CURIOUS TREE, NEAR LOOSE, IN KENT. I have heard that Master Isaac Walton's "Angler" proved a good physician in a recent case, when medicine had done its worst. A lady, hypochondriacally affected, was enabled, through its perusal, to regain or obtain that serenity which distinguished its worthy author, and which she had lost. And who can dwell on those pastoral scenes wherein he expatiates, without acknowledging their renovating influence, and living them over again! I defy any one, who has heart and eyes, to con over the passage subjoined, without a feeling of the fresh breeze rushing around him, or seeing the fleet clouds chase one another along the sky, as he drinks in the varied sounds of joy and gratulation with which the air is rife. "Turn out of the way a little, good scholar," says the contemplatist, "towards yon high honey-suckle hedge; there we'll sit and sing, whilst this shower falls so gently on the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. Look! under that broad beech-tree I sat down when I was this way a fishing; and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near the brow of that primrosehill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre-the tempestuous sea, yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots and pebble stones, which broke their waves and turned them into foam." The magic of these lines lies in their artlessness; they are poetry or prose, as the reader pleases, but, whether he wills it or not, they are "after nature." And surely there are many others who, like honest Isaac, can find "tongues in trees" as they lie dreaming in their summer shade, and see "the brave branches fan the soft breeze as it passes, or hear the leaves whisper and twitter to each other like birds at love-making." Nor are those few who have sat entranced beneath the friendly shelter of some twilight bower, listening to the "rocking wind," till suddenly it has died away, and is succeeded by the still shower, rustling on their leafy covert; and, as the serene and tender sungleams steal again through the twinkling thicket, have risen from their sojourn, mightier and better men, to go forth musing praise, and looking lively grati tude." Such has been oftentimes my experience; and very probably considerations of this kind possessed me as, wearied by a long walk, I sat down in a fresh flowing meadow to make the sketch copied in the engraving which precedes this article. It represents the twin-trunks of an alder, growing near the pretty "rivulet that loseth itself under ground, and rises again at Loose, serving thirteen mills," mentioned in the annotations to Camden's Britannia. Both trunks spring from the same root, and may have been at one time united; but a fissure having been made, possibly for some such superstitious purpose as that mentioned in the Table Book (vol. ii. col. 465), but more probably by accident or decay, the living bark has closed round the separate stems, and given them the singular appearance of entire and independent trees, growing very lovingly side by side. D. A. In 1827 many of the trees in Camberwell Grove, Surrey, which had died from unknown causes, were doomed to fall. One of these, a leafless, leprous thing, remained standing for some time after its brethren had been felled, presenting_an appearance strikingly picturesque. The fact is mentioned in a note to the following poem, from an unpretending little work, with the title of "Bible Lyrics and other Poems." THE LAST OF THE LEAFLESS. Last of the leafless! withered tree! Though hushed is now the minstrelsy That once around thee The storm no more thy scourge shall be, His dreaming fancy sees When, shiv'ring in the breeze, To light thy brethren trees, Like Moses on the desert strand, Unmoved at Egypt's boast, When God revealed his mighty hand To guard the favor'd coast: Spared in the wreck thou seem'st to stand Rearing thy powerless arm on high, Amidst a fallen host, To call down vengeance from the sky. Or, like some heart-sick exile here, Despising Mammon's leaven, His only solace-heaven! Blasted and tempest-riven; And scared, yet "looking upward" still. Preserved whilst thousands fall away, The sun-beam shall not smite That homeless sojourner by day, Or baleful moon by night; Yet thou must perish, wither'd tree! I desire to increase the calm pleasures of my readers, by earnestly recommending "Bible Lyrics, and other Poems," whence the preceding verses are taken. If one competent judge, who purchases this little five shilling volume, should differ with me in opinion concerning its claims to a place in the book-case, I am content to abstain from all claim to regard, and not to urge my notions on subjects of criticism. On the 6th of April, 1695, died, at the age of eighty-nine, Dr. Richard Busby, the celebrated master of Westminster *Kent, in describing the course of the Medway. school. He educated most of the emi rung: nent men who filled the great offices of state about the period he flourished. They regarded him as their father, though a severe one; and he obtained a prebend's stall at Westminster. Dr. Robert South, the son of a London merchant, was educated at Westminster school, by Dr. Busby, who, finding him idle but able, disciplined him into learning, by which he rose to eminence. South shone as a polite scholar, and a brilliant wit. Swift left his wit at the church porch; South carried it into the pulpit. It is said that he could "be all things to all men." He preached for and against the Independents and Presbyterians, but adhered to the church when it became triumphant. He was the panegyrist of his highness Oliver, lord protector, and after his death treated him with sarcastic irony, in a sermon before Charles II., who, pleased and turning to Rochester, said," Ods fish, Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop; remind me when a vacancy offers." talked