was the oddest fellow I ever did know; and I suppose he always will be. And yet what a man for business!"

That same forenoon, Mrs. Brown's boy and donkey came with a very long message from a lady who had tucked him on the head because he could not make out her meaning. He believed her name was Mrs. Jogging, and he was to say that Miss Oh Ah was fit to come home to-day, please, if they'd please to send the shay for her. And they must please to get ready Satan's room, where the daffodil curtains was, because the young woman loved to look at the yeast, and to have a good fire burning. And please they must send the eel-skin cloak, and the foot-tub in the shay, because the young woman was silly.

"Chilly, you stupid," replied Mrs. Toaster. She shall have the footwarmer and the seal-skin cloak; but what Satan's room with the daffodil curtains is, only the Lord in heaven knows; and how she is to see any yeast there! Are you certain that was the message?"

"Sartin, ma'am. I said it to myself ever so many times; more often than I stuck the Neddy."

Sir Cradock Nowell, upon appeal, speedily decided that the satin room was meant the room with the rosecoloured curtains, and the windows facing the east: but the boy stuck out for the daffodil; leastways he was certain it was some flower.

It was nearly dark when the carriage returned; and Sir Cradock came down to the great entrance-hall to meet his brother's child. He was trembling with anxiety; for his nerves were rapidly failing him; and, from Dr. Hutton's account, he feared to see in his probable heiress-for now he had no heir-something very outlandish and savage. Therefore he was surprised and delighted when a graceful and beautiful girl, with high birth and elegance in every movement, flung off her cloak, and skipped up to him with the lightness of a gazelle, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

"Oh, uncle, I shall love you so! You are so like my darling-you have his

nose exactly, and just the same shaped legs. Oh, to think he should ever have left me!" And she burst into tears then and there before half-a-dozen servants. "Oh, Uncle Cradock, you have got a fine house; but I never shall get over it."

"Hush, my dear; come with me, my child !" Sir Cradock was always wide awake upon the subject of the proprieties.

"I am not your child; and I won't be your child, if you try to stop me like that. I must cry when I want to cry, and it is so stupid to stop me."

"What a pretty dear you are!" said Sir Cradock, scarcely knowing what to say, but having trust in feminine vanity. "Am I indeed? I don't think so at

all.

I was very pretty, I know, until I began to cry so. But now my cheeks are come out, and my eyes gone in; but, oh dear! what does it matter, and my father never, never to take me on his lap again? Hya! Hya! Hya!"

"Faix, thin, me darlin'," cried Mrs. O'Gaghan, stroking her down in a shampoo manner, "it's meself as knows how to dale with you. Lave her to me, Sir Crayduck; she's pure and parfict, every bit on her. I knows how to bring her out, and she'll come to your room like a lamb, now jist.-Git out of the way, the lot on you"-to several officious maidens-"me honey, put your hand in my neck, your blissed leetle dove of a hand, and fale how me heart goes pat for you. Sir Crayduck, me duty to you, but you might 'ave knowed how to git out of the way, and lave the ladies to the ladies."

Sir Cradock Nowell marched away, thinking what a blessing it was that he had not had much to do with women. Then he reproached himself for the thought, as he remembered his darling Violet, the mother of his children. But, before he had brooded very long in the only room he liked to use now, his study just off from the library, a gentle knock came to the door-as Biddy always expressed it-and Eoa, dressed in deepest mourning (made at Lymington, from her own frock, while she lay ill at the Crown), came up to him steadily, and

kissed him, and sat on a stool at his feet.

"Oh, uncle, I am so sorry," she said, with her glorious hair falling over his knees, and her deep eyes looking up at him, "I am so sorry, Uncle Cradock, that I vexed you so, just now."

"You did not vex me, my pretty. I was only vexed for you. Now, remember one thing, my darling—for I shall love you as my own daughter-I have been very harsh and stern where, perhaps, I had no right to be so if I am ever unkind to you, my dear, if I ever say anything hard, only say, 'Clayton Nowell' to me, and I will forgive you directly."

You mean I must forgive you, uncle. I suppose that's what you mean. If you are unkind to me, what will you want to forgive me for? But I couldn't do it. I couldn't say it, even if I had done any harm. Please to remember that I either love or I hate people. I know that I shall love you. But you must not contradict me. I never could endure it, and I never will."

