This is the case with the letters of the Countess of Derby. In her there was not the slightest trace of _précieuse_ taint; her mode of expression is as clear as it is elegant and eloquent. To be sure, after twenty years’ residence in England, we find her spelling Lancashire _Lenguicher_, for which she deserves no quarter; but this appalling exception only proves the rule of her graceful diction. That Charlotte de la Trémoille however, while possessing such command of her pen, was preeminently a woman of ready wit and of prompt action, the great crisis in her stormy life amply testified. Lord Derby had scarcely set foot in the Isle of Man when a message reached the Countess at Lathom House from Lord Holland, the Parliamentary governor of Manchester, requiring her to accede to the conditions which he offered her, or to surrender Lathom House. Her reply was given without loss of time. It did not become her, she said, to give up her house, nor to purchase repose at the price of honour. That was the answer which Lord Holland’s deputy took back. The Countess, nevertheless, was conscious of her weakness. The supply of provisions and of ammunition within the walls of the house was utterly inadequate for withstanding a siege. More than all, it was not sufficiently garrisoned. Lady Derby therefore, offered no defiance; she sought only leave to defend herself and her household, by retaining a company of her own men of the Royalist party for protection against the molestation of the Parliamentary soldiery; but leaving the estate and the surrounding park at their mercy. Consent to this request was grudgingly accorded. “Thus she remained through eight months, a prisoner in her own domain,” says her biographer, “rarely leaving the house for fear of meeting some affront, deprived of her revenues, blamed alike by friends and foes; by these, for not having defended possessions and liberty; by those, for not yielding up the house as she had the surrounding estate; but she waited with patience for the moment when she might openly resist, working unceasingly and secretly at collecting provisions and ammunition; one by one getting in the men and barrels of powder under cover of the night, repressing the zeal of her garrison, which burned to revenge the insults she daily received, and in all ways silently preparing for the siege which she anticipated. A noble patience which, in such a high heart as Lady Derby’s, called for more courage than even that which she exercised in the midst of the fray itself; the courage of a woman and of a general, which knew how to endure all, while waiting to see how to dare all.” So the still waters ran deep, so under the white ash the fiery coal smouldered and glowed, and despite the keen vigilance of the Parliamentary Colonel Rigby, who was in command of the troops stationed in the neighbourhood, the Countess succeeded in mustering a garrison of three hundred men within those old towered and moated walls, and