out of London, and took the castle of Kingston, then belonging to Gilbert Clare, Earl of Gloster, which he entirely demolished; and in the civil wars of Charles I. Kingston was distinguished for its loyalty, as the first armed force that declared for the king was said to have been there assembled; and there the last struggle in behalf of the royal cause was made. When Catherine of Arragon came to England, to espouse Charles II., she lodged at Kingston the night before she arrived at Kennington Palace." But it does not seem to be further noticed in history. Nevertheless, by a strange coincidence, Kingston, or as Camden calls it, "the King's Towne," was one of the few places noted for the celebration of the Kyngham, an annual game or sport, conducted by the parish officers, who paid the expenses, and accounted for the profits of it. It was something similar to the May games, but held later in the summer, and the performers went from house to house levying contributions, and dressed in a sort of masque, of which the principal characters were Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Little John, a friar, a lady, and several "Moors" or morrice dancers. In the reign of Henry VIII. this game was so much the fashion at Court, that the king and his nobles would sometimes appear in disguise as Robin Hood and his men, "drest in Kendal, with hoods and hosen." In these days, when the schoolmaster is so much abroad, it is almost superfluous to observe that Marian was the name assumed by the beloved mistress of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon; who followed him while he was in a state of outlawry, during which time he was the original Robin Hood, the favourite hero of the earliest English ballads. The real story of Lord Huntingdon and his fair Marian is chronicled in the old poem of the "Nutbrowne Mayde," supposed to be written (1400) in the reign of Henry IV., and subsequently paraphrased by Prior in that of Queen Anne. Kingston is also celebrated for having been the first place of which Nicholas West was vicar, in the reign of Henry VIII. This celebrated man was the son of a baker at Putney, where he was born, and having distinguished himself at the grammar school there (1483) he was chosen a Scholar of King's College, Cambridge, in the year of Edward IV.'s accession. There he gave little promise of future eminence, as, in the words of Fuller," he was a rakehell in grain." One of his vicious pranks was setting fire to the provost's lodgings, for which he was expelled the university; but having seasonably become reformed in his conduct, he was subsequently re-admitted, and betaking himself to hard study he became an eminent scholar, and, as his first preferment, obtained the vicarage of Kingston-upon-Thames. How often do we see that the locality in which a man chances to enter upon public life mainly influences his future fortunes. It happened that the two favourite palaces of Henry VIII., namely, Richmond and Nonsuch, were in the immediate vicinity of Kingston, whilst, at the same time, Wolsey himself, the model of courtiers, at once the envy and the warning of the ambitious, resided at Hampton Court. Whether the precepts and example of Wolsey taught him the way to royal favour, or whether West's acknowledged talents first recommended him to Henry's notice, is uncertain; perhaps the accidental circumstance of neighbourhood may have contributed more than either to the rapid advancement of the baker's son; for conversational talent and wit have always been tickets of admission to the tables of the great, and as the college irregularities of the vicar were not uncongenial to the taste of the profligate monarch, his eminent learning and extraordinary abilities as a politician made him doubly acceptable as companion, when majesty sought, in the retirement of the country, relaxation from the cares of royalty. Had West's first preferment been in Westmoreland, instead of Kingston-upon-Thames, he possibly would never have risen as rapidly in the favour of Henry; who, after bestowing on him several other benefices, made him Bishop of Ely, employed him in various embassies, and lastly, Queen Catherine chose him as her advocate in conjunction with Bishop Fuller. The style of living adopted by this favourite of fortune was so magnificent, that he is said to have kept in his house a hundred servants, to fifty of whom he gave four marks wages, and to the others forty shillings a-year, allowing every one of them four yards of cloth for his winter livery, and three and a half yards for his summer livery. He died in the same year as Edward VI., (1553) and is buried in Ely Cathedral, having lived to see no less than six monarchs in succession occupy the British throne; whilst the changes in the political