strength to resist it. So they committed her to the dust, with her body sinless and undefiled, and raised above her a marble monument; and the fame of Holy Vale, and of its sacred flower, flourished in the land.

Save those survivors of her sisterhood, there remained, indeed, none to inquire into her fate. Men spoke of a secret passage, leading from the chapel to St. Mary's, at Old Town, by which she had escaped, and joined her faithful tirewounan; but these surmises led to no result. The stern Earl was dead. Jocelyn de St. Martin had died too, in harness, warring against the infidels. When she thus came back, raised, as it were, from the grave, only to be restored to it for ever, she had as little affinity to the old and feeble nuns, as she had felt, when, more than a generation before, she had walked in haughty solitude, beneath that roof. Her presence there troubled them, with its unearthly brightness, and its strange gift of youth, and the contrast of its angelic freshness with their wrinkled and forbidding brows.

So they buried her where she lay, in the odour of her sanctity, and in her undying beauty. At the Reformation, the black marble slab, placed above her rest, was destroyed, but, according to tradition, it bore these words alone,— "Cy git Marie

Priez pour elle."

Amid the general dearth of local tradition, and of relics of all sorts. Holy Vale has rather a distinguished place. It can show not only an ancient well, from whose properties it perhaps derives its name, and a range of orchards and gardens, which may have belonged to a religious establishment, for they have a decidedly conventual appearance, but also a portion of some fabric, which is of incontestable antiquity. This is

the top of a freestone arch, once forming part of a doorway or of a window, but now covering the entrance of a pig-sty. It may be seen behind the first house, on the left-hand side of the road, as it approaches the little hamlet from Hugh Town. There are, likewise, many other wells, in places where now no houses exist, but where there must formerly, from the very presence of such things, have been both dwellings and inhabitants. A resident at Holy Vale has in his possession a curious and interesting relic of the past. It is an old chair, bought at a sale of the furniture of Star Castle, and said to have been equally honoured with that celebrated by Sir Walter Scott in "Old Mortality," and so much prized by Lady Margaret Bellenden, in the tower of Tillietudlem, for "His Most Gracious Majesty, Charles the Second," once sate in it.

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CHAPTER VIII.

BRYHER.

HIS morning I went on an excursion to Bryher. It is one of the inhabited islands, lying between Tresco (to which it is joined by the sands at low water) and Samson. Probably all three were formerly one; for, as I have observed elsewhere, the space now covered by the sea is full of walls and enclosures. The fate of St. Mary's has clearly been anticipated here.

The distance between the Quay at Hugh Town, and Oliver Cromwell's Castle, which is built in the channel parting Bryher from Tresco, and on the shores of the latter, is just three miles. So wide is the fine pool of St. Mary's. I made the passage in about twenty minutes, under sail, with a stiff breeze. I had a six-oared gig, that literally flew over the waves. The craft of this kind here are proverbially good, and ours formed no exception to the rule. On our return,

with a jumping sea, and the wind dead ahead, our six stout. islanders did the whole space, from point to point, in threequarters of an hour, without shipping a drop of water. The men were proud of their boat, but they said that there was another in the island worth two of her.

Bryher contains at the present time thirty families, and one hundred and nineteen inhabitants. Its average length is about a mile and a half; its breadth scarcely half a mile. The ground rises abruptly in every part from the shore, into which the sea is visibly eating its way. The whole of Bryher consists only of three hundred and thirty acres, a great deal of which is still uncultivated. To the east of the declivity called Gweal Hill, from the opposite islet of that name, is a pool of fresh water, covering two or three acres. On the north-west side is a pretty spring, said to be useful for medicinal purposes. It is so situated under the cliff, that the sun never shines upon it. The steep hill opposite Samson is named from it "Samson hill" and has, or rather had, on its summit, three barrows, parts of which have been removed. These, as far as I could learn, are all the objects of interest to be seen, and they do not present a very varied list. But the resources of Nature are less limited, and on a far grander scale. Her "treasure caves and cells" need no fostering hand to draw forth or to develope them. Of the six inhabited islands, none is more full of stern and wild beauty than Bryher. And though every carn, and rock, and headland, has its name, to enumerate them would be

This is a peculiarity in the local nomenclature. Samson hill of Bryher is the one in Bryher opposite Samson. Bryher hill in Samson, or of Samson, is so called for a similar reason.

only to present to the eye a list of unmeaning appellations, uncouth as the scenes to which they are applied, and to our ears as dead as the language of the names they bear, which, with its children, has passed away for ever.

The gap between historical and mythical times, between the bright sunlight, and the shadowy poetry of the mountain mist, is shown clearly in the names of places here. These islands, whether formerly of greater or of less extent, were once thickly peopled. The graves rise up in witness of this fact. Every point, and carn, has its distinct appellation. There is not a solitary hill, nor a grey tomb, which has not received the baptism of one of those ancient words, which have in them so much beauty and expression. But not one of those words belongs to an era within the memory of man. The fount from which they were named is as unknown as the lips that christened them. The antique dweller on Minalto, and Mincarlo, felt the influence of this genial climate, and the spirit in his heart found utterance in his tongue, and so, in the rich varieties of his forgotten vocabulary, he discovered those terms which we now admire. But they are all distant, and unreal as a dream. To reach them, we must leap over a gulf, not of years, but of centuries. The Phoenician, the Greek, the Roman, the men of the dark ages, have left no trace of their language. We do not recognize their presence by one phrase that sounds to our ears like a familiar friend. The Briton only, with his Druid, comes before us, and shows us the relics of his religion, and bids us confess the accents of his tongue, and claims these domains for his own. The fact is singular, but, stripped of all colouring, it is true. When we leave the