account of the Temple, formerly in the possession of Lord Somers, states, that the students and professors of the Common Law made interest with the Earl of Lancaster for a lodging in the Temple, and first gained a footing therein as lessees. The permanent settlement of the Court of Common Pleas, the grand tribunal for disputes of property, in one certain place at Westminster, brought together the professors of the Municipal Law, who had been previously dispersed about the kingdom, the practice of the Municipal Law became confined to laymen, the episcopal constitutions having forbade clerks and priests to practise as advocates in the Common Law Courts, unless in defence of their own property, or that of the poor and destitute. Being excluded from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, they established a University of their own, for the study of the laws of the land, where exercises were performed, lectures delivered, and degrees conferred, as at other universities. The Crown, says Sir William Blackstone, seems to have taken under its protection this infant seminary of Common Law; and the more effectually to foster and cherish it, King Henry the Third, in the nineteenth year of his reign, issued an order, directed to the mayor and sheriffs of London, commanding that no regent of any law school within that city, should, for the future, teach law therein. The Temple (taking nearly Sir John Fortescue's words), situated in the suburbs of the city, away from its noise and bustle, and a reasonable distance from the Court at Westminster, with a ready and easy access thereto by water, was undoubtedly a desirable retreat for this legal Society, and measures seem to have been promptly taken to secure its possession. The name of the old military monks descended upon the lessees of their conventual tenements, and the law yers became templars; continuing to rent the premises under the Knights Hospitallers, until Henry the Eighth disbanded the latter, at the dissolution of the monasteries. Since then, the Templars have rented their estate of the Crown.-Athenæum. The Gatherer. Michael Kelly and the Income Tax.-The following dialogue took place between Kelly and the Commissioners of Pitt's Income Tax, and is given in his Reminiscences, "Sir," said I," I am free to confess that I have erred in my return; but vanity was the cause, and vanity is the badge of all my tribe. I have returned myself as having 500l. per annum, when, in fact, I have not 500 pence of certain income." "Pray, Sir," said the Commissioner, "are you not stage manager of the Opera House?" "Yes, Sir," said I; "but there is not even a nominal salary attached to that office; I perform its duties to gratify my love of music.” “Well, but, Mr. Kelly," continued my examiner, "you teach ?” I do, Sir," answered I: "but I have no pupils.” “I think," observed another gentleman, who had not spoken before, "that you are an oratorio and concert singer?" "You are quite right," said I to my antagonist," but I have no engagement." "Well, but at all events," observed my first inquisitor," You have a very good salary at Drury Lane ?" "A very good one, indeed, Sir," answered I; "but then, it is never paid." "But you have always a fine benefit, Sir," said the other, who seemed to know something of theatricals. Always, Sir," was my reply; "but the expenses attending it are very great, and whatever profit remains after defraying them is mortgaged to liquidate debts incurred by building my saloon. The fact is, Sir, I am at present very like St. George's Hospital, supported by voluntary contributions, and have even less certain income than I felt sufficiently vain to return." 66 cording to the Parisian journals, it appears The Cropping System in France.-Acthat the wholesale dealers in human hair have had a most successful harvest this year, not less than 200,000lbs. weight having been procured. Brittany is the province of France in which the traffic is mostly carried on; and all the fairs are regularly attended by purchasers, both male and female. The Breton peasants have particularly fine hair, and generally in great abundance. Their beautiful tresses they are perfectly willing to sell; and it is no uncommon sight to see several girls sheared one after the other like sheep, and many others standing ready for the shears, with their caps in their hands, and their long hair combed out and hanging down to their waists. Every successive crop of hair is tied up into a wisp by itself, and thrown into a large basket, placed by the side of the operator. The highest value given by these abominable hair-merchants for a fine crop of hair is twenty sous! but the more frequent consideration is a gaudy, but trumpery cotton handkerchief, worth about sixteen sous ! The profit thus netted by these hairmongers must be enormous. Notions of" Happiness."-A gentleman walking through Knightsbridge, on Saturday, overheard the following conversation between a man and a woman, who appeared as if just come from some pleasure trip into the country:- -Woman- Blow me, Bill, how tired I do feel. I'm as miserable, too, as a starved herring. What a miserable world this is! I wish I'd never been born, that I do; and now I am born I wish myself dead again.' Man-"Why, Bet, what's the matter with you now? What are you grumbling about?" Woman-"Why don't I tell yer I am as miserable as a rat?" Man-"Miserable, indeed! Why what on earth would yer have? You was drunk on Monday, and you was drunk again on Wednesday, and I'm blessed if you haven't had near enough to-day. If that aint enough pleasure for yer I don't know what is. I supposes you want to be a downright hangel here upon earth."