world, and still more, the reformation in the religion of the state, were equally remarkable events, occurring during the extraordinary career of this quondam vicar of Kingstonupon-Thames. THE FEAST OF THE ROSE. THE ancient custom of the Feast of the Rose has been Clovis. attributed for many ages past to St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon, who lived in the 15th century, in the time of This good bishop, who was at the time Grand Master of Salencey, a village half a league from Noyon, in the south of France, after passing many of his years of early life in endeavouring to do all the good possible, so that he was beloved by all the neighbourhood-after many years' consideration, he at last made up his mind to present, on every New Year's Day, a sum of twenty livres and a chaplet of roses, to the lass of the village who was held in the highest estimation, and of the most virtuous reputation. It is said that, he presented this glorious prize to his youngest sister, who was proclaimed by the public voice as the Village Rose. He is seen on the steps of the porch of the chapel of St. Medard, situated at the extremity of the village of Salencey, dressed in his pontifical robes, placing the chaplet of roses on the head of a villager, who is dressed in a plain white dress, with only a scull cap of black velvet on her head, and her hair reaching to her knees. The villagers of Salencey soon found it to their benefit to try and be the Village Rose for the year. The young men, it was soon seen, always chose those who had held that honour in preference to the others. St. Medard, struck with these advantages, founded his yearly gift by letting off to tenants twelve acres of ground attached to his estate, which paid the yearly rent of twenty pounds The present Lord of Salencey enjoys to this day the and all incidental expenses of the ceremony of the fête. choice of the Rose of the Village. The 8th of June is the day on which the fête of St. Medard is held. About two o'clock in the day, the village lass, clothed in white, her hair floating loosely on her shoulders, accompanied by her family and twelve young lasses, also dressed in white, with a broad blue ribbon or shoulder knot, arm in arm with twelve young men of the village, march to the chateau of Valencey to the sound of tambourines, violins, bagpipes, &c. The lord and lady of the manor come out to meet them, and she then makes a neat speech, in which she returns her thanks for the honour and preference he has bestowed on her; then, following his lordship or his representative, giving each an arm, is preceded by the music, followed by a number of persons, who entering the chapel proceed to the choir, attend vespers, and sing hymns in chorus. The vespers being finished, the clergy and people form a procession, and adjourn to the chapel of St. Medard; the Curate then blesses the crown and wreath of roses, which is on the altar table. The chaplet is entwined with a light blue ribbon, edged on the under side with a silver band. After the Benediction, and a discourse analogous to the subject, the officiating priest places the crown on the head of the Rose of the Village, who is on her knees, and receives twenty pounds in a small velvet purse, in the presence After this the assembly of villagers adjourn to the court of the chateau, under a large tree, where the lord of the manor leads off the dance with the Rose of the Village; after that the dancing becomes general among the villagers, to the sound of rustic music. The bal champêtre is always stopped at the setting of the sun. The Rose of the Village, on the day after, at midday, invites all the lasses of her acquaintance to a collation, followed by dancing, or other games, as may be. Louis XIII. being on a visit at the chateau of Varennes, a small village near Salencey, M. de Belloi, the lord of the manor, begged of that monarch to present a gift to the village lass who was considered the most virtuous. Louis XIII. consented, and requested M. le Marquis de Garde, his colonel of the guards, to be present at the next Rose Meeting, and to order the chaplet, the purse of gold, and the blue ribbon, which were presented with all due formality that year, and have been ever since through the government. It is authenticated in the royal records of France. echoed by the deep-drawn Bismillah of the listening coterie. The prose of Abdool was as highly inflated as his poetic style; he delighted in the most flowery and wordy pomp of the Persian school. The following note, written by him, and translated by a Hindoo, is an amusing specimen of the unavoidable bathos, inseparable from this style of composition. It may be prefaced, that Abdool had been requested, during his morning walk, to inquire what time would be desirable