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up the depressions which the knife had made. In another tree there was found a crown with W. M., for William and Mary, and in a third I., with a

WM

crown like the old crown, in prints of King John. The tree containing W. M. was cut down in 1785; the letters were nine inches within the tree, and three feet three inches from the centre: the letter I. was eighteen inches within the surface, and above a foot from the centre.

These circumstances, which at first were thought astonishing, and by many deemed miraculous, will admit of ready explanation if we consider the manner in which the annual growth of wood in most European trees takes place, and the relative situations in which the successive strata are deposited. All our native trees, and, indeed, a vast variety of vegetables are what botanists name exogena, or outside growing plants; i. e., the leaves and rootlets, both of which last but a year, and are annually reproduced, communicate with each other by a double series of vessels extending through the whole plant, and forming, in fact, its wood and bark. In plants of one year old there is only a single layer of each; but in perennial woody plants, although the leaves are shed yearly, the layers of wood and bark remain, and form a case and mould, between which a similar double series of new vessels are seated, which establish a similar communication from the roots to the leaves of the succeeding year. This process is continually going on, each successive crop of leaves having a successive double series of vessels running to and from the rootlets, forming what is called the new wood and new bark; and always deposited outside the old wood-vessels, which form the duramen, i. e., the old or heart-wood, and within the old bark vessels which form the volumen, i. e., the old or outer bark. These successive layers, which increase the diametric bulk of trees, are well seen in transverse sections of wood, forming many concentric circles, and from counting the number, a shrewd guess may be ventured as to the age of a tree: there are, however, exceptions and sources of error in such a computation.

If an injury be done to the bark and wood of any certain year, say in a tree of a foot in girth, the layers of each succeeding year will cover in the wound of the wood, and stretch wider the wound in the bark, and in the course of ten or a dozen seasons, if the injury has not been very extensive, there will be a series of ten or twelve layers of wood over the first injured stratum, and by the same time the old bark will have cracked, or more or less peeled off, or have so much widened by the increase of the trunk within it, as to have obliterated the external injury. These gradations may be seen in almost every copse, for love, mischief, or rustic ambition will cut initials and many devices upon trees, which, when afterwards discovered, excite much village wonder.

The letters and figures referred to, owed their origin, without doubt, to such causes. The initials and crowns of John, and William and Mary, discovered in the oaks of Sherwood, were probably cut by the

foresters in the respective monarchs' reigns; and the W. and M. being found only nine inches within the tree, and the I. eighteen, confirms this conjecture. Rings, crucifixes, images, &c., &c., found in similar situations, have been enclosed in the like manner, after having been engraven in, or fixed to the trees from love, folly, or devotion.

The writer has several specimens showing wounds thus enclosed, and cavities formed, and often dead branches of trees, when small, are included in a

similar manner, and grown over by the parent trunk.

Queen Anne's and Queen Charlotte's oaks in Windsor forest, both of which have had brass plates, with commemorative inscriptions thereon, fixed to them, might be given as further illustrations; over the edges of the plates, the yearly increasing bark has already made considerable encroachments, and in due course of time will progressively enclose the whole. To this process do we owe that more knotted and variegated texture of the central parts of planks, on which much of the beauty of heart-wood depends; for the abortive buds and nodes of young trees which had not energy sufficient to evolve themselves as branches, form knurls, and their relics or rudiments, in a variety of contortions, are thus enclosed and buried in the hearts of aged trees. Dr. Plot mentions an instance of this kind, but more extraordinary, in which a living shrub was in part enclosed by an ancient oak at Drayton Basset: the thorn, he says, seems to pass through it in several places. Several examples are likewise on record, in which birds' nests containing eggs, and even living animals, such as toads, have been, like Ariel, imprisoned in the solid substance of various trees.

One of the most extraordinary instances of such enclosures of foreign bodies, is that recorded by Sir John Clarke, who thus writes:

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'Being lately in Cumberland, I there observed three curiosities in Wingfield Park, belonging to the Earl of Thanet; the first was a huge oak, at least sixty feet high, and four feet in diameter, on which the last great thunder had made a very odd impression; for a piece was cut out of the tree, about three inches broad, and two inches thick, in a straight line from top to bottom. The second was, that in another tree of the same height, the thunder had cut out a piece of the same breadth and thickness, from top to bottom, in a spiral line, making three turns about the tree, and entering into the ground about six feet deep. The third was, the horn of a large deer found in the heart of an oak, which was discovered on cutting down the tree; it was found fixed in the timber by large iron cramps: it seems, therefore, that it had been first fastened on the outside of the tree which in growing afterwards, had enclosed the horn." This last is, indeed, one of the most astonishing circumstances of the kind known; it is, with only one exception the largest extraneous body ever discovered thus buried, as it were, in the living substance of a tree.

