"I oft have heard of Lydford law,
How in the morn they hang and draw,
And sit in judgment after.
At first I wondered at it much,
But since I find the matter such,
As it deserves no laughter.

"When I beheld it, Lord! thought I,
What justice and what clemency
Hath Lydford Castle's high`hall!
I know none gladly there would stay
But rather hang out of the way
Than tarry for a trial."

The prison within Lidford Castle is described in an Act of Parliament (1512) as "one of the most hanious, contagious, and detestable places in the realm." The act was passed to afford redress to William Strode, then member for Plympton, who had been prosecuted and fined by the Stannators at Crockern Tor, and refusing to pay, had been kept for three weeks in irons at Lidford, and fed on bread and water.

The names scattered over such a district as Dartmoor are the best possible evidences not only of its past history, but of its climate and general character. As certain plants, still found on the moor, are relics of a glacial period, the flora belonging to which was once spread over the greater part of England, so the names of the tors and hill-streams are yet lingering traces of the tribes that first wandered over, and dwelt beside them. The names of the greater rivers-Dart, Teign, Taw, Tavy-are British. Plym, and, perhaps, Torridge, received their present names from the first Teutonic settlers. Among the tors, Rootor (Corn. rooz), the red hill; Meltor (mel, yellow), the yellow or furzy hill; Lynxtor (lynnek, marshy), the hill of the morass; and, perhaps, Kneeset (neage, moss), the great mossy hill, not to mention such as Beltor, Hessarytor, and others, which have been claimed for the shadowy British gods Bel, Hesus, and the like, belong to that Celtic race which, we may fairly believe, was the constructor of such "villages as Grimspound. Mist-tor, Houndtor, Foxtor, and Sheepstor, are Saxon, and give us an additional touch or two toward a picture of primitive Dartmoor; while such words as "cleave," a deeply cleft valley, full of broken rock; "ledge," a high pass along the tor side; "beam," a straight natural line of division, sunk heath or morass; or "hall," constantly used for the hollow of the hill (compare the Icelandic "hialla ") still as strictly appropriate as when first given, show how completely unchanged the country has remained through the long march of centuries. Other names, of later date, tell us something further of the nature of Dartmoor. Such are "Honeywell's Bed," or "Childe's Tomb," both commemorating persons who are said to have perished

-a

in the snow, still most formidable in severe winters on these great untracked moorlands. The prisoners on Dartmoor have more than once been compelled to dig a way through the snow toward Tavistock before the usual provision carts could reach them; and a winter rarely passes without some loss of life. "Childe's Tomb "a granite cross, of which the basement alone now remains in a most desolate morass, close under Foxtor-was raised, says tradition, by the Tavistock Benedictines on the place where a certain "Childe the Hunter" was found, frozen to death, within the body of his horse, which he had killed, and crept into, for the sake of warmth. With its blood he had written on a rock close by

"The first that finds and brings me to my grave

The lands of Plymstock he shall have.'

The monks found, and brought him to their convent. The story is in all probability a version of some ancient Saxon legend, since Plymstock seems to have been one of the manors bestowed on Tavistock Abbey at the time of its foundation; although deep snow or the thick, flying mists that close in over the moors very suddenly and completely, might well bring about such a hunter's catastrophe. Something mysterious is generally connected with these mischances in the minds of the moormen, who look on the remoter heights of the forest, and especially the heaths about Cranmere,—a solitary morass in and near which many rivers have their sources, and where unhappy spirits heard wailing within it, are kept confined,-as, in their own words, "critical places," which it is not safe to traverse alone. The remains of two children who, not many years since, were lost in a thick mist near Widdecombe, were at last discovered on a far off hill-side, where many hawks and ravens were hovering and pitching. But the hill had an evil reputation; and the man who first saw the birds was "afeared to go nigh," till he had called some turf-cutters to keep him company.

And it was this "vraie Sibérie," this land of mist and snow, that perfidious Albion selected as the place on which to construct her chief war prisons during the long revolutionary struggle with France. Both French and Americans have given us long narratives of their detention here, more or less untrustworthy; but, although the motto over the great gates, "Parcere subjectis," seems to have been tolerably well observed, there can be no doubt that, thanks to the inmates themselves, they were, as prisons of war, far more "heinous and detestable" than Lidford as the prison of the stannaries. The buildings themselves have now been altered and enlarged, so as to form the great convict prison which is a rival of that on Portland Island; but in their former condition, deserted, solitary, and slowly mouldering to decay, they were more gloomily "uncanny" than the blackest morass on Dartmoor :

"O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted;
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear-
'The place is haunted.'”

After all, whatever may have been the iniquity of "ce monstre Pitt" in confining his victims under such a sky and within such walls, "the whirligig of time has brought about its revenges." A lively Frenchman (his name does not appear) has produced a "roman entitled "Le Dartmoor," in which the "ancient moore," as Drayton calls her, is made to suffer ample retribution for all she may have inflicted on the Gauls of former generations. Miss Kitty and Miss Betsy, "jeunes demoiselles des plus charmants," live in a rustic, but most refined, abode close under "le Dartmoor." Alas, that such innocence and such beauty could not command a better fate! Alphonse, a young Frenchman, who condescends to assist in the "établissement" of an eminent silk merchant at Plymouth, one day arrives at the cottage-door with a pack (such, it appears, is the eccentric way in which eminent silk merchants at Plymouth prefer doing business) stuffed with the most exquisite silks, with robes "dignes de Paris," and even with "châles de Cachemire." Miss Kitty, lively and impulsive, is struck with the beauty of the silks-more with the good looks of M. Alphonse. Miss Betsy, whose mind is of a severer order, and who delights to wander alone under the "ciel sombre et mysterieux" and among the "rochers sauvages" of Dartmoor, suspects a coming danger, and sends the fascinating packman about his business. How he came back, of poor Miss Kitty's too sad fate, of Miss Betsy's adventures among the haunted rocks of Sheepstor, and of the final triumph of virtue and la belle France,—all this and a great deal more will be found in the edifying, yellow-wrapped history, for which we sincerely wish all the literary success it deserves.

