UR Biographia Britannica is very meagre of names bearing prefatory titles of distinction, conferred-not by kings, but by common tacit consent. Fully sensible of this deficiency, we have been making out of late, for our own amusement, a list of worthies deriving the patents of their honours from the voice of the people. It is a scanty but curious catalogue-Venerable Bede, Old Parr, Beau Brummell, Bloody Mary, and Beau Nash: Selden, in his "Titles of Honour," is silent on the subject of such popular peerages. No fees were paid upon their appropriation, so our learned antiquary overlooked a class of worthies whose names are never mentioned without their attributes of distinction-an honour seldom awarded to the proudest of our peers.

The fame of Venerable Bede survives most usefully in his own history; Old Parr seems still to live among us in the admirable impersonation of Mr. Farren; Beau Brummell's remains have been intrusted to the editorial care of Captain Jesse; Bloody Mary has had

of late a successful whitewash from the antiquarian fervour of Mr. Tytler; and the Life of Beau Nash has been written at some length, and with admirable skill, by one whose charm of composition could throw an interest around the commonest topic he took in hand, telling a story with scarcely any other art than that of arranging the materials in their natural order.

I allude to the Life of Beau Nash by no less eminent a hand than that of Dr. Goldsmith. The Doctor was a dandy in dress, in a fashion and in a manner peculiarly his own. His tailor's bills have been printed by Mr. Prior for the edification of the curious and his dress and appearance preserved to the life in the entertaining biography of Boswell. Goldsmith should have written the life of Nash in the halfdress suit of ratteen he wore at Boswell's party; "for the life of a beau,' as he tells us, "if a beau could write, would certainly serve to regale curiosity."

Dr. Cheyne of Bath, was heard to declare, in one of his humorous moods, that Beau Nash never had a father. The entry of Tom Hill's baptismal register was destroyed-so Theodore Hook affirmed-in the

Fire of London. Dr. Cheyne would say at times, that Beau Nash never had the ordinary distinction of a Christian name. The Duchess of Marlborough, one day rallying him in public company upon the obscurity of his birth, compared him to Gil Blas, who was ashamed of his father. "No, madam," replied the beau, "I seldom mention my father in company; not because I have any reason to be ashamed of him, but because he has some reason to be ashamed of me."

Beau Brummell was the son of a confectioner, in Jermyn Street. His father never served up a daintier dish, a better kind of trifle, or a more delicate piece of pastry, than the full conception of his illustrious son. Beau Nash's father was, says Goldsmith, a partner in a glass-house ;-no inappropriate birthplace for a beau. Mr. Martin's hero may have been born, for what we know, with a pocket-mirror in his hand; he made the world his glass-house, for wheresoever he went, his sole contemplation was himself.

If Romulus founded Rome, Beau Nash was the founder of Bath; for before the Beau existed, Bath was but a poor place. He first erected it into a province of pleasure, and became, by universal consent, its legislator and ruler. Bath was his kingdom, and Tunbridge his colony. His name is inseparably allied with both places. You may as well think of walking over the field of Waterloo, and forgetting Wellington, as of going to Bath, and forgetting Beau Nash. His fame and name pervade the place;--you quote Anstey, but you think and talk of Beau Nash. Such are the influences and effects of genius.

Mr. Martin has drawn our Lycurgus of a beau contemplating the graces of his person in a new mirror fresh from the glass-house of his father at Swansea. He has just concocted his noble code of laws for the regulation of the city-balls, and his thoughts are divided between the consequence of his person and the civilizing effects of his new edict. He has no idea of "Folly at full length," but bows and simpers while achieving an imaginary conquest, or sneers with a kind of proud satisfaction, as if foreseeing the way in which some rebel lady has been made amenable at last to the wise provisions of his law. "D-n her," he is saying to himself, "Regulation 8 has done for her; what does it say? That the elder ladies and children be content with a second bench at the ball, as being past or not come to perfection :' 'fore Gad, I've settled her : -if she says much, I'll have a gardener in with a ladder-his bag of shreds, his nails and hammer, and I'll tack her up to the back benches as a confirmed old wall-flower."