The other case to which allusion is made, is a specimen now in the museum at Berlin, (and of which an account was given to the writer by a Polish nobleman who had seen it,) of a stag's head with horns, &c., enclosed in the same way in the body of a tree which grew in Poland.

If these things had been seen by those persons who imagined the letters, figures, &c., referred to above, the "sport of nature," they must rather have confessed them to be the sport of some idle hand; and still less ground would there have been left for the superstitious credulity of those who ascribed their origin to a still higher cause. G. T, B.

THE STORY OF HACHO,

KING OF LAPLAND.

HACHO, a king of Lapland, was in his youth the most renowed of the northern warriors. His martial achievements remain engraved on a pillar of flint, in the rocks of Hanga, and are to this day, solemnly carolled to the harp by the Laplanders, at the fires with which they celebrate their nightly festivities. Such was his intrepid spirit, that he ventured to pass the lake Vether to the Isle of Wizards, where he descended alone into the dreary vault in which a magician had been kept bound for six ages, and read the Gothic characters inscribed on his brazen mace. His eye was so piercing, that, as ancient chronicles report, he could blunt the weapons of his enemies only by looking at them. At twelve years of age, he carried an iron vessel of a prodigious weight, for the length of five furlongs, in the presence Nor was he less celebrated for his prudence and wisdom. Two of his proverbs are yet remembered and respected among Laplanders. To express the vigilance of the Supreme Being, he was wont to say, Odin's belt is always buckled. To show that the most prosperous condition of life is often hazardous, his lesson was, When you slide on the smoothest ice, beware of pits beneath. He consoled his countrymen, when they were once preparing to leave the frozen deserts of Lapland, and resolved to seek some warmer climate, by telling them, that the eastern nations, notwithstanding their boasted fertility, passed every night amidst the horrors of anxious apprehension, and were inexpressibly affrighted, and almost stunned, every morning, with the noise of the sun while he was rising.

of all the chiefs of his father's castle.

His temperance and severity of manners were his chief praise. In his early years he never tasted wine; nor would he drink out of a painted cup. He constantly slept in his armour, with his spear in his hand; nor would he use a battle-axe whose handle was inlaid with brass. He did not, however, persevere in this contempt of luxury; nor did he close his days with honour.

One evening, after hunting the gulos, or wild-dog, being bewildered in a solitary forest, and having passed the fatigues of the day without any interval of refreshment, he discovered a large store of honey in the hollow of a pine. This was a dainty which he had never tasted before; and being at once faint and hungry, he fed greedily upon it. From this unusual and delicious repast, he received so much satisfaction, that, at his return home, he commanded honey to be served up at his table every day. His palate, by degrees, became refined and vitiated: he began to lose his native relish for simple fare, and contracted a habit of indulging himself in delicacies; he ordered the delightful gardens of his castle to be thrown open, in which the most luscious fruits had been suffered to ripen and decay, unobserved and untouched, for many revolving Autumns, and gratified his appetite with luxurious desserts. At length he found it expedient to introduce wine, as an agreeable improvement, or a necessary ingredient, to his new way of living; and having once tasted it, he was tempted, by little and little, to give a loose to the excesses of intoxication. His general simplicity of life was changed; he perfumed his apartments by burning the wood of the most aromatic fir, and commanded his helmet to be ornamented with beautiful rows of the teeth of the rein-deer. Indolence and effeminacy stole upon him by pleasing and imperceptible gradations, relaxed the sinews of his resolution, and extinguished his thirst of military glory.

