of our religion and my councils are alike impotent; but I have thought of a measure which perhaps will conciliate both your love, and that which you owe to heaven. At first you will feign the appearance of indisposition; you must not eat at the refectory; Madame will summons me to inquire what is the matter with you; I will tell her that it is nothing more than the want of exercise. She will give me the key of the park, for she always does so when any of the sisters are sick. The day upon which your cousin has fixed for a rendezvous, you shall ascend the turret, the door of which is never fastened; you shall speak to him through the grating of the little window; you will tell him that you have not yet pronounced your vows, that you will not pronounce them; but that he must address his suit to your father, and since Monsieur your cousin is rich, he will doubtless give his consent to your marriage. Doubtless also,' added she, embracing me, 'you will quit me, but happy and without disobedience to heaven. That consideration will at least console me.' Such was the plan that her wisdom of twenty-two imagined, and which my love adopted. "As Rose had ordered me, I feigned illness. Madame gave us the key of the park; we went there every evening. Upon the fatal day you may judge of our inquietude. Rose however had preserved some little stock of courage; for myself I was more dead than alive. Arrived at the turret, the door, contrary to custom, was shut; but close at hand a tall ladder was placed against the wall. We knew not what to do, when suddenly my cousin appeared from the other side of the wall; he wished to descend; we threw ourselves upon our knees, and prayed him to refrain from so doing, telling him that all would be lost if he did. He complied with our entreaties, on condition that I myself should ascend the ladder from our side. I tremblingly obeyed; but scarcely had I reached him ere he seized me by the arm, at the same time his valet de chambre placed himself upon the wall, and both lifted me over, dumb with terror, not perhaps unmixed with another sentiment. Three days afterwards we were in Holland, where he married me. "This marriage proved a most happy one. However, amidst the first transports of our union, one bitter thought alloyed my otherwise so perfect felicity. What was the fate of Rose, and how dreadful must it be, if they looked upon her as an accomplice of my flight!when one day I received a letter from her. This is a copy of it. Read it once more to me; for although I have it by heart, I am never tired of hearing it." She then gave me the following letter to peruse, which bore her name and address. I begged permission of her to keep it, this she granted me. I give it here in all its original simplicity. "Abbée de Maubuisson, 20 Dec., 1791. "My dear sister in Jesus Christ, Louise Bénédictine, "You will assuredly be greatly astonished at receiving a letter from me. I will tell you on some future occasion how. But wheresoever you may read it, I pray heaven that it may find you faithful to its holy commandments and happy. "I have many things to tell you concerning this convent and its inmates; but as I imagine you are principally anxious to learn what befel me after your departure, I shall commence with that. "When Monsieur your cousin lifted you down on the other side of the wall, I was in an agony of terror; I feared lest you might fall and hurt yourself, for the wall is very high. I called to you several times but you made me no reply. Some minutes after, I heard the noise of a carriage driving off. I saw too clearly that you were lost to me for ever, and then I wept bitterly. "I knew not where I was, or what I was doing. However, the idea occurred to me of taking away the ladder, and notwithstanding it was three times heavier than myself, I dragged it among the bushes, near the water. I did so that they might not perceive, if they came, by which way you had made your escape; for had they have recovered you, they would have rendered your life very miserable. I then returned to the convent almost as fast as I could run, by the grate of Saint Benoit. I arrived at the very moment they were ringing the Angelus. "I at first imagined that the sisters in the infirmary had concluded you had returned to the cloisters, whilst our sisters within the cloister believed you were all the while at the infirmary; for that evening no one seemed to miss you. As for myself, you may guess that I was unable to close my eyes the whole night. Whenever I heard the smallest noise in the courtyard or in Madame's apartments I always thought it must be you they were bringing back. "But the next morning, Madame ordered all the sisters and boarders to assemble in the great hall near the refectory. When all of us were there, she came in accompanied by the superieure. I commended myself to the care of Heaven, fully persuaded that my last hour had arrived. "Madame read with her ordinary tranquillity the prayer, Veni, sancte Spiritus.' When it was ended, she rose up and spoke thus: 'My sisters, I recommend to your prayers Mademoiselle Louise Bénédictine. Heaven has not destined her to our holy vocation. She has quitted us. We will offer up in her behalf the orison pro peccatoribus.' "You will surely conclude that I was not one of those who prayed the least heartily for you. But all present prayed also from the very bottom of their souls; for everybody here loved you, and you might have been very happy with us. Heaven has otherwise disposed of you: let its will alone be done. "There was nothing of fresh occurrence during eight days. On the ninth, it was a Tuesday, Madame requested to see me. As she loved me passably well and often sent for me, I hoped that it was not on your account; but as soon as I entered her apartment, all hope forsook me. She was seated in her great arm-chair, and gazed at me with those piercing black eyes which used to terrify you so much. I trembled all over like a leaf, and was as pale as my veil. Seeing which, she said to me— 'You seem to be greatly terrified, Mademoiselle.' At that word Mademoiselle I trembled more then ever. 