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had with the Welsh, in 1157, some of his nobles, who had been detached with a considerable part of the army, were cut off by an ambuscade; those who escaped, thinking the king was also surrounded, told every one they met that he was either taken or slain. The news of this imaginary disaster put to flight the greatest part of the surviving army. Among the rest, Henry de Essex, hereditary standard-bearer to the kings of England, threw away the royal banner, and fled. For this act of cowardice he was challenged by Robert de Montford as a traitor. Essex denied the charge, declaring he was fully persuaded that the king was slain or taken; which probably would have happened, if Roger, Earl of Clare, had not brought up a body of troops, and, by displaying again the royal standard, encouraged the soldiers; by which means he preserved the remainder of the army.

"The king ordered this quarrel to be decided by single combat; and the two knights met at Reading, on the 8th of April, on an island,* near the Abbey, the king being present in person, with many of the nobility and other spectators. Montford began the combat with great fury, and Essex, having endured this violent attack for some time, at length turning into rage, took upon himself the part of a challenger and not of a defender. He fell after receiving many wounds; and the king, supposing him slain, at the request of several noblemen, his relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the vanquished knight, and carried him into the Abbey, where he revived. When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the king."

times, meet us constantly in the incidental allusions to the Abbey in our old historians and topographers; thus, for instance, amongst the hospitals attached to the foundation, mention is made of a house for lepers at Erleigh.

That the town flourished under their guardian care, is sufficiently proved, by the fact that Speed's map,t taken a comparatively short period after the Reformation, might almost have passed for a plan of Reading forty years ago, so little had the old town increased (it has made a huge spring in the present century) during the long period that intervened between Elizabeth and George the Third.

The palmy days of the church of Rome in this country were, however, numbered, and upon none of the great monastic establishments did the storm of the Reformation burst with more unsparing violence than upon the fated Abbey of Reading.

In September, 1539, John London, one of the commissioners for visiting and suppressing religious houses, arrived at Reading, and notwithstanding the submission of Hugh, the then abbot, which appears to have been implicit, he was hanged and quartered with two of his monks at one of the gates of the monastery, on the 14th of November following."

The work of destruction then commenced. Νο particulars of the demolition of the Abbey have come down to us; but it is clear that the magnificent church was levelled at once, partly, perhaps, for the sake of the valuable materials, and partly to prevent the people, attached by habit to the splendid ceremonies of the Catholic worship, from clinging to the cherished associations connected with the spot.

The site of the monastery itself remained with the crown, and a part of the house was converted into a royal residence, visited more than once by Elizabeth, and mentioned by Camden. But the enormous pos sessions of the Abbey granted to one favourite and another, were slowly frittered away, while what remained of the house itself was nearly destroyed in the siege of Reading during the civil wars.

Such was the Abbey from its foundation to the Reformation; succeeding Monarchs augmenting its demesnes and revenues by magnificent gifts, and confirming by successive charters the privileges and immunities enjoyed by the abbot and monks; for although the superior had various country-houses and parks, and was a spiritual peer of the highest rank, Every twenty years has brought a fresh diminution, there yet appears, from many of the rules which have until little now remains, except the shell of the refeccome down to us, one especially, in which no member tory, and of one or two other large detached buildings of the community could absent himself for a night more or less entire, parts of the cloisters, and large! without first obtaining permission from every individ-rock-like fragments of the grey walls, denuded of the ual monk in the convent, sufficient reason to believe that the internal government of the house was not altogether monarchial, but that it partook somewhat of the mixed form of the English constitution, and that the commons, if we may so term the brethren of the order, had some voice in the management of its

concerns.

