fell ill of a fever, which in five days carried her off. Then followed a time of great apprehension, lest the canonry should after all be missed. Lady Isabella's maid had an assuring dream on the subject; but the worthy chaplain's slumbers, affected by the anxieties of his day-thoughts, were unquiet and unrefreshingfull of interminable labours, and inextricable labyrinthine entanglements.

He endeavours to get information as to the state of things from the Infanta's Confessor.

"He was a Spanish cordelier, the most rustick and rude, ambitious and envious fellow that ever I did speak with in all my life. I went to his chamber at the Cordeliers, hoping to find out something from him. I spock to him with as much respect as if he had been primat. He made no answer. I thought it was because he was going to say messe. I waited upon him after messe; he ran to his chamber. I followed; he rapped to his door upon my nose. I chopped [i.e. knocked] doucely; no answer. Then I chopped harder; no answer. At last, I rapped with my foot; then he said, 'Who is that so rude at my door?' One, said I, who has something to say to you. Then he came and half opened his door, and as I began to conjure him he said, 'Nihil sum, nihil scio;' that is, I am nothing and I know nothing; and saying that, shut his door again."-p. 38.

Our author amuses a friend by an account of his interview with this affable ecclesiastic, and is told that

"Her Majesty keeped him only to be mortyfied by him; he is as ambitious as brutal. Because he hath not gotten a bishopric, that made him say Nihil sum; but her Majesty did know him but too well to give him any authority above souls."

About this time, we grieve to find, our good friend was rather ill off for money; which we might not perhaps mention but for the sake of a little legend, which he winds up with a remark very much in the manner of Fuller, and not at all likely to restore him to any good opinion which his sentiments on the celibacy of canonesses might have tended to forfeit.

"I had non but what I got for saying the first messe every morning at Nôtre-Dame de bonne successe, a chappel of great devotion, so called from a statu of our Ladye, which was brought from Aberdeen, in the North of Scotland, to Ostend, by a merchant of Ostend, to whom it was given in Aberdeen. And that same day that the ship in which it was did arrive at Ostend, the Infanta did win a battle against the Hollanders, the people thinking that our Ladye, for the civil reception of her statu, did obteane that victory to the princess; who did send for the statu to be brought to Brusselle, where the princess with a solemn procession did receive it at the port of the towne, and place it

in this chappel, where it is much honoured; and the chappel, dedicated to our Lady of bonne successe, which before was pouer and desolat, now is rich and well frequented. The common belief of the vulgar people there is, that this statu was throwen into the sea at Aberdeen, and carried upon the waves of the sea miraculously to Ostend. So thing it is for fables to find good harbour, where verities would be beaten out with cudgelles."—p. 43.

easy a

At length the Infanta's will is read. It is found that by a codicil, executed on her death-bed, and written (as it turned out) by the all-unknowing cordelier, she had secured the promised provision for Lady Isabella Hay, and, moreover, had bequeathed her a pension to be paid out of her own estate until a vacancy should take place at Mons. The young lady is left at Brussels, under the care of the Archbishop of Mechlin; and in Blackhal's parting conversation with this prelate, we catch a glimpse into the interior of "Catholic unity." The Archbishop proposed that he should remain at Brussels, as "confesseur to the Inglish nonnes of the new monasterie ".

"To which I answered, My Lord, non coutuntur Judæi Samaritanis, that is, the Jews and Samaritans do not converse willingly together. At which he smiled, and said, I know there be antypathie betwixt your nations; but now that should cease, being both under one king, and in some manner one nation. . . . I said, My Lord, if there were no other thing but the antypathie of our nations, which is wearing away, I could embrace the condition; but the antypathie of opinions engendereth more animosity, the diversity of humeurs. I hold for true the opinion of their confesseur, for the which they hated him, and, because they could not get him away, went away themselves from their monastery."-p. 45.

Are we reading of meek cloistered sisters, or of watering-place female polemics?

Father Blackhal resumed his place as chaplain to a good old gentleman at Paris; and in process of time Lady Isabella was settled at Mons, although not without a contest between her patrons and her future sisters; in which (inconceivable as we are taught to suppose such a thing in that realized Ideal, the "Free Church" of Rome,) the new canoness was forcibly intruded on the chapter by the civil power-the other members "all running out of the queir and church, not to see her installed." And with this event ends the first part of the " Brieffe Narration."

The old gentleman of Paris died in 1635; and in the following year Father Blackhal returned to Scotland, travelling from London by land. In the north of England an incident occurred which again brings out the character of his Catholicism. He

agreed to stay as chaplain for a time with a "Mr. Roger Viddrington, oncle to my Lord Viddrington," and descended (we doubt not) of the good squire whose manfulness at Chevy Chase is celebrated in a well-known melodious stanza. This gentleman had been induced to take the oath of allegiance-whether persuaded by Dr. Donne's Pseudomartyr, by the treatise which our British Solomon himself had devoted to proving that Romanists might do so with a safe conscience, or by some other means, we are not informed: it appears, however, that he and others who took the oath were in evil odour with their fellow-religionists. One Father Mortimer, who had been Blackhal's companion in his journey northward, "how soon he came to Scotland," says our narrator, "published among the Catholickes that I staid with Mr. Viddrington, and was of his opinion, and consequently heretik; and therefor, if I should come to Scotland, I were to be excluded from the society of all Catholickes."-p. 53.

A friend from Scotland tells him what reception he may expect from the Romish clergy there, who appear to have been mostly Jesuits.

