shake the boat; nor was it moved until both cables being brought to one side of the river by the united force of fifty or sixty men, she was dislodged, and swung down the rapid upside-down, finally pitching headlong beneath an eddy, entangling one of her cables on the rocks, and there lying beneath a heavy fall of water, until in the course of the day, one cable being broken by the efforts of the men to dislodge her, and the other by the sheer force of the current, she went over the falls-the second sacrifice to the poor fellow, who still clung to the log, swayed between hope and fear. The loss of this boat seemed a great blow to him, and he appeared, as far as we could judge at a distance, at times to give way to the utmost despair. A third boat was now brought-wooden, very long, and flatbottomed. Its passage was most fortunate, and as she floated down, even alongside of the log without accident, hope beamed in every countenance, and we all felt the man might be saved. Hope also had revived in him. He stood for some time upon the log making signals to those who directed the boat. He now eagerly seized her, drew her towards him, jumped into her, and made signs to them to draw him up. This was commenced, but some of the tackle had caught, and it was deemed necessary to let it loose for an instant. This was done; the boat floated a few feet down the rapid, swung round the lower end of the log, entangling the cable beneath it, and there remained immovably fixed. Once more the poor fellow's work began. He drew off one of his boots and baled the boat, he pushed at the log, climbed upon it, and used every possible exertion to move the boat, but in vain! An hour was spent in these fruitless efforts an hour of terrible suspense to all who beheld him. He worked well, for he worked for his life. Three months after, this boat retained its position, nor will it move until the rocks grind its cable in two, or the waters tear it piecemeal into shreds. Another plan must be devised, and this, with American promptitude, was soon done. A raft of from twenty to thirty feet long and five feet broad was knocked together with amazing rapidity. It consisted of two stout poles, made fast, five feet asunder, by nailing four or five pieces of two-inch board at each extremity; thus the machine consisted of a sort of skeleton raft, with a small stage at either end. On one of these stages-that to which the cables (of which there were two) were lashed-was tightly fixed a large empty cask, for the sake of its buoyancy, on the other a complete network of cords, to which the man was to lash himself; also a tin can of refreshments, he having taken nothing since the evening before; three or four similar cans, by the way, had been let down to him already, attached to strong pieces of new line, but the cords had in every instance been snapped, and the food lost. The raft was finished, launched, and safely let down to the log. The poor fellow committed himself to its care, he lashed his legs firmly, and then signalled to draw him up; thus for the second time the ropes had begun to be drawn up, the raft advanced under the first pull, but its head, owing to the great light cask, dipped beneath it, and as the raft still advanced, the water broke over it to such a depth that the man was obliged to raise himself upon all fours, keeping his chin well elevated to avoid being drowned. We expected at every pull to see his head go under, but, alas! they pulled in vain, for the front of the raft, pressed down by the weight of falling water, had come in coutact with a rock, and would not advance. The ropes were slackened, she fell back, but again hitched in her return. It was then determined to let her swing to another part of the rapid, where the stream did not appear quite so impassable. This was done, and a second attempt to draw it up was made, half-way between the log and the opposite shore (a small island). This also failed from the same cause, therefore it was proposed to endeavour to let the raft float down and swing round upon the island. This was commenced, but with the old result, the cable was caught in the rocks, and the raft remained stationary. However, she was floating easily, and the poor fellow could rest. Early in the day, for the afternoon was now far advanced, one of the large ferryboats (built expressly for crossing beneath the falls) had been brought up, but had lain idle. This was now put into requisition, and nobly she rode down towards the raft, whilst in breathless silence we all watched her as she dipped at the various falls, and each time recovered herself. I shuddered as she was launched, for I began to see that the man could