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THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR

Evangelical Miscellany.

JULY, 1843.

REMAINS OF LONDON WALL.

THE Contemplated destruction of this last relic of Roman London, has induced us to present our readers with a sketch of it.

"Our historians," says Camden, "tell us that Constantine the Great, at the request of his mother, Helena, first walled London around with hewn-stone and British bricks, containing within the compass of it about three miles; whereby the city was made a square, but not equilateral; being longer from west to east; and from south to north, narrower. That part of these walls which ran along by the Thames, by the continual beating of the river is quite washed away; though Fitz Stephens tells us there were some pieces of it to be seen in Henry the Second's time: the rest remains to this day, and that part towards the north, very firm; for having not many years since been repaired by one Jotcelin, that was mayor, it put on, as it were, a new face and freshness. But that toward the east and west, though the barons repaired it in their wars out of the demolished houses of the Jews, is yet ruinous and going all to decay."

VOL. VI. 4th SERIES.

U

In this wall were seven gates, the names of which are still retained in the several localities they occupied. The portion of the wall represented in our engraving lies between the Tower and the old gate or Aldgate, and is still to be seen immediately behind the houses on the east side of Trinity-square. The “hewnstones," referred to in the preceding extract, form the chief material of this interesting relic; and on a closer inspection many traces of the "British bricks," also mentioned as employed in the erection of the first wall of London, are discernible. The other portions of this wall, so abundant in the time of Camden, have entirely disappeared; and it is proposed shortly to remove this remnant for the sake of building a church upon the spot; a circumstance scarcely to be regretted by the Christian antiquary, who would rather trust in the "walls and bulwarks" of the common salvation, than repose any confidence, or cherish any peculiar interest in such memorials of by-gone days, associated as they are with thoughts of rapine, and strife, and worldly conquest.

PROSPERITY AND PEACE.

AN aged lady was walking alone on a raised path which ran along the side of a high road. It was evening, and summer time; the day was hot, but she was sheltered from the beams of the sun by the branches of tall trees which hung over a park-paling along the whole course of the causeway.

The dress of this lady was black, and remarkably neat, though it betrayed that the needle had been busy in repairing some defects; the materials denoting at the same time that it belonged to one fallen in circumstances. She was carrying a small basket in one hand, and a silver-headed stick in the other; she sometimes leaned on this last, and now and then raised it slightly if she saw a dog or other animal in any part of the road near to her. She was going to a cottage, the chimneys of which might be already seen at a small distance, and was carrying in her basket a small pot of black currant jelly, the contents of which she thought might prove refreshing to a poor woman older than herself, who lay on her deathbed in that cottage.

The place on which she was walking was at a very small distance

from a country town, where at that very time they were holding the assizes. But as most of the country people belonging to the neighbourhood had flocked to the town, the high road was very quiet, and for a short time the old lady only heard those sounds which poets have called the music of the woods and fields. But suddenly the bells struck up from the tower of the principal church of the town, and the merry peal came direct to the ears of the solitary lady as a bird would fly over the summits of the woods.

Merrily indeed it first struck upon her sense of hearing ; but in a few minutes the sweet tones lost their character, and assumed that of sadness, though of a sadness partaking of sweetness.

The venerable lady was soon aware of the melancholy influence, and repeated to herself a portion of the only modern song which she thought equal in sweetness and pathos to the songs of her childhood

"Those evening bells! those evening bells,

How many a tale their music tells

Of youth and home, and that sweet time

When first I heard their evening chime."

And whilst she still listened, her memory insensibly went back to that period of her life when she had first heard those bells, and when their music had associated itself first with the things which then were; for she had been born within the sound of those bells, and spent the greater part of a long life in places where they might be heard, yet though she had never travelled far, she had acquired much experience of life within a very small circle.

Memory indeed could awaken but few and faint recollections of this lady's parents, but these were all tender, and touching, and holy. Connected with these, and seeming almost to belong to them, came her school days, and the old double-gabled house and formal garden in which they were spent, and the simple times when little ladies put on their best slips, and bells rang merrily for days accounted holy, and no one enquired on what ground; and those were the very bells which sounded through the pleached walks in the garden of her school-house; and then came many exact and lively memories, seeming as it were to ride upon the bells, of the two old spinster-governesses in their fly-caps and long waists, with their formality and their strictness, under which lay an inexhaustible fund of genuine kindness, shewn especially to her orphan self in

many a private indulgence. She remembered also how sweetly their simple religious instruction had been imparted, without any suspicion of discord of opinion between real christians.

All these memories seemed to come upon the music from that steeple, and with them came bright images of school-fellows long departed from all present scenes; and foremost amongst these, and to her the best beloved, Amelia Langly. She had been accounted proud among that little community, and yet in her days of childhood, she had never shewn anything but kindness to those around her. The old lady thought of her last parting from this friend, and how she had herself wept, and thought that she could never more be happy; and how it had pleased God that when she and her friend were both married, though not far removed as to place, they should be so separated as to station, that their intercourse should never be renewed. No bitterness came with the recollection that her beloved Amelia had never sought a renewal of their former intercourse; "my friend had little time to think of me after her marriage," was the excuse which her own humble mind always suggested whenever this memory came; and it was enforced again amidst the meditations of that present moment.

This young lady had married a Mr. Bleville, the gentleman who was owner of the park under the paling of which the old lady was walking, and he had taken her to the noble house, portions of which were visible through an opening amongst the trees. But she had enjoyed these possessions a very little while she had died at the end of two years, leaving a son, who, at the death of his father, inherited the property. This son was a man of thirty years of age, a high and prosperous person, with a lady-wife and several children.

The old lady walked slowly forward, and the bells ceased for a few minutes again, however, they were heard though they rang a change, awakening new memories which seemed to come even more home to the heart of the solitary one.

These referred to her own married life, for she was a widow; to difficulties from straitened circumstances, to the deaths of dimpled babes, and the loss of a sweet daughter just blooming into womanhood, and finally to the bitterest of earthly bereavements, the loss of a beloved husband.

The review of these past sorrows brought one or two tears into

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