'Yes,' continued she, Mademoiselle, for you certainly do not expect that I can call such an atheist as you my sister.' I repeat that horrible word to you for my own humiliation and as a penance for my sins. I cannot describe to you the effect it had upon me; I was in a most wretched state of mind. I need hardly tell you how ill I merited that epithet. "My limbs would scarce sustain me, I trembled so violently, and I staggered near her praying-desk for support. "Touch not my prie-dieu,' exclaimed she. And then she added: Had you as much fear when you aided Mademoiselle Louise Bénédictine to make her escape?' And as I made no reply-' But answer me then!' she cried in a terrible voice. I was just on the point of losing my senses; which being perceived by her, she immediately assumed a kinder man. ner-Listen to me, and answer truly my interrogations. Have you spoken of this affair to any person whatsoever?' I assured her that I had not, which was the truth. Very well!' replied she, then I forbid your speaking on the subject to any one, whosoever they may be. I desire that this affair should remain unknown, for the sake equally of the convent's reputation and the interests of religion. The least indiscretion on your part will draw down my highest anger; in the meanwhile, I deliver you up to that of Heaven.' "As Madame said nothing more to me then, I thought she had nothing further to add. I made her my obeisance, and was about to retire, when she recalled me and said-Kneel down;' and when I had done so-'I repeat' continued she, that I do not judge it convenient to punish you for your fault before the eyes of mankind as it well merits, but do not hope that it will escape condign punishment.' I replied that I was ready to do whatsoever she should command. 'Well,' said she, 'in order that I may punish you without its being known to be on account of Mademoiselle Louise Bénédictine, I order you on the Saturday of every week to commit some fault contrary to the convent rules, that I may be furnished with a pretext. Your penitence will be, to go down into the correction from the end of matins until the commencement of mass, which you must hear kneeling beneath the lamp. Now arise, and you may withdraw.' 'You see, my dear Louise Bénédictine, that Madame has still been very good, for she might have written to our holy father, who would have sentenced me to die, instead of going once a week down into the correction. I must tell you frankly that the first time they put me into that horrible prison, 'I had a mortal terror and wept the whole time. I have now got accustomed to it by degrees; and I pray whilst there to Heaven and to the Holy Virgin to protect you. If you are happy with Monsieur your cousin, who undoubtedly is your husband, for you are too prudent not to have been married to him, I do not in the least regret suffering a little to insure your happiness. Our Saviour has suffered far greater agony for us. "That which causes me more pain than going into the correction, is committing the fault every Saturday which Madame has ordered me to do. I do assure you that it causes me much embarrassment. When I first began I made pretence of falling asleep at matins, but the sisters at last began to ask me where- "I perceive that I have used all my sheet of paper in speaking of myself, and I shall never have the opportunity of sending another. I could wish however to tell you many things concerning the sisters and the convent. You would not know it again were you to return; it would appear very dull to what it was when you were here. Father Brantome, who was so good, has left for a foreign country; father Cheuneviere alone remains, of whom I would not wish to say any thing disrespectful. The greater part of our boarders have also left us. Another of them, Mademoiselle Marie de Saulieu, will also take her departure to-morrow. When I discovered that she was distantly related to you, I became very intimate with her. She it is who has promised me to take charge of this letter, to and out where you are, and forward it to you. But there is one thing I must not forget to mention, which would cause you as much pain as it does me. It is to see how greatly, even daily, people relax in religion. Madame, and Madame the Superieure go almost every day to Paris. They say it is on account of the convents that they are anxious to suppress; but convents must always be necessary for the preservation of religion, and the king would not desire that ours should be suppressed, which was founded by the mother of his saintly ancestor. As for myself, I cannot imagine otherwise than that I shall end my days in it. Every evening I ask this grace from my good guardian angel, and I have a secret presentiment that it will be granted me. I think, by the