legendary taleswhich the peasantry relate of the minor families of the district, of the Bracewells, the Tempests, the Lysters, the Romillés, and the Nortons,-whose White Doe, however, has been immortalized by the poetry of Wordsworth,--can anything be more pregnant with romantic adventure than the fortunes of the successive chieftains of the lordly line of Clifford? Their first introduction to the North, owing to a love-match made by a poor knight of Herefordshire with the wealthy heiress of the Viponts and the Vesys! Their rising greatness, to the merited disgrace and death of Piers de Gavestone and his profligate minions! and their final exaltation to the highest honours of the British peerage, which they have now enjoyed for five hundred years, to the strong hand and unblenching heart with which they have always welcomed the assaults of their most powerful enemies! Of the first ten lords of Skipton castle, four died in the field and one upon the scaffold! The "black-faced Clifford," who sullied the glory which he acquired by his gallantry at the battle of Sandal, by murdering his youthful prisoner the Earl of Rutland in cold blood, at the termination of it, has gained a passport to an odious immortality from the soaring genius of the bard of Avon. But his real fate is far more striking, both in a moral and in a poetical point of view, than that assigned to him by our great dramatist. On the evening before the battle of Towton field, and after the termination of the skirmish which preceded it, an unknown archer shot him in the throat, as he was putting off his gorget, and so avenged the wretched victims whose blood he had shed like water upon Wakefield Bridge. The vengeance of the Yorkists was not, however, satiated by the death of the Butcher, as Leland informs us that they called him :-for they attainted him in the first year of the reign of Edward the Fourth, and granted his estates, a few years afterwards, to the Duke of Gloucester, who retained them in his iron grasp till he lost them with his crown and life at the battle of Bosworth. The history of his son is a romance ready made. His relations, fearing lest the partisans of the house of York should avenge the death of the young Earl of Rutland on the young Lord Clifford, then a

mere infant, concealed him for the next twenty-five years of his life in the Fells of Cumberland, where he grew up as hardy as the heath on which he vegetated, and as ignorant as the rude herds which bounded over it. One of the first acts of Henry the Seventh, after his accession to the throne, was to reverse the attainder which had been passed against his father; and immediately afterwards the young lord emerged from the hiding place, where he had been brought up in ignorance of his rank, and with the manners and education of a mere shepherd. Finding himself more illiterate than was usual even in an illiterate age, he retired to a tower, which he built in the beautiful forest of Barden, and there, under the direction of the monks of Bolton Abbey, gave himself up to the forbidden studies of alchemy and astrology. His son, who was the first earl of Cumberland, embittered the conclusion of his life, by embarking in a series of adventures which, in spite of their profligacy, or rather in consequence of it, possess a very strong romantic interest. Finding that his father was either unwilling or unable to furnish him with funds to maintain his inordinate riot and luxury, he became the leader of a band of outlaws, and, by their agency, levied aids and benevolences upon the different travellers on the King's highway. A letter of the old Lord, his father, which, by the by, is not the letter of an illiterate man, is still extant, in which he complains in very moving terms of his son's degeneracy and misconduct. The young scape-grace, wishing to make his father know from experience the inconvenience of being scantily supplied with money, enjoined his tenantry in Craven not to pay their rents, and beat one of them, Henry Popely, who ventured to disobey him, so severely with his own hand that he lay for a long time in peril of death. He spoiled his father's houses, &c., "feloniously took away his proper goods," as the old lord quaintly observes, "apparelling himself and his horse, all the time, in cloth of gold and goldsmith's work, more like a duke than a poor baron's son." He likewise took a particular aversion to the religious orders, "shamefully beating their tenants and servants, in such wise as some whole towns were fain to keep the churches both night and day, and durst not come

at their own houses."-Whilst engaged in these ignoble practices, less dissonant, however, to the manners of his age than to those of ours, he wooed, and won, and married a daughter of the Percy of Northumberland; and it is conjectured, upon very plausible grounds, that his courtship and marriage with a lady of the highest rank, under such disadvantages on his part, gave rise to the beautiful old ballad of the Nutbrown Maid. The lady, becoming very unexpectedly the heiress of her family, added to the inheritance of the Cliffords the extensive fee which the Percies held in Yorkshire; and by that transfer of property, and by the grant of Bolton Abbey, which he obtained from Henry the Eighth, on the dissolution of the monasteries, her husband became possessor of nearly all the district which stretches between the castles of Skipton on the south, and of Brougham, or as the Cliffords, to whom it belonged, always wrote it, Bromeham, on the north. The second Earl of Cumberland, who was as fond of alchemy aud astrology as his grandfather, was succeeded by his son George, who distinguished himself abroad by the daring intrepidity with which he conducted several buccaneering expeditions in the West Indies against the Spaniards, and at home, by the very extensive scale on which he propagated his own and his Maker's image in the dales of Craven. Among the numerous children of whom he was the father, the most celebrated was the Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery, whose long life of virtuous exertion renders her well qualified to figure as the heroine of a tale of chivalry. The anecdotes which are told of this high-spirited lady in the three counties of York, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, are almost innumerable, and relate to circumstances in her life which, though some are impossible, and others improbable, are still all full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,-her riding cross-legged to meet the Judges of Assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland, her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves that they would require

