Part 3

"On the 3rd of May, 10th of August, and the eve of the festivals of Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, annually, the whole of the brethren and the steward of the house assemble and form two lines or ranks, at sunset, within the door of the outer gateway; when, to every person (even to infants) who applies at the gate, is given a loaf of brown bread, weighing about three pounds. This distribution is continued until all the bread is given away; and if the applicants should exceed the loaves in number, to each of the remaining persons is given an halfpenny, be they ever so numerous.

"These 'doles' are very beneficial to the poor of Winchester and vicinity; for to all who attend and obtain an early admission a loaf is given. I know, that when I was a boy, and never missed going to the 'doles,' some families, where the children were numerous, received from seven to ten loaves.

"Likewise every traveller who applies at the porter's lodge at the outer gate of this hospital is entitled to, and receives, a horn of good beer and a loaf or slice of bread. This demand is frequently made by persons of a different quality from that intended by the founder, for the sake of attesting the peculiarity of the custom. The quantity of bread given to each person is about four ounces--of beer about three-fourths of a pint."

We next proceed to describe the exterior of the venerable church: the _interior_ will form the subject of a future article.

On entering the second court the first object that usually attracts attention is _the Church of St. Cross_, which extends a considerable distance into the court, and destroys its regularity on the east side. The exterior of the church is not altogether imposing. "The windows, with one exception, are seen to disadvantage from without, and the whole building is enveloped in a shroud of yellow gravelly plaister, strangely dissonant with ideas of Norman masonry."[9] The church is built in the cathedral form, with a nave and transept, and a low and massive tower, rising from the intersection: the whole length of the church is 150 feet; the length of the transept is 120 feet. The architecture of this structure is singularly curious, and deserving the attention of the antiquary, as it appears to throw a light on the progress, if not on the origin, of the pointed or English style. Our Correspondent states the whole to have been repaired about twenty-two years since, at a very considerable expense.

[3] Milner's Winchester, vol. ii. p. 141.

[4] Life of Wykeham. By Allan Cunningham--in the _Family Library_. The reference to the "_four_ masters" is evidently an error.

[5] Beauties of England and Wales, vol. vi. p. 108, Hants. Mr. Cunningham states these additions to have been made by Wykeham. We shall presently come to the details of Beaufort's additions to the building.

[6] A zealous Correspondent, _P.Q._, whose contribution appears in the next page, describes this gateway as resembling St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, which Mr. Malcom thinks "one of the most perfect remains of monastic buildings in London." It consists of one capacious arch, with an arched mullioned window in the centre above it; and is flanked by two square towers. From this place issued the early numbers of the _Gentleman's Magazine;_ and a wood-cut of the building appears to this day on the wrapper of that valuable work, which, for knowledge and utility, is as superior to the Magazine frippery of the present day as Michael Angelo to John Nash.

[7] Milner's Winchester, vol. ii. p. 146.

[8] The present Earl succeeded to the title on the death of his cousin, Francis, the learned Chancellor of the University of the Ionian Islands, founded by himself, and which he richly endowed with a noble bequest and a splendid library. His Lordship is Rector of St. Mary's, Southampton, Old and New Abresford and Medstead, in Hampshire, a Prebendary of Winchester, and Master of St. Cross, Hospital.

Among many famous men who have presided over the Hospital, was Colonel John Lisle, of Moyles Court, Regicide, and M.P. for the City of Winchester.

[9] From a paper in _The Crypt_, an antiquarian journal, printed at Ringwood, Hants, in the year 1827. The writer observes that Dr. Milner has uniformly applied the term _Saxon_ to the circular arches in this structure, as well as to similar specimens; but subsequent topographers have arrived at the more probable conclusion, that very slight remains, if any, now exist of ecclesiastical edifices by the Saxons.

* * * * *

THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

* * * * *

SCRAPS FROM THE DIARY OF A TRAVELLER.

BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.

O poets, poets, dream at home, If you would _still_ have visions haunt you; Trust me, if once abroad you roam, That mar-all, Truth, will disenchant you. Still think of VENICE, as in dreams You've seen her, by her ocean-streams;-- Fancy the calm and cool delights Of gondolas on summer nights: Of sailing o'er the bright Lagoon, And listening, as you glide along, To lays from TASSO, by that moon Whose beams, alas! he felt too strong, And of whose mad'ning philters all, Who feel the Muse's genuine call, Are doom'd, at times, to drink as deep, As did Endymion in his sleep!

