OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Letters of Junius/Letter LVI

LETTER LVI.
FROM THE REVEREND HORNE TO JUNIUS.
17. August, 1771.
I CONGRATULATE you, Sir, on the recovery of your wonted style, though it has cost you a fortnight. I compassionate your labour in the composition of your letters, and will communicate to you the secret of my fluency.—Truth needs no ornament; and in my opinion, what she borrows of the pencil is deformity.
You brought a positive charge against me of corruption. I denied the charge, and called for your proofs. You replied with abuse, and reasserted your charge. I called again for proofs. You reply again with abuse only, and drop your accusation. In your fortnight's letter, there is not one word upon the subject of my corruption.
I have no more to say, but to return thanks to you for your condescension, and to ​a grateful public, and honest ministry, for all the favours they have conferred upon me. The two latter, I am sure, will never refuse me any grace I shall solicit: and since you have been pleased to acknowledge, that you told a deliberate lie in my favour, out of bounty, and as a charitable donation, why may I not expect that you will hereafter (if you do not forget you ever mentioned my name with disrespect) make the same acknowledgment for what you have said to my prejudice?—This second recantation will perhaps, be more abhorrent from your disposition; but should you decline it, you will only afford one more instance, how much easier it is to be generous that just, and that men are sometimes bountiful who are not honest.
At all events, I am as well satisfied with your panegyric as Lord Chatham can be. Monument I shall have none; but over my grave it will be said, in your own words, "Horne's situation did not correspond with his intentions."
JOHN HORNE.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 44

To MRS. RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 18, 1824.
The indissoluble knot is tied! What an awful ceremony it is! What an awful deed! How can parents bear to be at the weddings of their children where it is not a marriage of their own free choice? and how can a woman herself pronounce that solemn vow when she is marrying for money, or for grandeur, or from any earthly motive but the pure heart?—a purer heart than my sister Sophy's I do believe never approached the altar, nor was the hand ever given more entirely with the free heart. There was no one at the wedding but our own family, Mr. Fox, Francis Fox, and William Beaufort. We six ladies went in the carriage immediately after breakfast to the church, where the gentlemen were waiting for us. The churchyard, and church of course, crowded with the poor people of the village, but as we drove out of our own lawn into Mr. Keating's, there was as little annoyance from starers as possible. William Beaufort married them, as had been Sophy's particular wish. The sun shone out with a bright promise at the moment her marriage was completed. Barry handed her into his chaise, the most commodious, prettiest, and plainest carriage I ever saw, and away they drove.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 46

To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, July 17, 1824.
I hope this will find you at Cheltenham with Barry and Sophy, and Fanny; my mother and Margaret set off this fine morning for Black Castle, and Lucy is now in the dining-room, her bed aslant across the open middle window, the grass plot new-mown, and a sweet smell of fresh hay. They are drawing home the hay, and men are driving past the windows on empty cars, or leading loaded ones. The roses are still in full blow on the trellis. Aunt Bess sitting by Lucy talking of the beautiful thorns in the Phoenix Park, and I am sitting on the other side of Lucy's bed by the pillar.
Margaret Ruxton when here was eager to pay her compliments to Peggy Tuite; her husband has written for her to go to him, and she is now "torn almost in two between the wish to go to her husband and her lothness to leave her old mother." She gave Margaret and me the history of her losing and finding her wedding ring. "Sure I knew my luck would change when I found my wedding ring that I lost four years ago—down in the quarry. I went across the fields to feed the pig, and looked and looked till I was tired, and then concluded I had given it to the pig mixed up and that he had swallowed it for ever—it was a real gold ring. But the men that was clearing out the rubbage in the quarry found it and adjourned to the public house to share the luck of it. My brother got scent of it and went directly to inform the man that found it whose the ring was, and demanded it; he wouldn't hear of giving it back, and sold it to a pensioner there above; my brother set off with himself to the priest and told all, and the priest summoned the man and the pensioner, and my brother, and in the presence of an honest man, Mr. Sweeny, warned the pensioner to restore the wedding ring, since my brother could tell the tokens on it. 'It's the woman's wedding ring to remind her of her conjugal duties, and it's sacrilege to take it.' But the man that sold it was hardened, and the pensioner said he had paid for it, and so says the priest to Keegan, that's the master of the quarry men, 'Turn this man out of the work, he is a bad man and he will corrupt the rest. And, Peggy Tuite, I advise you and your brother to go straight to Major Bond and summon these men.'" Then she described the trial, when Tuite "swore to the tokens where it had been crushed by a stone, and the goldsmith's mark, and the Major held it between him and the light and plainly noticed the crush and the battered marks, and handing me the ring said, 'Peggy Tuite, this is your ring sure enough.'"
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 43

