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ler, or group of travellers, for this or that excursion; and how, to such an one, opportunities presented themselves every day-more especially among the trodden pathways of the Swiss mountains-not only of forming, but almost of choosing his company. The system, too, had this great recommendation : that, with many of the pleasures, there were annexed none of the ties of a permanent alliance. So long as the schemes or the humours of both parties were in unison, each was bettered by the other's society; and the moment both or either of these inducements failed, no consideration of duty, of preconcert, or of a common end in view, hindered a parting-on the terms they might have met-good friends. With such palliatives was I fain to soften down the rigours of my prospect, in this point alone, a little forbidding; and I fancied already that I saw the commencement of its realization, in the jealous looks and half sentences of distrust, to be expected among the medley of people wherewithal these North Sea packets, at this time of year, are commonly laden; a tone, however, which never struck me half so forcibly as on board the "Ocean" steam-boat upon the present occasion.

Yet was my frame, on the whole, an enviable one. Naturally sanguine, in spite of occasional misgivings and suspicions, I carefully tutored myself to discover the agreeable in every object I met with. No light. matter, I resolved, should daunt me in the accomplishment of my scheme; no annoyance or irritation from petty inconveniences or hindrances. I was bent on maintaining my independence by asserting my own plans and wishes; not sacrificing them in mere politeness on account of any occasional comrade; and on gleaning knowledge along with enjoyment, everywhere and always, if possible. These were the grand principles I set myself. But alas! what man ever realized his own ideal?

I took care, however, to provide myself with extrinsic resources of various sorts. An enthusiastic admirer of fine scenery, I am not altogether unaccustomed to portray it; and my pencils, with a brace of Ackermann's sketching blocks, and a certain blank duodecimo in green roan with blue marble paper covers, severally intended, and destined, to be marred, blurred, be-dabbled, and be-scribbled, are entitled to be mentioned first among them. Two or three small books, designed as helps and prompters in as many languages, lay snug in a corner of my small portmanteau; wherein, lastly, was disposed with care-what was very important in my eyes-the apparatus requisite to catch and stow away as many beetles, butterflies, and optera and iptera of every denomination, as their evil stars and the prolific sunshines of the South, should conspire to put in my possession.

Finally, I had equipped for the Alps. Their gigantic precipices, their pathless snows and forests, their grand and romantic characteristics, were the stimulants that had set me in motion. I was bent on exploring their recesses a-foot, and my ambition was to make acquaintances of as many mountain-tops and valleys as the allotted modicum of time would suffer. I carried consequently no superfluous impedimenta. All my baggage lay in a small valise, which, without much difficulty I could, upon a needs

be, carry for a brace of miles on my two forefingers. Be this thy introductory Nota Bene, reader; and adopt my example herein, as a first principle in all arrangements for similar locomotion. Another suggestion ere starting, is, that you convert into the circular notes (and the smaller the more desirable) of some London banker, fortified by his lettre d'indication to his various continental correspondents-an accommodation which I procured from Messrs. Coutts and Co.,―the bulk of whatever fund you may have allowanced yourself to expend upon your tour. It is a convenient and secure way of carrying coin; and, if you are your own purse-bearer, will ease you during many a lonely walk of the disquietude which the mere possession of specie on your person is calculated to create. One more hint, and though homely, it must not therefore be deemed impertinent. Let your habiliments sit easily upon you loosely rather than otherwise a tight fit and a dandy build do not become a pilgrim, particularly if pedestrian. He is sure to be punished for his gentility; especially if he have to climb a mountain of Savoy in the dog-days. A thick-soled shoe or half-boot (if a few nails all the better) and gray worsted socks are the best equipment for the feet; while a dress coat will give you the entrée sometimes where a surtout is inadmissible.-Your blouse may be purchased to advantage abroad; but the Macintosh no where so well as in London.

