in the utmost fright, when lo! their ragged attire flew off, and revealed the two Lotharios who had dined with them the previous night. The champaigne bottles being emptied, we drove home to a substantial dinner. Our evening amusements commenced with music, and finished with merry games. Miss Barbara touched a sonata of Beethoven's with deep expression, in which that great composer deplores the loss of one most dear to him.* It threw us into a pensive mood, when Carlton, to give a turn to such sensations, called upon me to sing the lines of his favourite poet, Sir Walter Raleigh, which harmonized with the incident of the day

SONG. (PAGE 258.)

"O shepherd, what is love, I pray?

It is a yea—it is a nay ;

A pretty kind of sportive play;

It is a thing will soon away.

Take vantage, nymphs, while yet you may,
And this is love! as I hear say."

* Dedicated to Haydn, in F minor.

I

CHAPTER XXXIV.

OLD DALBY HALL.

1793. The honourable Mrs. Bowater, daughter of the Earl of Feversham, was on a visit to the Elector Palatine, when Pichegru invaded the Low Countries. The progress of the French armies was so rapid, that she was obliged to leave Bonn with the utmost speed. the Elector sent his chaplain, the Abbè Dobler, to see her safe to Hamburgh. While there, he was declared an emigrant, and his property seized. Luckily, he had placed some money in our government funds, and his only alternative was to proceed to England. Mrs. Bowater and her sister, the Countess of Radnor, had been kept out of their revenues by a disputed title for many years; but eventually, they were awarded by a suit in Chancery, an estate of the value of three hundred thousand pounds. In 1793, the lady came to Leicester in search of the estate of Old Dalby, in this county, where she intended to reside; but the mansion was so much out of repair that it would require a year or more to make it fit for her reception, During this interval she took lodgings in Leicester. Mrs. Bowater, having lived much in Germany, had acquired a fine taste in music; and as the Abbè was a very fine performer on the violin, music was essential to fill up this irksome period. My company was sought, with that of two of my friends, to make up, occasion

THE ABBE DOBLER.

66

143

ally an instrumental quartet. The Abbè was a refined and accomplished gentleman, who wrote and spoke our language correctly; and, as a specimen of his style and the nature of our parties, I copy one of his notes, received on a disagreeable, rainy morning: As the day is good for nothing but a dinner and music, Mrs. Bowater hopes for your company at four, and a quartet in the evening." These visits were regularly continued till the lady removed to Old Dalby Hall. Our music consisted of the quartettos of Haydn, Bocherini, and Wranisky. The Abbè, who never travelled without his violin, had luckily put into his fiddlecase a trio composed by Beethoven, just before he set off, which thus, in the year 1793, found its way to Leicester. This composition, so different from anything I had ever heard, awakened in me a new sense, a new delight, in the science of sounds. Beethoven was the son of a tenor singer in the cathedral of Bonn, and, as a lad, was patronized by my friend, and afterwards placed by the Elector under Haydn, at Vienna. This composition opened to me a new view of the art. It was a language that so powerfully excited my imagination, that all other music appeared tame and spiritless. When I went to town, I enquired for the works of this author, but could learn nothing more than that he was considered a madman, and that his music was like himself. However, I had a friend at Hamburgh, through whom, although the war was raging at the time, I occasionally obtained some of

these inestimable treasures. In the summer of 1795, Mrs. Bowater removed to Dalby Hall. The mansion stands on the brow of the Woulds, overlooking the vale of Belvoir, as far as Lincoln, where the Minster proudly stands upon the distant horizon. The Hall is on the site of the ancient preceptory of the Knights Templar, some part of which may be discovered in the present structure. These cloisters, no longer inhabited by lazy monks, were now the seat of refinement and munificent hospitality. In the twelfth century, nearly the whole of this district belonged to the Knights Hospitallers, a religious order of friars, who came from Italy. Roger de Mowbray, of Melton, was at the head of this fraternity, and gave most of the adjacent lands to this religious body.

The Hospitallers, not contented with the unbounded sway they held over the people, contrived to instigate the younger part of our nobility to take up arms in a crusade to the Holy Land, to rescue the sepulchre from the Saracens. As an encouragement, the Pope promised to deliver from the pains of purgatory those who should fall in the conflict; but to Richard Cœur de Lion he promised an instant entry into Paradise. Thousands who called themselves. soldiers of Jesus Christ rushed to the royal standard to be sworn for the enterprise, Their dress and appearance was terrific. They wore shirts and stockings. of twisted mail, over which was cast a white cloak that reached to the ground. On the left shoulder, as