"I thanked him for his kindness, and prayed him to wreat to the superior that he had seen me, and told me such things; and withal to tell him my answer, which is this: that oath is not put to us in Scotland, and therefore we need not disput nor teach or preach about the lawfulness or unlawfulness of it; therefor he and all his brethren will do well not to meddle themselves therewith, but to live quietly as long as they may, and not to move unprofitable questions, fit only to mak division without any edification to the hearers, who expect to hear us preach rather Christ Jesus and his doctrine, than the pope and his power over princes; as he himself knoweth better than we, as he said to Father Santerello in Roome, who by one chapter of his book of cases of conscience put all his brethren in hazard to be banished out of France. This is my counsel to my frinds; make use of it as they please."-pp. 53, 4.

On proceeding into Scotland, where (as indeed is the case throughout the book) he seems to have been independent of any ecclesiastical superior, Blackhal found himself under a sort of excommunication. The regulars looked cool and unfriendly,about which, as a secular priest, and nowise disposed to admit their assumptions, he did not much distress himself; they undermined him industriously, and managed to close the houses of all but six gentlemen against him. Thus he was obliged to lead an unsettled life about Aberdeenshire, until at length he found a patroness in the second of his "Three Noble Ladies," Sophia, Countess of Aboyne, the sister of Lady Isabella Hay, and widow of a young

nobleman whose death in "The Burning of Frendraught" is celebrated in northern tradition and song.

By a letter which Blackhal had written to an Aberdeenshire gentleman, immediately after the affair of the canonry, the members of the Erroll family had learnt their sister's obligations to her chaplain that young lady herself having never condescended to make any mention of his agency. Lady Isabella on this charged him with being "very bussie seeking thanks from her frinds for the service that he had done her;" and a rupture took place, in consequence of which the Father, on his arrival in Scotland, delicately abstained from presenting himself to her relations. Meanwhile Alexander Davidson-the old retainer who has been mentioned as one of the party in the Brussels coach - had thought proper to claim as his own merit the success of that expedition. Lady Aboyne, however, was not to be so imposed on, and, on hearing of Blackhal's arrival in Aberdeenshire, she sent him a pressing invitation to visit her, with which he was persuaded to comply, although he tells us that "at that time (which was in November)" he "had more willingly gon in the water of Dye, which glydeth by her house, up to the eares." His reception was very gracious; he remained for some time at Aboyne, and after various adventures, (among which was a narrow escape from drowning,) repeated his visit in the middle of the following Lent. He officiated in the family, as the chaplain was absent, and made a convert of the "maister cooke, Álexander Lambe." Father Lesly-instigated, it is presumed, by his superior, as the regulars continued their proscription of Blackhal and of all who showed him any favour-soon after resigned his chaplaincy in a huff, and our autobiographer was installed in his stead. Whatever the motive of his resignation, Father Lesly would seem to have quarrelled very signally with his bread and butter

"Although my Ladye of Aboyne had but a smal rent, yet she had a noble and generous hart, and keeped a good house; and gave power to her preist to send his man to the kitching, and choose upon the speit what peice or peices he should think would please his master best, and that peice or peices were send to his chamber when they were rosted, oftentymes before my lady did dine or suppe; which the preists could not do in no other house in all Scotland."-p. 62.

Soon after we hear a little more of this. The new confessor is scandalized at the greatness of the provision made for his solitary meals. "Four dishes of meat was the least that was send to me at every male, with ale and wyn conforme, which I thought superfluous. He asks his servant what becomes of the leavings. The

fellow unblushingly declares that he is in the habit of selling them -such being the right of the priest's man. Father Blackhal reminds him that there was no such condition in their original bargain, and requests of the countess that he himself may be allowed to dine with her servants, in order to save the expenses of his separate table. "You shall be very welcome, answered she, not indead to eat with my servants, but with myself and my child. I did mak this offer to others here before you, but they would not accept of it."-p. 65.

The reformation was not confined to the chaplain's maintenance. The countess, he tells us, described him as "my preist, my chamerlane, and the captain of my castil;" and we have a circumstantial statement of his good service in each of these capacities.

"Now to begin at the word preist: she did avouch, and so did all the Catholics that were in her house, and neighbours to her, that she had never any preists that were so careful of her soul as I was: for I failed very seldome to say messe to her and for her every day, and preached to her and her household, and neighbours and tenants, who were Catholics, every Sunday and holiday; and once every month she did confess and receave, forby [i. e. besides] all the great feasts of the year, which was not usual to her before I did come to her service; for, as she herself and her domestics told me, they who were with her before me used to go away very far off, even to the highlands, untould her where they were going, or when they intended to return; yea, unbidding God to be with her."—p. 67.

As chamberlain ("in Ingland they are called stuartes whom we in Scotland call chamerlanes"),-need we say that he showed himself a wise economist? He corrected the evil practices of servants, to which Lady Aboyne (like other excellent ladies, from Massinger's" Virgin Martyr" to Hannah More,) had been a victim; he put the accounts of the tenants on an improved footing, and made arrangements for clearing off the debts in which her kind and unsuspecting nature had involved her. Abbot Suger, nay Abbot Samson of St. Edmundsbury himself, could not well have excelled him as a financial reformer.

Nor were his performances as captain less distinguished. The troubles of the Great Rebellion were commencing, as to which, except in so far as his Church was concerned, he appears

3 We quote the conclusion of his dealings with one of these rascals, who had behaved abominably, and had at last been grossly insolent to his mistress. "Well, sir, said I to him, my lady will have you spared for this time; tak head that it be the last. If you retourne again, I vow to Almighty God my dagger shall go to your hart, that other knaves may tak example not to lightly her because she is a desolat widow!"-p. 77.