THE INGOLDSBY LEGENDS.*

[RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM, better known by his

nom de plume of “Thomas Ingoldsby," was born at Canterbury, Dec. 6, 1788. At seven years of age he lost his father, who left him a small estate, part of which was the manor of Tappington, so frequently mentioned in the Legends. At nine he was sent to St. Paul's school, but his studies were interrupted by an accident which shattered his arm and partially crippled it for life. In 1807 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, | intending at first to adopt the profession of the law. Circumstances, however, induced him to change his

mind and to enter the church. The choice seems sur

prising, for he had from childhood displayed that propensity to fun in the form of parody and punning for

which afterwards he became so noted. In 1813 he was ordained and took a country curacy; he married in the following year, and in 1821 removed to London on obtaining the appointment of minor canon of St. Paul's

Cathedral. Three years later he became one of the priests in ordinary of his Majesty's chapel royal. In

1826 he first contributed to Blackwood's Magazine; and in 1837 he began to furnish to Bentley's Miscellany

I can't make it out at all. Why, Barney, where are they?-and where the d-l are you?"

No answer was returned to this appeal; and the lieutenant, who was, in the main, a reasonable person—at least as reasonable a person as any young gentleman of twentytwo in "the service" can fairly be expected to be-cooled when he reflected that his servant could scarcely reply extempore to a summons which it was impossible he should hear.

An application to the bell was the considerate result; and the footsteps of as tight a lad as ever put pipe-clay to belt sounded along the gallery.

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"Čome in!" said his master. An ineffectual attempt upon the door reminded Mr. Seaforth that he had locked himself in. "By heaven! this is the oddest thing of all," said he, as he turned the key and admitted Mr. Maguire into his dormitory. Barney, where are my pantaloons ?" "Is it the breeches ?" asked the valet, the series of grotesque tales known as THE INGOLDS- casting an inquiring eye round the apartBY LEGENDS. These became very popular, were pub-ment:-"is it the breeches, sir?” lished in a collected form, and have since passed through numerous editions. These lively and amusing papers embody a store of solid antiquarian learning, the fruit of patient enthusiastic research by the light of the midnight lamp, in out-of-the-way old books, which few readers who laugh over them detect. Theodore Hook was one of his most intimate friends. Mr. Barham was a contributor to the Edinburgh Review and the Literary Gazette; published a novel in three volumes, entitled My Cousin Nicholas; and wrote nearly a third

of the articles in Gorton's Biographical Dictionary. His life was not without such changes and sorrows as make

"Yes; what have you done with them?" "Sure then your honor had them on when you went to bed, and it's hereabout they'll be, I'll be bail;" and Barney lifted a fashionable tunic from a cane-backed armchair, proceeding in his examination. But the search was vain; there was the tunic aforesaid; there was a smart-looking kerarticle of all in a gentleman's wardrobe but the most important seymere waistcoat; was still wanting.

"Where can they be?" asked the master,

men grave. He had nine children, and six of them with a strong accent on the auxiliary verb.

died in his lifetime. But he retained vigor and freshness of heart and mind to the last, and his latest verses show no signs of decay. He died in London after a long and painful illness, June 17, 1845.]

THE SPECTRE OF TAPPINGTON "It is very odd, though; what can have become of them?" said Charles Seaforth, as he peeped under the valance of an oldfashioned bedstead, in an old-fashioned apartment of a still more old-fashioned manor-house; "tis confoundedly odd, and

1The Ingoldsby Legends are here given completewith the exception of about half a dozen, written about

1843-1853, satirizing the Roman Catholics, as they have now no point, being merely temporary squibs, we omit them. We also omit " The Jackdaw of Rhiems," and "The Lady Rohesia," because they appear in our publication "The Library of Choice Literature."

"Sorrow a know I knows," said the man. "It must have been the devil, then, after all, who has been here and carried them off!" cried Seaforth, staring full into Barney's face.

Mr. Maguire was not devoid of the superstition of his countrymen, still he looked as if he did not quite subscribe to the sequitur.

