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by an officer who came to ask his commands concerning the disposal of several moss-troopers who had been just made prisoners. Displeased at the interruption, the warden answered heedless and angrily, 66 Hang them, in the devil's name;" but, when he laid aside his book, his surprise was not a little, to find that his orders had been literally fulfilled.'

Bothwell Castle, Clydesdale, is pronounced the most splendid ruin, perhaps, in Scotland,' and the ruins of Melrose Abbey, the finest specimen of Gothic architecture and Gothic sculpture. The ample privilege of sanctuary possessed by this latter, interfered so much with the execution of justice, that 'James V. is said to have acted as baron-baillie, in order to 'punish those malefactors in character of the abbot's deputy, whom his own sovereign power and that of the laws were ' unable to reach otherwise.' There is an extended account of Lindisfarne, or the Holy Island, and its legends of St. Cuthbert.

The history of Wark Castle, Northumberland, presents a most striking instance of the vicissitude of war, in the rapid and long alternation of its capture and partial demolition between the forces of the two powers.

The account of Elibank Tower, Peebles-shire, contains a very amusing incident in the history of the ancestors of Mr. Walter Scott.

William Scott (afterwards Sir William) undertook an expedition against the Murrays, of Elibank, whose property lay a few miles distant. He found his enemy upon their guard, was defeated, and made prisoner in the act of driving off the cattle which he had collected for that purpose. Sir Gideon Murray conducted his prisoner to the castle, where his lady received him with congratulations on his victory, and inquiries concerning the fate to which he destined his prisoner. "The gallows," answered Sir Gideon, "to the gallows with the marauder." "Hout na, Sir Gideon," answered the considerate matron, in her vernacular idiom, "would you hang the winsome young Laird of Harden, when we have three ill-favoured daughters to marry?" "Right," answered the baron, who catched at the idea," he shall either marry our daughter, mickle-mouthed Meg, or strap for it." Upon this alternative being proposed to the prisoner, he, upon the first view of the case, strongly preferred the gibbet to "mickle-mouthed Meg," for such was the nickname of the young lady, whose real name was Agnes. But at length, when he was literally led forth to execution, and saw no other chance of escape, he retracted his ungallant resolution, and preferred the typical noose of matrimony to the literal cord of hemp. Such is the tradition established in both families, and often jocularly referred to upon the Borders. It may be necessary to add, that mickle-mouthed Meg and her husband were a happy and loving pair, and had a very large family.'

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In the history of Dunbar Castle, another Agnes makes a much more lofty and commanding figure.

We read that, in 1338, the earl being absent, his wife, commonly called Black Agnes, from the darkness of her complexion, withstood the endeavours of the English army, under the Earl of Salisbury, to get possession of it. The lady performed al! the duties of a bold and vigilant commander, animating her soldiers by her exhortations, munificence, and example. When the battering engines of the besiegers hurled stones against the battlements, she ordered one of her female attendants to wipe off the dirt with her handkerchief; and when Salisbury commanded that enormous machine called the sow to be advanced to the foot of the walls, she scoffingly advised him to take good care of his sow, for she should soon make her cast her pigs, (meaning the men within it) and then ordered a huge rock to be let fall on it, which crushed it to pieces. Salisbury finding his open attempts on the castle thus stoutly resisted, tried to gain it by treachery. Having bribed the person who had the care of the gates, to leave them open; this he agreed to do, but disclosed the whole transaction to the countess. Salisbury himself headed the party who were to enter: finding the gates open, he was advancing, when John Copeland, one of his attendants, hastily passing before him, the portcullis was let down, and Copeland, mistaken for his lord, remained a prisoner. The countess, who, from a high tower, was observing the event, cried out to Salisbury, jeeringly, "Farewell, Montague; I intended that you should have supped with us, and assisted in defending this fortress against the English."'

The siege was changed into a strict blockade, which reduced the heroic commander and her garrison to great extremity; but reinforced by a gallant band, who secretly entered the castle from the sea, in a dark night, she finally drove off

the enemy.

The plates constitute, as they were intended to do, the most important part of the work. The reader is already apprized, that their architectural subjects are not, for the greater part, of a high order of beauty or magnificence. We were not to expect the kind of gratification imparted by views of Grecian or Roman remains; they present, however, many striking aspects of massive ruin, accompanied with a great variety of beautiful and romantic scenery, the greater number of them very judiciously combining landscape with the antiquities. The drawings are chiefly by Clennel, Arnald, and Nasmyth, all engraved in the line manner, by Greig. If here and there a plate betrays too much haste, or considerable intervention of the 'prentice-hand,' they are in general good, and a fair proportion of them eminently

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Art. II. Historical Illustrations of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold; containing Dissertations on the Ruins of Rome, and an Essay on Italian Literature. By John Hobhouse, Esq. of Trin. Coll. Camb. M. A. and F. R. S. 8vo. pp. 576. Price 14s. London, 1818. WHEN we opened the present volume, we naturally expected

to find its contents corresponding in some degree to its popular title, but to our surprise, we found that Childe Harold has less to do with it, than the ponderous folios of Muratori, or Montfaucon. Some of the longer notices of this volume,' Mr. Hobhouse is ingenuous enough to confess,' are dissertations 'not at all requisite for the intelligibility of Childe Harold, although they may illustrate the positions or the objects therein contained.' It is sometimes very remotely that they serve even this obscure purpose of illustration.

The contents of this work may be divided into three parts; an account of the Ruins of Rome-a few pages on the Roman Catholic religion-and an Essay on Italian Literature. In addition to these, there are some letters of Cola di Rienzi, and a few notes from Tasso to some of his friends, one of which contains a message respecting five shirts,' and another is occupied with a correction of four lines in one of his MSS. And these notes, which, on account of their insignificancy, have been left in the hands of the keeper of St. Anne's, to be exhibited to strangers, and which, for the same reason, have been neglected by Serassi and others, are here presented to us under the article, Letters of Torquato Tasso, never before published, with translations.' They extend to twenty pages.

