the mouth held three men erect, whilst the tongue was fifteen long. The liver filled two carts. One individual was said to have crept into the nostrils, where he was nearly suffocated by fetid blubber. The spot on which it was cast ashore still retains the name of Fishness."

In a former paper allusion has been made to the pretty village of Minster, with its rural gardens for tea-drinkings, its proximity to the sluggish Stour, and its church redolent of antique associations. But the legend annexed to the manor has been so briefly noticed that it seems to us worthy of further mention. In the year 670 the manor of Minster, or as in some old books it is called, the Tanet Manor, was possessed by Egbert, monarch of Kent, whose elder brother, Ermenfrid, dying, bequeathed to him his two sons-exacting from him a solemn promise that they should succeed to the crown. Egbert is said to have commenced by loving these youths, Ethelred and Ethelbright, who were many years younger than their sisters, Domneva (wedded to the prince of Mercia), and Ermengitha; but recklessly confiding the boys to the care of one Thunnor, a courtier, whose pernicious ambition and malignant disposition were hid beneath a pleasing exterior, they were trained in privacy, from the king's sight; during which time the evil insinuations and artful suggestions of Thunnor had prevailed upon Egbert to consent to their death, by which act (he assured him) he could alone ensure the throne to his own direct progeny. The weak and wicked monarch at length consented, and the bloody deed was perpetrated by Thunnor. The murdered princes were buried with great pomp, but the consciencestricken king, in a fit of remorse, made confession of the crime to Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and was by him and the abbot of St. Augustine's commanded, by way of expiating the foul offence, to offer to Domneva, the eldest sister of the deceased (a virtuous and learned lady, who had recently, on becoming a widow, taken the vow of chastity) any satisfaction in extenuation of the crime she chose to demand.

The widowed princess claimed the grant of a spot in the Isle of Thanet, on which to erect a monastery to the memory of her brothers; and in which she and her nuns might constantly intercede by prayer for the king's absolution.

Egbert complied instantly with the request, by granting a charter, which terminated with a remarkable execration on any one who should infringe its stipulations. "By that instrument," says an old chronicle, "one half of Thanet was granted for the endowment of this religions establishment." Egbert having granted Domneva's desire, asked her how much land she required for the holy purpose, when she replied that she must have "as much as her favourite deer could run over at one course." The monarch assented, and the animal was let loose at Westgate, in Birchington; the whole court and an immense concourse of people being spectators. Nor was Thunnor, the vile counsellor of the king, the viler assassin of the princes, absent: he had bribed some needy dependants to obstruct the course of the stag in every possible manner; poison had been placed in the trough whence it drank; some fierce blood-hounds had been slippped, as if by

accident; and other unfair means to hamper its progress and destroy its life had been resorted to-but all in vain. And heaven, wroth in its retributive justice, with the impiety of the man, smote him even in the hour of his baffled evil practices. As he stood on the sandy edge of a steep chalk-pit, beneath which the deer, unhurt and apparently unterrified, pursued its course, the irritated courtier, hid from view by the thick branches of a hawthorn-bush, launched a javelin at the noble animal, but overstretching himself in the effort he fell into the pit; the chalk and gravel which accompanied him in his fall, burying him in a hard and unkindly grave, cold as his own heart. His death was instantaneous, and while the gallant stag proceeded in triumphant safety, the malicious courtier lay suffocated beneath the shrouding sand. The superstitious people asserted that the earth had opened to swallow him up; and the chalk-pit received the name of Puteus Thunor, or "Thunnor's Leap ;" a name which has since been lost in that of the "Minster chalk-pit."

Domneva, with the acquisition of this property, founded a monastery of seventy nuns, called St. Mildred's Abbey, on the very spot where the parochial church now stands. She was constituted abbess of it by Archbishop Theodore, who consecrated the church. It long flourished as a monastery, whence is derived the word "Minster;" but in 978, it was entirely destroyed by the Danes, who consumed it by fire, when all its inmates perished, with the exception of Leofrune, then abbess, who was carried away prisoner to Denmark.

From the marshy meadows, rich in herbage, betwixt the church and the Stour, may be seen the ruins of Richborough castle, anciently called Reptacester, and (by Leland) Ratesberg. These venerable ruins stand-or rather fall to decay-on an eminence about a mile N.W. of Sandwich. Of this ancient pile so many accounts have been published, that it is enough to recommend it to the wanderer's inspection, of which it is well worthy. The massive fragments of its walls are clothed with ivy, and when I saw it in August, surrounded with standing corn, it presented a striking symbol of decay in the arms of Plenty and garlanded by Eternity. The foeniculum vulgare (common fennel) grows profusely among the ruins, whose first aspect recalled to my recollection an old gray pile upon which I came many years ago, in my wanderings in Spain. It stood, however, on a desolate heath, and the neighbouring villagers appeared to have lost all memory of its name, calling it simply the "old castle;" but a tradition respecting it shared not in the same oblivion, though in truth it was of so wild a nature as to scarcely merit remembrance.