Still by your fire-sides sit, and think Of palaces, along the brink Of ocean-floods,--whose shadows there Look like the ruins, grand and fair, Of some lost ATALANTIS, seen Beneath the wave, when heaven's serene. People those palaces with forms Lovely as TITIAN ever drew-- Bright creatures, whom the sunbeam warms With that ethereal gas, all through. Which finds a vent at lips and eyes, And lights up in a lover's sighs. Fancy these young Venetian maids Listening, at night, to serenades From amorous lutes, where Music, such As southern skies alone afford, Echoes to every burning touch, And thrills in each impassion'd chord.

All this imagine, and still more,-- For whither may not Fancy soar, If Truth do not, alas! too soon, Puncture her brilliant air-balloon-- But go not to the spot, I pray; O do not, _do_ not, some fine day. Order, like STERNE, your travelling breeches;-- All's lost, if once upon your way, The passport of Lord ---- Is death to Fancy--like his speeches.

If you would save _some_ dreams of youth From the torpedo touch of Truth, Go not to VENICE--do not blight Your early fancies with the sight Of her true, real, dismal state-- Her mansions, foul and desolate,-- Her close canals, exhaling wide Such fetid airs as--with those domes Of silent grandeur, by their side, Where step of life ne'er goes or comes, And those black barges plying round With melancholy, plashing sound,-- Seem like a city, where the Pest Is holding her last visitation, And all, ere long, will be at rest, The dead, sure rest of desolation.

So look'd, at night-fall, oft to me That ruin'd City of the Sea; And, as the gloomy fancy grew Still darker with night's darkening hue, All round me seem'd by Death o'ercast,-- Each footstep in those halls the last; And the dim boats, as slow they pass'd, All burial-barks, with each its load Of livid corpses, feebly row'd By fading hands, to find a bed In waters less choked up with dead.--_Metropolitan_.

* * * * *

ON THE DEATH OF SIR WALTER SCOTT.

_By the Author of "Eugene Aram."_

The blow is struck--the lyre is shattered--the music is hushed at length. The greatest--the most various--the most commanding genius of modern times has left us to seek for that successor to his renown which, in all probability, a remote generation alone will furnish forth. It is true that we have been long prepared for the event--it does not fall upon us suddenly--leaf after leaf was stripped from that noble tree before it was felled to the earth at last;--our sympathy in his decay has softened us to the sorrow for his death. It is not now our intention to trace the character or to enumerate the works of the great man whose career is run;--to every eye that reads--every ear that hears--every heart that remembers, this much at least, of his character is already known,--that he had all the exuberance of genius and none of its excesses; that he was at once equitable and generous--that his heart was ever open to charity--that his life has probably been shortened by his scrupulous regard for justice. His career was one splendid refutation of the popular fallacy, that genius has of necessity vices--that its light must be meteoric--and its courses wayward and uncontrolled. He has left mankind two great lessons,--we scarcely know which is the most valuable. He has taught us how much delight one human being can confer upon the world; he has taught us also that the imagination may aspire to the wildest flights without wandering into error. Of whom else among our great list of names--the heir-looms of our nation--can we say that he has left us everything to admire, and nothing to forgive?

It is in four different paths of intellectual eminence that Sir Walter Scott has won his fame; as a poet, a biographer, an historian, and a novellist. It is not now a time (with the great man's clay scarce cold) to enter into the niceties of critical discussion. We cannot now weigh, and sift, and compare. We feel too deeply at this moment to reason well---but we ourselves would incline to consider him greatest as a poet. Never, indeed, has there been a poet so thoroughly Homeric as Scott--the battle--the feast--the council--the guard-room at Stirling--the dying warrior at Flodden--the fierce Bertram speeding up the aisle--all are Homeric;--all live--move--breathe and burn--alike poetry, but alike life! There is this difference, too, marked and prominent--between his verse and his prose;--the first is emphatically the verse of Scott--the latter (we mean in its style) may be the prose of any one--the striking originality, the daring boldness, the astonishing vigour of the style, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, are lost in _The Antiquary and Guy Mannering_.

Scott may be said, in prose, to have _no style_. There are those, we know, who call this very absence of style a merit--we will not dispute it: if it be so, Scott is the first great prose writer from Bacon to Gibbon,--nay, from Herodotus, in Greek, to Paul Courier, in French--who has laid claim to it. For our own part, we think him great, in spite of the want of style, and not because of it. As a biographer, he has been unfortunate in his subjects; the two most important of the various lives he has either delineated or sketched--that of Dryden and that of Swift--are men, to whose inexpiable baseness genius could neither give the dignity of virtue nor the interest of error.

As an historian, we confess that we prize him more highly than as a biographer: it is true that the same faults are apparent in both, but there is in the grand History of Napoleon more scope for redeeming beauties. His great, his unrivalled, excellence in description is here brought into full and ample display: his battles are vivid, with colours which no other historian ever could command. And all the errors of the history still leave scenes and touches of unrivalled majesty to the book.