To MRS. BANNATYNE.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Feb. 16, 1824.
My dear Mr. and Mrs. Bannatyne—my dear Mrs. Starke and Miss Bannatyne, and Andrew and Dugald, and all of you kind friends, put your heads close together to hear a piece of intelligence which will, I know, rejoice your kind hearts.
Our dear Sophy and your dear Sophy is going to be married to a person whom her mother, and every one of her own family completely approve, who has been tenderly attached to her for some time, whose principles, understanding, manners, and honourable manly character are such as to deserve such a wife as I may proudly say he will have in Sophy. His birth, family connections, and fortune are all such as we could wish. The gentleman is a cousin of our own Captain Barry Fox; he is an officer, but will probably leave the army, and settle in his own country; we hope within reach of us. He has been so kind and considerate about poor Lucy, so anxious not to deprive her too suddenly of her beloved, and best of nurses, that he has endeared himself the more to us all.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 48

To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, August 28, 1824.
I am impatient to set my dear Aunt Mary's mind free from the anxiety I am sure she feels about her decision to stay in England this winter; whatever disappointment and regret I felt was mitigated by her beautifully kind and tender note.
Your entertaining account of the archery meeting at Lord Bagot's came yesterday evening. What a magnificent entertainment, and in what good taste! It was a delightful house for a fête champêtre.
The Roman Catholic Bishop, M'Gaurin, held a confirmation the day before yesterday, and dined here on a God-send haunch of venison. Same day Mr. Hunter arrived, and Mr. Butler came with young Mr. Hamilton, an "admirable Crichton" of eighteen; a real prodigy of talents, who Dr. Brinkley says may be a second Newton—quite gentle and simple. Mr. and Mrs. Napier arrived on Wednesday, and spent two most agreeable days with us; he is an extremely well-informed man, and both are perfectly well-bred. Mr. Butler and Mr. Hamilton suited them delightfully. Mr. Butler and Mr. Napier found they were both Oxford men, and took to each other directly. Mr. Napier's conversation is quite superior and easy. Those two days put me in mind of former times. Hunter is very happy here in spite of his cockney prejudices; he says Harry and Lucy must be ready by October.

## Footnotes

* ↑ After the death of her sister Charlotte in 1822, Mrs. Mary Sneyd resided occasionally with her brother in England till 1828, when she returned finally to Edgeworthstown, where she remained for the rest of her life, deeply attached to all the family, but regarding her niece Honora as peculiarly her own child.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 50

To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
BLACK CASTLE, May 10, 1825.
Your list of presentation copies of Harry and Lucy, and your reasons for giving each, diverted me very much. Sophy and Margaret and I laughed over it and agreed that every reason was like Mr. Plunket's speech, "unanswerable."
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 5

