from Monmouthfhire, the caftle was invefted by Trevor Williams and Colonel Morgan, and finally compelled to furrender by Fairfax himself. The marquis, and his fon Glamorgan, are said to have lent to Charles I. at different times £300,000; and befides this they loft all their eftates, valued at £20,000 a-year, which were confifcated; but restored on the return of Charles II.

The Strongbows seem to have been amongst the earliest poffeffors of Raglan. Richard Strongbow, the last male of the great family of Clare, according to Dugdale, conferred this property on Walter Bloet, or Blewitt, from whom by marriage it went into the Berkeley family, and fo continued till it came into the poffeffion of Sir John Morley, and, by Maud his daughter and fole heiress, into the family of the Ap Jenkins, alias Herberts, in 1438. Edward IV. commanded William, whom he created Lord of Raglan, Chepstow and Gower, to continue the family name as Herbert, and not to change the furname at every descent in the Welsh fashion. To the custody of this Lord Herbert he entrusted Henry, Earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., and he kept him in this his castle of Raglan till Jasper, then Earl of Pembroke, the uncle of this Lord Herbert, in his abfence enabled Henry to escape, and fled with him to Britany. Edward IV. then attainted Jafper, and conferred the earldom on Lord Herbert. This is the fame Earl of Pembroke that Wordsworth mentions in the "White Doe of Rylston," as having his head ftruck off in the porch of Banbury church, by one of the Cliffords. This Earl of Pembroke, being a staunch Yorkist, was defeated and taken prisoner at the battle of Dane's Moor, where he headed a band of his Welshmen. His fole heiress married Sir Charles Somerset, a natural fon of Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, but in high favour with Henry VII., and from him his estate and titles have descended to the present Duke of Beaufort.

The family produced fome remarkable men. This Sir Charles Somerset, who, though illegitimate, descended from John of Gaunt, was a man of great perfonal attractions, and equal prudence and ability. Prudence and ability were precifely the qualities to recommend him to Henry VII., by whom he was employed in various foreign embaffies. He was equally in favour with Henry VIII., and had a high command in the wars against France. He negotiated the peace with France in 1518, and the peace betwixt Francis I. and Charles V. in 1521. He represented Henry VIII. at the coronation of the king's fifter Mary, the queen of Louis XII. of France; and betrothed Henry's infant daughter Mary to the Dauphin. We have already mentioned Henry the fifth earl and first marquis of Worcester—his determined partizanship of Charles I.—his defence of Raglan, and his "Apothems ;" one of which was uttered when Charles fhowed, as he thought, too much lenity to his enemies :—“Well, fir, you may chance to gain you the kingdom of heaven by such doings as these, but if ever you get the kingdom of England by fuch wayes I will be your bondman.” The old man was a stout Catholic; his eftates were confiscated, and, contrary to the conditions of his furrender, he was committed to the custody of the Black Rod. When told, however, that he would be allowed burial in his family vault at Windsor, he exclaimed :—" Why, God bless us all, then I shall have a better castle when I am dead, than they took from me when I was alive!" He died at the age of eighty-five.

The fon of this Henry was Edward, the fixth earl and second marquis of Worcester, who was created by Charles I. Earl of Glamorgan. Like his father, he was a firm Catholic. This was the Glamorgan who was engaged by Charles I. to bring over ten thousand Irish to enable him to crush the liberties of England. The scheme failed; he was arrested, by the Marquis

of Ormond and Lord Digby; and Charles haftened to disavow the conduct of Glamorgan, though nothing is better afcertained than that he acted wholly in concert with the king. The tranfaction gave immense disgust in England, and did the greatest mischief to Charles; even his ftaunch adherent, Clarendon, denouncing it in ftrong terms. Glamorgan followed the fortunes of Charles II., and being sent to England on his concerns in 1652, he was difcovered and imprifoned. To obtain his liberation he offered to make important discoveries to Cromwell : and these after some hesitation were accepted. His fon, who had hitherto lived in France, was permitted to return, enjoyed the confidence of Cromwell, and a penfion of £2,000 per

annum.

This was the famous Marquis of Worcester who wrote and published, in 1663, "A Century of the Names and Scantlings of fuch Inventions as I can at present call to mind to have tried and perfected." Horace Walpole fneers at this book, little dreaming what was to come out of it, and dubbed it "A list of a hundred projects, most of them impoffibilities." One which the clever biographer of "Noble Authors” would doubtless have confidered the most impoffible of all was the steam-engine, and in its train all our present great steam and railway systems. But in this work of the marquis was the following description of a fire-engine, in the sixty-eighth article of the "Century of Scantlings :"-" An admirable and forcible way to drive up water by fire, not by drawing or sucking it up, for that must be, as the philosopher calleth it, intra sphæram activitatis, which is loft at such a distance. But this way hath no boundary if the veffels be fstrong enough," etc. He then goes on to describe how he has forced water up a strong cylinder forty feet high, and how he could keep up the action by admitting cold water by a couple of cocks, so that as the water

in one was being confumed, it could be supplied first by one cock, and then by the other, etc.

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This certainly was not the first time the idea of exercising force by steam had occurred; for Gibbon, in his " Decline and Fall," relates how the architect of St. Sophia in Constantinople avenged himself of the annoyances of his next neighbour, a lawyer, by running pipes up his house-side, and introducing them under his roof, and continually shaking the house over his head by explosions of steam. Neither does it appear that the idea was an original suggestion of the marquis's own mind or experiments, but that in Paris he had seen the unfortunate Solomon de Caus, who was confined in the Bicêtre as a lunatic, for afferting the wonders that might be done with steam. We are afraid that the marquis, being of an experimental turn, liftened to the poor man's supposed lunacy, and on his return to England made a number of experiments at his house at Lambeth, and boafted much of the wondrous power of his fire-engine. But if the marquis did not do proper honour to De Caus, he was deftined to receive the fame treatment. According to the "Experimental Philofophy" of Defaguliers, a Captain Savary bought up all the books of the marquis that he could lay his hands on, burnt them, and started the idea as his own. In confequence of the number of the marquis's "Century of Scantlings" destroyed by Savary, the book is very rare, but the contents of it may be found in the eighteenth volume of the "Gentleman's Magazine." Thus from Raglan iffued, if not the origination of the marvellous agency of steam, the great revolutionizer of the world, at least the revival of it.

Conway and its Castle.

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It was

HE ancient walled town of Conway, with its picturesque castle, stands as the portal to the mountain scenery of North Wales. Its fituation is beautiful, on high ground, commanding the estuary of the Conway, whence its Welsh name of Aber-Conway; and its form triangular, or rather that of a Welsh harp. strongly fortified with walls and battlemented towers, according to the ftyle introduced by the Crufaders; and indeed Conway, with its walls, as seen at the present day from some of its neighbouring heights, is faid greatly to refemble Jerusalem. The castle, one of the most picturesque ruins in England, was erected by Edward I. to keep the infubordinate Welsh in fubjection, and was completed under his own infpection in 1284. It was at the abbey of Conway that the head of the unfortunate but brave Prince Llewellyn was presented to the English conqueror. It is seldom that the name of the architect of any of our fine old buildings remains connected with them to posterity; however, in the case of Conway, we find it to be Henry de Elreton, the builder likewife of the caftle of Carnarvon.

In its perfect state Conway Castle was a magnificent structure, oblong in form, and standing on a precipitous rock at one corner of the triangular town-walls. On one fide it was