by the swordsmen. Horrible were the cries, and desperate the struggles, of the devoted wretches during this butchery. In a quarter of an hour upwards of a thousand corses strewed the ground.

Early next day a sufficient number of rafts were completed for the passage of the first division, which crossing effected a landing simultaneously with an attack of the Roman cavalry, who had swam the river higher up, upon the enemy's flank. The contest for some time was obdurate; but the Britons, having lost many men, retreated to the neighbouring woods. The remainder of the army then rapidly passed the Sabina. Sitting by the fires of their intrenched camp that night, the soldiers conversed respecting the events of the day, chiefly of the slaughter of the prisoners, which under less dangerous and imperative circumstances would have awakened discontent. The men of the ninth legion, who had executed the work, however, endeavoured to make the loss so resulting to their comrades a subject of jest, at the same time consoling them by picturing the prospects presented by the campaign in which they were about to engage, in which they were certain of trebling the number of prisoners thus sacrificed to circumstances. Presently good feeling being thus restored, they began to applaud the rapidity with which the soldiers of the ninth had executed the order. "In ten minutes," said a soldier, "a thousand covered the ground. I never saw an order SO neatly and swiftly obeyed; not a man escaped." "Not a man indeed escaped," another said; "but a woman did a girl who was a priestess of the Druids, or something of that sort, whom we took at Mona. She was named Esylth." "A girl," said a third; "that's not of any consequence, for-”

Here a trumpet sounded, signalling rest, and while the soldiers disposed themselves to sleep, the sentinels assumed their positions for the night along the ramparts and through the streets of the camp.

The next and two ensuing days the Roman army pushed forward by rapid marches, through the heart of the country, frequently interrupted by skirmishes with the enemy, and at length arrived at a point on the river

Thamesis, some twenty miles northwest of Lindun. Here they halted and encamped until preparations were completed for passing the river, which was narrow at this place. Thus arrived within the Roman territory, numbers of confederates flocked to the camp, whose testimony confirmed the accounts hitherto received of the destruction of the colonial towns, the horrors perpetrated by the British revolters, and the constantly increasing multitudes which swelled the army of Buoadicea. Camolodunum and Verulanum were, it was said, now mere heaps of ashes; thousands of corpses nailed to crosses, hung and gibbeted, marked the course of the roads leading thence to Lindun, upon which and the other cities of the south the barbarian army was already preparing to descend. Seutonius Paulinus resolved to march upon and occupy Lindun. Meanwhile let us see what was taking place in that native capital of Celtic Britain.

LINDUN.

"The army have doubtless been severely harassed during their march, as the populations through which they passed are up in arms," said a Roman soldier-one of many, who, escaping from Verulanum, had reached Lindun. "In a few days at furthest they must arrive; what think you ?" "If they have not been surrounded and cut to pieces," returned his comrade. "Of course the barbarians have attempted to intercept them."

"Pshaw," returned the first; first; "little fear of that. With the contingents which have been ordered to join them from the camp at Caerleon and other stations, the General Paulinus must have at least a legion and a half under his command."

"That is nine thousand men," said a rich merchant of Gaul; "but what is the number of the enemy? They have come from the north in hundreds of thousands."

"Half armed barbarians," said the Roman, contemptuously.

"Did you find them so at Verulanum and Camolodunum?"

"Ay, but then, for each of us, there were a thousand of them. They came upon us like a deluge, in which the best swimmer had little chance; but had we been a thousand in number, we would have beaten the savages, and preserved the town."

"The Britons fight well," said the Gaul, doubtfully.

"Better than the Gauls," returned the Roman. "Wait until the general arrives, then you will see what mince meat we'll make of this herd of beasts."

"Faith I hope so," said the Gaul, "for I have four vessels at anchor yonder"-and he pointed to the opposite side of the river" and more money's worth stored in the town than I'd care to lose."

"Hownear is the enemy's camp?" inquired the soldier of a confederate Briton, who, like the rest of the group, was looking earnestly westward along the course of the river.

"They have several camps," the latter said. "The nearest is in the neighbourhood of Verulanium, where the host who took the town are enjoying the plunder, drinking and carousing, as is their custom."

