her companion crones all in a flutter of excitement about the marriage. The whitewashed walls of their bleak dormitory were ornamented with prints out of the illustrated journals, and hung with festoons and true-lovers' knots of tape and colored paper; and the old bodies had had a good dinner, and the old tongues were chirping and clacking away, all eager, interested, sympathizing; and one very elderly and rheumatic Goody, who is obliged to keep her bed, (and has, I trust, an exaggerated idea of the cares attending on royalty,) said, “Pore thing, pore thing! I pity her.” Yes, even in that dim place there was a little brightness and a quavering huzza, a contribution of a mite subscribed by those dozen poor old widows to the treasure of loyalty with which the nation endows the Prince's bride. Three hundred years ago, when our dread Sovereign Lady Elizabeth came to take possession of her realm and capital city, Holingshed, if you please (whose pleasing history of course you carry about with you), relates in his fourth volume folio, that--“At hir entring the citie, she was of the people received maruellous intierlie, as appeared by the assemblies, praiers, welcommings, cries, and all other signes which argued a woonderfull earnest loue:” and at various halting-places on the royal progress children habited like angels appeared out of allegoric edifices and spoke verses to her-- “Welcome, O Queen, as much as heart can think, Welcome again, as much as tongue can tell, Welcome to joyous tongues and hearts that will not shrink. God thee preserve, we pray, and wish thee ever well! Our new Princess, you may be sure, has also had her Alexandrines, and many minstrels have gone before her singing her praises. Mr. Tupper, who begins in very great force and strength, and who proposes to give her no less than eight hundred thousand welcomes in the first twenty lines of his ode, is not satisfied with this most liberal amount of acclamation, but proposes at the end of his poem a still more magnificent subscription. Thus we begin, “A hundred thousand welcomes, a hundred thousand welcomes.” (In my copy the figures are in the well-known Arabic numerals, but let us have the numbers literally accurate:)--