way, that they will send some other sisters of our order to us, because they say we are too rich. They may send as many as they please, no one will ever be to me like my dear sister Louise Bénédictine. "Adieu, receive the prayers and blessings of your sister, who truly loves you. Rose de la Miséricorde. "N. B. Above all things do not write or endeavour to see me, for then I should be lost." The lady rejoined: :-"In that letter the mind of my poor Rose fully displays itself to you; a touching assemblage of sincere devotion and lively friendship. She told me some few of her troubles, yet made as light of them as possible for the sake of my feelings; at the same time she concealed the most poignant. Ah! it was not in that hateful dungeon where she must have suffered most, but in the cloister, during the hours of the promenade, at class, in fine she suffered incessantly. You have no conception, Monsieur, of the malignity existing among some forty idle nuns, who have but a very narrow circle wherein to exercise it: I myself know full well how many scornful expressions must have wounded her ear, how many injurious suspicions have saddened that noble and sensitive heart. "The revolution however advanced with hasty strides, France was open to all those whom political or religious matters had banished from it. My husband might have returned thither much sooner than he did, but affairs of importance detained him at the Hague. We did not return before the autumn of 1791. "We were at Valenciennes in the beginning of October, when I read in the public papers a decree of the Assembly which immediately suppressed several religious houses. The Abbey of Maubuisson was among the number. "I hastened my departure several days; I was impatient to see once more my dear Rose, and offer her in that world in which she was about to find herself alone, the succour of a friendship she had so dearly purchased. I arrived at Paris the 12th of October; on the 13th I was at Maubuisson. "I will not dwell upon the painful feelings experienced on beholding the gates of that cloistered retreat, closed during so many centuries, thrown open to all who chose to enter; the chapel devastated, its tombs violated, their bones profaned. Alas! a still sadder spectacle awaited me. "As I inquired of every person I met what had become of the nuns, the reply to each question was, that the portress could alone inform me. She occupied the apartment of the late abbess, and thither I ran with all speed. "This woman recognized me immediately. "What has become,' said I, "of sister Rose de la Misérecorde?' “On uttering the name she grew pale, trembled, lighted a taper, and sought for her keys. "In the name of Heaven,' I repeated, where is sister Rose? Can she be dead?' "Oh! Madame... Madame, come instantly, quick. . they have forgotten her.' .... edly we promised one another to bear a mutual share of the pains and pleasures of our whole lives: unequal partition, in which the fault and what the world calls happiness was mine, her's innocence and a most horrible punishment!" The lady had just finished these words when her carriage was announced. After she had stepped into it: "Monsieur," said she to me, "I am sure that I need not request your keeping this history a secret, and my name especially so, at least so long as I live." Intelligence has just reached me that Madame Louise Bénédictine de Simon died but a few days since. J. S. M. HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. SIR JAMES TYRREL, THE SUPPOSED MURDERER OF THE PRINCES THE following ingenious defence of the above gentleman, is from the European Magazine for June 1791. "The unhappy girl had perished with "Lord Bacon, who has the specious hunger, and every thing around testified art of affecting candour where he means how cruel had been her agonies. Her to impress conviction against truth, has veil and woollen garments were torn into in the first instance established the report shreds, her crucifix broken, and she was of this supposed murder, and the supextended over these fragments. I took posed murderer, into a tale of truth, by hold of her round the middle of the body, design to impose it as such in his Hisand raised her up before me, stark and tory of Henry the Seventh, by way of rigid, as though of one single piece of flattering that monarch, in order to curry framework. Her right hand had lace- favour after his fall. Without any warrated her bosom; her white and regular rant but his own authority, he asserts teeth, which her pain-contracted lips dis- that Henry caused Sir James Tyrrel and closed, were buried in her left arm, his man Dighton to be committed to the likewise bitten in several places. At Tower in 1493, and examined touching the same time her motionless eyes widely the death of the two innocent princes. open, appeared to stare me in the face. I could not longer sustain this horrible collision! I fell to the ground straining her body in my arms. It was necessary to employ force to separate us. next day, when I had recovered my senses, I found my husband arrived, who carried me from the spot. The "Such, Monsieur, was the deplorable event which brings me hither every year on the 13th of October. I come, not to ask forgiveness of my dearest Rose for the dreadful death I caused her: oh no! I am too certain that amidst all her sufferings there neither escaped from heart or lips a single malediction against me; but I come to these ruins to pray Heaven