little adventitious ornament from the writer who should take them as incidents for poem or romance. Her courage and liberality in public life were only to be equalled by her order, economy, and devotion in private. "She was," says Dr Whitaker, "the oldest and most independent courtier in the kingdom," at the time of her death."She had known and admired Queen Elizabeth ;-she had refused what she deemed an iniquitous award of King James," though urged to submit to it by her first husband, the Earl of Dorset;-"she rebuilt her dismantled castles in defiance of Cromwell, and repelled with disdain the interposition of a profligate minister under Charles the Second." A woman of such dauntless spirit and conduct would be a fitting subject, even for the pencil of the mighty magician of Abbotsford. A journal of her life in her own handwriting is still in existence at Appleby Castle. I have heard that it descends to the minutest details about her habits and feelings, and that it is that cause alone which prevents its publication. But surely such details might be omitted, where they are incompatible with the refined delicacy of the present age; and the really valuable part of the work, the gold separated from the dross, might advantageously be made the property of the public. Personal adventures are not without attraction, even when nar. rated in the most ordinary style; and adventures like hers, narrated in the same terse and forcible language in which her letters are written, would from an admirable foundation for any superstructure of romance, which an "imagination all compact" might rear upon them.

It is not my intention to make any use of the traditionary stories, to which I have been alluding. They are connected with great events and lofty associations, and ought to be decorated with language and imagery worthy of their heroic argument. To array them in a garb of corresponding majesty would require more time and talent than I possess; and I shall therefore leave the Lords of Craven to some chronicler who enjoys more leisure, and is gifted with more extensive literature, than has hitherto fallen to my humble lot. But though I decline to trace the fortunes of the noble chieftains of the Clifford family, from

a conviction of my own inability to do justice to their merits, I am by no means unwilling to try my powers, such as they are, on those of some of their less exalted descendants; and there is a legend regarding one of them, so wild in its nature, so extraordinary in its incidents, and at the same time so little known in Craven, and so utterly unknown out of it, that I will endeavour to do good service to the lovers of romance, by placing, it plainly and briefly before them.

It was in the early part of the reign of Henry the Eighth that Master Antony Clifford, as he was called in the language of the times, lost a patron and benefactor, and, as some said, no very distant relation, by the death of the tenth Lord Clifford, so well known as "the Shepherd" to the peasantry of Craven. A degree of mystery hung over his birth, which rendered his station in society more then ambiguous; but the favour which he enjoyed both with the old Lord Clifford and with the gallant outlaw, his son, of whom he appeared to be a living image, caused a degree of respect to be paid to him which might perhaps have been denied to the comeliness of his person and to the kindliness of his disposition. Strange stories were bruited abroad respecting his first introduction to Barden Tower; and it was rumoured, that the Fair Lily of Egremond had fled from the hearth of her father in dishonour and grief, only a few weeks before he was discovered, a helpless infant, on the brink of that narrow and tremendous fissure in the rocks, through which the Wharf hurries its waters with a rapidity which dazzles the eye of the gazer. From his early infancy, he delighted in the profound solitude of the woods between Bolton Abbey and Barden Tower; and as he advanced to manhood, his attachment to it appeared to gain additional strength with every succeeding year of his life. Whether this was owing to the abstruse nature of his studies, to the melancholy moodiness of his disposition, or to the enlivening presence of Helen Hartlington, who wandered through those forests like the Dryad who presided over them, it is impossible for me to decide; but as he loved the lady, shunned the conversation of his equals in years, and had been taught to read futurity in the aspect of the stars of heaven, by his aged patron, Lord Clif

