of Whitbye," and states that he married "Emme of the Porte; which Emme fyrst was lady of Semer besides Skarburgh upon the conquest;" and further that these possessions with other lands William the conqueror bestowed upon this Percy "for his good service," and that Percy wedded Emme of the Porte, "that was very heire to them," in discharging of his conscience." Of this marriage was Alayne Percy who "by Emma of Gawnte his wife" had the second William lord Percy who married " Aliza that lyeth at Whitbye."*

BOLTON ABBEY, YORKSHIRE.

Under the Saxon dynasty, Bolton had been the seat of earl Edwin's barony. In the twelfth century, Aaliza, the granddaughter of Robert de Romillè, heiress of the castle and honor of Skipton, married William Fitz-Duncan, a chief, who, after laying waste Craven by fire and sword, had been established there by his

calamity had befallen her son, instantly replied, " Endless sorrow."

The language of this question, almost unintelligible at present, proves the antiquity of the story, which nearly amounts to proving its truth. But "bootless been" is unavailing prayer; and the meaning, though imperfectly expressed, seems to have been, "What remains when prayer is useless?"

This misfortnne is said to have oссаsioned the translation of the priory from Embsay to Bolton, which was the nearest eligible site to the place where it happened. The lady was now in a proper situation of mind to take any impression from her spiritual comforters. The views of the parties were different; they spoke, no doubt, and she thought, of proximity to the scene of her son's death; but it was the fields and woods of Bolton for which they secretly languished.

Although there is reason for supposing that this tradition may refer to one of the sons of Cecilia de Romille, the first found

parted with this property to the canons of Embsay, and on the site of an ancient Saxon Church, in one of the most romantic situations in Craven, they built the beautiful structure of Bolton Priory. Dr. Whitaker, in his History of Craven, mentions a tragical event, assigned by tradition as the cause for lady Aaliza having parted with Bolton.

In the deep solitude of the woods betwixt Bolton and Barden, the Wharf suddenly contracts itself to a rocky channel, little more than four feet wide, and pours through the tremendous fissure with a rapidity proportioned to its confinement. This place was then, as it is yet, called the Strid, from a feat often exercised by persons of more agility than prudence, who stride from brink to brink, regardless of the destruction which awaits a faltering step. Such, according to tradition, was the fate of young Romille, who inconsiderately bounding over the chasm with a greyhound in his leash, the animal hung back, and drew his unfortunate master into the torrent. The forester who accompanied Romille, and beheld his fate, returned to the lady Aaliza, and, with despair in his countenance, inquired, "What is good for a bootless bene?" To which the mother, apprehending that some great

* Antiquarian Rupertory, iv. 4.

Whitaker is without doubt that the story is true in the main. "This singular occurrence," says Dr. Drake, "which, whether it apply to Cecilia, or Aaliza, Romillè, is of little consequence in a poetical point of view, has furnished more than one of our living bards with a theme for his muse. I annex the lines of Mr. Rogers."

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

"Say, what remains when hope is fled ?"
She answer'd, "Endless weeping!"
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,
The stag was roused on Badden-fell;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying:
When, near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad, and forest-green,

With hound in leash, and hawk in hood,

The boy of Egremond was seen.
Blithe was his song-a song of yore;
But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!
'Twas but a step! the gulf he pass'd;
But that step it was his last!

As through the mist he winged his way
(A cloud that hovers night and day)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The master and his merlin too.
That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;
The "Miserere!" duly sung;

:

And holy men, in cowl and hood,
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.
Sit now, and answer groan for groan;
The child before thee is thy own;
And she who wildly wanders there,
The mother, in her long despair,

Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled

When red with blood the river roll'd.

THE WANDERING JEW.

Matthew Paris relates a story which obtained full credit before the year 1228. He circumstantially reports thatin that year caine an Armenian archbishop into England to visit the shrines and reliques preserved in our churches; and that, being entertained at the monastery of St. Albans, he was asked several questionsrelating to his travels and his country. Among the rest, a monk who sat near him enquired "if he had ever seen or heard of the famous person named Joseph, who was present at our Lord's crucifixion, and conversed with him, and who was still alive in confirmation of the Christian faith." The archbishop answered that the fact was true; and afterwards one of his train, interpreting his master's words, told them in French, that his lord knew the person they spoke of very well; that

he dined at his table but a little while before he left the east; that he had been Pontius Pilate's porter, and was then 'named Cartaphilus; and that when the Jews were dragging Jesus out of the door of the judgment hall, this Cartaphilus struck him with his fist on the back, saying, "Go faster Jesus, go faster-why dost thou linger:" upon which Jesus looked at him with a frown, and said; "I, indeed, am going; but thou shalt tarry till I come." Soon afterwards he was converted, and baptized by the name of Joseph. He lives for ever, but at the end of every hundred years falls into an incurable illness, and, at length, into a fit of ecstacy, out of which, when he recovers, he returns to the same state of youth he was in when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years of age. He remembers all the circumstances of the death and resurrection of Christ, the saints that rose with him, the composing of the Apostles' creed, their preaching, and dispersion; and is himself a very grave and holy person. This is the substance of Matthew Paris's account, who was himself a monk of St. Alban's, and was living at the time when this Armenian archbishop made the above relation. Since then several impostors have appeared at intervals, under the name and character of the "Wandering Jew." Mr. Brand says, "I remember to have seen one of these impostors some years ago in the north of England, who made a very hermit-like appearance, and went up and down the streets of Newcastle with a long train of boys at his heels, muttering Poor John alone, alone! poor John alone!' otherwise, Poor Jew alone.' I thought he pronounced his name in a manner singularly plaintive." Ile adds that sir William Musgrave had a portrait of this man inscribed "Poor Joe alone!"

of some previous remarks upon hypochondria, whence is derived the subjoined

Extract.

