would be correspondent with the other salt-work reserved for Earl Edwin's other manor at Acton *; and the third penny of the hundred would be appropriately due to a manor held by Earl Edwin before the Conquest, and constituting one of the free burgs of the earldom after it. "On referring to the original survey, these conjectures (founded on the copy printed by parliamentary authority) were fully confirmed; and an additional circumstance was observable, which greatly corroborated them. The two lines describ. ing Alretune were inserted below the re. gular line, at the foot of the column, having been apparently omitted by the transcriber in the first instance, and afterwards added without a consciousness that he was transferring to Goderic's petty_estate the privileges of the great lordship of Frodsham, the description of which became divided by this interpolation. "An error generally extends itself beyond the first subject of it. After Alretune, and before the notice of another hundred (Dudestane) come descriptions of the vills of Alredelie, Done (supposed Utkinton), and Edesberie. Mr. Squire, in the very accurate copy of Domesday, given in Leycester's Antiquities, states the first to be described in Bochelau, and the hundred of the two next to be omitted. This, however, was his conjecture, and was what ought to have been, but was not the fact. The general title of Roelau bundred must be supposed continued, ac cording to the official mode of reading Domesday +, and the marginal note of Bochelau to relate to Alretune only; and in this case, Aldredelie will be severed from the adjacent towns in Old Bochelau Hundred, and transported to the other side of the county into Roelau, or Edisbury Hundred. If we invert this, and make the marginal notice of Bochelau apply to all that follows, until another Hundred is mentioned, similar violence must be offered in the removal of Utkinton and Edesbury from the hundred of Roelau into Bochelau. "The errors here pointed out are presumed not to be matter of mere curiosity: the proof of antient demesne rests with Domesday; it is also appealed to in the courts, (among other things) in proving the contiguity of mills, and in setting up prescriptions in non decimando §. The accuracy of the original surveyors is not here questioned, but it is presumed to be proved that descriptions have been severed from the parts to which they refer, by inattention or the want of local knowledge in the transcribers of those surveys; and how is this to be rectified. Can a judge be supposed to possess local knowledge, or could antiquarian conjecture, however accurate, be produced as legal evidence? Could it shake, if necessary, the antiquity of a molinum hiemale' at Alretune, or transfer it to its proper place at Frodsham? If it could not, it is presumed that no more reliance can be placed on Domesday than on any other work of patient labour and judgment, and that it must descend from the rank it holds in the Courts of Law, to a subordinate but high situation, to be considered the royal foundation-stone of English Topography." Part vii. p. 391. 70. (To be continued. } Observations on the State of Ireland, principally directed to its Agriculture and Population; in a Series of Letters, written on a Tour through that Country. By J.C. Curwen, Esq. M. P. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 822. Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy. Ellis observes, p. xxxvi.) in the Domesday description of Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Cheshire, and Shropshire." sa *"See Acton, in Nantwich Hundred. The Domesday description of Acton, states it to have in Wich, unam domum quietam ad salem faciendam ;' and the description of Nantwich says, that Earl Edwin had there unam salınam propriam quæ adjacebat suo manerio de Acatone. De hac salina per totum annum babebat comes lem sufficientem suæ domini,' Earl Edwin is noticed as having other salt-works, one of which was of course the salt-work above alluded to, but it is not recapitulated, in the account of the wiches by name." + "Information of J. W. Clarke, esq. in whose custody the record is deposited at the Chapter-house, Westminster," "Inelson and Warford, now in Macclesfield Hundred, as well as Alderley, were surveyed in Domesday under Bochelau, as a portion of Aldredelie here mentioned was intended to be. The other part of Alderley, held by the Baron of Halton, was in the adjoining part of Hameston Hundred." .§"Ellis's Introduction, p. cv." them. them. fo the long interval which has elapsed, much important infor mation has at different times been communicated to the publick respecting the Sister-Island: `but an account of its actual state, by a candid and intelligent agriculturist has hitherto been a desideratum. This deficiency is now supplied by Mr. Curwen, to whom (though we differ toto cælo from him in many of his political views,) we are happy on the present occasion to award our approbation, and our thanks for the mass of interesting statistical information which he has here collected. Mr. Curwen's Tour was performed in the Autumn of 1813. Having traversed part of Scotland, he embarked at Port-Patrick and landed at Donhaghadee, whence he proceeded through the principal agricultural districts of Ireland. As indicated in the title-pages of his volumes, Mr. C. directed his attention chiefly to the state of agriculture, and of the lower classes. The result of his