Is, break her neck--a politician did it."

The reader will find I have borrowed several incidents as well as names
from Ashmole, and the more early authorities; but my first acquaintance
with the history was through the more pleasing medium of verse. There
is a period in youth when the mere power of numbers has a more strong
effect on ear and imagination than in more advanced life. At this season
of immature taste, the author was greatly delighted with the poems of
Mickle and Langhorne, poets who, though by no means deficient in the
higher branches of their art, were eminent for their powers of verbal
melody above most who have practised this department of poetry. One of
those pieces of Mickle, which the author was particularly pleased with,
is a ballad, or rather a species of elegy, on the subject of Cumnor
Hall, which, with others by the same author, was to be found in Evans's
Ancient Ballads (vol. iv., page 130), to which work Mickle made liberal
contributions. The first stanza especially had a peculiar species of
enchantment for the youthful ear of the author, the force of which is
not even now entirely spent; some others are sufficiently prosaic.

CUMNOR HALL.

The dews of summer night did fall;
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby,

Now nought was heard beneath the skies,
The sounds of busy life were still,
Save an unhappy lady's sighs,
That issued from that lonely pile.