THE great secret of doing much is doing one thing at a time.-LOCKE.

THOUGH nothing is so vain as the eager pursuit of empty applause, yet to be well thought of, and to be kindly regarded by the world, is like a glory about a woman's head. 'Tis a perfume she carrieth about with her; 'tis a charm against ill-will. Malice may empty her quiver, but cannot wound: the dirt will not stick-the jests will not take. Without the consent of the world, a scandal doth not go deep: it is only a slight stroke upon the injured party; and returneth with greater force upon those that gave it. The Lady's New Year's Gift.

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so, the parent birds desert or persecute them, and | effectually cast them off. The clamour of the young brood, when thus left to themselves, often attracts attention to the nesting-tree, and some that are weakly, and have fallen from the nest in their first attempt at flight, are usually tamed, and, owing to their sagacious habits, turned to some account.

In former times ravens were much more numerous in this country than they are at present. There is an old saying, "Every rock has its raven;" but these birds are now comparatively rare amongst us in the southern parts of the kingdom. This is accounted for by the consideration that the improved state of cultivation in this land, with the great attention paid to the flocks during winter, must have diminished the food, and consequently thinned the numbers of these birds. The weak and sickly of the flock are now so carefully looked after, that there is no longer opportunity for these birds to seize on their victim, and complete the work which disease had begun. Nor does the raven attempt to intrude himself where his services are not required. In poor and badly-cultivated countries, subject to great variations of climate, he performs an essential service in clearing the land of animal substances in a decaying state, or in destroying such victims of disease as would soon become noisome and injurious to the living around them; these are the situations in which ravens are numerous and busily employed; but where wholesome and sufficient food is provided for the flocks, and they are in a thriving condition, the number of these birds is generally small, and they are only seen at intervals, and rather employed in watching for wild animals that may fall in their way, than for those who participate in the benefits of man's cultivation.

In lowering and stormy weather, sometimes called "ravens' weather," this bird is particularly active. While the rest of the feathered tribe gladly seek shelter from the rain beneath the covert of the forest, or in holes and caverns of the rocks, the raven braves the inclement season for the sake of the prey which he expects to find plentiful at that time. And seldom is he disappointed of his expected feast; for there are many poor birds tired of being long on the wing, or young nestlings that have scarcely learned to fly, that are easily secured as they are battling with the tempest. Young rooks form a favourite food of these birds: between rooks and ravens, therefore, there is eternal enmity; and though the latter have sufficient boldness to attack the nests, and often succeed in carrying off the unfledged rooks, the warfare is so determined and universal on the part of the inhabitants of the rookery, that they do not always succeed. The strokes given by the raven in the conflict are exceedingly powerful; for this bird, keeping his neck in a stiff position, appears to throw the whole weight of his body against his antagonist.

Though ravens are less frequently seen in the southern parts of England than in the northern, and though, when compared with the numerous tribes of rooks and crows, they may be called rare birds, yet it is said, that in traversing the open country, in hilly districts, there are generally some of these birds upon the watch for us, though we may be unable to see them. If a traveller should be pursuing his way in such a district after sunset, when the whole scene has become of a dusky raven hue, he will probably catch sight of one of these birds cautiously following his steps for a great distance, and yet managing his approach so well that, on turning to look at him, he always appears to be hopping away in another direction. But though he appears to be on the retreat, it is nothing less than an oblique method of advancing,

and if the traveller sits down to rest, he will soon find the bird perched on some stone at no great distance from him. Here again the cautious cunning of the raven is manifested: he perches with his tail towards the observer as if he were going to make off in another direction; but he is at the same time secretly looking over his shoulder, to ascertain the state of things. If the traveller now stretches himself on the ground, as if dead, the bird becomes more bold and decided in his approach, but still observes all necessary caution. He is said to make his advances " in perfect conformity with the tactics of a siege, never upon the direct line, but at an angle, working by traverses more and more oblique as he comes nearer, so that when you observe him in motion, he is always as if he were passing by, and regarding you with a mixture of fear and wonder." If he observes any movement of the body, he will take wing, but his flight is with an appearance of pain and difficulty, and, taking a lateral direction, he will generally alight rather nearer to his object than when he set out. Thus gradually and stealthily gaining upon his intended victim, his last step is to dart suddenly at the eyes, and so unexpected and rapid is this movement, after a lengthened and timid approach, that the traveller had need beware how he amuses himself with watching the manœuvres of the bird, at the dreadful risk of being deprived of sight.

