to mention the existence of this ancient memorial of people of his name who had lived in the parish to which his family traced its origin, when he expressed a strong desire to know more respecting it, and particularly whether it was still in existence, in whose possession it then was, and whether there might not be a possibility that he, a descendant of the family, might become the possessor of it. To none of these questions was I then able to return an answer, but I promised that I would institute the necessary inquiries, and report to him the result. I did so, and by the assistance of an old friend, the late Mr. Gamaliel Milner, of Thurlston, a hamlet of Peniston, it was ascertained that the oak press had remained at Peniston, in the possession of persons, either Wordsworths or descended from the family, but in reduced circumstances, till the period from 1780 to 1790, when it was sold by them to Sir Thomas Blackett, Bart. of Bretton Hall, and removed by him to that house. further inquiry it was ascertained that it was then at Bretton, where it had descended to Mrs. Beaumont, and her

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son, the late Mr. Beaumont, who was then the owner of it.

Some correspondence, I believe, passed between Mr. Wordsworth, or some one on his behalf, and Mr. Beaumont. Mr. Beaumont, I have heard indirectly, expressed his sense of the reasonableness of Mr. Wordsworth's claim, and of the satisfaction which it would give him to render in any proper way homage to so distinguished a man, but intimated, at the same time, the high pecuniary value in the Wardour-street market of works of this rare and curious class.

The affair then was laid to rest for several years; but Mr. Wordsworth's wishes having been made known to a friend and neighbour of Mr. Beaumont, a lady of whom Dr. Dibdin, in his Northern Tour, says that her eloquence was so persuasive that in half an hour she could turn any Whig into a Tory, she undertook to prevail with Mr. Beaumont, and managed the affair so successfully that in 1840 the press was removed to Rydal Mount, and received with great satisfaction by Mr. Wordsworth.

Yours, &c. JOSEPH HUNTER.

I BEG to place at your disposal a woodcut by Mr. Utting from a rubbing of the remains of the very remarkable brass of William de Aldeburgh, preserved at Aldborough, in Yorkshire, and there now attached to the wall of the church. The armour and military appointments are of great interest and curiosity, and they render this example a most important member of the series of our incised military monumental effigies.

That combination of mail with plate armour which subsequently led to the adoption of the complete panoply of wrought and burnished steel, is here exemplified at an early stage. The head and shoulders of the warrior are protected with a bascinet and camail of singular form and adjustment. The hauberk is still the defensive equipment

of the person, and here apparently without any plastron or steel breastplate; but the flowing surcoat of an earlier period has given place to the short emblazoned jupon of silk or velvet with its escalloped border, below which may be observed a second bodycovering of stronger materials, and studded with small circular plates of metal. The arms are cased in brassarts and vambraces of plate, with goussettes of mail at the joints, and the gauntlets, which are of great length, appear also of plate, or possibly they may be of leather (cuirbouilli), worked with small plates of metal; the hands are uplifted and hold a heart. The legs above the knees are probably defended by chausses of mail; if so, the mail is entirely covered with studded trews, each stud being in form a quatrefoil. The knees are guarded by genouillières of peculiar form; and the lower limbs

have jambarts or front-guards of plate or leather strapped over the mail chausses, which here are visible, after the manner of the brasses at Pebmarsh, Stoke d'Aubernon, Westley, Elsyng, and Wimbish; but, unlike these effigies, the sollerets are entirely of laminated plate or leather, without any admixture of mail. The offensive weapons are a straight sword and a dagger suspended from an enriched

hip-belt. The shield, which is worn upon the left arm, is charged with the same blazonry as appears upon the jupon, Azure, a fesse between three cross-crosslets or.†

This effigy, in the original composition, was probably placed upon a bracket-shaft, and was surmounted by

a canopy.

Yours, &c. CHARLES Boutell.