His master read incredulity in his countenance. "Why, I tell you, Barney, I put them there, on that arm-chair, when I got into bed; and, by heaven! I distinctly saw the ghost of the old fellow they told me of come in at midnight, put on my pantaloons, and walk away with them."

"May be so," was the cautious reply. "I thought, of course, it was a dream; but then-where the d-l are the breeches ?" The question was more easily asked than

answered. Barney renewed his search, while the lieutenant folded his arms, and, leaning against the toilet, sank into a rev

erie.

"After all, it must be some trick of my laughter-loving cousins," said Seaforth.

"Ah! then, the ladies!" chimed in Mr. Maguire, though the observation was not addressed to him; "and will it be Miss Caroline or Miss Fanny that's stole your honor's things?"

cable bloodstain on the oaken stair yet bids defiance to the united energies of soap and sand. But it is with one particular apartment that a deed of more especial atrocity is said to be connected. A stranger guest-so runs the legend-arrived unexpectedly at the mansion of the "Bad Sir Giles." They met in apparent friendship; but the ill-concealed scowl on their master's brow told the domestics that the visit was not a welcome one; the banquet, however, was not spared; "I hardly know what to think of it," the wine cup circulated freely-too freely, pursued the bereaved lieutenant, still speak- perhaps, for sounds of discord at length ing in soliloquy, with his eye resting dubi- reached the ears of even the excluded servously on the chamber-door. "I locked my-ing-men, as they were doing their best to self in, that's certain; and--but there must imitate their betters in the lower hall. be some other entrance to the room-pooh! I remember the private staircase; how could I be such a fool?" and he crossed the chamber to where a low oaken doorcase was dimly visible in a distant corner. He paused before it. Nothing now interfered to screen it from observation; but it bore tokens of having been at some earlier period concealed by tapestry, remains of which yet clothed the walls on either side the portal. "This way they must have come," said Seaforth; "I wish with all my heart I had caught them!"

"Och! the kittens!" sighed Mr. Barney Maguire.

But the mystery was yet as far from being solved as before. True, there was the "other door;" but then that, too, on examination. was even more firmly secured than the one which opened on the gallery-two heavy bolts on the inside effectually prevented any coup de main on the lieutenant's bivouac from that quarter. He was more puzzled than ever; nor did the minutest inspection of the walls and floor throw any light upon the subject: one thing only was clear the breeches were gone! "It is very singular,"

said the lieutenant.

Tappington (generally called Tapton) Everard is an antiquated but commodious manor house in the eastern division of the county of Kent. A former proprietor had been high-sheriff in the days of Elizabeth, and many a dark and dismal tradition was yet extant of the licentiousness of his life and the enormity of his offences. The Glen, which the keeper's daughter was seen to enter, but never known to quit, still frowns darkly as of yore; while an ineradi

Alarmed, some of them ventured to approach the parlor; one, an old and favored retainer of the house, went so far as to break in upon his master's privacy. Sir Giles, already high in oath, fiercely enjoined his absence, and he retired; not, however, before he had distinctly heard from the stranger's lips a menace that "there was that within his pocket which could disprove the knight's right to issue that or any other command within the walls of Tapton."

The intrusion, though momentary, seemed to have produced a beneficial effect; the voices of the disputants fell, and the conversation was carried on thenceforth in a more subdued tone, till, as evening closed in, the domestics, when summoned to attend with lights, found not only cordiality restored, but that a still deeper carouse was meditated. Fresh stoups, and from the choicest bins, were produced; nor was it till at a late, or rather early, hour that the revellers sought their chambers.

The one allotted to the stranger occupied the first floor of the eastern angle of the building, and had once been the favorite apartment of Sir Giles himself. Scandal ascribed this preference to the facility which the private staircase, communicating with the grounds, had afforded him, in the old knight's time, of following his wicked courses unchecked by parental observation; a consideration which ceased to be of weight when the death of his father left him uncontrolled master of his estate and actions. From that period Sir Giles had established himself in what were called the "state apartments,” and the “oaken chamber” was rarely tenanted, save on occasions of extraordinary festivity, or when the yule log drew an unusually large accession of guests around the Christmas hearth.

