Читать книгу: «The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831», страница 2
CORFE CASTLE—EDWARD II
(To the Editor.)
I should be glad to be informed by your correspondent, James Silvester, Sen., on what authority he grounds his assertion (contained in No. 484.) that it was in the fortress of Corfe Castle that the unfortunate Edward II. was so inhumanly murdered. I have always, considered it an undisputed fact that the scene of this atrocity was at Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire. Hume states, that while in the custody of Lord Berkeley, the murderers, Mautravers and Gournay, “taking advantage of Berkeley’s sickness, in whose custody he then was, came to Berkeley Castle, threw him on a bed,” &c. &c. giving the particulars of the cruel deed. An abridged history, the only other authority I have at hand to refer to, says, “After these transactions, he was treated with the greatest indignities, and at last inhumanly murdered in Berkeley Castle, and his body buried in a private manner in the Abbey Church, at Gloucester.” The lines of Gray, in his celebrated poem of “The Bard,” are familiar to most school-boys, where he alludes to the cries of the suffering monarch
“Through Berkeley’s roofs that ring Shrieks of an agonized king!”
Yet as your correspondent, J.S. seems of the intelligent kind, he may be in possession of some authority to which he can refer, and thereby prove it is not merely an assertion inadvertently given, to increase the interest of his Visit to Corfe Castle. Knowing your wish that the pages of your entertaining Mirror should reflect the truth, the insertion of this will oblige your Constant Reader,
W.
LINES WRITTEN IN A CHURCHYARD
(For the Mirror.)
Why am I here?—Thou hast not need of me,
Home of the rotting and the rotten dead—
For thou art cumber’d to satiety,
And wilt be cumber’d—ay, when I am fled!
Why stand I here, the living among tombs?
Answer, all ye who own a grassy bed,
Answer your dooms.
Thou, massy stone! over whose heart art thou?
The lord who govern’d yonder giant place,
And ruled a thousand vassals at his bow.
Alack! how narrow and how small a space
Of what was human vanity and show
Serves for the maggot, when ’tis his to chase
The greatest and the latest of his race.
One of Earth’s dear ones, of a noble birth,
Slumbers e’en here; of such supernal charms,
That but to smile was to awaken mirth,
And for that smile set loving fools in arms.
The grave ill balances such living worth,
For here the worm his richest pasture farms,
Unconscious of his harms.
Yon grassy sod, that scarcely seems a grave,
Deck’d with the daisy, and each lowly flower,
Time leaves no stone, recording of the knave,
Whether of humble, or of lordly power:
Fame says he was a bard—Fame did not save
His name beyond the living of his hour—
A luckless dower.
’Tis strange to see how equally we die,
Though equal honour be unknown to light,
The lord, the lady of distinction high,
And he, the bard, who sang their noble might,
Sink into death alike and peacefully;
Though some may want the marble’s honour’d site,
Yet earth holds all that earthliness did slight.
P.T.
ANCIENT BOROUGH OF WENDOVER
(For the Mirror.)
This borough sent members to parliament in the 28th of Edward I. and again in the 1st and 2nd of Edward II.; after which the privilege was discontinued for above three hundred years. “The intermission, (says Britton,) was attended by the very remarkable circumstance of all recollection of the right of the borough having been lost, till about the period of the 21st of James I. when Mr. Hakeville, of Lincoln’s Inn, discovered by a search among the ancient parliament writs in the Tower, that the boroughs of Amersham, Wendover, and Great Marlow, had all sent members in former times, and petitions were then preferred in the names of those places, that their ancient liberty or franchise might be restored. When the King5 was informed of these petitions, he directed his solicitor, Sir Robert Heath, to oppose them with all might, declaring, that he was troubled with too great a number of burgesses already,” The sovereign’s opposition proved ineffectual, and the Commons decided in favour of the restoration of the privilege. Some particulars of this singular case may be found in Willis’s Notitia Parliamentaria.
The celebrated John Hampden represented this borough in five parliaments.
P.T.W.
MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS
HIPPODROME GAMES
(For the Mirror.)
The Olympian Hippodrome, or horse-course, was a space of ground of six hundred paces long, surrounded with a wall, near the city of Elis, and on the banks of the river Alpheus. It was uneven, and in some degree irregular, on account of the situation;—in one part was a hill of moderate height; and the circuit was adorned with temples, altars, and other embellishments. There was a very famous hippodrome at Constantinople, which was begun by Alexander Severus, and finished by Constantine. This circus, called by the Turks atmeican, is four hundred paces long, and above one hundred paces wide. At the entrance of the hippodrome there is a pyramidical obelisk of granite, in one piece, about fifty feet high, terminating in a point, and charged with hieroglyphics. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on its base show that it was erected by Theodosius. The machines that were employed to raise it are represented upon it in basso-relievo. We have some vestiges in England of the hippodromus, in which the ancient inhabitants of this country performed their races. The most remarkable is that near Stonehenge, which is a long tract of ground, about three hundred and fifty feet, or two hundred Druid cubits wide, and more than a mile and three quarters, or six thousand Druid cubits in length, enclosed quite round with a bank of earth, extending directly east and west. The goal and career are at the east end. The goal is a high bank of earth, raised with a slope inwards, on which the judges are supposed to have sat. The metæ are two tumuli, or small barrows, at the west end of the course. These hippodromes were called, in the language of the country, rhedagua; the racer, rhedagwr; and the carriage, rheda—from the British word rhedeg, to run.
