One mile from Pensford, and another from Chew."
The castle there and noble tower,
Of all the towers of England is held the flower.
Stay curious traveller, and pass not bye,
Until this fetive (elegant) pile astound thine eye,
That shoots aloft into the realms of day,
The Record of the Builder's fame for aie—
The pride of Bristowe and the Western Lande.
When the hoarse waves of Severn are screaming aloud,
And Penline's lofty castle involv'd in a cloud,
If true, the old proverb, a shower of rain,
Is brooding above, and will soon drench the plain.
Once to Rome thy steps incline.
But visit twice St. David's shrine.
When Percelly weareth a hat,
All Pembrokeshire shall weet of that.
"Maidens of England, sore may ye mourn,
For your lemans ye've lost at Bannockburn"
"Some of his skill he taught to me,
And, warrior, I could say to thee,
The words that cleft Eildon Hills in three,
And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone."
Seven years before that awful day,
When time shall be no more,
A watery deluge will o'ersweep
Hibernia's mossy shore.
The green clad Isla too shall sink,
While with the great and good,
Columba's happy isle shall rear
Her towers above the flood.
This prophecy is said to be the reason why so many kings of Scotland, Norway, and Ireland have selected Icombkill for the place of their interment.
So cold the waters are of Lomond Lake,
What once were sticks, they hardened stones will make.
"Fear not till Birnam Wood
Do come to Dunsinane"
Retrospective Gleanings
GREEK BALLOT.—VOTING AMONG THE ANCIENT GREEKS
The manner of giving their suffrages (says Potter) was by holding up their hands. This was the common method of voting among the citizens in the civil government; but in some cases, particularly when they deprived magistrates of their offices for mal-administration, they gave their votes in private, lest the power and greatness of the persons accused should lay a restraint upon them, and cause them to act contrary to their judgments and inclinations.
The manner of voting privately was by casting pebbles into vessels or urns. Before the use of pebbles, they voted with beans: the beans were of two sorts, black and white. In the Senate of Five Hundred, when all had done speaking, the business designed to be passed into a decree was drawn up in writing by any of the prytanes, or other senators, and repeated openly in the house; after which, leave being given by the epistata, or prytanes, the senators proceeded to vote, which they did privately, by casting beans in a vessel placed there for that purpose. If the number of black beans was found to be the greatest, the proposal was rejected; if white, it was enacted into a decree, then agreed upon in the senate, and afterwards propounded to an assembly of the people, that it might receive from them a farther ratification, without which it could not be passed into a law, nor have any force or obligatory power, after the end of that year, which was the time that the senators, and almost all the other magistrates, laid down their commissions.
In the reign of Cecrops, women were said to have been allowed voices in the popular assembly; where Minerva contending with Neptune which of the two should be declared Protector of Athens, and gaining the women to her party, was reported by their voices, which were more numerous than those of the men, to have obtained the victory.
CLARENCE AND ITS ROYAL DUKES
Clarentia, or Clarence, now Clare, a town in Suffolk, seated on a creek of the river Stour, is of more antiquity than beauty; but has long been celebrated for men of great fame, who have borne the titles of earls and dukes. It has the remains of a noble castle, of great strength and considerable extent and fortification (perhaps some of your readers could favour you with a drawing and history of it); and ruins of a collegiate church. It had once a monastery of canons, of the order of St. Augustine, or of St. Benedict, founded in the year 1248, by Richard Clare, Earl of Gloucester. This house was a cell to the Abbey of Becaherliven, in Normandy, but was made indigenous by King Henry II., who gave it to the Abbey of St. Peter, at Westminster. In after time, King John changed it into a college of a dean and secular canons. At the suppression, its revenues were 324l. a year.
Seated on the banks of Stour river is a priory of the Benedictine order, translated thither from the castle, by Richard De Tonebridge, Earl of Clare, about the year 1315. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, converted it into a collegiate church. Elizabeth, the wife of Lionell, Duke of Clarence, was buried in the chancel of this priory, 1363; as was also the duke.
The first duke was the third son of King Edward III. He created his third son, Lionell of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, in 1362. His first wife was Elizabeth of Clare, daughter of William De Burgh, Earl of Ulster; she died in 1363. His second wife was Violante, daughter of the Duke of Milan. He died in Italy, 1370.
Clarencieux, the second king-at-arms, so called by Lionell, who first held it. King Henry IV. created his second son, Thomas of Lancaster, to the earldom of Albemarle and duchy of Clarence. He was slain in Anjou, in 1421.
The third duke was the second son of Richard of Plantagenet, Duke of York, George Duke of Clarence, in Suffolk. He was accused of high treason, and was secretly suffocated in a butt of Malmsley, or sack wine, in a place called Bowyer Tower, in the Tower of London, 1478, by order of his brother, King Edward IV.
The fourth duke. There was an interregnum of 311 years before another Duke of Clarence. George III. created his third son, William Henry, to the duchy of Clarence, August 16, 1789. The only Duke of Clarence who ever was raised to the throne is King William IV. of England.
SPIRIT OF THE Public Journals
SIR WALTER SCOTT
It would be superfluous to continue the list of his prose works: they are numerous; but they are in all people's hands, and censure or praise would come equally late. He has triumphed over every difficulty of subject, place, or time—exhibited characters humble and high, cowardly and brave, selfish and generous, vulgar and polished, and is at home in them all. I was present one evening, when Coleridge, in a long and eloquent harangue, accused the author of Waverley of treason against Nature, in not drawing his characters after the fashion of Shakspeare, but in a manner of his own. This, without being meant, was the highest praise Scott could well receive. Perhaps the finest compliment ever paid him, was at the time of the late coronation, I think. The streets were crowded so densely, that he could not make his way from Charing Cross down to Rose's, in Abingdon-street, though he elbowed ever so stoutly. He applied for help to a sergeant of the Scotch Greys, whose regiment lined the streets. "Countryman,"