Lady reader-sister, wife, mother-I claim your kind indulgence. Studious, as you constantly are proved of our comforts, you will accept my apology for these details. To mine own sex none is needful: their utility is their justification. I address not the lounging, fashionable exquisites, that are to be met with in constant migration between the capitals and the watering-places; or even the class (some shades more sensible) who roll through the length of a land, to see the hundred choice sights, and enjoy the numberless luxuries that solicit indolent affluence ; but require also wheels and the legs of cattle to transport them free of fatigue to the point whither they would be. The present journal was penned by one who kept his legs and fingers in exercise, as well as his eyes and nether jaw; nor can he discover that it has fared with him the worse in a single instance for so doing; intellectually and bodily, he fancies himself all the better. His pleasure was scarcely the less then, and is much enhanced in retrospect, by having, on more than one occasion, been forced, as the saying is, “to rough it." It gives zest to recollection as to appetite: and those who are not indisposed to share a rugged road, and a plain account of very ordinary adventures, sights, and doings, he calls upon to keep him company through the following pages. If now and then he weary them, he wrote at the tail of a long day's march; if his page occasionally grow dull, he lacked the merry faces and loud laugh of social glee, which are influential to promote pleasantry.

Not to lengthen this somewhat prolix exordium, start we forthwith upon our travels.

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THE parish or manor of Boxley, delightfully situated in a verdant vale adjoining Maidstone, although now only conspicuous for the beauty of its landscape, was formerly remarkable for the wealth and splendour of an abbey, and the frauds of its monks. At the general survey for Doomsday-Book, the manor of Boxleu, so called from the number of box-trees formerly growing in the vicinity, formed part of the estates of Odo, the famous Bishop of Bayeux, and Earl of Kent, at whose disgrace, in 1084, it was forfeited to the crown, along with his other possessions. In the year 1146, William d' Ipre, Earl of Kent, assumed the cowl at Laon, in Flanders, and, returning to his earldom, founded the Abbey of Boxley for monks of the Cistercian order. Richard Coeur-de-Lion bestowed the manor upon the new foundation, and subsequent monarchs enriched it still farther by liberal grants. The monks were permitted to hold a weekly market in Boxley, by a charter of Henry III., who confirmed all previous grants to the abbey; and the abbot was summoned to parliament by Edward I. When Queen Isabella was on a pilgrimage

to Canterbury, she sought an asylum in Leeds Castle, but the governor uncourteously refusing to admit her, drew upon himself the vengeance of the king. A regular siege commenced in October, 1221, during which Edward II. lodged in Boxley Abbey; and it was while he was a guest in this sanctuary that he granted a new charter to the citizens of London for the aids they furnished him, “armed footmen," to reduce the castle. At the dissolution of monasteries in Henry VIII.'s reign, Boxley shared the general fate; its resources, valued at £218 yearly, being seized by the monarch. His majesty, however, exchanged the manor and abbey lands with Sir Thomas Wyatt, of Allynton, Knight, (celebrated for his poetic talents,) for other premises, reserving to the crown the parsonage and advowson. Scarcely two years passed over before Boxley reverted to the crown again; upon which Queen Mary granted it to the Lady Jane Wyatt, widow of Sir Thomas, and her heirs-male in capite, by knights' service. By attainder of blood it was once more forfeited, but was restored, by act of parliament, to George Wyatt, whose lineal descendant, Richard Wyatt, dying in 1759, bequeathed it, with other estates, to his relative, Lord Romney. By intermarriage the abbey and lands passed to the family of Silyard (Selyard), Baronets, an heiress of which sold them to the Austens, also Baronets, by whom they were bequeathed in equal shares to the Amhursts, of Rochester, and the Allens.

The principal remains of the abbey consist of a long apartment, now desecrated into a barn; a brick gateway and lodge; and the boundary wall thickly overgrown with ivy, in which a gnarled oak, of considerable dimensions, and in robust and flourishing health, has found a secure tenure. The large roots, in many places denuded, exceed a foot in diameter; and having first displaced large portions of the wall, pierce through a soil of the most rigid description. The Indian Peepul-tree delights in similar situations, and sometimes attains to such dimensions as not only to throw down walls, but whole buildings also.

