Such is the story of “Master Guy;” a story whose incidents have doubtless meaning in them, but which were never turned to more practical purpose than when they were employed to support a tottering altar and a fallen throne. Reader, let us drink to the immortal memory of MASTER GUY; and having seen what sort of man he was whom the king delighted to honor, let us see what honors were instituted by kings for other deserving men. GARTERIANA. “Honor! Your own worth before Hath been sufficient preparation.”--_The Maid’s Revenge._ A brief sketch of the history of the foundation of the Order of the Garter will be found in another page. Confining myself here to anecdotical detail, I will commence by observing, that in former times, no Knight could be absent from two consecutive feasts of the order, without being fined in a jewel, which he was to offer at St. George’s altar. The fine was to be doubled every year, until he had made atonement. Further, every knight was bound to wear the Garter in public, wherever he might be, on pain of a mulct of half a mark. Equally obligatory was it on the knight, in whatever part of the world he was residing, or however he was engaged, to wear the sanguine mantle of the order from the eve of St. George till vesper-time on the morrow of the festival. Some of the chevaliers who were in distant lands must have caused as much surprise by their costume, as a Blue-coat boy does, wandering in his strangely-colored garb, in the streets of Paris. I need not allude to the absurd consequence which would attend the enforcing of this arrangement in our own days. Hunting is generally over before the eve of St. George’s day, and therefore a robed Knight of the Garter could never be seen taking a double fence, ditch and rail, at the tail of the “Melton Mowbray.” But even the sight of half a dozen of them riding down Parliament street at the period in question, would hardly be a stranger spectacle. A slight money offering of a penny exempted any rather loose-principled knight from attending divine service at St. George’s Chapel when he was in or near Windsor. When a knight died, all his surviving comrades were put to the expense of causing a certain number of masses to be said for his soul. The sovereign-lord of the order had one thousand masses chanted in furtherance of his rescue from purgatory. There was a graduated scale through the various ranks till the knight-bachelor was come to. For him, only one hundred masses were put up. This proves either that the knight’s soul was not so difficult of deliverance from what Prince Gorschakoff would call the “feu d’enfer,” or that the King’s was so heavily pressed to the lowest depths of purgatory by its crimes, that it required a decupled effort before it could be rescued.