is nothing, surely, that paints one side of the Middle Ages more vividly
than this fact that fine people lived in the same house with their
prisoners, and kept the key in their pocket. Fancy the young ladies of the
family working tapestry in their "bower" with the knowledge that at the
bottom of the corkscrew staircase one of their papa's enemies was sitting
month after month in mouldy midnight! But Ludlow Castle has brighter
associations than these, the chief of which I should have mentioned at the
outset. It was for a long period the official residence of the
governors--the "lords presidents" they were called--of the Marches of
Wales, and it was in the days of its presidential splendor that Milton's
_Comus_ was acted in the great hall. Wandering about in shady corners of
the ruin, it is the echo of that enchanting verse that we should try to
catch, and not the faint groans of some encaverned malefactor. Other verse
was also produced at Ludlow--verse, however, of a less sonorous quality. A
portion of Samuel Butler's _Hudibras_ was composed there. Let me add that
the traveller who spends a morning at Ludlow will naturally have come
thither from Shrewsbury, of which place I have left myself no space to
speak, though it is worth, and well worth, an allusion. Shrewsbury is a
museum of beautiful old gabled, cross-timbered house-fronts.

H. JAMES, JR.




LITTLE LIZAY.


Alston was a Virginia slave--a tall, well-built half-breed, in whom the
white blood dominated the black. When about thirty-seven years of age he