be possible from the windows of one house to pry into those of another. This task, of course, it is not always possible to accomplish; in which case, not only are the windows masked by railings of carved wood, but the light of heaven and the glances of the curious are farther impeded by the interposition of stained glass.

The Land Tax.-This is equally borne by the property in towns and the estates of the landed aristocracy. In one form or another it has existed since the Normans introduced the feudal government into this country. Under the Commonwealth it became a permanent money tax on the land. Four years after the Revolution a new survey and valuation were made; which survey and valuation, notwithstanding the vast increase in the value of the land, have never been altered to the present day. In the reign of Queen Anne the tax on the survey and valuation of King William was rated at four shillings in the pound of the rent, and this has never been exceeded in a period of more than 130 years; so that, even where the tax has not been redeemed, the original four shillings scarcely amounts to a sixpence.

Thames Water.-In the course of the

parliamentary inquiry which took place some time ago it was proved that, between Chelsea Hospital and London bridge, the contents of more than 100 common sewers emptied themselves into the Thames. Furthermore, instead of this mass of filth being swept into the ocean by every ebb of the tide, it appeared that after being carried about thirty miles by every ebb tide, the same water returns by the flood, so that a constant flux and reflux of the abomination was established. "The Thames," observed Mr Mills in his evidence, "is neither more nor less than the common sewer of London."

How to Live Long and Joyously.—The wonderful story of Louis Cornaro teaches a fine moral lesson. He was infirm and fearfully passionate in his youth, and addicted, like most of the young men of his clime and period, to intemperance; but perceiving the injurious consequences of indulging in excesses of temper and sensuality, he changed the whole course of his life, and, submitting himself to regular and severe discipline, vanquished his dangerous inclinations, became one of the most hearty and cheerful men of his age, and expired gently in his arm-chair, after having survived his hundredth year.

Oriental Modesty.-Even from a physician, to whom an Eastern woman is sufficiently unreserved in every other respect, the face must be carefully concealed. "My face thou must not see, for then I should have shown thee my whole heart," she will say; and if the nature of her illness makes

it indispensable that the face, the mirror of the heart, should be seen, it is usually uncovered piecemeal, first one cheek and then the other, but never the whole at

once.

The Duke of Wellington's Last Triumph.The following is a literal account of part of a conversation held with a young man of twenty-one:-"Did you ever hear tell of "No,--but I the Duke of Wellington?" seed his shape once." "Did you see it over a public-house door?" "No; I seed it ridin' on a jackass, with a pair o'owd boots on, and a pipe in his mouth." "And where did this happen?" "Why at Marsden;"-where, as I subsequently gathered, this effigy of his grace had been paraded on the occasion of some political excitement.-Chaplain's Report on the Preston House of Correction.

An ancient coffin was discovered some time since in the cemetery of Lens (Pas de Calais). The body, which fell to dust when exposed to the air, was supposed to have been that of a person of rank, from a certain quantity of jewels found with it. They consist of a pair of earrings, a brooch, two cloak-clasps, a large pin, and a bulla or medallion, all of gold. The clasps are covered over with a fine tracery of gold, giving the appearance of net-work.

The whole of these articles were submitted

to the Historical Committee of Paris. The opinion given by the committee is, that the objects date from the time of the Merovingian race, and that they formed the ornaments of a princess.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Nitre, commonly called saltpetre, is formed in great abundance on the surface of the earth, more particularly in India, South America, and Africa. In Germany and France it is obtained from artificial nitre beds, which consist of the refuse of animal and vegetable bodies undergoing decomposition. When oxygen gas is presented to azote, at the instant of its disengagement nitric acid is formed which seems to explain the origin of these acid beds. The azote disengaged from these putrefying substances combines with the oxygen of the air, and the potash, probably, partly being furnished by decomposed vegetable matter, forms the nitre in question. It is obtained in a marketable form by lixiviating the earthy matters with water, and when sufficiently saturated pouring it of. The salt is collected in brown crystals by evaporising the water by repeated processes, the nitre is obtained in a pure form.

on

R. W. must be blind if he does not see many costly and valuable additions have been supplied, which might console a reasonable observer for the absence of what he is pleased to say, formerly "threw luster" 'The Mirror,' but which has not been neglected. Natural Magic next week. Many communications omitted in the present number will be attended to at the same time.

