Inner Temple garden, while the shadow fell, dark as the night it heralded, on the turf below. Though in the heart of a vast city, it was impossible to imagine a more perfect picture of repose than was here presented. Not a creature was to be seen; the birds rested on the boughs, undisturbed by a fluttering wing, or a snatch of song. There were red and white roses growing around: but the rival flowers were unstirred by even a breath of wind; they were still as the ashes of the once stirring spirits that gathered them as badges for their fatal warfare. Strange that the flower so peculiarly the lover's own, around which hung the daintiest conceits of poesy, on which the eye lingers, to dream of the cheek it holds loveliest on earth—strange that the rose should have been sign for the fiercest struggle ever urged by party-strife.—a strife that laid desolate the fair fields of England for so many years. And yet, how much chivalric association has Shakespeare flung around their bloom! But for him, the wars of the "rival houses" would be but obscure chronicles of inglorious
