The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9 | Page 6

centuries, or more, scarcely a family in Yorkshire enjoyed a higher position. Its chiefs earned distinction in peace and war; one died in France, Master of the Ordnance to King Henry V.; another, a soldier, too, fell with Salisbury, at the siege of Orleans; and a third filled the Speaker's chair of the House of Commons. What an awful contrast to this fair picture does the sequel offer. Thomas Gargrave, the Speaker's eldest son, was hung at York, for murder; and his half-brother, Sir Richard, endured a fate only less miserable. The splendid estate he inherited he wasted by the most wanton extravagance, and at length reduced himself to abject want. 'His excesses,' says Mr. Hunter, in his 'History of Doncaster,' 'are still, at the expiration of two centuries, the subject of village tradition; and his attachment to gaming is commemorated in an old painting, long preserved in the neighboring mansion of Badsworth, in which he is represented as playing at the old game of put, the right hand against the left, for the stake of a cup of ale.
"The close of Sir Richard's story is as lamentable as its course. An utter bankrupt in means and reputation, he is stated to have been reduced to travel with the pack-horses to London, and was at last found dead in an old hostelry! He had married Catherine, sister of Lord Danvers, and by her left three daughters. Of the descendants of his brothers few particulars can be ascertained. Not many years since, a Mr. Gargrave, believed to be one of them, filled the mean employment of parish-clerk of Kippax.
"A similar melancholy narrative applies to another great Yorkshire house. Sir William Reresby, Bart., son and heir of the celebrated author, succeeded, at the death of his father, in 1689, to the beautiful estate of Thrybergh, in Yorkshire, where his ancestors had been seated uninterruptedly from the time of the Conquest; and he lived to see himself denuded of every acre of his broad lands. Le Neve states, in his MSS. preserved in the Heralds' College, that he became a tapster in the King's Bench Prison, and was tried and imprisoned for cheating in 1711. He was alive in 1727, when Wootton's account of the Baronets was published. In that work he is said to be reduced to a low condition. At length he died in great obscurity, a melancholy instance how low pursuits and base pleasures may sully the noblest name, and waste an estate gathered with labor and preserved by the care of a race of distinguished progenitors. Gaming was amongst Sir William's follies--particularly that lowest specimen of the folly, the fights of game-cocks. The tradition at Thrybergh is (for his name is not quite forgotten) that the fine estate of Dennaby was staked and lost on a single main. Sir William Reresby was not the only baronet who disgraced his order at that period. In 1722, Sir Charles Burton was tried at the Old Bailey for stealing a seal; pleaded poverty, but was found guilty, and sentenced to transportation; which sentence was afterward commuted for a milder punishment."
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MADRID AND THE SPANISH SENATE.
Gazpacho; or, Summer Months in Spain, is the title of a new book by W. George Clark, published in London. Gazpacho, it seems, is the name of a dish peculiar to Spain, but of universal use there, a sort of cold soup, made up of familiars and handy things, as bread, pot-herbs, oil, and water. "My Gazpacho," says the author, "has been prepared after a similar receipt. I know not how it will please the more refined and fastidious palates to which it will be submitted; indeed, amid the multitude of dainties wherewith the table is loaded, it may well remain untasted." It at least deserves a better fate than that. The volume relates, in a pleasant, intelligent, and gossiping way, a summer's ramble through Spain, describing with considerable force the peculiarities of its people, and the romantic features by which it is marked. The clever painter could not have better materials. The party-colored costumes of the peasants, like dahlias at a Chiswick show; the somber garments of the priests, the fine old churches, the queer rambling houses, looking centuries old, the dull, gloomy streets of Madrid, the life and activity of the market-place. Such are the objects upon which the eye rests, and of which Mr. Clark was too observant to neglect any. The following passages will give an idea of the materials of which the Gazpacho is made up:--
MADRID.
"I left, I suppose, scarcely a street in Madrid which I did not traverse, or a church which I did not enter. The result is hardly worth the trouble. One street and church are exactly like another street and church. In the latter, one always