1833.] 115 MAUNDY THURSDAY, OR SHERE THURSDAY. This day was also called Shere Thursday, and by corruption, Chare Thursday. Shere Thursday signi MAUNDY THURSDAY is the Thursday before Easter.fied, that it was the day on which the Clergy were It is supposed to be derived from the Saxon word According to annual custom, on Maundy Thurs- On James the Secona is said to have been the last monarch who performed this ceremony in person. the 5th of April, 1731, it being Maundy Thursday, the King being then in his 48th year, there was dispensed at the Banquetting-house, Whitehall, to 48 poor men and women, boiled legs and shoulders of mutton, and small bowls of ale, which is called dinner; after that, large platters of undressed fish, viz., one large old ling, and one large dried cod, twelve redherrings and twelve white, and four half-quartern loaves. After this, shoes, stockings, linen and woollen clothes were given; likewise, leathern bags, with one, two, three, and four-penny pieces of silver, and His Grace the shillings, to each about 47. in value. Lord Archbishop of York, as Lord High Almoner, performed the annual ceremony of washing the feet of the poor, in the Royal Chapel, Whitehall as formerly done by the Kings themselves. wont to shere or shear their heads, or get them shorn or shaven, and to clip their beards against Easter day. Maundy Thursday is no where observed in London, except, as before stated, at the Chapel Royal. WHEN one was speaking of such a reformation in the Church of England, as in effect would make it no Church at all, the great Lord Bacon said to him; Sir, the subject we the eye, we endeavour to take them off; but he were a talk of, is the eye of England; if there be a speck or two in strange oculist, who would pull out the eye. MEN do not so much fear to be dead as they fear to die: it is the separation of soul and body, not their condition when separated, which they contemplate with dread. Men either do not think of the state after death at all, or they anticipate happiness; were it otherwise, did they see the consequences of living as they too often do, they would not continue so to live. THE LAST DAY. HARK! from the deep of heaven, a trumpet sound From north to south, from east to west it rolls, All who have breathed, or moved, or seen, or felt; But while the universe is wrapt in fire, Imagination ! furl thy wings of fire, The last, the fiery chaos hath begun, And, lo ! the living harvest of the Earth, Upon the flaming Earth one farewell glance! No motion, blast, or breeze, or waking sound ! 47-2 JAMES MONTGOMERY. rests on the towers of Belvoir; to the north, on the magnificent minster; to the east, upon the high chalk country, called the Wolds of Lincolnshire; and, following the course of the Witham, is caught by the stately pile of Tattershall Castle, and the lofty tower of Boston, or Boston Stump, as it is familiarly called. So little does Lincolnshire deserve the character given by those who have never visited this county, that, in Dr. Clarke's able book on Climate, it is classed as being, next to Yorkshire, the most healthy part of the kingdom, from the purity of its air and the predominance of high ground. But we were rather to give some account of Coleby than to defend the county from misconstruction. The sketch which we are enabled to give will speak for itself, and the porch and the font will show that it contains very beautiful specimens of the Saxon as well as of the Gothic style. The three lancet windows in the chancel are a singular feature in this church. The rich and beautiful Gothic spire, including the upper part of the tower, with its light pinnacles and flying buttresses, are evidently the work of a later age than the plain Saxon tower which they crown. Indeed, an attentive observer may easily trace the whole outline of the old tower and nave. These may be compared to an unwieldy chrysalis, and the taste of a succeeding generation brought the butterfly to light. The aisles re WE think that our readers will be interested in the | the valley of the Trent to the west; to the south, it specimens of our Parish Churches, which we are enabled occasionally to present to their notice. We can boast of an infinite variety of architecture, and combination of styles. In different parts of the kingdom, we might trace every link of connexion between the walls of rifted oak at Greensted (see vol. i., p. 37,) and the massive and sculptured towers of Lincoln Minster. There is, generally, some point of interest about each of our old churches; some beauty of architecture, a porch, a window, a font, a monument, or, at least, a legend of ancient times, if the relics themselves have passed away. In some portions of the kingdom these beauties have been preserved, and laid up for the delight of future generations in our county histories. Such is the magnificent work on the Antiquities of Sussex, recently