-Bolton Chronicle. The Mississippi.-But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great Father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour: its strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees now twining themselves together in great rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy lazy foam works up, to float upon the water's top; now rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair; now glancing singly by, like giant leeches; and now writhing round and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollowcheeked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything: nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon. For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more dan gerous obstacles, the snags or sawyers, which are the hidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide. Looking down upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, as these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came starting up again, head first, when the boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few among them for the moment under water. Sometimes the engine stopped during a long interval, and then before her and behind, and gathering close about her on all sides, were so many of these ill-favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in; the centre of a floating island; and was constrained to pause until they parted somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and opened by degrees a channel out.-Dickens's American Notes. Rising Geniuses in America.-Scene in a School-room.-Master-" Fuss class 'n jegrafee!" Scholars-" Yeth'er." Master"Tummas, what's the biggest river in Ameriky?" "The Tombigbee, zar: Ike keeps a pinchin' on me.' "Take yer 66 66 66 seats; fuss class in parsin'!" "Yeth'er." 'Moses, parse 'Arkansas-sixth line from top." "A-r-k ark, a-n-s arkans, a-s ass, Arkansas." "Pronounce it Arkansaw; but, Moses, you ain't spellin'-yer parsin', child." "O, yeth'er, Harkandshaw is a noun, objectiv' case, indicativ' mood, comparative degree, third and in nominativ' case to scizzars." "You haven't said what gender, Moses." "Feminine gender." Why?"-" Corzitz-" "Next!" "Donno. "Next!" "Corzitz a female." "Next!" 66 David, you know?" Forgotten, zar." "Come, 66 Yeth'er." "Well, why is Arkansas of the feminine gender, David?" "Corzitz, why corzitz got Miss Soury on the north, Louisa Anna on the souf, Mrs. Sippy on the east, and ever so many more she-females on the west." Very well, David, you may go the head; you're a rising genius, and 'll make a man before yer mother." Yeth'er."— Glasgow Saturday Post. 66 66 Classical Education.-If a man is able to continue his studies till his twenty-eighth or thirtieth year, by all means let him learn Latin and Greek. If he must terminate them at one-and-twenty, we should in general advise him to be satisfied with the modern languages. If he is forced to enter into active life at fifteen or sixteen, we should thing it best that he should confine himself entirely to his native tongue, and thoroughly imbue his mind with the spirit of its best writers.-Edinburgh Review. Old Age of the Literary Character.Isaac Walton still glowed while writing some of the most interesting biographies in his eighty-fifth year, and in the ninetieth enriched the poetical world with the first publication of a romantic tale. Bodmer, beyond eighty, was occupied on Homer, and Wieland on Cicero's Letters. Hobbes exulted that he had outlived his enemies and was still the same Hobbes; and to demonstrate the reality of this existence, published, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, his version of the Odyssey, and the following year his Iliad. The venerable Bede, the instructor of his generation, and the historian for so many successive ones, expired in the act of dictating. Petrarch was found dead, lying on a folio in his library.-D'Israeli. Facts.-Facts are the landmarks to the understanding; he who is without them resembles a mariner who sails along the treacherous coast without either rudder or compass.-Lord Bacon. LONDON: Published by CUNNINGHAM and MORTIMER, Adelaide Street, Trafalgar Square; and sold by all Booksellers and Newsmen. T. C. Savill, Printer, 107, St. Martin's Lane. F we do have a partiality for one species of the genus antique rather than another, the preference is certainly exerted in favour of an old abbey or priory, where the hallowed walls, hoary with age, speak in a language that requires no interpreter of by-gone centuries- where there is just enough remaining to remind us of what is absent and where every crumbling fragment tells of departed greatness. Often have we encountered such in our wanderings, flinging Art's picturesque beauty over the face of Nature, and lending fresh charms to the woodlands or the vale. Now we have paused in admiration before the groined arches and fantastic doorway, once richly ornamented with cornices and statues, and now disfigured by mutilations from the VOL. XL. ruthless hand of time; and anon we have been betrayed into a smile at seeing headless saints kneeling, with fractured joints, to angels, who could none of them boast the usual complement of eyes or wings, whilst isolated hands, with an unequal supply of