tivated; the peasant looked cheerful; and the towns abounded with riches and festivity. What an alteration at present from such a charming scene! I am not expert at description, nor can iny fancy add any horrors to the pic ture; but sure even conquerors themselves would weep at the hideous pro speets how before me. The whole country, my dear country, lies one frightful waste, presenting only objects to excite terror, pity, and despair. The business of the husbandman and the shepherd are quite discontinued; the husbandman and the shepherd are be come soldiers themselves, and help to Favage the soil they formerly cultivated. The towns are inhabited only by old men, women, and children; perhaps here and there a warrior, by wounds or loss of limbs rendered unfit for service, left at his door; his little children hang round him, ask an history of every wound, and grow themselves soldiers before they find strength for the field. But this were nothing, did we not feel the alternate insolence of either army, as it happens to advance or retreat, in pursuing the operations of the cam paign: it is impossible to express the confusion which even those who call themselves our friends create. Even those from whom we might expect redress, oppress us with new calamities. From your justice, therefore, it is that we hope relief; to you even children and women may complain, whose humanity stoops to the meanest petition, and whose power is capable of repressing the greatest injustice. I am, Sire, &c. THE COLLEGE, OR CHETHAM'S HOSPITAL, MANCHESTER, LANCASHIRE. [WITH A VIEW.] HE learned historian of Man chester, Mr. Whitaker, contends that the above edifice stands within the precinct of the ancient Roman summer camp, belonging to the station called Mancunium. The buildings, a part of which is represented in the annexed PRINT, stand on a mass of rock, which is washed by the waters of the river Irk. It was formerly the residence of the Warden and Fellows of a College: the large and fine church belonging to which, stands at a short distance south of the domestic buildings. In consequence of the will of HENRY CHET BAM, Esq., of Clayton, near Manchester, bearing date December 16, A.D. 1651, these extensive premises were bought of the Earl of Derby, to whose family they belonged from the time of Edward the VIth. By the above will, the truly benevolent testator bequeathed 7000l. to purchase a fee simple estate, the profits of which were to be applied for the purchase of this place, and to found a school upon an enlarged and liberal plan, for clothing, educating, and maintaining forty boys, from the age of six years to that of fourteen, when they were to be apprenticed, with a moderate fee. As the value of the estates increased, the number of boys was afterwards augmented to sixty: and by a decree of the Feoffees in 1780, this number was again increased by an additional twenty. Thus, eighty boys are now provided for, and educated, by this establishment. Nearly one-fourth of the boys are annually discharged at Easter, and others elected in their stead by the Feoffees, who are twenty-four in number, and who have been invariably gentlemen of respectability in the neighbourhood. They are rendered a body corporate by charter, dated November 20, A.D. 1665. Mr. Chetham by his will bequeathed also the sums of 10001. for the purchase of books, and 1001. for a building, as the foundation of a public library; for the augmentation and support of which, he devised the residue of his personal estate, after the payment of certain legacies. The same truly pious and charitable man, who died a Bache lor, bequeathed the sum of 2001. to purchase religious, or, as... then called, " godly English books," which were to be chained to desks, in the churches of Manchester and Bolton, and the chapels of Turton, Walmsley, and Gorton. The library, which Mr. Chetham thus founded at Manchester, is now become a vast mass of useful books, amounting to upwards of 15,000 volumes; and these are carefully preserved in apartments appropriately fitted up for their reception. A catalogue of them was published in 1791, in two volumes, 8vo. It is entitled Bibliotheca Chethamensis," and was edited by the Rev. John Radcliff, M..., who was then librarian. * J. B. We have heard that a different Tiew of this Building, with more ample Accounts of it, will be published in the 9th Volume of the "Beauties of Eng land and Wales." VESTIGES, COLLECTED AND RECOLLECTED, BY JOSEPH MOSER, ESQ. A PRILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL VIEW OF WITH NOTES, &c. Chapter XIX. THE circunstances arising from the stance, from which profit could be derived, into the vortex of the Court of Rome. If this, upon the broadest of all possible plans, may be deemed a general sketch of the great mass of people in the latter period of the fifteenth century, it is necessary to fill up a small portion of the outline of every country with a principal object, which may stand like the cardinal point in a map; or, in other words, see how those people cinc instation of Great Britain, were governed. have, at all periods, been singular. Placed by Providence in a state that seemed calculated to secure to it the most dignified independence, it has yet, either by conquest, consanguinity, or commerce, become, at times, intimately connected with every other country of Europe; and, indeed, upon the pinions of war or traffic, stretched its relationship to many other parts of the globe. It is, perhaps, owing to this general connexion, that the prominent feature of the character of the English since the fifteenth century has been political. Inhabiting an island divided from, yet in a manuer allied to, all the world, an Englishman cousiders himself as a CosMOPOLITE, and becomes, in his turn, as anxious about the affairs of Abyssinia or of Lapland, as about those of York, Exeter, his own metropolis, or any other part of the kingdom. At the commencement of the last quarter of the period alluded to, Edward the IVth, as has been observed, was King of England; Rodolphus the Ild, Emperor of Germany; Louis the Xlth, King of France; Ferdinand and Isabella governed Spain; Naples was under the domination of Ferdinand, the illegitimate son of Alphonso; the Papal Chair was filled by Sixtus the IVth; and the celebrated Mattia Corvino bad lately been elected, by the free voice of his countrymen, King of Hungary. The A.D. 1475. “The political system of Europe was as yet unformed. despotic Sovereign, governing a half civilized people, had, in general, only two principal ends in view-the supporting