fore we would yield ourselves to the mercy of our enemies, we had resolved to eat our asses, mules, horses, dogs, cats, and rats; yea, our boots and other skins which we could soften and fry. All the besieged did resolve to defend themselves with all sorts of instruments of war, that is to say, to rank and charge the artillery at the entry of the breach with bullets, stones, cast-nails, bars, and chains of iron; also all kinds and differences of artificial fire, as basiquadoes, granadoes, posts, lances, torches, squibs, burning-faggots; moreover, scalding-water, melted lead, powder of unquenched lime, to blind their eyes. Also, they were resolved to have made holes through and through their houses, there to lodge musqueteers, there to batter in the flank and hasten them to go, or else to make them lie altogether. Also, there was order given to the women to unpave the streets, and to cast out at their windows billets, tables, tressels, forms and stools, which would have troubled their brains. Moreover, there was, a little further, a strong court of guard filled with carts and pallisadoes, pipes and hogsheads, filled with earth, for barricadoes to serve to interlay with faulcons, faulconets, field-pieces, harquebusses, muskets, pistols and wild-fire, which would have broken legs and thighs, insomuch, that they had been beaten in head, in flank, and in tail; and when they had forced this court of guard, there were others at the crossings of the streets, each distant an hundred paces, who had been as bad companions as the first, and would not have been without making a great many widows and orphans; and if fortune would have been so much against us as to have broken our courts of guard, there were seven great battalions ordered in square and triangle to combat together, each one accompanied with a prince, to give them boldness and encourage them to fight, even till the last gasp, and to die altogether. Moreover, it was resolved, that each one should carry his treasure, rings, and jewels, and their household stuff, of the best, to burn them in the great place and to put them into ashes, rather than the enemy should prevail, and make trophies of their spoils. Likewise, there were people appointed to put fire to the munition and to beat out the heads of the wine casks; others, to put the fire into each house, to burn our enemies and us together. The citizens had accorded it thus, rather than to see the bloody knife upon their throat, end their wives and daughters violated, and be taken by force by the cruel and inhuman Spaniards. "Now we had certain prisoners whom Monsieur De Guise sent away upon their faith, to whom was secretly imparted our last resolution, will, and desperate minds, who being arrived in their camp, do not defer the publishing, which bridled the great impetuosity and will of the soldiers to enter any more into the city to cut our throats, and to enrich themselves of our pillages. The emperor having understood this deliberation of the great warriors, the Duke of Guise put water in his wine,* and restrained his great choler and fury; saying, he could not enter into the city without making a great slaughter and butchery, and spill much blood, as well of the defendants as of the assailants, and that they should be dead together, and, in the end, * A French proverb, signifying that he cooled his passion. could have nothing else but a few ashes, and that, afterwards, it might be spoken of, as of the destruction of Jerusalem already made by Titus and Vespasian. The emperor then having understood our last resolution, and seeing that they prevailed little by their battery and undermining, and the great plague which was in his whole army, and the indisposition of the time, and the want of victuals and money, and that his soldiers forsook him, and went away in great companies, concluded, in the end, to retire, accompanied with the cavalry of the vanguard, with the greatest part of his artillery, and the battalia. The Marquess of Brandenburg was the last which decamped, maintained by certain bands of Spaniards, Bohemians, and his German companies, and remained a day and a half after, to the great grief of Monsieur De Guise, who caused four pieces of artillery to be brought out of the city, which he caused to be discharged at him on one side and the other, to hasten them to be gone, which he did full quickly, with all his troops. He being a quarter of a league from Mets, was taken with a fear lest our cavalry should fall upon him in the rear, which caused him to put fire to his munition powder, and leave certain pieces of artillery and luggage which he could not carry. Our horsemen would, by all means, have gone out of the city to have fallen upon their breech, but Monsieur De Guise would never permit them, but, on the contrary, would rather make plain their way, and let them go, being like a good shepherd who will not lose sight of his sheep. " See now, how our well-beloved imperialists went away from before the city of Mets, which was the day after Christmas-day, to the great contentment of the besieged and honour of princes, captains, and soldiers, who had endured the travels of this siege the space of two months. Notwithstanding they did not all go; there wanted twenty thousand who were dead, as well by artillery as by the sword, as also by the plague, cold and hunger, and for spite that they could not enter the city to cut our throats and have the pillage; and also a great number of their horses died, of which they had eaten a great part instead of beef and bacon. They went where they had been encamped, where they found divers dead bodies not yet buried, and earth all digged like St. Innocents' church-yard in the time of the plague. They did likewise leave in their lodgings and tents divers sick people; also bullets, arms, carts, waggons, and other baggage, with a great many munition loaves, spoiled and rotten by the rain and snow, yet the soldiers had it but by weight and measure; and, likewise, they left great provision of wood, of the remainders of the houses of the villages which they had plucked down, two or three miles compass; likewise divers other houses of pleasure belonging to the citizens, accompanied with beautiful gardens filled with fruit trees, for, without that, they had been starved with cold, and had been constrained to have raised the siege sooner. The said Monsieur de Guise caused the dead to be buried, and dressed their sick people; likewise the enemies left, in the abbey of St. Arnoul, divers of their hurt soldiers which they could not lead with them; the said Monsieur de Guise sent them all victuals enough, and commanded me and other surgeons to go and dress them and give them medicines, which we willingly did, and think they would not have done the like toward others, (because the Spaniard is most cruel, perfidious, and inhuman, and, therefore, enemy to all nations), which is proved by Lopez, a Spaniard, and Benzo of Milan, and others who have written the history of America and the West Indies, who have been constrained to confess, that the cruelty, avarice, blasphemy, and wickedness of the Spaniards, have altogether alienated the poor Indians from the religion which the