Read Ebook: The Mirror of Literature Amusement and Instruction. Volume 12 No. 337 October 25 1828 by Various

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION

In presenting your readers with a representation of the Wring Cheese, I offer a few prefatory remarks connected with the early importance of the county in which it stands, venerable in its age, amid the storms of elements, and the changes of religions. Its pristine glory has sunk on the horizon of Time; but its legend, like a soft twilight of its former day, still hallows it in the memories of the surrounding peasantry.

J. SILVESTER.

CURIOUS ANCIENT LEGEND.

In ancienne tyme, and in a goodly towne, neare to Canterbury, sojourned a ladie faire. She one nighte, in the absence of her lorde, leaned her lovely arme upon a gentleman's, and walked in the fyldes. When journeying far, she became afraide, and begged to returne. The gentleman, with kyndest sayings and greate courtesey, retraced their steps; when in this saide momente, this straynge occurrence came to pass--ye raine descended, though the moone and millions of starres were shyneing bryght. In journeying home, another straynge occurrence came to pass; her coral lippes the gentleman's did meete in sweetest kyss. Thys was not straynge at all; but that the moone, that still shone bryghte, did in the momente hide herself behynde a cloude: this was straynge, most passing straynge indeede. The ladie faire, who prayed to the blessed Virgin, did to her confesseur this confession mayk, and her confesseur with charitye impromptu wrote:--

"Whence came the rayne, when first with guileless heart Further to walk she's lothe, and yet more lothe to part? It was not rayne, but angels' pearly teares, In pity dropt to soothe Eliza's feares. Whence came the cloude that veil'd the orb of nighte, When first her lippes she yielded to delyght? It was not cloude, but whylst the world was hush, Mercy put forthe her hande to hide Eliza's blush."

W.G.C.

PICTON'S MONUMENT, CARMARTHEN.

This interesting national tribute stands at the west end of the town of Carmarthen, rising ground, and is erected in memory of the gallant Sir Thomas Picton, who terminated his career in the ever-to-be-remembered battle of Waterloo. The structure stands about 30 feet high, and is, particularly the shaft and architrave, similar to Trajan's pillar in Rome; and being built of a very durable material, will no doubt stand as many ages as that noble, though now mouldering relic. The pillar stands on a square pedestal, with a small door on the east side, which fronts the town, where the monument is ascended by a flight of steps. Over the door, in large characters, is the hero's name, PICTON; and above this, in basso relievo, is represented part of the field of battle, with the hero falling from his horse, from the mortal wound which he received. Over this, in large letters, is inscribed WATERLOO. On the west end is represented the siege of Badajos, Picton scaling the walls with a few men, and attacked by the besieged. Above this is the word BADAJOS. On the south side of the pedestal is the following inscription:--

Sir THOMAS PICTON,

Knight Grand Cross of the Military Order of the Bath, Of the Portuguese Order of the Tower and Sword, and of other foreign Orders; Lieutenant-General in the British Army, and Member of Parliament for the Borough of Pembroke, Born at Poyston, in Pembrokeshire, in August, 1758; Died at Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815, Gloriously fighting for his country and the liberties of Europe. Having honourably fulfilled, on behalf of the public, various duties in various climates: And having achieved the highest military renown in the Spanish Peninsula, He thrice received the unanimous thanks of Parliament, And a Monument erected by the British nation in St. Paul's Cathedral Commemorates his death and services, His grateful countrymen, to perpetuate past and incite to future exertions, Have raised this column, under the auspices of his Majesty, King George the Fourth, To the memory of a hero and a Welshman. The plan and design of this Monument was given by our countryman, John Nash, Esq. F.R.S. Architect to the King. The ornaments were executed by E.H. Bailey, Esq. R.A. And the whole was erected by Mr. Daniel Mainwaring, of the town of Carmarthen, In the year 1826 and 1827.

On the north side is the translation of the above in Welsh; and on the top of the pedestal, on each side of the square, are trophies. The top of the column is also square, and on each side are imitative cannons. The statue of the hero surmounts the whole. He is wrapped in a cloak, and is supported by a baluster, round which are emblems of spears.