"Well," said Sir Cradock, laughing; "I will try to remember that, my dear. Though, in that respect, you differ but little from our English young ladies."

"If you please, Uncle Cradock, I must go to-night to see where you have put my father. There, I won't cry any more, because he told me never to vex you, and I see that my crying vexes you. Did you cry, yourself, Uncle Cradock, when you heard of it first?"

She looked at him, as she asked this question, with such wild intensity, as if her entire opinion of him would hang upon his reply, that the old man felt himself almost compelled to tell "a corker."

"Well, my dear, I am not ashamed to confess

beautiful eyes you have, Eoa; finer than any of the Nowells!"

"Yes, I know. But that won't do, Uncle Crad; you don't want to answer my question. What I want to know is a very simple thing. How much money have you got a-year? You must have got a good deal, I know, because everybody says so, and because this is such a great place, as big as the palaces in Calcutta."

"Really, Eoa, it is not usual for young people, especially young ladies, to ask such very point-blank questions."

"Oh, I did not know that, and I can't see any harm in it. I know the English girls at Calcutta used to think of nothing else. But I am not a bit like them; it isn't that I care for the money a quarter so much as tamarinds; but I have a particular reason; and I'll find out in spite of you. Just you see if I don't, now."

"A very particular reason, Eoa, for inquiring into my income! Why, what reason can you have?"

"Is it usual for old people, especially old gentlemen, to ask such very pointblank questions?"

Sir Cradock would have been very angry with any other person in the world for such a piece of impertinence; but Eoa gave such a smile of triumph at having caught him in his own net (as she thought), and looked so exquisite in her beauty, as she rose, and the firelight flashed on her; then she tossed her black hair over her shoulders, and gave him such a kiss (with all the spices of India in it) that the old man was at her mercy quite, and she could do exactly what she liked with him.

Oh, Mrs. Nowell Corklemore-so proud of having obtained at last an invitation to Nowelhurst, so confident that, once let in, you can wedge out all before you, like Alexander's phalanx-call a halt, and shape your wiles, and look to belt and buckler, have every lance fresh set and burnished, every sword like a razor; for verily the fight is hard, when art does battle with nature.

To be continued.

WHILST on a journey of recreation through the Midland Counties, I happened one day to be standing on the top of the highest of the four Norman towers that yet frown in right feudal style from the venerable battlements of Bolsover Castle. It happened to be one of those most lovely October mornings which possess such exquisite charms, because they are so rarely seen to perfection in this country. The previous days had been cold, wet, and stormy; but now the sun had risen in all his splendour, and was sending down his warming beams from an unclouded sky through a perfectly undisturbed atmosphere, the tranquil calm of which was so complete that an unsheltered candle could have burned on the top of the tower without being extinguished by any kind of draught. Yet, with all this light shining down from heaven, nearly the whole of the surrounding landscape was for a while entirely hidden from view by one of those peculiar autumnal mists which, I believe, the Scotch mountaineers designate, not inappropriately, as "the pride of the morning." The old castle seemed to be standing quite alone in mid-air, or rather as if floating upon the surface of a magic ocean, after the fashion of one of those enchanted islands of which we are told in the ancient fables. If not really enchanted, it was at least one of those enchanting scenes that are not easily forgotten; and there was ample matter of suggestion in the hazy and almost ghostly vagueness of its character, that might even have made the most prosy matter-of-fact mind start off upon an excursion into the now but seldom visited regions of Dreamland.

But this,

like all other visions of the kind, did not last very long; for, as the hour advanced, the mist, which had been hanging like a veil over the face of the country, began No 76.-VOL. XIII.

gradually to sink. First it uncovered the northernmost and highest hills of Derbyshire; thereupon it revealed step by step other eminences to the west and south-among them the ridge of high ground upon which Hardwick Hall stands in its stately grandeur, surrounded by a number of venerable and majestic oak-trees-until the last traces of it had vanished also in the lower valleys, so that every object in this variegated prospect now presented itself in clear and distinct outlines. Our thoughts and feelings depend so much upon the influence of outward circumstances that, but for the recollections of that beautiful October morning, I should probably never have felt such an interest in the manifold and stirring vicissitudes which marked the spot where I then happened to be standing.