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On this eventful night it was prepared for in deciphering them was never known; he the unknown visitor, who sought his couch certainly never alluded to their contents; heated and inflamed from his midnight or- and little would have been thought of the gies, and in the morning was found in his matter but for the inconvenient memory of bed a swollen and blackened corpse. No an old woman, who declared she heard her marks of violence appeared upon the body; grandfather say that when the stranger but the livid hue of the lips, and certain guest" was poisoned, though all the rest of dark-colored spots visible on the skin, his clothes were there, his breeches. the suparoused suspicions which those who enter-posed repository of the supposed documents, tained them were too timid to express. Apoplexy, induced by the excesses of the preceding night, Sir Giles's confidential leech pronounced to be the cause of his sudden dissolution. The body was buried in peace; and though some shook their heads as they witnessed the haste with which the funeral rites were hurried on, none ventured to murmur. Other events arose to distract the attention of the retainers; men's minds became occupied by the stirring politics of the day; while the near approach of that formidable armada, so vainly arrogating to itself a title which the very elements joined with human valor to disprove, soon interfered to weaken, if not obliterate, all remembrance of the nameless stranger who had died within the walls of Tapton Everard.

Years rolled on: the "Bad Sir Giles" had himself long since gone to his account, the last, as it was believed, of his immediate line; though a few of the older tenants were sometimes heard to speak of an elder brother, who had disappeared in early life, and never inherited the estate. Rumors, too, of his having left a son in foreign lands were at one time rife; but they died away, nothing occurring to support them: the property passed unchallenged to a collateral branch of the family, and the secret, if secret there were, was buried in Denton churchyard, in the lonely grave of the mysterious stranger. One circumstance alone occurred, after a long intervening period, to revive the memory of these transactions. Some workmen employed in grubbing an old plantation, for the purpose of raising on its site a modern shrubbery, dug up, in the execution of their task, the mildewed remnants of what seemed to have been once a garment. On more minute inspection, enough remained of silken slashes and a coarse embroidery to identify the relics as having once formed part of a pair of trunk hose; while a few papers which fell from them, altogether illegible from damp and age, were by the unlearned rustics conveyed to the then owner of the estate.

Whether the squire was more successful

could never be found. The master of Tapton Everard smiled when he heard Dame Jones's hint of deeds which might impeach the validity of his own title in favor of some unknown descendant of some unknown heir; and the story was rarely alluded to, save by one or two miracle-mongers, who had heard that others had seen the ghost of old Sir Giles, in his nightcap, issue from the postern, enter the adjoining copse, and wring his shadowy hands in agony, as he seemed to search vainly for something hidden among the evergreens. The stranger's death-room had, of course, been occasionally haunted from the time of his decease; but the periods of visitation had latterly become very rare-even Mrs. Botherby, the housekeeper, being forced to admit that during her long sojourn at the manor she had never "met with anything worse than herself;" though, as the old lady afterwards added upon more mature reflection, "I must say I think I saw the devil once."

Such was the legend attached to Tapton Everard, and such the story which the lively Caroline Ingoldsby detailed to her equally mercurial cousin, Charles Seaforth, lieutenant in the Hon. East India Company's second regiment of Bombay Fencibles, as arm-in-arm they promenaded a gallery decked with some dozen grim-looking ances tral portraits, and, among others, with that of the redoubted Sir Giles himself. The gallant commander had that very morning paid his first visit to the house of his maternal uncle, after an absence of several years passed with his regiment on the arid plains of Hindostan, whence he was now returned on a three years' furlough. He had gone out a boy-he returned a man; but the impression made upon his youthful fancy by his favorite cousin remained unimpaired, and to Tapton he directed his steps, even before he sought the home of his widowed mother,—comforting himself in this breach of filial decorum by the reflection that, as the manor was so little out of his way, it would be unkind to pass, as it were, the door of his relatives, without just looking in for a few hours.

