upon by a number of irregularly built dwellings, and a couple of inns; one of them of so much apparent consequence, as to dignify the place. We soon came to an edifice which, by its publicity, startles the feelings of the passenger in this, as in almost every other parish, and has perhaps greater tendency to harden than reform the rustic offender-the "cage," with its accessory, the "pound." An angular turn in the road, from these lodgings for men and cattle when they go astray, afforded us a sudden and delightful view of "The decent church that tops the neighb'ring hill." On the right, an old, broad, high wall, flanked with thick buttresses, and belted with magnificent trees, climbs the steep, to enclose the domain of I know not whom ; on the opposite side, the branches, from a plantation, arch beyond the footpath. At the summit of the ascent is the village church with its whitened spire, crowning and pinnacl'ing this pleasant grove, pointing from amidst the graves-like man's last only hope towards heaven. This village spire is degradingly noticed in "An accurate Description of Bromley and Five Miles round, by Thomas Wilson, 1797." He says, "An extraordinary circumstance happened here near Christmas, 1791; the steeple of this church was destroyed by lightning, but a new one was put up in 1796, made of copper, in the form of an extinguisher." The old spire, built of shingles, was fired on the morning of the 23d of December, in the year seventeen hundred and ninety, in a dreadful storm. One of the effects of it in London I perfectly remember:-the copper roofing of the new "Stone Buildings" in Lincoln's Inn was stripped off by the wind, and violently carried over the opposite range of high buildings, the Six Clerks' offices, into Chancery Lane, where I saw the immense sheet of metal lying in the carriage way, exactly as it fell, rolled up, with as much neatness as if it had been executed by machinery. As regards the present spire of Beckenham church, its "form," in relation to its place, is the most appropriate that could have been devised-a picturesque object, that marks the situation of the village in the forest landscape many miles `round, and indescribably graces the nearer view. We soon came up to the corpse-gate of the church-yard, and I left W. sketching it,* whilst I retraced my steps into the village in Mr. W's engraving of his sketch is on p. 715. search of the church-keys at the parish-clerk's, from whence I was directed back again, to "the woman who has the care of the church," and lives in the furthest of three neat almshouses, built at the church-yard side, by the private benefaction of Anthony Rawlings, in 1694. She gladly accompanied us, with the keys clinking, through the mournful yew-tree grove, and threw open the great south doors of the church. It is an old edifice-despoiled of its ancient font-deprived, by former beautifyings, of carvings and tombs that in these times would have been remarkable. It has remnants of brasses over the burial places of deceased rectors and gentry, from whence dates have been wantonly erased, and monuments of more modern personages, which a few years may equally deprave. There are numerous memorials of the late possessors of Langley, a predominant estate in Beckenham. One in particular to sir Humphry Style, records that he was of great fame, in his day and generation, in Beckenham: he was "Owner of Langley in this parish, Knight and Baronet of England and Ireland, a gentleman of the privy chamber in ordinary to James I, one of the cupbearers in ordinary to King Charles, and by them boath intrusted with the weighty affairs of this countye: Hee was justice of peace and quorum, Deputy lieftenant, and alsoe (an hono'r not formerly conferred upon any) made Coronell of all the trayned band horse thereof." The possession of Langley may be traced, through the monuments, to its last heritable occupant, commemorated by an inscription; "Sacred to the Memory of Peter Burrell, Baron Gwydir, of Gwydir, Deputy Great Chamberlain of England, Born July 16, 1754; Died at Brighton, June 29th, 1820, aged 66 years." After the death of this nobleman Langley was sold. The poor of Beckenham speak his praise, and lament that his charities died with him. The alienation of the estate deprived them of a benevolent protector, and no one has arisen to succeed him in the character of a kind-hearted benefactor. A tablet in this church, to "Harriet, wife of (the present) J. G. Lambton, Esq. of Lambton Hall, Durham," relates that she died" in her twenty-fifth year." Within the church, fixed against the northern corner of the west end, is a plate. of copper, bearing an inscription to this import :-Mary Wragg, of St. John's, Westminster, bequeathed 151. per annum for ever to the curate of Beckenham, in trust for the following uses; viz. a guinea to himself for his trouble in taking care that her family vault should be kept in good repair; a guinea to be expended in a dinner for himself, and the clerk, and parish officers; 12. 10s. to defray the expenses of such repairs; if in any year the vault should not require repair, the money to be laid out in eighteen pennyworth of good beef, eighteen pennyworth of good bread, five shillings worth of coals, and 48. 