vellers prepared for their reception, had become open and furious in their attack. The Princess's party had barricadoed themselves in one suite of apartments, and repulsed the robbers from the doors and windows. Caspar had shewn the generalship of a veteran, and the nephew of the Princess the dashing valour of a young soldier. Their ammunition, however, was nearly exhausted, and they would have found it difficult to hold out much longer, when a discharge from the musketry of the gens- d'armes gave them the joyful tidings of succour.

A fierce fight ensued, for part of the robbers were surprised in the inn, and had to stand siege in their turn; while their comrades made desperate attempts to relieve them from under cover of the neighbouring rocks and thickets.

I cannot pretend to give a minute account of the fight, as I have heard it related in a variety of ways. Suffice it to say, the robbers were defeated; several of them killed, and several taken prisoners; which last together with the people of the inn, were either executed or sent to the galleys.

I picked up these particulars in the course of a journey which I made some time after the event had taken place. I passed by the very inn. It was then dismantled, excepting one wing, in which a body of gens-d'armes was stationed. They pointed out to me the shot-holes in the window-frames, the walls, and the pannels of the doors. There were a number of withered limbs dangling from the branches of a neighbouring tree, and blackening in the air, which I was told were the limbs of the robbers who had been slain, and the culprits who had been exe

cuted. The whole place had a dismal, wild, forlorn look.

I need not add that immediately after the combat the young Spaniard hastened with the Count to relieve the anxiety of the daughter by the assurances of victory. The young lady had been sustained throughout the interval of suspence by the very intensity of her feelings. The moment she saw her father returning in safety, accompanied by the nephew of the Princess, she uttered a cry of rapture and fainted. Happily, however, she soon recovered, and what is more, was married shortly after to the young cavalier, and the whole party accompanied the old Princess in her pilgrimage to Loretto, where her、 votive offerings may still be seen in the treasury of the Santa Casa,

THE BLACK FRIAR

BY LORD BYRON.

Beware! beware! of the Black Friar,

Who sitteth by Norman stone,

For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air,
And his mass of the days that are gone.

When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville,

Made Norman Church his prey,

And expell'd the friars, one friar still

Would not be driven away.

Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right,

To turn church-lands to lay,

With sword in hand, and torch to light
Their walls, if they said nay.

A monk remain'd, unchas'd, unchain'd,
And he did not seem form'd of clay,

For he's seen in the porch, and he's seen in the church
Though he is not seen by day.

And whether for good, or whether for ill,

It is not mine to say:

But still to the house of Amundeville

He abideth night and day.

By the marriage-bed of their lords 'tis said,
He flits on their bridal eve;

And 'tis held as faith, to their bed of death,
He comes but not to grieve,

When an heir is born, he is heard to mourn,
And when aught is to befal

That ancient line, in the pale moonshine
He walks from hall to hall.

His form you may trace, but not his face,

'Tis shadow'd by his cowl;

1

But his eyes may be seen from the folds between,

And they seem of a 'parted soul.

But beware! beware of the Black Friar,

He still retains his sway,

For he is yet the church's heir,

Whoever may be the lay.

Amundeville is lord by day,

But the monk is lord by night,

Not wine nor wassail could raise a vassal

To question that friar's right.

Say nought to him as he walks the hall,
And he'll say nought to you;

He sweeps along in his dusky pall,
As o'er the grass the dew.

Then Grammercy! for the Black Friar;

Heaven sain him! fair or foul, And whatsoe'er may be his prayer, Let ours be for his soul,

DEATH OF THE LAIRD'S JOCK

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Enough has been said and sung about

The well contested ground

The warlike border-land

to render the habits of the tribes who inhabited them before the union of England and Scotland familiar to most of our readers. The rougher and sterner features of their character were softened by their attachment to the fine arts, from which has arisen the saying that, on the frontiers every dale had its battle, and every river its song. A rude species of chivalry was in constant use, and single combats were practised as the amusement of the few intervals of truce which suspended the exercise of war. The inveteracy of this custom may be inferred from the following incident.

Bernard Gilpin, the apostle of the north the first who undertook to preach the protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was surprized, on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet or mail-glove hang

ing above the altar. Upon inquiring the meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed by the clerk that the glove was that of a famous swordsman, who hung it here as an emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle, to any who should dare to take the fatal token down. ,,Reach it to me," said the reverend churchman. The clerk and sexton equally declined the perilous office, and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the champion that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage of defiance. But the champion was as much ashamed to face Bernard Gilpin as the officials of the church had been to displace his pledge of combat.

The date of the following story is about the latter years of Queen Elizabeth's reign; and the events took place in Liddlesdale, a hilly and pastoral district of Roxburghshire, which, on a part of its boundary is divided from England only by a small river.

During the good old times of rugging and riving (that is tugging and tearing), under which term the disorderly doings of the warlike age are affectionately remembered, this valley was principally cultivated by the sept or clan of the Armstrongs. The chief of this warlike race was the Laird of Mangerton. At the period of which I speak, the estate of Mangerton, with the power and dignity of chief, was possessed by John Armstrong, a man of great size, strength and courage. While his father was alive, he was distinguished from others of his clan who bore the same name, by the epithet of the Laird's Jock, that is to say, the Laird's son Jock or Jack. This name he distinguished by so many