investigations is by no means agreeable; poverty and wretchedness, filth and ignorance, are the general characteristics of the Irish colliers or cabin-holders; for which "The attention paid to the comforts of the lower orders surrounding the palace does great credit to the feelings and humanity of his Lordship. Greatly is the possessor of wealth to be pitied whose pursuits are exclusively directed to the search after gratifications of a sensual description. To confer and promote the happiness of others, is to a benevolent mind the most enviable prerogative of riches. The warmth which emanates from the sun gives an animation to all created beings, in which every eye luxuriates! Gratitude for kindness received conveys to the heart of him who bestows a substantial self gratulation which the sensualist has no power to conceive or means to procure!" "The practice of this house is highly becoming the sacred office executed under its roof. Prayers are read by his Lordship morning and evening so entirely without affectation, and with so proper a that the service cannot be attended without inspiring an earnest desire that the custom prevailed in every family. The time occupied is not of such duration as to interfere either with the pleasure or business of the heads of the house, or the duty of their dependants and servants." This eminent prelate of the Irish Church does not confine his attention exclusively to the comforts of his dependants: his efforts have also been directed beneficially to revive and promote the interests of the Established Church in his Diocese. our Author assigns the following regard to what is fit and right to be done, causes, in different parts of his work, viz. Inadequate active employment for the male population; the great demand and consequent competition for small farms, which necessarily enhance the price of land; improvident and early marriages; the oppressive manner in which tithes are collected (from which, however, Mr. C. honourably acquits the Clergy); the prevalence of illicit distiliation; and the great number of absentee land-owners, who spend in other countries the rents which their tenants can with difficulty pay. These statements are substantiated by numerous heart-rending facts, which we will not pain our Readers by relating. The remedies he suggests, are, the furnishing of suitable occupation for the large mass of persons at present unemployed (amounting nearly to five-sixths of the entire population), by the judicious introduction of cotton and woollen manufactures, in addition to the staple manufacture of Ireland, a better mode of letting lands, a ge Beral commutation of tithes, and above all, the residence of absentee The disorders which had so long prevailed in the Established Church had been a source of regret to its friends;the obstacles to a correction of them, many and powerful. Notwithstanding the odium and unpopularity attending the attempt, the Bishop of Meath has, in his diocese, done much towards a reform. Above thirty churches and parsonage houses have been built and repaired. The strict regularity with which residence has been enforced, has obtained his Lordship the approbation of every candid individual." In the course of his tour, Mr. Cur wen wen passed through most of the principal towns and cities of Ireland; his accounts of Dublin and Cork, as well as of his visit to the Lakes of Killarney, are very interesting, but do not admit of abridgment: and they would suffer by partial extracts. Generally speaking, the state of Agriculture is but indifferent, though some gratifying exceptions occur, in the estates of the public-spirited resident landproprietors above alluded to. Filthiness, exorbitant charges, want of order and comfort, and execrable wines, are stated to be the characteristics of most of the inns in Ireland. Education is described as being at a low ebb; though the people were in many places desirous of procuring instruction for their children. Mendicity prevails to an enormous extent; and the beggars are not more remarkable for their importunity than for the ingenuity with which they urge their requests, we had almost said demands, for charity. While Mr. Curwen was at Derry he noticed, what he considers as a singular custom, but what the writer of this article has seen in other towns, in the South of Ireland. A number of beg. gars was permitted to take their stations by turns in the vestibule or lobby of the principal inn, for a certain time. Two or three changes of these wretched objects took place while Mr. C. stopped. From some cause, however, which he could not ascertain, he observed but few beg, gars at Dublin. Many curious facts relative to the Natural History of Ireland, and to the character and manners of its inhabitants, are interspersed through these volumes, which we have not room to specify. While they contain much that will gratify the general reader, they present much to engage the most serious attention of the Irish members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; under whose consideration the affairs of Ireland will probably come, in the ensuing Session. the Monastery must have been on the stocks of Mr. Ballantyne, at the time of the publishing of Ivanhoe. This latter production, for which an unprecedented demand has been made, and which, at this present time, has hardly reached the remote corners of the empire, is so full of theatrical episode, that both the patentee