tain he never was himself in England after the year 1518. Hither the capricious Henry himself used frequently to resort, sometimes to honour his subject's festive board, and sometimes to enjoy a richer banquet from his stores of learning, eloquence, and wit. On one occasion the two were seen walking in the gardens, the King's arm thrown around More's neck. When Sir Thomas was congratulated on this extraordinary evidence of his sovereign's affection, he answered, that, for all that, he knew well his majesty, could it win him any town or castle he wished to acquire in France, would not hesitate to send him to the block. And it was doubtless along this part of the margin of the Thames that the Chancellor was walking with his son-in-law, Roper, on the occasion immediately before his resignation of the seals, when, unburthening his heart, weighed down by many anxieties, he forcibly and pathetically exclaimed, that if certain matters of public concern, which he enumerated, could be well settled he should be content to be tied up in a sack and thrown into that river. Nor above all ought it to be forgotten that it was in this house that the famous painter, Holbein, resided for nearly three years with More, on his first coming to England, and finished many of the most admirable productions of his pencil. It was here he was first introduced to Henry VIII. There are several paintings of Sir Thomas More and his family still existing, which seem to have been executed by this great artist; and Mr. Brayley, in his Londiniana, has given an engraving, reduced from a print of this subject, which is stated to have been taken from the life, and has the date of 1533. The original of this print Mr. Brayley had not discovered; but there can be no doubt of its being taken from a sketch by Holbein, sent by Margaret Roper (More's eldest daughter) to Erasmus, as described by the latter in his Letters, and still preserved in the Town Hall at Basil. Indeed Dr. Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, published in the early part of the last century, has given an engraving of this picture, in all respects corresponding with that in the Londiniana. It bears the signature Johannes Holbein; but this is not, as Mr. Brayley supposes, an error for Hans Holbein, Hans being merely the Dutch form of Joannes or John. The picture exhibits, assembled together in a room, Sir Thomas, his father, Sir John More, their wives, Sir Thomas's three daughters, and their companion Margaret Gige, his son John, and Henry Paterson, his fool, whom, after his resignation of the chancellorship, and his descent to a station not requiring such an appendage, he presented to the city of London to serve as one of the household of the Lord Mayor.

There are several other monuments in the church, which are interesting memorials of past times.

The lover of the remnants of old customs will examine, too, with interest a small bookcase formed in the western wall, in which are contained a Bible, in large folio and good condition, but with all the title-pages torn out, a copy of Fox's Martyrs, a Prayer Book, and a book of Homilies, all attached by iron chains. There are a few monuments also on the outside deserving of notice of which one is that of Dr. Edmund Chamberlayne, who died in 1703, and on which is an inscription recording the strange fact, that deposited in the grave below along with the body of the Doctor are several of his literary publications, which he had ordered to be well sealed up in wax and put aside in this manner, to give them the better chance of going down to posterity. The tomb is said to have been searched more than once for these books, but it does not appear that anything was ever found. Dr. Chamberlayne's principal work was the well-known volume entitled Angliæ Notitiæ, or the Present State of England, first published in 1668, and of which new editions appeared annually for thirty-eight years. Addison, in one of his

[A Wasp's Nest pendent from a Willow.]

AN intelligent correspondent sends us the following description of a wasp's nest: "A nest (which I took recently) was remarkable for its situation and construction. I have seen many, but all, with this exception, situated in banks, walls, or the ground, but never suspended above the surface, or exposed to view; this, however, was pendent from a twig of willow over a bog in my plantation. You have above the best sketch I am able to give, and I trust it will convey a correct idea of its situation and form.

Length from a to b between nine and ten inches; its width from c to d six inches. It contained five horizontal layers of comb, concave on the upper side, and convex on the lower; suspended from each other by attachments, as shown at e. The cells were laid, sloping in one direction, as at f; their total number amounted to about 1,769.

The entrance was about half an inch in diameter, and situated on the lower part at g. The shell, or paper envelope, appeared distinct from the comb, so as to allow of free communication with each division. The upper part at a appeared solid, and the lower part at b ow an open space, on one side of which was the entrance. The shell or envelope was composed of many layers of a paper-like substance, on the sides about The comb, when burnt, produced

fifteen in number. a charcoal.

THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS. THE extraordinary subterraneous quarries known by the name of the Catacombs, extend under a very great part of the city of Paris. For the first building of Paris, the stone was raised in the environs, and as the city was enlarged, the suburbs were built imperceptibly over the ancient quarries, so that all that is seen beyond the ancient limits is essentially wanting in foundation. The Faubourg St. Jacques, the Rue de la Harpe, and the Rue Tournon, stand immediately over the ancient quarries, and pillars have been erected in very many places to support the weight of the houses. The principal entrance is near

the Barrière St. Jacques, where there is a descent by steps to the depth of 360 feet perpendicular. At the entrance the path is narrow for a considerable way; but the visitor afterwards enters large and spacious streets, all marked with names, as in the city above, and advertisements and bills are not unfrequently to be seen pasted on the walls, so that the place has in some measure the appearance of a large town swallowed up in the earth. The general height of the roof is about nine or ten feet, but in some parts not less than thirty, and even forty. Under the houses and many of the streets, the roof seems to be tolerably secured by immense stones set in mortar; in other parts, where there are only fields or gardens above, it is totally unsupported for considerable distances, the roof being level, or a plane piece of rock. After the visitor had walked about two miles, it used to be the custom to show him into a kind of saloon cut out of the rock, and said to be exactly under the church of St. Jacques, which was occasionally illuminated, and contained representations in miniature of fortifications, with cannons ready to fire, &c. The journey through the Catacombs is, however, a very tedious one, and the damp and cold air is often attended with unwholesome effects, The temperature is, for the most part, colder than on the surface of the earth, except in hard frosts, when it is said to be otherwise. In some of the passages and caverns where the rock is low, and in the descent, an oppression of breathing is felt. For many years there have not been more than two entrances into the quarries, viz., at the Barrière St. Jacques, near the Observatory, and at the Val de Grace, it having been deemed necessary to secure all the entrances, from its having been formerly inhabited by a gang of robbers, who infested Paris. Of late, however, on account of the alleged insecurity, the Catacombs have been closed from the public, and it is a matter of difficulty to obtain admission to them. The majority of travellers must therefore now be contented with a mere description of these famous caverns, and console themselves by their escaping from divers rheumatisms and coughs, which they would doubtless have brought up with them from the gypsum beds.

The Catacombs contain all the visible remains of human creatures, that had filled the burial-places within the walls of Paris for nearly a thousand years. They were brought from the cemeteries, particularly that of "Les Innocens," in 1788, and it was the plan of M. Lenoir, Lieutenant-General of the Police, that these bones should be placed in regular rows, with appropriate inscriptions, serving as lessons to the living. The skulls, of which there are above two millions, are placed in conjunction with the bones of the legs and arms, in a manner which has a very striking appearance. Many of these belonged to the victims of revolution; the dead of the 10th of August, and those of the 2nd and 3rd of September, 1792, are deposited there in separate divisions; and for these, a yearly service has been celebrated, since the Restoration, on the place of their interment. The different parts of the Catacombs are named, with strange incongruity, after the purport of the inscription which was placed there, or from the name of the author of the inscription. Virgil, Ovid, and Anacreon, have each their crypts, as well as the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel; and Hervey, the author of the Meditations, takes his place with Horace, Malherbes, and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. Among the ornaments is a fountain, in which four golden fish were, or are still, imprisoned. The Catacombs were much improved in 1810, under the care of M. de Thury, who stopped the access of the water which filtered through the roof-made galleries through the bones, which in some places were above thirty yards thick-provided a circulation of air, by means of the necks of bottles-carried off the water in channels-constructed steps from the lower to the

upper excavation-built pillars to support the dangerous parts of the roof-and, in short, was the great renovator of the place, which has subsequently had comparatively little attention bestowed upon it.

Among the many inscriptions, taken either from Scripture or from poets, there is a remarkable one over the spring, which was originally discovered by the workmen, for whose use the basin was made, and whose waters are carried off by a subterraneous aqueduct. M. de Thury named it, at first, "the Spring of Oblivion," and inscribed over it three lines of Virgil. But this inscription has been since changed for one of the most apposite texts that could have been found in Scripture:-"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