not be saved by a boat; a boat never could return against a rapid, however well able to float down it. No sooner would her bow come into contact with a fall than it would dip, fill, and spin round, as did the first skiff which was lost. The poor fellow himself was getting impatient-visibly so. He untied his lash ings, stood upright upon the raft, eagerly waiting to seize the boat, and jump into her. She had but one more fall to pass, and that fall was situated just above where he stood; she paused at the brink of it, swung down it like lightning, and, as he leaned forward to seize her, she rose on the returning wave, struck him in the chest, and he struggled hopelessly in the overwhelming torrent. The exclamation of horror, for it was not a cry, which burst from the thousands who by this time were assembled, I shall never forget, nor the breathless silence with which we watched him, fighting with the waters as they hurried him along upright, waving both arms above his head. We lost sight of him at intervals, yet again and again he reappeared, and I thought hours must have passed in lieu of one brief half-minute. But the end came at last; once more I saw his arms wildly waved above his head, and, in an instant, the crowd turned from the spot in dead silence. The man was lost. KING ALFRED'S WILL. ["I give to my wife Ealswithe, three manors: Wantage, because I was born there; Lamborne, because I dwelt there; and Wickham, because I fought there."] THUS, very near a thousand years ago Willed Alfred, unto whom we English owe Noble achievement and a high example. Defeat could never lay his courage low; Patient he was until he smote the foe, And his reward was ample. Great King was Alfred, though his folk were few; And the Truth-teller was an absolute hero. His will's a poem. See, he leaves his wife Under the chalk downs, ancient lazy Wantage. He leaves her Lamborne, where his memory's rife, July, 1845), as Serle's-place. When we say you will find yourself, we stand corrected; we mean rather, you would, once upon a time, have found yourself, for one step beyond the barber now is chaos. Serle'splace, where Steele once lived, and where the great Kit-Cat Club disported, in those palmy days when poets were ministers of state, has gone to return no more; it has melted into that air- that not very thin air- that now floats over the yawning space devoted to the Law Courts of the future. It is now, in a word, part of the great vacuum that London abhors, which is bounded westward by Clement's-inn, northward by King's College Hospital, and eastward by Bell-yard. So old London is vanishing while we write. The whole reign of Queen Anne used to rise before our eyes when we ventured into that very shy lane, at whose Fleet-street entrance, in the Kit-Cat times, Whig dukes and earls by the half-dozen, not to mention Whig lyrical poets, satirists, and epigrammatists of the highest rank in Parnassus, have descended from their coroneted coaches and their swaying sedan-chairs, venturing boldly into the defile, and laughing till the old gable ends echoed again. Oh, for one gleam of the flambeaux of Halifax or of Dorset on the statues of Temple Bar! Oh, for one moment's eaves-dropping at the lattice of the Trumpet, to hear Dorset repeat his gay farewell song, To all you Ladies now on Land, or Halifax enunciate one of his wise axioms, true as Rochefoucauld's, yet far more kindly! The origin of this King of Clubs no one seems clearly to establish. Ned Ward talks of the City Mouse and Country Mousewritten by Prior and Charles Montague (afterwards Earl of Halifax), to banter And Wickham, where with the Dane in deadly strife, Dryden's Hind and Panther, and published He won no mean advantage. Ten centuries have passed; but Alfred still, Who fights bis foes with tranquil, patient skill, CHRONICLES OF LONDON in 1687-as having "stole into the world out of the witty society of the Kit-Cat." But then who was Ward? The keeper of a punch-house in Fulwood's-rents, Gray'sinn, a reckless party writer, careless about facts, and indifferent to truth; a writer of no more value than the author of Tom and Jerry, who indeed painted with staring colours the London of the Regency, just as Ward did the London of the last north-years of William of Orange. His London Spy was written in 1699, and his testimony about a disputed matter in political literature twelve years before, is next to worthless. We therefore settle down to the old decision (disagreeing with Mr. Charles Knight) that the grand club arose, as nearly as possible, about the year 1699, SERLE'S PLACE, TEMPLE BAR. TURN sharp round to the right ward, by the little cave of the hermit barber who has