The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831

Till that dearest form was seen—
Till she on her lover smil’d—
And the turret-grates between
Look’d devout and angel-mild.[4 - Engelmild.]

There he sate thro’ many a day,
Thro’ many a year’s revolving round—
Alike to hope and grief a prey,
Till he heard the lattice sound.
Years were fleeting; when one morning
Saw a corse the cloister nigh—
To the long-watch’d turret turning
Still its cold and glassy eye.

    H.

CORFE CASTLE—EDWARD II

(To the Editor.)

I should be glad to be informed by your correspondent, James Silvester, Sen., on what authority he grounds his assertion (contained in No. 484.) that it was in the fortress of Corfe Castle that the unfortunate Edward II. was so inhumanly murdered. I have always, considered it an undisputed fact that the scene of this atrocity was at Berkeley Castle, in Gloucestershire. Hume states, that while in the custody of Lord Berkeley, the murderers, Mautravers and Gournay, “taking advantage of Berkeley’s sickness, in whose custody he then was, came to Berkeley Castle, threw him on a bed,” &c. &c. giving the particulars of the cruel deed. An abridged history, the only other authority I have at hand to refer to, says, “After these transactions, he was treated with the greatest indignities, and at last inhumanly murdered in Berkeley Castle, and his body buried in a private manner in the Abbey Church, at Gloucester.” The lines of Gray, in his celebrated poem of “The Bard,” are familiar to most school-boys, where he alludes to the cries of the suffering monarch

“Through Berkeley’s roofs that ring Shrieks of an agonized king!”

Yet as your correspondent, J.S. seems of the intelligent kind, he may be in possession of some authority to which he can refer, and thereby prove it is not merely an assertion inadvertently given, to increase the interest of his Visit to Corfe Castle. Knowing your wish that the pages of your entertaining Mirror should reflect the truth, the insertion of this will oblige your Constant Reader,

    W.

LINES WRITTEN IN A CHURCHYARD

(For the Mirror.)

Why am I here?—Thou hast not need of me,
Home of the rotting and the rotten dead—
For thou art cumber’d to satiety,
And wilt be cumber’d—ay, when I am fled!
Why stand I here, the living among tombs?
Answer, all ye who own a grassy bed,
Answer your dooms.

Thou, massy stone! over whose heart art thou?
The lord who govern’d yonder giant place,
And ruled a thousand vassals at his bow.
Alack! how narrow and how small a space
Of what was human vanity and show
Serves for the maggot, when ’tis his to chase
The greatest and the latest of his race.

One of Earth’s dear ones, of a noble birth,
Slumbers e’en here; of such supernal charms,
That but to smile was to awaken mirth,
And for that smile set loving fools in arms.
The grave ill balances such living worth,
For here the worm his richest pasture farms,
Unconscious of his harms.

Yon grassy sod, that scarcely seems a grave,
Deck’d with the daisy, and each lowly flower,
Time leaves no stone, recording of the knave,
Whether of humble, or of lordly power:
Fame says he was a bard—Fame did not save
His name beyond the living of his hour—
A luckless dower.

’Tis strange to see how equally we die,
Though equal honour be unknown to light,
The lord, the lady of distinction high,
And he, the bard, who sang their noble might,
Sink into death alike and peacefully;
Though some may want the marble’s honour’d site,
Yet earth holds all that earthliness did slight.

    P.T.

ANCIENT BOROUGH OF WENDOVER

(For the Mirror.)

This borough sent members to parliament in the 28th of Edward I. and again in the 1st and 2nd of Edward II.; after which the privilege was discontinued for above three hundred years. “The intermission, (says Britton,) was attended by the very remarkable circumstance of all recollection of the right of the borough having been lost, till about the period of the 21st of James I. when Mr. Hakeville, of Lincoln’s Inn, discovered by a search among the ancient parliament writs in the Tower, that the boroughs of Amersham, Wendover, and Great Marlow, had all sent members in former times, and petitions were then preferred in the names of those places, that their ancient liberty or franchise might be restored. When the King[5 - James the First.] was informed of these petitions, he directed his solicitor, Sir Robert Heath, to oppose them with all might, declaring, that he was troubled with too great a number of burgesses already,” The sovereign’s opposition proved ineffectual, and the Commons decided in favour of the restoration of the privilege. Some particulars of this singular case may be found in Willis’s Notitia Parliamentaria.

The celebrated John Hampden represented this borough in five parliaments.

    P.T.W.

MANNERS & CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS

HIPPODROME GAMES

(For the Mirror.)

The Olympian Hippodrome, or horse-course, was a space of ground of six hundred paces long, surrounded with a wall, near the city of Elis, and on the banks of the river Alpheus. It was uneven, and in some degree irregular, on account of the situation;—in one part was a hill of moderate height; and the circuit was adorned with temples, altars, and other embellishments. There was a very famous hippodrome at Constantinople, which was begun by Alexander Severus, and finished by Constantine. This circus, called by the Turks atmeican, is four hundred paces long, and above one hundred paces wide. At the entrance of the hippodrome there is a pyramidical obelisk of granite, in one piece, about fifty feet high, terminating in a point, and charged with hieroglyphics. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on its base show that it was erected by Theodosius. The machines that were employed to raise it are represented upon it in basso-relievo. We have some vestiges in England of the hippodromus, in which the ancient inhabitants of this country performed their races. The most remarkable is that near Stonehenge, which is a long tract of ground, about three hundred and fifty feet, or two hundred Druid cubits wide, and more than a mile and three quarters, or six thousand Druid cubits in length, enclosed quite round with a bank of earth, extending directly east and west. The goal and career are at the east end. The goal is a high bank of earth, raised with a slope inwards, on which the judges are supposed to have sat. The metæ are two tumuli, or small barrows, at the west end of the course. These hippodromes were called, in the language of the country, rhedagua; the racer, rhedagwr; and the carriage, rheda—from the British word rhedeg, to run.

One of these hippodromes, about half a mile to the southward of Leicester, retains evident traces of the old name, rhedagua in the corrupted one of Rawdikes. “There is another of these,” says Dr. Stukely, “near Dorchester; and another on the banks of the river Lowther, near Penrith, in Cumberland; and another in the valley just without the town of Royston.”

    WALTER E.C.
    Pratt-street, Lambeth.

THE SKETCH-BOOK

THE BEGGAR WOMAN OF LOCARNO