by the command of Richard. Here Margaret of Salisbury was hacked into pieces on the block.

Henry of Richmond kept his royal state in the Tower, receiving his ambassadors, counting his angels, making presents to his bride, Elizabeth of York. Among other gifts to that lady on her nuptial day was a royal book of verse, composed by a prisoner in the keep.

Turning through a sally-port in the Bye-ward Gate, you cross the south arm of the ditch, and come out on the wharf,—a strip of strand in front of the fortress won from the river, and kept in its place by masonry and piles. This wharf, the work of Henry the Builder, is one of the wonders of his reign; for the whole strip of earth had to be seized from the Thames, and covered from the daily ravage of its tides. At this bend of the river the scour is hard, the roll enormous. Piles had to be driven into the mud and silt; rubble had to be thrown in between these piles; and then the whole mass united with fronts and bars of stone. All Adam de Lamburn's skill was taxed to resist the weight of water, yet keep the sluices open by which he fed the ditch. Most of all was this the case when the king began to build a new barbican athwart the sluice. This work, of which the proper name was for many ages the Water Gate, commands the only outlet from the Tower into the Thames; spanning the ditch and sweeping the wharf, both to the left and right. So soon as the wharf was taken from the river-bed, this work became essential to the defensive line.

London folk felt none of the king's pride in the construction of this great wharf and barbican. In fact, these works were in the last degree unpopular, and on news of any mishap occurring to them the Commons went almost mad with joy. Once they sent to the king a formal complaint against these works. Henry assured his people that the wharf and Water Gate would not harm their city. Still the citizens felt sore. Then, on St. George's night, 1240, while the people were at prayer, the Water Gate and wall fell down, no man knew why. No doubt the tides were high

Henry the Third.