published by Dr. E. Cartwright. But some of the most beautiful remains in the kingdom are comparatively unknown, and may, perhaps, moulder away and be lost for. ever, because no pen or pencil has been employed to immortalize them. We could wish to have some of these brought into notice, to have a WHITE'S Selborne in miniature for every parish, recording whatever there is of interest, not only in its ecclesiastical remains, but in its natural history and local circumstances. In general, the expense of printing such notices, even if there are those whose genius and industry lead them to gather together the information, puts it out of the question. But our pages offer a medium to which the labours of the pen and the pencil may be transferred without difficulty; and if they will aid us, we will gladly present our readers, in every corner of the kingdom, with a description of whatever is best worth recording in their own beloved haunts, provided they are calculated to interest general readers. We will follow up these remarks with some notice of Coleby. This beautiful church is six miles from Lincoln, on the Grantham road. Perhaps the impression which is presented to the mind of the reader from this beginning, is, that it is buried in the Fens, and cannot be visited without some danger of cholera, or, at least, of ague. Be not alarmed, gentle reader. Coleby is situated on a commanding eminence, on the very escarpment of the oolite formation, which runs in an uninterrupted line from the Humber to the coast of Dorsetshire. From this commanding height the eye looks over upon Nottinghamshire and presen the wings, the pinnacles and spire may stand for the antennæ or horns of the beautiful insect. We regret that we have no accounts of the time, or the different stages of this metamorphosis. An examination of the parish Register, which goes back for near three hundred years, furnishes no memoranda of any interest, except the following: 66 J. Rodgers, of Coleby, was chosen by the inhabitants and householders of the said towne, to bee their Parish Register; and was sworne before William Lister, Esq. one of the Justices of the Peace for the Parts and Countie of Kesteven, Oct. 30, 1657." But even those days of civil strife and trouble, do not seem to have disturbed the peace of this quiet village there is nothing to mark any breach in the regular routine of baptisms, marriages, and burials, through the whole course of the civil war. If bones and ashes could be taught to speak, we might indeed be able to give a lively interest to our pages by moving tales of still remoter times, for no ground is more full of vestiges of antiquity than some parts of Coleby. They are chiefly Roman remains of which we speak. The famous Ermine-street passes through the parish at no great distance from the village, but it is not on the line of this old Roman road that the most interesting antiquities have been found; but in a large field, near to Coleby Hall, the seat of C. Mainwaring, Esq., spear-heads, and swords, and various ornaments, have been ploughed up in great abundance, as well as large fragments of vases of coarse earthenware, which seem to have contained the ashes of the dead. The great number of these relics which have been discovered, spread over a considerable space, seems to prove that Coleby may once have been a Roman station, an out-post perhaps from their headquarters at Lindum, to keep the rude natives in awe, and preserve the military occupation of the country. But we are not going to travel into the regions of fancy, though it would be a most interesting vision, if we could catch a glimpse of those times, of the conqueror and the conquest; it is still a matter of deep and sober thankfulness, that we live in days when Christian churches occupy the place of heathen temples, and the sound of the village bell has succeeded to the alarm of the Roman trumpet. Centuries have passed since a foreign enemy has gained a footing in our land: other lands have been trodden under foot by the invader again and again. In our own days, every nation of Europe has been in turn the prey of the spoiler; their villages have been burnt, their cottages plundered, their peasantry the sport of brutal violence: we only have been spared; we have enjoyed our liberties and lived in peace, whilst war has raged around us. May we be thankful for these inestimable blessings to Him who is the author and giver of them; and may we preserve that peace and union amongst ourselves, which the foreign enemy has not been able to disturb. FONT OF COLEBY CHURCH ABRAHAM COWLEY was the posthumous son of a grocer of London, and was born in the year 1618. He received his education at Westminster School, where he exhibited an extraordinary instance of talent early developed; and we have his own account of a circumstance, which had a material influence in directing the bent of his genius