TERRIFIC REGISTER. nun to whom the distressed girl was indebted for the happiness of her child- The real feelings of the new votaress were, however, too much suspected by her more bigotted or more resigned fellow prisoners and time and despair making her less cautious she was soon looked upon as one likely to bring disgrace on the whole order, by divulging the secret that it is possible The storm of conventual perfor a nun to feel impatient under her vows. secution (the fiercest and most pitiless of all that breed in the human heart) had been lowering over the unhappy young woman during the short time which her aunt, the prioress, survived. But when death had left her friendless, and exposed to the tormenting ingenuity of a crowd of female zealots, whom she could not escape for an instant, unable to endure her misery, she resolutely attempted to drown herself. The attempt, however, was ineffectual. And now the merciless character of Catholic superstition appeared in its full glare. The mother, without impeaching whose character no judicial steps could be taken to prove the invalidity of the profession, was dead; and some relations and friends of the poor prisoner were moved by her sufferings to apply to the church for relief. A suit was instituted for this purpose before the ecclesiastical court, and the clearest evidence adduced of the indirect comBut the whole order of Saint pulsion which had been used on the case. Francis, considering their honour at stake, rose against their rebellious subject, and the judges sanctioned her vows as voluntarily and valid. She lives still in a state approaching to madness, and death only can break her chains. Such an instance of misery is, I hope, one of those extreme cases which seldom take place, and more seldom transpire. The common source of suffering among the Catholic recluses proceeds from a certain degree of religious melancholy, which, combined with such complaints as originate in perpetual confinement, affect more or less the greater number. It was in company with my friend Seandro, that I often met the unfortunate Maria Francisca. His efforts to dissuade her from the rash step she was going to take, and the warm language in which he spoke to her father on that subject, had made her look upon him as a warm and sincere friend. The unhappy girl, on the eve of the day when she was to take the veil, repaired to church, and sent him a message, without mentioning her name, that a female penitent requested his attendance at the confessional. With painful surprise he found the future novice at his feet, in a state bordering on distraction. When a flood of tears had allowed her utterance, she told him that for want of another friend in the whole world to whom she could disclose her feelings, she came to him, not, however, for the purpose of confession, but With a warmth because she trusted he would listen with pity to her sorrows. and eloquence above her years, she protested that the distant terrors of eternal punishment, which she feared might be the consequences of her determination, could not deter her from the step by which she was going to escape the incessant persecution of her mother. In vain did my friend volunteer his assistance to extricate her from the appalling difficulties which surrounded her ; in vain did he offer to wait upon the archbishop, and implore his interference: no offers, no persuasions could move her. She parted as if ready to be conveyed to the scaffold, and the next day she took the veil. The real kindness of her aunt, and the treacherous smiles of the other nuns, supported the pining novice through the year of probation. The scene I beheld when she was bound with the perpetual vows of monastic life, is one which I cannot recollect without an actual sense of suffocation. A solemn mass, performed with all the splendour which that ceremony admits, preceded the awful oaths of the novice. At the conclusion of the service, she approach ed the superior of the order. A pen, gaily ornamented with artificial flowers, was put into her trembling hand, to sign the engagement for life, on which she was about to enter. Then, standing before the iron grate of the choir, she began to chant, in a weak and fainting voice, the act of consecration of herself to God; but, having uttered a few words, she fainted in the arms of the surrounding nuns. This was attributed to mere fatigue and emotion. No sooner had the means employed restored to the victim the powers of speech, than, with a vehemence which those who knew not her circumstances attributed to a fresh impulse of holy zeal, and in which the few that were in the painful secret saw nothing but the madness of despair, she hurried over the remaining sentences, and sealed her doom for ever. TREMENDOUS PASS. In this Two hundred miles from the Sound is the great river Connecticut. river there is a narrow part of only five yards broad, formed by two shelving mountains of solid rock. Through this chasm are compelled to pass all the waters, which in the time of the floods bury all the Northern country without frost; but by pressure and velocity, the waters are here consolidated to such a degree of firmness that no iron crow can be forced into it; here iron, lead, and cork have one common weight; here steady as time, and harder than marble, the stream passes, irresistible and swift as lightning; the electric fire rends trees to pieces with no greater ease than this amazing water. The passage is four hundred