for our gar dener to send for some shrubs, promised us by a native, as transplants from his parterre. Some circumstance preventing his return at the time proposed, we received this specimen of epistolary grace. "As long as the garden of the world is adorned with tender cypresses, statues of beautiful mistresses, and roses which are the cheeks of beloved ladies, so long may the garden of wishes, which belong to the great Captain, (may his prosperity be perpetual) who is a bud of the tree of chief-ship, and a sprout of that of greatness, be flourish ing and green by the watering of Divine goodness. Your servant, (i. e. I,) after presenting the nosegay of his solicitous prayer to God for your advantage, which is gathered by the hand of well-wishing and sincerity, and united with the threads of those prayers which are performed at dawn and midnight, wishes, that your sacred mind may know, that when your servant (i. e. I) requested from Gopal Josee, son of Radha Josee, the plants of Neem, which he agreed to give yesterday; he answered, that to-morrow, at noon, when the gun fires, you may send your servant to his garden, and he will give the plants which are required. 66 (Signed) ABDOOL KUREEM, This is the origin of the Feast of the Rose; it is no less interesting when it is affirmed that throughout the numerous villages in France where the fête is held, "Moonshee of Shiraz." riotous meetings, drunkenness, debauchery of any kind The beauty of a Mahommedan letter consists in the is never known, and that the honour of receiving a length of the exordium, the number of similes, and the chaplet of roses at Salencey had excited an emulation paucity of facts introduced As Abdool in all the surrounding villages in the various depart- Kureem was long with us, I endeavoured to teach him ments to be present at the meeting, to see the Rose of English, with the hope of increasing his capabilities as a the Village presented with the order of Merit and tutor. His memory proved so defective, that I even Virtue. tually abandoned my task in despair. The reading-book selected was a collection of easy fables, chosen with the hope of the style attracting him, from its resemblance to that of his own authors. The first tale concerned the sapient doings of a learned cat, which he read, and reread, for a considerably longer period than could have been required for the composition of the volume, and, moreover, the whole was explained to him in the purest Persian. At length I ventured to ask, if my pupil com prehended the fable. "No." Did he at least understand the meaning of the word Cat, about which so much had been studied? The answer was appalling. "Kat!" replied the poet, with the puzzled look of one hopelessly plunged in a sea of doubt; "Kat? Allah Kureem God is merciful, but by the beard of my father, your servant cannot tell the meaning of Kat." From this period I left Abdool to the manufacture of verses, to the enjoyment of a remarkable appetite, and to his favourite meditations on the probable locality of the "fountain of life," in which he as firmly believed, as in the philosopher's stone, and the houris of Paradise."Western India in 1838," by Mrs. Postans. Miscellaneous. THE Mahommedans are particularly proud of their acquirements, and suppose themselves possessed of great imaginative powers. They are surprising egotists, and, like the Spaniards, poor and proud to a proverb. A short time since, a Moonshee was domesticated with us, who afforded a curious example of this union of unfortunate qualities. N.B. The Second Volume of this Periodical is now ready; Covers for binding, with Table of Contents, may be ordered of any Book seller. CONTENTS. Bianca, a Ballad, (with Il- Abdool Kureem had neither lodging, nor wherewithal to satisfy the cravings of a Persian appetite: but, like all his class, his manners were pleasing and mild, which won for him our commiseration. He accompanied us from the Presidency, and although a professional Moonshee, he was soon discovered to be grossly ignorant of even the construction of his native language. His leisure was devoted to inditing verses, which, execrable as they were, he imagined equal to Ferdousi's: such was our poor poetaster's opinion of his own talents, that History of the Cotton Mawhenever any of his Mahommedan friends came to visit him, in lieu of conversation, he commenced by drawing out a long roll of closely written paper, and spouting his own verses, constantly pausing to ejaculate expressions eulogistic of his genius, which were courteously re nufacture (continued)...... 246 Page Frank Fairlegh; or, Old 250 252 955 256 PRINTED by RICHARD CLAY, of Park Terrace, Highbury, in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, at his Printing Office, Nos. 7 and 8, Bread Street Hi in the Parish of St. Nicholas Olave, in the City of London; and published by THOMAS BOWDLEH SHARPE, of No. 15, Skinner Street, in the Parish of St. Sepulchre, in the City of London.