toward poetry. He says, "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head with such chimes of verses, as have never left ringing there. I remember when I began to read, and to take pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlour, I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion, but there was wont to lie Spenser's works. This I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses which I found every where, (though my understanding had little to do with all this,) and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old." Thus early enamoured of poetry, Cowley may almost be said to have "lisped in numbers." At the age of ten years, he wrote a poem on the subject of Pyramus and Thisbe; at twelve, he wrote Constantia and Philetus; and these, with other pieces, were actually published, under the title of Poetical Blossoms, in his fifteenth year, before he left school. At Cambridge, whither he went in 1636, he wrote some plays, and commenced his Davideis, an epic when poem on the history of King David. In 1643, he took his degree of Master of Arts, the civil war was raging between Charles the First and his Parliament, and, on being ejected from Cambridge, Cowley sheltered himself at Oxford, which place was then in possession of the Royalists. Here he recommended himself to the friends of the King, particularly to the accomplished and gallant Lord Falkland. He had also written an elegy on William Hervey, which brought him acquainted with the brother, John Hervey, and by this friend Cowley was recommended to the Earl of St. Alban's, then acting as minister to Queen Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles the First. When the decline of the Royal cause obliged the Queen, with her court, to retire to France, Cowley became secretary to the Earl of St. Albans, and was particularly employed in ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the King and the Queen. In the same service, he also performed some dangerous journeys into Jersey, Scotland, Flanders, Holland, and elsewhere. In these confidential and honourable employments he continued for twelve years, and, in 1656, he returned to England with no very fixed occupation or pursuit. He took his degree of Doctor in Medicine, though without any design of practising as a physician, and became one of the original members of the Royal Society. About this time, he also published his poems, in four parts, in folio. In 1660, Charles the Second was restored to his throne; and, as this was a period of highly-raised expectation with the Royalists who had shared the adverse fortune of the king, so it proved to many an occasion of severe disappointment. Cowley, for some time, felt himself neglected, and vented his mortification in a poem, entitled the Complaint. But, at length, he obtained, by the interest of the Earl of St. Alban's and the Duke of Buckingham, an income of 3001. per annum, derived, it seems, from an advantageous lease of the Queen's lands. This fortune enabled him to attempt the realization of a vision, which had long floated before his fancy. From his earliest days we find him expressing a strong desire for retirement and solitude. His translations of various passages in ancient writers, descriptive of the charms of rural seclusion, show with what fondness he continued to dwell on such ideas. As he advanced in years, he still breathed forth his sighs for privacy and tranquillity, and, at one time, even professed a wish to retire to the plantations of America,-a conceit which Dr. Johnson has made the principal subject of the sixth number of his Rambler, wherein he exposes, with his customary force of reasoning, the absurdity of supposing that any local circumstances can exclude vexation, or that happiness is dependent upon any thing else than the temper of mind which each man carries with him, whether into society or into solitude. to pass the whole night exposed under a hedge, when Cowley caught a severe cold, attended with a fever, that terminated in his death." He was buried with much pomp in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and Spenser, and a monument was erected to his memory by George, Duke of Buckingham Cowley is invariably represented as having possessed the most sweet and amiable disposition. He was also deeply impressed with religious feelings, and is said to have particularly abhorred the abuse of scripture by licentious raillery, which he called "not only the meanest kind of wit, but the worst sort of ill manners." In the latter part of his life, he contemplated a work of inquiry into the original principles of the primitive church of Christ; but he did not live to execute it. Indeed, like many others, Cowley appears to have done least when his command of time was the greatest. Of his Davideis, which was begun early in life, and was designed to have consisted of twelve books, he completed