While Hacho was thus immersed in pleasure and in repose, it was reported to him, one morning, that the preceding night, a disastrous omen had been discovered, and that bats and hideous birds had drunk up the oil which nourished the perpetual lamp in the temple of Odin. About the same time, a messenger arrived to tell him that the King of Norway had invaded his kingdom with a formidable army. Hacho, terrified as he was with the omen of the night, and enervated with indulgence, roused himself from his voluptuous lethargy, and re-collecting some faint and few sparks of veteran valour, marched forward to meet him. Both armies joined battle in the forest where Hacho had been lost after hunting; and it so happened, that the King of Norway challenged him to single combat near the place where he had tasted the honey. The Lapland chief, languid and long disused to arms, was soon overpowered; he fell to the ground; and before his insulting adversary struck his head from the body, uttered this exclamation, which the Laplanders still use as an

early lesson to their children: "The vicious man should date his destruction from the first temptation. How justly do I fall a sacrifice to sloth and luxury, in the place where I first yielded to those allurements which seduced me to deviate from temperance and innocence! The honey which I tasted in this forest, and not the hand of the King of Norway, conquers Hacho."

[THOMAS WARTON, in the Idler]

To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we cannot suffer in others, is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves, than to have others so.SWIFT.

To make our reliance upon Providence both pious and rational, we should, in every great enterprise we take in hand, prepare all things with that care, diligence, and activity, as if there were no such thing as Providence for us to depend upon; and again, when we have done all this, we should as wholly and humbly rely upon it, as if we had made no preparations at all. And this is a rule of practice which will never fail, or shame any who shall venture all that they have or are upon it,-for, as a man, by exerting his utmost force in any action or business, has all that human strength can do for him therein, so, in the next place, by quitting his confidence in the same, and placing it only in God, he is sure of all that Omnipotence can do in his behalf.-SOUTH.

THE DOWNWARD TENDENCY OF BAD MEN.—If a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, depend upon it he is sinking downwards to be a devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most savage men are not beasts; they are -COLERIDGE. worse, a great deal worse.

THE pure, the simple, the rational enjoyments of man, finds so much to admire in the works of the Creator, how seems to be one great end in the creation; and if man much more must those beings find who can understand them better than he. Increased knowledge must be increase of admiration.-DANBY.

A CONTENTED mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.

A GREAT Author says, "Is there a God to swear by, and is there none to believe in, none to trust to?"

THE YEARLY MEETING OF THE CHILDREN IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL. THE writer of the following lines has endeavoured to embody in verse the thoughts which suggested themselves to his own mind, and probably to the minds of others, on the last occasion of the meeting of the Charity Schools in St. Paul's Cathedral. It is calculated that about eighteen thousand persons (including the six thousand children) were present. And who that listened to the chorus of praise ascending from so large a multitude of infant voices, could be unmoved by the impressive and affecting scene!

BENEATH the spacious Dome I stood:
Ten thousand tongues were telling
GOD's praises; and methought 'twas good
To be thus within His dwelling.

And high above me, and around,

In their appointed station,
Thick ranks of little children crown'd
That goodly congregation.

'Twas CHRISTIAN ENGLAND'S CHARITY,
With her throng of sons and daughters,
Whose mingled voices came to me

Like the sound of many waters!
And whilst they hymn'd the glorious truth,
That which alike remaineth
The covenant of
and youth
age
"The LORD, the SAVIOUR REIGNETH","
It seem'd as though each infant tongue
Made there its first endeavour
To sing th' undying song, that's sung
Before the Throne for ever!

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THE ABBEY OF GLASTONBURY.

II.

He

AN account has been already given of the rise and prosperous days of the Abbey of Glastonbury. We have now to view a different picture. The last abbot, as was before noted, was Richard Whiting. lived in those unhappy days when the accumulated treasures of ages, which had been derived to the church from the bounty of kings and nobles, were appropriated to secular purposes, being made to gratify the cupidity of rapacious courtiers. It appears that at that period, many abbots, influenced by motives of personal hope or fear, tendered their resignations. But this was not the course pursued by Whiting. He refused to surrender his abbey to King Henry the Eighth, and would not lend an ear to any of the solicitations offered him. He was consequently seized, on a false pretence, and without much formal process as to law or equity, was dragged on a hurdle to the Tor Hill, where, without the least regard to his age, his sanctity, or his entreaties to be allowed to revisit his abbey, he was hanged, and his head set upon the abbey gate, and the four quarters of his body sent to Wells, Bath, Ilchester, and Bridgewater. Like several of his brother abbots, he seems to have been accused of having appropriated portions of the conventual plate to the support of the rebels who were then making head against the king in the north of the country*, and consequently

was attainted of treason.