theatres, as well as some of the minor ones, are contending to pick up the best tale, and turn it to the best advantage. This eagerness of the theatrical caterers may answer their views, but shows a dearth of historical subjects for tragedy, and comic authors capable to find in our present manners sufficient opportunities of handling the whip of satire: and from thence the prevailing bad taste of encouraging none but mongrel dramas founded upon old ballads, or antisocial and barbarous manners of former centuries. This, how. ever, is no disparagement to Ivanhoe as a novel or romance; on the contrary, it shows that the author knows so well the road to the heart, that, if we dare make use of the simile, not unlike our most renowned pastrycook near the Royal Exchange, he seasons his mince-pies so well, that, as they come out of the oven, they are eagerly bought, and greedily devoured. Such has been the destiny of nearly thirty volumes, which, in the short space of little more than six years, have come from the wonderfully-prolific pen of the Author of Waverley. The Monastery is preceded by an introductory letter to a Captain Člutterbuck, which, with the answer, forms almost a third part of the first volume. From the latter we are informed, that these most interesting and delightful novels are not due to the happy combinations of fortuitous circumstances: "No, Captain, the funds from which 1 have drawn my power of amusing the publick, have been bought otherwise than by fortuitous adventure. I have buried myself in libraries, to extract from the nonsense of antient days, new nonsense of my own. I have turned over volumes, which, from the pot-hooks I was obliged to decipher, might have been the cabalistic manuscripts of Cornelius Agrippa, although I never saw the door open and the devil come in'. But all the domes *See Southey's Ballad on the young man who read in a Conjuror's Book." tic inhabitants of the libraries were disturbed by the vehemence of my studies ;From my research the boldest spider fled, And moths, retreating, trembled as I read." We most cordially give our assent to this declaration, being aware that none but one deeply read in the early records of former centuries, could introduce, amongst the seducing images of fiction, such store of learning and erudition. We do not intend to give a sketch of the fable or drama which constitutes the principal incidents of the Monastery: 1st, because our Journal embraces too many topics to allow us room enough to do justice to the Author; next, because we conceive, that giving the plan of the Work, and engrossing it, as some contemporary Journals, to above fifty pages of close print, is hurting the sale of the book, or at least diminishing by anticipation the pleasure of the Reader. We shall, however, as in the bill of a new play, name the dramatis personæ, not in the order in which they are presented, but as we conceive their importance in the novel before us. The character of the good Abbot Boniface is perfectly well contrasted with the thin palid-cheeked Eustace, Sub-Prior of the convent of St. Mary; that of Edward and Halbert Glendinning, the two sons of Simon Glendinning, and of Elspeth Drydone their mother, are drawn after nature; the first, a mild well-disposed boy; and Halbert, a high-bred youth; "Gentle if you speak him fair, but cross him and he was a born devil." The next and not the less amusing personage, is one Sir Pierce Shafton, who is brought, as a friend of Julian Avenel, to spend three or four days in the tower of Glendearg, the habitation of widow Elspeth, and her two sons, Edward and Halbert: the interest of the novel begins with this coxcomb or dandy, who belongs to a set of fashionable English youths, at that time called or denominated Euphuist. As a specimen of the absurdity of their talking: "Credit me, fairest lady," said the knight, "that such is the cunning of our English courtiers of the hodiernal strain, that, as they have infinitely refined upon the plain and rusticial discourse of our fathers, which, as I may say, more beseemed the mouths of country roisterers in a May-game than that of courtly gallants in a galliad, so I hold it ineffably and unutterably improbable, that those who may succeed us in that garden of wit and courtesy shall alter or amend it. Venus delighteth but in the language of Mercury; Bucephalus will stoop to none but Alexander; no one can sound Apollo's pipe but Orpheus." "Pretty and quaint, fairest lady," answered the Euphuist. "Ah that I had with me my Anatomy of Wit, that allto-be unparalleled volume-that quintes sence of human wit-that treasury of quaint invention that exquisitely-pleasant-to-read, and inevitably-necessary-tobe-remembered manual of all that is worthy to be known-which indoctrines the rude in civility, the dull in intellectuality, the heavy in jocosity, the blunt in gentility, the vulgar in nobility, and all of them in that unutterable perfection of human utterance, that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise, that art which, when we call it by its own name of Euphuism, we bestow on it its richest panegyric." But we forget that we did not intend giving any extracts; and it is well that we have come to that determination, otherwise we might have copied nearly half of the second volume. ' The subordinate characters are Mary Avenel, and her uncle Julian Avenel, who had taken a forced possession of the estates of her father