of all means of defence, a happier and quieter state of social life, when that stately pile was raised : there it is, with its courtyard, its galleries, and, more than all, with its large and lofty hall. It requires no great effort of imagination to picture to ourselves a gallant party issuing forth from its wide portals ; the knight on his handsome steed, his lady on her palfrey, with esquire and page and groom and falconer, to watch the hawk and the heron battling together in the sky ; nor is it difficult to fancy them, on their return, carousing in that great hall, — the chieftains seated at the high table, and their kinsmen and retainers occupying the humbler places according to their ranks. All this has an air of splendour not without refinement about it, but what was the reality?¹ An envoy from Venice, who came to England at the close of the fifteenth century, has let us into many secrets as to our social condition at that tune : though he found many things to admire, — though he spoke of us as being "essentially polite in our language, which, though derived from the German, had lost its natural harshness, and was pleasing in its sound," — though he mentions a trait of our countrymen which we should little have expected in them, that "in addition to their civil speeches, they have the incredible courtesy of remaining with their heads uncovered with an admirable grace, whilst they talk to each other," — though he gives us credit for possessing good understandings, and a ready aptitude of acquiring anything to which we applied our minds, — evidently considered us in many essential points an ignorant, illiterate, and barbarous people ; and well he might, for he came from Italy, a nation which then far surpassed us in civilisation and refinement, in arts, 
   (continued from page 118) Leighton. A. plain, blue, broken stone, inserted in the wall of the church, was till very lately the only monument raised to his memory ; one more worthy of him has been lately placed there.
    ¹  'Italian Relation of England,' published by the Camden Society.