have purchased the property would have cost the Lord Mayor and citizens the large sum of 70002.

About 201. was a considerable receipt at the Blackfriars on any one day. In 1596 the shareholders wished to enlarge their house. In a petition to the Privy Council, they state that the place, "by reason of its having been so long built, hath fallen into great decay; and that, besides the reparation thereof, it has been found necessary to make the same more convenient for the entertainment of auditors coming thereto."

During the reign of Elizabeth the stage became an honourable field for the employment of talent-talent which received its meed of patronage from the Court. The last entry in the books of the Treasurer of the Chamber during the reign of Elizabeth, having reference to Shakspere and his friends of the Blackfriars, is as follows:-"To John Hemynges and the rest of his companie, servaunts to the Lord Chamberleyne, uppon the Councells Warraunte, dated at Whitehall the xxth of Aprill, 1603, for their paines and expences in presentinge before the late Queenes Matie twoe playes, the one uppon St. Stephens day at nighte, and thother upon Candlemas day at nighte, for ech of which they were allowed by way of her Maies rewarde, tenne poundes, amounting in all to xx"." The last of these two performances was given on the 2nd of February (Candlemas day); on the ensuing 24th of March, Elizabeth resigned her earthly crown. Her successor, James, extended a liberal patronage to the Blackfriars company, who performed before that sovereign at Wilton, Hampton Court, and at the Banqueting House at Whitehall. Shakspere's matchless play of Lear" was first published in 1608, the title-page reciting that "It was plaid before the King's Majesty, at Whitehall, uppon S. Stephen's night, in Christmas Hollidaies."

In Camden's "Annals of the Reign of King James the First," it is stated that this theatre fell down in 1623, and that about ninety persons were killed; but from an old tract printed in the same year in which the accident happened (November 5, 1623), it is evident that this is a mistake, and that the room which gave way was in a private house appropriated to the service of religion. That it was not the theatre which fell down is further confirmed by the following lines prefixed to a play called "The Queen," published in 1653:

We dare not say

that Blackfriars we heare, which in this age

Fell, when it was a church, not when a stage;

Or that the Puritans that once dwelt there,

Frayed and thriv'd, though the playhouse were so neare."

The accident here referred to was long after remembered by the name of the Fatal Vespers. The bigoted of the time ascribed the calamity to the displeasure of Heaven against the Roman Catholics, and a violent controversy raged for a considerable time after.

The Blackfriars Theatre was probably pulled down shortly after the permanent closing of the theatres during the Commonwealth.

THE GLOBE THEATRE.

This house, as well as the one just noticed, derives much of its interest from its connection with Shakspere. The performances at the Blackfriars were given for the most part in winter, artificial light being used. In December, 1593, its chief proprietor, or shareholder, Burbage, entered into an agreement with Peter Streete, a carpenter, for the erection of a new theatre for his company. This new house was the Globe, situate on the Bankside-the site now occupied by the extensive brewery of Messrs. Barclay and Perkins. The circumstance which led to this new speculation was probably the growing prosperity of the Lord Chamberlain's servants, who required a larger house and a more public field for exertion. In 1592 and 1593 England was visited by a plague, during which period the theatres were closed; at the end of the last-named year, when the virulence of the epidemic was over, the theatre on the Bankside was no doubt commenced.

The Globe was a public theatre of considerable size, the performances at which took place in summer, and by daylight. It was an hexagonal wooden building, partly open to the weather, and partly thatched with reeds. It may appear singular that, in a climate so changeable as our own, a theatre should have been constructed without a roof; but at the date of the Globe being first opened (1594), not twenty years had elapsed since plays were represented in the open yards of the inns of London.

The name of this house was probably derived from its sign, which was a figure of Atlas, supporting the globe, with the inscription, "Totus mundus agit histrionem" (All the world acts a play). On the 29th of June, 1613, the theatre was destroyed by fire, during the representation of a new play, entitled "All is True." This play, there is reason to believe, was Shakspere's "Henry the Eighth." Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter to his nephew, gives an account of the piece, with the following allusion to the fire:-" Now King Henry, making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain cannons being shot off at his entry, some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming, within less than an hour, the whole house to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that perhaps had broiled him, if he had not, by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with bottle ale."

In the following year (1614) the house was rebuilt, and decorated with more ornament than was bestowed on the former structure. Ben Jonson (who was in the theatre at the time of its destruction) styled the new building the "Glory of the Bank and the Fort of the whole parish;" and Taylor, the "water poet," thus commemorates the improvement :

"As gold is better that 's in fire tried,

So is the Bankside Globe that late was burned;
For where before it had a thatched hide,

Now to a stately theatre 'tis turn'd;

Which is an emblem that great things are won,
By those that dare through greatest dangers run."

