man. They talked, or rather clamored, | question, there is a measure of truth in Welsh, so I had no conception what it. The ruins of the abbey at this day are a witness to the importance of the little island many centuries ago. The abbey has been associated with Dubricius, Archbishop of Caerleon, who died in Bardsey in A.D. 522. Rather less than a hundred years later occurred that outrage by King Ethelred upon the monks of Bangor-is-coed in Flintshire, which seems to have spread was in the wind. Curiosity was not to be resisted. I left my room and saw my pretty milliner, her mother, and the maidservant all heavily impelling up the narrow stairs an aged man whose white hair tossed almost to his shoulders, and whose semi-circle of snowy whiskers and beard made him look like Moses or Abraham in the picturebooks. The man was loth to ascend, panic among the Christians of the and resisted. But the women all had northern part of the principality. him hard in the small of the back and These disestablished believers fled to declined to give way. Thus they urged Anglesey in thousands. Many of their him to the first floor and into a bed- names are preserved for us in the chamber, where he collapsed immedi- names of the churches which sucately upon a bed. They locked the ceeded the remote hermitages in which door and left him, heedless of his they ensconced themselves. Llanmonstrous cries for a supper to consist of roast beef, porridge, and tea. flewyn, Llanbeulan, Llanrhwydrys, etc., are but the churches of Flewyn, Beulan, Rhwydrys holy men who never expected thus to go down the avenue of time memorialized for posterity. But the monks also fled down the Carnarvon Peninsula, striving to get as far as possible from the cruel hands of the pagan marauders. They were stopped temporarily by the red This was a Bardsey islander over for the day, or the week, as the weather might please. He was a relation of the shop, but had spent his best hours at one of the inns. This same venerable reveller astonished me on the stairs the next morning by greeting me civilly in English, and wondering (in a dubious manner) if he could have a soda-and-dish cliffs of Braich-y-Pwll. brandy. They sent him up a teacupful On a level plateau of grass and of milk instead. heather here where the land looks Bardsey is the property of Lord towards Bardsey, only two miles away Newborough, who owns so much terri- | (though with a strong tide between), tory in the north-west of Wales. It is a possession full of honor, if we are to believe the accepted tradition that twenty thousand saints lie buried in it. The lord of the isle has erected a monument to their memory in the precincts of the old ruined abbey; nor does he reduce the number of them by a single one. At first sight you might doubt the island's ability to hold the bones of so many mortals; but really it has a circumference of about three miles, which, manifestly, may suffice. The modern islanders are, as they ought to be, a byword of integrity and sobriety at home; but perhaps it is a pity the righteous influence of their native place does not cling to them more effectually when they are away from it. This legend of Bardsey's saints demands explicit recognition. Out of and about a hundred and fifty feet it. For my part, I would fain imagine that the chapel of Our Lady of Braichy-Pwll had a considerable existence and was incorporated with a monas- on the ocean that has endeared itself tery; and, further, that after the death to them. You would expect these of the successive inmates, they were superannuated mariners to be rather ferried over the flood to their last rest- heedless of the dangers attendant upon ing-place in Bardsey. It is quite cred- the sea and its currents. In the Faroe ible that a thousand or two of the Islands and elsewhere there is an anBangor-is-coed monks and their Chris-nual and relatively large mortality due tian flock sheltered and died in the to storms and capsizes. But here at island, even though common sense Bardsey years pass and there is no puts the question, "How could they death from natural or accidental causes. exist here ere they died?" With the The islanders are not to be bribed to dead bodies of these Christians and cross to Aberdaron or from Aberdaron those of the monastery of Our Lady of when the weather is risky. A soverBraich-y-Pwll we may readily justify eign or two more or less can make but the later chroniclers (who were seldom little difference to their material prosgood at arithmetic) in telling of the perity, and they seem sufficiently philotwenty thousand Bardsey saints. sophic to perceive it. Much more to Thus may be explained this unique their taste is it to stand at the doors of characteristic of the little island. The their cottages and prattle about past subject has been provocative of a host times. These travelled ones talk very of scoffs so much so that the island-passable English, though they interers themselves have given up defend- lard it with Welsh mannerisms which ing their country's reputation in the matter and shake their heads with the majority. But it does not deserve to be smothered in ridicule as a mere lying tale. The modern folk of Bardsey cannot but be influenced more or less by the halo that is about their land. They are a simple, law-abiding community the women in particular being engagingly ignorant about events in the great world of which they are a part, though a small one. They have not much to commend them to admiration externally. Constant exposure gives them very tawny complexions, and though they have strength they have few of the graces that on the mainland often accompany strength. They are thick-limbed, heavy featured, and rather dull to the eye. But all this is of scant account to their discredit in comparison with the homely virtues that are certainly theirs. A person of experience could recognize them at a glance as inhabitants of a remote island. may well make the Londoner smile. They have adventures enough to relate about storms and fanatic foreigners; nor does it signify overmuch that they strain at the long-bow to excite the interest of the ladies. There is something taking about the hard-featured but placid old fellows, with their lurching gait, fluent if rather labored speech, and their simple clay pipes in which they smoke the disagreeable black tobacco of the mainland. I hope this little paper may have shown, as I meant it to show, that with all its crudity and defects the Lleyn is not at all a bad