The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 14, No. 379, July 4, 1829

Notes of a Reader

SUSSEX COTTAGES

We have been delighted with the following admirable sketch of English comfort from the pen of Mr. Cobbett:

"I never had, that I recollect, a more pleasant journey or ride, than this into Sussex. The weather was pleasant, the elder-trees in full bloom, and they make a fine show; the woods just in their greatest beauty; the grass-fields generally uncut; and the little gardens of the labourers full of flowers; the roses and honeysuckles perfuming the air at every cottage-door. Throughout all England these cottages and gardens are the most interesting objects that the country presents, and they are particularly so in Kent and Sussex. This part of these counties have the great blessing of numerous woods: these furnish fuel, nice sweet fuel, for the heating of ovens and for all other purposes: they afford materials for the making of pretty pigsties, hurdles, and dead fences of various sorts; they afford materials for making little cow-sheds; for the sticking of peas and beans in the gardens; and for giving to every thing a neat and substantial appearance. These gardens, and the look of the cottages, the little flower-gardens, which you every where see, and the beautiful hedges of thorn and of privet; these are the objects to delight the eyes, to gladden the heart, and to fill it with gratitude to God, and with love for the people; and, as far as my observation has gone, they are objects to be seen in no other country in the world. The cattle in Sussex are of a pale red colour, and very fine. I used to think that the Devonshire were the handsomest cows and oxen, but I have changed my mind; those of Sussex, of which I never took so much notice before, are handsomer as well as larger; and the oxen are almost universally used as working cattle.

"Throughout this county I did not observe, in my late ride, one single instance of want of neatness about a poor man's house. It is the same with regard to the middle ranks: all is neat and beautiful, and particularly the hedges, of which I saw the handsomest white thorn hedge at Seddlescomb, that ever I saw in my life. It formed the inclosure of a garden in front of a pretty good house. It was about five feet high, about fifteen inches through; it came close to the ground, and it was sloped a little towards the top on each side, leaving a flat about four inches wide on the top of all. It had just been clipped; and it was as perpendicular and as smooth as a wall: I put my eye and looked along the sides of the several lines near the top, and if it had been built of stone, it could not have been truer. I lament that I did not ask the name of the owner, for it does him infinite credit. Those who see nothing but the nasty slovenly places in which labourers live, round London, know nothing of England. The fruit-trees are all kept in the nicest order; every bit of paling or wall is made use of, for the training of some sort or other. At Lamberhurst, which is one of the most beautiful villages that man ever sat his eyes on, I saw what I never saw before; namely, a gooseberry tree trained against a house. The house was one of those ancient buildings, consisting of a frame of oak wood, the internal filled up with brick, plastered over. The tree had been planted at the foot of one of the perpendicular pieces of wood; from the stem which, mounted up this piece of wood, were taken side limbs to run along the horizontal pieces. There were two windows, round the frame of each of which the limbs had been trained. The height of the highest shoot was about ten feet from the ground, and the horizontal shoots on each side were from eight to ten feet in length. The tree had been judiciously pruned, and all the limbs were full of very large gooseberries, considering the age of the fruit. This is only one instance out of thousands that I saw of extraordinary pains taken with the gardens."

A WINTER'S NIGHT

 
How beautiful this night! The balmiest sigh
Which vernal Zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,
Were discord to the speaking quietude
That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,
Studded with stars unutterably bright,
Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,
Seems like a canopy which Love had spread
To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,
Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;
Yon darksome walls, whence icicles depend
So stainless, that their white and glittering spears
Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,
Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower
So idly, that wrapt Fancy deemeth it
A metaphor of Peace—all form a scene
Where musing Solitude might love to lift
Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;
Where silence undisturbed might watch alone
So cold, so bright, so still.
 

P.B. SHELLEY.