"Ay," interrupted the Roman, "those wild beasts prefer plunder to fighting. When on my way hither, as I was passing at night through a wood, I came upon a company of them. The ground around the fire by which they sate was covered with gold plate, purple robes, and what not; but though they had plenty of jewelled cups, what do you suppose were their drinking vessels? why, skulls, which they dipped ever and anon into a huge vessel of wine, and with which they pledged each other, while one of the minstrels chanted a war song, in whose chorus the drunken herd roared at times as if they were mad." "That tribe must have come from the far north," said the confederate. "It is one of their usages to drink from the skulls of their enemy after battle; but that is nothing. At Camolodunum I'm told some of the enemy roasted the hearts of several Roman ladies of rank, and devoured them; for they were naturally excited, you understand, by what some of the veterans and the slaves of the colony did in Queen Buoadicea's country. But I've known some of your men, a body of them, who were cut off in north-western Gaul, use the same food when starving. Whenever they could take a prisoner in a sally, they roasted and eat him."

"All fair under the circumstances,"

said the Roman, indifferently; "but where are the other camps of the barbarians?"

"There is one in the territory of the Cornavans, but the greatest is stationed about fifty miles south. There are at least two hundred and fifty thousand men there who crossed the river some days since. Buoadicea leads them, and except Paulinus comes up in time, I I fear fea not one of the southern cities will escape. Romans and confederates will share the same fate."

"Would that the army had arrived," broke from many of the group; are there no tidings? All the citizens are armed, but what are they among the vast multitudes which are hemming them in on all sides? Has any scout come from the west lately?"

"Yes, a soldier has just galloped into the town," said a confederate Briton, who at this moment joined the group.

"And the army," cried many voices.

"Is crossing the river some twenty miles up yonder."

The fort, on the battlements of which this colloquy took place, occupied the summit of a small hill, upon which the Tower of London now stands. The prospect which it commanded upon this early winter day, in the year 61 A.D., was not without interest to those who take pleasure in picturing the original site of the great capital of commerce and civilization.

Below the hill fort which was the highest of the three, rose two others on the areas now known as Ludgate and Cornhill-the first a work of Roman, the other of British architecture. At the foot of each a large village was seen, the houses, some built of stone, some of wood, and many of clay; several of the former were built in Roman style, others in British-in other words, the latter houses which were of considerable size were round, with conical straw roofs, backed by a congeries of grain magazines and cattle sheds. A continuous street thus irregularly extended from the highest fort to that rising from the next elevation westward, along the base of which a small river issuing from the fields and marshes to the north, flowed into the Thamesis.

Thence a third town straggled along

the descent, until it was terminated by clumps of trees and patches of fen field at the curve of the river.

The Thamesis, covered with Gaulish and Iberian vessels and innumerable boats, shining in the sun, spread broad, blue, and bright beneath, winding amid its many shoals and islands. Looking eastward at some distance one would have perceived a spacious isolated mass of sand, patched in the centre with green fields and boscage (the Isle of Dogs). On the opposite side, to the east of the southern town also, another island of similar appearance embracing the area now covered by the Bermondsey district. Looking westward, just at the turn of the river, a peninsula projected, thickly wooded, along whose fresh, white sanded shores numerous fishing boats lay stranded; while through the foliage and branches above gleamed the straw-thatched cots of a fishing village, the original site of Charingcross. As the observer followed the course of the river as it flowed radiantly westward, he recognised many other islands, small and large; some mere banks of sand, others covered with emerald verdure, among which the most considerable was one whose pebbly shores were shaded with trees, and which, like others more distant, has long been re-united to the mainland.*

The town commencing around the highest of the fort hills on the northern bank of the Thamesis, extended along the elevated line of ground (now covered by Cornhill, Cheapside), joined the second, grouped around the second hill (Ludgate), and extended in the form of a British village nearly to the base of the above-named peninsula. Along this course ran a great highway, from which principal street many others diverged through the valley to the right, bordered by a stretch of marshland (Finsbury, Moorfields). Beyond this, wide spaces of marshland, dotted with wood, extended to the east, and thick forest to the north and west, whose semicircular shores beginning in the modern city regions of Whitechapel, Holborn, &c., curved away until they joined the

woods by the river side, and extended, with intervals of meadow (as on the area of Camden-town), over the now thickly-populated north and west, to the line of the horizon.