To MRS. RUXTON.
PARIS, Nov. 1820.
Never lose another night's sleep, or another moment's thought on the Quarterly Review—I have never read and never will read it.
I write this merely to tell you that I have at last had the pleasure of seeing Madame la Comtesse de Vaudreuil, the daughter of your friend; she is an exceedingly pleasing woman, of high fashion, with the remains of great beauty, courteous and kind to us beyond all expectation. She had but a few days in Paris, and she made out two for us; she took us to the Conciergerie to see, by lamp-light, the dungeons where the poor Queen and Madame Elizabeth were confined, now fitted up as little chapels. In the Queen's is an altar inscribed with her letter to the King, expressing forgiveness of her enemies. Tears streamed from the eyes of the young Countess de Vaudreuil, the daughter-in-law, as she looked at this altar, and the place where the Queen's bed was. Who do you think accompanied us to this place? Lady Beauchamp, Lady Longford's mother, a great friend of Madame de Vaudreuil's, with whom we dined the next day, and who had procured for us the Duc de Choiseul's box at the Théâtre Français, when the house was to be uncommonly crowded to see Mademoiselle Duchenois in Athalie "avec tous les choeurs," and a most striking spectacle it was! I had never seen Mademoiselle Duchenois to perfection before.

## Footnotes

* ↑ An article on Maria Edgeworth's Memoirs of her Father, full of doubt, ridicule, misrepresentation, and acrimony. Miss Edgeworth never read this Review till 1835, when she was induced to do so by a letter from Mr. Peabody alluding to it. It was then powerless to give her pain, for its anonymous falsehoods had long fallen into oblivion.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 45

To MRS. O'BEIRNE.
BLACK CASTLE, July 6, 1824.
In the little drawing-room at Black Castle, where we have been so often happy together; in the little drawing-room to which you have so often brought me to see my dear aunt, I now write to you, my dear friend, to tell you how much I miss you. I feel a perpetual want of that part of my happiness in this dear place which I owed to its neighbourhood to another dear place to which I cannot now bear to go. Once, and but once, in the two months I have been here have I been there; when the indispensable civility of returning a formal visit required it, and then I felt it to be as much, if not more, than I was able to do, with the composure I felt to be proper. The sitting in that red drawing-room and missing everything I had so loved—the saloon, the lawn—I really could not speak, and heartily glad I was when I got away.
My plans of going to England this summer have been all broken up: you know how, as you have heard of the death of my dear sister Anna, at Florence; the account of her loss reached me just when I was joyfully expecting an answer to a letter full of projects which she never lived to read. GOD'S will be done. We expect my nieces, Anna and Mary, at Edgeworthstown as soon as they return from Italy.

## Footnotes

* ↑ The Bishop of Meath died in 1823; and Mrs. O'Beirne and her daughters went to reside in England.
* ↑ Anna Edgeworth, Maria's whole sister, had married Dr. Beddoes in 1794.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 47

To MRS. RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, August 16, 1824.
We have heard from Sophy Fox, who tells us that they have been delighted with their journey to Aberystwith, especially the devil's bridge. Can you tell me why the devil has so many bridges, sublime and beautiful, in every country of the habitable world? Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées to his Satanic majesty would be a place of great business, profit and glory, and would require a man of first-rate abilities. Lucy has painted a beautiful portrait of her bullfinch, picking at a bunch of white currants—the currants would, I am sure, be picked by any live bird.
Tell me how you like Haji Baba.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 3/Treacle Dipping

Part III: Sports and Games; Treacle Dipping.
TREACLE-DIPPING.
The late Mr Gregson, in his "Gimcrackiana," describes amongst the sports of the visitors at Southport, treacle-dipping, sack-running, and steering soap-tailed pigs to their styes. In a note to his verses on Southport, he ​observes that some of these pastimes are not to be found in Strutt, such as the elegant amusement termed "treacle-dipping," which he believes found its way to Southport from some place in the neighbourhood of Bolton. For those to whom it may not be familiar, he adds a short description:—"A large dish is placed on an exalted station, and into it is poured a quantity of treacle, till about three or four inches in depth; a few shillings or sixpences are then thrown in. Needy adventurers then essay to dive into this silver mine, and bring up the metal with their teeth, upon which their faces are wiped with feathers—thus forming altogether a delicious spectacle!" Dipping for apples, or money, in mugs full of water is not uncommon throughout Lancashire, and sometimes forms the subject of heavy wagers. The apples chosen for the sport are tolerably large, and the performers have to dip for them into the water with their hands tied behind their backs. He who catches most apples in his mouth within a given time, wins the wager. In the case of money, it must be brought up in the mouth from the bottom of the mug.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 3/Tip, Blackthorn, Fives