HACKNEY COACHES

Nothing in nature or art can be so abominable as those vehicles at this hour. We are quite satisfied that, except an Englishman, who will endure any thing, no native of any climate under the sky would endure a London hackney coach; that an Ashantee gentleman would scoff at it; and that an aboriginal of New South Wales would refuse to be inhumed within its shattered and infinite squalidness. It is true, that the vehicle has its merits, if variety of uses can establish them. The hackney coach conveys alike the living and the dead. It carries the dying man to the hospital, and when doctors and tax-gatherers can tantalize no more, it carries him to Surgeons' Hall, and qualifies him to assist the "march of mind" by the section of body. If the midnight thief find his plunder too ponderous for his hands, the hackney coach offers its services, and is one of the most expert conveyances. Its other employments are many, and equally meritorious, and doubtless society would find a vacuum in its loss. Yet we cordially wish that the Maberley brain were set at work upon this subject, and some substitute contrived. The French have led the way, and that too by the most obvious and simple arrangement possible. The "Omnibus,"—for they still have Latin enough in France for the name of this travelling collection of all sorts of human beings—the Omnibus is a long coach, carrying fifteen or eighteen people, all inside. For two-pence halfpenny it carries the individual the length of the Boulevard, or the whole diameter of Paris. Of those carriages there were about half-a-dozen some months ago, and they have been augmented since; their profits were said to have repaid the outlay within the first year: the proprietors, among whom is Lafitte, the banker, are making a large revenue out of Parisian sous, and speculation is still alive.—Monthly Mag.

FRANKLIN'S GRAVE

Captain Basil Hall, in his Travels in North America, just published, says, "On the 12th of December, we made a pilgrimage to the tomb of Franklin—dear old Franklin! It consists of a large marble slab, laid flat on the ground, with nothing carved upon it but these words:—

BENJAMIN AND DEBORAH

FRANKLIN

1790

Franklin, it will be recollected, wrote a humorous epitaph for himself; but his good taste and good sense showed him how unsuitable to his living character it would have been to jest in such a place. After all, his literary works, scientific fame, and his undoubted patriotism, form his best epitaph. Still, it may be thought, he might have been distinguished in his own land by a more honourable resting-place than the obscure corner of an obscure burying-ground, where his bones lie indiscriminately along with those of ordinary mortals; and his tomb, already wellnigh hid in the rubbish, may soon be altogether lost. One little circumstance, however, about this spot is very striking. No regular path has been made to the grave, which lies considerably out of the road; but the frequent tread of visiters having pressed down the rank grass which grows in such places, the way to the tombstone is readily found without any guide."

AN INDIAN SULTANA IN PARIS

It is known to very few even in France that an Indian Sultana, a descendant of Tamerlane, named Aline of Eldir, has been living in Paris, poor and forgotten, for above forty years. This heiress to a great kingdom was stolen almost out of her cradle, and deserted by the robbers on the coast of France. She was presented to the princesses of the old court, and conceived a particular attachment for the Princess de Lamballe; but when, at the age of only nine or ten years, her beauty had attracted too much notice, and nothing but a lettre de cachet could secure her from the persecutions of an exalted personage, she exchanged a convent for a prison. The revolution set Aline at liberty. At the time of the Egyptian campaign, the man who was destined to rule France, and almost all Europe, and who had probably thus early turned his attention to India, is said to have thought of the heiress of Tamerlane, and to have formed the plan of restoring the illustrious stranger to her native land. Josephine interested herself on this occasion for the Sultana; but this had no influence upon her condition. Unhappy, surrounded only by a few pious nuns, and urged by her confessor, she renounced the religion of Mahomet, and became a Christian. At length, in December, 1818, an Indian Sheik, named Goolam, arrived in Paris, with instructions to claim the Princess Aline from the Court of France. The Envoy sought out the Sultana: he informed her, that her relations were desirous of her return; that she should be reinstated in the rank which was her right, and again behold the bright sun and the beautiful face of her own Asia, upon the sole condition that she would forsake Christ for Mahomet. No persuasions, however, could prevail upon the convert to comply with this requisition; Goolam went back to India without accomplishing the object of his mission, which produced no improvement in her straitened circumstances. Two years afterwards, she learned that an Indian Prince had landed in England with a splendid retinue, including three females, but that he had been obliged by the English government to embark again immediately for India. Aline had no doubt that this event had some connexion with her history, but she heard no more of the matter.

These particulars are chiefly extracted from the preface to the books of the Princess, written by the Marquess de Fortia. This nobleman generously took upon himself the charge of supporting Aline, who has now attained the age of sixty years in a foreign land.—Court Journal.