Although the earliest accounts of Bolsover are of a purely traditional character, there is no reason to doubt that it was already an important stronghold during the period of the Saxon rule; for Leuric, the great Saxon thane, who assembled his vassals to oppose the Normans, is mentioned as among the earliest of its possessors. After the Conquest it was bestowed upon William Peverel, one of the chief leaders of the successful invaders, who raised a strong castle on the same site, probably, where the present building is standing. During those remote times it figured alternately under the various appellations of Balesourc and Bolsofres, till it was ultimately called by the name it bears at present. According to Mr. Hamilton Gray,1

"From 1068 to 1086, the time when the Domesday Survey was, made, the lordship of Bolsover was in the possession of William Peverel, and it is therein stated to have been

1 Bolsover Castle. A paper read before the Lincoln Diocesan Archæological Society.

X

previously the property of the Saxon Leuric. We have no notice concerning his fate. It is probable that, like many other noble Saxons, his family descended from being lords to become tillers of the soil; and his posterity may have earned a hard subsistence by labour

on those broad lands which once owned him as Thane. The family of Peverel possessed two noted strongholds in Derbyshire-the castles of Bolsover and of the Peak. The former was not yet built at the time of the Domesday Survey in 1086, whereas the latter is there mentioned as already existing. Yet there can be no doubt that Bolsover was built

during the reign of one of the Norman kings. It was erected by a Peverel. That race was extinguished in its main line in the first years of the reign of King Henry II. The reign of Stephen was too troubled and stormy to admit of much castle-building by his partisans, and thus we are limited for its erection to the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I. The original ancestor was Ranulph de Peverel, father of William de Peverel, of Bolsover and the Peak; of another William, who was governor of Dover, and father of Willliam de Peverel of Essex; and of Payn de Peverel, an eminent soldier, who was standard-bearer of Robert Curthoze, Duke of Normandy, in the Holy Land. obtained from Henry I. the barony of Bruane in Cambridgeshire, and was father of William de Peverel of London, in the days of King Edward I., and a John Peverel of Bradford

He

Peverel, in the county of Dorset, whose family

ended in an heiress, who died so recently as 1576. The two Williams, father and son, who possessed Bolsover, must have been very longlived, as their sway over the extensive possessions which were granted them by the Conqueror began in 1068, and did not terminate until 1153, when it ceased with a violence equal to that of its commencement. William Peverel, the son of King William's favourite, appears to have been a zealous supporter of King Stephen, and thus made himself obnoxious to Henry Plantagenet. He was accused of administering poison to Ranulph, the third Earl of Chester, in 1153, in the eighteenth year of Stephen. This Ranulph was a strenuous supporter of the Empress Matilda against that prince, whom he took prisoner in the battle of Lincoln, when the victory was mainly won through the gallantry of this earl. As he and William de Peverel were among the most powerful chiefs of the opposite political parties of their time, we must receive the odious accusation of poisoning, brought against the latter, with considerable suspicion. It was, however, a convenient pretext afforded to Henry Plantagenet, for at once ridding himself of a formidable enemy, and acquiring vast possessions; so he did not fail to turn it to good account for his own interest."

After Bolsover had thus reverted to the Crown by means of confiscation, there occurs frequent mention of it, and

the sums laid out upon it at different periods, in the Great Roll of the Pipe.

Besides the castellated fortress, it is evident that the town of Bolsover was anciently prepared for defence, from the extensive fortifications which protect it on those sides where it has not the natural defence of a steep bank or precipice, and where it is not under the more immediate shelter of the castle. When the castle was a fortress, the adjoining town was probably fortified, as is evident from the still visible traces of an outer wall which surrounds the present village on those sides where the approaches are on a level with the height upon which it is situated. The remnants of this ancient town wall are of considerable extent, and stretch in a manner all across the high ground towards the east and south, terminating at each end at the steep declivity, which, from a considerable height, suddenly abuts upon the Vale of Scarsdale. It is most likely that the old market town of Bolsover has never greatly varied in having covered a larger extent of ground size, as there is no trace of the houses than they now do. There must, consequently, always have been, as there is at present, a considerable uninhabited space within the circuit of the old fortification, which probably served as an encamping ground for bodies of troops which used to be sent to assist the castle and town during the frequent sieges to which they were subject.

