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State of New York, in 1804, is from the Political Barometer, printed at Poughkeepsie :

Sarah Bishop is a person of about fifty years of age. About thirty years ago, she was a lady of considerable beauty, with a competent share of mental endowments and education; she was possessed of a handsome fortune, but was of a tender and delicate constitution; she enjoyed but a low degree of health, and could be hardly comfortable without constant recourse to medicine and careful attendance; and was often heard to say, that she dreaded no animal on earth but man. Disgusted with men, and consequently with the world, about twenty-three years ago she withdrew herself from all human society, and in the bloom of life, resorted to the mountains which divide Salem from North Salem, near New York, where she spent her days in a cave, or rather cleft of the rock.

Yesterday I went in the company of two captain Smiths of this town (New York) to the mountain, to visit the hermitage. As you pass the southern and elevated ridge of the mountain, and begin to descend the southern steep, you meet with a perpendicular descent of a rock, in the front of which is this cave. At the foot of this rock is a gentle descent of rich and fertile ground, extending about ten rods, when it instantly forms a frightful precipice, descending half a mile to the pond called Long Pond. In the front of the rock, on the north, where the cave is, and level with the ground, there appears a large frustum of the rock, of a double fathom in size, thrown out by some unknown convulsion of nature, and lying in the front of the cavity from which it was rent, partly enclosing the mouth, and forming a room: the rock is left entire above, and forms the roof of this humble mansion. This cavity is the habitation of the hermitess, in which she has passed the best of her years, excluded from all society; she keeps no domestic animal, not even fowl, cat, or dog. Her little plantation, consisting of half an acre, is cleared of its wood, and reduced to grass, where she has raised a few peach trees, and yearly plants a few hills of beans, cucumbers, and potatoes; the whole is surrounded with a luxuriant grape vine, which overspreads the surrounding wood, and is very productive. On the opposite side of this little tenement, is a fine fountain of excellent water;

at this fountain we found the wonderful woman, whose appearance it is a little difficult to describe: indeed, like nature in its first state, she was without form. Her dress appeared little else than one confused and shapeless mass of rags, patched together without any order, which obscured all human shape, excepting her head, which was clothed with a luxuriancy of lank gray hair depending on every side, as time had formed it, without any covering or ornament. When she discovered our approach, she exhibited the appearance of a wild and timid animal; she started and hastened to her cave, which she entered, and barricaded the entrance with old shells, pulled from the decayed trees. We approached this humble habitation, and after some conversation with its inmate, obtained liberty to remove the palisadoes and look in; for we were not able to enter, the room being only sufficient to accommodate one person. We saw no utensil either for labor or cookery, save an old pewter basin and a gourd shell; no bed but the solid rock, unless it was a few old rags, scattered here and there; no bed clothes of any kind, nor the least appearance of food or fire. She had, indeed, a place in one corner of the cell, where a fire had at some time been kindled, but it did not appear that there had been one for some months. To confirm this a gentleman says he passed her cell five or six days after the great fall of snow in the beginning of March, that she had no fire then, and had not been out of her cave since the snow had fallen. How she subsists during the severe season, is yet a mystery; she says she eats but little flesh of any kind; in the summer she lives on berries, nuts, and roots. We conversed with her some time, found her to be of a sound mind, a religious turn of thought, and entirely happy in her situation; of this she has given repeated proofs by refusing to quit this dreary abode. She keeps a bible with her, and says she takes much satisfaction, and spends much time in reading it.

TRIAL BY BATTLE IN THE EARLY AGES.

