one hundred and eighty-five parishes, about twenty-one thousand houses, and one hundred and seven thousand four hundred and forty inhabitants.

The soil of this country is principally composed of rich loam, strong clay, chalk, &c. The principal rivers are the Ouse and the Thame. The interchange of traffic has been much facilitated by the Grand Junction Canal.

Buckinghamshire is mostly in the diocess of Lincoln; it sends fourteen members to parliament; pays twelve parts of the land tax; provides the militia with five hundred and sixty men; and is in the Norfolk circuit.

Our circuit of this county, within thirty miles of London, commences at DATCHET, a village on the Thames, between Eton and Staines. The wooden bridge here, built by queen Anne, fell down in 1795, and has not since been rebuilt. Below this bridge, the banks of the river are enriched with handsome villas, commanding a fine view of Windsor Castle, &c. Among these, Ditton Park, the seat of the earl of Beaulieu, is worthy of notice. It was built by Sir Ralph Winwood, secretary of state to James I. on the site of a mansion which had been occupied by cardinal Wolsey. It is surrounded by a moat. The apartments are spacious and finely painted; and in the gallery there is a good collection of pictures. The park is famed for its antient majestic oaks. The manor of Datchet, after several grants, belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Whitfield, in 1730; the late duke of Montague purchased it in 1742 of their representatives; and it is at present the property of his daughter, the duchess of Buccleugh.

In the parish church are the monnments of lady Catharine Berkeley, and Christopher Barker, Esq. printer to queen Elizabeth.

DATCHET MEAD has been rendered famous by Shake. speare, for the pranks of the Merry Wives of Windsor, and the disasters of Sir John Falstaff.

ETON, a village on the Thames, is situated opposite Windsor, and famous for its royal college and school, les founded by Henry VI. in 1440, for the support of a pro

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vost and seven fellows, and the education of seventy youths in classical learning. It consists of two quadrangles; one appropriated to the school, and the lodging of the masters and scholars; in the midst of which is a copper statue of the founder, on a marble pedestal, erected at the expence of Dr. Godolphin. In the other quadrangle are the apartments of the provost and fellows. The library is one of the finest in England. The chapel is a stately structure, apparently by the same hand who designed King's College, Cambridge. At the west end of this chapel is a marble statue, by Bacon, of the "ill-fated Henry."

The seventy king's scholars, as those are called who are on the foundation, when properly qualified, are elected, on the first Tuesday in August, to King's College in Cambridge, but are not removed till there are vacancies in that college, when they are called according to seniority; and after they have been three years at Cambridge, they claim a fellowship. Beside those on the foundation, there are seldom less than three hundred noblemen and gentlemen's sons, who board at the masters' houses, or within the bounds of the college. The school is divided into upper and lower, and each of these into three classes. To each school there is a master and four assistants. The revenue of the college amounts to about 5000l. a year. Gray's Ode to Eton College will always be read with pleasure and satisfaction.

Among the eminent men educated at this college, on the foundation, are to be recounted the names of bishop Fleetwood, doctors Hales, and Stanhope; Sir Robert Walpole; the late earl Camden; and John Horne Tooke. Of the cedebrated characters not on the foundation, Oughtred the mathematician, hon. Robert Boyle, Waller the poet, the great earl of Chatham, Horace Walpole earl of Orford, Gray the poet, Gilbert West, and Jacob Bryant, the eminent mythologist.

In the chapel were buried Richard lord Gray of Wilton; John Longland, bishop of Lincoln; Sir Henry Saville, founder of the Astronomical and Geometrical Professorships

in Oxford; Sir Henry Wotton; Francis Rouse, a distinguished writer among the puritans; Dr. Allestree; and Dr. Ingelo, author of Bentevolio and Uránia.

In the provost's lodgings are portraits of queen Elizabeth, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Robert Walpole, Mr. Stewart, clerk of the closet to Charles T.; Sir Henry Saville, Sir Henry Wotton, Francis Rouse, and several other provosts. A picture also here, is said to be a portrait of Jane Shore *. SLOUGH,