As a novelist, Scott has been blamed for not imparting a more useful moral to his fictions, and for dwelling with too inconsiderate an interest on the chivalric illusions of the past. To charges of this nature all writers are liable. Mankind are divided into two classes; and he who belongs to the one will ever incur the reproach of not seeing through the medium of the other. Certain it is, that we, with utterly different notions on political truths from the great writer who is no more, might feel some regret--some natural pain--that that cause which we believe the best, was not honoured by his advocacy; but when we reflect on the _real_ influence of his works, we are satisfied they have been directed to the noblest ends, and have embraced the largest circle of human interests. We do not speak of the delight he has poured forth over the earth--of the lonely hours he has charmed--of the sad hearts he has beguiled--of the beauty and the music which he has summoned to a world where all travail and none repose; this, indeed, is something--this, indeed, is a moral--this, indeed, has been a benefit to mankind. And this is a new corroborant of one among the noblest of intellectual truths, viz. that the books which please, are always books that, in one sense, benefit; and that the work which is largely and permanently popular--which sways, moulds, and softens the universal heart--cannot appeal to vulgar and unworthy passions (such appeals are never widely or long triumphant!); the delight it occasions is a proof of the moral it inspires.

But this power to charm and to beguile is not that moral excellence to which we refer. Scott has been the first great genius--Fielding alone excepted--who invited our thorough and uncondescending sympathy to the wide mass of the human family--who has _stricken_ (for in this artificial world it requires an effort) into our hearts a love and a respect for those chosen from the people. Shakspeare has not done this--Shakspeare paints the follies of the mob with a strong and unfriendly hand. Where, in Skakspeare, is there a Jeanie Deans? Take up which you will of those numerous works which have appeared, from _Waverley_ to the _Chronicles of the Canongate_,--open where you please, you will find portraits from the people--and your interest keeping watch beside the poor man's hearth. Not, in Scott, as they were in the dramatists of our language, are the peasant, the artificer, the farmer, dragged on the stage merely to be laughed at for their brogue, and made to seem ridiculous because they are useful.

He paints them, it is true, in their natural language, but the language is subservient to the character; he does not bow the man to the phrase, but the phrase to the man. Neither does he flatter on the one hand, as he does not slight on the other. Unlike the maudlin pastoralists of France he contents himself with the simple truth--he contrasts the dark shadows of Meg Merrilies, or of Edie Ochiltree, with the holy and pure lights that redeem and sanctify them--he gives us the poor, even to the gipsey and the beggar, as they really are--contented, if our interest is excited, and knowing that nature is sufficient to excite it. From the palaces of kings--from the tents of warriors, he comes--equally at home with man in all aspects--to the cotter's hearth:--he bids us turn from the pomp of the Plantagenets to bow the knee to the poor Jew's daughter--he makes us sicken at the hollowness of the royal Rothsay, to sympathize with the honest love of Hugh the smith. No never was there one--not even Burns himself--who forced us more intimately to acknowledge, or more deeply to feel, that

"The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd, for a' that."

* * * * *

Scott, is not, we apprehend, justly liable to the charge of wanting a sound moral--even a great _political_ moral--(and political morals are the greatest of all)--in the general tenor of works which have compelled the highest classes to examine and respect the lowest. In this, with far less learning, far less abstract philosophy, than Fielding, he is only exceeded by him in one character--(and that, indeed, the most admirable in English fiction)--the character of Parson Adams. Jeanie Deans is worth a thousand such as Fanny Andrews. Fielding, Le Sage, and Cervantes are the only three writers, since the world began, with whom, as a novelist, he can be compared. And perhaps he excels them, as Voltaire excelled all the writers of his nation, not by the superior merits of one work, but by the brilliant aggregate of many. _Tom Jones, Gil Blas, Don Quixote_, are, without doubt, greater, _much_ greater, productions than Waverley; but the _authors_ of _Tom Jones, Gil Blas_, and even of _Don Quixote_, have not manifested the same fertile and mighty genius as _author_ of the Waverley Novels.

And _that_ genius--seemingly so inexhaustible--is quenched at length! We can be charmed no more--the eloquent tongue is mute--the master's wand is broken up--the right hand hath forgot its cunning-the cord that is loosened was indeed of silver--and the bowl that is broken at the dark well was of gold beyond all price.

* * * * *

When a great man dies, he leaves a chasm which eternity cannot fill. Others succeed to his fame--but never to the exact place which he held in the world's eye;--they may be greater than the one we have lost--but they are not he. Shakspeare built not his throne on the same site as Homer--nor Scott on that whence Shakspeare looked down upon the universe. The gap which Scott leaves in the world is the token of the space he filled in the homage of his times. A hundred ages hence our posterity will still see that wide interval untenanted--a vast and mighty era in the intellectual world, which will prove how spacious were "the city and the temple, whose summit has reached to Heaven."