W.H.

THE SKETCH BOOK

AN HOUR TOO MANY.

Hail, land of the kangaroo!--paradise of the bushranger!--purgatory of England!--happy scene, where the sheep-stealer is metamorphosed into the shepherd; the highwayman is the guardian of the road; the dandy is delicate no more, and earns his daily bread; and the Court of Chancery is unknown--hail to thee, soil of larceny and love! of pickpockets and principle! of every fraud under heaven, and primeval virtue! daughter of jails, and mother of empires!--hail to thee, New South Wales! In all my years--and I am now no boy--and in all my travels--and I am now at the antipodes--I have never heard any maxim so often as, that time is short; yet no maxim that ever dropt from human lips is further from the truth. I appeal to the experience of mankind--to the three hundred heirs of the British peerage, whom their gouty fathers keep out of their honours and estates--to the six hundred and sixty-eight candidates for seats in parliament, which they must wait for till the present sitters die; or turn rebellious to their noble patrons, or their borough patrons, or their Jew patrons; or plunge into joint-stock ruin, and expatriate themselves, for the astonishment of all other countries, and the benefit of their own;--to the six thousand five hundred heroes of the half-pay, longing for tardy war;--to the hundred thousand promissory excisemen lying on the soul of the chancellor of the ex-chequer, and pining for the mortality of every gauger from the Lizard to the Orkneys;--and, to club the whole discomfort into one, to the entire race of the fine and superfine, who breathe the vital air, from five thousand a year to twenty times the rental, the unhappy population of the realms of indolence included in Bond Street, St. James's, and the squares.

For my own part, in all my experience of European deficiencies, I have never found any deficiency of time. Money went like the wind; champagne grew scanty; the trust of tailors ran down to the dregs; the smiles of my fair flirts grew rare as diamonds--every thing became as dry, dull, and stagnant as the Serpentine in summer; but time never failed me. I had a perpetual abundance of a commodity which the philosophers told me was beyond price. I had not merely enough for myself, but enough to give to others; until I discovered the fact, that it was as little a favourite with others as myself, and that, whatever the plausible might say, there was nothing on earth for which they would not be more obliged to me than a donation of my superfluous time. But now let me give a sketch of my story. A single fact is worth a hundred reflections. The first consciousness that I remember, was that of having a superabundance of time; and my first ingenuity was demanded for getting rid of the encumbrance. I had always an hour that perplexed my skill to know what to do with this treasure. A schoolboy turn for long excursions in any direction but that of my pedagogue, indicative of a future general officer; a naturalist-taste for bird-nesting, which, in maturer years, would have made me one of the wonders of the Linnaean Society; a passion for investigating the inside of every thing, from a Catherine-wheel to a China-closet, which would yet have entitled me to the honours of an F.R.S.; and an original vigour in the plunder of orchards, which undoubtedly might have laid the foundation of a first lord of the treasury; were nature's helps to get rid of this oppressive bounty. But though I fought the enemy with perpetual vigour and perpetual variety, he was not to be put to flight by a stripling; and I went to the university as far from being a conqueror as ever. At Oxford I found the superabundance of this great gift acknowledged with an openness worthy of English candour, and combated with the dexterity of an experience five hundred years old. Port-drinking, flirtation, lounging, the invention of new ties to cravats, and new tricks on proctors; billiards, boxing, and barmaids; seventeen ways of mulling sherry, and as many dozen ways of raising "the supplies," were adopted with an adroitness that must have baffled all but the invincible. Yet Time was master at last; and he always indulged me with a liberality that would have driven a less resolute spirit to the bottom of the Isis.

"Ye gods, annihilate both space and time, And make two lovers happy,"

MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS.

SELLING MEAT AMONG THE ANCIENT ROMANS, &c.

Two English poets have been rather severe towards the London butchers, the former says,--

The latter,--

P.T.W.

STUMBLING AT THE THRESHOLD.