Upon the whole, the rule of the monks of Reading over their vassals, the burghers, and their feudal tenants in the villages round, to say nothing of their dependent cells at Leominster and at Cholsey, seems to have been mild, benevolent, and charitable. Rich landlords are, generally speaking, kind landlords; it is those who are themselves pushed for money who become hard creditors in return; and besides the wealth that flowed into the good borough from the trains of knights and nobles who attended the parliaments and councils held in the Abbey, the fathers of the community were not only zealous protectors of their vassals against the aggressions so common in that age of violence, but they furnished alms to the poor, shelter to the houseless, and medical aid to the sick, from their own resources. Traces of their power and their charity, as well as of the manners of the

*Tradition assigns as the place of this combat a beautiful green island nearly surrounded with willows, in the midst of the Thames, to the east of Caversham bridge. A more beautiful spot could not have been devised for such a combat. It was in sight of the Abbey, and of the remarkable chapel erected in the centre of the bridge, of which the foundation still remains, surmounted by a modern house.

cut free-stone by which they were coated, some upright, some leaning against each other, and some pitched violently into the earth, as if by a tremendous convulsion of nature. But in the very absence of artificial ornament, in the massiveness and vastness of these remains, there is something singularly impressive and majestic. They have about them much of the hoary grandeur, the wild and naked desolation which characterize Stonehenge. And as the paltry modern buildings which disfigured them are gradually disappearing, there is every reason to hope, from the excellent taste of the present proprietor, that as soon as the excavations which have brought to light so much that is curious and beautiful shall be completed, they may be left to the great artist Nature, so that we may, in a few years, see our once-famous Abbey more august and beautiful than it has been at any period since the days of its pristine magnificence; rescued, as far as is now possible, from the din and bustle of

† Very curious is this old map of "Redding." The vacant spaces representing fields round the town being illustrated by certain curious representations of trees and animals particularly unlike, such as a cow in the act of being milked, (the sex of the milking figure is doubtful, the dress being equally unsuitable to man or woman, girl or boy,) two horses fighting, with sheep grazing, and another creature which may stand for a pig or an ox at discretion, standing at ease in a meadow. It is remarkable that each of these animals would make three or four of the trees, under which it is supposed to stand, and is very much bigger and taller than any church in the place. Those old artists had strange notions of perspective and proportion.

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this work-a-day world, and rising like the stately ruins of Netley, or rather like the tall grey cliffs of some sylvan solitude, from the fine elastic turf, a natural carpet, the green elder bush and the young ash tree growing amongst the mouldering niches, the ivy and the wall-flower waving from above, and the bright, clear river flowing silently along, adorning and reflecting a scene which is at once a picture and a history.

HONOR O'CALLAGHAN.

TIMES are altered since Gray spoke of the young Etonians as a set of dirty boys playing at cricket. There are no such things as boys to be met with now, either at Eton or elsewhere; they are all men from ten years old upwards. Dirt also hath vanished bodily, to be replaced by finery. An aristocratic spirit, an aristocracy not of rank but of money, possesses the place, and an enlightened young gentleman of my acquaintance, who, when somewhere about the ripe age of eleven, conjured his mother "not to come to see him until she had got her new carriage, lest he should be quizzed by the rest of the men," was perhaps no unfair representative of the mass of his school-fellows. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. The sons of the old nobility, too much accustomed to splendour in its grander forms, and too sure of their own station to care about such matters, and the few finer spirits, whose ambition even in boyhood soars to far higher and holier aims, are, generally speaking, alike exempt from these vulgar cravings after petty distinctions. And for the rest of the small people, why "winter and rough weather," and that most excellent schoolmaster, the world, will not fail, sooner or later, to bring them to wiser thoughts.

In the meanwhile, as according to our homely proverb, "for every gander there's a goose,' so there are not wanting in London and its environs "establishments," (the good old name of boarding-school being altogether done away with,) where young ladies are trained up in a love of fashion and finery, and a reverence for the outward symbols of wealth, which cannot fail to render them worthy compeers of the young gentlemen their contemporaries. I have known a little girl, (fit mate for the above-mentioned amateur of new carriages,) who complained that her mamma called upon her, attended only by one footman; and it is certain, that the position of a newcomer in one of these houses of education will not fail to be materially influenced by such considerations as the situation of her father's town residence, or the name of her mother's milliner. At so early a period does the exclusiveness which more or less pervades the whole current of English society make its appearance amongst our female youth.

fashioned seminary in which I was brought We, too, had our high castes and our low up, we were not quite free from these vanities. castes, and (alas! for her and for ourselves!) we counted among our number one who in her loneliness and desolation might almost be called a Pariah- or if that be too strong an illustration, who was at least, in more senses than one, the Cinderella of the school.