The voracity of the raven is expressed by its name, which, when used as a verb, signifies to reave, or tear away, to seize by violence; yet this bird, though greedy of food, and not particular as to the means of obtaining it, is capable of enduring hunger for a very long time. The number of years to which these birds attain has not been ascertained, but they are understood to be extremely long-lived; and it is remarkable that in places where they most abound, a dead raven, unless killed by man, is a most unusual sight.

The raven, when taken young, may be easily tamed, and made use of almost as a dog to watch and protect premises, as well as to devour offal. In the course of their taming, however, they exhibit many mischievous propensities, and require to be closely watched. They show likings and dislikings to particular persons, and will strike very severe blows with their sharp bills. Their peculiar sagacity and acuteness have often been the subject of anecdote.

THERE is no vice which does so overwhelm a man with shame, as to be found false or perfidious; and therefore Montaigne saith very acutely, when he inquired the reason why the giving the lie should be such a disgraceful and odious charge, "if it be well weighed," said he, "to say that a man lies, is as much as to say, he is a bravado towards God, and a coward towards man, for the liar insults God and crouches to man."-LORD BACON.

Is there not practical wisdom in commencing every day with the steady effort to make as much of it as if it were to be our whole existence? If we have duties to perform, in themselves severe and laborious, we may inquire if there be not some way by which to invest them with pleasant associations? A man may find amusement in free thoughts, while following his plough upon the hill-side; in digging up the words for a dictionary, or in copying out a brief; or he may train himself, by an inefficient and shrinking spirit, to recoil from these tasks as insupportable burdens. How many men find their pleasure in what would be the positive horror and torment of the indolent! How weak the spirit, and how silly the vanity, which we display in ever renewing narration of our personal troubles, pains, and misfortunes! If we would have the discretion to measure the sympathy which we may expect from others by that which we are conscious of feeling for theirs of the same character, it would go far to teach us the folly of that querulous spirit, which doles forth the story of sufferings and sorrows, as though the narrator were the only sufferer, and were enti tled to a monopoly of all the passing pity.-FLINT.

LOVE OF HOME.
CHATEAUBRIAND remarks that the finest of moral instincts
implanted in man is the love of his country, and that if
this were not a law sustained by a continual miracle-to
which, like many others, we pay no attention-men would
all have flocked to the temperate zones, leaving the rest of
the globe desert. To obviate such perceptible evils as
would result from this assemblage of the human race on one
spot of the earth, Providence has fixed as it were the feet of
each man to his own individual soil by an invincible load-
stone, so that the frozen shores of the north, and the burning
sands of Africa, are not without their inhabitants.
stronger and nearer to us are the ties that attach us to the
home of our birth, equally implanted in us by Providence
as the source of many virtues. These we can scarce render
an exact account of: each sight and sound, however trivial,
by daily familiarity carries its charm with it-

What are the links that bind thee to thy home?
My mother's smile, my father's reverend head,
My sister's cheerful voice and busy tread;
The old domestic, grown in service gray,
That clock-work like performs his task each day;
The distant watch-dog baying low by night;
The bird that wakes me first in morning light-
The swallow building 'neath my window's eaves;
The church just peeping through yon grove of leaves;
The primrose path that leads me to its door;
The antique tomb dark yews are shading o'er;
The thought that I at length may lie at rest
Where the green sod scarce stranger foot hath prest:
These are the links that bind me to my home.-J. F.

Still

SKIRLAW CHAPEL, YORKSHIRE. SKIRLAW Chapel, in Yorkshire, is a building which has suffered as little, perhaps, from the effects of time, as any ecclesiastical structure of equal antiquity in England: although erected more than four hundred years ago, its appearance presents a remarkable degree of freshness.