may unite us again in eternity. I come to revisit that garden, those alleys, that cloister, wherein so often we swore an eternal friendship, where so repeat Now that cannot be true; because, on the testimony not only of Henry himself, but of his parliament, three years afterwards, in 1497, Sir James Tyrrel bore an unstained character, and that in the eye of all the world; and nothing can bear a construction to the contrary, but he maintained it to his last breath of life. The occasion was this: the Earl of Oxford, with whom Sir James Tyrrel seems to have been well connected, had in the first 'parliament of Henry the Seventh, obtained an act for the restoration of a maternal estate which his mother, the Lady Oxford, and her trustees, had conveyed to Richard the Third, when he was only Duke of Gloucester, while the earl her son was in prison: and this act, passed a suggestion that the conveyances were executed by coercion; it happened on afterwards that it was held, that there was no proof before the parliament, of such coercion, and, in the parliament of 1497, being the twelfth year of that king's reign, the earl applied for a confirmation of that act, and offered evidence of the coercion, by producing several gentlemen to prove it, who in the words of the new act applied for, are styled "worshipful and credible persons," amongst whom is mentioned James Tyrrel, knight. The truth of which representation will be found in the Rotuli Parliamentorum, Vol. 6, pp. 473, 474. : It will appear that long after this time Sir James Tyrrel was favoured and trusted by Henry the Seventh, under whom he held the office of Captain of Guysne, which probably he held to his dying day he was beheaded in the Tower in the year 1503, with Sir John Wyndham, on pretence of treason, in plotting to assist in dethroning Henry in favour of the Earl of Suffolk. It is remarkable, and reflects descredit on Lord Bacon, that, on that occasion, he observes, "That Lord Abergavenie, and Sir Thomas Greene, were at the same time apprehended and soon after delivered; that the Earl of Devonshire remained prisoner in the Tower during the king's life; that William de la Pole, was also long restrained, though not so straitly. But," says he, "for Sir James Tyrrel, against whom the blood of the innocent princes, Edward the Fifth and his brother, did still cry from under the altar, and Sir John Wyndham, and the other meaner ones, they were attainted and executed." By this apostrophe on Tyrrel, Lord Bacon meant to impress the fiction of his being taken into custody and examined about the supposed murders, of which we have reason to think there was never a suspicion till very long after Tyrrel's death, and it was then fixed on him because he was not living to answer for himself. The memory of the dead is sacred, and should be defended for them; the living can answer for themselves, and the murder must be proved before it can be believed, which now it never can be. DEATH OF DR. W. HARVEY, THE DISCOVERER OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. "THE following circumstantial account of the death of this eminent man," says Hasted, in his History of Kent, "I believe is little known beyond the family, but is related on the authority of a clergyman of the county of Kent, who was assured of the fact of it, by the late Eliab Harvey, Esq. Barrister of Law, a descendant of the Doctor's younger brother of that name. "Dr. Harvey was ever afraid of becoming blind. Early one morning, for he always rose early, his housekeeper, coming into his chamber to call him, opened the window shutters, told him the hour, and asked him if he would not rise. Upon which, he asked if she had opened the shutters :-she replied yes.— Then shut them again :-she did so.Now open them again;-but still the effect was the same to him, for he had awakened stone-blind. Upon this, he told her to fetch him a bottle (which she herself had observed to stand on a shelf in his chamber for a long time), out of which he drank a large draught, and it being strong poison, which, it is supposed, he had long before procured, and set there for this purpose, he expired within three hours after." Dr. Harvey is buried in the obscure village of Hempstead in Essex. In the church there is a monument erected to him, with a long Latin inscription. It appears, by the size of his coffin, now remaining in the vault under the church, that he was a man of very short stature. The portraits of him, all agree in representing him as a man of a very sagacious and penetrating countenance, and of a body much extenuated by mental labour and fatigue. HOME CASTLE. In the year 1650, immediately after the taking of Edinburgh Castle, which surrendered on the 24th of December, Cromwell sent Colonel Fenwick with his own and Colonel Syder's regiment to take Home-Castle; on which Fenwick marched thither, drew up his troops, and sent the Governor the following summons." His Excellency, the Lord Geral Cromwell, has commanded me to reduce this castle you now possess under obedience; which if you now deliver into my hands for his service, you shall have terms for yourself, and those with you; if you refuse, I doubt not but in a short time, by God's assistance, to obtain what I now demand. I expect your answer by seven of the clock to-morrow morning, and rest your servant, GEO. FENWICK." The governor, whose name was Cockburn, being it seems a man of fancy, returned him this quibbling answer:— |