The phrase, "to stumble at the threshold," originated in the circumstance, that the old thresholds, or steps under the door, were like the hearths, raised a little, so that a person might stumble over them, unless proper care were taken. A very whimsical reason for this practice is given in a curious little tract by Sir Balthazar Gerbier, entitled, "Council and Advice to all Builders," 1663, in these words:--"A good surveyor shuns also the ordering of doores with stumbling thresholds, though our forefathers affected them, perchance to perpetuate the antient custome of bridegroomes, when formerly at their return from church they did use to lift up their bride, and to knock her head against that of the doore, for a remembrance that she was not to pass the threshold of her house without leave."

W.G.C.

CHINESE PHYSICIANS.

The charitable dispensation of medicines by the Chinese, is well deserving notice. They have a stone which is ten cubits high, erected in the public squares of their cities; whereon is engraved the name of all sorts of medicines, with the price of each, and when the poor stand in need of relief from physic, they go to the treasury to receive the price each medicine is rated at.

The physicians of China have only to feel the arm of their patient in three places, and to observe the rate of the pulse, to form an opinion on the cause, nature, danger, and duration of the malady. Without the patient speaking at all, they can tell infallibly what part is attacked with disease, whether the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the intestines, the stomach, the flesh, the bones, and so on. As they are both physicians and apothecaries, and prepare their own medicines, they are paid only when they effect a cure. If the same rule were introduced with us, I fear we should have fewer physicians.

THE TOPOGRAPHER

BOX HILL.

John Evelyn, who wrote about the middle of the seventeenth century, says, "Box-trees rise naturally at Kent in Bexley; and in Surrey, giving name to Box Hill. He that in winter should behold some of our highest hills in Surrey, clad with whole woods of them, might easily fancy himself transported into some new or enchanted country."

In Aubrey's posthumous work on Surrey, published in 1718, the northern part of the hill is described as thickly covered with yew-trees, and the southern part with "thick boscages of box-trees," which "yielded a convenient privacy for lovers, who frequently meet here, so that it is an English Daphne." He also tells us that the gentry often resorted here from Ebbesham , then in high fashion. Philip Luckombe, in his "England's Gazetteer," says, on Box Hill "there is a large warren, but no houses; only arbours cut out in the box-wood on the top of the hill, where are sold refreshments of all sorts, for the ladies and gentlemen who come hither to divert themselves in its labyrinths; for which reason a certain author has thought fit to call it the Palace of Venus, and the Temple of Nature; there being an enchanting prospect from it of a fine country, which is scarce to be equalled for affording so surprising and magnificent an idea both of earth and sky."

PHILO.

Here is a stump of wood which denotes the grave of Major Labelliere, a deranged officer of the Marines, who, by his own request was buried on this spot, with his head downwards; it being a constant assertion with him, "that the world was turned topsy-turvy, and, therefore, at the end he should be right."

NOTES OF A READER

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER AND OTHER POEMS.

From the other poems we have detached the following beautiful specimens:--

CONSUMPTION.

With step as noiseless as the summer air, Who comes in beautiful decay?--her eyes Dissolving with a feverish glow of light, Her nostrils delicately closed, and on Her cheek a rosy tint, as if the tip Of Beauty's finger faintly press'd it there,-- Alas! Consumption is her name. Thou loved and loving one! From the dark languish of thy liquid eye, So exquisitely rounded, darts a ray Of truth, prophetic of thine early doom; And on thy placid cheek there is a print Of death,--the beauty of consumption there. Few note that fatal bloom; for bless'd by all, Thou movest through thy noiseless sphere, the life, Of one,--the darling of a thousand hearts. Yet in the chamber, o'er some graceful task When delicately bending, oft unseen, Thy mother marks then with that musing glance That looks through cunning time, and sees thee stretch'd A shade of being, shrouded for the tomb. The Day is come, led gently on by Death; With pillow'd head all gracefully reclined, And grape-like curls in languid clusters wreath'd, Within a cottage room she sits to die; Where from the window, in a western view, Majestic ocean rolls.--A summer eve Shines o'er the earth, and all the glowing air Stirs faintly, like a pulse; against the shore The waves unrol them with luxurious joy, While o'er the midway deep she looks, where like A sea god glares the everlasting Sun O'er troops of billows marching in his beam!-- From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth, her eyes Are lifted, bright with wonder and with awe, Till through each vein reanimation rolls! 'Tis past; and now her filmy glance is fix'd Upon the heavens, as though her spirit gazed On that immortal world, to which 'tis bound: The sun hath sunk.--her soul hath fled without A pang, and left her lovely in her death, And beautiful as an embodied dream.

