tops. I only heard one note, and that eight or ten houses, all through the war, rather sweet, a catbird's, the doctor through which the Confederate cavalry thought; but he was almost as much a had passed again and again. They had stranger in these woods as I. Happily, never molested her or hers in any way, however, he was an old acquaintance of but had a fancy for poultry, which might that delightful insect, the "tumble-bug," have proved fatal to her white family, but to which he introduced me on a sandy bit for her Yankee wit. She and her husband of road. The gentleman in question took managed to fix up a false floor in one of no notice of me, but went on rolling his their rooms, in which they fed the roosters, lump of accumulated dirt three times his so whenever a picket came in sight, her own size backwards with his hind legs, as call would bring the whole family out of if his life depended on it. Presently his the woods and clearing into the refuge, lump came right up against a stone, and where they remained peacefully amongst stopped dead. It was a "caution" to corn-cobs till the danger had passed. She see that bug strain to push it further, but had nothing but good to say of her native it wouldn't budge, all he could do. Then neighbors, except that they could make he stopped for a moment or two, and evi- nothing of the country. The Lord had dently made up his small mind that some- done all he could for it, she summed up, thing must be wrong behind, for no bug and Boston must take hold of the balance. could have pushed harder than he. So We heard the owls all night, as well as he quitted hold with his hind legs, and the katydids, but they only seemed to turned round to take a good look at the emphasize the forest stillness. The old situation, in order, I suppose, to see what lady's beds, to which we retired at ten, must be done next. At any rate, he pres- after our long gossip in the balcony, were ently caught hold again on a different sweet and clean, and I escaped perfectly side, and so steered successfully past the scatheless, a rare experience, I was asobstacle. There were a number of them sured, in these forest shanties. I was working about, some single and some in bound, however, to admit, in answer to pairs, and so full of humor are their our hostess's searching inquiries, that I doings that I should have liked to watch had seen, and slain, though not felt, an for hours. insect suspiciously like a British B flat. We got to our journey's end about dusk, a five-roomed, single-storied, wooden house, built on supports, so as to keep it off the ground. We went up four steps to the verandah, where we sat while our hostess, a small, thin New Englander, probably seventy or upwards, but as brisk as a bee, bustled about to get supper. The table was laid in the middle room, which opened on the kitchen at the back, where we could see the stove, and hear our hostess's discourse. She boiled us two of her fine white chickens admirably, and served with hot bread, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and several preserves, of which I can speak with special praise of the huckleberry, which grows, she said, in great abundance all round. The boys, we heard, had been there to breakfast, after sleeping out, and not having had a square meal since they started. Luckily for us, her white chickens are a very numerous as well as beautiful family, or we should have fared badly. She and her husband supped after us, and then came and sat with us in the balcony, and talked away on all manner of topics, as if the chances of discourse were few, and to be made the most of. They had lived at Jamestown, close by, a village of some The cave which we sought out after breakfast was well worth any trouble to find. We had to leave the buggy and horses hitched up and scramble down a glen, where presently, through a tangle of great rhododendron bushes, we came on a rock, with the little iron-stained stream just below us, and opposite, at the top of a slope of perhaps fifteen or twenty feet, was the cave, like a long black eye under a red eyebrow, glaring at us. I could detect no figure in the sandstone rock (the eyebrow), which hung over it for its whole length. The cave is said to run back more than three hundred feet, but we did not test it. There would be good sitting-room for three or four hundred people along the front, and so obviously fitted for a conventicle, that I could not help peopling it with fugitive slaves, and fancying a black Moses preaching to them of their coming exodus, with the rhododendrons in bloom behind. Maidenhair grow in tufts about the damp floor, and a creeping fern, with a bright red berry, the name of which the doctor told me, but I have forgotten, on the damp, red walls. What the nook must be when the rhodo dendrons are all ablaze with blossom, I hope some day to see. From The Saturday Review. CHEPSTOW