KNOLE, IN KENT. Ir is a grateful task to explore those noble, time-defying edifices which have seen many successive generations pass away, which still retain much of their grandeur, while their lords are seen no more, and "Hands which the reins of empire once had held, In arms who triumphed or in arts excelled," have crumbled into dust. One of these we find in the subject of the cut which embellishes the present number of the Mirror.' The mansion there represented has been the seat of many distinguished families. It is near Sevenoaks, in the county of Kent, and stands in a large and beautiful park. Baldwin de Bethun, Earl of Albemarle, held it in the time of King John. To the Mareschals, Earls of Pem broke, it passed by marriage, and next to the proud Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, and from them to Otho de Grandison. Sir Geffrey de Say, a knight banneret, bought it of Sir Thomas Grandison, the descendant of Otho. Thence it is traced to Rauf Leghe, who sold it to the Fienneses, Lords Say and Sele. In 1456 it was disposed of by William Lord Say and Sele to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, who No. 1192]

left it at his death, in 1486, to his successors and that see for ever. Archbishop Morton, who succeeded him, augmented the building, and died at Knole in the year 1500. He appears to have been visited once, or more than once, by Henry VII. lates in succession, and the seventh and Dene and Warham were the next preeighth Henries were among the visitors of the latter. After Warham, Cranmer filled the see, and many of its rich possessions he deemed it prudent to surrender to the King, in order to secure the rest. Knole, with its park and lands, thus became the property of the Crown, by whom it was retained till after the accession of Edward V, when it was granted, with other estates, to John Dudley Earl of Warwick, afterwards Duke of Northumberland. On the attainder of that nobleman, in the time of Queen Mary, for supporting the cause of his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, for which crime he was brought to the block, it was granted by Mary, with Sevenoaks and other estates, to her kinsman, Cardinal Pole, then archbishop. By a remarkable coincidence, that prelate died on the same day that Queen Mary breathed her last; and Knole, again reverting to the Crown, was bestowed [VOL XIIII.

by Queen Elizabeth, in the third year of her reign, on Robert Earl of Leicester. He did not long enjoy it, being induced five years afterwards to surrender it to his royal mistress. It was next granted, in the following year, to Thomas Sackville Lord Buckhurst, K.G., subject, however, to the remaining terms of a lease which had been granted by the Earl of Leicester, through which the new proprietor did not obtain full possession until 1603, when it was given up by the Lennards of Chevering, who had held it in the interim. Lord Buckhurst was a poet, and was said to have been gifted with "a sublime genius,"

""Till hateful business damp'd his flame,
And for vile titles barter'd fame;
Till the chill cup of worldly lore,
Quench'd the rich thoughts to wake no more."

6

When a young student in the Inner Temple, he wrote the celebrated induction to his Legend of the Duke of Buckingham, in the Mirror for Magistrates,' which Warton considered came nearer to the Fairie Queene' in the richness of allegorical description than any previous or succeeding poem. His tragedy of Gorbo. duc,' performed four years afterwards before Queen Elizabeth by the gentlemen of the Inn, was the first tragedy known to have been written in English verse. He then became a statesman, and after the death of his father, Sir Richard Sackville, in 1566, was created a peer, by the style and title of Baron Buckhurst, was subsequently made a Knight of the Garter, and having served Elizabeth as Ambassador to several foreign courts, at length, on the death of Lord Burleigh, became Lord High Treasurer. He succeeded to the confidence of James the First, by whom he was created Earl of Dorset. He took up his re sidence at Knole in 1603, and two hundred men were kept constantly at work in repairing and beautifying the mansion and estate till 1608, when his lordship died while sitting at the Council Board.

Since his time many improvements have been made in the manor. The principal entrance is through a great tower-portal, leading into the first or outer quadrangle. In the centre of the grass plat on each side are models of ancient statues, the Gladiator and Venus, orta mari. Through a large tower there is an entrance from this court to the inner quadrangle, with a portico in front, supported by eight Ionic columns, over which is an open gallery with a balustrade. Some of the waterspouts bear the dates of 1605 and 1607.

The great hall of the mansion measures seventy-four feet ten inches in length, and twenty-seven in breadth. A nobly-carved screen at one end supports a grand music gallery, decorated with the arms of Thomas Earl of Dorset, and those of his countess.

THE DESPOT; OR, IVAN THE
TERRIBLE.

(Continued from page 344.),

IVAN had witnessed with great apparent satisfaction the cruelties committed on their route by the legion, as if it gratified him to find them so accomplished in the art of murder. At length, on the 2nd of January, 1570, his advanced guard reached. the devoted city of Novgorod. The churches and convents were immediately closed, and money demanded from all the clergy without exception. Every monk who could not ransom himself by paying a fine of twenty roubles, was seized, bound, and flogged with inhuman severity. The houses of the inhabitants were closely watched, and their owners thrown into fetters to await the arrival of the Czar. He reached Goroditche on the 6th, and on the following day all the monks who had not paid the fine were put to death, and their bodies sent for interment in their several monasteries. Ivan made his grand entry on the 8th, at the head of the select legion, and accompanied by his son. archbishop, with his clergy, and the sacredimages, waited for him on the bridge. Ivan scornfully refused to receive the cus. tomary benediction, and breathed a fierce and most reproachful malediction on the prelate. The crucifix and images were ordered to be carried into the church of St Sophia. There, with his usual affectation of piety, Ivan attended to hear mass. He then proceeded to the episcopal palace, and sat down to dinner with his boyards. He suddenly rose from table and uttered a loud cry. This was a preconcerted signal. His officers promptly appeared, seized the archbishop and his officers and servants and the palace and cloisters were instantly, given up to plunder. The cathedral itself was not spared. Its treasures, its sacred vessels, its images, and bells were all taken away, and the churches attached to the rich monasteries were treated in the like