only four. And the whole history of his latter years, gives a strong confirmation (if confirmation were needed), of the important truths, that leisure is apt to degenerate into listlessness and inactivity; and that the rubs and crosses, from which no condition of human existence is exempt, are only felt the more painfully by him, who, while he possesses the sensitive temperament of genius, does not fortify himself against them by strenuous occupation, and by an active and useful life passed among his fellows. In his days of industry and exertion, Cowley wrote and published much, both in Latin and in English, and in various kinds of poetry, epic, lyrical, elegiac, and didactic. His genius was of the highest order. With profound and varied learning he combined an extraordinary vigour and fertility of imagi and exuberance, sometimes with the happiness of his images, reminding us not a little, though in a different kind of composition, of his own contemporary, Jeremy Taylor, and, in later days, of Mr. Burke. His misfortune was that he lived in an age of wretched taste in poetry. To Spenser and Shakspeare had succeeded a class of poets, to whom Johnson gives the name of metaphysical, and whose faults he exposes, in his life of Cowley, in a strain of the happiest criticism. Their great defect lay in substituting wit for feeling and nature, and in fancying poetry to consist in subtle, far-fetched, and exaggerated conceits; but for this unhappy perversion of taste, Cowley would have been second to few of our English poets. His prose writings, which were struck off without any effort or affectation, give a pleasing picture of his abilities and of his heart, and justify the well-known lines of Pope : In fact, Cowley himself was destined to experi-nation; and he astonishes us with the multiplicity ence the vanity of his own fond anticipations. He was now at liberty to retire from courts and crowds, and first established himself at Barn Elms; this place, however, disagreed with his health, and he then settled at Chertsey, in the house of which a view is given above; but the happiness, which he fondly imagined to be now within his grasp, mocked his pursuit. It was thus that he writes from Chertsey to his friend, Dr. Spratt, afterwards Bishop of Rochester:-" The first night that I came hither, I caught so great a cold, with a defluxion of rheum, as made me keep my chamber ten days, and, two after, I had such a bruise on my ribs with a fall, that I am yet unable to move, or to turn myself in my bed. This is my personal fortune here to begin with; and, besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my neighbours. What this signifies, or may come to in time, God knows; if it be ominous, it can end in nothing less than hanging," &c. &c. Spence, also, as quoted by Dr. Warton, gives a very similar account of the disappointment which Cowley experienced in his expectations of rural peace and rural simplicity. He says, I Cowley seems to have thought that the swains of Surrey had the innocence of those of Sidney's Arcadia; but the perverseness and debauchery of his own workmen soon undeceived him." The same writer gives the following account of his death, which occurred in the forty-ninth year of his age, on the 28th of July, 1667, two years only after he had retired to Chertsey." His death was occasioned by a singular accident: he paid a visit on foot, with his friend Spratt, to a gentleman in the neighbourhood of Chertsey, which they prolonged, and feasted too much, till midnight. On their return home they mistook their way, and were obliged Mr. : Who now reads Cowley? If he pleases yet, It was But still I love the language of his heart. The house in which Cowley lived at Chertsey, remains, and is still called the Porch House. for many years occupied by R. Clark, Esq., Chamberlain of London, who, in honour of the Poet, took much pains to preserve the premises, with the least possible alteration, kept an original portrait of Cowley, and affixed a tablet in front, containing Cowley's Latin Epitaph on himself. Mr. Clark, also, placed a tablet in front of the building, where the porch stood, with the following inscription: "The Porch of this House, which projected ten feet into the highway, was, in the year 1792, removed, for the safety and accommodation of the public." 