In melancholy connection with the old bridge of Chepstow, is a family calamity which drew from the late poet Campbell an epitaph[5] worthy of his pen. The victims by the sudden catastrophe were a lady and her two daughters, personal friends of the poet, and for whom he entertained sentiments of great esteem and regard. The lady and her daughters were on a visit at Chepstow; and, after hearing sermon, went on the river in a boat. The tide was running strong at the time; and in his attempt to clear the centre arch of the bridge, the boatman missed his aim--the frail bark struck against the wooden pier, and upset; and the lady and her two daughters were carried down by the stream and lost. Their lifeless remains were afterwards recovered, and buried in the churchyard of Monckton, where a tomb, erected to their memory, bears the following inscription:-- “In deep submission to the will above, Yet with no common cause for human tears, This stone to the lost Partner of his love, And for his children lost, a mourner rears. One fatal moment, one o’erwhelming doom, Tore threefold from his heart the ties of earth-- His Mary, Margaret, in their early bloom, And Her who gave them life, and taught them worth. “Farewell, ye broken pillars of my fate! My life’s companion, and my two first-born! Yet while this silent stone I consecrate To conjugal, paternal love forlorn-- Oh, may each passer-by the lesson learn Which can alone the bleeding heart sustain-- Where friendship weeps at virtue’s funeral urn-- That, to the pure in heart, _to die is gain_!” It is somewhat remarkable, that the text of Scripture which they had just heard expounded in the parish church the same morning, was--“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Of the principal victim in this calamity, Campbell thus speaks in a private letter to a friend:--“We looked to Mrs. Shute as truly elevated in the scale of beings for the perfect charity of her heart. The universal feeling of lamentation for her, accords with the benign and simple-minded beauty of her character.” As the limits and object of this work do not permit us to enlarge our remarks on the particular history of Chepstow, we now proceed to that of the castle, whose roofless walls, and moss-clad ramparts, carry us back to the Norman Conquest, and fill an ample page in its subsequent history. The present structure, on a Roman or Saxon foundation, is ascribed to William Fitzosborne, Earl of Hereford,[6] upon whom his kinsman the Conqueror had bestowed vast possessions, in this and the neighbouring counties, which could only be secured by sword and stronghold. On the forfeiture of his son Roger, it passed to the Clares, another great Norman family.