Honor O'Callaghan was, as her name imports, an Irish girl. She had been placed under the care of Mrs. Sherwood before she was five years old, her father being designated, in an introductory letter which he brought in his hand, as a barrister from Dublin, of ancient family, of considerable ability, and the very highest honour. The friend, however, who had given him this excellent character, had, unfortunately, died a very short time after poor Honor's arrival; and of Mr. O'Callaghan, nothing had ever been heard after the first half-year, when he sent the amount of the bill in a draft, which, when due, proved to be dishonoured. The worst part of this communication, however unsatisfactory in its nature, was, that it was final. All inquiries, whether in Dublin or elsewhere, proved unavailing; Mr. O'Callaghan had disappeared; our unlucky governante found herself saddled with the board, clothing, and education, the present care, and future destiny, of a little girl, for whom she felt about as much affection as was felt by the overseers of Aberleigh towards their involuntary protegé, Jesse Cliffe. Nay, in saying this, I am probably giving our worthy governess credit for somewhat milder feelings upon this subject than she actually entertained; the overseers in question, accustomed to such circumstances, harbouring no stronger sentiment than a cold, passive indifference towards the parish boy, whilst she, good sort of woman as in general she was, did certainly upon this occasion cherish something very like an active aversion to the little intruder.

The fact is, that Mrs. Sherwood, who had been much captivated by Mr. O'Callaghan's showy, off-hand manner, his civilities, and his flatteries, felt, for the first time in her life, that she had been taken in; and being a peculiarly prudent, cautious personage, of the slow, sluggish, stagnant temperament, which those who possess it are apt to account a virtue, and to hold in scorn their more excitable and im-! pressible neighbours, found herself touched in the very point of honour, piqued, aggrieved, mortified; and denouncing the father as the greatest deceiver that ever trod the earth, could not help transferring some part of her hatred to the innocent child. She was really a good sort of woman, as I have said before, and every now and then her conscience twitched her, and she struggled hard to seem kind and to be so: but it would not do. There the feeling was, and the more she struggled against Even in the comparatively rational and old-it, the stronger, I verily believe, it became.

Trying to conquer a deep-rooted aversion, is something like trampling upon camomile: the harder you tread it down the more it flou

rishes.

Under these evil auspices, the poor little Irish girl grew up amongst us. Not ill-used certainly, for she was fed and taught as we were; and some forty shillings a year more expended upon the trifles, gloves, and shoes, and ribbons, which make the difference between nicety and shabbiness in female dress, would have brought her apparel upon an equality with ours. Ill-used she was not; to be sure, teachers and masters seemed to consider it a duty to reprimand her for such faults as would have passed unnoticed in another; and if there were any noise amongst us, she, by far the quietest and most silent person in the house, was, as a matter of course, accused of making it. Still she was not what would be commonly called ill-treated; although her young heart was withered and blighted, and her spirit crushed and broken by the chilling indifference, or the harsh unkindness which surrounded her on every side.

Nothing, indeed, could come in stronger contrast than the position of the young Irish girl, and that of her English companions. A stranger, almost a foreigner amongst us, with no home but that great school-room; no comforts, no indulgences, no knick-knacks, no money, nothing but the sheer, bare, naked necessaries of a school-girl's life; no dear family to think of and to go to; no fond father to come to see her; no brothers and sisters; no kindred; no friends. It was a loneliness, a desolation, which, especially at breaking-up times, when all her school-fellows went joyfully away each to her happy home, and she was left the solitary and neglected inhabitant of the deserted mansion, must have pressed upon her very heart. The heaviest tasks of the half-year must have been pleasure and enjoyment compared with the dreariness of those lonesome holidays.