Along the leading streets of the north town the mansions of the richer merchants were of great size, and built for the most part of brick and wood. Their lower fronts occupied by bazaars, in which most of the commodities and manufactures of Gaul, Spain, Italy, Egypt, and Asia, were exhibited. Many of those great emporiums were built in Roman fashion, with fronting colonnades of wood and stone, and displayed within numerous chambers as richly paved, painted, decorated, and furnished, as in the Gallic and Iberian coast cities, and even in Rome itself. Such mansions, however, were intervalled here and there by the older British houses, circular, with conical thatch of straw, and embankments toward the river, which washed the sandy shores at the foot of the elevated ridge of ground on which they stood, and which in some places sloped downward in gardens, or was covered with sheds for cattle or merchandise.

Between the two hills (Tower and Ludgate), there was an open marketplace, around which stood sormal public buildings, and from which roads diverged to the east and north, both of which were dotted at the termination of the houses in each direction, by lines of sepulchres.

The streets were thronged with a motley population in varied garb. There was seen the gaudy costume of the Gaul, delighting in scarlet and purple, profusely decorated with gold; the Roman toga and lacerna, the latter of many hues; the black woollen cloak of the Briton; the yellow cloak of the Celt from the neighbouring island, Eire; the plaided scarf and tunic of the northern tribes bordering on the forest of Cellydon. Merchants and mariners, soldiers, agriculturists, artisans, and women gaily attired, thronged the streets and shops of this rich and animated emporium of ancient Briton, which, from its agreeable situation, and the pleasures it afforded, formed the most attractive resort of the Romans, of foreigners, and the confederates of Rome in those days. Seen from the fort indeed, the prospect of the town spreading beneath, with its houses painted in varied and lively colours, the diverse dresses of its population, the broad azure river covered with innumerable vessels and boats, from the high-decked merchantman of Betica, Massilia, Egypt, and Italy, to the long open ship of the Scythian and skin-covered wicker skiff of the Briton-the leagues of surrounding forest changing into the yellow and scarlet of late autumn-the meadows covered with cattle, and intersected by glittering streams-the Town on the opposite bank of the river, which, commencing immediately opposite the fort, extended for a considerable distance (over the area of Southwark, Newington, Walworth, and Lambeth), with its irregular streets of brightcoloured houses, its forum, theatre, and temples, its high roads reaching

thence away across the wooded uplands of Surrey-these with the bright cloudless sky above, formed a panorama full of animation and wild beauty. Such an impression, however, would have vanished on descending to witness that of life itself in the streets, where every face wore an expression of care, anxiety, gloomy anticipation, and terror.

armour

The group collected on the top of the fort had gazed but a brief period westward, when suddenly a cry of joy and pride rung through the air, as they perceived the sheen of through the woods in that direction. It was the vanguard of the army. Military music remote, but ardourinspiring, was soon heard, and soon the long lines of cavalry squadron and battalions of footmen debouching along the great road, with standards and eagles, spear-tops and armour, blazing in the sunshine, approached Lindun.

THE readers of the UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE are familiar with the query which forms the title of these observations, and of one of the last published of the novels of the day. It possesses for them so much less interest than for others that they are able to supply the answer: they know Who the Heir is, and there is no riddle to be solved. Nevertheless, we are bold to say that they will be glad to see that the story which was so pleasing to them during its monthly progress has * been put in the more convenient shape, for another circle of readers, of the ordinary three-volume tale, and glad also to find such a reference to it in the critical department of the MAGAZINE as may revive their recollection of its principal features, and give the author such credit as in honesty he may appear to deserve.