WE are fortunately spared any consideration of this work in its political character. Besides being an exposition of its author's views on public affairs, it contains many agreeable reminiscences of the notable people who have crossed his path through life, and we turn to that portion of the work with a pleasure which we could not have derived from its politics. We believe the writer to be much mistaken in his views of the course which would promote the welfare of his country, but he is no doubt an honest, upright man, and expresses his opinions openly and fairly.

Lord Cloncurry's early acquaintances in England ranged from John Horne Tooke on the one hand to John

Reeves, the treasurer of the Literary Fund, on the other: the former the impersonation of an ultra radicalism, the latter of an equally ultra toryism. Mr. Tooke introduced the author, then the Hon. V. F. Lawless, to Sir Francis Burdett and the other visitors of the cottage on Wimbledon Common, and passes muster, in the pages before us, unblamed; Mr. Reeves receives his lordship's sneer as "the most noted pluralist of the day" (on which point his statement is very inaccurate) in return for services rendered with honourable and friendly fidelity, when his lordship was under confinement in the Tower for suspected participation in the rebellion of 1798. The particulars in this volume respecting Mr.

c. A.D. 1320. Sir

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c.

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Reeves, who, it is unnecessary to remind our readers, was the author of the History of English Law, are valuable contributions to his biography. Lord Cloncurry gives us also a good deal of information respecting the persons who were concerned in the rebellion in which he was implicated, with many anecdotes of various Irish notabilities of that disastrous period. We will extract a specimen.

Archibald Hamilton Rowan was a fine grown fellow, "a figure of the grandest proportions," and was endued with a mind 66 guileless and romantic to a degree that, if depicted in a novel, would be looked upon as forced and incredible." Some thirty years ago he was well known in the streets of Dublin as a "gigantic old man," rambling about in an oldfashioned dress, and followed by the two last of the race of Irish wolfdogs. When a young man he was himself probably the last of another extinct race, that of knights errant. Confident in his great personal strength, "he was always ready to undertake the redressal of the wrongs of distressed damsels, or of the needy and oppressed of either sex," and was ever on the look-out for that class of adventures. But the event of his life was "a grand feat" which he performed under the eyes of Marie Antoinette, the running of a foot-race in jack-boots against an officer of the French royal guard in light shoes and silk stockings. The jack-boots won with ease, and Rowan was a proud and joyful man for ever afterwards. He had a fortune of 5,000l. a-year, but his pursuits were expensive, and he was never idle. He had always some adventure or other upon his hands. That which was his especial delight, as we are told a second time, was to 66 rescue distressed damsels from the snares and force of ravishers of rank." Lord Cloncurry leads us to infer that such cases were then numerous, and Rowan, we learn, was fortunate enough to fall in with two or three which made a good deal of noise. It was not, indeed, his wish that the trumpet of his fame should be silent. The noise was a part of his delight, and, in order to secure it, he kept a private press in his house, "ready for such occasions," and, whenever anything of the kind oc

curred, published instantly an extraordinary gazette of his own, containing the full, true, and particular account of his personal achievements, and of all the sorrows of the rescued Pamela. We hope the Dublin bibliographical collectors have secured copies of these interesting memorials. A few years hence they will be precious evidences of a state of manners from which we have fortunately escaped. When in the full blush of his fame, Rowan and Lord Cloncurry, accompanied by Sir Thomas Frankland, were companions in a pedestrian tour through England. "A pleasant party we made," remarks his lordship, and rather an odd-looking one, we suspect, for his lordship tells us, that it was "the practice" of the Quixotic Rowan," at starting from our inn, of a wet morning, to roll himself into the first pool he met, in order that he might be beforehand with the rain." Certainly if Lord Cloncurry had not told us the reason of this strange, if not cleanly, practice, we never should have guessed it. Probably the travellers were not so communicative to the people they came in contact with in the course of their excursion, and some little concealment upon that head may account for the uncivil treatment which they met with from the celebrated improver of machinery, Sir Richard Arkwright. In the course of their tour the three young gentlemen (Mr. Lawless_was probably about 17) rambled into Derbyshire, and, being desirous of visiting Sir Richard's factory, they presented themselves at his door. They sent in their names, and requested permission to inspect the works. Whether the message was none of the civilest, or whether it had been one of Rowan's rolling mornings, and Sir Richard did not like the look of the travellers, or whether the good knight was a-bed and dreaming of his Jenny, does not appear, but the impetuous pedestrians were kept waiting in the hall of the residence of the recent high sheriff of the county for what they deemed to be "a considerable time." Now we are told that Sir Thomas Frankland was "a man of very considerable ability, but what he chiefly valued himself upon was his lineal descent from Oliver Cromwell," and as soon as "the old barber," as Sir

