HER MAJESTY'S TOWER.*

IN this, his newest work, Mr. Dixon lays the scene of his story no longer across the Atlantic, but in the very midst of us—in that most unfashionable of all places, the City—a locality nowadays too much neglected by those not struggling in the race for wealth, and at night still and deserted as a city of the dead. Yet here rises the famous pile to which, we are told, cling so many precious associations of the past,—" the must ancient and moat poetic pile in Europe" :— " Seen from the hill outside, the Tower appears to be white wi th age and wrinkled by remorse. The home of our stoutest kings, the grave of our noblest knights, the scene of our gayest revels, the field of our darkest crimes, that edifice speaks at once to the eye and to the soul. Grey keep, green tree, black gate, and frowning battlement stand out apart from all objects far and near them, menacing, picturesque, enchaining; working on the senses like a spell ; and calling us away from our daily mood into a world of romance, like that which we find painted io light and shadow on Shakespeare's page. Set against the Tower of London— with its eight hundred years of historic life, its nineteen hundred years of traditional fame—all other palaces and prisons appear like things of an hour The Tower has an attraction for us akin to that of the house in which we were born, the school in which we were trained. Go where we may, that grim old edifice on the Pool goes with us ; a part of all we know, and of all we are. Put seas between us and the Thames, this Tower will cling to us, like a thing of life. It coleurs Shakespeare's page. It casts a momentary gloom over Bacon's story. . . . Even as to length of days, the Tower has no rival among palaces and prisons."

And Mr. Dixon goes on to prove that all Europe cannotshow anything to compare with this old fortress of ours, and to state that all her palaces and prisons not already swept away are of comparatively modern date, and certainly of fewer important national associations. He then takes us through many interesting chapters descriptive of the growth and internal arrangement of this State Prison ; of the cells and chambers of the seditious and unfortunate ; of the prisoners, their treatment and fate ; of the prison rules, and the Constable's rights. He enlightens us as to the site of the Law Courts, where of old the Pleas of the Crown and the Common Pleas were wont to be heard,—a bit of news to the public, but in fact published several years ago under the direction of the Master of the Rolls in the Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages (Munimenta Londoniensis).

Then we have the Tower Warden's monopoly of poaching with kidels in the Thames and the incessant disturbances that resulted from this injustice ; an account of the construction of the wharf and its adjuncts, its legends, and its busy scenes of everyday life ; there is also much told of the celebrated White Tower, the most ancient part of the whole fortress, and the one most famous for its ten thousand heart-stirring associations of good and evil. And now we come to those illustrious and unfortunate persons who were confined in the Tower from the time of the Conquest to the close of James Vs reign. Mr. Dixon tells us of them all separately, and endeavours by some bright pictorial incidents to enlist our special sympathy for his heroine Queens. Elinor of Provence, Anne Boleyn, the Princess Elizabeth, Lady Jane Grey, and Margaret Lennox, mother of Darnley, all receive their proper share of attention, whilst their troubles and misfortunes are narrated in a manner that secures for them our warmest pity and commiseration.

The following is a touching account of the last moments of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days' Queen, an account, by the way, that appears to be paraphrased from Hollingshed's description of the same subject in Lord de Ros' Memorials of the Tower of London. When the time of her execution drew near,—

" She stood up on her feet [!], and took off her gloves and kerchief, which she gave to Elizabeth Tylney. The Book of Psalms she gave to Thomas Brydges, the Lieutenant's Deputy. Then she untied her gown, and took off her bridal gear. The headsman offered to assist her, but she put his hands gently aside, and drew a white kerchief round her eyes. The veiled figure of the executioner sank at her feet, and begged her forgiveness for what ho had now tato. She whispered in his ear a few soft words of pity and pardon ; and then said to him openly, ' I pray you despatch me quickly.' Kneeling before the block, she felt for it blindly with her open fingers. One who stood by her touched and guided her hand to the place it sought ; when she laid down her noble head, and saying, 'Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,' passed, with the prayer on her lips, into her everlasting rest."

Of the narratives of remarkable men that follow in rapid succession, we may single out for special commendation that of Sir Walter Raleigh, the friend of Shakespeare and of Bacon, as possess ing many new biographical particulars. This hero, of whom so much has before been written, is " the most eminent and most interesting prisoner ever lodged in the Tower eminent by his personal genius, interesting from his political fortune." We have here presented to us a large amount of minute information of his daily life and habits during his prolonged imprisonment, and a good deal of hitherto excluded light is thrown on matters con nected with his political career. But we refer our readers to this graphic and amusing sketch without quotation.