O'Connors, her maternal ancestors; and over such dim traces of Cathleen's legends as floated in her memory, fragments wild, shadowy, and indistinct, as the recollections of a dream, did the poor Irish girl love to brood. Visions of long-past splendour possessed her wholly, and the half-unconscious reveries in which she had the habit of indulging, gave a tinge of romance and enthusiasm to her character, as peculiar as her story.

Everything connected with her country had for her an indescribable charm. It was wonderful how, with the apparently scanty means of acquiring knowledge which the common school histories afforded, together with here and there a stray book borrowed for her by her young companions from their home libraries, and questions answered from the same source, she had contrived to collect her abundant and accurate information, as to its early annals and present position. Her antiquarian lore was perhaps a little tinged, as such antiquarianism is apt to be, by the colouring of a warm imagination; but still it was a remarkable exemplification of the power of an ardent mind to ascertain and combine facts upon a favourite subject under apparently insuperable difficulties. Unless in pursuing her historical inquiries, she did not often speak upon the subject. Her enthusiasm was too deep and too concentrated for words. But she was Irish to the heart's core, and had even retained, one can hardly tell how, the slight accent which in a sweet-toned female voice is so pretty.

In her appearance, also, there were many of the characteristics of her country women. The roundness of form and clearness of complexion, the result of good nurture and pure blood which are often found in those who have been nursed in an Irish cabin, the abundant wavy hair and the deep-set grey eye. The face, in spite of some irregularity of feature, would have been pretty, decidedly pretty, if the owner had been happy; but the expression was too abstracted, too thoughtful, too melanAnd yet she was almost as lonely when we choly for childhood or even for youth. She were all assembled. Childhood is, for the was like a rose, shut up in a room, whose pale most part, generous and sympathising; and blossoms have hardly felt the touch of the there were many amongst us who, interested glorious sunshine or the blessed air. A daisy by her deserted situation, would have been of the field, a common, simple, cheerful-lookher friends. But Honor was one of those flow-ing daisy, would be pleasanter to gaze upon ers which will only open in the bright sunshine. Never did marigold under a cloudy sky shut up her heart more closely than Honor O'Callaghan. In a word, Honor had really one of the many faults ascribed to her by Mrs. Sherwood, and her teachers, and masters— that fault so natural and so pardonable in adversity-she was proud.

National and family pride blended with the personal feeling. Young as she was when she left Ireland, she had caught from the old nurse who had had the care of her infancy, rude legends of the ancient greatness of her country, and of the regal grandeur of the

than the blighted queen of flowers.

Her figure was, however, decidedly beautiful. Not merely tall, but pliant, elastic, and graceful in no ordinary degree. She was not generally remarkable for accomplishment. How could she, in the total absence of the most powerful, as well as the most amiable motives to exertion? She had no one to please; no one to watch her progress, to rejoice in her success, to lament her failure. In many branches of education she had not advanced beyond mediocrity, but her dancing was perfection; or rather it would have been so, if to her other graces she had added the

charm of gaiety. But that want, as our French dancing-master used to observe, was so universal in this country, that the wonder would have been to see any young lady, whose face in a cotillion (for it was before the days of quadrilles) did not look as if she was following a funeral.

Such at thirteen I found Honor O'Callaghan, when I, a damsel some three years younger, was first placed at Mrs. Sherwood's; such five years afterwards I left her, when I quitted the school.

Calling there the following spring, accompanied by my good godfather, we again saw Honor silent and pensive as ever. The old gentleman was much struck with her figure and her melancholy. "Fine girl that!" observed he to me: "looks as if she was in love though," added he, putting his finger to his nose with a knowing nod, as was usual with him upon occasions of that kind. I, for my part, in whom a passion for literature was just beginning to develope itself, had a theory of my own upon the subject, and regarded her with unwonted respect in consequence. Her abstraction appeared to me exactly that of an author when contemplating some great work, and I had no doubt but she would turn out a poetess. Both conjectures were characteristic, and both, as it happened, wrong.

