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THE LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN.

they looked exactly like two respectable superannuated old clergymen." (The "black beaver N the June No. of LONG AGO it was stated that men's hats," as the writer rather curiously calls Plâs Newydd, the residence of the "Ladies of them, were, it must be remembered, then and until Llangollen," was advertised for sale. "The Ladies recently the custom of the country.) Matthews of Llangollen!" It is a story of "long ago"-so accepted their pressing invitation, and paid them a long ago, that perhaps the memories of our readers visit, which he humorously describes in a letter will bear a little refreshing on the subject. Lady dated October 24th. Among other visitors, they Eleanor Charlotte Butler, daughter of the sixteenth entertained Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Lockhart, Earl of Ormond, was born in Ireland in the year 1739. Among the friends of her youth was a child some sixteen years her junior, named Sarah Ponsonby. A most close and romantic attachment grew up between the two, so that the idea of a possible separation became unendurable to both. This close attachment was viewed with great disfavour by the Ormond family, who attributed to it Lady Eleanor's peremptory rejection of five successive and eligible offers of marriage, and an attempt was made to separate them. In vain! They eloped were tracked — overtaken― and brought back. A short time afterwards, however, they disappeared again, together with a female servant, and the place of their retreat was not discovered for some years.

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Miss Seward, Madame de Genlis, and in fact all the most eminent of the tourists who in those days risked the dangers of a trip to Llangollen. Perhaps the most interesting description of the ladies and their surroundings is preserved in the "Tour of a German Prince" (Puckler Maskau, of Prussia), who visited them in 1828. Lady Eleanor was then a short, robust woman" of eighty-three- Miss Ponsonby "a tall and imposing personage" of seventy-four. (The respective ages are thus given by the Prince, who was clearly misinformed.) "No one who is presentable," he adds, " travels in Wales without an introduction to them;" but not having provided himself with one, he determined "to storm the cottage;" but on the simple presentation of his card, the garrison surrendered at discretion, The minds of the simple villagers of Llangollen, and he became a welcome guest. His description in North Wales, were much exercised nearly a hun- of "the ladies" in their old age calls up a strange dred years ago by the sudden appearance in their picture before our eyes:-" Both wore their still midst of three mysterious female strangers. Mr. abundant hair, combed straight back and powdered, Lockhart, on authority which is open to doubt, says a round man's hat" (this is as bad as Matthews' that Miss Ponsonby was dressed "in the garb of a smart footman, in buckskin breeches;" scandal was rife and busy, and it was many years before the unostentatious charities of the two ladies silenced the wicked tongue of slander.

But now

"black beaver men's hats"), "a man's cravat and waistcoat; but, in the place of inexpressibles, a short petticoat and boots--the whole covered by a coat of blue cloth, of a cut quite peculiar—a sort of middle term between a man's coat and a lady's Meanwhile they had purchased the estate and riding-habit. Over this Lady Eleanor wore, first, caused a cottage to be built after their own tastes, the Grand Cordon of the Order of St. Louis across surrounded by gardens, pleasure-grounds, rural her shoulders; secondly, the same order around her walks, grottoes, temples, conservatories, rustic neck; thirdly, the small cross of the same to her bridges, and ornamented with wood carvings button-hole; and, pour comble de gloire, a golden and other perhaps somewhat incongruous adorn- lily, of nearly the natural size, as a star-all, as she ments. On the whole, it was, however, a delightful said, presents of the Bourbon family. So far the retreat, although our two heroines ceased in a few whole effect was somewhat ludicrous. years to be recluses in the strict sense of the word. you must imagine both ladies with that agreeable They never, it is true, slept from home, but they aisance-that air of the world of the ancien régime, received and returned visits, and kept up a lively courteous and entertaining, without the slightest correspondence with the principal celebrities of the affectation, speaking French as well as any Englishperiod. In 1820, they even travelled as far as woman of my acquaintance; and above all with Oswestry to see a performance of the elder Mat- that essentially polite, unconstrained, and simply thews, returning home, a distance of fourteen miles, cheerful manner of the good society of that day, after the close of the theatre at twelve o'clock. which, in our serious hard-working age of business, The celebrated comedian thus describes them in a appears to be going to utter decay. I was really letter to his wife, dated September 4th, 1820:- affected with a melancholy sort of pleasure in con"As they are seated, there is not one point to dis- templating it in the persons of the amiable old tinguish them from men. The dressing and pow- ladies who are among the last of its living repredering of the hair; their well-starched neck-cloths; sentatives, nor could I witness without lively symthe upper part of their habits, which they always pathy the unremitting, natural, and affectionate wear, even at a dinner-party, made precisely like attention with which the younger treated her somemen's coats; and regular black beaver men's hats, what infirmer friend, and anticipated all her wants."