6d. in money, to be given to each of twenty of the poorest inhabitants of the parish; if repairs should be required, the money left to be laid out in like manner and quantity, with 4s. 6d. to as many as it will extend to; and the remaining 88. to be given to the clerk. In consequence of Mary Wragg's bequest, her vault in the church-yard is properly maintained, and distribution made of beef, bread, and money, every 28th of January. On this occasion there is usually a large attendance of spectators; as many as please go down into the vault, and the parochial authorities of Beckenham have a holiday, and "keep wassel." There is carefully kept in this church a small wooden hand-box, of remarkable shape, made in king William's time, for the receipt of contributions from the congregation when there are collections. As an ecclesiastical utensil with which I was unacquainted, W. took a drawing, and has made an engraving of it. This collecting-box is still used. It is carried into the pews, and handed to the occupants, who drop any thing or nothing, as they please, into the upper part. When money is received, it passes through an open slit left between the back and the top enclosure of the lower half; which part, thus shut up, forms a box, that conceals from both eye and hand the money deposited. The contrivance might be advantageously adopted in making collections at the doors of churches generally. It is a complete security against the possibility of money being withdrawn instead of given; which, from the practice of holding open plates, and the ingenuity of sharpers, has sometimes happened. In the middle of two family pews of this church, which are as commodious as sitting parlours, there are two ancient reading desks like large music stands, with flaps and locks for holding and securing the service books when they are not in use. These pieces of furniture are either obsolete in churches, or peculiar to that of Beckenham; at least I never saw desks of the like in any other church. Not discovering any thing further to remark within the edifice, except its peal of five bells, we strolled among the tombs in the church-yard, which offers no inscriptions worth notice. From its solemn yewtree grove we passed through the "Lichgate," already described. On our return to the road by which we had approached the church, and at a convenient spot, W. sketched the view he so freely represents in the engraving. The melodists of the groves were in full song. As the note of the parish-clerk rises in the psalm above the common voice of the congregation, so the loud, confident note of the blackbird exceeds the united sound of the woodland choir : one of these birds, on a near tree, whistled with all his might, as if conscious of our listening, and desirous of particular distinction. Wishing to reach home by a different route than that we had come, we desired to be acquainted with the way we should go, and went again to the almshouses which are occupied by three poor widows, of whom our attendant to the church was one. She was alone in her humble habitation making tea, with the tokens of her officebearing, the church keys, on the table before her. In addition to the required information, we elicited that she was the widow of Benjamin Wood, the late parishclerk. His brother, a respectable tradesman in London, had raised an excellent business, "Wood's eating-house," at the corner of Seething-lane, Tower-street, and at his decease was enabled to provide comfortably for his family. Wood, the parishclerk, had served Beckenham in that capa city many years till his death, which left We led dame Wood to talk of her "domestic management," and finding she brewed her own beer with the common utensils and fire-place of her little room, we asked her to describe her method: a tin kettle is her boiler, she mashes in a common butter-firkin, runs off the liquor in a "crock," and tuns it in a small-beerbarrel. She is of opinion that "poor people might do a great deal for themselves if they knew how: but," says she, "where there's a will, there's a way." The old Font of Beckenham Church. A font often denotes the antiquity, and frequently determines the former importance of the church, and is so essential a part of the edifice, that it is incomplete without one. According to the rubrick, a church may be without a pulpit, but not without a font; hence, almost the first thing I look for in an old church is its old stone font. Instead thereof, at Beckenham, is a thick wooden baluster, with an unseemly circular flat lid, covering a sort of wash-hand-basin, and this the "gentlemen " from a of the parish" call a "font!" The odd- sented in the engraving. Mr. Harding expresses an intention of making a table of it, and placing it at the front of his house: in the interim it is depicted here, as a hint, to induce some regard in Beckenham people, and save the venerable font from an exposure, which, however intended as a private respect to it by the host of the "Crooked Billet," would be a public shame to Beckenham parish. For the Table Book. GONE OR GOING. 