his authority at home by the depression of his powerful Nobles, and the extending his dominion abroad by the subjugation of his weaker neigh bours. Devoted to these objects, which frequently required all their talents and all their resources, the Potentates of Europe beheld with the utmost indifference the destruction of the Eastern empire, and the abridgment of the Christian territory, by a race of barbarians, who were most probably prevented only by their own dissensions from establishing themselves in Italy, and desolating the kingdoms of the west. It was in vain that Pius the 11d had called upon the European Sovereigns to unite in the common cause. The ardour of the crusades was past. A jealousy of each other, or of their own subjects, was an insuperable obstacle to his entreaties; and the good Pontiff was at length convinced that his eloquence would be beer employed in prevailing on the Turkish Emperor to rebnquish his creed and embrace Christianity, than in simulating the Princes of Europe to resist his arms *." This has, for ages, been the English character; but this, formerly, was not the character of other European na tions. The Germans seem to have laboured under a load which, whether military or civil, encumbered without adding variety to their ideas or to have pursued with indefatigable indus try the atoms of science, and busied their lives upon objects which, could they have been discerned, would probably have been admired. The French appear to have had too much volatility to suffer any ideas to press long enough to encumber them; the Dutch to have been sedulously devoted to one object; the Spaniards, in conse quence of a new establishment of their own, to have been trembling under the denunciations of a religious systein, which was, in its purity, intended to speak peace and good will to mankind; the Italians, who might for ages have been termed the spies of Europe, pervading the domestic concerns of every nation, and dragging every circum- Xth. Europ. Mag. ol. LI. Feb. 1807. *Roscoe's Life and Pontificate of Leo the N This whole length portrait of the political situation of Europe, drawn by so able a master, we deemed it necessary to copy, because it must correctly connects itself with the sketch that we had before displayed, and, combined together, operated most intimately upon the political and moral circumstances of the City of London, whose inhabitants, as we have observed of the English in general, inquisitive after, and governed in their propensities by foreign, more than even by domestic events, rose, upon the depression of the higher or-ders of society, into legislative consequence. By the distraction which pervaded Italy, commerce was frightened from Florence, its mart, and from Venice, itsemporium, to the British shores. Even the rising empire of the Turks was advantageous to our Eastern system; and from the wars betwixt the Germans and the French, the trade of England deved additional importance. The Dutch, although known as a people, had not vet obtained sufficient consequence in the scale of nations to interfere in the smallest degree with the interest of our metropolis while with the Netherlands, through the medium of Antwerp, that kind of emulation subsisted, which, although it might, in a few instances, excite the jealousy of London, was certainly advantageous to both cities. Under these flourishing circumstances the fifteenth century closed upon the inhabitants of the metropolis: let us therefore, observe their operative consequences in the sixteenth. now, It does not appear that in this contury the Chief Magistrates were so anxious for the improvement of the city as they had been in those preceding. SIR WILLIAM CAPEL, Draper, Mayor 1503, was the first that caused a Cage for the punishment of vagabonds to be set up in every ward. These were pro bably deemed necessary erections, and therefore, with respect to police, must be allowed to be improvements. SIR THOMAS KNESWORTH, Fishmonger, Mayor 1505, appointed the water conduit at Billingsgate to be built. SIR STEPHEN JENNINGS, Merchant Tailor, Mayor 1508, built the greatest part of the church of St. Andrew Undershaft. SIR HENRY KEBLE, Grocer, Mayor 1510, gave 1000l. toward the new building and finishing his parish-church SIR THOMAS EXMEWE, Goldsmith, Mayor 1517, made the water conduit in London Wall, by Moorgate. SIR JOHN MILBORNE, Draper, Mayor 1521, founded fourteen alms-houses by Crossed Friars Church. SIR ROWLAND HILL, Mercer, Mayor 1549, appears to have been a man of a liberal spirit. He founded a free school, amended many highways, and built and repaired many bridges +. SIR WILLIAM CHESTER, Draper, was Mayor 1560. It was during this mayoralty that the Merchant Tailors founded their excellent free school for poor men's children, &c. *This church, it will be recollected, obtained the latter appellation from being the aldest fabric dedicated to St. MARY, in London. Sir Henry Keble, though so noble a benefactor, had no monument set over his body till the year 1551 or 1535; but William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who married Alice, his daughter, ordered, by his will, ་་ a stone to be laid over him, upon this consideration, that there was no stone upon him, and he had been a special benefactor to the building of Aldermary church to the value of 2000l., and above;" which (says Stow) was a great sum of money in those times. He succeeded Sir William Brown, who died in his mayoralty. This means the bridges that crossed the streets of the metropolis, of which there were a great number. The Mayor inmediately preceding this Magistrate, viz. A. D. 1559, was Sir Win LIAM HEWET, who is stated to have been a merchant, and to have lived en London Bridge. He is said to have possessed an estate of 6000!.. per annum, and to have had three sons and one daughter. To this daughter the accident of being dropped into the Thames by her maid happened: which, togother with the heroism of Osborn, the ancester of the Duke of Leeds, is well known. When the young lady grew up, so great was her beauty, and so immense her fortune, that several of the Nobility, particularly the Earl of Shrowsbury, wished, as we now say, to lead her to the altar; but Sir William declared, that as Osborn had sured her, Osbo, u should have her. In 1732 there was a picture of Sir William at Kiveton House. He died 1599, as was recorded on his tomb, which was of magnificent workmanship, in St. Paul's church. Sir Edward Osborn, the hero of this tale, was Mayor 1585. Both father and son-in-law were of the company of Clothworkers. |