*

ANCIENT CUSTOMS OF THE LAND OF
BÉARN.

* "Not only the venerable ladies, but their house was full of interest; indeed it contained some real treasures. There is scarcely a remarkable person of the last half century who has A CONTEMPORARY of Shakespeare not sent them a portrait, or some other curiosity or with the very type of whose plays his antique, as a token of remembrance. The collec- translations of ponderous chronicles are comtion of these, a well-furnished library, a delightful posed-bewails the birth and early life of Henry situation, an equable, tranquil life, and perfect the Fourth of France, in that he had then a friendship and union-these have been their pos- fate so " abject and contemptible as to be shut sessions; and, if we may judge by their robust old up in the Pyrenean dens or grottes." Yet that age, and their cheerful temper, they have not life in the rugged highland region fitted the chosen amiss." vert galant for his after hardships.

Death was as tender as Time had been with the good old ladies, and did not attack the happy cottage till June 2nd, 1829, when he carried off Lady Eleanor Butler at the ripe old age of ninety. Two years and a half afterwards, Miss Ponsonby, who had lived in strict seclusion after her friend's death, succumbed to the effects of grief, and died on the 9th of December, 1831, aged seventy-six. They both lie in the churchyard of Llangollen, under a stone monument bearing touching testimony to their long friendship, and also recording the long-previous death of the faithful domestic who accompanied them from Ireland, Mary Carryl, who died on the 22nd of November, 1809. On their death the cottage and estate came into the hands of the far-famed auctioneer, George Robins, for disposal by public sale. The bill and catalogue are before us, and are couched in the florid style which Robins had made his own. They are too long to reprint, but we observe as an indication that the two "recluses" were not above an appreciation of the creature comforts, that their cellar comprised old Port, Sherry, Madeira, Lisbon, Bucellas, Vidoria, Mareschino, Noyeau, Eau de la Reine, and other estimable Liqueurs."

The property and many of the relics were purchased by two friends of the deceased, Miss Lolly and Miss Andrew, who, to some extent, copied their mode of life; but as the shrubs grew into trees and many of the alterations and "improvements" were conceived in bad taste, and out of character, Plâs Newydd soon ceased to be the pretty retreat which it was in the days of "the ladies." It is now only a memory of Long Ago. Stoke Newington.

A. A.

THE CHEVALIER QUIRINO BIGI has published at Correggio a very curious memoir of the famous painter, Antonio Allegri, surnamed Correggio, and which completely contradicts the previous notions concerning his career and circumstances. The information given in the memoir, has, says the Architect, been derived from documents found in the depositories of the little town of Correggio and the city of Parma.

French romancists, Dumas and Soulie,
amongst the first, would have been grieved not
to have had that rugged realm as a field of
action for their heroes. If M. Paul Raymond,
keeper of public records in the department of
the Lower Pyrenees, does not furnish them with
many incidents for novels, he supplies us, at
least, with some interesting notes upon the
manners and customs of the Béarnese in the
In every
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
one of the musty documents which his diligence
has unearthed, the ramifications of the church
to extend. Priests of all degrees
are seen
figure as often in the criminal accusations for
defendants as for arbiters and witnesses. The
fines of offenders, whether in money or kind,
help to maintain, repair, or build sacred edi-
fices, and pledges, oaths, and vows are made
upon relics and other holy objects, which are, as
a matter of course, in the hands of the religious
officials.

In the papers curious names crop up, part
French, part Spanish, all stamped with Basque
variations, such as, among those of females,
Amadine, Audine, Bibentoo, Blanquine, Domen-
gine, Guirantine, Prosine; and among the
men's-Arnautuc, Arnautuquet, Berdolet, Ber-
nat, Guilhemolo, Goathoart, Johnænico, Monan-
tolo, Perarnaud, Peyrolet, Sansolet none of
that sweetness which would draw a dolphin
ashore, as the ancient said "Simon" had the
power to do.

