as invariably leads the builder to deem a command of picturesque scenery the first great requisite in the site of a family mansion. The village of Sonning, which lies on the margin of the Thames, is one of the most agrecable spots that the fancy can picture. All is sceming tranquillity and repose. The cottages "of simplest form, with coverlets of thatch," are sufficiently numerous to bestow a decided air of rusticity on the general appearance of the village; while many houses of a more eligible description, in which embellishment is added to comfort, give promise of a rational intercourse, and agreeable neighbourhood, to those who are happy enough to "husband out life's taper" in the retirement of this unostentatious village. Sonning was formerly a place of considerable consequence. The bishops of Salisbury held the manor at the time of the Conquest; and the manor-house (which stood at the base of the hill on which Mr. Palmer's modern residence is built) was for many centurics their occasional residence. Isabel, the youthful queen of Richard II. (on whose name, it may be remembered, that ill-fated monarch so pathetically called, when he found himself betrayed to Hereford,) resided at Sonning, during the melan. choly period which occurred between the first imprisonment, and ultimate murder, of the king. Who can walk through this retired village without attempting to retrace the hours of anxiety which were there passed by this distressed, and almost infantile, princess? Torn from her country and friends, and bereft of the gaudy crown which was her only protection, futile indeed must have proved all the soothing charms of this romantic retirement to the unhappy Isabel! 要 The tortures of uncertainty were added to the oppressive weight of her ordinary reflections. A band of conspirators, (for so they must be called, since the new king was able to retain the Sceptre,) with sir Bernard Brocas (who lies buried in Westminster abbey) at their head, persuaded the young and dethroned queen, that Richard had *It appears that the marriage was merely one of form. Isabel was not more than twelve years of age when she arrived in England. escaped from Pontefract castle, and was ready to join them at Reading. A gleam of joy, therefore, shone over her solitary retreat. The conspirators marched from Sonuing, and the queen poured forth unceasing prayers for their success. But her tears were unavailing: Richard was. doomed to perish in captivity, and sir Bernard lost his head on the scaffold; one half of the country lamenting aim as a martyr, and the other stigmatising his memory with the opprobrium of treason. The Berkshire side of the Thames, between Sonning and Wargrave, is replete with beauties not more estimable than they are various. The fertile meadow, an object irresistibly soothing and attractive, (For green is to the eye, what to the ear Is harmony, or to the smell the rose,} blends with shady recesses, from which the prospect is caught only through unexpected breaks. But, agreeable as is this bank, the pedestrian must offen stop to admire the Oxfordshire hills on the opposite side of the river. On the most picturesque of these elevations, is scated Shiplake-house, the residence of John Hanscomb, esq.; and in this retreat, the writer admits that be has spent so many happy hours, that he might well be sus pected of partiality, should he indulge in too florid a vein of description. Yet the real beauty of the situation, and the correct taste of the owner, demand at least a passing tribute of praise. Shiplake-house was built in the reign of queen Anne, when hospitality was in its zenith; when," instead of being tantalized with a dozen of French dishes, (which no Frenchman, however, would venture to taste,) and stared at by as many French servants, dressed better stead of being dragged out, the moment than yourself or their own master; inyou have dined, to take a walk in the shrubbery, and wonder at his lordship's bad taste, and then frightened away by the appearance of cards and wax-candles; instead of this refined luxury, I say, you were sure to find a ham and fowls, a piece of roast beef, or a pigeon-pie, and a bottle of port-wine, every day in the week; and, if you chose to spend the night at the house, a warm bed and a hearty welcome." And, very fortunately, the difference of a hundred years has produced little alteration in the temper of the occupiers of this seat. Though Mr. Hanscomb has only within these few years years taken possession of the mansion, he may be pronounced a century old in hospitality; and never thinks of exhibiting his grounds to a visitor, except in the morning. Yet the grounds dependent on Shiplake-house, are eminently beautiful. The mansion stands on a lofty hill; and the chief prospect is viewed through a glade, where majestic woodland, devious interstice, and a back-ground replete with all the mellow charms of distance, unite to soothe the feelings, and exalt the imagination: Vivid green, Warm brown, and black opake, the fore. ground bears Conspicuous; sober olive coldly marks declines In softer blue; or, less'ning still, is lost Atasmall remove from Mr. Hanscomb's, is the vicarage-house of Shiplake; a respectable dwelling that demands the attention of the traveller, from the circumstance of it having been the residence of the Rev. Mr. Granger, who there wrote his Biographical History of England. The vicarage is embowered by trees; and the front windows command an extensive and agreeable prospect. The walks in the neighbourhood seem dedicated to solitude and meditation. It was through these shades that Granger rambled, while examining the merits of a Plantagenet or a Stuart; and cold indeed must be the bosom that does not repeat the sigh once heaved on this spot by the historian, as