ON LOCALITIES:
Reading edition
LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS OF LONDON.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
No intellectual enjoyment, in my opinion, can surpass the delight we experience when traversing those spots of the habitable earth where celebrated warriors fought, minstrels sang, philosophers pondered, or where philanthropists have immortalized their names by deeds of charity. To roam through the romantic vales of Italy—surrounded at all turns by the sad memorials of its former magnificence—the mighty ruins of its temples and palaces, and the mutilated remains of its statues and triumphal columns, conveying to the mind mournful images of the fallen fates of those who had for ages been its proud possessors; where the Mantuan bard first caught inspiration from the deathless muse; where Tully charmed the listening throng, whilst defending with mild persuasion the arts and the sciences he loved, and condemning in terrible denunciations the mad ambition that threatened the destruction of his country; to wander among its groves, and say, here Ovid, in lonely exile, soothed his sorrows with the melody of his heaven-inspired strain; here Petrarch wooed his much-loved Laura in sonnets soft as the affection that gave them birth; here Tasso made history and Jerusalem immortal by crowning them with the garlands of his Promethean genius; and here Ariosto, Dante, Metastasio, and a galaxy of poets and philosophers shed the splendour of their gifted imaginations on the expiring greatness of their country.
Where is the portion of the civilized globe that has not some delightful reminiscence connected with it? There is not a country in the world, even the most barbarous, where the inhabitants will not feel pride and pleasure in pointing out to your attention some sacred spot ever dear to their memories: some battle-field or scene of conquest; some warrior's grave; some monarch's sepulchre, or some chieftain or legislator's dwelling. And what shall we say of the classic soil of Greece? where the eye cannot turn, or the foot move to a place which is not eternalized by its associations: where the waters will not remind you of Castalian founts; the flowers of Parnassian wreaths; the eminences of the Phocian hills; and where the air of all breathes inspiration. To a mind prone to contemplation, a walk through Athens must awaken the most exquisite reveries. Although "fallen from its high estate," there is enough in the tottering ruins which yet remain to recall the history of its ancient grandeur: the shattered Acropolis and the Pyraeus tell the tale of other days, in language at once pathetic and intelligible—
"The time has been when they were young and proud, Banners on high and battles pass'd below."
The mind must be distracted with the multiplicity of its recollections; all that is great or good or glorious in our nature, must be identified with some forcible remembrance; and heroes, poets, statesmen, patriots, legislators, philosophers, and the historical events connected with their names, must congregate before us in sublime and touching similitude. "Alas, poor country!"—On those shores the monuments of science and of art, which drew admirers from the remotest corners of the earth, are now demolished by the savage and cowardly slaves of a despot, who is himself a slave; the eloquence which swayed the passions of applauding multitudes is dumb; the pencil of Appelles that breathed over the canvass, and the chisel of Praxiteles that gave life and animation to shapeless blocks, are now no more; and the all-powerful lyre, whose sweeping chords would rouse the soul to rage or melt it into pity, is now, and perhaps FOR EVER, mute and unstrung!
C.E.
"In St. Giles' Church lie Chapman, the earliest and best translator of Homer; and Andrew Marvell, the wit and patriot, whose poverty Charles II. could not bribe.—Who would suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the metropolis? And yet it is undoubtedly so. The Globe Theatre was there, of which Shakspeare himself was a proprietor, and for which he wrote his plays. Globe-lane, in which it stood, is still extant, we believe, under that name. It is probable that he lived near it: it is certain that he must have been much there. It is also certain that on the Borough side of the river, then and still called the Bank-side, in the same lodging, having the same wardrobe, and some say, with other participations more remarkable, lived Beaumont and Fletcher. In the Borough, also, at St. Saviour's, lie Fletcher and Massinger in one grave; in the same church, under a monument and effigy, lies Chaucer's contemporary, Gower; and from an inn in the Borough, the existence of which is still boasted, and the site pointed out by a picture and inscription, Chaucer set out his pilgrims and himself on their famous road to Canterbury.
