Sir Robert Cotton.-Ruerdean, co. Gloucester. 1831.] tees themselves, they are satisfied that the whole cost of the undertaking, including the approaches, the expense of surveys, plans, Act of Parliament, engineers, clerks of the works, and every other incidental charge, will be covered by the sum of 57,000l. MR. URBAN, Oxford, May 6. AS the rolling year brings round the seasons, it not only renews the varied scenes of nature that give to our senses fresh though frequently tasted delights, but awakens recollections of past feelings and events, that are associated in our memory with the respective times of their occurrence. Nor does nature only, but history and chronology, arts which men have invented to perpetuate knowledge and memory, do likewise affect us with things that we were not parties to, unless as links of the chain of the succession of mankind. Thus we have anniversaries of our personal and social affairs, and celebrate at more lengthened periods our jubilees and centenaries. From my "Year-day-book," or calendar of commemorations, which suggesteth many interesting reflections when I peep at its pages, I find that in this year are two centenaries which might easily escape observation, yet when observed, cannot fail to excite emotions in the breasts of the learned and patriotic. SIR ROBERT COTTON, the greatest benefactor that the history of this country ever had, died broken-hearted by reason of the arbitrary and unjust sequestration of his library, by order of the Privy Council, just two hundred years before the time at which I write, namely, on the 6th of May, 1631. This invaluable library, secured to his posterity by especial intailment, after being made national property by his grandson Sir John Cotton, suffered an irreparable loss on the 23d of October, 1731 (one hundred years after his death), when but for the timely interference of Speaker Onslow and others, all his precious MSS. must have perished. Methinks it would be but an act of gratitude due to the memory of so great a man (who even sold some of his estates to secure monuments of English history from destruction), if the memory of those events were publicly celebrated. A public Oration in 403 the new MS. Library of the British Museum, in the hall of the London University, or in the Piladeλpelov, as a panegyric on the Founder of the richest historical library in this country, on the centenary of the calamity which I have mentioned (23 October next), would be creditable to this enlightened nation, and perhaps give a fresh spur to the investigation of the remaining treasures of which he was the original preserver. Nor ought this to be all. The example set by a respectable body in London, by proposing a general commemoration of the birth-day of the late Robert Raikes, esq. of Gloucester, the founder of Sunday-Schools, on the 14th of September next; and by some spirited individuals who have designed to raise a monument to the same good man, should be followed in this case. Let patriots and histo rians tell us whether Sir Robert Cotton does not deserve a monument in the hall of the British Museum more than Shakspeare; who stands there, but has nothing more to connect him with that place than his own poetic genius, of which he has left for himself a sufficient because a perpetual ΜΕΛΑΣ. monument. Mr. URBAN, Goodrich Court, RUERDEAN, in Gloucestershire, stands on a very high ground, between four and five miles from this place. It is singular that it should retain its ancient name, for as it is now spelt, it exactly expresses the sound of the more correct orthography Rhiw yr dîn. This appellation is quite descriptive of its situation, for the town is placed on the side of a hill near a fortress. Of this, large earthworks remain, called the castle tump, and a small portion of the stone wall still exists. Not far off is the Church, containing various architecture from the reign of Stephen to that of Henry IV. The place itself has the appearance of decay, and as if in former times, when it had the protection of the powerful lords of the castle, it had been of more importance. As my books are not yet arranged, I cannot furnish you with any history, though I am in hopes you will have some communication of that kind, taken from the public records, &c. from the 404 Sculpture in the porch of Ruerdean Church, Gloucestershire. [May, pen of your assiduous corrrespondent the Rev. T. D. Fosbroke, who serves this church as well as his vicarage of Walford adjoining. My present ob jeet is to introduce to you a piece of sculpture in the porch, representing the conquest of St. George over the Dragon. This I regard as a very great curiosity. I had much to do to convince the parish clerk that he need not apologise for its not having lately been painted, regretting the many incrustations of colour it already bore. If these were removed, probably some details might appear, hidden in its present state. There is sufficient to fix its date to the time of Henry the First, or rather King Stephen, and if you compare the drawing sent herewith, with the seals of the latter monarch, and Milo Fitzwalter, Earl of Hereford, I trust you will be of