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The Abbey itself, as might be supposed, did not long survive the fate of its spirited superior. It met the same doom which fell on other similar institutions. That the monastic establishments, with all their faults, and they were neither few nor inconsiderable, were, even in their latest and worst days, the sources of great benefits to society, cannot well be denied †. It is certain also that they might even then have been made still to yield to the community at large most essential blessings, could they have been preserved, but properly reformed. "Latimer," indeed, with his honest earnestness entreated that two or three in every shire might be continued, not in monkery, he said, but as establishments for learned men, and such as would go about preaching and giving religious instruction to the people, and for the sake of hospitality." But the rapacity of the king's favourites was to be gratified, and consequently, the monasteries and their property were devoted to their fate. Amongst others the estates of this noble establishment were either granted or sold away.

The merciless destruction (observes Mr. Southey,) with which this violent transfer of property was accompanied, remains a lasting and ineffaceable reproach upon those who partook the plunder, or permitted it. Who can call to mind, without grief and indignation, how many magnificent edifices were overthrown in this undistinguishing havoc, the noblest works of architecture, and the most venerable monuments of antiquity, each the blessing of the surrounding country, and collectively the glory of the land! Glastonbury, which was the most venerable of all, even less for its undoubted age, than for the circumstances connected with its history, and which in beauty and sublimity of structure was equalled by few, surpassed by none, was converted by Somerset, after it had been stript and dilapidated, into a manufactory, where refugee weavers, chiefly French and Walloons, were to set up their trade. He had obtained it from the crown by one of those exchanges which were little less advantageous than a grant. By pious protestants, as well as papists, the abbey-lands were believed to carry with them the curse which their first donors imprecated upon all who should divert them from

This rising was named by some of its leaders "the holy alliance and blessed pilgrimage of grace."--SOUTHEY.

In the early period of their history they were almost invaluable.
SOUTHEY'S Book of the Church.

the purposes whereunto they were consecrated; and in no instance was this opinion more accredited than in that of the Protector Somerset §.

The foundation plot upon which this vast fabric and its immense range of offices were erected, included a space of not less than sixty acres, and was freestone. The principal building, the great Abbeysurrounded on all sides by a lofty wall of wrought church, consisted of a nave of 220 feet in length, and 45 in breadth; a choir of 155 feet; and a transept of nearly 160 feet; and with the chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea, which stood at its west end, 110 feet in length by 24 in breadth, its extreme length measured the vast extent of 530 feet. Adjoining the church on the south side, was a noble cloister, forming a square of 220 feet. The church contained five chapels,-St. Edgar's, St. Mary's, St. Andrew's, the chapel of Our Lady of Loretto, and the chapel church were three large crypts, supported by two of the Holy Sepulchre. Under the body of the remains of many of the most illustrious personages, rows of massive pillars, in which lay entombed the and under St. Joseph's Chapel was another large and handsome crypt, having, in one of its angles, an arched passage, which is said to have been traced for a considerable distance, and supposed by some to have led to the Tor. Of this vast range of buildings, scarcely a vestige is now to be seen, except some fragand of the abbot's kitchen. ments of the Great Church, of St. Joseph's Chapel,

Two of the pillars that supported the tower, with part of the arch, and a few fragments of the south walls of the choir, are the whole of the conventual church now standing. There is, however, a sufficient specimen of the workmanship remaining in the arches of the windows, to authorize a belief that this edifice was in the best style of the later Norman. "It is wonderful," observes Dr. Maton, "that so stupendous a mass of building should have suffered such innumerable others of inferior magnitude have surdepredation and diminution within a period which

vived almost unmolested."

St. Joseph's Chapel is pretty entire, excepting the roof and floor, and must be admired for the richness the design. The communication with the church was of the finishing, as well as for the great elegance of by a spacious portal. There are doors also to the north and south; one is ornamented with flowerwork, the other with very elaborate flourishes and figures. The arches of the windows are semicircular, and adorned with the lozenge, zigzag, and embattled mouldings; underneath appear a series of compartments of interlaced semicircular arches, springing from slender shafts, and also ornamented with zigzag mouldings, and in their spandrils are roses, crescents,

and stars.

The style of the architecture seems to fix the date of its erection to the end of the eleventh, or the early part of the twelfth century.

The Abbot's kitchen is an octagonal building, four of its sides being filled by fire-places, each of which measures sixteen feet in length, and was surmounted by a chimney. Of the other four sides, two opposite to each other, are each occupied by a window, and the remaining two by doorways leading into it. The whole building with its pyramidal roof, is surmounted by a lantern. This curious structure is said to have been erected in the time of Henry the Eighth.