a tribute to those who have long since "acted their parts,' and who live only in the tender fancy of their descendauts. belonged to these zealous members of the church-militant; but the sculptured ta blets, observable in many parts of the farm-house, are evidently the fragments of some more costly structure. At no great distance from Burrougla Marsh, a branch of the river Loddon enters the Thames: and here is to be seen a piece of military antiquity, which has hitherto passed entirely unnoticed; though Berkshire has produced many literary men, and has been the subject of inquiry with several recent topogra phical writers. I allude to an embankinent, which is thrown up on each side of the narrow bed of the Loddon, for the extent of more than a mile; but which is contrived in such an angular form, as to leave a considerable space between the interior of the bank, and the margin of the river. There appears every reason to suppose that this embankment was made by the Danes; who, in their Berkshire devastations, constantly hovered on the borders of the Thames, and who possibly formed this intrenchment as an artificial haven for the small vessels which attended their incursions. It certainly is not known that any battle was fought between the Danes and the English, in the neighbourhood of War grave; but, from the success which crowned the efforts of the invaders at Reading and Wallingford, it is unlikely that the natives of the county would venture to attack the ravagers, in the comparatively strong-hold constructed by them as a place of resource in time of extreme peril. "To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. I SIR, HAVE lately been reading the Essays on Professional Education of Mr. Edgeworth. This work exhibits the same peculiar characteristics Reading, Wallingford, and Hungerford, appear to have been the chiei stations of the Danes; and it was in the neighbourhood of these three places, that their principal battles with the English were fought. It was probably owing to a surprise from the natives, that they omitted to destroy the "great barn," at Cholsey, which bears the date of 1101, and belonged to that ancient abbey of Choisey, which was destroyed by the Danes before Reading abbey was founded. A farm-house, on a low plot of ground, termed Burrough Marsh, near which the pedestrian passes in his way to Wargrave, is worthy of examination. This lone dwelling is supposed to have formerly belonged to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Interspersed in various parts of the building are stones ornamented with grotesque carving; and one large room (reported to have been for merly a chapel) is wainscoted with oak, and furnished with fixed oaken seats. It is certain, that the knights-templars had formerly considerable property in Berkshire; and the mills in the parish ofn (which is accurately described by Gilpin, in his Forest Scenery) is above a hundred Bisham yet retain the appellation of the Temple Mills. Burrough Marsh, and yards in length, and is eighteen yards broad. The roof is supported by carved pillars, and its appendages, may therefore have the barn contains four threshing-places. This as all the other productions of the Edgeworth family; and will, I hope, do much good. One remark however, neither liberal nor just, has struck me in its perusal, which, as I do not believe the author would knowingly be either illiberal or unjust, I shall take leave to notice, in the hope that in any future edition it will be omitted or modified. As an illustration of the difference between "useful order, and vain finical precision," (page 225) Mr. E. contrasts the arrangen.ents of Buffon and Linnæus with what he calls "the curious impertinence of Lyonet, who wrote a quarto volume on the anatomy of a caterpillar." Little did poor Lyonet think, when he had exerted every faculty in the production of a work which the amiable Bonnet termed "l'etonnante et admirable che nille de Lyonet," and which has called forth universal astonishment and admiration, that his labor would be branded with the name of curious impertinence by any man of an enlightened understanding. And what is the ground of Mr. E.'s epithet? Does he mean that it was impertinence to write at all about the anatomy of a caterpillar; or that the impertinence consists in writing a quarto book on what ought to have been dispatched in a pamphlet? I cannot admit the first supposition. Mr. Edgeworth is not one of those who measure the importance of natural objects by their cubical capacity; and believe, that because an elephant is bigger than a caterpillar, it must be of more importance in the scale of creation. If he were, I need but refer him to the remarks of his friend Dr. Darwin, in his Phytalogia, on the aphidivorous fly, to convince him that the destruction of an insect so mean, so minute, would cause a greater gap in nature than even the annihilation of the race of elephants;-I need but refer him to some late volumes of the Linnean So ciety's transactions, where it is shewn that our reaping a single acre of wheat is dependent on the friendly exertions of an ichneumon not bigger than a pin's head. Yet though I cannot suspect Mr. E. of the vulgar folly of estimating things by their size, I cannot conceal, that I do not believe that if Mr. Carlisle or Mr. Home had written a quarto volume on the anatomy of an elephant, he would have sneered at their labor, or called it curious impertinence. We must recur then to the second supposi tion: Mr. E. objects to writing a quarto yolume on such a subject. But is this MONTHLY MAG. No. 197. either wise or consistent? Can it be doubted, that every contribution to our present imperfect knowledge of compara tive anatomy is important? and if it be worth while to do a thing at