The spectra seen in hypochondriasis, and the gorgeous scenery of dreams under such states of excitement, serve to confirm the now received axiom in physiology, that it is not external objects in general that the mind actually views, but their forms exhibited on the sensorium; for cerebral action will sometimes take place spontaneously and produce visions. We quote the following from a modern writer :

"I know not whether my reader is aware that many children, perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms; in some that power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye; others have a voluntary, or a semivoluntary power to dismiss or to summon them; or, as a child once said to me when I questioned him on this matter, I can tell them to go, and they go; but sometimes they come when I don't tell them to come.'

At

night, when I lay awake in bed, vast processions passed along in mournful pomp; friezes of never-ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before Oedipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis, and, at the same time, a corresponding change took place in my dreams; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and lighted up within my brain, which presented nightly spectacles of more than earthly splendor. And the four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at this time:-that, as the creative state of the eye increased, a sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the dreaming states of the brain in one point, that whatsoever I happened to call up and to trace by a voluntary act upon the darkness, was very apt to transfer itself to my dreams; so that I feared to exercise this faculty-for, as Midas turned all things to gold that yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, so, whatsoever things capable of being visually represented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately shaped themselves into phantoms of the

sufferable splendor that fretted my heart. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, were accompanied by deep-seated anxiety and gloomy melancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by words. I seemed every night to descend, not metaphorically, but literally to descend, into chasms and sunless abysses, depths, below depths, from which it seemed hopeless that I could ever re-ascend. Nor did I, by waking, feel that I had re-ascended. This I do not dwell upon, because the state of gloom which attended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to utter darkness, as of some suicidical despondency, cannot be approached by words. The sense of space, and, in the end, the sense of time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings and landscapes were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive; space swelled, and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for 70 or 100 years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millenium passed in thd time, or, however, of a duration far bas yond the limits of any human experience. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgotten scenes of later years, were often revived; I could not be said to recollect them, for if I had been told of them when waking, I should not have been able to acknowledge them as parts of my past experience: but placed as they were before me, in dreams like intuitions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances and accompanying feelings, I recognised them instantaneously. I was once told by a near relation of mine, that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the critical assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her simultaneously, as in a mirror, and she had a faculty, developed as suddenly, for comprehending the whole and every part. This, from some experiences of mine, I can believe."

eye; and, by a process apparently no less

h. m.

4 59

and visionary colors, like writings in sym

Sun rises

6 53

pathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the

fierce chemistry of my dreams, into in

MINA HILL Row. The General Assembly is the highest court in the church of Scotland. It is a representative body consisting of min isters and of elders, whose office bears a considerable resemblance to that of churchwardens in England, in the following proportions:

200 Ministers, representing seventyeight Presbyteries. 89 Elders representing Presbyteries. 67 Elders representing Royal Burghs. 5 Ministers, or Elders, representing Universities.

The business of the assembly is to decide all appeals and references in cases from inferior courts, as well as to enact general laws in regard to the internal administration of the church, with the consent of a majority of presbyteries.

The general assembly meets annually on the 25th of May, at Edinburgh. It is honored with the presence of a representative of the sovereign in the person of a Scottish peer, with the title of His Grace Lord High Commissioner, but he has no vote nor takes any part in the proceedings. On the evening previous to the day of meeting he holds a levee, when the magistrates are introduced; the Lord Provost makes a complimentary address, and presents the silver keys of the city to him. The present Lord High Commissioner is James Lord Fobres.

During the ten days of the assembly's sitting the commissioner holds daily levees and public entertainments, which are attended by the members of assembly and the leading nobility and gentry in the city and neighbourhood. On the day appointed for the meeting he walks in state

to the high church, attended by the nobility, magistrates, and gentry, with his personal attendants, and a military guard of honor, where a sermon is preached by the moderator (or speaker) of the last assembly; after which his grace proceeds to the assembly house, which is an aisle of the church, where a throne is prepared for his reception. The moderator then opens the meeting with prayer, the roll of the new assembly is read, and a minister from that roll is appointed moderator. The royal commission is then delivered to the assembly from the throne by the nobleman who bears it, accompanied by a letter from the sovereign, which having been respectfully read and recorded, the commissioner addresses the assembly in a speech from the throne, to which a suitable reply is made by the moderator, and a committee is appointed to prepare an answer to the king's letter. These and other preliminary proceedings being finished, the assembly proceeds to the transaction of its legislative and judicial business, in discussing which it has adopted some of the forms which are established in parliament, and other great assemblies, for the preservation of order and decorum. In the case of a division the sense of the house is collected, by the names on the roll being called by one of the clerks, and the votes being marked by the principal clerk, under the eye of the moderator.

On the tenth day of its sitting, the assembly is closed by an address from the moderator, followed by prayer and singing. It is then dissolved, first by the moderator, who, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ as the head and king of his church, appoints another assembly to be held on a certain day in the month of May the year following; and then by the Lord High Commissioner, who in his majesty's name appoints another assembly to be held on the day mentioned by the moderator.

As the General Assembly is the only great deliberative body which now meets in Scotland, and its proceedings often give rise to animated and even brilliant debates, its meeting is generally regarded with a great, and of late years an increasing, degree of interest in the northern metropolis, and over the country.

P.

A PUNY EPISTLE TO Kirk OF SCOTLAND:

A FRAGMENT.

Somerville, 26th May, 1830. DEAR Kirk, Agreeably to my promise, made to give you an account of my