Very frequently, however, Mr. Dixon appears to lose sight of what he has taken in hand, viz., "the throwing light into the cells once occupied by the heroes and heroines of English history ;" he quits the 'rower for long periods at a time, and plunges into history, giving us several detached and well-padded dramas, welcome enough in their proper place, but here stale and unprofitable, and this, too, when we are longing to get back to our friends at the Tower ; it may be that some of the chief personages in this irrelevant history eventually paid the penalty of their crimes on Tower Hill or Tower Green, and it is possible that some of them may have passed a night or two within the Tower walls ; but this is no excuse for inflicting upon us the whole history of their politics and the chain of events that finally brought them to the block. For instance, with the fascination for her memory that all who saw her had for her fair face, Mr. Dixon relates at some length the old, old story of Mary, Queen of Scots,—her intrigues and reverses, her duplicity and love-making, her misfortunes and disgrace, but it does not appear that she ever came near the Tower of London at all, certainly not as a captive. Then, again, there is a mass and maze of names in chap. 14 perfectly bewildering and altogether extraneous. We are told of there being eight heirs to the Crown on the death of Edward VI., and are accordingly furnished with full particulars as to their claims and genealogical lists of the various families, partizans, and collateral branches.

We have also to complain of the numerous inaccuracies of detail that occur throughout the book, more especially in reference to the inscriptions cut on the walls by the prisoners during their confinement in the Tower ; they are not only incorrectly spelt, but otherwise misrepresented ; and of those quoted by Mr. Dixon which we have examined on the walls, there is scarcely one that is not inaccurate in some way or other. Thus, on one jamb of the larger cell in the crypt of St. John's Chapel, Mr. Dixon gives the following :—

T. CULPEPPER OF DARFORD.

It should run thus:—

T. CULPEPER OF AILSFORD—KENT.

Again, in the vaults below the same chapel there is an inscription by one Fisher, a Jesuit father concerned in the Powder Plot ; Mr. Dixon writes it thus

SACRIS VESTIBUS INDUTUS DUM SACRA MYSTJERIA SERVANS, CAPTUS ET IN HOC ANGUSTO CARCERE INCLUSUS. I. FISHER.

Now, it is a curious fact that this inscription tallies precisely with that given by Lord de Ros in his Memorials of the Tower of London, except that the latter writes " R. Fisher," instead of " I. Fisher," and yet both inscriptions are wrongly put and totally at variance with the real one ; the top line is illegible, but the rest of the inscription runs thus :—

VESTIBUS SACRIS IN CUBICULO CARCERIS MEI INVENTIS HIC

INCLUDOR. R. FISHER.

It is, we think, quite plain that Mr. Dixon has not troubled himself much with these facsimiles, but has been content to abide by the authority of others, and we must blame him for being so careless in his reproduction of these handwritings on the pages of his own book. He has said so little of the architectural features of the Tower that we suppose he must have had misgivings as to his power to handle them at all, and this supposition is strengthened by the little he has said. We would ask where are the "marble shafts" and " delicate traceries " alluded to on page 9 ? The shafts are of quite modern date, and made of fire-atone, and as to the traceries, we have been unable to discover that they exist elsewhere than in the author's fertile imagination.

Wheu speaking of the Water Gate (page 21), or St. Thomas's Tower, he tells us that " one of the rooms, fitted up as an oratory, and having a piscina still perfect, is called the Confessor's Chapel." No such thing. The Confessor's Chapel, with the perfect piscina therein, is in the Hall or Wakefield Tower; but there is a little chapel in St. 'Thomas's Tower, in two of the windows of which may be seen portions of two piscine. Mr. Dixon is a little premature, to say the least of it, when he speaks of the Hall Tower (page 17), " now sparkling with jewels ;" the jewels never have been deposited there, and are not likely to be so for many months.

We consider, too, that Mr. Dixon has errors of omission besides those of commission to be laid to his charge. Why should he not tell us something about the famous stake at which so many poor wretches were burnt to death, and which now lies charred to half its original length in the dungeons near the Bloody Tower? why ignore so interesting an inscription as that of ANNE BOULLEN (sic) in the Martin Tower, and why say next to nothing of St. John's Chapel, so famous in history and so noble in its simple Norman architecture ?

It will be seen from the foregoing remarks that if Mr. Dixon was ambitious to obtain for his book the dignity of a history, he must, from want of references, dearth of dates, and reliance on secondhand authorities, have failed to attain to that rank ; but if his aim was only to provide the public with some light historical reading, we consider he has succeeded well, and, on the whole, we can speak very favourably of Mr. Dixon's book.

Except for the errors of detail of the kind alluded to, and that he wanders away too often from the beaten track he has himself prescribed for his readers, and leads thorn into regions of history where they will not care to follow, there is little that we can find fault with. There are here and there bits of writing that we must condemn as flashy or sensational, but for the most part the style is good and the tone commendable. History, biography, and novel are all welded together and reproduced in the form of an historical romance, bright and sparkling in its anecdote, and generous in its display of new and interesting information ; Mr. Dixon is anxious to recognise all the old and familiar traditions of the Tower when he can substantiate them by the authority of the State Papers, and he is especially eager to draw people (and people of higher and more educated taste) to a better conception of all that our great prison has so much reason to be proud of, and to a right appreciation of the exceeding richness of its associations.