The

manner. All the valuables that could be secured having been seized as a preliminary, on the following morning the grand business of the expedition, the tortures and executions, commenced. At these the Czar and his son regularly assisted, and each day, dreadful to relate, from five hundred to a thousand unhappy beings were dragged before them to be consigned to the grave. Some were deprived of their eyes and limbs, others were slowly consumed by a combustible composition prepared for the occasion, and some were tied by the head or the feet to sledges, and conveyed to the Volkhof, to a part of the river which is never frozen hard. There, from the bridge over it, wives with their husbands, mothers with sucking children at their breasts, and, in short, whole families, were pitilessly hurled into the water, while some of the Strelitzes, armed with pikes, lances, and hatchets, sailed on the river to pierce or cut to pieces all who attempted by swimming to save their lives. For five weeks the horrible havock was continued without intermission. Not only was it accompanied by a pillaging of the houses, but the churches and monasteries in the neighbourhood were ruined, the horses and cattle were killed, and the corn which had been stored away was wilfully destroyed. The commodities found in the shops which the soldiers did not want were thrown into the street, to be scrambled for by the populace.

The number of victims which fell on this occasion at Novgorod and the several places in its vicinity, which were visited with the same monstrous cruelty, has been estimated at sixty thousand souls! At the end of the period which has been named, wearied at last, it may be presumed, of the brutal punishments he commanded being so often repeated, Ivan made a grand display of clemency by granting his pardon to the heart-broken, miserable survivors. Pale and ghastly, they assembled at his bidding, the living images of terror and despair. He pretended to address them with parental kindness, lamented the rigorous measures which had been forced upon him by the treason so happily repressed, and, exhorting them to pray to the Al mighty to grant him a long and a happy reign, bade them most graciously farewell, as if a kind word at parting could make them forget that their fathers and children, mothers and sisters, had by his ruthless decree been hurried from life by one comprehensive, unhallowed, undis tinguishing massacre.

From Novgorod he carried off an immense booty, which was in all probability the true cause of its being thus awfully visited. He compelled the Archbishop of Novgorod, and many other priests, to accompany him to Alexandrovsky. On

his arrival there he resumed his religious éxercises, if so the mockery of devotion in which he indulged may be called, and the captives were confined in noisome dungeons, being occasionally tortured, till the abbot could find leisure without too seriously interrupting the course of his devotions to decide on their fate.

The summer season arrived, and still these unfortunates languished in close con.. finement. Others were added to them. Some persons who had in the first instance acted against them now shared their sufferings. The instruments of tyranny are commonly in the end numbered among its victims. At length the time came when the Czar deemed it fit to refresh himself with another banquet of blood.

On the morning of the 25th of July no fewer than eighteen gibbets were erected in the market place of Moscow, to which city Ivan returned to take part in this grand ceremony. Various instruments of torture were in readiness, and a huge fire was kindled, over which a vast copper cauldron was suspended. The Muscovites, terrified at the awful spectacle, thought only of saving their lives, and fled, leaving their shops open, and their merchandize, and even their money, unprotected. The streets were almost wholly deserted. Few besides the Strelitzes, who formed in silence round the gibbets and the fire, were seen. The beating of the drums announced the coming of the Czar and his son, who made their appearance on horseback. They were attended by the boyards, several princes, and that portion of the select legion which had not been previously stationed in the market place. In solemn order the Strelitzes followed the Czar and those who accompanied him, and to these succeeded the long and melancholy procession of the unhappy men who were doomed to die. Their appearance was distressing in the extreme. From the tortures they had already known they looked pale and emaciated. They were smeared with blood, and so feeble that they could scarcely advance to the spot on which their sufferings were to be terminated with their lives. On reaching the intended scene of murder, Ivan was at once surprised and grieved to find that the crowd usually assembled on such mournful occasions was absent. None had repaired to the market place as spectators, for the wayward brutality of the despot was such that each felt he himself might probably be added to the condemned list. Such conduct on the part of the populace appeared to him strangely remiss. He immediately gave orders that the citizens should be summoned to behold the spectacle which he had prepared for them, and joined himself in encouraging those who first appeared by assurances of