Gambling seems to have been the worst of
the Seven Deadly Sins, in that day. The
remedy speaks well for the belief in personal
honour, or the impossibility of carrying on a
system of deceit undiscovered in a small
community. Lords and louts were alike
charmed by the rattle of the Satanic "bones,"
or the flapping of cards. A coppersmith's
'prentice hastens to vow that during his four
years' training in that noble craft, he will not
gamble, unless it were in a company where
much wine was drunk, and where, consequently,
temptation might come upon him when he was
ill-fitted to resist it. At the other end of the
social ladder, the Lord of Lanegaa himself, in

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consideration of some money lent him, sets his hand to a scroll, by which he is engaged to gamble neither by himself nor an agent for a good two years to come. The penalty is to give his creditor and family board and lodging in his own house.

dog Latin and Béarnese French, but are drawn up with a priest's or lawyer's craftiness, as witness the word "day," being taken to include both day and night, and a "year" to be from one day to the end of the same day a twelvemonth distant. The artistes in tric-trac and backgammon can have found but few loop-holes of escape in such forms. The hail-fellow-well-met swagger with which the expectant gamesters come up before the authorities to put their marks to these parchments, reveal a tender state of feeling towards them which could not be termed harsh.

A friend of the Lord of Claverie values his life at two hundred pence-as it would appear from his pledge to leap into the river from off Orthez stone bridge, if he should touch cards, dice, or other implements of play throughout his life, or should be unable to pay the sum mentioned. For three golden crowns, another gamester debars himself from his own peculiar Far otherwise with the unfortunates rejected weakness for as many years. A more cautious alike by church and cottage. In "The History fellow reserves to himself the right to play at of Races under the Ban," by Francisque Michel, bowls, so long as the stake is merely the set- the relgulations will be found at length, which tling of the score for meat and drink. If he excluded from their fellow-man the Cagots, or goes beyond that amount, he agrees to pay four Chrestians, as they were called in Béarn down florens to the Lord of Béarn, the like to a friend, to the sixteenth century. The Act discovered and as much towards the building of St. Mary's by our industrious compiler, is a variation from Cathedral at Oleron engaging his person. those made public. Maestre Ramon, the Cagot, This was no light gage, for servitude worse than his wife, son, daughter, and all others of his imprisonment was to be dreaded in an age when family, are prohibited from herding cattle or the private secretaryto the famous Gaston Phoebus, doing work as carpenters or otherwise, as had Count of Foix and Lord of Béarn, was a slave. heretofore been permitted them. Thus deprived The petty farmers and oil-pressers were not of their scanty employment-for which human often able to command cash for their amendes. nature tells us they were not overpaid in conIn such cases, the church received even oil for sideration of their misfortunes-they were forits lamps in lieu of silver. The father con- bidden to beg from door to door on the plea of fessors had much or all to do with the stopping their being Cagots, or to solicit alms anywhere of this flow of loose pence to the hostelries else. They were also ordered not to frequent abounding in mares of the push-pin and tarotcard nature.

In the worst case of all, a householder had been not only led away by false friends into wasting his estate in diversions, but into becoming bail for his boon companions in their straits. The rector (as the priest of the parish is called in these documents) having excommunicated him, Master Goalhart was fain to appear before him and his family council (just as young Parisian prodigals are bound to do this day, under the Code Napoleon) and confess his regret. In the future, so he promises, he will take care to lend no money to anybody but relations or respectable friends. He will pay a fine every time he gambles for more than innocent matters, like a pint of wine-half of which (the priest's finger here evidently points the pen) goes to the reparation of the church at Lucq, and to the treasurer of St. Michel's. There must have been a flock of Master Goalhart's IO U's flying about, since the council cause him to repudiate all his outstanding debts. There was gnashing of teeth over a lost black-sheep in the taverns of Navarreux the day that paper was read in public.

All these engagements are in a mixture of

the neighbourhood of fountains or other watering places, much less to go up to them for water or to wash. To this warrant of destruction of a family of afflicted beings, for whom no proper refuge was provided by lord, priest, or farmerthe authorities of Momour set their hands on the "1111 day of August, 1471."

At this same time and in this same region, the home to our own days of these lepers, the moral canker in the priesthood was as manifest as hideous. The plentiful proofs of their misconduct are not to be quoted in these pages. What they permitted, sufficiently shows how placidly they gazed upon the world without the monastery.

"The noble baron," who steals away a vassal's wife, is compelled by his suzerain, the Count of Foix's solemn sentence, to deliver up the woman, to assure the husband from wrong in person or property, "according to the general custom of the county," and to pay the man a span of beeves. The wife must restore to her husband not only all she has had from him in the way of portion, but as much more out of her own personal property, in one payment, as a fine; until he receives which, he is to hold their house (which was hers) against everybody.

"ROBIN HOOD'S GARLAND."

baron and his vassal were present in the Church of Pau to hear this judgment read. Suspected persons could exonerate themselves by swearing I HAVE before me a collection of twenty-seven that they were innocent upon the holy Evangelists, held in the right hand before the altar.

