"Henceforth," sigh'd Arden, "hope, aim, end, confined To one--my heart, if tortured, is resign'd; So lately seen, oh! sure she liveth yet! Once found--oh! strong thine eloquence, Regret! The palace and the coronal, the gauds With which our vanity our will defrauds,-- These may not tempt her, but the simple words 'I love thee still,' will touch on surer chords, And youth rush back with that young melody, To the lone moonlight and the trysting-tree!" As the tale ceased, the fields behind them lay,-- The huge town once more open'd on the way; The whir of wheels, the galliard cavalcade; The crowd of pleasure, and the roar of trade; The solemn abbey soaring through the dun And reeking air, in which sunk slow the sun; The dusky trees, the sultry flakes of green; The haunts where Fashion yawns away the spleen;-- Vista on vista widens to reveal Ease on the wing, and Labour at the wheel! The friends grew silent in that common roar, The Real around them, the Ideal o'er; So the peculiar life of each, the unseen Core of our being--what we are, have been-- The spirit of our memory and our soul Sink from the sight, when merged amidst the whole; Yet atom atom never can absorb, Each drop moves rounded in its separate orb. [J] "One of the most remarkable pictures of ancient manners which has been transmitted to us, is that in which the poet Gower describes the circumstances under which he was commanded by King Richard II.-- 'To make a book after his hest.' The good old rhymer---- ... had taken boat, and upon the broad river he met the king in his stately barge.... The monarch called him on board his own vessel, and desired him to book 'some new thing.'--This was the origin of the Confessio Amantis."--KNIGHT'S _London_, vol. i. art. _The Silent Highway._ [K] "What a picture Hall gives us of the populousness of the Thames, in the story which he tells us of the Archbishop of York (brother to the King-maker), after leaving the widow of Edward IV. in the sanctuary of Westminster, 'sitting below on the rushes all desolate and dismayed,' and when he opened his windows and looked on the Thames, he might see the river full of boats of the Duke of Gloucester his servants, watching that no person should go to sanctuary, nor none should pass unsearched."--Id. ibid. [L] A favourite rendezvous a few years since (and probably even still) for the heroes of that fraternity, more dear to Mercury than to Themis, was held at Devereux Court, occupying a part of the site on which stood the residence of the Knights Templars. [M] The Amrita is the name given by the mythologists of Thibet to the heavenly tree which yields its ambrosial fruits to the gods.