Richard is politely designated by his lordship, made his appearance in his morning gown and night-cap, Sir Thomas gave proof at once of his ability and good temper by assailing him with a lecture on his failure in the respect that was proper to be shewn by a person in his position" to a gentleman who "was a descendant of the great Protector." Of course "the ingenious knight" received the lecture with much astonishment. He even became gruff and surly, and ventured to treat the house of Cromwell" with great contempt. To our astonishment, he did not so far lose his politeness as to refuse the young gentlemen an admission to his mill. The facts are here chronicled to the intended discredit of "the old barber," and with all due aristocratical disdain; but in the judgment of some people the more obvious inference will be, that, unless the race is more improved than the tone of Lord Cloncurry's remarks upon this incident leads us to suppose possible, young Irish lads should not be allowed to travel except under the guidance of some person possessed of a little com

mon sense.

But poor Rowan did things more unbecoming than his rolling in the mud, and more venturesome than the rescuing of distressed damsels. "In the purest spirit of patriotism," or the most ardent love of excitement, he joined the rebels of '98, and was obliged to seek safety and follow out his fondness for adventure (without his printing-press) in America. Remittances from Ireland failed; he was reduced to the greatest distress, and for a time was driven to obtain honest and creditable maintenance by employment in the cotton factory of some pupil or imitator of "the old barber in New York. Permitted, after many years, to return to his native country, he still clung to the opinions which led to the rebellion, but lived retired at Rathcoffry, in the county of Kildare, forgotten by the busy world. Lord Cloncurry visited his travelling associate in his extreme age for the purpose of introducing to him a daughter of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. He describes the old man as a 66 mummy and a "skeleton ;" but the spirit of the preux chevalier who had won the

66

smiles," or whose jack-boots had excited the laughter, of the Queen of France, was still manifest in the affectionate gallantry with which he welcomed the daughter of his less fortunate but not less gallant friend.

The early part of the book contains a good deal of this sort of amusing matter, with here and there an anecdote worth remembering. On his release from the Tower Lord Cloncurry spent several years on the continent, was presented to Buonaparte in a private interview, and lived more than two years in Rome. Things are bad enough in the eternal city at this time, in spite of French interference, but they are certainly not quite so degrading as they were at the commencement of the century. Lord Cloncurry was there, when the Earl of Bristol, who was bishop of Derry, used to ride about the streets of Rome dressed in red plush breeches and a broad-brimmed white or straw hat. He says he was often asked if that was the canonical costume of an Irish prelate. He says, also, speaking of the general condition of society,

"I have often spent a whole morning at a whist table, placed between the beds of a prince and princess, with a cardinal for my partner, and their excellencies comfortably reclining under their bedclothes for our adversaries. On we played until dinner time."

Of the ignorance and superstition which were then predominant (we hope we may speak in the past tense) there are some odd details. We will give one or two of the briefest, selected at random:

"The King of Sardinia used to march through the streets of Rome in public religious processions, bearing a wonderful cross, large enough to be used as an instrument of execution. It was of such a size as to be too heavy even for the powers of a coal-porter, but to the universal astonishment was carried with the utmost ease by the feeble tottering king. Lord Cloncurry pays the devout sovereign a

visit. In his ante-chamber stands this marvellous cross. His lordship lifts it. investigates its nature, and finds that it is It is comparatively light as a feather. He

a mere case of bark."