this Mr. URBAN, HAVING seen the revised edition of "The Ultimate Remedy for Ireland," from a pen, the productions of which have often appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine (from the years 1813 to 1823, under various signatures, those of YORICK and L. S. in particular), it may not be unacceptable to the public to give a fuller notice here than that cursory one which may be seen in the last number. The scope opinion. The pallium or cloak is not of frequent occurrence in the representation of military equestrian figures at this period, and therefore has claim to notice; the helmet is without a nasal, the toe points down, and the spur is of the kind denominated spear-spur, similar to what is seen in the Bayeux tapestry. The sculpture itself is in alto-relievo, nearly an inch and a half in thickness. Within the Church, under an elegant arch, is the monument of a priest of the time of Edward the First. SAMUEL R. MEYRICK. and intent of the pamphlet seem to have been to show from the past and present state of that part of the realm, what it would be the most desirable, as well as the safest and most feasible to do for Ireland, with a view not only to its immediate relief, but its future content and tranquillity. It recommends, once for all, therefore, an immediate completion of the UNION, not only by consolidating their remaining establishments, but also by making On the Ultimate Remedy for Ireland. 1831.] the Irish people one with ourselves; towards which, the following theorem is laid down and solved as the Irish nominal independence of the year 1782 was to the Parliamentary Union in 1800: so will the repeals of 1828-9 be to some ulterior m re? We may judge of the compression in this tract, when it comprises the spirit of our past transactions in Ireland from Henry II. to the Union in 1800, its present state, and all that is necessary to do for it in the way of complete and final remedy. It is impossible in this small compass to do justice to the details. It certainly places a great number of undeniable facts in an entirely new point of view. It explodes without ceremony various mystifications of the press and of popular opinion. Among others, the common-place of absenteeism, showing that this cannot be prevented; and that if it could, it ought not, but rather should be encouraged; that those cannot, without a solecism, be called absentees, who reside in some part or other of the same realm; that the hue and cry about absentees arises from the old anti-union principle; that not only the rich, but any or all of the industrious, unemployed, and able poor who actually flock over to England in quest of employment (following the rents and pensions of their country wherever these are spent), should, in common fairness, be reIceived and welcomed. The latter is only one of the two wings of Irish absenteeism, the other wing is that of the rich; adding, that it would be "a fair piece of political generalship to take of this ARMY of absentees, BOTH WINGS IN FLANK, by sending over to the deserted fields, the shut-up villas, and waste country houses of Ireland-NOT an army but an overwhelming and well-appointed colony of Englishmen (Englishwomen and children along with them), composed of all ranks (families of husbandmen and artisans of every description) to re-colonize, or to colonise in the way it ought to be done, and for the first time, the unemployed or half-employed, and unpaid or ill-paid-for lands, the vast unreclaimed tracts, and rich wastes, in that part of the kingdom. To further this colony, Mr. Lascelles quotes and seconds a plan recommended in the weekly journal called the Spectator, namely, to pass 405 an Act of Parliament empowering trustees of entailed estates to sell them, and investing the purchase-money in English government-securities :-this Act should compel absentee proprietors to sell their estates to Government at a fair valuation; Government raising a loan for the purchase of such estates; and liquidating the debt so incurred by the gradual sale of the lands [to Englishmen, or exchanging the lands for English lands]. However populous Ireland may be, it is admitted that its produce of food might be vastly augmented-so as to support a manifold-augmented population. That, as in a compost of two opposite soils, each of which separate, is less productive, or wholly barren; so the union of a certain proportion of the English with Irish population, would render that industry geometrically productive as mixed, which, before, was worse than useless in a separate state. That it would create a new demand for labour, and new requisitions for exertion in both parts of the kingdom at once. That it would relieve the land-tax and poorrates here, and introduce them there. At present, in many parts, the Irish tenants cannot (or will not) make the land fully productive; nor satisfy the whole (if any) dues out of it; and they will not suffer the land to be taken by others, or so much as bid for! It is fair, therefore, to seek for those who can and will take them, who will cultivate them, and thereout satisfy the dues to the landlord and to the state-being moreover