There are two villages to which the name of Skirlaw, or Skirlaugh, is attached, both situated at a short distance from the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, in the eastern part of Yorkshire: that to which the ancient chapel belongs is called North Skirlaw, and is about nine miles from Hull. During the reign of King Stephen a priory for Cistertian nuns was founded at North Skirlaw; but of this priory no remains are now to be seen: in the church, however, which once belonged to it, are several monumental effigies, in a

the demesne of Skirlaw:-that the prioress and convent should give him one penny per annum out of every oxgang of land which they held in Skirlaw:and, lastly, that in order to maintain the supremacy of the parish church of Swine over the chapel at Skirlaw, the inhabitants should be obliged to attend Divine service at the former, instead of at the latter, on Easter Sunday. These details are not without their interest to the modern reader, as showing the curious manner in which parochial and monastic affairs were mixed up, at the time when monasteries and nunneries, as well as other institutions of the Roman Catholic church, covered the land.

cut, is that which was built by Walter Skirlaw, bishop The chapel, however, which is represented in our of Durham, somewhere about the year 1400. Scarcely anything is known of the circumstances under which it was built, except that the bishop died before it was quite completed, and left two hundred marks to defray the expenses of the completion after his death. In the reign of Henry the Fourth, A.D. 1402, the king granted a license to Walter Skirlaw, to give a messuage worth one shilling per annum, two tofts of land worth fourpence each, twenty-four acres of land worth threepence per annum per acre, and eleven acres of meadow-land worth fivepence per acre, to the prioress and convent of Swine. This gift is supposed to have been a provision, in some way or other, for a priest to officiate in Skirlaw Chapel, then about being founded.

The chapel is represented as seen from the southwest. It is situated near to, but still detached from, the village of Skirlaw; and its pinnacles, first catching the eye from above the surrounding trees, are said by Mr. Britton to have a very pleasing effect, contrasted with the wide extent of low land to the west of the chapel. There is a tower at the west end, a large window at the east, and an entrance-porch at the south side. The body of the chapel, exclusive of the tower, is about seventy-six feet long, and twenty-two feet wide, with six windows on each side. The base of the tower is surrounded with a series of quatrefoil panels; and the lable mouldings of all the windows (except the upper ones of the tower, which have

high state of preservation, with inscriptions. There heads,) are finished with a shield bearing Skirlaw's arms. A screen across the interior divides the chapel appears to have been a chapel erected either in North into two parts-a body, to which four bay windows on or in South Skirlaw, previous to the erection of the each side are attached, and a chancel, with two bays one to which our attention is at present directed; for on each side: this screen is of carved wood, and is, we are told by Burton, in his Monasticon Eboracense, as well as the pulpit and seats, coeval with the rest of that a controversy arose, in the year 1337, between the building. On each side of the east window is a the inhabitants of Skirlaw, on the one part, and the bracket or support, supposed to have been used to prioress and convent of Swine (the name of the parish hold either tapers or images. In the south wall is a in which Skirlaw is situated), on the other part. piscina-the name given to a perforated stone, usually This controversy related to the right of possession in found in a niche on the right hand side of the altar a certain chantry in the chapel of Skirlaw; and the in our ancient churches, and used to contain the decision being left to William Melton, archbishop of water in which the officiating priests dipped their York, he decided:-that the inhabitants should main-hands, during the performance of the religious ceretain, at their own cost, a priest to perform the duties in Skirlaw Chapel:-that he should be selected and presented by the prioress and convent :-that the inhabitants should provide books, chalice, vestments, candles, bread and wine, and other necessaries for the chapel; and should also keep the chapel in fitting repair: that the prioress and convent should pay 11. 10s. 4d. per annum towards the expenses incurred: -that the sum of five shillings per annum, which the inhabitants had been accustomed to pay to the convent, should be thenceforth discontinued:-that the officiating priest should have two oxgangs* of land in An organg was one of the early measures of land employed in England: it amounted to fifteen acres, being the quantity which it

was supposed-according to the rude estimate of the times-that an ox could plough in the course of the year.