GUNHILDA, sister to Hardicanute, king of England, was celebrated for beauty and sanctity of manners; she had been courted in her father's life time by the Emperor Henry III. The lustre of this match gilded all the woes which others easily foresaw must arise in matrimony with a person of this prince's disposition. The humbler crowds of admirers, because subjects, though they were of the first rank, were disdained; and the friends of Gunhilda thought she could not be miserable if she was great. The match, therefore, was concluded between her and the Emperor; while Hardicanute, conceiving he could not have a fairer opportunity of displaying his magnificence, ransacked all nature and art to celebrate the nuptials. This was done with such exquisite luxury, with such memorable profusion, that it got even into the songs of the bards of those days; and was transmitted, by the rude minstrels of the times, in lays which survived to the age of Westminster the historian. At last, the effusion of pomp and luxury being over, the fair bride was sent to her consort. But Henry took in such draughts of love as intoxicated his brain; while jealousy, prompted by conscious demerits, whispered him, that so many charms were not made for him alone. Suspicion was strengthened by the adulation of those who found it more easy to sooth, than to combat, the prepossessions of princes; and, at last, imagination forming circumstances, Gunhilda was accused of adultery. Such accusations in those days were too arbitrary and too delicate to be handled in the common way of evidence and defence; to be suspected was to be guilty; and nothing could wipe off that guilt, but the precarious success of single combat between two champions, one for the accuser, and one for the accused. The fair Gunhilda had, in all her numerous train, only one Englishman; his name, from his diminutive size, was Mimecan; he had been bred about her own person, and was an ocular witness to her purity of conversation.

The day of combat being come, a gigantic champion for the accusation stepped into the lists, and swaggering about

like another Goliah, threw out his defiances against the power of living beauty. The wretched Gunhilda in vain cast round her fair eyes, and unable to read, in the countenance of any person present, one sentiment of manly compassion for her fate, was just fixing them upon the prospect of death and infamy, when the generous Englishman stepped forth, as the champion of her honor. He was her own page; his years too tender to make it suspicious that he had any motive for danger, besides the vindication of injured innocence; and his person too diminutive for Gunhilda ever to entertain a thought of him for a champion. However, supplying weakness with courage, and aiding courage by cool dexterity, the beardless champion, with sword in hand, advanced against his enormous antagonist. The security of the latter proved his destruction; for, endeavoring, rather to tread out his adversary's life, than to fight with him, Mimecan was tall enough to reach the giant's hams, with his sword, and to cut them so, that his bulk came thundering to the ground; the gallant boy gave him his death wound; then dividing his head from his body he laid it at the feet of his lovely mistress.

While Gunhilda, with a soul truly royal, looked upon the event of this combat as her deliverance, her narrowhearted lord considered it as her vindication: with open arins he invited her to her former place in his heart; but she, at once abhorring the fury of his jealousy, and disdaining the easiness of his reconciliation, sought peace where it can best be found, in retirement from worldly grandeur, with virtuous affections. In vain were menaces and blandishments applied to shake this purpose of her soul; she obtained a divorce from his bed and person, and died an illustrious example of innocence triumphing over malice, and wisdom adorning innocence, by a seasonable retreat from farther temptations, and therefore from farther dangers. My readers will not imagine that I have embellished the above narrative, when I inform them, that, with the variation of but a very few phrases, I have kept strictly to the facts, as I find them unanimously recorded in all our oldest, gravest, and most creditable historians.- Guthrie's History of England.

RUSSIAN AMUSEMENTS.

THE Swing is the amusement of all ranks and conditions, and Easter witnesses it in its greatest perfection, swings being then set up in all the public squares. Another kind of holiday diversion is the ice-hills. A scaffold about thirty feet high, is erected on the Neva: on one side of it are steps, or a ladder, to ascend to the platform on the top; on the opposite side, a steep inclined plane, about four yards broad and thirty long, descends to the river; this is supported by strong poles, and its sides are protected by a parapet of planks. Large square blocks of ice, about four inches thick, are laid upon the inclined plane, close to one another, and smoothed with the axe; they are then consolidated by water thrown over them. The snow is cleared away at the bottom of the plane for the length of two hundred yards and the breadth of four; and the sides of this course, as well as those of the scaffoldings, are ornamented and protected with firs and pines. Each person, provided with a little low sledge, something like a butcher's tray, mounts the ladder, and glides with inconceivable rapidity down the inclined plane, poising his sledge as he goes down. The momentum thus acquired, carries him to a second hill, at the foot of which he alights, mounts again, and in the same manner glides down the other inclined plane of ice. The boys also amuse themselves in skating down these hills. Summer-hills, constructed in imitation of the icehills, also afford a favorite amusement to the inhabitants of St. Petersburgh, especially during their carnivals. These consist of a scaffold between thirty and forty feet high, with an inclined plane in front, flowers and boughs of trees sheltering the person in the descent; a small, narrow cart on four wheels is used instead of the sledge: below, there is a level stage of some hundred feet in length, along which he is carried by the impulse of his descent. This amusement has been introduced at Paris, under the name of the Russian mountains.

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