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*Messrs. Lysons have given the most probable origin of the Ad Montem at Eton. Before we dismiss the subject of Eton School, the ancient custom of the procession of the scholars ad montem may be thought not undeserving of notice. This procession is made every third year on Whit Tuesday, to a tumulus near the Bath road, which has acquired the name of Salt Hill, by which also the neighbouring inns have been long known. The chief object of the celebrity is to collect money for salt, as the phraze is, from all persons present, and it is exacted even from passengers travelling the road. The scholars who collect the money are called salt bearers, and are dressed in rich silk habits. Tickets inscribed with some motto by way of pass-word, are given to such persons as have already paid for salt, as a security from any further demands. This ceremony has been frequently honoured with the presence of his májesty and all the royal family, whose liberal contributions, added to those of many of the nobility and others, who have been educated at Eton, and purposely attend the meeting, have so far augmented the collections, that it has been known to amount to more than 8001. The sum so collected is given to the senior scholar who is going off to Cambridge, for his support at the university. It would be in vain perhaps to endea your to trace the origin of all the circumstances of this singular custom, particularly that of collecting money for salt, which has been in use from time immemorial.. The procession itself seems to have been coeval with the foundation of the college, and it has been conjectured with great probability that it was that of the bairn or boy-bishop; and that this part of the ceremony has been supposed by some to have originated from an ancient practice among the friars of selling consecrated salt. We have been informed, that originally it took place on the 6th of December, the festival of St. Nicholas, the patron of children; being the day on which it was customary at Salisbury, and in other places where the ceremony was observed, to elect the boy-bishop, from among the children belonging to the cathedral. In the voluminous collections relating to antiquities bequeathed by Mr. Cole, (who was himself of Eton and King's College) to the British Museum, is a note, in which it is asserted, that the ceremony Vol. V. No. 120. 3 K

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SLOUGH, a village, twenty miles and a half from London, and two from Windsor, is partly in the parishes of Stoke and Upton. In the parish church of Upton, which is a Saxon structure, are memorials for the family of Bulstrode. At Slough Dr. Herschel pursues his astronomical researches, assisted by a royal pension. His forty feet telescope is a prodigious instrument. The length of the

tube is thirty-nine feet four inches; it measures four feet ten inches in diameter; and every part of it is of rolled or sheet iron, which has been joined together, without rivets, by a kind of seaming, well known to those who make iron. funnels for stoves. The concave face of the great mirror is forty-eight inches of polished surface in diameter! The thickness, which is equal in every part of it, is about three inches and a half; and its weight, when it came from the cast, was two thousand one hundred and eighteen pounds, of which it must have lost a small part in polishing. The method of observing by this telescope, is by what Dr. Herschel calls the front view; the observer being placed in 'a seat, suspended at the end of it, with his hack toward the object he views. There is no small speculum, but the magnifiers are applied immediately to the first focal image. From the opening of the telescope, near the place of the eye glass, a speaking pipe runs down to the bottom of the

of the bairn or boy-bishop, was to be observed by charter; and that Geffrey Blythe, bishop of Litchfield, who died in 1530, bequeathed se veral ornaments to King's College and Eton, for the dress of the bairnbishop. From whence the industrious antiquary procured this information, which, if correct, would end all conjecture on the subject, does not appear. We cannot learn that there are any documents in support of it ́at King's College, or at Eton; and the prerogative court of Canterbury, as well as the registries of London, Chester, and Litchfield, where alone there is any probability of its being registered, have been searched in vain for bishop Blythe's will. Within the memory of persons now living, it was a part of the ceremony at the Montem, that a boy dressed in a clerical habit, with a wig, should read prayers.

The custom of hunting a ram, by the Eton scholars, on Saturday in the election week, supposed to have been an antient tenure, was abolished by the late provost, Dr. Cooke.-Magna Britannia, Vol. I. p.557.

tube,

tube, where it goes into a turning joint; and, after several other inflexions, it at length divides into two branches, one going into the observatory, and the other into the work room; and thus the communications of the observer are conveyed to the assistant in the observatory, and the workman is directed to perform the required motions. The foundation of the apparatus by which the telescope is suspended and moved, consists of two concentric circular brick walls, the outermost of which is twenty-two feet in diameter, and the inside one twenty-one feet. They are two feet six inches deep under ground, two feet three inches broad at the bottom, and one foot two inches at the top; and are capped with paving stones about three inches thick, and twelve and three quarters broad. The bottom frame of the whole rests upon these two walls by twenty concentric rollers, and is moveable upon a pivot, which gives a horizontal motion to the whole apparatus, as well as to the telescope. The description of the apparatus and telescope occupies sixty-five pages in the second part of the Philosophical Tranfactions for 1795, and the parts of it are illustrated by nineteen plates. It is altogether a most curious piece of art, and the discoveries made by means of its powers constitute some of the leading topics of modern astronomy.

BULSTRODR, the seat of the duke of Portland, in the parish of Upton, four miles from Beaconsfield, is a noble house, containing fine apartments, and the following pictures by the old masters: A Holy Family, RAPHAEL; St. Cecilia, CARLO DOLCE; Orpheus charming the brutes, SAVARY; the portrait of the first earl of Portland, and others of that noble family; and Henry Wriothesley, earl of Southampton, with the cat which accompanied him in the Tower of London. The park is peculiarly fortunate in situation, by means of contrast. The country adjoining is very flat, and has few of those elegant varieties which are pleasing to the traveller; and yet this happy spot contains not a level acre; it is composed of perpetual swells and slopes, set off by scattered plantations, disposed in the 3 K 2

purest