all, is it not worth while to do it well? Lyonet discovered and dissected four thousand and fortyone muscles in the cossus caterpillar, a number much greater than has been discovered in the human body. Was it likely that this aston shing assemblage could be described in less space than a quarto voluine? and was it desirable that, for the sake of avoiding the "curious impertinence" of writing more than an octavo on such a subject, he should have left half of them undescribed, or described the whole imperfectly? So, I will venture to assert, does not the celebrated Cuvier think, who has himself spent much time on the anatomy of in sects, who has had his labor much facilitated by Lyonet, and regrets only that he has not been preceded in this almost untrodden path by more Lyonets. Mr. E. has judiciously directed the parents of youth to turn their attention to such wonders in nature as the fourteen hundred lenses in the eye of a drone bee: why not add to this the still more astonishing fact, that an animal so small and despised as a caterpillar should have been furnished with no less than four thousand muscles? And was Lyonet, for furnishing us with this fact, to be called a "frivolous pe dant," and his work a curious impertinence? We praise a Heyne, who spends his days in illustrating and investigating the works of a classical poet; and are we to ridicule a man who occupies himsel in exploring the works of nature? ENTOMOPHILUS. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine, SIR, Mr. Hall, in your magazine for Nanswer to the first question proposed by last August, it will be sufficient to observe, that the custom of placing the altar at the eastern end of the sacred edifice, appears to be coeval with the regular establishment of christianity. That position was assigned to the altar, in order that, during the celebration of the mass, the eyes of the congregation might be directed towards Jerusalem, the actual secne of the crucifixion. For this purpose ic was thought sufficiently accurate, in those countries which first composed the Latin church, to have the building erected due east and west; and when chris2 E tianity tianity was introduced in this island, our ancestors,who were better skilled in archi. tecture than in geography, blindly followed what they observed to be the practice in those countries from whence they received their faith; probably without inquiring into the origin of the customs, or, if they did, without considering that in this latitude the true bearing was widely different. Mr. Hall will find some ingenious remarks on this subject, in White's History of Selbourne. With respect to the position of the officiating minister, I must refer Mr. Hall to his prayer-book; and on consulting it, he will find that the rubric prefixed to the communion-office directs certain portions to be read, "the priest standing at the north side of the table." The fanciful analogy Mr. Hall imagines he has discovered, certainly never entered the heads of the compilers of the liturgy; who merely wished to vary the reformed communion-office as much as they possibly could from the Roman-catholic ritual, according to which the priest stands at the front (i. c. the west side) of the altar during the celebration of the mass. W. W. Z. For the Monthly Magazine. ACCOUNT of the NEGOCIATION of MESS. DE BOUILLON and DE SANCY, in ENGLAND, in 1596, for a LEAGUE, OFFENSIVE and DEFENSIVE, against SPAIN; from a MANUSCRIPT in the NATIONAL LIBRARY at PARIS, marked MANUSCRITS DE BRIENNE, vol. 37. Extracted by M. GALLIARD, and now first published in ENGLAND. THIS negociation occupies the second Tips tend on heart, which in the first is filled by the negociation of M. de Lomenie, in 1595. Between these two negociations, there is a visible connection; both had the same object; that is, to obtain the succour of Eng Jand against Spain: and it may be said, that the negociation of M. de Lomenie, although it had not succeeded, had nevertheless led the way for that of Mess. de Bouillon and de Sancy, which bad more success. He was besides sent sometimes to England, during the course of this last negociation, in order to assist the new envoys, and urge the succours which they solicited. It would be needless to repeat what is said in the other memoir, of the joint interests of Henry and Elizabeth, to act against Spain; or to mention here the obstacles which impeded their co-operation. In the former year, (1595,) England had seen with indifference the Spaniards masters of La Capelle, Catelet, Cambray, and even of Dourlens. This part of Picardy was too far from England to excite any interest; but in 1596, the Spaniards, under the conduct of the archduke Albert of Austria, preparing to besiege Calais, Elizabeth saw, that honour and interest did not permit her to let her enemies thus lay hold on the possessions which the English had so long held in France; places besides, which, from a greater vici nity to England than any other, furnished an easy method of insulting that island, and which, by their situation between. England and the Low-countries, were fitted to annoy trade, then very brisk. and beneficial between the two powers. Henry, on his side, saw the new preten sions, which his necessities, his misfortunes, and especially the alarms of England, gave him towards obtaining the succours that Elizabeth had the year before refused. Accordingly be sent into England Sancy, of the house of Harlay, to whom he soon after joined the marshal de Bouillon, in order to solicit these succours anew, and accelerate their arrival. Sancy found England agitated and unresolved: there were some troops at Dover, ready to embark; sometimes the order was given, sometimes revoked; now the levies at London were expedited, and again disbanded; it was