Our Beau was very rude at times-rude both in sentiment and language. The ladies, it is true, gave him a great deal of trouble, and it was long before he could bring them within his code of dancing discipline and ball-room order. As his power and influence increased, he became the little tyrant at Tunbridge, and the overbearing despot at Bath. He waged a long and successful war against gentlemen in boots and ladies in

white aprons. "I have known him on a ball night," says Goldsmith, "strip even the Duchess of Queensbury, and throw her apron at one of the hinder benches; observing, that none but abigails appeared in white aprons." The good-natured Duchess laughed and acquiesced in his censure, remembering perhaps the lines in Pope :

"If Queensbury to strip there's no compelling,

'Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen."

When the Princess Amelia applied to him for one dance more, he refused, -his laws, he said, were the laws of the Medes and Persians, laws which altered not.

It was an easy matter to tear an apron from the waist of a lady, but a difficult undertaking to extract a pair of boots from the unwilling feet of a country 'squire. Nash is said to have made the attempt, and in a full assembly-covering his failure with an arch air, and a polite inquiry, Why Mr. So and So had not brought his horse in?-"The beast was shod and so was his master."

But these insolent sayings were first said when Beau Nash had become the beau of three generations-when his rudeness had grown proverbial, and men laughed like the Duchess of Queensbury, and let the dandy have his own way. They could not but bow to the decision of one whose picture was taken at full-length within their ball-room, with Sir Isaac Newton and the poet Pope for the Beau's supporters. They acquiesced, and let Lord Chesterfield tell why

"Immortal Newton never spoke,

More truth than here you'll find;
Nor Pope himself e'er penn'd a joke,
More cruel on mankind.

The picture placed the busts between,
Gives satire all her strength;
Wisdom and Wit are little seen,

But Folly at full length."

CARCELY a thousand paces eastward of the gates of the little town of Guens, famous for the lionlike defence of Turissit against the great Suleyman in 1532, is situated a lovely valley, nestled beneath one of the frontier mountains of the stupendous chain which divides the province of Eisenberg from Austria. Rich meadows, and stretches of corn-field and orchard, interspersed with clumps of forest trees, make the whole valley seem like one vast garden; while the clear and sparkling stream of the Guens, which gives its name to the town, meanders in many a wavy line amid the dense vegetation, swelling onward in fantastic curves through the pleasant greenery, catching the sunlight in its course, and brawling with every pebble in its shallow bed. Wild flowers enamel its banks, and water-fowl build their nests amid its sheltering sedges; nor would any dream during the summer months, when, in several spots a strong man may clear it at a bound, that gathering force and volume as the winter pours its icy breath over the valley, and fed by the torrents which sweep down the neighbouring declivities, it overflows its channel, and spreads ruin and destruction over the surrounding country; whence it is called by the peasantry of the province "the wicked Guens.'

By following the course of this capricious stream for about a league (an easy and a pleasant task to the

lover of fine scenery), the pilgrim arrives at the foot of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock, inaccessible upon three of its sides, and crowned by the ruins of an extensive and stately castle, the remains of the fortress of Lockenhaus, formerly a stronghold of the Nadasdy family, and now a possession of Prince Esterhazy. So perfectly is its outline preserved, that, even from a short distance, it has all the appearance of being habitable; but it is in reality almost entirely deserted from its state of utter dilapidation, affording shelter only to a few labourers, who contrive to make its questionable accommodation subservient to their own penury, and who prefer the sheltered nooks afforded by the angles of its substantial stone-work to the less secure huts of mud or timber which would be their alternative.

Even in this state of decay, however, the castle of Lockenhaus is well worthy of a visit, for its extraordinary vaults cannot fail to arrest the attention of the traveller. One of these, which was formerly the sepulchre of the Nadasdy family, is built of ponderous square stones, and vaulted in round arches boldly proportioned, which rest on columns of prodigious girth. It is of considerable length, being, in fact, a subterranean gallery, lighted only by one circular aper ture, which was closed by a stone, after the manner of the tombs of the patriarchs as described in holy writ. A second, situated under the suite of rooms once appropriated to the lord of the castle, and dug deep into the solid rock, is divided into two distinct compartments, by a long line of stunted pillars, upon which the rounded arches descend low and heavily; and the

light which fell from the high mullioned window at his back, and his long snowy beard descending to his girdle. His sword lay on a cushion by his side, together with his spurs, and an illuminated missal, in that age beyond all price; and as the herald approached, he rose, and made a courteous obeisance, after which he

circle, e

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pression of quiet attention. Far different, however, were the look and bearing of many of those about him.

proud defiance, while the features of others bore an expression of anxiety which they sought in vain to disguise under a semblance of impatient haughtiness.