Part III: Sports and Games; Tip, Blackthorn, Fives.
TIP.
"Tip," or "tipcat," is still played at Burnley; but the game is locally known as "playing at t' bad." "Bad" is a North-country word descriptive of the short thick piece of wood driven by the players. He who can drive the bad the greatest distance in so many strokes wins the game.
BLACKTHORN.
Any number of boys and girls can play at "blackthorn." Two or three, or it may be only one, stand at a line or mark, placed at some distance from another line, along which all the rest of the players stand in a row. The following dialogue then takes place:—
"Blackthorn, blackthorn, blue milk and barleycorn; How many geese have you to-day?" Ans.—"More than you can catch and carry away."
They players then run towards each other's marks, and if any one be caught before he gets home to the opposite mark, he has to carry the one who catches him to the mark, where he takes his place as an additional catcher. In this way the game goes on till all are caught.
FIVES.
This game is frequently played by boys at both public ​and private schools. The pupils at the Burnley Grammar-School do not confine themselves to five players on one side. That party which succeeds in keeping up the ball for the longest space of time wins the game. The factory operatives are also very fond of the game, the cotton-mills affording sufficient blank wall space for the purpose.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Introduction

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Introduction.
PART IV.
PUNISHMENTS.
PUNISHMENTS—LEGAL AND POPULAR.
INTRODUCTION.
Among the old legal punishments, descending, many of them, from Saxon times, the chief, or at least the most remarkable in Lancashire, were the stocks, the whipping-post, the cucking or ducking stool, the tumbrel, the scold's brank or bridle, the pillory, and the gallows. Of those popular punishments, which were inflicted in the spirit of Lynch-law for offences which the ordinary processes of law and modes of legal punishment would not reach, the most striking were riding the stang and ringing the pan. The following are a few brief notices of these.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Kirkham Ducking Stool

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Kirkham Ducking Stool.
KIRKHAM DUCKING-STOOL.
The ancient borough of Kirkham, in Amounderness, formerly possessed a bridle, or brank, for scolds, as well as a ducking-stool. A pool near the old workhouse long bore the name of the Cuckstool Pit, but it is now filled up.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 3/Spell and Nur

Part III: Sports and Games; Spell and Nur.
SPELL AND NUR.
Spell and nur is played somewhat differently in the neighbourhood of Burnley, from what is said of it by ​Strutt in his "Sports and Pastimes." The game has also been discussed in Notes and Queries. If the ball is struck so as to diverge too much either to the right or to the left of fixed marks, the player loses the number of his wide balls. These limits are agreed upon by the players before the game is commenced.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Beheading a Thief

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Beheading a Thief.
BEHEADING A THIEF.
Dr Whitaker remarks that from an old perambulation record of the township of Wiswall, near Whalley, it appears that one of the meres, or landmarks, was called "Jeppe knave grave," for one Jeppe, says the record, "ki fust decolle come laron" (who was beheaded as a thief). Jeppe (pronounced Yep) is a monosyllabic Saxon name; but this punishment could not have been prior to the Conquest, for the Saxon laws imposed either a money fine or banishment for theft, which they did not punish capitally. It is said that Earl Waltheof was the first person upon whom the ​sentence of decapitation was executed, in the year 1075. The beheading of thieves appears to have been a Norman punishment, and seems to have been specially applied to cases of furtum manifestum, or thieves caught in the act. In such cases the right of beheading the offenders belonged to the Earls of Chester, and was probably imported into Lancashire by the Halton branch of the Lacies, on their succeeding to the fee of Clitheroe.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Cuck Stool or Ducking Stool

