ROYAL PROGRESSES, OR VISITS.


The celebrity attendant on a royal visit adhered long to places as well as
persons. A chamber in the decayed tower of Hoghton, in Lancashire, still
bears the name of James the First's room. Elizabeth's apartment, and that
of her maids of honour, are still known at Weston House, in Warwickshire;
her walk "marked by old thorn-bushes," at Hengrave, in Norfolk; near
Harefield, the farm-house where she was welcomed by allegorical personages;
at Bisham Abbey, the well in which she bathed; and at Beddington, in
Surrey, her favourite oak. She often shot with a cross-bow in the paddock
at Oatlands. At Hawsted, in Suffolk, she is reported to have dropped a
silver-handled fan into the moat; and an old approach to Kenninghall Place,
in Norfolk, is called Queen Bess's Lane, because she was scratched by the
brambles in riding through it.--_Quarterly Review_.

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SHAKSPEARE'S MACBETH.


During one of the progresses of James I. on passing the gate of St. John's
College, at Oxford, his majesty was saluted by three youths, representing
the weird sisters (sibyllae,) who, in Latin hexameters, bade the
descendant of Banquo hail, as king of Scotland, king of England, and king
of Ireland; and his queen as daughter, sister, wife, and mother of kings.
The occasion is memorable in dramatic history, if it be true that this
address, or a translation of it, led Shakspeare to write on the story of