Upon my next visit to London, I found that a great change had happened in Honor's destiny. Her father, whom she had been fond of investing with the dignity of a rebel, but who had, according to Mrs. Sherwood's more reasonable suspicion, been a reckless, extravagant, thoughtless person, whose follies had been visited upon himself and his family, with the evil consequences of crimes, had died in America; and his sister, the richly-jointured widow of a baronet, of old Milesian blood, who during his life had been inexorable to his entreaties to befriend the poor girl, left as it were in pledge at a London boarding-school, had relented upon hearing of his death, had come to England, settled all pecuniary matters to the full satisfaction of the astonished and delighted governess, and finally carried Honor back with her to Dublin.

From this time we lost sight altogether of our old companion. With her school-fellows she had never formed even the common school intimacies, and to Mrs. Sherwood and her functionaries she owed no obligation except that of money, which was now discharged. The only debt of gratitude which she had ever acknowledged, was to the old French teacher, who, although she never got nearer the pronunciation or the orthography of her name than Mademoiselle l'Ocalle, had yet, in the overflowing benevolence of her temper, taken such notice of the deserted child, as amidst the general neglect might pass for kindness. But she had returned to France. For no one else did Honor profess the slight

est interest. Accordingly, she left the house where she had passed nearly all her life, without expressing any desire to hear again of its inmates, and never wrote a line to any of them.

We did hear of her, however, occasionally. Rumours reached us, vague and distant, and more conflicting even than distant rumours are wont to be. She was distinguished at the viceregal court, a beauty and a wit; she was married to a nobleman of the highest rank; she was a nun of the order of Mercy; she was dead.

And as years glided on, as the old school passed into other hands, and the band of youthful companions became more and more dispersed, one of the latter opinions began to gain ground among us, when two or three chanced to meet, and to talk of old school-fellows. If she had been alive and in the great world, surely some of us should have heard of her. Her having been a Catholic, rendered her taking the veil not improbable; and to a person of her enthusiastic temper, the duties of the sisters of Mercy would have peculiar charms.

As one of that most useful and most benevolent order, or as actually dead, we were therefore content to consider her, until, in the lapse of years and the changes of destiny, we had ceased to think of her at all.

The second of this present month of May was a busy and a noisy day in my garden. All the world knows what a spring this has been. The famous black spring commemorated by Gilbert White can hardly have been more thoroughly ungenial, more fatal to man or beast, to leaf and flower, than this most miserable season, this winter of long days, when the sun shines as if in mockery, giving little more heat than his cold sister the moon, and the bitter north-east produces at one and the same moment the incongruous annoyances of biting cold and suffocating dust. Never was such a season. The swallows, nightingales, and cuckoos, were a fortnight after their usual time. I wonder what they thought of it, pretty creatures, and how they made up their minds to come at all!-and the sloe blossom, the black thorn winter as the common people call it, which generally makes its appearance early in March, along with the first violets, did not whiten the hedges this year until full two months later. In short, everybody knows that this has been a most villanous season, and deserves all the ill that can

*It is extraordinary, how some flowers seem to obey the season, whilst others are influenced by the weather. The hawthorn, certainly nearly akin to the sloe blossoms, is this year rather forwarder, if anything, than in common years; and the fritillary, always a May flower, is painting the water meadows at this moment in company with "the blackthorn winter;" or rather is nearly over, whilst its cousinthe warmest exposures and most sheltered borders of german, the tulip, is scarcely showing for bloom in the garden.

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possibly be said of it. But the second of May held forth a promise which, according to a very usual trick of English weather, it has not kept; and was so mild and smiling and gracious, that, without being quite so foolish as to indulge in any romantic and visionary expectation of ever seeing summer again, we were yet silly enough to be cheered by the thought that spring was coming at last in good

earnest.

In a word, it was that pleasant rarity a fine day; and it was also a day of considerable stir, as I shall attempt to describe hereafter, in my small territories.

In the street too, and in the house, there was as much noise and bustle as one would well desire to hear in our village.