CASTLE. WALES is now as quiet as a country churchyard; but if severity of past oppression could help to explain the survival of a spirit for Home Rule among the Welsh, as with their brother Celts, it might suffice, in evidence of bygone military tyranny, to point to the traces of the lords men who carried fire and sword among the Irish. Though the Conqueror penetrated Wales, he left its people unsubdued, the "natural bravery " of the country, with its rivers, rocks, and mountains, being a foe that required something more than a sudden inroad to overmas We had heard of a fine spring somewhere in this part of the forest, and in aid of our search for it presently took up a boy whom we found loafing round a small clearing. He was bare-headed and bare-footed, and wore an old brown, ragged shirt turned up to the elbows, and old, brown, ragged trowsers turned up to the knees. I was riding, and in answer to my invitation he stepped on a stump and vaulted up behind me. He never marchers, some of whom were the same touched me, as most boys would have done, but sat up behind with perfect ease and balance as we rode along, a young centaur. We soon got intimate, and I found he had never been out of the forest, was fourteen, and still at (occasional) school. He could read a little, but couldn't write. I told him to tell his ter. Our Afghan experience has familmaster, from me, that he ought to be ashamed of himself, which he promised to do with great glee; also, but not so readily, to consider a proposal I made him, that if he would write to the manager within six months to ask for it, he should be paid a dollar. I found that he knew nothing of the flowers or butterflies, of which some dozen different kinds crossed our path. He just reckoned they were all butterflies, as indeed they were. He knew, however, a good deal about the trees and shrubs, and more about the forest beasts. Had seen several deer only yesterday, and an old opossum with nine young, a number which took the doctor's breath away. There were lots of foxes in the woods, but he did not see them so often. His face lighted up when he was promised two dollars for the first opossum he would tame and bring across to Rugby. After guiding us to the spring, and hunting out an old wooden cup amongst the bushes, he went off cheerily through the bushes, with two quarter-dollar bits in his pocket, an interesting young wild man. Will he ever bring the opossum? 1 doubt, but shall be sorry not to see his open, wondering face again. We got back without further incident (except flushing quite a number of quail, which must be lovely shooting in these woods), and found the boys at home, and hard at lawn-tennis and well-digging. The hogs are becoming an object of their decided animosity, and having heard of a Yankee notion, a sort of tweezers, which ring a hog by one motion, in a second, they are going to get it, and then to catch and ring every grunter who shows his nose near the asylum. Out of this there should come some fun, shortly. VACUUS VIATOR. iarized us with the difficulties of warfare in a country defended by cliffs and passes as rugged as the people whom they shield; and the military system of William I. was one which he might well have adopted to extend an Indian frontier, had his career of conquest carried him to the East. He empowered his great barons to castellate each strong natural position on the Welsh borderland, both for defence of the English territory and to form bases for aggressive operations against the Welsh people. Paying no respect to Offa's Dyke, which, like the walls of Romulus, it had once been death to overpass, the lords marchers, as these independent chiefs were called, pushed forward their unscientific frontier into the heart of Wales. In advance of the main line of important strongholds, which they erected, of which Gloucester, Shrewsbury, and Chester were representatives, stood the castles of Strigul or Chepstow, Monmouth, Hereford, Chirk, Hawarden, Flint, and others all erected, says Mr. G. T. Clark, within half a century of the Conquest; while numerous other fortresses on the Welsh coast for one hundred and thirty miles between Chepstow and Haverford, on the northern side of the Bristol Channel, secured the admission of supplies and protected the passage of ships from the western ports of England to Ireland. Chepstow Castle in its earlier features is identical with the Castellum de Estrihoel of Domesday; the latter name, ac cording to a Saxon poet of the twelfth century, quoted by Leland, being a corruption of Strata Julia, which Roman route crossed the Wye near Chepstow. The original stronghold was founded by William FitzOsbern, the famous senescha of the Conqueror, to whose recommenda- | though not found in the index to Mr. tion of vengeance against Harold's perfidy, Green's “Short History," may be discovbacked by the promise of sixty ships ered