Reference has been made to Shakspere's connection with this house. The licence which James the First granted to Laurence Fletcher, William Shakspere, James Burbage, and others (dated May 19, 1603), empowered them "To exercise the facultye of playenge plaies both in the Globe Theatre and through all the realme." Our own great author has himself told us the shape of the Globe in the preliminary chorus to " Henry the Fifth :”— “Pardon, gentles all,

The flat unraised spirit, that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

The genius of Shakspere, however, was not to be confined within this "rude-thatched tabernacle." In the production of his works he received but little aid from "scenery, dresses, and decorations"the mise en scène of the present day; but, as Johnson remarks, "the incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind as dewdrops from a lion's mane."

Taylor, the poet, has been already quoted. He had been a sculler on the Thames, but, although very illiterate, applied himself to composition, in spite of the most disheartening obstacles. It was his original calling which gained for him the title of the "water poet." From his writings we learn the effect produced upon the traffic of the Thames by the erection of theatres upon the Bankside:

"About the year 1596 the players began to play on the Bankside, and to leave playing in London and Middlesex for the most part. The number of watermen, and those that live by and are maintained by them, and by the only labour of the oar and skull, cannot be fewer than 40,000; the cause of the greater half of which multitude hath been the players playing on the Bankside, for I have known three companies, besides the bear parties, at once there, to wit, the Globe, the Rose, and the Swan."

Like the Blackfriars, the Globe Theatre was probably swept away during the period of the Commonwealth.

THE TWO ANGELS.

BY PROFESSOR LONGFELLOW.

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o'er the village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,
The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke.

Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white; But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame, And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed:
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!"

And he, who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognised the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled and haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And knowing whatsoe'er He sent was best, Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, My errand is not Death, but Life," he said;

And ere I answered, passing out of sight

On his celestial embassy he sped.

'T was at thy door, O friend! and not at mine, The angel with the amaranthine wreath, Pausing descended, and with voice divine, Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.

All is of God! If He but wave his hand
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud.

Angels of Life and Death alike are his;

Without his leave they pass no threshold o'er; Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this, Against his messengers to shut the door?

THE ANT-EATER.

WHAT a curious beast! Which is his head, and which is his tail? Surely he has got no mouth! Is that what they call a Python? Such were the exclamations I heard when present at one of the first levées given to the British public by Seignor Ant-Eater. The man who thought he was looking at a Python (it was Monday, and therefore a sixpenny day) had seen outside the building the words "To the Pythons" posted up in gigantic type, the card of the stranger not being at that time ready, and therefore he came fully prepared to see a python, and nothing but a python. Had he looked at the "Times" that morning he would have been aware "that an adult example of the giant Ant-Eater had been added to the collection."

Certainly he has been added to the collection, but the addition will appear to those who don't go at the proper time very much like a bundle of hay tumbled into the corner of the den. The ant-eater receives not the public indiscriminately, he is "at home" only at dinner time, at which time, like most of ourselves, he is wide awake and ready for action. The opening of the keeper's door, and the cracking of sundry egg-shells on the side of his tin soup plate, is his dinner bell, and it is quite astonishing to see how soon these welcome sounds awake him, though but five minutes before all the hists, and the heys, and the umbrella stampings of yon old gentleman seemed only to deepen his lethargic slumbers. At length the clock strikes four and the door opens. At this moment the bundle of hay unfolds itself, and out stalks monstrum horrendum informe ingens, which monster, nevertheless, has been dubbed with the high sounding title of Myrmecophaga jubata, which, being interpreted, meaneth, the Maned AntEater, viz., uúgun, an ant, púyw, to eat. Jubata, from juba, a crest, which little lesson reminds us forcibly of former days when, trembling with fear of the schoolmaster's rose-wood ruler, we mechanically committed to our infantine memory the meaning of the word Geography.

Being a distingué among animals, like great folks among ourselves, he has more names than one. The Indians of Brazil (who rejoice in the crack-jaw appellation of Qjuarani) call him the "Youroumi," which D'Azara tells us signifies in Spanish "Boca Chica," or little mouth. The Portuguese call him "Tamandua," a name equivalent to ant-bear; the French of Cayenne, by the elegant name of Tamanoir; and, lastly, his indulgent keeper at the Zoological, trusting to intimate acquaintanceship, takes the liberty of addressing this many-titled quadruped by the familiar term of "Tit," a name which his highness is condescending enough to answer to," as the dog-dealer would say.

VOL. XXXV.

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