a species of demi-goddesses. And in the stern republic of Rome, as well as during the splendid epoch of its empire, we find the all-accomplished characters of Lucretia, Virginia, Cornelia, Portia, Octavia, Arria, Agrippina, and many others, on whose several noble qualities history has been eloquent; which will not allow us, of more modern refinement, to forget that the dignity of a Roman matron had passed into a proverb; and that the modesty of a Roman virgin was less assailable than her life.

At that time Rome was mistress of the world; and the unconscious herald of a better world, too. Wherever the eagles of her conquest flew they carried with them the principles of highly civilized society. From north to south, from east to west, wherever she planted her standard, the staff was struck so deep into the soil, that it remains yet; not only in the legible outline of her camps, and the imperishable foundations of her causeways, but in the shape of some revered law or cherished custom; and, with regard to the more pliant mold of manners, the seeds may be traced there too, springing to good or ill. On one side, her adulation of fame fomented a laudable ambition, until it became an insatiable desire for self-aggrandizement; and her refinements of taste exaggerated the elegant enjoyments of sense to a degree of luxury, which at length swallowed up all that was moral in man, in a never-satisfied pursuit of mere sensual gratifications. On the other hand, Rome having opened the gates of science, and introduced the amenities of social intercourse, to the most barbarous of their conquered provinces, the posterity of those classic graces yet abide amongst them.

But the benefit did not end there. By the then general diffusion of one language all over the inhabited earth, and the not less universal spreading of the knowledge of the great events that occurred in any part of the empire, spread by that very language from one extremity of its thousand provinces to another, the

still small voice of Bethlehem was heard throughout them all; when the teacher was given, for whom Socrates had sighed with an almost inspired earnestness, and for whose peace-bestowing reign Virgil had raised the prophetic hymn of the sibyl, while even himself knew not the sacred promise he breathed. But the power of Christianity over the world was to extend by degrees; as the infant Jesus, in a divine similitude, is described to have gradually grown in stature," increasing in favour with God and man." Therefore we must not be surprised that heathen practices contended so long with the sacred precepts, or that many of the brightest female names of Rome, even for centuries after the promulgation of the holy doctrine of Jesus, should still show the stains of the old false religion.

Hardly more than one century before that period, which might well be called the renewed dawn of man's immortal existence, our remote country became known to Roman ambition. Our ancestors then sat under their Druid oaks ; and the daughters of Albion uttered their virgin vows before the mysterious mistletoe, to lovers mantled in the wolf-skin, and armed with bow and quiver. To polish that bow, and fledge the arms for that quiver, was then the young wife's proudest employment. But when the new colonists from imperial Rome arrived, what the Calphurnias and Claudias were at the beginning of the Christian era, the wondering, and admiring female natives of the eagerlyvisited western isle, sedulously sought to imitate. That change appears to form the link, in time and circumstance, between the rough Amazonian character of our aboriginal women, and the heroic virtue in the British females, which in the course of a few succeeding generations set even Rome at gaze!

But the next evening's reading will take up the story here.

To be continued, under the head of " Women of Ancient Britain."

For some moments after I had ended, he sat and mused. "Did you never hear more of him?" said he, at last. "No," I replied, “and there is no more in the journal."

The old man rose, and going to his bureau took out a small packet of papers. "Here is the last that I ever saw of him," said he; "perhaps the last that ever was seen of him on this side the sea." He put the papers into my hand-"I wrote them first, a few days after we parted for the last time; but it is but a little ago I was putting them in order; for I think to leave them with some few notes of the days that will be forgotten when I am gone. Ye may just look at them."

I read the MS. with an interest which he did not overlook, and while I was doubting if I could ask him for a copy, he laid his hand on my knee.-"Ye'r just thinking o' the prunter's deevils!" said he: "Weel, ye'll get it, and ye'll no tell onie buik-making lees, nor mak mair nor less o't." I promised that I would not, and taking the MS. he tore out two or three of the leaves. "They'll no get you," said he; "and if they dinna like it, ye'll just tell them. They have it as ye have it, and ye canna mak mair

o't."

I obeyed the old man's humour with a fidelity very uncommon for an editor of post-obit memoirs, but I have not attempted to supply the lost leaves from my memory, and the following pages are printed without an alteration from the original MS.