MORTALITY.

All that we love and feel on Nature's face, Bear dim relations to our common doom. The clouds that blush, and die a beamy death, Or weep themselves away in rain,--the streams That flow along in dying music,--leaves That fade, and drop into the frosty arms Of Winter, there to mingle with dead flowers,-- Are all prophetic of our own decay.

BEAUTY

How oft, as unregarded on a throng Of lovely creatures, in whose liquid eyes The heart-warm feelings bathe, I've look'd With all a Poet's passion, and have wish'd That years might never pluck their graceful smiles-- How often Death, as with a viewless wand, Has touch'd the scene, and witch'd it to a tomb! Where Beauty dwindled to a ghastly wreck, And spirits of the Future seem'd to cry,-- Thus will it be when Time has wreak'd revenge.

MELANCHOLY.

When mantled with the melancholy glow Of eve, she wander'd oft: and when the wind, Like a stray infant down autumnal dales Roam'd wailingly, she loved to mourn and muse: To commune with the lonely orphan flowers, And through sweet Nature's ruin trace her own.

VISION OF HEAVEN.

An empyrean infinitely vast And irridescent, roof'd with rainbows, whose Transparent gleams like water-shadows shone, Before me lay: Beneath this dazzling vault-- I felt, but cannot paint the splendour there! Glory, beyond the wonder of the heart To dream, around interminably blazed. A spread of fields more beautiful than skies Flush'd with the flowery radiance of the west; Valleys in greenest glory, deck'd with trees That trembled music to the ambrosial airs That chanted round them,--vein'd with glossy streams, That gush'd, like feelings from a raptured soul: Such was the scenery;--with garden walks, Delight of angels and the blest, where flowers Perennial bloom, and leaping fountains breathe, Like melted gems, a gleaming mist around! Here fruits for ever ripe, on radiant boughs, Droop temptingly; here all that eye and heart Enrapts, in pure perfection is enjoy'd; And here o'er flowing paths with agate paved, Immortal Shapes meander and commune. While with permissive gaze I glanced the scene, A whelming tide of rich-toned music roll'd, Waking delicious echoes, as it wound From Melody's divinest fount! All heaven Glow'd bright, as, like a viewless river, swell'd The deepening music!--Silence came again! And where I gazed, a shrine of cloudy fire Flamed redly awful; round it Thunder walk'd, And from it Lightning look'd out most sublime! Here throned in unimaginable bliss And glory, sits The One Eternal Power, Creator, Lord, and Life of All: Again, Stillness ethereal reign'd, and forth appear'd Elysian creatures robed in fleecy light, Together flocking from celestial haunts, And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host Of heaven assembled to adore with harp And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God; They knelt,--a universal choir, and glow'd More beauteous while they breathed the chant divine, And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd, And thrill'd the concave with harmonious joy.

VISION OF HELL.

Apart, upon a throne of living fire The Fiend was seated; in his eye there shone The look that dared Omnipotence; the light Of sateless vengeance, and sublime despair.-- He sat amid a burning world, and saw Tormented myriads, whose blaspheming shrieks Were mingled with the howl of hidden floods, And Acherontine groans; of all the host, The only dauntless he. As o'er the wild He glanced, the pride of agony endured Awoke, and writhed through all his giant frame, That redden'd, and dilated, like a sun! Till moved by some remember'd bliss, or joy Of paradisal hours, or to supply The cravings of infernal wrath,--he bade The roar of Hell be hush'd,--and silence was! He called the cursed,--and they flash'd from cave And wild--from dungeon and from den they came, And stood an unimaginable mass Of spirits, agonized with burning pangs: In silence stood they, while the Demon gazed On all, and communed with departed Time, From whence his vengeance such a harvest reap'd.

BEAUTIFUL INFLUENCES.

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