to have been of some eminence in filled with fighting men, we owe, accord- his time by no more recondite a refering to Wace, the battle of Senlac with its ence than to Shakespeare's " King John," consequences. The castle stands on the where he wins the blessing of the reader irregularly sloping edge of a lofty lime- for his humane interference to save Prince stone cliff that rises perpendicularly from Arthur from being barbarously blinded. the Wye, by which river it is defended on Marshall was, indeed, so important a perthe north, the other sides being secured sonage that the protectorship of the kingby a deep dry moat. We hear nothing dom had been mainly vested in him more of FitzOsbern's connection with the during the absence of Richard I. on the castle, except that after he was slain (in Crusades. But humanity was hardly a 1070) on a military expedition to Flan- virtue of his character, his cruelties in ders, his son Roger became possessed of Ireland having been quite in keeping with this part of his estate, though he lost it what might be expected from a successor eight years after in rebellion against the to Strongbow. In addition to these exking. The powerful De Clares then cesses he seized among the spoils of war received from the crown the lordship of two fair manors of the Bishop of Ferns, Strigul. These took their name from for which sacrilegious act he was excomClare, in Suffolk, which was one of the municated by the injured prelate. The hundred and sixty manors granted to earl died (A.D. 1219) unabsolved, and went Richard of Brionne by his cousin-german to his place. Unwilling to leave the the Conqueror, as his portion of the En- brave knight in torment, or perhaps thinkglish spoil. Walter, the third son of ing it more profitable to get back the fat Richard, by way of increasing his patri- manors in exchange for his soul, the mony, received royal license to the over- bishop went to the English court, and rule of what lands he could conquer from persuaded the king, Henry III., to accomthe Welsh, and the whole of Nether-pany him to the Temple Church, where Gwent, or Monmouthshire, became the reward of his enterprise. How far the holy and beautiful house of Tintern, which he founded in 1131, was intended as an atonement for the crimes incident to aggressive warfare is unknown; but we may be sure, from the manners of his ungentle times, that he needed more mercy from heaven than he showed on earth. In 1139 the funeral torches were flaring in the hands of the white-vested Cistercians over his remains, which were interred in the monastery he had lately built. As he left no offspring, Walter de Clare's estates passed to his nephew, Gilbert FitzGilbert, surnamed Strongbow, who in 1138 was created Earl of Pembroke by King Stephen, on whose side he fought. Having reduced west Wales, he died in 1148, and was also buried at Tintern. the earl was buried, and where his mailed image may yet be seen. Standing before the tomb he exclaimed, "O William, who liest here, an alien from salvation, if those lands which thou didst perniciously take from my Church be plenarily restored, either by the king who here listens or by any of thy friends, I then absolve thee; otherwise, I ratify thy sentence of eternal condemnation." Henry thereupon privately advised the earl's eldest son to give back the manors for the sake of his father's soul; but the son replied, "I do not believe that my father got them unjustly, therefore the curse of the old doting bishop will fall upon himself for my part I will not lessen my rightful inheritance." The prelate, with increased indignation, went again to the king, and said, "Sir, what I have spoken cannot be reversed, the sentence must stand; the Richard Strongbow, his son, gained punishment of evil-doers is from God, military renown in Ireland rather than in and therefore the curse which the PsalmWales, and added a fresh chapter to the ist hath written shall descend upon the annals of human ferocity by the unrelent-earl. His name shall be blotted out in ing fury with which, during five years, he warred against the people. His death, in 1176, was attributed by the Irish to divine vengeance, their opinion being confirmed by the remorse of his last moments, when he confessed that he had been smitten by the saints of Ireland. Isabel, his heiress, married William Marshall, whose name, one generation." As it happened, Earl Marshall's five sons died childless, his five daughters consequently becoming his heiresses. By marrying Maud, the eldest of these ladies, Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, became lord of Strigul. The last of the Norfolk family who held this demesne was Roger, the nephew of Roger the son sand men. Chiefly at the instigation of "John Clapham, Esq., servant to the Earl of Warwick," Pembroke, with his brother, was condemned to die, a fact commemorated in Wordsworth's