place for a holiday. It certainly affords in full measure those two best features of a profitable change of residence: novelty and a good air. In summer one cau endure with smiles a certain amount of discomfort. Moreover, I doubt not I have made more of the failings of the Lleyn folk than I need have done; while, on the other hand, a keener or more amiable visitor would probably discover in them a variety of virtues which the casual stranger does not discern in them. Among the men, not a few have travelled far and wide as sailors and fisherfolk ere settling down on this gorse-clad rock. They find the island I walked to Aberdaron from Pwllheli, thoroughly congenial. It is a sort of but returned by the coach. This was compromise for them. They are on an amusingly odd final experience of dry land, and yet it is as if they were the ways of life in the peninsula. We were packed so tight about the vehicle, | estimate of their character. The hiseven at the start, that there was a diffi-torians whom we follow provide us culty in breathing. This, however, with pictures of the great men whose was nothing to the afterwards. variety of old ladies in archaic bonnets, with bundles and umbrellas, also young women in feathers, and males of all kinds stopped us in the lanes and must likenesses, and would be surprised to needs mount how and where they see of what an interpretation their could. I never was so squeezed in all actions were capable. In the days in my days. The more obliging young which they lived men were too busy in men took the comelier of the maidens working their respective works to unupon their knees. It was really false dertake the task of recording the minor kindness, since it only enabled the details of their neighbors' lives. Even driver to cram another old lady or two in the time of the great Elizabethan and into our midst. Thus after a while we Jacobean writers, we know strangely rattled along with people clinging upon little of the personal characteristics all sides like limpets to a rock. Our of the leading statesmen and poets. horses were of the large, loose, lean We are grateful beyond measure for kind, two white and two brown. For the isolated episodes occasionally introan hour it was quite laughable. Then duced by the early chroniclers, for the it began to rain, and for the remaining chance recollection which has preserved three hours of the ride the heavens for us the memory of those "wit-conpelted us without mercy. Between us tests" at the Mermaid Tavern, or for we absorbed so much moisture that the the anecdote of Raleigh's sacrifice of weight of the coach was considerably his cloak beneath the feet of Elizabeth. increased ere Pwllheli was reached. But these do not go far towards reconOne of the old school of caricaturists structing the personalities of the heroes would have made a very great deal of of our earlier history. After the midthis eccentric vehicle and its pictur- dle of the century is past, however, the esque freight. For my part, I bore a scene begins to change. The age of memento of the ride in the impress of memoirs and diaries commences, which a button which a stout farmer lady had has made the eighteenth century as driven as far into my arm as it would well known to us as the days of our go. If she had been a criminal with own fathers. From the beginning of the law at her heels, my arm could the reigns of Charles II. in England have given circumstantial evidence against her hours after we parted company. A actions they record; but it is sometimes difficult to avoid a suspicion that the originals of these portraits would find it hard to recognize their own From The Church Quarterly Review. AN ENGLISH PRINCESS AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV.1 BEFORE the middle of the seventeenth century the personages of Euglish history are but dimly and imperfectly known to us. We know, more or less accurately, the deeds they did and the mark they left upon the history of our country; and from these we form our and Louis XIV. in France, there is no lack of information concerning the minor characteristics, not only of the leading public men, but of many who played quite secondary parts in politics or letters or society. The change thus produced, from our point of view, is enormous. History ceases to be concerned only with the great actions of statesmen and peoples; it becomes personal and particular. We have authentic portraits of the best-known men and women, and we have memoirs in which their private characters, their foibles and peccadillos, their virtues and vices, are chronicled by lively and acute observers. By Julia Pepys and Grammont and Evelyn have made us intimate with all the person 1 Madame a Life of Henrietta, Daughter of Charles I. and Duchess of Orleans. 'Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady). London, 1894. ages of the court of Charles II. as Wal- classes of historians, and conscience need not reproach us if we like our history interesting. If it can be true as well- so in some moods one is inclined to say - -so much the better; but anyhow let it be interesting. Mrs. Ady whom many readers know better as Miss Julia Cartwright pole and Hervey have with those who flourished under George II. The consequence is that students in our own day, who have saturated themselves with such chronicles, can reconstruct the inner life of the societies which they describe in all its freshness and color. Macaulay declared that Pepys' has an admirable knack of selecting diary formed almost inexhaustible food for his fancy. "I seem to know every inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein's gate, and come out through the matted gallery," and so on. And Mr. Austin Dobson must, to all appearance, know the streets and society of London in the days of Steele and Walpole at least as well as those of London to-day. a picturesque personage for the subject of an historical memoir. Her life of Dorothy Sidney, the divine Sacharissa of Waller's devotion, gave a pleasant glimpse of life and politics from Charles I. to Charles II. Her new book covers a portion of the same period; but the scene of the greater part of it is laid in France. Without encroaching too much on the province of the professed It is, no doubt, possible that in at- historian, she throws an interesting tending overmuch to the tittle-tattle side light on the political relations beand personalities of these bygone days tween France and England after the we may lose sight of the