fingers, appeared silently to reproach with neglect the arms that kept at such an unseemly distance. We have pioneered our path, through brier and thistle, to the vaulted dome, now open to the sky, where the moss covered portals still pointed out the refectory; and many a sigh has it cost us to think how many years have passed since human forms have gathered round that spot, or since its surface had been illumed by lamp or taper. There rang the joyous laugh-there was the festal song sent round with wine-and there, perhaps, [No. 1141, B B sort, and diligent search being made for the royal remains, they were discovered and recommitted to the earth with great solemnity. The earl, we presume, being further admonished, then rebuilt the monastery from its foundation. Waltheof, his successor, gave it, with all its possessions and St. Oswald's body into the bargain, to the monks of Jarrow. Earl Albrey confirmed the grave, and the buildings were soon afterwards made cells to the church at Durham. In 1090, Earl Mowbray refounded Tynemouth, and filled it with monks of the order of the Black Canon, and out of enmity to the Bishop of Durham, made it a cell to the monastery of St. Albans. When he conspired against William Rufus, Mowbray converted the priory into a fortress, which, after a desperate siege of two months, was taken by storm. Mowbray contrived to escape to Bamborough Castle; but being even there insecure, he returned for sanctuary here, was dragged from the altar, and imprisoned for life. After this time, its history is soon traced. The churches of Eglinham, Norton, and Hartburn, were given to the monks for the purpose of "bettering their ale and enlarging their hospitality;" and after having undergone various mutations of fortune, it was finally fortified, about a century ago, for the purpose of repelling the French and opposing their threatened invasion. Never was a more wanton and more needless desecration committed than this on Tynemouth Priory. did the oily, shaven monks, apply those welcome offerings of gold to uses of which the pious devotees who gave them never dreamed. Now the cross and crosier have yielded to the mattock and the spade; whilst the once costly tesselated pavement is overspread with a slimy, green mould, and the proud towers have sunk, like their builders, to the ground, and delved for themselves a grave in the yielding surface of the earth beneath. And this has been the end of man's proud ambition-this the goal to which all his wishes tended! How sad a monument of human vanity! how melancholy an illustration of human frailty! But to the subject of our sketch, Tinmouth, or, more properly, Tynemouth Priory, is situated in the parish of the same name at the mouth of the Tyne, and standing on an eminence, has a bold and commanding view over the sea that washes its base. Though its origin is both remote and uncertain, most topographers have concurred in dating the period of its first erection as a mere wooden chapel, in the popular reign of Edwine, King of Northumbria, whose beauteous daughter Rosella took the veil in it. St. Oswald, his successor, rebuilt it with stone, about the year 826, and dedicated it to St. Mary. Its reputation now speedily increased, and the dead were brought from all parts of the neighbourhood to be buried at it, great sanctity being attributed to the place in consequence of the number of illustrious persons who performed divine service in the oratory of the Virgin. Amongst those interred were the royal martyr Oswald, King Edred, Henry the hermit of Coquet Island, Malcolm King of Scotland, his son Prince Edward, and other illustrious persons. But notwithstanding the local veneration paid, it was fated not long to continue undisturbed. The Danes, during one of their ravaging incursions, destroyed it; and as the reiterated attacks of that warlike people completely extinguished the glimmering light of Christianity in those parts, the recollection of King Oswald was utterly obliterated, and so it continued, till, in the time of Tostig, Earl of Northumberland, the saint, vexed doubtless at this neglect of his name, busily bestirred himself, and with a forethought for which ghosts have rarely obtained credit, appeared at the bedside of Edmund the sexton, and having frightened him sufficiently, revealed the place of his burial, The sexton, it seems, told it to his wife the next morning as a great secret; and this communication, coupled with a strict injunction not to reveal it to any one, of course induced her to blazon the matter over the whole neighbourhood, with which the ghost, being acquainted with the proverbial characteristic of women, was, we doubt not, highly delighted. Hence it came to the ears of Judith, the earl's con Scott speaks, in Marmion, of "Tynemouth's haughty prioress," and adds that many a vow was made at the shrine by the distressed mariners who were driven towards the iron-bound coast of Northum berland in stormy weather. At one period, it was a nunnery; and then it was, that Virca, Abbess of Tynemouth, presented the holy St. Cuthbert with a rare windingsheet, in sepulchral emulation, we presume, of the Lady Tuda,. who had sent him, just before, a coffin, for which mortuary gifts St. Cuthbert expressed himself truly grateful. Another anecdote, of a similar nature, from the monkish chronicles of the times, may be here recorded, to shew the reputed sanctity of the place. On August 20th, 1384, being the festival of St. Oswald's