The park of Chartley is a wild and romantic spot, in its primitive state, untouched by the hand of the agriculturist, and was formerly attached to the royal forest of Needwood, and the honour of Tutbury, of the whole of which the ancient family of De Ferrars were once the puissant lords. Their immense possessions, now forming part of the duchy of Lancaster, were forfeited by the attainder of Earl Ferrars, after his defeat at Burton Bridge, where he led the rebellious barons against Henry III. The Chartley estate, being settled in dower, was alone reserved, and handed down to its present possessor. In the park is preserved, in its primitive purity, the indigenous Staffordshire cow, small in stature, of a sand-white colour, with black ears, muzzle, and tips at the hoofs. In the year of the battle of Burton Bridge, a black calf was born, and the downfall of the great house of Ferrars happening at the same period, gave rise to the tradition, which to this day has been held in veneration by the common people, that the birth of a party-coloured calf from the wild breed in Chartley Park, is a sure omen of death within the same year to a member of the lord’s family. A calf of this description has been born whenever a death has happened in the family of late years. The decease of the last earl and his countess, of his son Lord Tamworth, of his daughter, Mrs. William Jolliffe, as well as the deaths of the son and heir of the present nobleman and his daughter, Lady Frances Shirley, have each been forewarned by the ominous birth of a spotted calf. In the spring of a late year, an animal perfectly black was calved by one of this weird tribe, in the park of Chartley, and this birth also has been followed by the death of the countess. In the beautiful chapel of Rosslinne, founded by William Saint Clair, prince of Orkney, there is a legend of the spectral light, which illumined its gothic beauty, on the eve of a death among his descendants. And my sweet Castaly will remember how pathetically Harold sings the fate of Rosabelle Saint Clair. In other districts, on the coming of such an event, these lights are seen of various colours, and are termed “Dr’ Eug,”—“the Death of the Druid;” and _they_ also marshal the funeral procession to the very verge of the grave. Dr. Caldicot solemnly writes, that when a Christian is drowned in the Dee, a light appears over the spot, by which the body is easily discovered; and hence the river is called “Holy” Dee.