There is scarcely any exception to the fact, that there is among all nations, even the most savage, a strong and tender feeling for the remains of their dead; and it is remarkable, that so universal is the sentiment, that although, for the inhabitants of maritime cities and of the sea-coast the most obvious and easiest mode of disposing of the dead would be by committing them to the deep, yet no such method seems to have prevailed, because it would have the appearance of casting them away, rather than of depositing them in peace. In visiting such repositories of the mortal remains of our species, as the Catacombs, it is impossible not to be struck with the reverential feeling which has established so extensive a place of sepulture, and has preserved it inviolate and hallowed, amidst all political commotions, notwithstanding that spirit of insult and contumely for sacred things, which will be the everlasting reproach of the first French revolution, and of the eventful years that followed it. The epitaphs and inscriptions to be seen in the cemeteries of France frequently show a disposition to treat death with levity; but there is no reason to charge the French with a want of respect or affection for the mortal remains of their great men, their friends, or their kindred. Whether or not such cemeteries as the Catacombs, or of Père la Chaise, be the best and most natural mode of burying and preserving the dead, is a question depending very much on the genius and temper of each nation, and on the difference of religion. In this country, however, picturesque burialgrounds, laid out as public promenades, would probably be thought by few to be consistent either with good taste or good feeling.

In passing along the walls and battlements of skulls in the Catacombs of Paris, there is yet another and a more important reflection, which can hardly fail to come home to the visitors of this city of the dead. These grim visages of mortality cannot but suggest to us what a momentary space is the life of man, between the eternity of the past and of the future. What is now the abode of the spirits that once animated these skulls and skeletons, or what is to be our own destination after death, we may guess as long as we please, and guess in vain, for this knowledge is hidden from man. Philosophers have been speculating for thousands of years, whether or not our souls survive our bodies, and the result is, that philosophy can give us no certain information upon the subject. It is religion that holds out the strongest hopes that the grave is not our last home, and that our destination is to a higher sphere than tombs and catacombs. If, therefore, in our career of life, we have great need of hope to sustain and cheer us in worldly affairs, (and who has not felt such need?) how much more valuable ought to be those cheering hopes of a life to come, which religion alone is able to afford us?

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THE WEEK.

NOVEMBER 15.-The anniversary of the birth of William Pitt, commonly distinguished as the Great Lord Chatham. This illustrious statesman was born at London in the year 1708, and was the son of Robert Pitt, Esq., of Boconnoc in Cornwall. He was educated first at Eton and afterwards at Trinity College, Oxford, of which he was entered a gentleman commoner in 1726. On leaving the university he purchased a cornetcy in the Blues; but urged probably by the desire of obtaining a more suitable field for the display of his abilities than a military life afforded, in 1735 he procured himself to be returned to parliament for the family borough of Old Sarum. Sir Robert Walpole was then at the head of affairs; and Pitt immediately joined the opposition, which eventually compelled that minister to retire in 1742. For the part which he thus took he was, the year after he entered parliament, deprived by Walpole of his commission, but was compensated by being made one of the Gentlemen of the Bedchamber to the Prince of Wales. His eloquence, as soon as he began to take a part in the debates, raised him to distinction and importance; and imperfectly as the proceedings of the House were then communicated to the public, his reputation as one of the most powerful speakers of the day seems to have rapidly spread itself over the nation. It was in 1740, in the course of this contest with Walpole's administration, that, on a motion relating to impressment, he made his famous reply to Mr. Horatio Walpole, the brother of the minister, vindicating himself from the double charge of youth and theatrical elocution, which Johnson reported with so much spirit in the Gentleman's Magazine.' Walpole's administration was succeeded by that of Lord Carteret (afterwards Earl of Granville); but this change did not introduce Pitt to office. The celebrated Sarah Duchess of Marlborough, however, left him in 1744 a legacy of £10,000, in reward, as it was expressed in the will, of the noble disinterestedness with which he had maintained the authority of the laws, and prevented the ruin of his country. The following year he resigned his post in the household of the prince. In 1746, under the premiership of the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Pitt was for the first time chosen to fill a place in the Government, being appointed to the office of Vice-Treasurer for Ireland, from which he was transferred the same year to that of Paymaster-General of the Forces. In this situation, which he held for nearly nine years, he displayed his characteristic activity, energy, and decision, and the most high-minded integrity and contempt for many of the customary profits of office. In 1755, however, on a disagreement with the majority of his colleagues, he resigned: but, in little more than a year after, the force of public opinion compelled his recall; and on the 4th of December, 1756, he was appointed principal Secretary of State. In the April following, finding his views still thwarted by the rest of the cabinet, he again retired; but within less than three months the King was obliged to yield to the national voice, the ministry was driven from power, and a new one was formed under the auspices of Pitt, who, reinstated in his former place of Secretary of State, now exercised under that name the authority of Premier. For the next four years Pitt may be regarded as having been the director of the energies of England; and they are four of the most glorious years in the history of the country. Victory crowned the British arms wherever they appeared, whether on sea or on land; the French were beaten at almost every point both in the east and in the west; the vast territory of Canada was wrested from them, almost before the Government at home was aware that it was in danger; and they were eventually stripped of nearly all their other colonies in every part of the world. Along with these successes abroad, tranquillity and contentment at home no less remarkably distinguished the

