probably, the queen then knighted her host, Sir Henry Sherington. In the Civil War, 1645, the house was garrisoned for the king, and taken by the opposite party shortly after Cromwell had won Devizes, the Lord of Lacock having previously been sent prisoner to London.

Aubrey relates this romantic story, which has the appearance of authenticity: Dame Olave, a daughter and co-heir of Sir [Henry] Sherington of Lacock, being in love with [John] Talbot, a younger brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury, and her father not consenting that she should marry him, discoursing with him one night from the battlements of the abbey church, said she, "I will leap down to you." Her sweetheart replied he would catch her then, but he did not believe she would have done it. She leapt downe; and the wind, which was then high, came under her coates, and did something break the fall. Mr. Talbot caught her in his arms, but she struck him dead. She cried out for help, and he was with great difficulty brought to life again. Her father told her that, since she had made such a leap, she should e'en marrie him. She was my honoured friend Colonel Sharington Talbot's grandmother, and died at her house at Lacock about 1651, being about an hundred years old. Quære, Sir Jo. Talbot ?'

The above anecdote was missed by the venerable historian of Lacock, the Rev. Canon Bowles, to which work we are largely indebted for the materials of this sketch. John Carter, the antiquary, when he visited Lacock in. 1801, was told a tradition, that 'one of the nuns jumped

from a gallery on the top of a turret there into the arms of her lover.' He observes, as impugning the truth of the story, that the gallery appears to have been the work of James or Charles the First's time.' This may have been founded upon Aubrey's story: though the abbey church had then been destroyed, there is a galleried tower of later date.

From the Sheringtons the property descended to Sir Anthony Mildmay of Apthorp, Northamptonshire, by his marriage with Grace, daughter of Sir Henry Sherington, but had no issue; so that the whole inheritance of Lacock came to her sister Olive, the wife of John Talbot, Esq. of Salwarp, county Worcester, fourth in descent from John the second Earl of Shrewsbury, from whom it has descended to Henry Fox Talbot, Esq., who in this delightful retreat, in chemical researches for his own recreation, here worked out the secret of Photography. He took up the ground to which Davy and Wedgwood had made their way. Paper was the medium, which he made sensitive to light by nitrate of silver, and then fixed the image by common salt. He first called his process Photogenic Drawing, then Calotype, which his friends changed to Talbotype, in imitation of Daguerre's example. Mr. Fox Talbot is stated, in the Quarterly Review, No. ccii., to have sent his method to the Royal Society in the same month that Daguerre's discovery was made known, January 1839; but Sir David Brewster dates Mr. Talbot's communication six months earlier.1

1 As a new art, which gave employment to thousands, Mr. Fox Talbot brought photography to a high degree of perfection. 'He

Lacock Abbey, as it now exists, consists of the octangular turret, with a gallery, already referred to; and the cloisters, of the time of Henry IV. There are several sepulchral relics, as grave-stones, coffin-lids, etc. The site of the church is now a terrace-walk. The residential portion of the building has handsome bayed windows, pierced parapet, and twisted chimney-shafts. The middle chamber of the tower is reserved as a depository for writings; here is the Magna Charta of King Henry III., of inestimable value, being the only one perfect in the kingdom. It is 12 inches broad; and in length, including the fold, 20 inches: the seal is of green wax, pendent by a skein of green silk. This charter seems to have been designed for the use of the knights and military tenants in Wiltshire, and to have been deposited here by the Countess Ela, who succeeded her husband in the office of Sheriff of Wiltshire.

expended large sums of money in obtaining for the public the full benefit of his invention; and towards the termination of his patent he liberally surrendered to photographic amateurs and others all the rights which he possessed. As Mr. Talbot had derived no pecuniary benefit from his patent, he had intended to apply to the Privy Council for an extension of it; but in this he was thwarted by interested parties.' 'Although,' says Sir David Brewster, we are confident that a jury of philosophers would have given a verdict in favour of Mr. Talbot's patent, taken as a whole, and so long unchallenged, yet we regret to say that an English judge and jury were found to deprive him of his right, and transfer it to the public. The patrons of science and art stood aloof in the contest; and none of our scientific institutions, and no intelligent member of the Government, came forward to claim from the State a national reward to Mr. Talbot. How different in France was the treatment of Niepce and Daguerre !'

A singular domestic relic is shown here-the Nuns' Boiler, which formerly stood in the abbey kitchen. It is very massive, is supported on three legs, and bears this inscription :

'A PETRO WAGHUENS IN MECHLINIA EFFUSUS FACTUS VE FUERAM, ANNO MILLESIMO QUINGENTESSIMO. DEO LAUS ET GLORIA CHRISTO.'

'I was moulten or made by Peter Waghuens, of Mechlin, in the year 1500. Praise be to God and glory to Christ.'

Mrs. Crawford, in a sketch of the old place, remarks: 'There is something highly picturesque and moving to the feelings in the appearance of this fine abbey, standing in a fertile vale, with its old avenue, broad terrace-walks, and extensive cloisters, breathing, as it were, the heavenly music of those holy spirits that once animated the vestal forms of beauty now mouldered into dust, and of which the profane. foot that treads over it takes no account.

'The entrance-hall is a magnificent apartment, with a double row of niches round its sides, filled with statues : one of a bishop, with a book in hand, is instinct with life. Over the high mantel are the effigies of the Countess of Shrewsbury and her two beautiful nieces, habited as nuns. From a door on one side of the hall you enter the inner cloisters, which still bear the name of "the nuns' buryingground." The great dining-room has full-length portraits painted on panel. There is a gallery hung with pictures, among which is the legendary leap of the nun, who “escaped with her lover, having leaped from the high tower, in which

the abbess had confined her, and sustained no injury from her fall but the fracture of her little finger."' Mrs. Crawford relates some interesting recollections of an inmate of the abbey, Lady Shrewsbury, a strict Catholic, eighty years of age, who had been in her youth a great beauty. She had frequently friends staying here; the Blounts, Cliffords, and Hydes being her most frequent guests. The family priest, a sort of Will Wimble,' had three rooms for his special use a bed-chamber hung with tapestry, and filled with all sorts of curious things; and two chambers-a printingoffice and turning-shop.

Lady Shrewsbury was pious without parade, and one of the old aristocracy, without any of those unbecoming airs of pride too often attending high rank. She was sent by her father, Lord Dormer, to a French convent to be educated. Her own account of her first interview with the Earl of Shrewsbury is amusing: Being told that an English gentleman had brought letters from my father, I hurried into the Lady Abbess' parlour, where the Earl, then a beautiful young man, was waiting to see me. I had been so long within those dismal walls, and never seen a man but our own confessor, and a hideous-looking creature who came to draw my tooth, that the Earl looked like an angel to me.' They were soon married, and spent some time at the French court. On her arrival in England, Lady Shrewsbury went, in all her bridal state, to visit her sister, Miss Dormer, at the convent where she was passing her novitiate, previously to her taking the veil. Lady Shrewsbury used all her sisterly arts