In times long gone by, ere yet the Nadasdys themselves were lords of the fortress, it was the property and one of the many strongholds of the Templars. In calm retirement, and strict adherence to the rules of their order, righting the wronged, sustaining the feeble, and avenging the oppressed, the Knights found a worthy equivalent for the deprivation of the mere worldly honours and ephemeral triumphs to which most of them were entitled by their high blood and exalted position; and they wore the red cross with proud humility, and passed their tranquil days amid the affection of their retainers, without one suspicion of the storm which was about to burst above their devoted heads. Deep as was their regret at the discontent and opposition which had manifested itself against them in France, they never for a moment contemplated the possibility of the frightful consequences which ensued; and it was consequently with a consternation for which language has no words that they learnt the execution of their grand master, and the sentence of extermination which had been pronounced against their order by the council of Vienna. Henceforward, none of them ventured to leave the walls of the castle lest they should lose their lives; and it having been a part of their policy to keep the fortress at all times well provisioned in the event of any hostile demonstration, they resigned themselves to their adverse fortune with what patience they might, although not without a gloomy presentiment of future ill.

The obedience of the count-king, Robert of Anjou, to the will of the pope, by whom the destruction of the Templars had been vowed, they could not for one moment doubt, as he was indebted to the pontiff for his crown and kingdom of Hungary; and thus it was with more misgiving than surprise that after the lapse of a few months, the warder one day announced the approach of a royal herald, who demanded admission to the castle, and speech of the venerable knight who held the keys of the fortress.

The gates were immediately opened, and the herald ushered into the great hall, where the Templars were ranged about their chief, who occupied a high-backed chair on the dais, beneath a canopy bearing the insignia of the red cross, and flanked by half a dozen infidel banners. Nothing could be more venerable than his appearance, as he sat there with a calm brow and a steady eye, like one beyond fear of king or kaiser, who owned no allegiance save to the head of his own order: his ample robes falling about him in large folds; his bald head glistening like marble in the

The herald, however, wasted no time in commenting either upon the dignity of the chief or the passionate demonstrations of the assembled Templars; once opened his mission by exclaiming in a tone of rude defiance.

"Ye well know, knights and Bobles, wherefore I am here; for ye have not now to learn the edict of the Council of Vienna, by which your order has been abolished: neither need I dilate upon the crimes which have been expiated by several of your brethren by a death of fire. Ye are all alike guilty and yet, lest it should be that some one among you may be able to exculpate himself from the heavy charges wherewith ye all stand charged, the King of Hungary, your lord and mine, unwilling that the innocent should suffer, hath convoked a high court of justice, before which ye will be free to offer such defence as ye can bring to bear against your guilt-and I am here, armed with the royal mandate, to summon you to the trial."

A deep and indignant silence succeeded to this address; and every gaze was turned upon the venerable chief who occupied the chair of state; but for a moment he did not answer the appeal. Suddenly, however, a light burned in his eye which had been for years extinguished; and he rose slowly and proudly, with all the firm grace and self-possession of unbowed manhood; and waving his arm haughtily in the direction of the herald, he replied in a voice as firm, as sonorous, and as fearless as his own.

"You say well, Sir Herald; we are indeed acquainted with the edict of extermination which hath been fulminated against us. We are not ignorant of the martyrdom of some of our best and bravest-of the sainted death of our holy and pious knight-commander, the head and bulwark of our order. We need no teaching to comprehend of what crime both they and we are held to be guilty: nor do we, in the consciousness of our innocence, fear to submit our lives or our actions to the cognizance of justice. We cannot, however, forget that our brethren now in Heaven were illegally murdered: and the remembrance does not tend to induce us willingly to place ourselves in the same ruthless hands, without a full assurance that, until our guilt be proved, we shall not be condemned to die the death of the felon and the traitor. We therefore demand that the royal word be pledged for our safety, until we be pronounced death-worthy by the laws of our country; and without this surety, not one of these brave knights, my followers and children, will set foot beyond the ramparts. To prove to you that I speak not without assurance of this fact, I call upon each Templar who is minded to submit in this to my authority, and to redeem my word, to lay hand upon his sword."