One Guilhem deu Cog, a contractor, who had enriched himself by building churches, signs a very pretty contract on that appropriate day, the 1st of April, 1388. He binds himself, in the event of his wife dying, to take for wife one Gualhardine, who, in return, will gladly accept him, if her husband also shall die timely. (Mr. Charles Reade's "Double Marriage" is feeblenèss itself to this cool proposition.) Meanwhile, Gualhardine is given board and lodging as a servant in the contractor's house. If the notary had executed this agreement in duplicate and served Madame deu Cog with a copy, the probability is that Madame Gualhardine would have led quite a slavey's life of it.

Even under such provocations, perhaps, though wives were afraid to murmur loudly when the husbands were as much lords and masters as the Camanche Indian in his lodge. One wife, in question, who had offended her stronger half, was only allowed to return home if her parents paid all the fines that her misconduct had brought upon the husband, and if she, on entering the house, fell upon her knees, and said slowly, one word after another, "I, Domengine, declare that I am a false and bad wife, and have grievously wronged my husband, like the bad woman that I am, and I pray him to forgive me."

It is a pity, to point the tale, that this forgiving Benedict was not the Pierre de Sapres, whom we find solemnly promising his wife, Bonine, not to beat her for trivial causes, either with a

cudgel or otherwise, unless he can prove her really guilty. If he should thump her unwarrantably, he must pay twenty silver marks to the Count of Foix, besides four calved cows to buy a missal-cape for the abbot elect of Lucq.

This continuous enumeration of the powers of the church makes the last item in our budget the more singular. It is a certificate of just such another civil marriage as the vestry registrars record by scores in our day. In 1369, a hundred years before Luther was born, a loving couple appear before Squire Bernadon de Gerderest, a notary of Gant and a gentleman of noble family, and "in face of all present, they, Bernat and Amadine, come mouth to mouth and foot to foot, and, kissing, vow to be true, good, pure, and loyal one to the other, he taking her to serve him through health and illness, for better and worse, by night and day. Which they do of their own free will and pleasure, swearing together on the four holy Evangelists." H. L. WILLIAMS.

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ballads which, under the above heading, chiefly relate to the life and exploits of the once noted Robin Hood, the outlawed Earl of Huntington. On referring to Ritson, I find that "none of these songs, it is believed, were ever collected into a garland till some time after the Restoration ; as the earlyest that has been met with, a copy of which is preserved in the study of Anthony à Wood, was printed by W. Thackeray, a noted ballad-monger, in 1689. This, however, contains no more than sixteen songs, some of which, very falsely as it seems, are said to have been 'never before printed.' The latest edition of any worth,' according to Sir John Hawkins, 'is that of 1719.' None of the old editions of this garland have any sort of preface: that prefixed to the modern ones of Bow, or Aldermary Churchyard, being taken from the collection of old ballads, 1723, where it is placed at 'the head of Robin Hood's birth and breeding. The full title of the last London edition of any note is, Robin Hood's Garland ;' being a complete history of all the notable and merry exploits performed by him and his men on many occasion: to which is added a preface (ie., the one already mentioned), giving a more full and particular account of his birth, &c., than any hitherto published. (Cut of archers shooting at a target.)

I'll send this arrow from my bow,
And in a wager will be bound
To hit the mark aright, although

It were for fifteen hundred pound.
Doubt not I'll make the wager good,
Or ne'er believe bold Robin Hood.'

London,

Adorned with twenty-seven neat and curious cuts adapted to the subject of each song. printed and sold by R. Marshall, in Aldermary On the back of Churchyard, Bow-lane," 12mo. the title page is the following Grub-street address:"TO ALL GENTLEMEN ARCHERS. "This garland has been long out of repair,

Some songs being wanting, of which we give account; For now at last, by true industrious care,

The sixteen songs to twenty-seven we mount;
Which large edition needs must please, I know,
All the ingenious 'yeomen' of the bow,
To read how Robin Hood and Little John,
Brave Scarlet, Stutely, Valliant, bold and free,
Each of them bravely, fairly play'd the man,
While they did reign beneath the green-wood tree;
Bishops, friars, likewise many more,

Parted with their gold, for to increase their store,
But never would they rob or wrong the poor."†
*The property of Mr. Jesse Mitchell, of Great Horton,
Bradford.

"Robin Hood; a collection of poems, songs, and ballads, relative to that celebrated English outlaw. Edited by Joseph Ritson." Ingram's edition.