1. Fine merry franions, Wanton companions, My days are ev'n banyans With thinking upon ye; How Death, that last stringer, Or is laying, on ye. There's rich Kitty Wheatley, She sleeps in the Kirk-house; And poor Polly Perkin, She's gone to the Work-house: 3. Fine gard'ner, Ben Carter For Proserpine's orchards; And Lily, postillion, Is one of a million That fill up the church-yards. 4. And, lusty as Dido, Fat Clemitson's widow Flits now a small shadow By Stygian hid ford; And good Master Clapton The ground he last hap't on; Intomb'd by fair Widford; 6. (Roger de Coverly Not more good man than he),' Push'd for Cocytus, With cuckoldy Worral, His death might affright us! 7. Had he mended in right time, Have groan'd in his coffin, While demons stood scoffing You'd ha' thought him a coughingMy own father heard him I 8. Could gain so importune, With occasion opportune, That for a poor Fortune, That should have been ours.t In soul he should venture Amid the dark Powers? Kindly hearts I have known; Linger, yet uneffaced,→ 10. But this day, Fanny Hutton She died, as the dunce died; Things, as she once did i And prudent Miss Wither Nor I, well, nor you know; And flaunting Miss Waller - 5. And gallant Tom Docwra, Of Nature's finest crockery, Now but thin air and mockery, Lurks by Avernus ; Whose honest grasp of hand, Still, while his life did stand, At friend's or foe's command, Almost did burp us. Scottish Legends. HIGHLAND SCENERY. The scenery and legend of Mr. James Hay Allan's poem, "The Bridal of Caölchairn," are derived from the vicinity of Cruachan, (or Cruachan-Beinn,) a mountain 3390 feet above the level of the sea, situated at the head of Loch Awe, a lake in Argyleshire. The poem commences with the following lines: the prose illustrations are from Mr. Allan's descriptive notes. Grey Spirit of the Lake, who sit'st at eve At mighty Cruächan's gigantic feet; And lov'st to watch thy gentle waters heave The silvery ripple down their glassy sheet; How oft I've wandered by thy margin sweet, And stood beside the wide and silent bay, Where the broad Urcha's stream thy breast doth meet, And Caölchairn's forsaken Donjon grey Looks from its narrow rock upon thy watery way. Maid of the waters! in the days of yore What deeds have past upon thy mountain shore; INISHAIL. At the convent on the lovely isle." Inishail, the name of one of the islands in Loch Awe, signifies in Gaelic" the lovely isle." It is not at present so worthy of this appellation as the neighbouring "Fràoch Elan," isle of heather, not having a tree or shrub upon its whole extent. the period when it received its name, it might, however, have been better clothed; and still it has a fair and pleasant aspect: its extent is larger than that of any other island in the lake, and it is covered with a green turf, which, in spring, sends forth an abundant growth of brackens. There formerly existed here a convent of Cistercian nuns; of whom it is said, that they were memorable for the sanctity of their lives and the purity of their manners: at the Reformation, when the innocent were involved with the guilty in the sufferings of the times, their house was supprest, and the temporalities granted to Hay, the abbot of Inchaffrey, who, abjuring his former tenets of religion, embraced the cause of the reformers." Public worship was performed in the chapel of the convent till the year 1736: but a more commodious building having been erected on the south side of the lake, it has since been entirely forsaken; nothing now remains of its ruin but a small part of the shell, of which only a few feet are standing above the foundation. Of the remaining buildings of the order there exists no trace, except in some loose heaps of stones, and an almost obliterated mound, which marks the foundation of the outer wall. But the veneration that renders sacred to a Highlander the tombs of his ancestors, has yet preserved to the burying-ground its ancient sanctity. It is still used as a place of interment, and the dead are often brought from a distance to rest there among their kindred. In older times the isle was the principal burying-place of many of the most considerable neighbouring families: among the tombstones are many shaped in the ancient form, like the lid of a coffin, and ornamented with carvings of fret-work, running figures, flowers, and the forms of warriors and two-handed swords. They are universally destitute of the trace of an inscription. Among the chief families buried in Inishail were the Mac Nauchtans of Fràoch Elan, and the Campbells of Inbherau. Mr. Allan could not discover the spot appropriated to the former, nor any evidence of the gravestones which must have covered their tombs. The place of the Campbells, however, is yet pointed out. It lies on the south side of the chapel, and its site is marked by a large flat stone, ornamented with the arms of the family in high relief. The shield is supported by two warriors, and surmounted by a diadem, the signification and exact form of which it is difficult to decide; but the style of the carving and the costume of the figures do not appear to be later than the middle of the fifteenth century. On the top of the distant hill over which the road from Inverara descends to Cladich there formerly stood a stone cross, erected on the spot where Inishail first became visible to the traveller. These crosses were * Statistical Account, vol. viii. p. 347. 1 |