-Saturday, February 13, 1947. No. 69.] London Magazine: A JOURNAL OF ENTERTAINMENT AND INSTRUCTION CURIOSITIES OF SCIENCE. LE VERRIER'S NEW PLANET. "Is the whole history of Astronomy-I had almost said, in the whole history of Science," writes Professor Airy, "there is nothing comparable to the circumstances attending the discovery of the planet exterior to Uranus. The history of the discoveries of new planets in the latter part of the last century, and in the present century, offers nothing analogous to it. Uranus, Ceres, and Pallas, were discovered in the course of researches which did not contemplate the discovery of planets. Juno and Vesta were discovered in following up a series of observations suggested by a theory which, fruitful as it has been, we may almost venture to call fanciful. Astrea was found, in the course of a wellconducted examination of the heavens, apparently con VOL. III. templating the discovery of a new planet, as only one of many possible results. But the motions of Uranus, examined by philosophers who were fully impressed with the universality of the law of gravitation, have long exhibited the effects of some disturbing body: mathematicians have at length ventured the task of ascertaining where such a body could be; they have pointed out that the supposition of a disturbing body, moving in a certain orbit, precisely indicated by them, would entirely explain the observed disturbances of Uranus; they have expressed their conviction, with a firmness which I must characterise as wonderful, that the disturbing planet would be found exactly in a certain spot, and presenting exactly a certain appearance; and in that spot, and with that appearance, the planet has been found. Nothing in the whole history of Astronomy can be compared to this.”—Proceedings of the Royal Astronomical Society. WHAT WERE THE HABITS OF THE DODO? for about five minutes. It was not highly explosive, detonated only when partially struck with a hammer, and required to be heated considerably to cause it to explode. Mr. Richard Phillips, one of the editors of the Philosophical Magazine, in agreement with the above statement, mentions that Mr. Reeks, of the Maseum of Economic Geology, when drying some gun cotton, and drawing it out, heard a crackling noise, which induced him to present it to the gold-leaf ele trometer, when it instantly caused strong divergence of the leaves. PURITY OF ANCIENT COINS. SILVER coins, after having been long in the earth, are often found covered with a salt of copper. This may be explained by supposing that the alloy of copp at the surface of the coin, enters into combination with the carbonic acid of the soil, and being thus removed, its place is supplied by a diffusion from within: and in this way, it is not improbable that a consideralle portion of the alloy may be exhausted in process of time, and the purity of the coin be considerably in ALL the records we have of the history of this remark- THE GEOLOGY OF NORWAY, AS CONNECTED WITH THE TRAVELS OF VOLCANIC DUST. On the 2d of September, 1845, a quantity of volcanic dust fell in the Orkney Islands, which was supposed to have originated in an eruption of Hecla, in Iceland it has now been fully ascertained that an eruption of that volcano took place on the morning of September 2d, about nine o'clock, so as to leave no doubt of the justness of the conclusion. The dust had thus travelled about 600 miles ! ELECTRICITY OF GUN COTTON. MR. BOWMAN, Demonstrator of Chemistry at King's College, has ascertained gun cotton" to be capable of application to a purpose different from any hitherto described; viz. that of insulating an electrically charged body. Mr. Bowman, while unravelling some cotton which had matted together while in the acid, was struck with the tenacity with which it adhered to his fingers; and, on lightly holding a small flock of it, and approach ing a finger of the other hand, or any foreign body, found that it was strongly attracted towards it; thus differing essentially from the unprepared cotton. By examining the two balls at short intervals of time, by means of a delicate gold-leaf electrometer, Mr. Bowman found that the one suspended by the cotton retained its charge considerably longer than the other; thus proving the cotton to be a more perfect insulator than the silk, which has hitherto been chosen as best adapted for the purpose of insulation. The acid employed was a mixture of equal parts of nitric acid, sp. gr. 146, and sulphuric acid, gr. 1·83, and the cotton was immersed A PHYSICAL Circumstance, almost peculiar to Norway, and apparently very little