the one to Ireland and the other to Calais, rather than risk a general engagement under such circumstances. They were not absent long, as all the world knows, but returning to their own country, had possession of the capital.

In the following year I was again excited by hearing of the affair of Wakefield Green, and of the death of the Duke of York; his head having been stuck on the gates of that city, its gory locks surmounted with a paper crown, in derision of the daring wish the noble brow beneath had entertained, relating to the throne of England. Then came the second battle of St. Alban's, the desertion of Lord Lovelace, and the defeat of Warwick; and the next year brought with it the terrible battle at Towton, in Yorkshi between Lord Warwick, accompanied by Edward, and the Queen's forces, wherein at least a hundred thousand men must have been engaged.

I remember playing with my cousin in the house on that very day, and our wondering to each other if it snowed as heavily elsewhere, as it then did at

Aust; little thinking that the wind which drove that snow against our windows, only enhancing to us the comforts of our fire-side, was at the same time hurling death in the faces of 40,000 brave souls; or gathering on the chilled limbs of those already down. It is well-known that Edward and Warwick advanced with the storm, and were upon the Lancastrians almost before they knew it; no quarter was given, and at the head of their victorious troops, they marched into York, the Prince, or rather King as he had been proclaimed, taking down the ghastly heads of his father and Lord Salisbury, and replacing them with that of the Earl of Devon. I have frequently heard my father and others say, that after this last mentioned engagement, England might be likened to the vale of tears, for there was mourning in almost every family, from the cottage to the palace.

During the time that these and other events were taking place, I had reached my fourteenth year, and my cousin was now seventeen. Of late I could not

help observing that more than once she had smiled

at my heroic descriptions of the events of the times, as if the account I gave of them was scarcely worth her notice; though she still good naturedly assisted me to cut out the different parchment representatives of the heroes of my imagination; which, as my playthings, I intended should fight their mimic battles o'er again. It was strange-but she seemed in the course of one day to have sprung from a child to the verge of womanhood; yet so imperceptibly had the loveliness of her person ripened, that I cannot describe the sudden change more aptly, than by referring to the bud of the rose; the perfections of which had been improving hour after hour, beneath its modest and enclosing veil, till alone was needed a milder beam than usual, to bid it burst upon the gaze in all its blushing beauty. Tallwith a figure formed beyond her age, and an arm, a foot, and ancle, that might have satisfied the most fastidious, she was in truth as fascinating a creature as it is possible for the soul of a poet to conceive. Her mild and deep brown eyes shone forth from beneath their black and beautifully pencilled brows

with the starry brilliancy of Heaven, while the long, dark, silken lashes that fringed them, rather added to, than veiled, the depth of their expression, as each lid seemed but to stoop to kiss the roseate hue that floated on the transparency of the skin beneath. Her hair, of the jet and gloss of the raven's plume, she wore parted on her snowy forehead; and it was permitted to fall in long luxuriant ringlets on each side of her swan-like neck, and to rest upon her graceful shoulders; while the varying bloom and dimple on her cheek, spoke the modest sensibility of her mind; and gave life to the reddest and smoothest lip that ever obeyed the dictates of the heart. Such was my cousin, and if ever there was a being worth every affectionate attention that it is in the power of parents to bestow, and formed to assert the supremacy of humanity over all other living creations of the world, that being was Isabel Mead.

But to proceed, my father was at this time, November 1463, much distressed by the news which reached him from the Castle, of the death of James

Lord Berkeley, then in the 82d year of his age. The good old Lord had been one of his earliest patrons, frequently employing him in the grievous law-suits in which he was so constantly engaged; consulting him on all matters relating to the management of his estates, and treating him with a marked attention, which those of a legal profession seldom experienced at the hands of the warlike nobility. My father was one of the many invited by Sir William, now Lord Berkeley, to attend the funeral.

My father was very melancholy for some days after the mournful ceremony; and I remember about this time hearing my mother ask him how he liked the present Lord, who was then in the 38th year of his age, and unmarried; being the first of his ancestry who had remained single for so long a period, all the rest having earlier embarked in the great matrimonal lottery, through their own desires, or by command of their parents.

His reply to this question was-that as the head of the family, there was, for the time present, no one fitter to uphold or advance it, in all its dignities;