66 Here the last accents flow'd from Cowley's tongue." THE FAMINE AT BOMBAY. THE effects of the famine which was desolating the neighbouring districts, soon made themselves visible at Bombay, by a very curious and painful sort of reflected, or rather what the opticians would call transmitted, light. We were living on that island in the midst of peace and plenty, while the territories north of us had become a prey to absolute want and the fiercest tumults, accompanied by bloodshed in every variety of shape. As each day broke, the wharfs and roads of our happy spot were lined with crowds of wretched, half-starved objects, who had with difficulty made their escape from the accumulated horrors of their own desolated homes. The whole of the eastern, or land-side of Bombay, was strewed over with the dead and dying natives. I never saw misery on such an extensive scale, either before or since, except, perhaps, in some of the wretched villages of Spain, when the French dragoons had taught the poor inhabitants, at the edge of the sabre, to understand what the evils of war really are, when brought close to their own altars and fire-sides. What an important service might not that man render to England, who should make the people at large duly aware of the unspeakable advantages they have so long enjoyed in being exempted from the dreadful miseries of actual war, and its ghastly followers, pestilence and famine! How useful and how grateful, but, alas, how hopeless, the task of convincing the great mass of the present and future generations of this country, that almost all the sacrifices we have made in our own time, and are still making, as well as the share which our posterity will be called upon to contribute in theirs, are admirably bestowed in securing the matchless blessings we enjoy, and future ages of our descendants may continue to enjoy, far above all other nations. I only wish that those people amongst us who doubt the efficacy of our establishments in church and state, in preserving the national strength, and in maintaining the purity of virtuous practice, could see with their own eyes the effects of the absence of such institutions, and thus judge for themselves of their influence on human happiness. I think there might readily be pointed out, to the satisfaction of any reasonable advocate for speculative reform, scenes and circumstances in many countries whose boast, for example, it is, to have no national debt, which would prove, that in consideration of the annual payment of this comparatively trifling rental, as it may well be called, not only we, but all our posterity, are secured in the enjoyment of national and domestic blessings, such as no other country on earth is even in a slight degree acquainted with. The most striking, and, perhaps, I may add, most affecting circumstance, connected with this glimpse we had of the famine, was the marvellous patience, or what, in other lands, we should have called Christian resignation, of the unfortunate sufferers. I mixed amongst the natives constantly, and saw them exposed to every shade of distress, but never heard a complaint, nor saw a gesture of impatience. And what was still more extraordinary, immense groups of persons, actually dying of hunger, would sit round the fire on which the rice provided for them had been cooked, and there wait, with perfect composure, while the several messes were measured out and distributed to them; a process that often lasted more than an hour, during which their food lay but two or three feet from them, and quite within their grasp. It was curious to observe, also, during the whole period of this famine, that in several of the squares and other open spaces in the town, immense piles of rice were left exposed, night and day, for weeks together, without any guards, yet not a single bag was ever cut open. I ought to have mentioned, that subscriptions, to a considerable amount, were made for the support of the starving multitude. And what was particularly interesting, the wealthy natives, the Banyans and Parsees in particular, opened a subscription amongst themselves, and purchased many thousands of bags of rice for the strangers, some weeks, or, at all events, a good many days, before the English residents came forward. This, however, was partly accidental, and partly caused by the natives having a more intimate acquaintance with the pressing nature and the extent of the distress. The two parties soon combined their exertions, and the native and English committees mutually assisted each other in this work of charity. Huge boilers were provided, under a pic|turesque tope, or grove, of cocoa-nut trees, about half a mile from the fort; and as a Hindoo, in general, will not eat a morsel of food, even to save his life, if it has been dressed by a person of a different caste, care was taken to provide cooks, whose foreheads were marked with the proper streak of red or yellow paint, as the case might require. I myself repeatedly saw natives actually expiring of hunger, who refused the food presented to them, because a doubt existed as to the hands through which it had passed.—CAPT HALL'S Voyages and Travels; Second Series. REVENGE.-Banish all malignant and revengeful thoughts. We all complain of the shortness of time, (says Seneca,) and THE PRODIGAL SON. Many a lonely hour Was pass'd in prayer for thee, mistaken one! Who whispers comfort when the heart feels none To mortal ear the anguish I have known, |