description of Bolton Abbey in "The White Doe of Rylstone: Look down and see a grisly sight: Church, and heir of Maud. He rebuilt (in 1269) | stalwart brother, Sir Richard Herbert, Colonel Morgan appeared before Chep- | having been constructed in adaptation to stow with seven hundred horse and foot; the natural ridge on which it stands. the castle afforded little hindrance to the Though there is some Roman masonry in taking of the walled town, and the exam- the structure of the great west gate, we ple of the townsmen was followed after a need give no more credence to Stowe's siege of four days by the capitulation of assertion that the castle was first built by the citadel. There was, however, living Julius Cæsar than to Leland's report that in Glamorganshire a stalwart baronet, Sir a tower called Longine was "erected by Nicholas Kemys, who was accounted the one Longinus, a Jew, father of the soldier Samson of his day. As an instance of whose spear pierced the side of Christ." his strength, it is related that he was one To the right of the eastern or principal day met in his park by a noted Cornish gatehouse are the offices, including the wrestler, who, desiring to win fresh lau- kitchen and lesser hall (temp. Edward rels, asked the baronet to try a fall with II.), some of which apartments are inhim. The request was answered by the habited by the custodian of the ruins. To Cornishman finding himself first thrown the left is an ivy-draped building, outon his back and then over the park wall, wardly perfect, called Marten's Tower. his conqueror politely sending his ass in This is an early English work, and conlike manner after him. A place is still tains in its upper story the lord's oratory shown in the park wall at Cefn Mably as a beautiful thirteenth-century chamber, the scene of the exploit. A more signifi- with a fine window, enriched with rose cant feat was the capture of Chepstow ornament. That so pronounced a sceptic Castle, which in May 1648 was betrayed as Henry Marten the regicide should have during the absence of the governor into had this fair chapel among the rooms he the hands of Sir Nicholas, who got pos- occupied when his capital sentence was session of a fort by night. Cromwell, commuted to a mild kind of imprisonment chagrined at the event, and being in the for life, is certainly not an instance of neighborhood of Chepstow, marched upon the fitness of things. His twenty years' the fortress, but found the defence too confinement in the castle became, as obstinate to be speedily overcome. He political hostility relented, so relaxed that therefore left Colonel Ewer to pursue the he was allowed to have his family in conenterprise, who beleaguered the walls stant residence with him, and even_to until the garrison was reduced by famine. visit people in the neighborhood. On surrender Sir Nicholas Kemys was yond the second court, which has been slain in cold blood, together with forty- planted as a garden, stands FitzOsbern's eight men, one hundred and twenty pris- Norman keep, or what remains of it, a oners being taken. These were tempo- good deal of early English work, includrarily confined in the adjacent Norman ing some fine details in the clustered Priory church. Before the days of the columns of the windows of the great banCommonwealth were ended, the castle queting hall, having replaced the earlier received (in 1656) as a captive the illustri-structure. Here was the scene of the ous author of "Holy Living and Dying." fierce revellings of the De Clares and Though no insurgent, Jeremy Taylor was Bigods when their deeds of warfare were too distinguished a royalist to escape the projected or rehearsed. The story of one notice of the government, but he was not of the raids is told in Scott's rattling ill-treated, and his imprisonment endured ballad "The Norman Horseshoe," which only a few months. has given so much satisfaction to Mr. The noble architectural remains, though George Borrow that his "Wild Wales" the towers and halls are roofless and commemorates hardly anything else in floorless, are sufficiently entire to recall connection with Chepstow Castle. Be Be to view the walls that confined the Chrys-yond the great hall is another courtyard, ostom of English divinity. Of the for- and finally the back gatehouse. mer strength of the fortress there is yet visible evidence. The outer walls retain enough completeness to prevent entrance except by the massive eastern gateway. This is of the period of Edward I., and, entering between its bold round towers, we find a grass-covered court, sixty yards long by twenty broad, which is succeeded by three other courts of narrower proportions, the whole fortress From The Spectator. POLAND AND THE HAPSBURGS. THE situation in eastern Europe, and the rivalries imputed to the governments of Russia and Austria, tend once more to direct public attention to the condition of |