But the great name which Boxley anciently enjoyed was derived from a famous wooden Rood, or image, with which the monks practised upon the credulity of the people for many years. It was called the Rood of Grace, and was so ingeniously contrived, that its movements deceived not only the most ignorant, but even the most discerning amongst its supplicants, so that pilgrimages were made thither, and rich offerings brought to the abbey. Until the searching nature of the Dissolution exposed so many pious frauds, the ingenious mechanism of the Rood of Grace lay concealed: but, when all danger was dispelled, Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, carried the Rood to London, and there at St. Paul's Cross, on Sunday, the 24th of February, 1538, exposed the secret mechanism by which it moved its lips and eyes, and to which it owed all its miraculous ability. After this discovery and exposure, the image was ceremoniously broken into pieces and publicly burned. The history of this extraordinary piece of mechanism is thus quaintly told by Lambard in his " Perambulations of Kent."

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"It chanced upon a time, a cunning carpenter of our country was taken prisoner in the wars between us and France, who wanting otherwise to satisfy for his ransom, and having good leisure to devise for his deliverance, thought it best to attempt some curious enterprise within the compass of his own art and skill, to make himself some money withal; and therefore, getting together fit matter for his purpose, he compacted of wood, wire, paste and paper, a Rood of such exquisite art and workmanship, that it not only matched in comeliness, and due proportion of parts, the best of the common sort; but in strange motion, variety of gesture, and nimbleness of joints, passed all other that before had been seen : the same being able to bow down, and lift itself up, to shake and stir the hands and feet, to nod the head, to roll the eyes, to wag the chaps, to bend the brows, and finally to represent to the eye, both the proper motion of each member of the body, and also a lively expression and significant show of a well-contented or displeased mind; biting the lip, and gathering a frowning, froward, and disdainful face when it would pretend offence; and showing a mild, amiable, smiling, and cheerful countenance when it would seem to be well pleased. So that now it needed not Frometheus' fire to make it a lively man, but only the help of the covetous priests of Bell, or the aid of some crafty college of monks, to deify and make it pass for a very God. This done, he made shift for his liberty to come over into the realm, on purpose to utter his merchandise, and laid the image upon the back of a jade that he drove before him. Now, when he was come as far as Rochester, he was very thirsty owing to his journey, and called at an alehouse for a drink to refresh himself, suffering his horse, nevertheless, to go on alone through the city. This jade was no sooner out of sight, but he missed the straight western way that his master intended to have gone, and turning south made a great pace towards Boxley, and being driven, as it were, by some divine fury, never ceased till he came to the Abbey Church door, where he beat and bounced so with his heels, that divers of the monks heard the noise, came to the place to know the cause, and (marvelling at the strangeness of the thing) called the abbot and his convent to behold it. These good men seeing the horse so earnest, and discerning what he had on his back, for doubt of deadly impiety opened the door, which they had no sooner done, but the horse rushed in, and run (in great haste) to a pillar (which was the very place where this image was afterwards placed), and there stopped himself and stood still. Now while the monks were busy taking off the load, in comes the carpenter (who by great inquisition had followed), and he challenged his own. The monks, loath to lose so beneficial a stray, at first made some denial; but afterwards, being assured by every sign that he was the very proprietor, they allow him to take it with him. The carpenter then takes the horse by the head, and first essays to lead him out of the church; but he would not stir for him: then he beats and strikes him; but the jade was so restiff and fast-nailed, that he would not once remove his foot from the pillar: at last he takes off the image, thinking to have carried it out by himself, and then to have led the horse after; but that also clung so fast to the place, that notwithstanding all that he and the monks did who were at last obliged for pity's sake to help him, it would not be moved one inch from it; so that in the end, partly from weariness in wrestling with it, and partly by the persuasion of the monks, who were in love with the picture, and made him believe that it was by God himself destined for their house, the carpenter was contented, for a piece of money, to go his way and leave the Rood behind him."

VOL. 1.-NO. I.

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