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. 31, 1863.] of, and, above all, who can pay for a pastry palateable to “youths of both sexes,” and men and women of all ages. We know, to our cost, that most enticing shop. We, when young, once treated some dozen of our school companions to a feast of Maids of Honour. A yellow Geordie of Wyon’s make—one that would ring—was in our pocket, and we (not nineteen at the time) were somewhat ostentatious of a coin so little known to schoolboys. Tray upon tray came up of “Maids” in pastry. Such Scylla and Charybdis appetites we never remember to have seen. Brave old Dando did not dismiss newly-opened oysters more summarily than Mr. W—ie’s schoolboys dismissed the inviting banquet. Bath buns? pooh! Chelsea buns? pooh! Banbury cakes? pooh! Shrewsbury cakes? pooh! Scotch buns? Sally Luns? nonsense! Nought can compare with the Maids of Honour manufactured and sold at Richmond. Thy cakes, O Richmond! will not bear carrying; they must be eaten on the spot. Ask any schoolboy, if after a determined resolution to take a shilling’s-worth of Maids of Honour home to dear mamma, or sister Mary, he has ever reached home with them intact, or at all. They will not cross the Thames at Kew Bridge without turning sour (inquire of any schoolboy), and at Turnham Green they are fit only for the pigs. Exquisitely delicate is this divine pastry, and not to be made by uneducated hands. The original receipt is locked in an iron box, not unlike that in Westminster Abbey wherein are kept the standards for the once well-known Trial of the Pix. The descent of this box is curious. It was given to Anne Boleyn, when Maid of Honour, and the article itself was first tasted—devoured we should say—by Henry Tudor, better known as King Henry the Eighth, when, at Reading in Berkshire, he knighted that portion of John Bull known till then as Loin alone, but now known wherever genuine English beef is to be had, as “Sir Loin.”

“Arise, Sir Loin,” cried the King, with his sword-of-state carving-knife, duly dubbing the loin, and helping himself at the same time, right royally and merrily, to a third, or very possibly a fourth helping. He quaffed, at the same time, from a goblet of gold, in sack of the best, a health to fair Anne Boleyn, Maid of Honour to his sister, Mary Tudor, wife to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; and as he led her to the withdrawing chamber, he is known to have used these Shakespearian words: “I were unmannerly to take thee out, and not to kiss thee.” Charles the Second would have acted in the same right-royal manner, and who could have found fault with him? Who finds fault with bluff King Harry? Holbein has left us an ample apology for his seeming rudeness.

The noblest captain in the British fleet

Might envy William’s lips those kisses sweet.

Lord Chesterfield, if we remember rightly, has said nothing by way of disapprobation of such a course in his Letters of advice to his illegitimate and ill-bred son.

And here it is proper to relate a little incident, for which fair authority may be found; one leading to far greater results than the loss of Belinda’s hair in Pope’s “Rape of the Lock.” Miss Anne Boleyn (we ask pardon of antiquaries for the designation) was observed by King Harry on this Reading progress seated on a dais, with a silver dish of cheese-cakes, or tartlets, before her and her honourable fellows. The cakes were disappearing, as good cakes will disappear when young ladies are alone. The king asked what they were eating. No one knew. Let them be called, said “the Defender of the Faith,” Maids of Honour, and Maids of Honour they were then called, and are happily so called to this day. If any one has a doubt of the truthfulness of this origin of so appetite-provoking a name they are at liberty to ask Sylvanus Urban, or the editor of “Notes and Queries” in person, for a more trustworthy solution.

We have been unable to compile a satisfactory catalogue of the Maids of HonoursHonour [sic]—from Queen Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, to Queen Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Beatson should have had one, and so should Haydn in his “Book of Dignities.” Who waited on Adeliza, on Berengaria, on Eleanor of Castille, on Philippa of Hainault, Margaret of Anjou, or Katherine of Arragon, we are unable to tell. We are at a like loss for the names of the fair attendants upon Bloody Mary and Good Queen Bess. Nearer our own time, we shall be found more at home with the names of the fair attendants upon Anne of Denmark, Henrietta of France, Catherine of Portugal, Mary of Modena, Anne Hyde, the two Carolines, old Queen Charlotte, the still regretted Queen Adelaide, and our Gracious Queen—whom God long preserve. Honoured names are among them—recalling fair faces of noble families—fair girls budding into future duchesses, the destined transmitters of many a lovely face, or doomed to die unmarried without even the brevet privilege (to be explained hereafter) of acting as married women. Anne Boleyn herself (the mother of Queen Elizabeth) was a Maid of Honour,

Anne Hyde, the mother of two queens—Queen Mary and Queen Anne—was once a Maid of Honour. Ladies of the Bedchamber—we care not for them: for Mistresses of the Robes we care still less: but for the “Maids of Honour” to our Queens we have a kind of sneaking affection—fast forming into “right honourable love,” the more we learn about them.

The Maids of Honour to our Queens have always been a laughing and light hearted race. The earliest account we have of them is a little incident provocative of laughter. The Maids of Honour to Eleanor of Castille tossed King Edward the First in a blanket. The hammer of the Scottish nation was tossed in a blanket by a parcel of lasses. What a picture for Frith or Maclise! These Maids of Honour were always pert, giggling, and boisterous girls. The wife of Sir Walter Raleigh, the fair Elizabeth Throgmorton, one of Queen Bess’s maids, “delighted much” in relating some of the knavish tricks wrought among the maids by Sir Walter himself when young, and when there was no visionary El Dorado flitting falsely before his eyes. The girls were eternally at their tricks, in spite of the scolding looks and tongues of the