bosses bearing heraldic devices, &c.: the wood work of the pews, &, are very badly painted in a paltry, domestic-dwelling kind of style. I have heard that the Rector (to his credit be it spoken) intends this year to expend a considerable sum of money on it; and if the repairs are made with judgment and taste, the interior of Lympsham Church may be as attractive as the environs. The tower, which is a handsome embattled one, owing to the base having given way at one time, inclines as much as two feet from the perpendicular. I may here say that I attended prayers in the evening also, when the attendance was nearly as good as in the morning, and the sermon better. There was an affecting circumstance which came under my notice on the occasion of my visit, and I can hardly refrain from mentioning it before I conclude this paper. There was an old man standing pensively by the west door as I entered, and he afterwards took up his place near me in the church, when I perceived him look with a wistful and sad, a regretful but an humble, glance towards the reading-desk. I felt impelled by an indescribable interest in him to inquire who he was, when I learned he was the late clerk. He had been dismissed for some error, cider was unfortunately on one occasion too plenty for him, and he had "fallen from the high estate," which he had occupied for twenty years. He was regretted and pitied by the Rector and parishioners, and (poor man) there was a touching air of sadness and penitence about him, and something like an appearance of conscious degradation, as he saw another occupying the post, and reading out of the great prayer-book which was his for near a quarter of a century. "A stranger filled the Stuart's throne," and the knowledge that his deposition was just did not deprive thought of its sting. Poor man, he still went to church, though I have no doubt every Sunday renewed the pang. I have to thank some one-some kind heart I am sure, for a large slice of mothering cake. I am grateful for the gift, on account of the good feeling of which it is indicative but the truth is, I furnished myself, in accordance with my old and annual custom, with a whole one. Long, long ago, when we were all at home, we had of course the mothering cake: death gradually thinned the circle, but the orbit of the cake continued the same— the family fell off, but the order that went to the confectioner's was undiminished: time contracted the little social ring, but it was a comfort to think he could not nip one of those luscious blossoms that flourished like crocuses in the snow, above the white expanse of powdered sugar. At length, one after the other having dropped away, my brother and myself found ourselves one Midlent Sunday a sort of solitary dual, confronting each other across six pounds of painted confectionary. He, too, followed the rest, and now, like Cuthon's snuff-box, which survived the eleven in the tale of the French Revolution, the mothering cake is annually forthcoming in its pristine proportions, though there is but one left to look at it. It is a fact which every one's experience will confirm, that many men and women too, take a morbid pleasure in brooding over their solitude and sorrows; and I have sometimes thought the Roman was never so happy as when he sat on a broken column, and told the slave to tell his master that he saw Caius Marius sitting amongst the ruins of Carthage. Now, I don't confess to any such unwholesome feeling, but I do admit that the contemplation of my own loneliness at the recurrence of festive seasons, is not altogether without a kind of enjoyment. Zoroaster, the head of the Brahmins, is said to have smiled but twice in his life, when he was born and before his death; and I believe there are some worldly hearts that only open once in the year, and that on Mothering Sunday. And if they do not open then, they are past praying for. On the Saturday evening previous to Midlent Sunday, I always walk round to the various confectioners in the city, and stand amongst or behind the group of people that gaze in at each window on the luscious array inside, for I take an interest in mothering cakes, and can even trace the progress of society and civilization in their embellishments: the rows of flowers around them are nearly the same, for blessed nature never materially changes, but it is the principal figure in the centre, that marks the course of time and the change of manners. When I was a boy no one thought of having a mothering cake without old Redcliff Church or the High Cross, or Bristol Cathedral were on it now you have Opera dancers poussetting, or ladies and gentlemen polkaing, or some other modern gimcrackery, which shows the flimsy and unsubstantial spirit of the age. There was another circumstance that on the occasion of my present peripatetic visit to the confectioners' shops disturbed my comfort: there was a group of boys in front of my old friend Lucas's, in Redcliff-street, and with fingers pointed and lips watering, they seemed to be engrossed with the delicious display inside, when one of them separated himself slyly from the rest, and getting a sharp pebble dropt it into the ear of one of his most intent companions: the boy's want of sentiment shocked me, so I dealt him a smack of my silver-headed bamboo across the shoulders, to teach him more respect for the feelings and ears of other people the next time. With this little adventure, and thanking my unknown friend once more for her kindness, I must conclude. Berkeley. My Lord Fitzharding despairs of ever being as great a man as Moses; but this has not prevented him from trying to imitate Joshua, and tampering, not with the sun, but the parish clock. I was informed that the service commenced at halfpast ten, and a few moments before that time I rode into the Berkeley Arms. On reaching the churchyard, however, and looking up at the clock, I found it wanted a quarter to eleven, still the ringers were in the tower (which stands some twenty yards away from the church), "panting, pulling, hauling" as hard as Hookem Frere's heroes. "How is this, my good man," said I to one of them, looking from the dial of my watch to the face of the parish oracle above me: your clock is wrong." 66 "No, Sir," was his reply, "it's the Earl's time. He always has the clocks in Berkeley to go an hour, or an hour and a quarter, faster than those any where else." "What right has he to mislead people," said I, with an Englishman's independence, "or to make Time go faster here than elsewhere: he'll find himself quite soon enough in the other world, without trying to hurry on the old fellow with the scythe and hour-glass." "What right ?" repeated my informant. "Because he likes it. That's his Lordship's one reason for everything, and I'd not care to be the man to ask him for a second." "You're a prudent fellow," said I, "and I'll follow your example so long as I'm in Berkeley; but let me get back to Bristol, and if I don't give him a bit of my mind, scratch me out of your will." But really this is a strange whim of his Lordship's, and if he were not too long headed a person to take the trouble of setting the clock with his own fingers (which I am told he does) for nothing, I should say it was done in the wantonness of authority, merely, like Dryden's tyrant, "to show his arbitrary power.' We read, I think, in the Tour to the Hebrides, of a Highland chieftain, whose ideas of his own greatness were so sublime, that he had a horn blown as soon as he had dined, to intimate to the rest of the world that they might then go to dinner; and so his Lordship would seein to wish to have the start of his neighbours in time, and enjoy the noon a good hour and quarter before his friends. For my part, I wonder the Earl does not reverse his fancy, and thrust back the hour hand, instead of putting it on, humming all the while with Horace, "Eheu fugaces! Posthume, Posthume, Afferet indomitæque morti." I walked about the churchyard for full ten minutes. I never before was in such a poetical place, at least as far as the tombstones are an evidence of the public taste every grave has a head-stone, and every headstone has nearly half-a-dozen lines of hard-earned rhyme upon it. Nearly all Pope's epitaphs are to be found here, but chipped and chopped about a good deal, so as to suit person and purpose: and as the poorest party scorns to rest in peace without a heap of poetry above his head, on the principle, I suppose, of "Placantur carmine manes," the original import being some time expended, many have copied, picked, and plagiarized from their neighbours. On a white stone to the west of the tower were the words "Attend to me as you pass by Under this, some wag, who could crack his jokes even |