supremacy of this able, patriotic, and popular minister. In October, 1760, George II. died, and the ascendency of new principles, which the new reign brought along with it, before long compelled Pitt to tender his resignation of his services. His administration terminated, and that of Lord Bute commenced in October, 1761. Although Pitt, however, had found it necessary to retire from the management of affairs, his sovereign was so sensible of his great deserts, that a barony was bestowed upon his lady, and a pension of three thousand a year granted to him for their conjoint lives and for that of his eldest son. After this, he remained out of office till 1766, when, after the failure of the Rockingham administration, it was found necessary in the embarrassed state of public affairs, occasioned by the first troubles respecting the American Stamp Act, again to call for the assistance of the man who was generally believed best able to serve the country; and in July that year he was intrusted with the formation of a new cabinet. In the arrangement which he made upon this occasion he reserved to himself along with the premiership the office of Lord Privy-Seal, as better suiting than one of more active duties, the enfeebled state of his health, now greatly broken down by attacks of the gout, to which he had long been subject. He also went to the upper house with the title of Earl of Chatham. He now applied himself with his best endeavours to heal the differences with America; but the opposition of his colleagues rendered him unable to carry into effect the measures which he would have taken for this purpose; and, in December, 1768, he again resigned. Lord Chatham lived for nearly ten years after this; and, although his increasing infirmities compelled him to spend much of his time in retirement in the country, he frequently presented himself in his place in parliament, when important discussions were to take place, and never distinguished himself more than he did, on some of these occasions, by his eloquent and indignant appeals against the headlong course of misgovernment in which ministers were proceeding, and his maintenance of the constitutional rights and liberties of his countrymen. The conduct of the House of Commons, in the case of the Middlesex election, when, by the repeated rejection of Mr. Wilkes, after he had been returned by a majority of votes, they attempted to establish the principle that an expulsion from the House created a perpetual and indelible disqualification to serve as a representative, was earnestly and perseveringly reprobated by Lord Chatham, who did not,. however, live to witness the triumph of the doctrines which he maintained in the rescinding of the obnoxious resolutions by a subsequent House of Commons. This was the second violation of the constitution, in the person of the same individual, which Lord Chatham had signalized himself in endeavouring to defeat; having, in 1764, taken a leading part in denouncing the attempt of the ministry of that day to revive against the authors and printers of Wilkes's paper, the North Briton, the application of the old and already condemned system of general warrants,-that is of warrants which, mentioning no person by name, were directed against all who came, or were pretended to come, under a vague general description. Principally for his exertions, in reference to this matter, Sir William Pynsent, in the beginning of the following year, left him his estates in Somersetshire. It was the contest with America, however, which called forth from Lord Chatham the most brilliant efforts of his latter days, and perhaps of his life. He may be said to have expired in resisting the infatuated measures which, in provoking this war, led to the dismemberment of the empire. On the 7th of April, 1778, when a motion on this subject was to be discussed, he appeared for the last time in the House of Lords, leaning on the arm of his son, with his majestic figure wrapped in flannels, and his face pale as death. After delivering his sentiments with his accustomed fervour, he sat down.