"The lady (said my informant) who was the last inheritrix of this old castello was of Moorish descent, and in youth of supreme beauty; but her nature was proud and churlish, and though her charms and her gold won her three several husbands, in a succession so speedy as to form food for comment and malicious remark, she had not the power to retain that affection which is the lasting growth of true regard; for she was of so ill-nurtured and peevish a disposition, that all within the range of her control feared rather than liked her. Her first husband, a gentleman of wealth, was found some ten months after their union, in a dying condition in the forest, whither he had

gone to walk; he was covered with wounds, and expired without recovering speech; but beside him lay a poinard of peculiar description, and there were many who remembered to have seen it hang in the girdle of the dark Italian noble who wedded his widow soon after. The marriage was neither long nor happy; for a cousin of the lady's,a gay, gallant young cavalier, handsome, and of a merry nature—came on a visit to the castle, where, ere long, his attentions to his kinswoman passing the limits of decorous friendship, excited the jealousy of her Italian lord. The sneers of the wife and her refusals to alter her conduct aroused his indignation to such a pitch, that on one occasion he even struck her in the presence of her cousin. A combat ensued between the cavaliers, ending in the lady's becoming again a widow; and then every body expected that the survivor would claim her hand.

"But this did not ensue. He probably knew his kinswoman's temper too well to care for her otherwise than in dalliance, for he soon left the castle, and soon after a third suitor appeared, and obtained the lady's hand. Then, indeed, did she meet with her match; for he was rough and rude as December, and continual strife marked their union. After months of unhappiness, her kinsman, long absent, returned; and as the report went, the lady one day in a fit of passion called upon him to rid her of her present tyrant as he had rid her of her former one.' No word passed the husband's lips, but his looks were black and threatening; and next morning the bold young kinsman was not to be found. Suspicious of assassination, the lady accused her lord of his death, taunting him so scornfully that he menaced her with a dungeon, and terminating his threats with two abusive words that roused the wretched woman's vengeance to madness. Those words were adulteress, and murderess!'

"Now it so happened, that having long shared separate beds, the lady's husband slept in a tower, divided by a passage from the other sleeping apartments; beneath this tower were the dungeons. To this turret, in the insanity of her rage, and at the dead hour of night, the wife set fire. But she guessed not the length to which the demon she had let loose would run. The meditated destruction of her husband involved that of others, and a high wind spreading the conflagration, a dreadful spectacle met the gaze of the aroused vassals and neighbouring villagers on the following morning. At separate windows of the turret, now a-blaze, could be distinguished the burning, yet living figures of the lady's husband and cousin-the latter having been imprisoned in a chamber of the tower. No assistance could be rendered, for the whole pile shared in the peril, and the desperate lady, beholding her kinsman's ghastly form, as he shrieked in agony, flung herself into the consuming element, where she and her victims speedily perished!

(To be continued.)

THE NEWMARKET OCTOBER MEETINGS.

BY CRAVEN.

"Respicere exemplar vitæ morumque jubebo
Doctum imitatorem, et veras hinc ducere voces."
HORAT.

Like the life of a king, the life and lively-hood of racing never end. It is with no irreverential application of the adage-" one down another come on" in each case; indeed, it may be permitted me to remark, that in either instance one will occasionally come on "before the other is down." Taking the average as regards the turf, new interest attaches to incidents arising out of the past-just as we speculate in how much the heir-apparent to the people is tinged by the hue and temper of his predecessor. Thus, albeit the Turf season for 1843 has ceased to exist practically, it is full of the lusty life of theory. With this, its second stage of existence, we shall have frequently to deal between this and the merry spring time. At present, our purpose is to speak of those three meetings at Newmarket, in which centred all the racing interest of the past month.

Poor Hook, in one of the clever passages of one of his clever books (that ever he should go to "Fudley-cum-Pipes" and put on twaddle) asks, "Does any one suppose an alderman would relish his turtle and punch if he were forced to discuss them on the tight rope?" There are those, however, who seem to delight in inconveniences to which they are exposed in their pleasures. The most fashionable coffee room in the parish of St. George's, Hanover-square, is not half so well appointed as an average gin shop. It is no libel to say the visitors do not fare sumptuously at Almack's; it is no lie to say they "rough it" pretty extensively at Newmarket. I am not aware that there exists any tradition that this latter place is to be destroyed by an earthquake in the event of its being furnished with such accommodation as befits the rendezvous of civilized men; but it could not be left in a more complete state of nature were the Jockey Club assured that on any attempt to put it in order, the heath would gape and swallow them. It was rather moist during the First October Meeting; on my return from which, I met in the railway carriage one who also had been there. It was his first visit, and he made it on a pair of legs-none of the best-with sixteen stone to support upon them. As

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