said Spaniards are said to hold. And all write that they are less worth than the idolatrous Indians, by the cruel usage done to the said Indians. "After the camp was wholly broken, I distributed my patients into the hands of the surgeons of the city, to finish their cure; then I took leave of Monsieur De Guise, came back towards the king, who received me with a loving countenance, and demanded of me, how I did enter into the city of Mets. I recounted to him all that I had done: he caused two hundred crowns to be given me, and one hundred I had at my going out; and he told me, he would not leave me poor: then I thanked him, most humbly, for the good and the honour which he pleased to do me." At the siege of Hedin, which follows next, Parey appears to have passed his time very uncomfortably. "For," says he, "council was held, where I was called to know, if I would sign, as divers captains, gentlemen, and others, had done, that the place should be rendered up. I made answer, that it was not possible to be held, and that I would sign it; for the little hope that I had, that we could resist the enemies, and also, for the great desire which I had to be out of this torment and hell; for I slept not, either by night or day, by reason of the great number of hurt people, which were about two hundred. When I entered into one lodging, soldiers attended me at the door, to go and dress others at another lodging; when I went forth, there was striving who should have me; and they carried me, like a holy body, not touching the ground with my foot, in spite one of another. Nor could I satisfy so great a number of hurt people." Such was the general estimation in which this celebrated man was held. We shall conclude our extracts from this work with the following instance of Parey's love of his country. After relating the manner in which he was taken prisoner, he thus proceeds: in "The emperor's surgeon took me apart, and told me, if I would remain with him, that he would use me very well. I thanked him very kindly for the honour he did me; and told him, that I had no desire to do any service to the enemies of my country. Then he told me, I was a fool, and if he were prisoner as I, he would serve the devil to get his liberty. I told him flatly that I would not dwell at all with him." The works of Ambrose Parey were collected and translated into Latin by an unknown hand, and published at Paris, in the year 1582, by his pupil, Jacques Guillemeau, surgeon to the King of France. They were afterwards translated into most of the European languages; and, in the year 1634, an English version of them, by Thomas Johnson, a surgeon of some eminence, appeared, dedicated to Lord Herbert, of Cherbury. The Travels, not being contained in the Latin edition, were translated from the French, by George Barker. 1 ART. IV. A Relation of Ghosts and Apparitions, which commonly appear in the Principality of Wales. By the Rev. Edmund Jones, Preacher of the Gospel at Monmouth. Bristol, 1767. While the customs, manners, and traditions of Scotland and Ireland have been displayed and depicted in every form and manner, those of Wales have been most culpably neglected. Her ancient literature and poetry, indeed, have met with a better fate; but even these have been confined in their diffusion, and limited in their utility by the injudicious mode adopted for their dissemination. The two or three works which have been devoted to their preservation are so decidedly and particularly national, that their object has been entirely defeated by their exclusive addiction to subjects merely antiquarian, or to those which possess only a limited and partial interest. Had the contents of these works been varied by lively descriptions of scenery and manners, they would have proved infinitely more acceptable to the general reader, and would have answered more abundantly the purpose of their projectors, by conveying to the public at large an adequate idea of the interest and importance of our ancient British literature. The "reading public," taken in the aggregate, is not willing to bestow much time or attention upon the perusal of old historical records. The antiquarian scholar, indeed, will gloat over the contents of a worm-eaten chronicle, and feast rapturously on the illegibility of an ancient manuscript. But the antiquary is generally too much wrapt up in the profundity of his harmless recreations, to assist in conveying instruction to others, by converting his studies into a source of public utility. The Welsh antiquary, even when he is inclined to give publicity to his lucubrations, has rarely adopted the most judicious method of doing so. A laudable desire, and one which every Cambro-Briton must heartily admire-of preserving uncontaminated the language of his ancestors, has induced more than one learned individual to publish his works in the Welsh tongue; and we need not say how much is lost to the English reader by such a plan. We may instance, as one example of this fashion, that noble work, the ARCHAIOLOGY OF WALES, the contents of which are as a "book sealed" to the great majority of those persons who would profit by them. We do not the learned and excellent editor of that splendid monument of Cambrian lore for printing the original MSS. in their original language: highly would he have been to blame had he not done so. Surely, a translation would not have been supererogatory. mean to censure the les Yet, after all, the great cause of this limited knowledge of the literary treasures of the Principality originates in the obstinate apathy of the natives themselves. In matters of literature the Welsh have hitherto been most lamentably negligent. Nobody can admire more than we do the general character of the Cambro-British. It is replete with loyalty, generosity, frank and open-hearted hospitality; but the exercise of these good qualities does not extend either to the fostering of living talent, or the rescuing from oblivion the genius of past ages. The Welsh country gentleman, alas! cares little for the Homers, who have been, or might have been, born to sing the wars of the Cimrians. Was it not, in fact, this discouraging apathy which nipped in the bud the expanding genius of a Goronwy Owen -which chilled the glowing spirit of an Evan Evans---and which permitted that noble monument of Cymric literature, the ARCHAIOLOGY OF WALES, to be collected, printed, and published, at the sole expense of Owen Jones, "the Thames Street furrier?" In addition to other causes, the influence of sectarianism has been particularly effective in the promotion of that indifference which the natives of the Principality have manifested towards the interests of literature. Nay, we have been sometimes inclined to believe, that the apathy in question has even had its root in those peculiar religious propensities to which Wales has, for a long series of years, been proverbially subject, and which have established their exclusive dominion over the mind. Hence, as a natural consequence, a taste for the literæ humaniores for the more polished learning of the world-has been too often obscured by the gloom of fanaticism, or lost in the baneful vortex of theological controversy. We do not state |