THE GRAY WOMAN OF WOLFSDEN.

IN the autumn of 1790, during a journey to the south, I visited the Peak of Derbyshire, and spent some days at the little village of Castleton in the midst of that wild solitary district. I had seen the Diel's Dowp,' Poole's Hole,' and 'Helden Hole,' and every other hole usually visited among the Wonders of the Peak,' when on the evening before my intended departure

a shepherd came to tell me of a cave known only to very few, and said by tradition to have been a retreat of the cavaliers in the great civil war. "It is called The Wolf's Den," said the man, "from some old captain that was called the Wolf of the Peak, and that was hid there; and as you are from the north, perhaps you would like to see one of the old Pretender's* queer places better than e'er another in the Peak, and except old Jem Horncoot down in Huntercoomb, there's not another man can show ye the road."

I love much better the face of a gray craig than the face of human nature; unless, indeed, such a one as Julia del Ila's, which Heaven knows one shall never see near the Devil's Doup of Derbyshire;' + and I asked the direction of the cave. Ostentatious of his guidecraft, the shepherd described every crook, bush, and stone with a minuteness from which I could have laid down a map.

"Good evening," said I, "you may go;" and I gave him a halfcrown.

The man twisted his hat, and looked at the money, and turned up his tups face to me with a cackling laugh. "Well!" said I.

"Do you know as what I thinks, sur?" said he.

"No more than if you were Aristotle!" said I.

Why, sur, I thinks as how-I'm an old shepherd ye see. I thinks as how if you had the snout of my dog, ye wouldn't find the hole, suppose it was mutton."

I bowed. "Friend," said I, "do you know what a chamois is?"

"Shammy! crimony! sure! Istrops my razzor on't every marnan.'

66

'Well," said I, "I have followed the beast upon whose skin you strop your razzor,' where your dog would break his neck, if he was the leaping devil of Burstall, and if you have given me true signals, I trust not to lose my

VOL. III.

C

way among the mole-hills of Derbyshire."

The old man pulled his gray forelock, made a long scrape on the sandy floor, and left the room.

The dawn began to break as I ascended the foot of the hill, near the summit of which the cave was said to open. It was a dark, still, blue October day. The gray clouds rested upon the white bonnet of the mountain, but at times the misty veil shifted suddenly, and for a moment showed the sharp snowy silent peak glimmering like a baseless cone amid the world of cloud. I climbed slowly along the bank of the solitary stream which I was told had its source at the cave; it was a deep, black, rocky channel, such as in Scotland we call a Gill,'* partly overhung by stunted bushes, and obstructed by fragments of spotted rock which had rolled from above. As I ascended, the chasm grew deeper and deeper, till it assumed the character of a wild, black ravine, a few gray thorns and silvered pines leaned here and there over the brink, and at intervals a white fall leaped down the deep steps of the rock.

I had almost reached the gray cloud, which rested upon the upper hill, when suddenly the path came to a sharp turn where the precipice scarce afforded footing for a couple of goats. A white blasted fir leaned over the crook, and holding by its arm, I passed the rock, and came suddenly in sight of the termination of all further progress.

I stopped and looked round; it was a deep black volcanic corrai in the heart of the hill, surrounded by naked precipices, which descended at one fall into the bottom of the abyss, where a little lake blacker than Asphalt slumbered far beneath the wind. Not a breath stirred upon its shadowless surface, nor a motion moved its silent brim, except where a slow sullen eddy glided into the gorge of the ravine. Upon the north side rose up a red shattered fortress of sandstone broken into broad clefts, and ledges fringed with birch and black willow. I looked for the cave, but I could see no aperture but the holes of the sand-martins, and one or two hollows which seemed to be old earths of badgers

or foxes. The path, however, had not terminated; and following till it brought me to the red rock, I found that it continued to run along the face of the precipice upon the matted roots of the trees which jutted from a ledge undistinguishable at a distance. The narrow footing was thickly embowered by the boughs; but the sand was beaten, and the little leafy archway hollowed as if by frequent passing. Though I saw no print but the round soft patting paws of the hillmartin, and here and there the little forked feet of the wild goats.