"To return over the water, who would expect any thing poetical from East Smithfield? Yet there was born the most poetical even of poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of Bowbell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. So was Gray, in Cornhill. So was Milton, in Bread-street, Cheapside. The presence of the same great poet and patriot has given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He lived in St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet-street; in Alders-gate-street, in Jewin-street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew-close; in Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's Inn Fields; in Holborn, near Red-lion-square; in Scotland-yard; in a house looking to St. James' Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on legislation, and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and metaphysician; and he died in Artillery-walk, Bunhill-fields; and was buried in St. Giles', Cripplegate.
"Ben Jonson, who was born 'in Hartshorne-lane, near Charing-cross,' was at one time 'master' of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate-street; and is known to have frequented with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill.
"The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time was the Devil Tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben Jonson lived also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards lived. It was in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St. Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands upon the Lincoln's Inn garden wall, which looks upon Chancery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his illustrious brick and mortar still remaining.
"Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stand in the heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young and learned eyes) lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it was once a monastery of Gray Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Burdet, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the reign of Edward IV., for wishing the horns of a favourite white stag, which the King had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward II.
'She, wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate' GRAY
"Her 'mate's' heart was buried with her, and placed upon her bosom! a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at school; or after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at night time, as we used. Camden, 'the nourrice of antiquitie,' received part of his education in this school; and here also, not to mention a variety of others known in the literary world, were bred two of the most powerful and deep-spirited writers of the present day; whose visits to the cloisters we well remember.
"In a palace on the site of Hatton-garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook House, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brook, the 'friend of Sir Philip Sydney.' In the same street, died, by a voluntary death, of poison, that extraordinary person, Thomas Chatterton—-
'The sleepless boy, who perished in his pride.' WORDSWORTH
"Before we rest our wings, however, we must take another dart over the city, as far as Stratford at Bow, where, with all due tenderness for boarding-school French, a joke of Chaucer has existed as a piece of local humour for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Speaking of the Prioress, who makes such a delicate figure among his Canterbury Pilgrims, he tells us, among her other accomplishments, that—
'French she spake full faire and featously;'
adding with great gravity,
'After the school of Stratford atte Bowe; For French of Paris was to her unknowe.'
CURIOUS FACTS RELATING TO SLEEP.
(For the Mirror.)
"Next to those nourishments that sustain the body (says Dr. Venner) moderate and seasonable sleep is most profitable and necessary. It helps digestion, recreates the mind, repairs the spirits, and comforts and refreshes the whole body." It is also observed by Dr. Hufeland, that "sleep is one of the wisest regulations of nature, to check and moderate at fixed periods, the incessant and impetuous stream of vital consumption. It forms as it were, stations for our physical and moral existence, and we thereby obtain the happiness of being daily reborn, and of passing every morning through a state of annihilation, into a new and refreshed life."
The writer of the article "Sleep." in Rees's Cyclopædia, says, "the proportion of time passed in sleep differs in different persons, and at different ages. From six to nine hours may be reckoned about the average proportion. Men of active minds whose attention is engaged in a series of interesting enjoyments, sleep much less than the listless and indolent, and the same individual will spend fewer hours in this way, when strongly interested in any pursuits, than when the stream of life is gentle and undisturbed. The Great Frederic of Prussia, and John Hunter, who devoted every moment of their time to the most active employments of body and mind, generally took only four or five hours' sleep. A rich and lazy citizen, whose life is merely a chronicle of breakfast, dinners, suppers, and sleep, will slumber away ten or twelve hours daily. When any subject strongly occupies us, it keeps us awake in spite of ourselves. The newly born child sleeps most of its time, and seems to wake merely for the purpose of feeding. Very old persons sleep much of their time; in the natural progress towards death, the animal faculties are first extinguished; accordingly, when they begin to decline in decrepit old age, the periods of their intermissions are longer. The celebrated De Moivre, when eighty-three years of age, was awake only four hours out of the twenty-four; and Thomas Parr at last slept the greatest part of his time. An eye-witness relates that some boys, completely exhausted by exertion, fell asleep amid all the tumult of the battle of the Nile; and other instances are known of soldiers sleeping amid discharges of artillery, and all the tumult of war. Couriers are known to sleep on horseback, and coachmen on their coaches. A gentleman who saw the fact, reported, to the writer of this article, that many soldiers in the retreat of Sir John Moore, fell asleep on the march, and continued walking on. Even stripes and tortures cannot keep off sleep beyond a certain time. Noises at first prevent us from sleeping, but their influence soon ceases, and persons rest soundly in the most noisy situations. The proprietors of some vast iron-works, who slept close to them, through the incessant din of hammers, forges, and blast furnaces, would awake if there were any interruption during the night. And a miller, being very ill and unable to sleep, when his mill was stopped, on his account, rested well and recovered quickly when the mill was set going again. Great hunger prevents sleep, and cold affecting a part of the body has the same effect. These causes operated on the unfortunate women who lived thirty-four days in a small room overwhelmed by snow, and with the slightest sustenance, they hardly slept the whole time."