CONTINENTAL ARCHÆOLOGY.

(From our German Correspondent.)

HAMBURG, June 20th.

The "Garland" under notice differs from those tions purporting to be ancient. Numerous little mentioned above, although it is similar, in many misshapen figures, said to have been discovered respects, to the Aldermary, or Aldermanbury at Giardini, near Taormina, in Sicily, close to the Churchyard copy; having the same preface, and, little promontory of Schiso, and on the site of the as we have already seen, the same number of ancient Grecian town of Naxos, are now offered for ballads. Only thirteen of them, however, are illus- sale to unwary travellers. Any one possessing the trated; the wood-cuts being of a very rude charac- slightest knowledge of antiquities must see at a ter. It is of smaller size, and may, probably, be glace that they are not genuine, nor have they the of a later date, but, as the title page is missing, I least resemblance to those of Phoenician origin so am unable to make out when, and by whom, it was frequently found in the islands of the Mediterraprinted. Can any of my readers throw a light nean, but put one most in mind of the celebrated upon the subject? JOHN EMANUEL PRESTON. attempts at drawing made by the child of a German back-woodsman in the solitary forests of North Gilstead, near Bingley, York. America, which the Abbé Domenech published about ten years ago as the work of an extinct tribe of native Indians. Most of these figures bear inscriptions in Greek characters, but they appear to have been made more for the sake of a hoax than the more serious desire af deliberate forgery; and THE Schleswig-Holstein Association for the col- it is extremely possible that they are of English lecting and preservation of the antiquities in origin, and were manufactured-like so many other those Duchies have just published their thirty-third Greek, Egyptian, and Roman coins and other quasi annual report. Among other papers of archæologi- antiques-not a hundred miles from Birmingham. cal interest, it contains the second series of the Thus one of them bears the imposing inscription, Pre-historic Stone Monuments in Schleswig-Hol- 'ONIZOITKIMAAVIENZE, which might have puzzled stein, illustrated by three plates with pictures of fif- Mr. Pickwick as much as the stone containing the teen different graves and tombs cut in the rocks. celebrated mark of Bill Stumps, but which when At the end of the report is the startling and unex- analysed a little, turns out simply to be the wellpected announcement that the Association is dis- known motto of the Order of the Garter: Honi soit solved. It is communicated to the members in an qui mal y pense. All this might possibly have been official circular from the managing committee, dated done for fun, but it assumes a more serious appearKiel, May 21, which runs as follows:-"The cura- ance from the fact that the discoverer has obtained tor of this university, Baron von Scheel-Plessen, an official certificate from the deceived authorities having informed the undersigned committee of at Giardini that the figures were found there, printed management by an official missive of the 7th inst., copies of which are distributed by him as a proof that the so-called Museum of Northern Antiquities of their being genuine antiques; and still more so, at Flensburg has been transferred to and become the property of the University of Kiel, the committee, by virtue of the powers vested in them, by decision of the General Meeting of members, held here on January 14 last, declares the SchleswigHolstein Society for the Collection and Preservation of National Antiquities dissolved, and that it ceases to exist from this date." The committee at the dissolution of the Association was composed of the following gentlemen:-Herr Westedt, Judge of the Local Court at Albersdorf; Professor Klander, at Ploen; Professor Christian Jessen, at Hadersleben; Professor Handelman, Professor Groth, and Dr. H. A. Meyer, of the University of Kiel. It is, however, satisfactory to be able to state that the collection they had formed during the thirty-three years of their existence, will remain available to the public, having been now incorporated with the Museum of the University of Kiel.

that the price demanded for each of the figures is no less than sixteen thousand francs. Surely this is going beyond the legitimate bounds of a joke!

At Regensburg on the Danube the foundations of the east gate of the ancient Roman urbs quadrata have recently been discovered. From an inscription still perfectly legible on one of the stones, it appears that the gate and its flanking towers were erected in the time Antoninus Pius, about the middle of the second century. The excavations of the Roman burial ground that was discovered near the city last year, are now being carried on with great energy and diligence; according to the last accounts some four thousand skeletons have been found in about nine hundred graves. Among the articles discovered are several convex glass mirrors as well as many metallic ones, which proves the incorrectness of the assertions made by many learned antiquarians that their being found in conjunction on the same spot has never been satisfactorily demonstrated.

A letter has been received here from a learned German Professor, now at Rome, complaining of a mystification to which he and other antiquarians Dr. Heinrich Schliemann, who for the last two have been exposed by spurious figures and inscrip-years has been making excavations in the plain of

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