practice to steel, as they termed it, horse-shoes with pieces of cast iron at their toes and heels, with bits of broken cast-iron plates, generally the backs of stoves or grates broken to pieces, and afterwards to harden them like steel; and they were found to wear as well, whilst the cost was much less, than if steel had been actually employed. The working of this cast-iron and wrought-iron in Italy is always done in charcoal fires, which it is essential to notice. We are in possession of some curious particulars, kindly furnished by Mr. Reveley on the Italian processes for reducing the Elba iron ores, either into hardwhite pig-iron, grey pig-iron, or bar-iron, and which we shall shortly lay before our readers. Improvement in Drawing Iron and Steel Wire.-Accident is frequently the source of improvement in the arts, and this valuable improvement owes its origin to this cause. The acid liquor used in pickling iron-wire during the drawing of it, requiring to be warmed, ingots of brass, lying at hand, were accordingly heated red-hot and quenched in the liquor; the consequence of this was, that a portion of the copper in the brass became dissolved in the liquor, and was precipitated upon the surface of the iron-wire pickled in it. It was found that that the wire thus coated passed through the holes in the plates with remarkable facility, it requiring to be annealed much less frequently than before, owing, no doubt, to the copper preventing the action of the plate upon it, so as to gall or fret it, and, in fact, lubricating it as it were. We need hardly add, that this circumstance happening in the manufactory of a scientific individual, he has since constantly availed himself of the use of a weak solution of copper in iron and steel wire-drawing. The slight coat of copper is entirely got rid of in the last annealing process. LIST OF NEW BRITISH PUBLICATIONS. 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ON Christmas-day, in the year 1536, at the abbey church of St. Mary Ottery in Devonshire, just as the host was about to be elevated, a shrill voice, which nevertheless appeared to be half-suffocated with emotion, cried out from the gallery where the monks were sitting, "I am a woman, and the abbot's a villain.” A great stir ensued in the gallery. The abbot suddenly presented himself in the front, holding a pale and frightened-looking young man, one of the monks. He was himself much agitated, and addressed the congregation in the following words:-"The prayers of all good Christian people are desired for an unhappy soul, grievously tormented with fits of lunacy." The young man was then carried out, and the service proceeded. This cry, and the extraordinary circumstance that followed it, excited great talk in the neighbourhood. Neither the abbot nor his monks enjoyed the best reputation. His example had undone the severity of his doctrine: for he would fain have had a monopoly of his license, but was forced to compromise the matter, and wink at a participation. His propensity to the fair sex in particular, was notorious. The moment therefore the voice was heard in the church, it was believed to be that of a woman; though with what face, or under what pretext, she could have been introduced among the reverend fathers on such an occasion, could not be conjectured. On the other hand, the person who had been brought forward as needing the prayers of the laity (which made some of the neighbours very merry at the abbey's expense) was known to every body in the village for a monk so afflicted. He had never cried out before; but that did not prove the impossibility of his having now done it and though the voice sounded like a woman's, there was no knowing how agony might not have wrought it to that unnatural pitch. Opinion was much divided on the subject. People did not know how to reconcile their own jarring speculations. Not so Lord Fitzwarren, a powerful nobleman, who had a seat in the neighbourhood, and who was at variance with the abbot. A long knowledge of the latter's character, and a dispute of equally long standing respecting some meadows that lay between their domains, inclined him to beVOL. VI. No. 36.-Museum. . 3 P lieve the worst. He set his agents to work, and soon got information enough to excite attention to the mystery at court; thus gratifying himself in every way, for he at once indulged his resentment, pleased the king and his minister, who wished for this kind of information beyond all others, and indulged in certain visions, not only respecting meadows, but their abutments, which turned out to be well founded. All that his lordship had yet discovered, was, that there was actually a female in the monastery. The monks denied that she had been brought there by the abbot's connivance, or by any body's; and said, that a heavy punishment would fall on her head. They protested, that this female had nothing to do with the cry in the church; that the imagination of the invalid had been disturbed by a knowledge of her being among them; and that a due account of her, and her intrusion into the abbey, would be given to the parishioners. Meanwhile, she was under close confinement in the house of a man who worked for the monastery; which was true. Something was added about officious and meddling persons, jealous of the popularity of the church; and an artful appeal was made from the pulpit-to the interests of the parishioners; who, in fact, were not sorry to let the abbot continue in a reasonable course of scandal, provided he distributed his usual quantity of alms, gave as much good work to the labourers, and continued to let certain tenements at their singularly low rent: offices of charity, in which he had shown great symptoms of becoming zealous. The monks were right in their allegation respecting the mode in which the female had come among them. It was her own doing. She had offered herself, in boy's clothes, as an inmate of the monastery on any terms, and with a view to enter on a noviciate: and nobody, till of late, had known that she was any other than she pretended. It was observed, at the same time, that the monks who gave this information, and who would sometimes offer it before it was asked, were always the same men, consisting of but two or three out of the whole number. The porter was one; but the rest were generally loitering about the gate. None of the others were to be seen. A young monk in particular, very popular on account of the sweetness and pensiveness of his manners, was never to be met with. The following history ultimately transpired. We shall relate it in its order up to the period before us, and then go on with what took place in consequence of the cry in the church. Francis Periam was younger son of a good