to be feared. that Calais would be taken before they arrived, and so it happened. The news was soon spread in London, that it was taken, both town and citadel: in consequence, the indignation was excessive, and the public outcry violent against the French, they were reproached, having neglected every thing necessary for the preservation of so important a place: the more they complained amongst themselves, the less disposed were they to assist them. Sancy, who had no information concerning Calais, took upon him, according to the relation in the manuscript, to throw out, that he had authentic information, that the citadel still held out, and had promised the king to wait for the succours from England. This produced, for the moment, the effect of occasioning orders for the enbarkation of the troops. Upon the evening of the same day, (April 20) arrived the sieur de Champeron, who had left the king upon the Thursday before at Saint Vallery, and brought the capitulation of the citadel of Calais; which was, a as truce truce of six days, during which there was to be no act of hostility upen either side: so that what the said seigneur de Sancy had affirmed, without having any advice of it, turned out true. They informed the queen of it; and sent off on the morrow morning the said sieur de Champeron to bring advice to the king, that the succours were marching. Louis XIII.; who died in 1621, in the possession of that dignity. He was at the time of the negociation counsellor of state; and the two ambassadors styled him, “confidential servant of the king." It would be unnecessary to analyze this relation, because it IS printed at the end of the works of Will. de Vair, together with all the other pieces, relative to this negociation, which also occur in the manuscript; with the exception of one only, which is here wholly transcribed: it is a letter of Henry IV. to queen Elizabeth, written during the course of the negociation; and upon an important incident, which removes a strong difference between the recital of Du Vair and that of Sancy upon the same fact. It is observed, in the account of the embassy of M. de Lomenie, how much Elizabeth regretted the possession of Thus die, bold, adroit, and successful, was a trick for which any negociator, under similar circumstances, might take great credit; and it is singular, that Sancy himself does not mention it in a memoir which he presented, under the regency of Mary de Medicis, for reim bursement of the expenses which he had contracted on account of govern ment. This memoir, in which he takes the tone of a minister deprived of his ancient favour, renouncing any recompence, and confining himself to the claim of justice; and where, in conse-Calais, lost by the English under the quence, he rather exaggerates than diminishes much less forgets, even the smaliest service that he has been able to render; is printed in the third vol. of the Memoires d'Etat, en suite de ceur de Villeroy, under this title, "Discours fait par messire Nicolas de Harlay. Chevalier, Seigneur de Sancy, &c. Conseiller du Roi en ses conseils d'estat et privé, sur l'occurrence de ses affaires." This discourse contains some very curious details upon his embassy in England, and the negociation here aliuded to; but there is no mention whatever of the fact, the relation of which, in the manuscript, does him so much honour. The succours could not arrive in time: the politic queen tcazed (fit passer) the French vivacity by a long round of delays, reproaches, refusals, menaces, and promises: she breathed nothing but peace and amnity; notwithstanding which, her ministers perpetually created difh culties, which the queen appeared always desirous of removing, but did not do so. [See the reasons below.] All these incidents are well exposed in the relation given in the manuscript. The progress of the negociation is marked day by day. The author of this relation is a person who assisted at all the consultations, and was united with the two negociators; because the said seigneur de Sancy might be necessitated to depart before the treaty was concluded, and then he could relieve the said seigneur de Bouillon. It was the famous Will, de Vair, afterwards bishop of Lisieux, twice garde des sceaur in the reign of reign of her sister Mary; that she had herself lost it, when offered in exchange for flavre; and that she bad made the cession of it, repeatedly, a condition of aiding Henry. In 1596, Elizabeth, sceing Calais besieged by the Spaniards, conceived new hopes. She thought that they could not avoid ceding the place to her, while she offered either to defend it when it was yet but attacked, or to retake it if it should be captured by the Spaniards: she said nothing of this, or even hinted any thing of the kind, to Sancy, when he pressed the council for the departure of the succours; she promised to give the requisite orders, and sent Sidney to visit Sancy. This was on the 20th of April. On the night following, she ordered Sidney to set out for France. Sancy, who was informed on the next morning by his friends of the departure of Sidney, thought that it was only to advertise the king of the succours; and to inform his majesty, that the said succours were prepared before the coming of the said sieur de Sancy, on purpose that the king might take it better of her majesty. It was doubtless what she wished Saucy to believe, it he should hear of the precipitate departure of Sidney; she meant that fleury, on receiving through Sidney the proposi tion of abandoning Calais to England, should remam soll uncertain of the suc cour which he solicited, on purpose that this uncertainty might make him resolve upon it. The next day, on the 21st, Sancy had an audience of the queen; she did not mention Sidney, but negli gently |