The first of May is Belford Great Fair, where horses and cows are sold, and men meet gravely to transact grave business; and the second of May is Belford Little Fair, where boys and girls of all ages, women and children of all ranks, flock into the town, to

buy ribbons and dolls and balls and gingerbread, to eat cakes and suck oranges, to stare at the shows, and gaze at the wild beasts, and to follow merrily the merry business called pleasure.

Carts and carriages, horse-people and footpeople, were flocking to the fair; unsold cows and horses, with their weary drivers, and labouring men who, having made a night as well as a day of it, began to think it time to find their way home, were coming from it; Punch was being exhibited at one end of the street, a barrel-organ, surmounted by a most accomplished monkey, was playing at the other; a half-tipsy horse-dealer was galloping up and down the road, showing off an unbroken forest pony, who threatened every moment to throw him and break his neck; a hawker was walking up the street crying Greenacre's last dying speech, who was hanged that morning at Newgate, and as all the world knows, made none; and the highway in front of our house was well-nigh blocked up by three or four carriages waiting for different sets of visiters, and by a gang of gipsies who stood clustered round the gate, waiting with great anxiety the issue of an investigation going on in the hall, where one of their gang was under examination upon a question of stealing a goose. Witnesses, constables, and other officials were loitering in the court, and dogs were barking, women chattering, boys blowing horns, and babies squalling through all. It was as pretty a scene of crowd and din and bustle as one shall see in a summer's day. The fair itself was calm and quiet in comparison; the complication of discordant sounds in Hogarth's Enraged Musician was nothing to it.

Within my garden the genius of noise was equally triumphant. An ingenious device,

contrived and executed by a most kind and ingenious friend, for the purpose of sheltering the pyramid of geraniums in front of my greenhouse, consisting of a wooden roof, drawn by pulleys up and down a high, strong post, something like the mast of a ship, had given way; and another most kind friend had arrived with the requisite machinery, blocks and ropes, and tackle of all sorts, to replace it upon an improved construction. With him came a tall blacksmith, a short carpenter, and a stout collar-maker, with hammers, nails, chisels, and tools of all sorts, enough to build a house; ladders of all heights and sizes, two or three gaping apprentices, who stood about, in the way, John willing to lend his aid in behalf of his flowers, and master Dick with his hands in his pockets looking on. The short carpenter perched himself upon one ladder, the tall blacksmith on another; my good friend, such a clatter ensued of hammers and voices Mr. Lawson, mounted to the mast-head; and

(for it was exactly one of those fancy jobs find fault)-such clashing of opinions and conwhere every one feels privileged to advise and ceptions and suggestions as would go to the building a county town.

Whilst this was going forward in middle air, I and my company were doing our best to furnish forth the chorus below. It so happened that two sets of my visiters were scientific botanists, the one party holding the Linnæan system, the others disciples of Jussieu; and the garden being a most natural place for such a discussion, a war of hard words ensued, which would have done honour to the Tower of Babel. "Tetradynamia," exclaimed one set; "Monocotyledones," thundered the other; whilst a third friend, a skilful florist, but no botanist, unconsciously out-long-worded both of them, by telling me that the name of a new annual was " Leptosiphon androsaceus."

Never was such a confusion of noises! The house door opened, and my father's strong clear voice was heard in tones of warning. "Woman, how can you swear to this goose?" Whilst the respondent squeaked out in something between a scream and a cry, "Please your worship, the poor bird having a-laid all his eggs, we had marked un, and so-" What farther she would have said being drowned in a prodigious clatter occasioned by the downfall of the ladder that supported the tall blacksmith, which, striking against that whereon was placed the short carpenter, overset that climbing machine also, and the clamour inci

*This description does not sound prettily, but the real effect is exceedingly graceful: the appearance of the dark canopy suspended over the pile of bright flowers at a considerable height, has something about it not merely picturesque but oriental; and that a gentleman's contrivance should succeed at all points, as if he had been a real carpenter, instead of an earl's son and a captain in the navy, is a fact quite unparal leled in the annals of invention.

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