But he found his uncle as hospitable, and his cousin more charming than ever; and the looks of one, and the requests of the other, soon precluded the possibility of refusing to lengthen the "few hours" into a few days, though the house was at the moment full of visitors.

"Why, sir, when I married Mrs. Peters, I was-let me see-I was—”

"Do pray hold your tongue, P., and eat your breakfast!" interrupted his better half, who had a mortal horror of chronological references; "it's very rude to tease people with your family affairs."

The lieutenant had by this time taken his seat in silence-a good-humored nod, and a glance, half-smiling, half-inquisitive, being the extent of his salutation. Smitten as he was, and in the immediate presence of her who had made so large a hole in his heart, his manner was evidently distrait, which the fair Caroline in her secret soul attributed to his being solely occupied by her agrémens: how would she have bridled had she known that they only shared his meditations with a pair of breeches!

The Peterses were there from Ramsgate; and Mr. and Mrs., and the two Miss Simpkinsons, from Bath, had come to pass a month with the family; and Tom Ingoldsby had brought down his college friend the Hon. Augustus Sucklethumbkin, with his groom and pointers, to take a fortnight's shooting. And then there was Mrs. Ogleton, the rich young widow, with her large black eyes, who, people did say, was setting her cap at the young squire, though Mrs. Botherby did not believe it; and, above all, there was Mademoiselle Pauline, Charles drank his coffee and spiked some her femme de chambre, who "mon-Dieu'd" half-dozen eggs, darting occasionally a peneverything and everybody, and cried "Quel etrating glance at the ladies, in hope of horreur ! at Mrs. Botherby's cap. In detecting the supposed waggery by the evishort, to use the last-named and much-re- dence of some furtive smile or conscious look. spected lady's own expression, the house was But in vain: not a dimple moved indica"choke-full" to the very attics,-all save tive of roguery, nor did the slightest elethe "oaken chamber," which, as the lieu-vation of eyebrow rise confirmative of his tenant expressed a most magnanimous dis- suspicions. Hints and insinuations passed regard of ghosts, was forthwith appropriated unheeded-more particular inquiries were to his particular accommodation. Mr. Mag-out of the question :-the subject was unuire meanwhile was fain to share the apart- approachable. ment of Oliver Dobbs, the squire's own man: a jocular proposal of joint occupancy having been first indignantly rejected by "Mademoiselle," though preferred with the "laste taste in life" of Mr. Barney's most insinuating brogue.

"Come, Charles, the urn is absolutely getting cold; your breakfast will be quite spoiled: what can have made you so idle?" Such was the morning salutation of Mrs. Ingoldsby to the militaire as he entered the breakfast-room half an hour after the latest of the party.

"A pretty gentleman, truly, to make an appointment with!" chimed in Miss Fran

ces.

"What has become of our ramble to the rocks before breakfast ?"

In the meantime, " patent cords" were just the thing for a morning's ride; and, breakfast ended, away cantered the party over the downs, till, every faculty absorbed by the beauties, animate and inanimate, which surrounded him, Lieutenant Seaforth of the Bombay Fencibles bestowed no more thought upon his breeches than if he had been born on the top of Ben Lomond.

Another night had passed away; the sun rose brilliantly, forming with its level beams a splendid rainbow in the far-off west, whither the heavy cloud, which for the last two hours had been pouring its waters on the earth, was now flying before him.

"Ah! then, and it's little good it'll be the claning of ye," apostrophized Mr. Barney "Oh! the young men never think of keep- Maguire, as he deposited in front of his ing a promise now," said Mrs. Peters, a lit-master's toilet a pair of "bran new" jockey tle ferret-faced woman with underdone eyes. "When I was a young man," said Mr. Peters, "I remember I always made a point of-"

"Pray, how long ago was that?" asked Mr. Simpkinson from Bath.

boots, one of Hoby's primest fits, which the lieutenant had purchased in his way through town. On that very morning had they come for the first time under the valet's depurating hand, so little soiled, indeed, from the turfy ride of the preceding day, that a less

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"Lassy me!" said Miss Julia Simpkinson, "won't you be very wet?"

