SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS
Reading edition
CLASSICAL CORRECTIONS.
In a neat little cottage, some five miles from town, Lived a pretty young maiden, by name Daphne Brown, Like a butterfly, pretty and airy: In a village hard by lived a medical prig, With a rubicund nose, and a full-bottomed wig, Apollo, the apothecary. He, being crop sick of his bachelor life, Resolved, in his old days, to look for a wife— (Nota bene—Thank Heaven, I'm not married): He envied his neighbours their curly-poled brats, (All swarming, as if in a village of Pats,) And sighed that so long he had tarried. Having heard of fair Daphne, the village coquette, As women to splendour were never blind yet, He resolved with his grandeur to strike her; So he bought a new buggy, where, girt in a wreath, Were his arms, pills, and pestle—this motto beneath— "Ego opifer per orbem dicor." To the village he drove, sought young Daphne's old sire, Counted gold by rouleaus, and bank notes by the quire, And promised the old buck a share in't, If his daughter he'd give—for the amorous fool Thought of young ladies' hearts and affections the rule Apparently rests with a parent. Alas! his old mouth may long water in vain, Who tries by this method a mistress to gain— A miss is the sure termination: For a maiden's delight is to plague the old boy, And to think sixty-five not the period for joy; Alas! all the sex are vexation. Daphne Brown had two eyes with the tenderest glances! Her brain had been tickled by reading romances, And those compounds of nonsense called novels, Where Augustus and Ellen, or fair Isabel, With Romeo, in sweet little cottages dwell: Sed meo periclo, read hovels. She had toiled through Clarissa; Camilla could quote; Knew the raptures of Werter and Charlotte by rote; Thought Smith and Sir Walter ecstatic; And as for the novels of Miss Lefanu, She dog's-eared them till the whole twenty looked blue; And studied 'The Monk' in the attic. When her sire introduced our Apollo, he found The maiden in torrents of sympathy drowned— "Floods of tears" is too trite and too common: Her eyes were quite swelled—her lips pouting and pale; For she just had been reading that heartbreaking tale, "Annabelle, or the Sufferings of Woman." Apollo, I'll swear, had more courage than I, To accost a young maid with a drop in her eye; I'd as soon catch a snake or a viper: She, while wiping her tears, gives Apollo some wipes; And when a young lady has set up her pipes, Her lover will soon pay the piper. Papa locked her up—but the very next night, With a cornet of horse, the young lady took flight; To Apollo she left this apology— "That, were she to spend with an old man her life, She would gain, by the penance she'd bear as a wife, A place in the next martyrology." Apollo gave chase, but was destined to fail; The female had safely been lodged in the mail, Now flying full speed to the borders; So the doctor, compelled his sad fate to endure, Came back to his shop, commissioned to cure All disorders but Cupid's disorders.
Monthly Magazine.
BAMBOROUGH CASTLE.
The origin of this princely establishment may be new to our readers:—One of the owners of the castle, John Forster, member for Northumberland, having joined in the rebellion, and being general of the English part of the rebel army, of course his estates, then valued at 1,314 l. per annum, were forfeited; Crewe, bishop of Durham, purchased them from the government commissioners, and settled the whole, by his will, on charitable uses. Under a clause which left the residue of the rents to such charitable uses as his trustees might appoint, the "princely establishment of Bamborough" has arisen—where
"Charity hath fixed her chosen seat; And Pity, at the dark and stormy hour Of midnight, when the moon is hid on high, Keeps her love watch upon the topmost tower, And turns her ear to each expiring cry, Blest if her aid some fainting wretch might save, And snatch him, cold and speechless, from the grave."
BOWLES.
The charitable intentions of a testator have never, in any instance, been better fulfilled than this; the residuary rents, owing to the great increase of rental in the Forster estates, became considerably the most important part of the bequest; and the trustees, who are restricted to five in number, all clergymen, and of whom the rector of Lincoln College is always one, being unfettered by any positive regulations, have so discharged their trust as to render Bamborough Castle the most extensively useful, as well as the most munificent, of all our eleemosynary institutions. There are two free-schools there, both on the Madras system, one for boys, the other for girls; and thirty of the poorest girls are clothed, lodged, and boarded, till, at the age of sixteen, they are put out to service, with a good stock of clothing, and a present of 2l. 12s. 6d. each; and at the end of the first year, if the girl has behaved well, another guinea is given her, with a Bible, a Prayer-book, the Whole Duty of Man, and Secker's Lectures on the Catechism. There is a library in the castle, to which Dr. Sharp, one of the trustees, bequeathed, in 1792, the whole of his own collection, valued at more than 800l.; the books are lent gratuitously to any householder, of good report, residing within twenty miles of Bamborough, and to any clergyman, Roman Catholic priest, or dissenting minister within the said distance. There is an infirmary also in the castle, of which the average annual number of in-patients is about thirty-five—of out-patients above one thousand. There is an ample granary, from whence, in time of scarcity, the poor are supplied on low terms. Twice a week the poor are supplied with meal, at reduced prices, and with groceries at prime cost; and the average number of persons who partake this benefit is about one thousand three hundred in ordinary times, in years of scarcity very many more. To sailors on that perilous coast Bamborough Castle is what the Convent of St. Bernard is to travellers in the Alps. Thirty beds are kept for shipwrecked sailors; a patrol for above eight miles (being the length of the manor) is kept along the coast every stormy night; signals are made; a life-boat is in readiness at Holy Island, and apparatus of every kind is ready for assisting seamen in distress;—wrecked goods are secured and stored, the survivors are relieved, the bodies that are cast on shore are decently interred.
Quarterly Review.