In spite of mist and snow, however, the climate of Dartmoor, even in winter, is healthy and bracing; and in spring, when the hills are golden with furze, while the streams dash onward between beds of aromatic bog-myrtle, or in autumn, when the heather, with its colouring of dusky crimson, gives something of life and of beauty to the most desolate mosses, nothing can well be more invigorating than the fresh free air of the Devonshire highland, with its occasional dash of turf smoke from outlying farm or village. No one who visits Dartmoor at such seasons will wonder at the strong hold it retains on the affections of all who live on it or around it. "I would rather live in the hollow rocks of Blackytor than in the finest house in Plymouth," said old Tom French, a well-known Dartmoor "hunter," and a great "destroyer" of foxes; "a nasty varmint," he declared, "that aught to be killed on the Sabbath as well as on the week

day." Tom, we believe, was "in at the death" of a fox which, like himself, preferred the "hollow rocks" of Cumston Tor to any more usual abode, and which, run after run, disappeared among them to the great wonder and dissatisfaction of its pursuers. Many were the stories told of this marvellous "varmint," which at last came to be looked on as not altogether canny. It was killed, in the end, close under the tor; and, what an ordinary fox never does, gave a loud sharp cry when caught. There was much white in its pads. A veteran sportsman who was present declared that only on one other occasion he had heard a fox "cry" at the death, and that fox was also marked by its white pads.

Standing on one of the higher tors near the border of Dartmoor, and looking over the wide stretch of cultivated land beneath it,-the long, wooded coombes that run upward into the skirts of the moorland, and the river valleys with their patches of green meadow shut in between steep hill sides-it is easy to see how the great mass of wild country, occupying so large a proportion of Devonshire, has influenced the history of the county. The most ancient roads, those which the Romans either constructed or adopted, ran below it on either side. The castles of Lidford, Plympton, and Okehampton rose close under the hills,-for their lords were "worthie parsonages enough to obtain license for hunting the deer in the king's forest; the earliest religious houses in Devonshire-Tavistock and Buckfastleigh-lie both of them in the upper valleys of Dartmoor rivers; nestling, as it were, under the high moors that rise steeply behind them. Monk and baron alike found their account in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor; whilst, like the Romans with the line of their roads, they hesitated to raise their towers or their cloisters among the barren hills themselves. The Cistercians especially, of Buckland and of Buckfast, have left traces of their former interests on Dartmoor. Grey, weather-worn crosses, "signa," says a charter of the former abbey," Christiano digna,"-still mark the boundaries of the convent moors, and stand here and there beside the "Abbots' Way,'-a narrow green path through the heather, along which, says tradition, the wool of their moorland sheep was conveyed downward to the ample storehouses of the Cistercians at Buckfast. Later still, the long, low manor house, and the franklin's farm, with its outlying "steadings" rose, as we may still look down upon them, in many a winding coombe and sheltered valley. And the unchanged, oldworld atmosphere of Dartmoor hangs alike about coombe and manorhouse; carrying us back to ages which appear far less real and impressive amid the stir and confusion "of this most brisk and giddypaced time."

RICHARD J. KING.

VITTORIA.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN.—VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY.

THE fall of Vicenza turned a tide that had overflowed its barriers with force enough to roll it to the Adriatic. From that day it was as if a violent wind blew east over Lombardy; flood and wind breaking here and there a tree, bowing everything before them. City, fortress, and battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls. Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this, unutterable devastation, so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking false oath of its being night when it was day. From Vicenza and Rivoli, to Sommacampagna, and across Monte Godio to Custoza, to Volta on the right of the Mincio, up to the gates of Milan, the line of fire travelled, with a fantastic overbearing swiftness that, upon the map, looks like the zigzag elbowing. of a field-rocket, if such a piece of description can be accepted.Vicenza fell on the 11th of June; the Austrians entered Milan on the 6th of August. Within that short time the Lombards were struck to the dust.

Countess Ammiani quitted Brescia for Bergamo before the worst had happened; when nothing but the king's retreat upon the Lombard capital, after the good fight at Volta, was known. According to the king's proclamation the Piedmontese army was to defend Milan, and hope was not dead. Vittoria succeeded in repressing all useless signs of grief in the presence of the venerable lady, who herself showed none, but simply recommended her accepted daughter to pray daily. "I can neither confess nor pray," Vittoria said to the priest, a comfortable, irritable ecclesiastic, long attached to the family, and little able to deal with this rebel before Providence, that would not let her swollen spirit be bled. Yet she admitted to him that the countess possessed resources which she could find nowhere; and she saw the full beauty of such inimitable grave endurance. Vittoria's foolish trick of thinking for herself made her believe, nevertheless, that the countess suffered more than she betrayed; was less consoled than her spiritual comforter imagined. She continued obstinate and unrepentant, saying, "If my punishment is to come, it will at least