ford, the reader may impute it to any of the three causes which suits best with his own inclination. It was, however, remarked that, shortly after Lord Clifford's death, he became more strongly addicted then ever to the study of astrology. He had before calculated the horoscope of most of his friends; but then, by some strange fatality, he became passionately eager to calculate his own. There was a difficulty, however, about the operation, which he found it impossible to overcome. He knew neither the hour nor the circumstances of his birth, nor any means by which he could discover them. He know the time and the place where the verdurer of Barden forest had accidentally found him; but beyond that, he could learn nothing. A restless spirit of curiosity led him, on the anniversary of the day on which his destiny rescued him from the ripids of the Wharf, to visit at deep midnight the rocky and romantic scenery of the Strid. He had often seen and admired it in the brilliant blaze of day; but it was the first time that he had beheld the ruggedness of its features under the softening influence of the pale moonlight. He yielded up his full heart to the enchantment of the place and of the hour, and fell, he knew not how, into a train of mournful meditation on the events which had befallen him since he had been left there, a nameless being, to live or die, as accident might determine. The sports of his infancy, the pursuits of his youth, the favourable prospects of his maturer years, all passed in rapid succession before him. He was the delight of his friends, and the beloved of his mistress; and yet all this availed him nothing, so long as he was ignorant of the parents who had given him birth, and of the hour at which he had received it. He was turning his steps homewards, feeding on these bitter fancies, and heedless of every thing around him, when the unexpected appearance of a tall and aged female by his side, whose complexion and features betrayed her Egyptian origin, roused him from his reverie, and made him feel solicitous for a moment for his personal safety. But a second glance dissipated his anxiety, and though he started, as she called him by his name, it was more from surprise than from any unquiet or unpleasant feeling.

"Well met, Antony Clifford," said

the gipsy, eyeing him attentively as she spoke, and flinging a hasty glance of recognition over his pensive features,—“ well met, Antony Clifford, any where; but, at this season, best of all met here. Nay, fear not, because I have found thee alone at this late hour in the deepest glen of Barden forest. One-and-twenty years ago this very day, on an evening as serene and lovely as the present, I rescued thee on this very spot from the raging frenzy of a broken-hearted mother, who had just given thee birth; and I have not watched over thy safety for her sake in secret so long to wish to mar in one moment the last scion of a house which I loved so well. Listen to me, Antony Clifford," said she, observing him impatient to address ber-" and interrupt me not by idle questioning. I come to warn thee, in thy mother's name, against thy present feelings. Join in the active business of men, and advance, like a true son of Clifford as thou art, with boldness to fortune. Linger with the dreaming canons of Bolton in these woods, and become, as thy maddened mother prophesied that thou wouldst, the bane and ruin of those who love thee."

The young man, thus addressed, sought, but in vain, for further explanation from the sibyl, who had thus unexpectedly volunteered him her advice. She was not entirely unknown to him, as he had frequently met her in the recesses of the forest and had sometimes been surprised, if not perplexed, by the pertinacity with which she had at a distance observed his every motion. To all the questions, and they were many, which he asked her on other subjects she replied readily and distinctly; but whenever he touched upon the subject of his birth, she either gave him evasive answers, or sank, as if conscious she had said too much, into an obstinate and moody silence. He gained from her, however, upon that night, as he afterwards confessed, information sufficient for the calculation of his own horoscope; and the next day saw him busily occupied with the erection of the figure of heaven and its twelve houses, and with the rectification of the planets in their position in it, according to the moment of his presumed nativity. I am not sufficiently acquainted with the jargon of astrology

to know whether he found them in aspects sextile,quartile, trine conjoined, or opposite: but it was evident to all who knew him, that the calculations into which he had entered had ended in very unflattering results, and had produced an impression upon his mind from which, in spite of his efforts, he could not relieve it.

He was in this uneasy and unsettled state of mind, when the arrival of the new Lord Clifford to take possession of his paternal inheritance in Craven diverted for a while the current of his griefs, and filled him with proud aspirations of the future. Harsh and imperious to others, to him Lord Clifford was all gentleness and affection; and his dependents soon discovered that nothing gave his Lordship so much genuine satisfaction as any act of attention conferred on this foster-child of his family. To love those whom we have benefited is almost as natural a process of the human mind as to hate those whom we have injured; and it appeared as if each successive benefit which Lord Clifford bestowed upon his youthful favourite, served only as an inducement to shower upon him still greater benefits at the earliest opportunity. The only boon which Antony Clifford could not obtain was leave to depart from his native valleys, and to seek distinction in the turmoil and danger of a military life. The more earnestly he solicited that boon, the more obstinately was it withheld from him; and he was at last compelled to give up all thoughts of obtaining it by the declaration of Lord Clifford, that nothing but the basest ingratude could induce him to wish to withdraw himself so entirely from his protection and friendship. He felt this disappointment the more bitterly, because he could not conceal either from himself or from his companions that it was a disappointment; and he was scarcely reconciled to it by the watchful attention with which his Lordship sought to forestall his wishes upon every other subject. He was provided with hawks, which could strike down herons of the highest flightwith horses, which were unrivalled for spirit and fleetness, even among the excellent horses for which Yorkshire has long been renowned-and with dogs, which, if not "of the true Spartan breed," were "flew'd and