"When Prince Borghese, the brotherin-law of Napoleon, was nominated to some public office, it became necessary to have a stamp made for the purpose of

"When Pius VII. left Rome for France to crown Napoleon, the cavalcade consisted of sixteen or eighteen carriages, only one of which was provided with springs; and that was one sent from Paris for the express use of his Holiness. This was quite a splendid affair, with a false bottom of silver to hold warm water, as the weather was cold; but the poor cardinals.... were jolted along in vehicles not less inconvenient and rude than the ancient biga, though profusely adorned with gilding and lined with velvet."

"In Canova's studio were statues nearly finished of the legitimate King of Naples in robes of state, and of Napoleon unrobed, but with the rudder, globe, and other emblems of sovereignty. The contrast was a strange one. See how fortunate he is in every thing,' said Canova to Lord Cloncurry, as he turned from the stupid image of the king de jure to the noble figure of the monarch de facto of continental Europe. That block of marble is the only one I ever got from Carrara undamaged by a single flaw.' The statue is now, I believe, in Apsley House."

"Cardinal York was an invalid and under strict regimen, but, as he still retained his tastes for savoury meats, a contest usually took place between him and his servants for the possession of rich diet, which they formally set before him, and then endeavoured to snatch away, while he, with greater eagerness, strove to seize it in its transit. The cardinal petted a miserable masterless cur who attached itself to his reverence at the gate of St. Peter's. He insisted that the cur was a King Charles's spaniel, and appealed to its instinctive acquaintance with himself, as a member of the house of Stewart, as a proof of his true royal blood."

"The cardinal seems to have been struck with amazement by a small telescope which Lord Cloncurry presented to him; and he says, an ordinary dressingcase given by my sister to Princess Massime, was the admiration of all the Roman ladies, to whom it was sometimes shown as a special favour. Prince Borghese, when he wished to decorate a chamber for the reception of his wife Pauline Bonaparte, was obliged to eke out a small turkey carpet with pieces of baize of different textures and shades of colour."

"Abbé Taylor, head of the Irish monastery of St. Isidore, was generally supposed to be the priest who married George IV. to Mrs. Fitzherbert."

Gossip like this constitutes the staple of Lord Cloncurry's early recollections.

When he returns to poor Ireland the book becomes of course less lively, but the letters of Lord Anglesea and Lord Holland, with those of some others of his correspondents, will give the volume a permanent historical value.

And here we should have pointed out some instances which have occurred to us of our author's occasional failure of memory, but we are spared the ever unwelcome task by our respected correspondent J. R. of Cork, who has added greatly to his lordship's information, at the same time that he has rectified one or two of his lapses, in an interesting letter which our readers will feel obliged to us for giving them nearly entire. After some praises of Lord Cloncurry's volume, which we have anticipated, and after reminding him that the French loyal air is "Ö Richard, O mon roi!" and not "Oh Charles," our correspondent proceeds:

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"At p. 14 we read: immediately prior to the period referred to (1793,) Le Beau Dillon, a well known Irish officer, who commanded that portion of the brigade that remained in the service of the revolutionary government, was dragged out of his cabriolet and murdered by the French soldiers, upon the suspicion of his being influenced by royalist predilections. His aide-de-camp, who was in the carriage with him at the time of the murder, was my late worthy friend Pat Lattin, who immediately resigned his commission and retired to his patrimonial estate of Morristown-Lattin, in the county of Kildare, &c." Here, I must remark, that his lordship's memory has played him signally false, for Beau Dillon and the murdered officer were very different persons, and solely cognate in identity of the family name. The former was Edward Dillon, son, as I have always understood, of one of the Dublin bankers, who so numerously failed in 1759, when, to prevent the recurrence of a public evil, caused, it was believed, not by banking transactions, but by losses in general trading speculations, a law was enacted confining bankers to that special line of industry, and interdicting them from all other mercantile operations. Edward Dillon was born at Bordeaux, whither his father retired, and, pursuing the military career, emigrated when only a captain, in 1791, and never returned to France till the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. During this interval, his family's property there had been con