Chapter XVI

Warwick, farewell! Long may thy fortunes stand,
And sires of sires hold rule within thy walls,
Thy streaming banners to the breeze expand,
And the heart's griefs pass lightly o'er thy halls!
May happier bards, on Avon's sedgy shore,
Sustain on nobler lyre thy poet's vow,
And all thy future lords (what can they more?)
Wear the green laurels of thy fame, as now!

[6] These lines will form a beautiful pendant to the picturesque
Engraving of WARWICK CASTLE, in No. 357 of the MIRROR--as well as
to the very interesting antiquarian description by our esteemed
correspondent _L.L._

NOTES.

One of the towers of Warwick Castle is complimented with the name of Guy's Tower; certain ponderous armour and utensils preserved in the lodge are also attributed to Guy; nobody, in short, thinks of Guy without Warwick, or of Warwick without Guy; "Arms and the Man" ought to have been emblazoned on the castle banner; and why should I hesitate to say, that one of the most amiable of children perpetuates the heroic name within its walls? Had this renowned adventurer been ambitious of patriarchal honours, his descendants might have extended the ancestral renown, and have furnished many a ballad of those good old times; but when the Saxon Ulysses had returned from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and made an end of Colbrand and the Dun Cow, his fancy was to take alms in disguise from his own fair lady, at his own castle gate, and then retire (_tous les goúts sont respectables_) to a certain hole or cave called Guy's Cliff, where he amused himself (in the intervals of rheumatism) for the rest of his natural life in counting his beads and ruminating on his sins, which, as he was a great traveller and a hero, might have been considerable.

STANZA III.

The following interesting passage is copied from a book of ordinary occurrence, in which it is cited without stating the authority. It is more than doubtful if any other nobleman in the kingdom, at that time or since, has projected or executed so much on his own property as the late Earl of Warwick:--

"I purchased a magnificent collection of pictures by Vandyke, Rubens, &c. The marbles are not equalled, perhaps, in the kingdom. I made a noble approach to the castle through a solid rock, built a porter's lodge, and founded a library full of books, some valuable and scarce, all well chosen. I made an armoury, and built walls round the court and pleasure gardens. I built a noble green-house, and filled it with beautiful plants. I placed in it a vase, considered the finest remain of Grecian art, for its size and beauty. I made a noble lake, from 3 to 600 feet broad, and a mile long. I planted trees, now worth 100,000l., besides 100 acres of ash. I built a stone bridge of 105 feet in span, every stone from 2,000 to 3,800 lbs in weight. The weight of the first tier on the centre was estimated at 1,000 tons. I gave the bridge to the town with no toll on it. I will not enumerate a great many other things done by me. Let Warwick Castle speak for itself."

STANZA X.

There is a _feeling of respect_ inspired by ancient buildings of importance. Such a castle as Warwick, which has lodged a succession of generations of the most opposite characters--at one time the "dulcis et quieti animi vir, et qui, cougruo suis moribus studio, vitam egit et clausit;" at another by the assassin of Piers de Gaveston, the king's favourite, "whose head he cut off upon Blacklow Hill, and gave the friars preachers the charge of his body, inasmuch as he had called the said earl the Black Dog of Arderne"--is not to be approached as one visits a handsome stone house of Palladian architecture!--such a house we know can never have been the scene either of council or conspiracy; within such walls there can never have been "latens odium inter regem et proceres, et præsecipuè inter comitem de Warwick et adhærentes ejusdem."

As to the river and its swans. I have learned from the bard to whom it has been long since consecrated, (although he may not have had the right of fishing in it when alive,) that "discretion is the better part of valour."

If I were to describe the walks, I should only say that they were contrived, as all walks ought to be, to let in the sun or to shut him out by turns. Here you rejoice in the fulness of his meridian strength, and here in the shadows of various depth and intensity, which a well disposed and happily contrasted sylvan population knows how to effect. The senatorial oak, the spreading sycamore, the beautiful plane, (which I never see without recollecting the channel of the Asopus and the woody sides of Oeta,) the aristocratic pine running up in solitary stateliness till it equal the castle turrets--all these, and many more, are admirably intermingled and contrasted, in plantations which establish, as every thing in and about the castle does, the consummate taste of the late earl, although it must be admitted he had the finest subjects to work upon, from the happy disposition of the ground. I shall never forget the first time I walked over them; a pheasant occasionally shifting his quarters at my intrusion, and making his noisy way through an ether so clear, so pure, so motionless, that the broad leaves subsided, rather than fell to the ground, without the least disturbance; the tall grey chimneys just breathing their smoke upon the blue element, which they scarcely stained; every green thing was beginning to wear the colour of decay, and many a tint of yellow, deepening into orange, made me sensible that "there be tongues in trees," if not "good in every thing." But Montaigne says nothing is useless, _not even inutility itself_.

STANZA XIII.

This superb work of antiquity must indeed be seen, to be sufficiently estimated: the great failure of that branch of the fine arts which is employed to represent all the rest, is in the inadequate idea of size which it must necessarily give where the objects to be represented are large.

The marble vases now extant are, of course, comparatively few in number, and this is, perhaps, excepting the Medicean, the finest of them all. The best representations of it are those in Piranesi, three in number. One great, and conspicuous beauty of this vase consists in the elegantly formed handles, and in the artful insertion of the extreme branches of the vine-stems which compose them, into its margin, where they throw off a rich embroidery of leaves and fruit. A lion's skin, with the head and claws attached, form a sort of drapery, and the introduction of the thyrsus, the lituus, and three bacchanalian masks on each side, complete the embellishments. The capacity of this vase is 103 gallons, its diameter 9 feet, its pedestal of course modern. It was discovered in 1770, in the draining of a mephitic lake within the enclosure of the Villa Adriana, called Laga di Pantanello. Lord Warwick had reason to be proud of his vase, which had this peculiarity, that, whereas almost every other object of art in the kingdom has been catalogued and sold over and over again, this vase passed (after a sufficiently long parenthesis of time) _immediately from the gardens of Adrian to his own!_

_Blackwood's Magazine._

* * * * *

Manners & Customs of all Nations.