I followed the narrow ledge, fearing every moment that it would terminate in nothing, when suddenly, at a gap of the bushes, I looked up and saw the deep, black, hazy mouth of the cavern in an angle of the rock which was unseen from the sides of the corrai. The cavern opened like a martin's nest to the precipice, and as I stooped and gazed upon the fearful den, and thought of those who had made it their retreat, a dark figure appeared in the arch; I could scarce discern its shape in the gloom, but suddenly it came out into the sun and stood on the jutting shelf of the rock, the very shadow of one of the cavaliers which stood there two hundred years ago. It was a tall man in a black cloak and broad round hat, and as he moved, a dim flash under his hand discovered that he was armed. I gazed almost with awe as he stood motionless in the still sunshine, till suddenly he turned again into the cave, and slowly disappeared amidst the gloom.

For several moments I watched the entrance, but nothing appeared, and I advanced up the fearful steps of the rock which ascended like a broken stair to the mouth of the cavern. It was a narrow rugged arch, not twenty feet high without; but as I entered, the roof rose into a vast black dome which ascended till the gray twilight faded in its vault. I looked round, but all was still and solitary, and not the whisper of a footstep gave any intimation of the person whom I had seen before me. I advanced, but in a few moments entered a 'darkness that might be felt,' and as I groped my way with my kent, the rocky walls receded from the staff, and

I felt myself in a vastness of space into which I dared not enter without a light. "D-n the shepherd!" said I, as I stood and pondered on my stick, and gazed into the darkness, hoping to discover some shape as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. It was of no use, however, the guide had 'done' me; for though I had found the cave, the size, which he had concealed, prevented me from profiting by my success. After a few moments of impatient curiosity, I turned to retrace my steps, but I had not reached the mouth of the cave when I thought I heard distant words in the darkness. I stopped and listened, and looked back. The echo of a deep voice came distinctly down the cavern, and suddenly a little red light appeared like a star in the gloom. It advanced with a steady motion toward the place where I stood, and I might as well tell you the truth-I looked round for some place to hidenot in regard to my courage-but I could not help thinking that the strange figure which I had seen must be there for some equally strange purpose; and, beautiful lady-for, reader, you must needs be a lady; and like Don Quixote's princess, very beautiful.-I was actuated by the same laudable impulsethe mother of knowledge-which you and I participate in common.

At the second glance I discovered a deep nook concealed by a large fragment of fallen rock, and retiring into the recess, I sat down behind the stone, and watched through a chink. It was not long before the voices advanced, and I heard the slow heavy tread of feet upon the soft sand. In a few moments the light approached, and discovered the noble figure of the cavalier, accompanied by a tall powerful man with every characteristic of one of those smugglers who forty years ago often crossed a king's cutter, and rode the country in troops of more than two hundred. He

was dressed in a costume half sailor, half horseman: his wide blue trousers gathered into high rolling black boots, and his frieze coat belted with a ridingbelt, from which hung a broad short cutlass, almost concealed by his heavy watch-cloak. His stern sunburnt countenance and long dark hair was overshadowed by a wide glazed hat, such as still worn by the French and Dutch smugglers, and the thick moustache which covered his lip was compressed with the severity of habitual taciturnity and danger. As they passed the stone he stopped suddenly, and fixed his dark eye upon the cavalier.

"Et bien, et la Dame?" said he.

66

Carry her to the Convent de la Madelaine, at St. Omer," replied the cavalier. The smuggler resumed his pace, and I lost the rest of the reply as they

went on.

I watched them till they came to the cave's mouth, when they stopped, and again returning towards me, continued to pace to and fro between the entrance and the stone. Each time as they advanced I listened eagerly, but they spoke so low that I could only catch a few words, in which I distinguished the names of the Prince,' and the King of France. The smuggler walked with his broad hat pulled over his brow, and his hands thrust into his belt. At times he stopped, and his stern dark face fixed upon the cavalier, till again he resumed his steps in silence.

For more than half an hour they continued in that mysterious conference, till suddenly they stopped immediately under the stone; and I heard the gingle of money, the crumpling of paper, and the closing of a purse-snap. For some moments there was a busy silence, a few low words, and the confederates separated. The steps of one passed out alone; but as they retired, the smuggler called after-" To-morrow, on the red Scaur,