yards in length, of a rising form, with obtuse corners : here masts and other timber are carried with incredible swiftness, and sometimes (at high water) with safety through this tremendous straight; but when the water is low, they are in a moment rent into perfect shreds to the terror and astonishment of beholders. INFERNAL MACHINE. The Journalist of the reign of Henry III. of France, under the month of September, 1587, records the execution of a Norman, who invented an infernal machine, which he caused to be conveyed to the Seigneur de Milland Allegre. It was a box, containing thirty-six pistol barrels, each of them loaded with a couple of bullets.. This box was so contrived, that on opening it each of these barrels was to discharge its contents, firing off seventy-two balls, It was sent with a forged letter as from De Milland's sister, signifying that she desired his acceptance of a curiosity, which the bearer would instruct him how to open. This bearer was the inventor's servant, who had been taught the manner of opening the box, but was a stranger as to what it contained. Accordingly, by de Milland's direction, it was opened, and in his presence, when the pistols were all discharged; but the gentleman and servant happened to be but slightly wounded. The inventor was thereupon apprehended and broken upon the wheel, for his murderous invention. NEGLECTED WARNING. James IV. King of Scotland, being persuaded by the clergy and bishops to break with England, and declare war against Henry VIII. contrary to the advice of his nobility and gentry, who were to bear both the expence and the blows of a battle; the king, thus overruled by the clergy, raised an army and prepared to march to the frontiers: but the evening before he was to take the field, as he was at vespers in the chapel royal at his palace of Linlithgow, an ancient man appeared to him with a long head of hair of the colour of amber, (some accounts represent it as a glory round his head) and of a venerable aspect, having on a belted plaid girt round with a linen sash. This man was perceived by the king before he came up close to him, and before he was seen by any of the people; and the king also perceived him to be earnestly looking at him, and at the noble persons about him, as desiring to speak to him. After some little time, he pressed through the crowd, and came close up to the king, and, without any reverence or bow made to his person, told him with a low voice, but such as the king could hear distinctly, that he was sent to him to warn him not to proceed in the war which he had undertaken at the solicitation of the priests, and in favour of the French; and that if he did go on with it he should not prosper. He added also, that if he did not abstain from his lewd and unchristian practices with wicked women, they would end in his destruction. Having delivered this message he immediately vanished; for though his pressing up to the king had put the whole assembly in disorder, and every one's eye was fixed upon him when he was delivering his message to the king; yet no one saw him any more, or perceived his going back from the king; which put them all into the utmost consternation. The king himself was also in great confusion; he would fain have believed that the spectre was a man, and would have spoken to him again, and asked some questions of him. But the people constantly and with one voice affirmed that it was an angel, and that it immediately disappeared after the message was delivered; that they plainly saw him and felt him thrusting to get by them as he went up, but not one could see him go back. The king upon this was satisfied that it was not a real body, but an apparition; and it put him into a great consternation, and caused him to delay his march awhile, and call several councils of his nobility to consider what to do. But the king being still overpersuaded by those engines employed by Monsieur La Motte, the French ambassador, continued in his designs for a war, and advanced afterwards with his army to the Tweed, which was the boundary of the two kingdoms. Here the army rested some time, and the king being at Jedburgh, a known town in those parts, as he was sitting drinking wine very plentifully in a great hall of the house where his head-quarter's was then held, supposed to be the old Earl of Morton's house, the spectre came to him a second time, though not in the form which he appeared at Linlithgow, but with less regard and respect to the prince, and in an imperious tone told him he was commanded to warn him not to proceed in that war, for if he did, he should lose not the battle only, but his crown and kingdom; and after this, without staying for any answer, went to the chimney, and wrote on the stone over it, or that which we call the mantle-piece, the following distich: Læta sit illa dies, nescitur origo secundi, Sit labor an requies, sic transit gloria mundi. That the king did not listen to either of these notices, our histories, as well as Buchanan, the historian of Scotland, take notice of very publicly; and also that he marched on, fought the English at Flodden Field, and there lost his army, all his former glory, and his life. THE SINGING VALLEY. Pottstown (Pennsylvania.) "A few days since a party of gentlemen from this village rode to the celebrated Klingleberg, or Singing Valley, about three miles from this place. Although our expectations were very highly raised by the reports which we had heard, still they