P.T.W.
PERU: SIMPLICITY OF PASTORAL LIFE.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
After all that has been written and said on South America, by many recent travellers, it may probably be thought that the following remarks are rather out of time; but as a single fact may sometimes serve to show the state of a country more forcibly than volumes, I am induced to relate an anecdote which will throw a little light on the present situation of one portion of the natives of Peru.
The Andes take their rise literally at the "end of the World;" for Cape Horn certainly deserves that epithet, and the Straights of Magellan, which divide Terra del Fuego from the continent are comparatively no more than a mountain stream in a hilly country, so that that island may without any impropriety be deemed a part of it. The Andes are not one continuous chain of mountains; but an immensity of piles raised one on another, at different elevations of which are extensive plains, termed "Pampas," some of which appear as boundless as the horizon, and totally divested of herbage. On one of these plains, called the Pampa of Diesmo, in the province of Junin, I was detained some days at the only hut to be seen for leagues. One of the arreóros, or muleteers, with me, a native of Madrid, remarked on the solitude of the spot, adding, with a sigh, "This was a different place when first I visited it." Within about half a mile from where we were then conversing was an astonishing freak of Nature. In the midst of the plain were about one hundred naked rocks rising abruptly from the surface, in detached groups, some of which were as high as St. Paul's, and many appeared like the spires of a cathedral. Pointing to these eminences, the muleteer went on to say, "for five months these rocks were my refuge from white men, and from them have I seen an army of twenty-five thousand men traverse this plain again and again; their only support for nearly fourteen months being drawn from the spot." On asking an explanation, he bid me look round and say if I thought I could count the number of sheep on the Pampa. I readily answered I did not think there were fifty. "What will you say, sir," said he, "when I tell you that sixteen years since, there were, on this plain alone, eight hundred thousand sheep! besides oxen; at that time there was scarcely an Indian that did not possess at least two thousand, and this was only a part of the wealth of Peru. The desolation that now exists may justly be laid to the account of a revolution, which has only been the means of creating a spirit of animosity amongst those who before were cordially united; you yourself must be aware that if it were known I was a Godo, (Old Spaniard), my life would not be worth an hour's purchase; another thing you have yourself experienced, is the total absence of hospitality in Peru. This is also an effect of the revolution; for at the time I alluded to, a stranger in this country need not expend a maravedi in travelling; but those days, I fear, will never return."
This conversation occurred in the summer of 1827, and there are a few readers of the MIRROR who were then in Peru, who will readily recognise the writer.
VIATOR.
ON FEAR.
By Sir Thomas More.
If evils come not, then our fears are vain, And if they do, fear but augments the pain.
MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS.
SKIMINGTON RIDING.
(To the Editor of the Mirror.)