family at Kirton in Devonshire. He was designed for the church; but the intention was dropped, on account of a fortune left him. However, the church was unwilling to let him go. He was kept much at home, under the eye of his mother, and of the priest who educated him; but his nature being lively and sanguine, the first thing he did on entering the world was to fall in love. The lady was the first young Tady he had conversed with; and the first conversation made him her prisoner. The mother was very angry at first, and gave the object of his passion a variety of ill names; but finding that she was of good birth and had a considerable fortune, her opinion changed. It was agreed, that nothing better could have happened for the family of the Periams, provided a due regard for the church. could be maintained among the progeny to come. But a new ob stacle occurred. The lady would not have the lover. She was a haughty beauty, proud of a fortune twice as large as his, and resolved to marry nothing under a title. Francis was struck to the heart. His first taste of the world had been very sweet: he was pleased with every body and every thing: the lady, who with all her pride was a coquet, had encouraged his advances; he was good and unsuspecting, and could not suddenly awake to the knowledge that there were dispositions less kind and honourable than his own, in persons of his own age, without a surprise the most afflicting. The priest, who had acknowledged the expediency of the match, because he could not help it, now took advantage of his sorrow to press on him the nothingness of the world. Francis admitted what he said, but with the humility and patience, and not without the hopes of a lover, held it his duty nevertheless to see if he could not turn the heart of a beauty, who thought too much of the pride of the eyes. He persevered in his suit for two years. At length, meeting with no encouragement, nor even with incivility, which might have rendered him more submissive, or awakened his resentment, he withdrew in hopeless patience from the world, and buried himself in the monastery of St. Mary Ottery. "First loves," quoth the Journal, at this part of the narrative, "are things notably jeered at and flouted; but in good truth they do colour and concern the lives of honest gentlemen, more than such pleasant companions wot of: and methinks, the true method of dealing with well-disposed youth, be neither to make too light of such matters, nor withal to carry an over-sour and formal countenance of restraint, but to deal frankly and honestly with honest minds, and show them rather what sort of women would be a blessing and comfort to their days. Here was a young gentleman, as the history will show, who, had he been plainly guided as to what natures it were to his profit to love, and put handsomely in the way of them, instead of being admonished by a silly woman and a knavish Roman priest not to love at all, would have escaped years of doleful suffering, besides great peril to his soul's health among those pestilent friars." The writer adds a curious remark. "Note," saith he, "that young men which have grown up with sisters, are less exposed to this peril of falling in love unwisely, than such as be unused to that kindred; for that young girls do use to show their humours and girlish weakness more freely in their own homes, and before they arrive at women's estate, than when they dress up their behaviour, like their bodies, for them that know them not: the which experience rendereth the young man their brother marvellously cautelous and acute, when he cometh to bethink himself of a wife: for in other women he seeth other men's sisters; whereas the poor youth who wanteth that help to feminology, beholdeth none but Queen Helens and the ladies of Amadis de Gaul; and so taking any painted face for an aungell, findeth, peradventure to his despair, that he hath bound himself to a veray divell.” It was about three years after the entrance of Francis into the monastery, that a stripling of a tender age, and apparently brought up with delicacy, presented himself at the abbey-gate, and begged to be admitted as an inmate under any circumstances. The vagueness and earnestness of his request made the abbot suspect him to be a runaway youth, who was to be sent back to his parents; but although the little stranger, with great firmness and gentleness, declined giving an account of himself, yet upon his repeated protestations that he was no such person, joined to a look of singular innocence and distress, and an asseveration that he should die in the neighbourhood if they rejected him, the abbot was induced to give him admission for a time, hoping that his family would not be long before they discovered him. The reverend father was willing to amuse himself meantime with endeavouring to discover his secret, and looked for honour and advantage in the end from those who came to claim him. The youth was clad as a lay-brother, and given the office of censer-boy in the chapel, where his beauty rendered him an object of admiration. "Little William," said the abbot in the boy's hearing, to a favourite monk, "wanteth nothing save the being a woman, to be an angel. Verily, as I turned upon him the other day, whereas he knelt with the censer, I started for my sins, his visage and pretty seeming looked so heavenly amidst the sweet odour. Hey, brother Thomas? What thinkest thou Aaron would have said to such a lip at his beard, with a woman to it?" Brother Thomas, who had not drunk so much as my lord abbot, bowed with an air of piety, and answered, that the holiest of men would have been pleased to see the encouraging manner in which it pleased his lordship to speak of youth and simplicity. Little William was rather surprised at the manner in which youth and simplicity were encouraged; but he looked down, and threw into his countenance as vague an expression as terror would allow. More than one circumstance had terrified him, since he came to the abbey. The inmates, at all hours, did not appear to consist entirely of men. Young as he was, he observed more than was suspected. The abbot took him to be eleven or twelve at most; but the truth was, he was a good twenty. Our reverend father, in order to worm his secret out of the boy (for gossipping always went a great way in religious houses) consigned him to the care of a hypocrite of a fellow, the above-mentioned brother Thomas, who to unsuspecting eyes could put on all the appearances of sanctity. But the reserve of innocence is often a match for the greatest cunning. William's companion instructed him in the rules of a convent, in the duties of a religious life, and in the veneration and confidence which those who aspire to lead it |