One of these hippodromes, about half a mile to the southward of Leicester, retains evident traces of the old name, rhedagua in the corrupted one of Rawdikes. “There is another of these,” says Dr. Stukely, “near Dorchester; and another on the banks of the river Lowther, near Penrith, in Cumberland; and another in the valley just without the town of Royston.”
WALTER E.C.Pratt-street, Lambeth.
THE SKETCH-BOOK
THE BEGGAR WOMAN OF LOCARNO
At the foot of the Alps, near Locarno, was an old castle, belonging to a marquess, the ruins of which are still visible to the traveller, as he comes from St. Gothard—a castle with lofty and roomy apartments, high towers, and narrow windows. In one of these rooms, an old sick woman was deposited upon some straw, which had been shaken down for her by the housekeeper of the marquess, who had found her begging before the gate. The marquess, who was accustomed to go into this room on his return from hunting, to lay aside his gun, ordered the poor wretch to get up immediately out of her corner, and begone.
The creature arose, but slipping with her crutch upon the smooth floor, she fell, and injured her back so much, that it was with great difficulty she got up, and, moving across the room as she had been desired, groaning and crying sadly, sank down behind the chimney. Several years afterwards, when the circumstances of the marquess had been much reduced by war and the failure of his crops, a Florentine gentleman visited the castle, with the intention of purchasing it, in consequence of the beauty of the situation. The marquess, who was very anxious to have the bargain concluded, gave his wife directions to lodge the stranger in the same upper room in which the old woman had died, it having, in the meantime, been very handsomely fitted up; but, to their consternation, in the middle of the night, the stranger entered their room, pale and agitated, protesting loudly that the chamber was haunted by some invisible being; for that he had heard something rise up in the corner, as if it had been lying among straw, move over the chamber with slow and tottering steps, and sink down, groaning and crying, near the chimney.
The marquess, terrified, though he scarcely knew why, endeavoured to put a fair face upon the matter, and to laugh off the fears of his visiter, telling him he would rise himself, and spend the rest of the night with him in his room; but the stranger begged that he would rather allow him to occupy a couch in the adjoining room; and as soon as morning broke, he saddled his horse, took his leave, and departed. This occurrence, which occasioned much notice, made so unpleasant an impression upon intending purchasers, that not another inquiry was made; and at last, even the servants in the house becoming possessed with the notion that there was something dreadful in the room, the marquess, with the view of setting the report to rest, determined to investigate the matter himself next night. Accordingly, in the twilight, he caused his bed to be brought to the apartment, and waited, without sleeping, the approach of midnight. But what was his consternation, when, on the stroke of midnight, he actually heard some inconceivable noise in the apartment, as if some person had risen up from among straw, which rustled beneath them, walked slowly over the floor, and sank, sighing and groaning, behind the chimney. When he came down the next morning, the marchesa asked him how the investigation had gone on; and he, after gazing about him with wondering glances, and bolting the door, told her the story of the chamber’s being haunted was true. She was terrified out of her senses; but begged him, before making any public disclosure, once more to make the experiment coolly in her company. Accompanied by a trusty servant, they accordingly repeated their visit next night, and again heard, as the marquess had done before, the same ghostly and inconceivable noise; and nothing but the anxious wish to get rid of the castle, cost what it would, enabled them to suppress their terrors in presence of the servant, and to ascribe the sound to some accidental cause. On the evening of the third day, when both, determined to probe the matter to the bottom, were ascending with beating hearts the stair leading to the stranger’s apartment, it chanced that the house dog, who had been let loose from the chain, was lying directly before the door of the room; and, willing perhaps to have the company of any other living thing in the mysterious apartment, they took the dog into the room along with them. The husband and wife seated themselves on the couch—the marquess with his sword and pistols beside him; and while they endeavoured, the best way they could, to amuse themselves with conversation, the dog, cowering down on the floor at their feet, fell asleep. Again, with the stroke of midnight, the noise was renewed;—something, though what they could not discover, raised itself us if with crutches in the corner; the straw rustled as before. At the sound of the first foot-fall, the dog awoke, roused itself, pricked up its ears, and growling and barking as if some person were advancing towards him, retreated in the direction of the chimney. At this sight, the marchioness rushed out of the room, her hair standing on end; and while the marquess seized his sword, exclaimed “Who is there?” and receiving no answer, thrust like a madman in all directions, she hastily packed up a few articles of dress, and made the best of her way towards the town. Scarcely, however, had she proceeded a few steps, when she discovered that the castle was on fire. The marquess had, in his distraction, overturned the tapers, and the room was instantly in flames. Every effort was made to save the unhappy nobleman, but in vain: he perished in the utmost tortures, and his bones, as the traveller may be aware, still lie where they were collected by the neighbouring peasants—in the corner of the apartment from which he had expelled the beggar woman of Locarno.—Edinburgh Literary Journal and Gazette.