Henry Warden, an bumble teacher of the Holy Word, whose enthusiasm, fanaticism, and audacity, were equal to those of any of the first martyrs in the early ages of Christianity; one Christie of the Clint-hill, a bold ruffian dependent of Julian Avenel; and a Missie Harper, the daughter of Hob Miller, as he was called, although his name was Harper, who plays the part of a page to our favourite Sir Pierce Shafton, after having clearly rescued him from the dangers which were threatening him in the tower of Glendearg. The ground-work of this novel is in a great measure founded on the superagency of a mysterious White Lady, who is often consulted by Halbert and his brother, and seems to direct all the events, by misleading all the actors. Although we did not approve of the agency of such ideal beings, we were reconciled to it, by transporting ourselves to the superstitious times to which the novel alludes; and we can assure our Readers that far from diminishing the interest of of the scenes, it gives to them a kind of solemnity, which keeps up our attention, and consequently enhances our pleasure. As to the style of writing, it is throughout a master-piece; and far above the standard of common novel writers. 72. Letters on the Events which have pass ed in France since the Restoration in 1815. By Helen Maria Williams. Svo. pp. 199. Baldwin and Co. THE literary reputation of Miss Williams has long been fully established; and ber warm admiration of the French Revolution, unappalled by the dismal scenes of which she was a frequent witness, are well recollected. She is now nearly thirty years older, and her former ardour is somewhat abated. Still, however, she says, "The interest I once took in the French Revolution is not chilled, and the enthusiasm I once felt for the cause of Liberty still warms my bosom. Were it otherwise I might perhaps make a tolerable defence, at least for a woman, by reverting to the past, and recapitulating a small part only of all I have seen, and all I have suffered. But where the feelings and affectious of the mind have been powerfully called forth by the attraction of some great object, we are not easily cured of long cherished predilection. Those who believed as firmly as myself in the first promises of the Revolution, have perhaps sometimes felt, like me, a pang of disappointment; but no doubt continue, like me, to love Liberty, quand méme to use the famous unfinished phrase of an Ultra, applied to the Kingit may have given some cause of complaint. "I am yet to learn, however, what there may be in common with the abhorrence of military despotism expressed in my last letters, and the renunciation of liberal principles. The strange prestige for our Imperial Ruler that prevails in England often renews an accusation which has long since been brought against our Country by Foreigners, that she considers Freedom as a home production, chartered for her own use, and resigns with great equani. mity the government of the rest of Europe to Monarchs-' qui montent à cheval;' the French term for a conqueror." The Letters have certainly great merit. They describe with fidelity what the Writer of them has seen and known; and her reflections on passing events are the result of attentive observation. Amongst other subjects of discussion are the persecution of the Protestants, and a supplementary Letter in their Defence; Chamber of Deputies; Law of Elections; Liberty of the Press; Concordat; Mandement; Literature; Science; Bible Society; Missionaries; Education; Recruiting Law; Catholic Processions; Aix-laChapelle; and the Proposition to change the Law of Elections. 73. Chronicon Mirabile; seu, Excerpta Memorabilia e Registris Parochialibus Com Pal. Dunelm. Pondere non Numero. 8vo. pp. 26. Garbutt, Sunderland. THIS is a Tract, which (similar to "Jacob Bee's Book," noticed in 1819, Part ii. p. 614.) if it had no intrinsic merit, is of sufficient rariety to make it valuable, only 25 copies having been printed. But it possesses other attractions. The "Prologue," from the pen of the Editor, Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, will be found in our Poetry for the present month. The extracts from many of the Registers are curious, and most of them may be useful to Genealogists. A few specimens shall be given. "From St. Oswald's, Durham. "March ye 27, 1666. The vicaridge of St. Oswalds, Durham, was this day betowed upon mee by the Dean & Chapter of the Cathedrall Church of Durham. A. D. 1691, I was deprived of it for not swearing allegiance to William & Maria, as king & Queen of England.—Deo gloria. Amen. John Cock." "John Slater, one of the bailiffs, from St. Nicholas, bur. 8 July, 1722. "Mem. Ye River was risen so high yt they could not bring the corps up New Elvet, but were obliged to carry it up Old Elvet & y Ratten Row. It was ye greatest flood yt had been in ye memory of man." "7 June, 1725. • All communication between Shincliff and ye Town was stopped by a great flood, which yet rose not so high (by near a yard perpendicular) as yt of July 8, 1722, commonly called Slater's flood. "June 21. Towards night there was another flood very near as high as y⚫ former, but did not last so long: for yt kept to ye heigth near 12 hours; but ye brooks did more harm yn in ye former flood-The public news give an account yt most counties of England have suffered as much or more by water ya wee ; & yt a great part of Europe bave been equall sufferers |