I have been amused by the accounts given in a former volume of the MIRROR, of the curious custom called "Stanging;" may I be allowed to edge in a few words descriptive of a ceremony belonging to the same order, which prevails in my native county, (Dorset), instituted and practised on the same occasions as those mentioned in vol. xii., but differing from them in many material points, and in my opinion partaking more of the theatrical cast than either of those two mentioned by your correspondents. Having been an eye witness to one or two of these exhibitions, I am enabled to give an accurate account of the same. The name which they give to this ceremony, as near as I can make out from the pronunciation, is Skimington Riding; the origin of which name I have endeavoured in vain to ascertain. The ceremony commences by two fellows armed with stump brooms mounting on a ladder borne by four or five more of the crowd, when sitting back to back, they commence a fierce attack on each other with the brooms over their shoulders, maintaining at the same time as the procession advances, a scolding dialogue, or rather duet; one of them squeaking to represent the angry tones of the better half, while the other growls his complaints an octave below. In this manner, accompanied by the shouts of the crowd, the rattling of old tin kettles, and the blowing of cow's horns, producing altogether a horrible din, they parade before the dwelling house of some peace-breaking couple; and should they be in possession of any word or words made use of by the unhappy pair in their squabbles, you may be sure such expressions are repeated with all due emphasis by the performers on the (stage) ladder. After making as much noise as they possibly can before the fated dwelling, where they sometimes meet with a most ungracious reception, they proceed in the same style through all the streets of the parish in order that the whole place may be apprized of the conduct of the offending couple; and they keep up the game as long as they possibly can.
Sturminster.
RURIS.
A SEA-SIDE MAYOR.
(For the Mirror.)
At Yarmouth, a person is selected from among those employed on the beach during the fishing season, who is denominated the Sea-side Mayor, his office being to inflict certain punishments and penalties on such fishermen as are found guilty of pilfering herrings, &c.
The fishing commences in the latter part of September, a day or two previous to which a procession goes round the town, the object and order of which are as follow:—
In this order the procession calls at the shops of different tradespeople, or any one at all connected with the herring fishery, where they solicit contributions, and those who are disposed to be liberal, are honoured with a tune from the musicians, and the cheering of the mayor. After parading the town they retire to a tavern to dinner. A great number of French and Dutch fishing boats resort to Yarmouth at the herring fishing, and on the Sunday previous to the 21st of September, "Dutch Fair," as it is denominated, is held on the beach, and presents a novel and interesting appearance.
From twenty to thirty of their flat bottomed boats are run on shore at high water, and as the tide recedes, are left high and dry. Dutch pipes, dried flounders, wooden shoes, apples, and gingerbread, are then offered for sale, and if the weather be fine, the beach is thronged with company, many of whom come from a great distance.
W. S. L.
SAXON NAMES OF THE MONTHS.
(For the Mirror.)
December, which stood first, was styled "Mid-winter monath." January was "Aefter-yule," or after Christmas. February "Sol-monath," from the returning sun. March "Rhede, or Rhede monath," rough, or rugged month. April "Easter monath," from a favourite Saxon goddess, whose name we still preserve. May was "Trimilchi," from the cows being then milked thrice in the day. June "Sere monath," dry month. July "Maed monath," the meads being then in their bloom. August was "Weod monath," from the luxuriance of weeds. September "Haerfest monath." October they called "Winter fylleth," from winter approaching with the full moon of that month. And lastly, November was styled "Blot monath," from the blood of the cattle slain that month, and stored for winter provision. Verstegan names the months somewhat differently.
P.T.W.
CURIOUS BEQUEST.
(For the Mirror.)
John Wardell, by will, dated August 29, 1656, gave to the Grocers' Company, a tenement known by the name of the White Bear, in Walbrook, to the intent that they should yearly, within thirty days after Michaelmas, pay to the churchwardens of St. Botolph, Billingsgate, £4. to provide a good and sufficient iron and glass lantern, with a candle, for the direction of passengers, to go with more security to and from the water side, all night long, to be placed at the north-east corner of the parish church of St. Botolph, from the Feast Day of St. Bartholomew to Lady Day; out of which sum £1. is to be paid to the sexton for taking care of the said lantern.
H.B.A.
SLEEPERS IN CHURCH.
(For the Mirror.)
Richard Davey, in 1659, founded a free-school at Claverley, Salop, and directed to be paid yearly the sum of eight shillings to a poor man of the said parish, who should undertake to awaken sleepers, and to whip out dogs from the church of Claverley, during divine service.
H.B.A.