connected with the social state of a people, was of great influence, in concurrence with accidental circumstances, in preventing the rise of an aristocracy. The stone of Norway is gneiss, or other hard primary rock, which is worked with difficulty, and breaks up in rough, shapeless lumps, or in thin schistose plates; so that walls cannot be constructed of such building materials without great labour, time, and commard of cement. Limestone is not found in abundance in Norway, and is rare in situations in which it can be easily transported; and even clay, which is used as a bedding or cement in some countries for rough lumps of stone in thick walls, is scarce in Norway. Wood has, of necessity, in all times and with all classes, been the only building material. This circumstance has been of great influence in the middle ages on the social con dition of the Northmen. Castles of nobles or kings, commanding the country round, and secure from sudden assault by the strength of the building, could not be constructed, and never existed, in Norway. The huge fragments and ruins of baronial castles and strongholds, so characteristic of the state of society in the middle ages in the feudal countries of Europe, and so crna mental in the landscape, are now wanting in Norway The noble had nothing to fall back upon but his war ship; the king nothing but the support of the people.The Sea-Kings of Norway; by G. Laing. GOLD IN SIBERIA. THE reign of the Emperor Nicholas has been distir guished by the important discovery, that portions of the great eastern regions of Siberia are highly au riferous, viz. in the government of Tomsk and Tenistik. where low ridges, similarly constructed to those on the eastern flank of the Ural, and, like them, trenchin from north to south, appear as offsets from the great east and west chain of the Altai, which separates Siberia from China; and here it is curious to remark. that, a very few years ago, this distant region did not afford a third part of the gold which the Ural produced; but, by recent researches, an augmentation so rapid and extraordinary has taken place, that, in 1843, the eastern Siberian tract yielded considerably upwards of two millions and a quarter sterling, raising the total gold produce of the Russian empire to near three mil lions sterling!—Sir R. S. Murchison, F.R.S. MILD TEMPERATURE OF WHITEHAVEN. THE high mean annual temperature of this healthy part of Cumberland, and especially the very limited range of the thermometer in the winter season there, as compared with inland towns, and many localities in | the south of England, are very remarkable. During severe frosts, the thermometer at Wigton and Carlisle is frequently 15 or 20 degrees, and in the south as much as 30 or 35 degrees lower than at Whitehaven. Even at Paris, Lyons, and other places in France, the temperature in winter is often lower than at Whitehaven. Thus, on January 7, 1846, the thermometer at Lyons marked 9° centigrade, (below the freezing point,) equal to 17 of Fahrenheit; at Whitehaven, the thermometer throughout the winter was not lower than 2895; and on the night in question, the lowest point to which it fell was 36 or 19° higher than at Lyons. Carnations continued to bloom throughout the season, and numbers of wild strawberry plants in flower, were noticed in the immediate vicinity of the town. "On the whole," says Mr. J. F. Miller, in Jameson's Journal, "we believe there are very few localities in Great Britain, which are favoured with so mild and genial an atmosphere, or are less subject to those sudden vicissitudes of temperature which render the climate of England so trying to those subject to catarrhal diseases, bronchitis, or other more alarming affections of the lungs and air-passages." SENSATION AT GREAT HEIGHTS. D. LE RILEUR has submitted to the Paris Academy of Science, a paper on the sensation experienced at great heights; and which has been called by various medical writers, the Mal de Montagne. De Saussure, Humboldt, Boussingault, and many other travellers, generally felt acceleration of the pulse, prostration of strength, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, and other symptoms similar to those of sea sickness. D. Le Rileur and his companions, Messrs. Bravais and Martans, in ascending Mont Blanc, in August, 1844, suffered most during the first hour after their arrival at the summit of the mountain. In the second hour, they felt better, and after that they suffered very little; but they had no appetite during the whole of the time that they were at a height exceeding 4000 yards. The author distinguishes between the sensations created by the mere fatigue of ascension, and those which are caused by the atmosphere in elevated positions; the latter are the acceleration of the