North-eastward of Glastonbury, on a very high hill, (that on which Abbot Whiting suffered,) stands the Tor, or Tower of St. Michael, probably crected in the fourteenth century, on the spot previously occupied by a more ancient building. It serves as a landmark to sailors in the Bristol § SOUTHEY'S Book of the Church.

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Channel; and is seen in clear weather to a very great traffic of them, in exporting them to foreign parts. distance in all directions.

Even but now

I saw the hoary pile cresting the top

Of that north-western hill; and in this Now
A cloud hath pass'd on it, and its dim bulk
Becomes annihilate-or if not, a spot
Which the strained vision tires itself to find.

And even so fares it with the things of earth
Which seem most constant: there will come the cloud
That shall infold them up, and leave their place
A seat for emptiness. Our narrow ken
Reaches too far, when all that we behold
Is but the havoc of wide-wasting Time,

Or what he soon shall spoil. His outspread wings
(Which bear him like an eagle o'er the earth,)
Are plumed in front so downy soft, they seem
To foster what they touch, and mortal fools
Rejoice beneath their hovering: woe the while!
For in that indefatigable flight
The multitudinous strokes incessantly
Bruise all beneath their cope, and mark on all
His secret injury; on the front of man

Gray hairs and wrinkles; still as Time speeds on
Hard and more hard his iron pennons beat

With careless violence; nor overpass,
Till all the creatures of this nether world
Are one wide quarry: following dark behind,
The cormorant Oblivion swallows up

The carcases that time has made his prey". On the south-west side of Glastonbury may be seen Weary-all Hill, which is supposed to have taken its name from a belief instilled into the minds of the ignorant in former days, that here St. Joseph and his companions sat down, all weary with their journey. From the stick also which Joseph stuck in the ground on that occasion, though then only a dry hawthorn staff, they say sprang the famous Glastonbury Thorn, which blossoms every year at Christmas.

The tree, which was considered the original stock, had, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, two trunks, or bodies, when a puritan exterminated one of them, The other, which was of the size of a common man, was still an object of wonder and attraction, and the blossoms were esteemed such curiosities by people of all nations, that the Bristol merchants made a Leweadon Hill, by the Rev. William Crowe

In the Great Rebellion, during the time of Charles the First, the remaining trunk of this tree was also cut down, but others derived from it then existed. Absurd as is the account of the origin of this thorn, still there can be no doubt that it really has much the same extraordinary property as that possessed by the oak at Cadenham, in the New Forest, of which a notice has been already givent. Dr. Maton says,

I have never seen the Glastonbury Thorn in fructification, but all the botanists who have examined it in that state, agree that it is no other than the common Crataegus monogyna. It is a fact, however, that the shrub here flowers two or three months before the ordinary time, and sometimes as early as Christmas-day, O. S., whence I conjecture it must be at least a variety of the above species, which may have been introduced originally by some pilgrim or other from the East.

An intelligent correspondent of the Gardeners' Magazine thus writes on this subject:

The unsatisfactory, and even contradictory, statements which occur in various works, both on systematic botany and on horticulture, respecting the Glastonbury Thorn, induce me to trouble you with this communication. Not that I consider myself able to give you full and satisfactory information on the subject, but I hope, at least, to be enabled, from very long residence in the neighbourhood, to describe with accuracy whatever is known with certainty at Glastonbury about the plant in question. The popish legend about the staff of Joseph of Arimathea, I may be permitted to pass over in silence, and, therefore, come at once to the thorn-tree now standing within the precincts of the ancient Abbey of Glastonbury; for there can be no doubt, that from this tree and its forefathers, (the present one being of great age,) all others of the kind had been propagated by budding or grafting. The most remarkable peculiarity of this tree, and in those descended from the same stock, is the time of flowering: it is now (December 31, 1832,) in blossom, and I transmit you a specimen for examination; it will again blossom in the month of May, and from these latter flowers fruit will be produced.

+ See Saturday Magazine, Vol, III., p. 238.

LONDON.

JOHN WILLIAM PARKER, WEST STRAND. PUBLISHED IS WEEKLY NUMBERS, PRICE ONE PENNY, AND IN MONTHLY PARTE PRIOR SIXPENCE,

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UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.

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