skilfully fortified himself for several generations (indeed ever since Steele's time) in a crevice of Temple Bar, and you find yourself in that dingy defile, once known to wits, poets, and geniuses of all kinds as Shire-lane, and latterly (since and flourished till about 1720. It was held at the Trumpet in Shire-lane; not in Gray's-inn-lane, as Ned Ward says, or in King-street, Westminster, as a later heretic is inclined to have it. It originated, in all probability, in a weekly dinner given by Jacob Tonson, the great bookseller, who published Dryden's Virgil, purchased a share of Milton's works, and first made Shakespeare accessible to the multitude. This great bookseller, "the left-legged" Jacob of the Dunciad, had a shop at Gray's-inn-gate, in Gray's-inn-lane, from 1697 to 1712, and then removed to opposite Catherine-street in the Strand. Now Ned Ward, who asserts that the first Kit-Cat meetings were at a pudding-pie shop in Gray's-inn-lane, and were then removed to the Fountain Tavern in the Strand, may surely be wrong also in the date of the club's starting. Malone, however, seems inclined to believe the Kit-Cat Club to be synonymous with "the Knights of the Most Noble Order of the Toast," to whom, in 1699, Elkanah Settle, one of Dryden's butts, and the lord mayor's laureate, addressed some complimentary verses. It seems doubtful whether it was the Trumpet (where Steele's club of country twaddlers afterwards met) which was kept by Christopher Katt, the mutton-pie man, at the sign of the Cat and Fiddle. Mr. Diprose, the latest writer on the antiquities of St. Clement's parish, decides that it was, and we like to think it was. The club derived its name, according to the Spectator (No. 9), not from Kit Katt, the pastrycook, who kept the house where the club dined, but from the pies, which derived their wellknown London name from the maker. Pope treats the derivation as doubtful in the following neat and witty epigram upon the club: Whence deathless Kit Katt took his name The fact is simply this, that the name of the alliterative sign, representing the name of the owner, amused the town, and was chosen to designate the pies, and from the pies the club was christened. It seems very doubtful whether Dryden was ever more than a visitor at the club, as he died in May, 1700, and the club cannot be clearly traced back beyond 1699. Dryden's portrait, by Kneller, was certainly among those likenesses of the members painted for Tonson's cottage at Barn Elms, and now preserved by Mr. R. W. Baker, a representative of the Tonson family, at Bayfordbury in Hertfordshire. To judge by the engravings of them by Faber (1735), the year before Tonson died, the club had consisted of forty-eight poets, wits, noblemen, and gentlemen. The proud Duke of Somerset, who was said never to allow his children to sit in his presence, and who gave his orders to his servants by signs, came early. Then followed the Dukes of Richmond, Grafton, and Devonshire, the great Duke of Marlborough, the Duke of Kingston, and, after the accession of George the First, that strange blundering prime minister, the Duke of Newcastle. Of earls there was Dorset, the patron of Prior and Dryden, whom the latter poet absurdly ranked with Shakespeare as the first of English satirical poets, and dubbed “the restorer of poetry, the greatest genius, the truest judge, and the best patron," and whom Rochester described as The best natured man with the worst natured muse. Sunderland, Wharton, that half madman, and the Earl of Manchester, were also members. Among the lords it counted Halifax the wise, and Somers, the good lord chancellor. Bluff, brusque Sir Robert Walpole was of them, and so at various times were Vanbrugh, the wit, dramatist, and architect; Congreve, the most courtly of gentlemen; Halifax's protégé, Granville, "the polite," as Pope calls him, a poet and secretary-of-war to Queen Anne; Addison, the greatest of our English essayists; Steele, that kindly humorist; Garth, the worthy poet and physician; Maynwaring, a poor writer but great conversationalist of the day; Stepney, a secondrate versifier and diplomatist, Arthur Attlie, of whom we know nothing; and Walsh, another small bard and a friend of Dryden, and patron and early adviser of Pope. Prior could hardly have belonged to the club after his perversion. Of the poets in the Kit-Cat Club, Pope used to say that Garth, Vanbrugh, and Congreve, were "the three most honesthearted real good men.' The club in summer dined either at Tonson's villa, at Barn Elms, previously the residence of Cowley, or at the Upper Flask Tavern on Hampstead Heath. It was the smallness of Tonson's rooms at Barn Elms that led to