of wearing the "buff coat" for James II. against Monmouth, and, in James's distress, "the divine assistance,' assisted to seat William III. upon James's throne. Yet he was not covetous. The canonry of Christ Church, a stall at Westminster, the rectory of Islip, and a Welsh sinecure, were all the preferments he would accept. Their revenues were too confined for his liberality; and he gave away part of his paternal patrimony so secretly that it could never be traced. He valued an old hat and staff which he had used for many years, and refused not only a mitre but even archiepiscopal dignity. He was an able controversialist, but not in the habit of commencing or declining controversies. He bore a long and painful malady with cheerful fortitude, and died at the age of eighty-three, on the 8th of July, 1716. He was publicly buried with great honors to his memory. Many of his sermons are excellent. Twilight ends Grape hyacinth, and most of the hyacinths and narcissi, blow fully in the gardens. April, 7. On the 7th of April, 1786, the celebrated catacombs of Paris were consecrated with great solemnity. For many centuries Paris had only one public place of interment, the "Cemetery des Innocens," originally a part of the royal domains lying without the walls, and given by one of the earliest French kings as a burial-place to the citizens, in an age when interments within the city were forbidden. Previously to the conversion of this ground into a cemetery, individuals were allowed to bury their friends in their cellars, courts, and gardens; and interments frequently took place in the streets, on the high roads, and in the public fields. Philip Augustus enclosed it, in 1186, with high walls, and, the popula tion of Paris gradually increasing, this cemetery was soon found insufficient. In 1218, it was enlarged by Pierre de Nemours, bishop of Paris, and from that time no further enlargement of its precincts was made. Generation after generation being piled one upon another within the same ground, the inhabitants of the neighbouring parishes began, in the fifteenth century, to complain of the great inconvenience and danger to which they were exposed; diseases were imputed to such a mass of collected putrescence, tainting the air by exhalations, and the waters by filtration; and measures for clearing out the cemetery would have been taken in the middle of the sixteenth century, if disputes between the bishop and the parliament had not prevented them. To save the credit of the burialground, a marvellous power of consuming bodies in the short space of nine days was attributed to it. Thicknesse speaks of several burial-pits in Paris, of a prodigious size and depth, in which the dead bodies were laid side by side,without any earth being put over them till the ground tier was full: then, and not till then, a small layer of earth covered them, and another layer of dead came on, till, by layer upon layer, and dead upon dead, the hole was filled. These pits were emptied once in thirty or forty years, and the bones deposited in what was called "le Grand Charnier des Innocens," an arched gallery, which surrounded the burial-place. The last grave-digger, François Pontraci, had, by his own register, in less than thirty years, deposited more than 90,000 bodies in that cemetery. It was calculated that, since the time of Philip-Augustus, 1,200,000 bodies had been interred there. In 1805 the council of state decreed that the "Cemetery des Innocens" should be cleared of its dead, and converted into a market-place, after the canonical forms, which were requisite in such cases, should have been observed. The archbishop, in conformity, issued a decree for the suppression and evacuation of the cemetery. The work went on without intermission, till it was necessarily suspended during the hot months; and it was resumed with the same steady exertion as soon as the season permitted. The night-scenes, when the work was carried on by the light of torches and bonfires, are said to have been of the most impressive character: nothing was seen save crosses, monuments, demolished edifices, excavations, and coffins-and the laborers moving about like spectres in the lurid light, under a cloud of smoke. It fortunately happened that there was no difficulty in finding a proper receptacle for the remains thus disinterred. The stone of the ancient edifices of Paris was derived from quarries opened upon the banks of the river Bièvre, and worked from time immemorial without any system,every man working where and how he would, till it became dangerous to proceed farther. It was only known as a popular tradition that the quarries extended under great part of the city, till the year 1774; when some alarming accidents aroused the attention of the government. They were then surveyed, and plans of them taken; and the result was the frightful discovery that the churches, palaces, and most of the southern parts of Paris were undermined, and in imminent danger of sinking into the pit below them. A special commission was appointed in 1777, to direct such works as might be required. The necessity of the undertaking was exemplified on the very day that the commission was installed: a house in the Rue d'Enfer sunk ninety-one feet below the level of its court-yard. Engineers then examined the whole of the quarries, and propped the streets, roads, churches, palaces, and buildings of all kinds, which were in danger of being engulphed. It appeared that the pillars which had been left by the quarriers in their blind operations, without any regularity, were in many places too weak for the enormous weight above, and in most places had themselves been undermined, or, perhaps, had been erected upon ground which had previously been hollowed. In some instances they had given way, in others the roof had dipped, and threatened to fall; and, in others, great masses had