"You had better take Tom's cab," quoth the squire.

scrupulous domestic might, perhaps, have "A glorious day for the ruins!" said considered the application of "Warren's young Ingoldsby. But, Charles, what Matchless," or oxalic acid, altogether super- the deuce are you about? you don't mean fluous. Not so Barney: with the nicest to ride through our lanes in such toggery care he had removed the slightest impurity as that?" from each polished surface, and there they stood, rejoicing in their sable radiance. No wonder a pang shot across Mr. Maguire's breast as he thought on the work now cut out for them, so different from the light labors of the day before; no wonder he murmured with a sigh, as the scarce-dried windowpanes disclosed a road now inch deep in mud, "Ah! then, it's little good the claning of ye!"—for well had he learned in the hall below that eight miles off a stiff clay soil lay between the manor and Bolsover Abbey, whose picturesque ruins,

"Like ancient Rome, majestic in decay," the party had determined to explore. The master had already commenced dressing, and the man was fitting straps upon a light pair of crane-necked spurs, when his hand was arrested by the old question-" Barney, where are the breeches ?"

They were nowhere to be found!

Mr. Seaforth descended that morning, whip in hand, and equipped in a handsome green riding-frock, but no "breeches and boots to match" were there loose jean trousers, surmounting a pair of diminutive Wellingtons, embraced, somewhat incongruously, his nether man, vice the "patent cords," returned, like yesterday's pantaloons, absent without leave. The "" "topboots" had a holiday.

"A fine morning after the rain," said Mr. Simpkinson from Bath.

"Just the thing for the 'ops," said Mr. Peters. "I remember when I was a boy

But this proposition was at once overruled; Mrs. Ogleton had already nailed the cab, a vehicle of all others the best adapted for a snug flirtation.

"Or drive Miss Julia in the phaeton ?” No; that was the post of Mr. Peters, who, indifferent as an equestrian, had acquired some fame as a whip while travelling through the midland counties for the firm of Bagshaw, Snivelby, and Ghrimes.

66 Thank you, I shall ride with my cousins," said Charles, with as much nonchalance as he could assume-and he did so; Mr. Ingoldsby, Mrs. Peters, Mr. Simpkinson from Bath, and his eldest daughter with her album, following in the family coach. The gentleman-commoner "voted the affair d-d slow," and declined the party altogether in favor of the gamekeeper and a cigar. "There was no fun' in looking at old houses!" Mrs. Simpkinson preferred a short séjour in the still-room with Mrs. Botherby, who had promised to initiate her in that grand arcanum, the transmutation of gooseberry jam into Guava jelly.

Did you ever see an old abbey before, Mr. Peters?"

"Yes, miss, a French one; we have got one at Ramsgate; he teaches the Miss Joneses to parley-voo, and is turned of sixty."

Miss Simpkinson closed her album with an air of ineffable disdain.

"Do hold your tongue, P.," said Mrs. Peters-advice which that exemplary matron was in the constant habit of adminis- Mr. Simpkinson from Bath was a professed tering to "her P.," as she called him, antiquary, and one of the first water; he whenever he prepared to vent his reminis- was master of Gwillim's Heraldry and cences. Her precise reason for this it Mills's History of the Crusades; knew would be difficult to determine, unless, every plate in the Monasticon, had written indeed, the story be true which a little bird an essay on the origin and dignity of the had whispered into Mrs. Botherby's ear-office of overseer, and settled the date on a that Mr. Peters, though now a wealthy man, Queen Anne's farthing. An influential had received a liberal education at a charity school, and was apt to recur to the days of his muffin-cap and leathers. As usual, he took his wife's hint in good part, and "paused in his reply."

member of the Antiquarian Society, to whose "Beauties of Bagnigge Wells" he had been a liberal subscriber, procured him a seat at the board of that learned body, since which happy epoch Sylvanus Urban