On rising again, however, a short time afterwards, to reply to some observations which had been made upon his address, he fell back in the arms of the Duke of Cumberland and Lord Temple, who sat beside him, speechless, and, to all appearance, insensible. The late painter, Mr. Copley, father of the present Lord Lyndhurst, has painted this scene. Lord Chatham recovered so far as to be removed to his country-house at Hayes, where he lingered till the 12th of May, when he expired, entirely exhausted, in the seventieth year of his age. The characteristics of this celebrated minister were vigour, decision, a mind prophetic of consequences, and an eloquence so commanding that probably nothing quite equal to it has distinguished any other speaker in modern times. Judging rather by the effects which it is recorded to have produced, than by any pretended reports of particular speeches, it must have contained an extraordinary share of the vehemence and power by which Demosthenes, in ancient Greece, "wielded at will that fierce democraty." In feeling, Lord Chatham was an Englishman to the heart's core; and had no stronger passion than the love of his country. The unexampled height of glory to which he raised that country, and the noble stand he uniformly made for the rights of the people and the best principles of the constitution, will make his memory dear to England, so long as any reverence for the great men of past times shall remain among us.

FIDELITY.

A BARKING Sound the shepherd hears,
A cry as of a dog or fox;

He halts, and searches with his eyes
Among the scatter'd rocks:

And now at distance can discern

A stirring in a brake of fern;

From which immediately leaps out

A dog, and yelping runs about.

The dog is not of mountain breed ;

Its motions, too, are wild and shy;

With something, as the shepherd thinks, Unusual in its cry:

Nor is there any one in sight

All round, in hollow or in height;

Nor shout, nor whistle strikes his ear;

What is the creature doing here?

It was a cove, a huge recess,

That keeps till June December's snow;

A lofty precipice in front,

A silent tarn* below!

Tarn is a small mere or lake, mostly high up in the mountains.

Far in the bosom of Helvellyn,
Remote from public road or dwelling,
Pathway, or cultivated land;
From trace of human foot or hand.
There, sometimes does a leaping fish
Send through the tarn a lonely cheer;
The crags repeat the raven's croak,
In symphony austere ;
Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud;
And mists that spread the flying shroud
And sun-beams; and the sounding blast
That, if it could, would hurry past,
But that enormous barrier binds it fast.
Not knowing what to think, awhile
The shepherd stood: then makes his way
Towards the dog, o'er rocks and stones,
As quickly as he may;

Nor far had gone before he found
A human skeleton on the ground;
Sad sight! the shepherd with a sigh
Looks round, to learn the history.
From those abrupt and perilous rocks

The man had fallen, that place of fear!
At length upon the shepherd's mind
It breaks, and all is clear:
He instantly recall'd the name,
And who he was, and whence he came;
Remember'd, too, the very day

On which the traveller pass'd this way.
But hear a wonder now, for sake

Of which this mournful tale I tell!
A lasting monument of words

This wonder merits well.

The dog, which still was hovering nigh,
Repeating the same timid cry,

This dog had been through three months' space

A dweller in that savage place.

Yes, proof was plain that since the day

On which the traveller thus had died

The dog had watch'd about the spot,

Or by his master's side:

How nourished here through such long time
He knows, who gave that love sublime,

And gave that strength of feeling, great
Above all human cstimate.

It is about twenty-seven years ago, that the fata. accident happened which furnished a subject for the above beautiful poem by Mr. Wordsworth. The circumstances were recently detailed to us by one of the guides who conducts the tourist to the summits of Skiddaw and Helvellyn. The unfortunate man who perished amidst these solitudes was a resident at Manchester, who was periodically in the habit of visiting the Lakes, and who, confiding in his knowledge of the country, had ventured to cross one of the passes of Helvellyn, late in a summer afternoon, in company only with his faithful dog. Darkness, it is supposed, came on before his expectation-he wandered from the track-and fell over the rocks into one of those deep recesses where human foot never treads. The dog was found by the side of his master's body, after many weeks' fruitless search. The man who told us the story had never heard of the poem; but the sentiment of natural piety with which it concludes was on his lips: "God knows," he said, "how the poor beast was supported so long."

At St. Petersburgh, in the square opposite the Isaacbridge, at the western extremity of the Admiralty, the colossal equestrian statue of the founder of that magnificent city, placed on a granite rock, seems to command the undivided attention of the stranger. The huge block of granite which forms the pedestal, upwards of fifteen hundred tons in weight, was conveyed from a VOL. I.

Petersburgh, and two miles from the sea.

In a grooved railway, corresponding with an opposite grooved space, fixed to the basis of the rock, were placed cannon balls; and as the stone was moved forwards, by means of ropes, pullies, and windlasses, drawn both by men and horses, the balls over which it had passed were brought to the front. A drummer was stationed on the rock to give a signal to the workmen. Its size, when

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