monies. On the north side of the chapel is a small vestry, perfectly plain, and lighted by a small aperture in the wall. The initials W. S. (probably for Walter Skirlaw) still remain in a window on the north side; but the heraldic bearings of the bishop, which were once placed in every window, are now nowhere to be seen; for the winds, on account of the chapel being in a very exposed situation, have gradually destroyed nearly all the glass originally set in the windows. During the last century trees were planted round the chapel, in order to break the force of the wind. The only regular endowment of this chapel is said to be the sum of three pounds six shillings and eightpence per annum, payable out of the township of Martonle-Clay, for the performance of service once a month.

are well drained and brought into cultivation, the little hamlet of Meaux has nothing to boast of, except the fertility of its soil; for nothing can be more dull or less picturesque than the scenery by which it is surrounded.

Within two or three miles of Skirlaw are the remains, or rather the site, of the Abbey of Meaux, which was at one time possessed of considerable influence. Meaux was so called by its inhabitants, who came into England with William the Conqueror, and named their new seat according to the name of the But although Meaux Abbey far eclipsed, in the city of Meaux in Normandy. The founder of this splendour of its ecclesiastical rank, the humble chapel abbey was William le Gros, earl of Albemarle and at Skirlaw, yet the latter was doomed to survive, and lord of Holderness: having vowed to make a pil- to present to the architect a very complete specimen grimage to Jerusalem, and being, on account of his of the architecture of the fourteenth century, while age and infirmities, unable to fulfil it, he built this the former has been so utterly destroyed that no idea monastery by way of commutation for the vow. He of its form now remains; although, from the remains dedicated his new establishment to God and the of curious mosaic pavement of brick, the foundations Blessed Virgin, and introduced into it a convent of of buildings yet to be traced, and the extensive moats monks from Fountain Abbey, near Ripon. The or ditches by which it was surrounded, and which are monks of the new abbey at first earned their living yet discoverable, it is evident that this famous monasby the labour of their own hands, but were soon tery once displayed considerable magnificence. afterwards richly endowed with lands and revenues Swine Priory, to which we before alluded as holding by the earl: they entered on the possession of the considerable sway over Skirlaw Chapel, somewhat reabbey on the 1st of January, 1150. The abbey soon sembled in its history Meaux Abbey. It was founded became very rich, through the bounty of several by Robert de Verli, in the reign of King Stephen, for people of fortune, and the monks were enabled to a prioress and fifteen nuns of the Cistertian order, purchase several valuable estates; among others that and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. No vestige of of Maud Camin, a gentlewoman of property, who sold this priory now remains. to the abbot and monks two parcels of land in the village of Myton, pasture for eight sheep, a toft, or fishery, in the river Humber, two salt-pits, and other possessions: the purchase-money for the whole being only ninety-one marks of silver, which we may reasonably suppose to have been much less than the real value. It is said that the Earl of Albemarle selected this spot on account of its pleasant situation, and that he gave in exchange for it twice as much land at Berwick, near Aldborough. It is difficult, as Mr. Bigland remarks, to conceive what beauties could be found in such a situation; for at that time it was overgrown with woods, and almost, if not wholly, surrounded with morasses; and at present, when the extensive fens, on the edge of which it is situated,

The breaking up of monastic establishments in England, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, influenced in different ways all the three foundations of which we have been speaking. At the suppression of Meaux Abbey, the number of monks was fifty, and the revenues were 2991. 6s. 4d. The annual revenues of Swine Priory were valued at 1347. 6s. 9d.: the priory was surrendered by Dorothy Knight, the last prioress, who received a pension of 131. 6s. Sd. per annum, each of the nuns receiving pensions varying from two to four pounds per annum. The site of the priory was sold, in 1540, to Sir Robert Gresham, who afterwards became the purchaser of the rectory of Swine, together with Skirlaw Chapel and other dependencies.