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Cuck Stool or Ducking Stool.
THE CUCK-STOOL OR DUCKING-STOOL.
As recently as the beginning of the eighteenth century this machine for the punishment of scolds was in use in the parish and town of Liverpool. It was a chair suspended by a long pole over some pool of water; and the scolding woman being tied fast in the chair, could be ducked more or less deeply in the pond, as those on its bank raised their end of the pole. It is, says Baines, ​impossible now to fix the date when the chair of correction was first introduced into Liverpool, or to say when, by the improvement in female manners, it was no longer found to be necessary; but that it was in request as late as the year 1695 may be inferred from an item in the parochial expenditure of that year, which runs thus:—"Paid Edward Accres for mending the cuck-stool, fifteen shillings." For many ages the ducking-stool stood at the south end of the town of Ormskirk; but from the improvement in female manners, or the refinement in modern taste, it was removed in 1780. According to Blount, this cooling apparatus was in use in the Saxon era, when it was named the scealfing-stole, and described to be a chair in which quarrelsome women were placed, and plunged under water. The poet Gay celebrates this correctional chair, which was evidently in use in his time, in the following terms (Pastorals, iii. v. 105):—
"I'll speed me to the pond where the high stool On the long plank hangs o'er the muddy pool— That stool the dread of every scolding quean."
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Ducking Pits at Burnley

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Ducking Pits at Burnley.
DUCKING-PITS, &c., AT BURNLEY.
This mode of punishing female offenders has long beenndisused in Burnley and the neighbourhood. The places, however, can still be identified. The pit for Burnley was formed on what is now termed Brown Hill. When the present genteel residences were erected there, the pond was filled up. The ducking-pits for the Pendle district were formed by the side of the northern branch of the river Calder, here locally termed "Pendle Water." The ford across the river at that point is well known as the "Duck-Pit Hippings."
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Ducking Stool at Liverpool

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Ducking Stool at Liverpool.
CUCKING OR DUCKING-STOOL, LIVERPOOL.
In the "Moore Rental" (1667-8), its editor, Thomas Heywood, Esq., F.S.A., observes that "the ducking (properly cucking) stool, at this period, with the pillory and stocks, ornamented every English market-town. Misson gives an elaborate account of the machinery for ducking scolding women, the trebuchet and the stool; and the punishment he describes as "pleasant enough." Bakers and brewers "who offended the statute" were subject to immersion, as also cuck-queans, which Lord Coke (3d inst. 219) and Mr William Gifford held to mean scolds, though other etymologists will have the word to signify the female of cuckold; and on reading this last critic's two notes upon the subject (Johnson's Works, ii. 482, iv. 424), we were almost led to believe that a woman was sometimes ducked because her husband was unfaithful. In the last edition of Burns (v. 246), Hawkins is quoted to show that after conviction for scolding, on indictment, the ducking must be inflicted. The last trace of the cucking-stool in Liverpool is the order for its repair, 1695, still remaining on the parish books. In Manchester, Barritt saw one standing in the pit—since the Infirmary Pool—now the Flags—half a century later.
The ducking-stool, according to Mr Richard Brookes' "Liverpool from 1775 to 1800," was in use in 1779, by the authority of the magistrates, in the House of Correction, which formerly stood upon Mount Pleasant, in that town. Its use there is noticed in Howard's "Appendix to the State of Prisons in England and Wales" (p. 258), and it is also alluded to by Mr James Nield, the philanthropist, in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1803.
# Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, &c./Part 4/Ducking Stool in the Fylde

Part IV: Punishments—Legal and Popular; Ducking Stool in the Fylde.
THE DUCKING-STOOL IN THE FYLDE.
Different persons now living, says Rev. W. Thomber in 1837, well remember that formidable machine the cuck-stool, once the dread of scolds, standing in Great Carlton. The stool or chair was placed at the end of a long pole, balanced on a pivot, and suspended over a pond of water, in which the offender was ducked. At Poulton, he adds, a few are still living who remember the remains of the chair fixed over the cuck-stool at the Breck, for the punishment of scolds. Poulton must surely have been infested with these scourges of domestic happiness, for no less than three ponds there all bear the name of cuck-stool. It was in use even to a late period; for the last female doomed to undergo this punishment, escaped by the interference of Madame Hornby, who became surety for her future good behaviour.