true les- Restoration, and at the same time sons of their history; and to some paints the portrait of a bright and atextent this has actually been the case. tractive person, a princess of England Historians have dwelt upon the char- by birth, and of France by residence acters of Shaftesbury and Sunderland, and marriage. In one respect Henrithe intrigues of Newcastle and Bute, etta of Orleans is even a better subject and have overlooked the importance for biography than Dorothy Sidney, of the naval wars with the Dutch since the materials for her life are in the seventeenth century, and the fuller and more vivid. There were building up of our colonial empire in gaps in the earlier record which could the eighteenth. But so long as the only be scantily supplied by conjecgreater outlines are not forgotten, it is ture; but the short life of Henrietta legitimate to linger a little over the was passed in the full glare of publighter aspects of history. Some of the licity. The memoirs of the personages time which we naturally devote to fic- who thronged the court of Louis XIV. tion may be quite as pleasantly spent are plentiful and varied, and they have in following a competent guide through the vivacity and piquancy which one some of the by-ways which the me- naturally associates with French memoir-writers have opened to us. The moirs. Further, Mrs. Ady has been movements of the great actors across fortunate enough to be able to print the stage will not be less interesting or for the first time in their original lanless effective, if the supernumeraries guage a large number of letters from are live men and women instead of lay- Charles II. to his sister, which have figures. And while engaged in this not a little interest, both personal and diversion we shall not inquire too curi- political. With these materials at her ously into the nature of the evidence disposal, it will surprise no one who is on which the reconstruction of this acquainted with Mrs. Ady's earlier minor history is based. Research is works to find that she has produced a great and will prevail. But the pictur- pleasant and very readable volume. esque writer will carry the knowledge The life of the Princess Henrietta, of history into many quarters which the youngest child of Charles I. and the single-minded fact-hunter never Henrietta Maria, was short but not unreaches. There is room for both eventful; and in both its beginning and its end it had something striking and she, naturally perhaps, but conand pathetic. She was born in the trary to the last wishes of her husband, crisis of the Civil War, and within the resolved that she should be brought walls of a city which was on the point up in the Roman Catholic faith. Her of standing a siege. Henrietta Maria, brother, Charles, protested strongly, having parted from her husband at Ox- and his protestations were renewed ford, had taken refuge at Exeter as a still more vehemently when Henrietta place of greater security; but hardly Maria endeavored also to bring about had the child been born when the Par- the conversion of his younger brother, liamentary army marched upon the the Duke of Gloucester an endeavor town. The queen, whether fearing for which was frustrated by the boy's own her own safety or to avoid embarrass-resistance. During these years the ing her husband by allowing herself to English exiles in Paris were often in be captured by the enemy, fled from severe straits for want of money. In Exeter, leaving the child behind under the very month of the king's executhe charge of Lady Dalkeith. No tion, a bitterly cold January, Cardinal better delegate of a mother's care could Mazarin, on paying a visit to the have been found. Lady Dalkeith queen, found her without a fire, and nursed the weakly infant with the ut- the infant princess in bed, because that most devotion, in spite of the unmer- was the only place where she could ited reproaches which the queen, from be warm. The cardinal, however, took her safe retreat in France, heaped prompt steps to relieve her necessities, upon her for not having effected an and Anne of Austria, the queenimpossible escape. When Exeter at mother, was always well disposed to last surrendered, in April, 1646, and the infant princess passed into the power of the Parliament, Lady Dalkeith accompanied her charge, and for several months maintained her at Oatlands at her own expense, in default of the Parliament's promised allowance. Faithful to her orders not to be parted from the child, she strenuously resisted a proposal to transfer her to the care of Lady Northumberland; and when she received no answer to her petition, she formed the hardy resolution to carry the little princess secretly out of the country. Probably the Parliament was too much occupied with weightier matters to insist that a close watch should be kept on these prisoners; still more probably it never occurred to them that a woman and a child would attempt to escape. The faithfulness of the household at Oatlands secured the fugitives three days' start before notice of their escape reached the Parliament; and by that time they were safe in France, and the first exciting episode of the infant princess's life was happily at an end. The years which followed can be passed over briefly. The child's education was in the hands of her mother; her; and as the young princess grew older she was admitted to share the amusements of the boy-king, Louis XIV., and his brother, Philippe, Duke of Anjou. Her name occurs frequently in the records of the festivities of the court, and as time went on hints were whispered, and were, no doubt, sanctioned by Henrietta Maria, of the possibility of a future marriage between the young king of France and his cousin of England. But Louis was sixteen and probably had a boy's disdain for a girl six years younger than himself; and certainly his admiration was attracted by the maturer charms of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces, the Mancini. Nor was it otherwise when Louis came of age and his marriage really became an affair of State. For his own part he had no particular affection for Henrietta, then a girl of fifteen; and his counsellors might well hesitate before connecting him with a royal family which lacked a throne. Moreover, an unexpected chance offered itself for arranging a match of the greatest political importance, a chance which was on no account to be missed. Accordingly the youngest Mademoiselle Mancini, then the object of his worship, was |