fallen in. The aqueduct of Arcueil, which passed over this treacherous ground, had already suffered shocks, and an accident must, sooner or later, have happened to this water-course, which would have cut off its supply from the fountains of Paris, and have filled the excavations with water. Such was the state of the quarries when the thought of converting them into catacombs originated with M. Lenoir, lieutenant-general of the police. His proposal for removing the dead from the Cemetery des Innocens was easily entertained, because a receptacle so convenient, and so unexceptionable in all respects, was ready to receive them. That part of the quarries under the Plaine de Mont Souris was allotted for this purpose; a house, known by the name of "la Tombe Isoire," or Isouard, (from a famous robber, who once infested that neighbourhood), on the old road to Orleans, was purchased, with a piece of ground adjoining; and the first operations were to make an entrance into the quarries by a flight of seventy-seven steps, and to sink a well from the surface, down which the bones might be thrown. Meantime, the workmen below walled off that part of the quarries which was designed for the great charnel-house, opened a communication between the upper and lower vaults, and built pillars to prop the roof. When all these necessary preliminaries had been completed, the ceremony of consecrating the intended catacombs was performed, and on the same day the removal from the cemetery began. All the crosses, tombstones, and monuments which were not reclaimed by the families of the dead, to whom they belonged, were carefully removed, and placed in the field belonging to la Tombe Isoire. Many leaden coffins were buried in this field; one of them contained the remains of Madame de Pompadour. Thus far things were conducted with the greatest decorum; but, during the revolution, la Tombe Isoire was sold as a national domain, the leaden coffins were melted, and all the monuments destroyed. The catacombs received the dead from other cemeteries, and served also as receptacles for those who perished in popular com motions or massacres. Upon the suppression of the convents and various churches, the remains discovered in them were removed and deposited in this immense charnel-house, but, from the breaking out of the revolution, the works were discontinued, and so much neglected, that, in many places, the soil fell in, and choked up the communications; water entered by filtration; the roof was cracked in many places, and threatened fresh downfalls; and the bones themselves lay in immense heaps, mingled with the rubbish, and blocking up the way. In 1810 a regular system of piling up the bones in the catacombs was adopted. To pursue his plans, the workmen had to make galleries through the bones, which, in some places, lay above thirty yards thick. It was necessary also to provide for a circulation of air, the atmosphere having been rendered unwholesome by the quantity of animal remains which had been introduced. The manner in which this was effected was singularly easy. The wells which supplied the houses above with water were sunk below the quarries, and formed, in those excavations, so many round towers. M. de Thury merely opened the masonry of these wells, and luted into the opening the upper half of a broken bottle, with the neck outwards; when fresh air was wanted, it was only necessary to uncork some of these bottles. Channels were made to carry off the water, steps constructed from the lower to the upper excavation, pillars erected in good taste to support the dangerous parts of the roof, and the skulls and bones were built up along the walls. There are two entrances to the catacombs, the one towards the west, near the barrier d' Enfer, by which visitors are admitted; and the other to the east, near the old road to Orleans, which is appropriated to the workmen and persons attached to the establishinent. The staircase descending to the catacombs consists of ninety steps, and, after several windings, leads to the western gallery, which is under, and in a perpendicular line with trees on the western side of the Orleans road. From this gallery several others branch off in different directions. That by which visitors generally pass extends along the works beneath the aqueduct d' Arcueil, and brings them to the gallery du Pont Mahon. A soldier, named Dé cure, who had accompanied marshel Ri- Cet ouvrage fut commencé en 1777, de Sa Majesté, et fini en 1782. Décure's stone table and benches are still preserved in the quarry which he called his saloon. At a short distance from this spot are enormous fragments of stone (Logan-stones ?) so nicely balanced, on a base hardly exceeding a point, that they rock with every blast, and seem to threaten the beholder. About a hundred yards from the gallery du Port Mahon, we fall again into the road of the catacombs. On the right side is a pillar formed of dry stones, entirely covered with incrustations of gray and yellow calcareous matter; and 100 yards further on is the vestibule of the catacombs. It is of an octagonal form. On the sides of the door are two stone benches, and two pillars of the Tuscan order. The vestibule opens into a long gallery, lined with bones from the floor to the roof. The arm, leg, and thigh bones are in front, closely and regularly piled together, and their uniformity is relieved by three rows of skulls at equal distances. Behind these are thrown the smaller bones. This gallery conducts to several rooms, resembling chapels, lined with bones varously arranged; and in the centre, or in niches of the walls, are vases and altars, some of which are formed of bones, and others are ornamented with skulls of different sizes. Some altars are of an an tique form, and composed of the solid rock. Among the ornaments is a fountain, in which four golden fish are imprisoned. |