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In the notes upon Childe Harold, Mr. Hobhouse, with great shew of exultation over Serassi, Muratori, and others, boasts of having discovered the cause of Tasso's imprisonment, which was unknown to all his predecessors. For further and, it is hoped, decisive proof that Tasso was neither more nor less than a prisoner of state, the reader is referred to "Historical Illus'trations of Childe Harold," page 5, and following.' The dissertation will, however, be found to contain nothing more than a criticism upon an inscription by Miollis, a revolutionary general, on the door of Tasso's prison at St. Anne's; the mention of the famed kiss which Brusoni pretends threw Torquato into prison; and, as the real cause of his imprisonment, the statement of Serassi, that he was confined for insolent words, and kept there because the Duke feared he would upon his liberation retract the praise of the Este family, contained in his Jerusalem, and satirize them as they deserved. Mr. Hobhouse, at the same time that he pretends no one else has before exposed this cause, quotes Serassi's words, which mention this very mc tive for his detention, and which are as plain and explicit as his

own. Having previously stated his arrest upon having abused the court, he says, (we translate literally,) But (Alfonso) reflecting that the poets are naturally a genus irritabile, and fearing, therefore, that Tasso on finding himself free, would, with the ' formidable arms his pen afforded, revenge himself for his long ' imprisonment and the bad treatment received at that court, he 'knew not how to resolve to let him go out of his states, without being first assured that he would attempt nothing against 'the honour and reverence due to so great a prince as he was.' What can be more clear or explicit? How the Author of these Illustrations can, therefore, take any merit to himself for understanding these simple words, we are at a loss to comprehend. Yet, a few lines before, there is this passage:

The abate Serassi was acknowledged to be a perfect master of the " cinque cento," and he has perhaps spoken as freely as could be expected from a priest, an Italian, and a frequenter of the tables of the great.-He shews that he is labouring with a secret, or at least a persuasion, which he is at a loss in what manner to conceal; and which, in spite of an habitual respect for the best of princes and most illus trious of cardinals, is sufficiently apparent to confirm our suspicions of Alfonso's tyranny.' p. 12.

But in order to expose more fully the Author's abuse of quotations, we shall examine part of his treatise upon the causes of the ruin of the ancient city of Rome. It will be easy to shew, by merely subjoining the literal interpretation to his own quotations, that his statements are for the most part erroneous, and his superficial erudition perverted to purposes it cannot accomplish.

Those who gaze upon fallen Rome, and not only behold the massy piles of the Cæsars fallen into ruins, although, like the pyramids, they seemed built to be objects to future generations of wonder and astonishment, long after the voice of fame concerning their founders should be lost in the distant echo of ages, but find, that the very soil trodden by the heroes and sages of republican and imperial Rome, has been covered by the care of time, as if to save it from the pollution of the footsteps of these unworthy ages, that the hill on which the capitol stood, that the rock from which Manlius was thrown, are now almost brought to a level with the plain ;-these gazers, startled at the effects of a few ages, lose themselves in conjectures concerning the probable causes of the change. The vicissitudes of Rome have been more numerous than her victories, and her fall was even more rapid than her rise. From the moment that Constantine carried the seat of empire to Byzantium, Rome gave up her marbles and her riches to adorn the new metropolis. The wars against the Goths and Vandals, the still lower degradation of becoming inferior in rank to Ravenna and Naples, despoiled her of her or

naments, which came to be used as weapons by her generals, or as part of their rapine, by her subaltern governors. The bigot's rage had some share in it; but more than all, her own citizens must bear the blame of destroying what, when they had degraded it, could still have adorned their native city. Their civil broils did not spare what the Goth, in his rage, had left untouched; what the bigot, in his momentary madness, had passed unmarked by his hammer. And worse than all, their avarice has stamped with its large and too evident footsteps, every quarter of the city.

Mr. Hobhouse has devoted to the examination of this subject, several pages of his work. So far, however, from having elucidated it, he has succeeded in embarrassing it, by throwing the rubbish of erudition upon a point from which it had been cleared by several able critics. It had been almost generally acknowledged, from the time of Angelo Pietro da Barga down to the present day, that the Goths had been much calumniated in regard to the ruin they are said to have caused in Rome. They have been represented as wantonly defacing the beautiful, and using their utmost strength in destroying the massy structures of the Queen of Cities, each time she came under their power. But, from the accounts, which have been handed down to us by those who lived nearest the time in which this destruction is said to have taken place, it would not appear that they committed any other depredations than what generally ensued when a town was given to sack. They seized upon the gold and silver, and when these failed, the baser metals were not despised. Fire was set to several parts of the city, apparently more by accident than purposely; but how small the effect of fire has been upon the public buildings, may be ascertained by the examination of the structures which remain. Little wood was employed; stone, bricks, a few beams, some of which were even of brass, constitute the materials. The houses of the poor and the palaces of the rich, might certainly supply such materials to a fire, as would free St. Jerome from the imputation of too great an exaggeration in his lamentation over Rome: Once the head of the world, now the sepulchre of its people.' The authorities quoted by Mr. Hobhouse, only prove the existence of a fire when the Goths entered Rome; they do not even prove that they set the city on fire, nor do they prove the fact of any wanton destruction. To establish this we need but follow him in his several authorites.

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In order to weaken the authority of Orosius, who does not assert sufficient to warrant the Author's indignation, Mr. Hobhouse says, 'It should be remembered, that the supposed piety • redeemed the actual violence of the Goths, and that respect 'for the vessels of St. Peter's shrine, made Orosius almost the

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