were more than realized on our arrival there. A large and irregular mass of ill-shaped stones presented themselves to our view at first. They appear to have been thrown together by some terrible convulsion of nature. From the appearance of the stone, probably at some former period, a volcanic eruption must have taken place here. By striking on the stones the most varied sounds imaginable are produced. The chime of the finest bells in the world could not exceed in variety the sounds produced here, from the most sonorous bass to the most delicate air, the gradations beautifully fine. Near the Klingleberg there is a considerable cave, which extends some distance under the rocks, and is really worthy the attention of the curious. Many visitors heretofore have been at this place, but of late it has been almost deserted. When a traveller is much troubled to kill time, there is not a place that would better compensate him than a visit to this celebrated Singing Valley. MATERNAL FEELING STIFLED BY LAW. The daughters and sisters of the Grand Signior, married to the vizirs and great men of the empire, live separately in the palaces, and the male infant of the marriage must be smothered at the same moment, and by the same hands that bring it into the world. This is at once the most public and most inviolable law; no veil is thrown over the horror of these murders. A cowardly fear produces these assassinations, more than the real interest of the throne. What advantages of situation can console these unhappy princesses? -But what fresh horror! The pride of their birth, which compels this crime, more monstrous than the crime itself, not satisfied with the victim, smothers even the cry of nature. RICHARD NOBLE, A MURDERER. Richard Noble was an attorney at law, and the paramour of Mrs. Sayer, wife of John Sayer, Esq. who was possessed of about one thousand pounds a year, and lord of the manor of Biddlesden, in Buckinghamshire. Mr. Sayer does not appear to have been a man of any great abilities; but was remarkable for his good nature and inoffensive disposition. Mrs. Sayer, to whom he was married in 1699, was the daughter of Admiral Mevil, and a woman of an agreeable person and brilliant wit; but of such an abandoned disposition as to be a disgrace to her sex. Soon after Mr. Sayer's wedding, Colonel Salisbury married the Admiral's widow; but there was such a vicious similarity in the conduct of the mother and daughter, that the two husbands had early occasion to be disgusted with the choice they had made. Mr. Sayer's nuptials had not been celebrated many days before the bride took the liberty of kicking him, and hinted that she would procure a lover more agreeable to her mind. Sayer, who was distractedly fond of her, bore this treatment with patience; and at the end of a twelvemonth she presented him a daughter, which soon died: but he became still more fond of her after she had made him a father, and was continually loading her with presents. Mr. Sayer now took a house in Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, kept a coach, and did every thing which he thought might gratify his wife : but her unhappy disposition was the occasion of temporary separations. At times, however, she behaved with more complaisance to her husband, who had, after a while, the honour of being deemed father of another child of which she was delivered; and after this circumstance she indulged herself in still greater liberties than before; her mother, who was almost constantly with her, encouraging her in this shameful conduct. At length a scheme was concerted, which would probably have ended in the destruction of Mr. Sayer and Colonel, if it had not been happily prevented by the prudence of the latter. The Colonel taking an opportunity to represent to Mrs. Sayer the ill consequences that must attend her infidelity to her husband, she immediately attacked him with the most outrageous language, and insulted him to that degree that he threw the remains of a cup of tea at her. The mother and daughter immediately laid hold of this circumstance to inflame the passions of Mr. Sayer, whom they at length prevailed on to demand satisfaction of the Colonel. The challenge is said to have been written by Mrs. Sayer, and when the Colonel received it, he conjectured that it was a plan concerted between the ladies to get rid of their husbands. However, he obeyed the summons, and going in a coach with Mr. Sayer towards Montague House, he addressed him as follows:-" Son Sayer, let us come to a right understanding of this business. 'Tis very well known that I am a swordsman, I should be very far from getting any honour by killing you. But to come nearer to the point in hand. Thou shouldst know, Jack, for all the world knows, that thy wife and mine are both what they should not be. They want to get rid of us at once. If thou shouldst drop, they will have me hanged for it after." There was so much of obvious truth in this remark, that Mr. Sayer immediately felt its force, and the gentlemen drove home together, to the mortification of the ladies. Soon after this affair Mrs. Sayer went to her house in Buckinghamshire, where an intimacy took place between her and the curate of the parish, and their amour was conducted with so little reserve, that all the servants saw that the person had more influence in the house than their master. Mrs. Sayer coming to London, was soon followed by the young clergyman, who was seized with the small pox, which cost |