_New Monthly Magazine_.

* * * * *

TO A ROSE.

THE THOUGHT FROM THE ITALIAN.

Queen of Flora's emerald bowers, Imperial Rose, thou flower of flowers, Wave thy moss-enwreathen stem, Wave thy dewy diadem; Thy crimson luxury unfold, And drink the sunny blaze of gold.

O'er the Zephyr, sportive minion, Spreads the blue, aurelian pinion. Now in love's low whispers winging, Now in giddy fondness clinging, With all a lover's warmth he wooes thee, With all a lover's wiles pursues thee.

And thou wilt yield, and thou wilt give The sigh that none can breathe and live. Like lovelier things, deluded flower, Thy date is short; the very hour That sees thee flourish, sees thee fade; Thy blush, thy being, all a shade. Yet, flower, I'll lay thee on a shrine, That makes thy very death divine.

Couch'd on a bed of living snows, Then breathe thy last, too happy rose! Sweet Queen, thou'lt die upon a throne, Where even thy sweetness is outdone; Young weeper, thou shalt close thine eyes Beside the gates of Paradise. On my Idalia's bosom, thou, Beneath the lustres of her brow, Like pilgrims, all their sorrows past, On Heaven their dying glances cast, Thy crimson beauty shalt recline, Oh, that thy rapturous fate were mine!

_Blackwood's Magazine_.

* * * * *

NEW BOOKS.

LIVES OF SCOTTISH WORTHIES, VOL. II., [Or the 34th volume of the _Family Library_, is rife with interesting details of the proudest areas of Scottish history; but more especially of the chivalric courses of Robert Bruce and James the First. We quote half-a-dozen vividly written pages, from the former, describing the memorable Siege of Berwick, in 1319.]

Considering the importance of Berwick, and the care and expense with which it had been fortified by the king, it was natural that any attempt against it should be viewed with much interest; and when it was known that the son-in-law of Bruce,--a young warrior, whose high rank was rendered more conspicuous by the services he had already rendered to the country,--had been selected as its governor, and that the whole army of England, headed by king Edward, and under the command of the flower of the nobility, had invested it by sea and land, the intense interest with which the siege was watched by both countries may be easily imagined. It concluded, however, in the complete triumph of the steward, and the repulse of the English army; yet not before every device then known in the rude engineering of the times had been essayed by the besiegers, and effectually baffled by the ingenuity and persevering courage of the enemy. After their earthen mounds had been completed, the English, on St. Mary's eve, made a simultaneous assault both by land and by sea. Whilst their force, led by the bravest of their captains, and carrying with them, besides their usual offensive arms, the ladders, crows, pick-axes, and other assistances for an escalade, rushed onwards to the walls with the sound of their trumpets, and the display of innumerable banners, a large vessel, prepared for the purpose, was towed towards the town from the mouth of the river. She was filled with armed soldiers, a party of whom were placed in her boat drawn up mid-mast high; whilst to the bow of the boat was fixed a species of drawbridge, which it was intended to drop upon the wall, and thus afford a passage from the vessel into the town. Yet these complicated preparations failed of success, although seconded by the greatest gallantry; and the English, after being baffled in every attempt to fix their ladders and maintain themselves upon the walls, were compelled to retire, leaving their vessel to be burnt by the Scots, who slew many of her crew, and made prisoner the engineer who superintended and directed the attack.

This unsuccessful attack was, after five days' active preparation, followed by another still more desperate, in which the besiegers made use of a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; and, instead of a single vessel, as on the former occasion, a squadron of ships, with their top castles manned by picked bodies of archers, and their armed boats slung mast high, were ready to sail in with the tide, and anchor beneath the walls. Aware of these great preparations, the Scots, under the encouragement and direction of their governor, laboured incessantly to be in a situation to render them unavailing. By Crab, the Flemish engineer, machines similar to the Roman catapult, moving on wheels, and of enormous strength and dimensions, were constructed and placed on the walls at the spot where it was expected the sow would make its approach. In addition to this, they fixed a crane upon the rampart, armed with iron chains and grappling hooks, and large masses of combustibles and fire-faggots, shaped like tuns, and composed of pitch and flax, bound strongly together with tar ropes, were piled up in readiness for the attack. At different intervals on the walls were fixed the espringalds for the discharge of their heavy darts, which carried on their barbed points little bundles of flaming tow dipped in oil or sulphur; the ramparts were lined by the archers, spearmen, and crossbows; and to each leader was assigned a certain station, to which he could repair on a moment's warning.