Bolsover was one of the most im

portant of the military structures raised in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in different parts of England, and possessed, therefore, also the chief characteristics of those grim fortalices which the Norman tyrants built, in order to compress the conquered Saxons, and to resist the sieges which family feuds, civil wars, and rebellions caused to be of such perpetual occurrence. The Norman castle - to distinguish the more ancient part from the later structure raised shortly before the first revolution, during the reign of King Charles I. upon the terrace-was lofty and not large, but very strong, and surrounded by a Pallium, or Bailey-court.

This court was defended by a solid and lofty perpendicular wall, strengthened at intervals with towers, and, instead of being, as usual, surrounded by a ditch, or moat, was here protected in addition by the precipitous declivity, on the brink of which it partly stood. We will quote the description given, in his verbose style, by old Mr. Pegge.'

"The Castle, my Lord, at present, may be said in one sense, to be a ruin; in another, not. For explanation of this I beg to observe, that, though the house at the north end, towering aloft with a great degree of magnificence, be in good order, and at this time an habitable, though not a very commodious dwelling; yet the other part, or main body of the edifice, as appears from the plate, is in a very ruinous condition, being, as we suppose, never completely finished at first, and many of the materials since then, both stone and timber, carried away, inasmuch that it is now, though the place was originally superb, in a very dilapi dated state. In regard to the second particular, its not being a ruin in any other sense, I wish to note that of the first castellated fabric at this place, erected not long after the Norman conquest, as we shall show, not a single vestige now openly remains, but, as Lucan says of Troy, in Julius Cæsar's time, '. . . . etiam periere ruinæ.'

Good Mr. Pegge was, however, mistaken upon several points, as will be seen from the following extract from Mr. Hamilton Gray :

:

"If now an actual Norman castle, Bolsoveralthough very curious-cannot be regarded as an existing specimen, because it has been subjected to so many repairs and alterations that but little of the original structure remains. The present building may be called the Elizabethan restoration of a Norman castle, of which the ancient character has been preserved. The castellated portion of Bolsover, which is still inhabited, and in perfect repair, is reared exactly on the early Norman foundations, is of the precise extent and size of the Norman castle, and is built in part with the ancient Norman materials. Besides the foundations also the lowest portion of the castle are criginal, as may be surmised from the great thickness of the walls, and their general proportions."

According to Mr. Pegge's exaggerated account of the utter devastation of Bolsover, the present "keep" would be but a sorry sham, and as such entirely

1 Letter to the Duke of Portland, by Mr. Fegge, dated from Whittington, 26th Sept. 1785. Bibliotheca Topographica Britannica, vol. iv. Nichols.

divested of all antiquarian importance. But, happily, this is not the case-as shown by the latter statement, which ought to carry the more weight in this matter as coming from no less an authority than the present occupant of the place itself. Long before this restoration-or, rather, reconstruction-Bolsover had, however, ceased to be a fortress. From the end of the fifteenth

century it assumed a more peaceful, though not less interesting character, by becoming, like many similar places, which had previously been devoted chiefly to warlike purposes, one of those noblemen's residences which were destined henceforth to adorn instead of threatening the rural districts of the provinces of the now peaceful and secure kingdom. In the year 1465, Henry VII. is mentioned as being Lord of Bolsover -which title he held, either as King of England, or as heir to his father, Edmund Tudor; the castle having upon a previous occasion been granted to the Tudor family as the Earls of Richmond. It now continued to be for upwards of a century either held by the Crown. directly, or in the hands of some private individual as a royal grant, until it was disposed of by Henry VIII. who, in 1514, bestowed it upon Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. It reverted, however, once more by attainder to the Crown, when, after a short time, it was in 1552 granted in fee-favour by Edward VI. to George, Lord Talbot, who after wards became sixth Earl of Shrewsbury. From this time Bolsover Castle has, during the last three centuries, always continued in possession of a subject; but in at least a portion of that period it has been the theatre of events not less remarkable than those which distinguished it when a royal stronghold or a baronial fortress. Sir Charles Cavendish, the third son of the famous Countess of Shrewsbury, perhaps better known under the familiar appellation of "Bess of Hardwicke," became the possessor of Bolsover, in the year 1613, by a family arrangement; and it was he who rebuilt the castellated portion as it exists at present. Huntingdon Smithson is re