pulse, the loss of appetite, and sometimes somnolency. WHITE RACE IN ALGERIA. M. GEYRON confirms the statements of Reysounel, Bruce, and Shaw, describing the Aures in the province of Constantine, Algeria; they have white skin, blue eyes, and fair hair; they do not form distinct tribes, but predominate in some, and are very rare in others, and have inhabited the country for a very long time. THE MAMMOTHS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. DR. BUCKLAND has happily and successfully shown that, for long ages, many species of carnivorous animals, now extinct, inhabited the caves of the British islands. Again, in low tracts of Yorkshire, where tranquil lacus tine (lake-like) deposits have occurred, there bones (even those of the lion) have been found so perfectly unbroken and unworn in the fine gravel in which they are heaped up. (as at Market Weighton,) that few persons would be disposed to deny, that such feline, and other animals, once roamed over the British isles, as well as other European countries. Why, then, is it improbable, that large elephants, with a peculiarly thick integument, a close coating of wool, and much long shaggy hair, should have been the occupants of wide tracts of Northern Europe and Asia? This coating, Dr. Fleming has well remarked, was probably as impenetrable to rain and cold, as that of the monster ox of the Polar Circle. Such is the opinion of Sir R. J. Murhison, who thus accounts for the disappearance of the British Mammoths: When we turn from the great Tiberian continent, which, anterior to its elevation, was the chief abode of the Mammoths, and look to the other parts of Europe, where their remains also occur, how remarkable is it that we find the number of these creatures to be justly 'proportionate to the magnitude of the ancient masses of land, which the labours of geologists have defined! Take the British isles, for example, and let all their low, recently elevated districts, be submerged; let, in short, England be viewed as the comparatively small island she was, when the ancient estuary of the Thames, including the plains of Hyde Park, Chelsea, Hounslow, and Uxbridge, were under the water,-when the Severn extended far into the heart of the kingdom, and large ea tern tracts of the island were submerged; and there will then remain but moderately sized feeding grounds for the great quadrupeds, whose bones are found in the gravel of the adjacent rivers and estuaries. This limited area of subsistence could necessarily only keep up a small stock of such animals; and, just as we might expect, the remains of British Mammoths occur in very small numbers indeed, when compared with those of the great charnel-houses of Siberia, into which their bones had been carried down during countless ages, from the largest mass of surface which geological inquiries have yet shown to have been dry land during that epoch.— Jameson's Journal. THE POTATO MALADY. MR. A. SMEF, F. R. S. has just written an elaborate work in proof of the present potato malady being caused by the Aphis vantator, which comes upon the plant in the winged state, and there brings forth its young alive. After a short time, the insect brings forth other young, which young, of themselves, reproduce; thus, from a single specimen, a plant may become speedily covered with the insects. It has been proved by Reamur, that in five generations, one Aphis may be the progenitor of 5,904,900,000 descendants; and it is supposed that, in one year, there may be twenty generations; and Mr. Smee knows no reason why the vantator should be less prolific than its congeners. The vantator, likewise, attacks many other plants: upon one specimen of the beet, Mr. Smee states, that not less than 30,000, or 40,000 may sometimes be found. FRANK FAIRLEGH; OR, OLD COMPANIONS IN NEW SCENES. BY F. E. S. CHAP. VII. THE GAME IN BARSTONE PARK. WE had arrived within a quarter of a mile of the gate; and I had just settled, to my thorough dissatisfaction, that the old footman must be a humourist, and had diverted himself by making a kind of April-fool out of season of me, when through the trees, which at that spot stretched their huge branches across the road, so as to form a complete arch, I fancied I perceived the flutter of a woman's dress; and, in another moment, a turn in the drive disclosed to my view a female form, which I instantly recognised as that of Clara Saville. Without a minute's hesitation, I sprang to the ground before Lawless had time to pull up, and, saying to him, I shall be back again directly;-wait for me-there's a good fellow," I hastily entered a winding path, which led through the trees to the spot where I had seen the young lady, leaving my companion mute from astonishment. Up to this moment, acting solely from a sort of |