This, we believe, is Mr. Mortimer Collins's first effort as a novelist. Of what he has done as a poet it is unnecessary to speak. Who is not familiar with

the charming ballads, odes, and lighter pieces of his which have from time to time been published in these pages and in those of other magazines?poems proving him so decidedly to be possessed of all those qualities and powers which are "born, not made ?" We do not know if his pieces have been printed in a collected form, but we are quite certain that when they are they will be regarded as poetry of no common order. The conception of many, even of the shortest of them, is most striking, and they have that polished completeness which to the cultivated taste must seem so high a merit. The language is particularly free, rich, and felicitous; the figures are quaint and equally remarkable for fulness of meaning and warmth and variety of colour. It was to be assumed that when Mr. Mortimer Collins aimed at a place among the tale-writers, he would bring to his task an order of gifts to which few of the race of modern novelists have any pretension: hisstyle would be chaste and elevated; his descriptions of scenery would be n natural,

and not of the stereotyped sort to be found in nine out of every ten novels thrown upon the tables of the circulating libraries from year to year; Mis satire would be clever; hissketches of character done with purity and force; and his reflections of a philosophical order far above the commonplace profound of a meaner class of workmen. But these necessary elements of success in the higher walks even of novel-writing at the present day would not have made Mr. Collins's "Who is the Heir" what we believe it to be, if it were weak in the essential of a good plot. The first, second, and third requisite in a "first-rate novel," as readers now judge, is story. If it have the other kinds of merit, so much the better: these will not fail to be appreciated by the more select audience for whose delicate eye and ear the writer of genius shapes his finest phrases and retouches again and again his choicest passages. But even works very indifferent, or absolutely disgraceful in point of style, whose landscapes are daubs, whose character-sketches are caricatures, will be read everywhere, chiefly by young ladies-who still constitute, much as puritanism has relaxed in the matter of light reading, four-fifths of the novelperusing public-if only the mystery is well devised, the web of complications subtly woven and sufficiently exciting, and the denouement sudden and effective. It might be invidious to refer to particular instances of superior works which fell flat from being deficient in materials for awaking expectation, and holding the reader in suspense; and to name, on the other hand, the unpardonably careless works in point of composition, and even of plan in minor matters, which a cleverly-contrived plot has carried off successfully, would be to fill a page almost with the titles of many of the favourites of some years past. Nay, stories of very questionable moral tendency have become, despite that blemish, popular on account of the audacity of the startling combinations from which they

derived all their interest.

This straining for high effect in the matter of a plot may be considered

fatal to real excellence. It certainly depraves the taste of readers. But, on the other hand, the staid and tame novel which satisfied a former generation could not be expected to take any hold upon the sympathies of an age so full of bustle and enterprise, so quick and daring, so familiar with dangers and with tragedies, so frequently in contact with great crimes and amazing turns of fortune -facts stranger than fiction-as that we live in. The novel ought to go a little beyond every day's occurrences: at present to keep abreast of them in the romantic is almost as much as the novelist can do by the utmost licence he may give to his imagination.

But this is to stray from our intention of noticing the original and really effective plot of "Who is the Heir?" Mr. Mortimer Collins tells the life-story of the three Mauleverers-the father, and Hugh and Harry his sons. Hugh senior, the proud head of an ancient house, had married a second time the governess of a neighbouring clergyman. It was a proverb in the family that the Mauleverers never managed their marriages well, and this case was no exception. When Edith Sullivan became mistress of the Mauleverer mansion, Hugh the younger was as old as his stepmother, and became a cause of quarrel. Edith, after a violent scene, disappeared, leaving an infant Harry behind her; and twenty years afterwards, when the story begins, she has not returned, or been heard of, and old Mauleverer is dreaming of another marriage to some fair one of sunny Italy. He is also arranging marriages for his sons, which fate malignantly thwarts. But to show how all the perplexity and trouble arose, and how things finally fell out, it is necessary to go back before the date of the Mauleverer in question a good many years, to the days of his predecessor.

"The Hugh Mauleverer of that date was a disappointed man in one regard. He had but one child, a daughter, Edith. Unluckily all the ladies of the Mauleverer family had been from time immemorial self-willed, capricious, verily desperate when thwarted. Now, Hugh thought it the most natural, and indeed necessary, thing in the world that his daughter should marry his younger brother's son-no less a