* * * * *

HEAVING.

_(For the Mirror.)_

They have a ludicrous custom in Staffordshire, at Easter, which they call heaving. The males claim Easter Monday, and the females Tuesday, and on this day a group of the latter assemble, and every male they meet with they seize, and one of them salutes him with a kiss, after which they all lay hold of him and heave him up as high as they can, for this they require some donation, which, if refused, they will seize his hat, handkerchief, or any thing they can lay hold of. This lasts till twelve o'clock. Sometimes old women collect together, and then woe be to the person who does not present them with a trifle, and thus stop their proceedings; for if not, their snuffy beaks might come in contact with their prisoners' lips. They often collect 10 or 12s. and spend it in carousing at night.

W.H.

* * * * *

CONVICTS IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

The regular hours of work are from sun-rise to sun-set; but so few settlers get up to see that this time is kept, that a much shorter period is generally employed in labour. The expense of maintaining a convict is rather a difficult calculation: where there are many men, they are, of course, supported at much less per man than where there are but few, from being able to buy slop clothes, tea, and the other necessaries, at wholesale prices, of the importing merchant. The waste, also, made by the convicts in their meat, &c. is a serious consideration: the head and entrails of animals slaughtered for their use, and which an English labourer would be glad of, are thrown away as only fit for the dogs; nothing but the body and legs are deemed sufficiently good for these dainty characters. Taking all expenses into consideration, I think that from 25l. to 30l. per man may be estimated as the annual cost--_Widowson's Present State of Van Dieman's Land_.

* * * * *

THROWING STONES AT THE DEVIL.

On arriving at Wady Muna, each nation encamped upon the spot which custom has assigned to it, at every returning Hadj. After disposing of the baggage, the hadjys hastened to the ceremony of throwing stones at the devil. It is said that, when Abraham or Ibrahim returned from the pilgrimage to Arafat, and arrived at Wady Muna, the devil Eblys presented himself before him at the entrance of the valley, to obstruct his passage; when the angel Gabriel, who accompanied the patriarch, advised him to throw stones at him, which he did, and after pelting him seven times, Eblys retired. When Abraham reached the middle of the valley, he again appeared before him, and, for the last time, at its western extremity, and was both times repulsed by the same number of stones. According to Azraky, the Pagan Arabs, in commemoration of this tradition, used to cast stones in this valley as they returned from the pilgrimage; and setup seven idols at Muna, of which there was one in each of the three spots where the devil appeared, at each of which they cast three stones. Mohammed, who made this ceremony one of the chief duties of the hadjys, increased the number of stones to seven. At the entrance of the valley, towards Mezdelfe, stands a rude stone pillar, or rather altar, between six or seven feet high, in the midst of the street, against which the first seven stones are thrown, as the place where the devil made his first stand: towards the middle of the valley is a similar pillar, and at its western end a wall of stones, which is made to serve the same purpose. The hadjys crowded in rapid succession round the first pillar, called "Djamrat el Awla;" and every one threw seven small stones successively upon it; they then passed to the second and third spots (called "Djamrat el Owsat," and "Djamrat el Sofaly," or "el Akaba," or "el Aksa,") where the same ceremony was repeated. In throwing the stones, they are to exclaim, "In the name of God; God is great (we do this) to secure ourselves from the devil and his troops." The stones used for this purpose are to be of the size of a horse-bean, or thereabouts; and the pilgrims are advised to collect them in the plain of Mezdelfe, but they may likewise take them from Muna; and many people, contrary to the law, collect those that have already been thrown.--_Burckhardt's Travels_.

* * * * *

THE GATHERER.

A snapper up of unconsidered trifles.

SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

THE COACHMAN.

The moment he has got his seat and made his start, you are struck at once with the perfect mastership of his art. The hand just over his left thigh, the arm without constraint, steady, and with a holding command that keeps his horses like clock-work; yet to a superficial observer quite with loose reins; so firm and compact he is, that you seldom observe any shifting, only to take a shorter purchase for a run down hill; his right hand and whip are beautifully in unison; the crop, if not in a direct line with the box, over the near wheel, raised gracefully up as it were to reward the near side horse; the thong--the thong after three twists, which appears in his hand to have been placed by the maker never to be altered or improved ...... and if the off-side horse becomes slack, to see the turn of his arm to reduce a twist, or to reverse, if necessary, is exquisite: after being _placed under the rib_, or upon the shoulder point, up comes the arm, and with it the thong returns to the elegant position upon the crop! I say elegant! the stick, highly polished yew--rather light--not too taper--yet elastic; a thong in clean order, pliable. All done without effort--merely a turn of the wrist!

* * * * *

At twelve o'clock at noon, on the day before Easter, the resurrection service begins at the Quirinal Chapel at Rome; when a curtain is drawn back, which conceals a picture of our Lord: bells ring, drums are beaten, guns are fired, and joy succeeds to mourning.

* * * * *

ACROSTIC ON "THE MIRROR."

MIRROR! methinks your name indeed is true
In every other point, except that you,
Resplendent with the wisdom of mankind,
Reflect not to the _sight_, but to the _mind_.
Oh! may success then to your pains accrue,
Rewarding all your merit with its due.