held responsible for preserving the internal peace of the country, and its security against foreign invasion. That a reciprocal absenteeism, therefore (if it is still to be so called), of English and Irish, interchangeably, is clearly for the common union and safety; were it only on the principle of interchanging the militias of the respective two parts of the realm. That the proposed plan is further salutary on the principle of free trade; exchanging men for men, as you truck one produce of the soil, or one manufacture for another: free home trade, take notice, not free trade with foreigners onlythat is, with all the world but ourselves-engendering separation and starvation at home. And Mr. Lav celles subscribes to the eloqu clamation of Mr. Shiel 4.06 On the Ultimate Remedy for Ireland. Union must not be an union for purposes of affliction only, and a separation as to all other intents and purposes of any good, any blessing, honour, or real benefit, to the great body of the Irish part of our people." This done, English capitalists might then (but never before, while in their senses,) be encouraged to go over. Nor is it fair, till then, to expect its own middle order of gentry to reside in Ireland; they cannot with safety. Let such English capitalists adopt the Irish manufactures, which are become really orphan. Let England occupy, reclaim, and reconquer the rich wastes of Ireland, for the last time, in this best way; not with the sword of a mercenary army, or more mercenary set of adventurers, as in former times, but with her industrious people; whether husbandmen, artisans, manufacturers, miners, soldiers, and sailors; instead of cannon, using only forges, looms, and ploughshares. The orphan manufactures and farms thus becoming really English, all national and mercantile jealousy would cease, and the whole Irish revenue system might be swept away. While Ireland, thus become really a part of England, not called so only, but sincerely and honestly treated as such, and both people having become one, English in opinions, in interests, and feelings, England might then also disband her army. Concurrently with this most essential union of the people of the two parts of the kingdom, the author suggests the expediency of revising the Irish Ecclesiastical regimen, including its jurisdiction, by a Convocation at London, of the three (at present) acknowledged churches of the realm. Both reforms should be subject, of course, to the Parliamentary one now in progress; and which he considers as certain. Had this, first, taken place, there would have been no need of what is called Emancipation. It is needless to add, that the acts of such a Convocation would be more memorable, so far as regards this entire realm, than those of the celebrated Council of Trent, or of any other, since the four first Councils of Christendom. It is remarkable, by the way, that the King has no secretary for ecclesiastical affairs, as he has for law, trade, finance, the home and foreign [May, secretariates, the colonies, and war. And the author asks, what is become of the third estate among the Clergy? Also, whether some benefices should not be conferred by election, and not all, as now, by nomination? For the ecclesiastical state of this or any realm, must be analogous to the civil constitution; which, with us, is essentially a Parliamentary one; having a third estate, eligible by the people only. We know that the Convocation is now become merely nominal, while clergymen are the only professional men who are excluded from the House of Commons. But, unless the Convocation sit, in good earnest, to do business every session, as formerly: or until clergymen are eligible, as well as any other, to sit in the House of Commons, never can that house be properly said to represent the nation in Parliament. It is curious, by the way, that the Lowlanders of Scotland (contradistinguished to the Highlanders), were, originally, not British but Englishmen. Circumstances, however, having severed them from England, they lost, in their separate state, their English institutions: such as the third estate in Parliament, with distinct sovereign attributes; which are, and can be, preserved in a distinct, separate, and co-ordinate assembly alone; as in our English House of Commons. The very same occurrence destroyed the liberties of Spain. With the English laws, the Lowlanders lost also their old juries on the English model, and all notion of English liberty under their feudal, needy, and very barbarous oligarchy. I need not add that the first estate, or the royal power and spiritual lords, were reduced to a mere cypher. It appears, too, that the penal laws in Ireland, and the orange-party men of the time of Geo. III. and IV. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, had their prototypes in the Kilkenny Statutes of Edward III. in the fourteenth, and in the Knights of St. George of Edward IV. in the fifteenth century. The same dull round of events has been ever recurring (under other names only), in our past Irish transactions; which, if composed in a new view, as a part only of the history of England (by way of illustration to this last), 1831.] Dr. Forster's Aerial Ascent. might perhaps afford both instruction and entertainment. As a part of the history of England, it becomes then for the first time the interest, as well as duty, of every Englishman to read it. Mr. Lascelles has, already, endeavoured to do this in the Res Gestæ Anglorum in Hibernia, prefixed (in the nature of a preface only), to his Liber Hiberniæ; the great Parliamentary Record Collections, of which see some account in vol. c. part ii. p. 590. He has there woven all our Irish transactions into the very web of the History of England, of which, it is understood, this pamphlet is merely the argument carried on to its conclusion. In truth, Ireland has no history of its own, properly speaking; and in the pamphlet before us it is shown why it never can have any. All the other evils of the Irish are incidentally mentioned; but these resolve themselves into one -that of our never having been made one people with them. Of course the completion of the union (a scheme any thing but "Utopian,") is insisted on, in a spirit of true, liberal feeling, and that in a style, natural, easy, and familiar throughout. CRITO. PARTICULARS OF AN AERIAL VOYAGE, IN A LARGE BALLOON FILLED WITH GAS, BY T. FORSTER, ESQ. F.L.S. M.D. SO few persons, since the voyage of of Zambucari and Gay Lussac, have ascended in balloons, for the express purpose of promoting science, that we do not doubt the following account which Dr. Forster gives of his own ascent will be read with interest by all scientific readers. About half-past five o'clock, April 30, I ascended with Mr. Green. The balloon was forty feet in vertical and about thirty in horizontal diameter, which, together with its neck, gave it nearly the shape of a pear. It was filled with carbonated hydrogen gas, which is heavier than pure hydrogen; and its buoyant power, when we got into the wicker basket suspended under it, in which we rode, must have been equal to lifting up ourselves and several bags of sand, although the balloon was not completely inflated. The air was mild and still, and there were many clouds in the upper regions, some of which appeared by their forms to be charged with electric fluid. On first ascending, the balloon rose majestically with a moderate velocity, in a direction nearly W.N.W. passing over the 407 valley, and taking its course towards Writtle. -When nearly over Mr. Knox's house at that place, and at an elevation of about 1500 feet, we perceived a considerable motion in the car, the oscillation was increased, and we found that we had got into a different current of air, but so gentle was its force, that we were almost imperceptibly wafted back again till we got almost over the northern extremity of the town of Chelmsford. This was in fact the S. W. current, which, increasing in force during the night, became the S.W. gale that blew, all Sunday, and brought the showers, having, as I have proved currents do, descended. However, it was as yet only a breath of air. We soon found ourselves in yet another current, and the car, which was now steadied by the grappling iron that Mr. Green had provided, and which hung by a rope, was so motionless as to enable me to distinguish our altered course only by noticing the change in the relative position of objects below. I found we increased the angle subtended by us and Mr. King's house, and consequently that we were going to Broomfield. We were still mounting, and I now perceived a sensation of pressure on the tympanum of the ear, but not accompanied by any impetus of blood to the head, very like what other aeronauts have described, and which I had before experienced in a less degree, after surmounting very high hills in Switzerland. It was also accompanied with temporary deafness. Blanchard, Garnerin, MM. Charles and Roberts, and all the early aërial travellers, who mounted very high, have described this sensation, which is, while it lasts, a trifling drawback to the pleasure of breathing a rarefied atmosphere; but I have ascertained its cause, and I feel warranted in saying that it is unattended with any real danger, particularly if care be taken not to ascend or sink too rapidly. We were now gently throwing out ballast, and the balloon, taking a sort of curved or crescent course while mounting, must, as I have since become convinced, have been slowly ascending in a spiral. At length, at the elevation of near 6,000 feet, we found ourselves perfectly becalmed, and so remained for near a quarter of an hour the motionless spectators of a vast panorama, over which the most profound and indescribable silence prevailed. Accustomed as I had been, in the course of my varied life, to all sorts of situations, on high mountains, in boats, upon the waves, in travelling, in floating on gentle water, I had as yet seen nothing like this. I remember first in crossing to France, the experience of a steamboat paddling across the level brine like a fish, was a curious phenomenon, having before been only conveyed by sailing vessels. But this newborn leviathan of the sea is nothing to a balloon; neither is the sensation produced by a balloon in motion at all |