passion, whilst a sailor was hewing a piece of wood for his ship at Newcastle-on-Tyne, he perceived blood to flow from it, and immediately recollecting the day, ceased from his employment. A companion of his, disregarding the miracle, came and struck it again, but immediately blood gushed more violently than before from every part that was cut, as if one's breast had been painfully lacerated by a sword, The matter was told to the clergy, who, with the laity, approved of the omen; and, after having consecrated it, they conveyed it with great pomp to Tynemouth Priory, at where it was placed by the body of the saint, and worked many miracles, least, so says the monkish historian, and far be it from us to deny the truth of a statement so veraciously recorded. In the year 1642, some curious relics of the Roman invasion were here discovered, together with a Saxon chalice, to which the neighbouring peasantry attached great reverence as a preservative from witchcraft, -a precaution not unnecessary, if we trust to the description given by an old author in his " Wytche of Tynemouth," who speaks of her living "In a gloomy pit, o'ergrown with briers, Close by the ruins of a mouldering abbey, Midst graves and grots that crumble near the charnel house, Fenced with the slime of caterpillars' kells An abode which we should have but little inclination to exchange with her. Her pastimes are quaintly described as stealing forth "To find relief in fogs And rotten mists that hang upon the fens Sour the milk, so maids can churn it not, Get vials of their blood, and where the sea A catalogue of supernatural amusements, which it must be confessed are far from being altogether ladylike or exemplary, A donjon or penance vault is still shewn to the curious traveller as that chiefly patronised by Tynemouth's witch. It is a kind of crypt, and is supposed to have been projected as far back as the time of Ceolwolf, or Colwulf, a King of Northumberland, who flourished in the eighth century. The venerable Bede dedicated to him his "Ecclesiastical History," which speaks well for his learned reputation at all events. His love for the good things of this world, however, seems not to have militated against his sanctity; for it is recorded, that finding the air of the north cold and raw, he indulged the monks with the free use of wine and ale. These penance vaults were occasionally used as cemeteries for those whose unsanctified bodies were not permitted to pollute the choir, and also corresponded to the Geissel-Gewolbe of the German convents, being a kind of chapter for the discussion of business relating to the priory. The architecture of this priory is singularly light and beautiful-the broken groins of arches belonging to the roof being turned with rich mouldings. Various grants of land were made to it by successive kings, which considerably extended the value and property of the abbey; and to the munificence of King John it owed great liberties. Though the latter were infringed upon by Edward III., he afterwards fully restored them, from his respect to the two martyrs, St. Alban and St. Oswald. The present remains of the ancient priory are still highly interesting, being principally of the early style of English architecture, with some portions of earlier date in the north aisle. They chiefly consist of a gateway, exploratory turret, the eastern part of the church, and the crypt before mentioned. The approach from the west is by the castle, of which the walls alone remain; and the picturesque foreground of fishermen's cottages, mouldering ruins and lichen, festooned turrets, creates a most pictorial contrast to the extensive range of sea and sky beyond. Indeed, altogether we know of few spots better deserving the pencil of the artist than that known as "Tynemouth E. L. B. Priory." VARUS. A TALE OF THE TIME OF HONORIUS. THE events that immediately followed are recorded in history. In the year 410, Alaric took and sacked Rome; swept like a pestilence through Italy, devastating it from end to end, and about a year afterwards died, not improbably from his excesses after so great a conquest. His fierce and devoted followers turned aside a river from its course, dug in its proper bed a capacious tomb, which they filled-along with the body of Alaric the Goth-with jewels and immense treasures, that had been taken by him from the imperial city; then having had it closed up, and the river again directed over it, they slew those who had been concerned in the work, so that no one to this day knows the spot in which the conqueror of Italy reposes. But the inhabitants of Rome and other Italian cities had been compelled to seek refuge in the provinces of the empire, while it remained such. They fled to Egypt, Africa, Syria, Spain, and not a few to Gaul and Britain. Amongst those who had left Italy, when there was no longer empire or possessions to defend, was Varus, whose valour and conduct in these desperate times had raised him to the rank, first of a centurion, and subsequently that of tribune -an empty title, now that the Roman people no longer existed. Having collected together what resources he could in money and valuables, he passed, as unobservedly as he could, into Gaul, where the shadow of the Roman power was still kept up by Ætius, and other of the Roman generals. The apprehensions of Varus for the fate of Britain were none other than those of the rest of the thinking world. The Picts and Scots had renewed their incursions in a |