Kneller's inventing that reduced half-length size for portraits still called by artists KitCat. The club-room was standing in 1817, but was soon after joined to a barn and turned into a riding-school. Sir Richard Blackmore, the poetical physician whom Pope and Dryden ridiculed, and who wrote to the rumbling of his carriage-wheels, describes the Kit-Cats on their way to Hampstead: Or when Apollo-like thou'rt pleased to lead The club gradually grew more and more political; the members became louder over their claret for Protestant ascendancy and the glorious House of Hanover. Gradually the wits fell out, and mere rank rose to the top. Pope says the club broke up soon after Lord Mohun, a dissolute rake and duellist of bad reputation, and Lord Berkeley, joined it, to the horror of sober old Jacob Tonson, the club secretary, who saw "they were just going to be ruined." Mohun, perhaps drunk, wantonly broke the gilded emblem off his chair; and Jacob told his friends with a sigh that "the man who would do that would cut a man's throat." In 1725 (George the First), the club had gone. Vanbrugh, in 1727 (George the Second), writing the year before his death to Tonson, says, in his gay pleasant way, "You may believe me when I tell you, you were often talked of, both during the journey and at home, and our former Kit-Cat days were remembered with pleasure; we were one night reckoning who were left, and both Lord Carlisle and Cobham expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter if you can come to town-not as a club-but as old friends that have been of a club, and the best club that ever met." There is a pleasing tone of regret about this, as if Vanbrugh himself felt the sand run low in the glass, and there is a touch of pathos in the idea of the three fashionable club men in the country, sitting down at night, and counting who were left of the friendly tontine. It was the gallant custom of this club once a year to elect by ballot a reigning beauty as a toast. To this queen of their choice the poetical members wrote by turns verses, which were etched with a diamond upon the glasses. The most celebrated of these toasts were the four beautiful daughters of the Duke of Marlborough, Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, generally called the "Little Whig," the pride of that party, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer; Swift's friends, Mrs. Long and Mrs. Barton, the niece of Sir Isaac Newton; the Duchess of Bolton, Lady Carlisle, Lady Wharton, and Mrs. Di. Kirk. A few of these epigram matic verses have been preserved, but they are, to tell the sober truth, for the most part flat as yesterday's champagne. Those written on the "Little Whig" and Lady Mary Churchill, by Lord Halifax, in 1703, are the most tolerable: THE LADY SUNDERLAND. All nature's charms in Sunderland appear, The one on The Lady Mary Churchill is weaker, and even whiggier: Fairest and latest of the beauteous race, Blest with your parent's wit, and her first blooming face, Born with our liberties in William's reign, Your eyes alone that liberty restrain. The words "Little Whig" were foolishly inscribed on the first stone of the new Haymarket Theatre, built by subscription in 1706, and placed under the management of Vanbrugh and Congreve. But the prettiest story of the Kit-Cat toasts is that related by clever, eccentric Lady Mary Wortley Montague, of her own adventure as a child. On the night of the annual election, when lords and wits. were proposing this or that beauty, and "dark eyes, blue eyes,' (6 swan neck," "bosom of Juno," "bust of Dian," and such phrases from the poets were flying about the best room at the Trumpet-as the flasks of Florence and Burgundy were being loudly uncorked, and the guests drew closer for the business of the evening-a whim suddenly seized Evelyn Pierpoint, Duke of Kingston, to nominate his little girl, then not eight years of age, declaring that she was far prettier than any lady on the day's list. The other members demurred, because the rules of the club forbade the election of any beauty whom the members of the club had not seen. "Then you shall see her," cried the duke, and instantly sent a message home to have the little lady dressed in her best, and brought to him at the tavern. She presently appeared from her sedan, shy at first, and wondering. She was received with acclamations, and her claim unanimously allowed, her health was drunk up-standing by all the Whig gentlemen, and her name duly engraved with a diamond upon a drinking glass. She was then passed round, like a bouquet, from the lap of one poet, patriot, or statesman, to the arms of others; was feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with caresses, and, what perhaps already pleased her better than either, heard her wit and beauty loudly extolled on every side. Pleasure, she said, was too poor a word to express her sensations; they amounted to ecstasy; never again, throughout her whole future life, did she pass so happy a day. She thought of that innocent time, perhaps, when Pope lashed her with scorpions; and again in her miserable old age, in Florence, when malice and scandal had mangled her reputation, and rioted on her good name. are extinguished, the glory passed away like the morning cloud, or a dream when one awakens. One story, however, survives, that is highly characteristic of Steele's amiable weaknesses. One grand night, the great Whig festival of the celebration of King William's anniversary, Doctor Hoadley, the worthy Bishop of Bangor, father of Hogarth's great friend, went with those friendly comrades, Steele and Addison, to solemnly drink "the immortal memory." Steele, in his anxiety to preserve William's It is difficult to realise in Jacob Tonson, the friend of Congreve and of Halifax, of Addison and Steele, that hard, grinding bookseller, who complained bitterly to Dry-memory lost his own, and the invisible spirit den that he had only got fourteen hundred and forty-six lines translated from Ovid for fifty guineas, instead of, as he had expected, fifteen hundred and eighteen lines for forty guineas, and who eventually paid him in bad silver. In the faithful secretary, who treasured his forty-eight portraits of club friends at Barn Elms, we lose sight of the little pudgy dealer in books at the Judge's Head at the south-west corner of Chancery-lane, whom Dryden is said to have etched in aqua-fortis and catalogued with "two left legs, leering looks, bull face, and Judas-coloured hair," a rough caricature not forgotten, be sure, by Tonson's Tory enemies of later years. We rather recognise him as Rowe, that solemn writer but merry liver, sketched him in 1714, in an imaginary dialogue between Tonson and Congreve, the author who wished Voltaire to look upon him simply as the fine gentleman. According to Rowe, the indestructible English passion of tuft-hunting spoiled Jacob, for he says: While in your early days of reputation To judge by a letter of Stepney to Tonson, I am the founder of your loved Kit-Cat, A club that gave direction to the state, 'Twas there we first instructed all our youth, To talk profane, and laugh at sacred truth; We taught them how to boast, and rhyme, and bite, To sleep away the day, and drink away the night. Many as were the wise things spoken in Shire-lane, countless as were the jokes that were cracked, there are not many anecdotes extant of the Kit-Cat nights. The lights of wine beguiled him into folly. Presently John Sly, an eccentric hatter of the day, and a most zealous politician, especially when drunk, crawled into the room on his knees, in the old cavalier fashion, to drink a tankard of ale to the immortal memory of the Dutch hero. No one laughed, so Steele, tender even in his liquor, kept whispering to the rather staggered bishop, “Do laugh, it is humanity to laugh." By-and-bye, the bishop prudently withdrawing, Steele, altogether overcome by sympathy with the immortal memory, was discovered among the dead men, packed into a chair, and sent home. Late as it was, nothing would satisfy the wilful man, but being carried to the Bishop of Bangor, no doubt to apologise. At last, by quiet and steady resist ance, the chairmen got Steele home, and, with considerable coaxing and difficulty, up into his bedroom; but there a qualm of kindness and courtesy came over him, and he would insist on seeing them down-stairs. Having done this, with the most tipsy complacency, he returned quietly to bed. Next morning, penitent Steele sent the tolerant bishop the following admirable couplet: Virtue with so much ease on Bangor sits, All faults he pardons, though he none commits. One night, when the good-natured Garth lingered at his club wine, Steele reproved him. Garth had before then, on his first arrival, been talking of the patients who were waiting for him. "Well,” said Garth, pulling out his list of fifteen, "it's no great matter, Dick, after all, whether I see them to-night or not, for nine of them have such bad constitutions not all the physicians in the world can save them, and the other six have such good constitutions that all the physicians in the world could not kill them." In 1817, that clever bookseller, Sir Richard Phillips, made a pilgrimage to Tonson's old villa at Barn Elms, to see the room where the great club had met. The people had never heard of the Kit-Cat, but |