toss of her head, "Oh, then, I suppose that about the pot of boiling water was not true; only stories of the old people that they used just to be telling in Irish to one another.' Another time a chapter in the Bible was the cause of making the poor woman renounce a practice held sacred, by the lower orders, from time immemorial, that of going to weep over the graves of their departed friends, whenever a funeral occurs in the churchyard where they lie. This day I found her unusually depressed, and on inquiring the cause, heard that a death had occurred in the neighbourhood, and that she was going to attend the funeral, and cry over the grave of her son. On these occasions, it often happens that a woman, even in the case of a friend long since dead, will abandon herself to such immoderate grief, as to be removed from the grave in a state of complete exhaustion. Such a trial for the poor bereaved mother, while her sorrow was so fresh and poignant, was much to be dreaded: but to think of arguing against such an invariable and deep-rooted custom seemed quite hopeless. Nothing was said, therefore, to her on the subject. I turned to the eleventh of St. John, and the beautiful narrative of the raising of Lazarus soon engrossed her attention, and yielded that comfort which this touching chapter never fails to afford to every mourner. When I had finished, I read over again the thirty-first and thirty-second verses, and laying down the book, added, "You see Mary did not go the grave as was supposed; she went to throw herself at her Saviour's feet. Here is a lesson for us when we lose a friend; not to go weeping and wailing over the poor lifeless body, which can do it no good, and does ourselves great harm; but like Mary to go to the Lord Jesus Christ, who can comfort our afflicted hearts, and save our immortal souls." She kept her head buried in her apron for a moment, as if revolving something in her mind, and then exclaimed, with her usual energy, "No, I'll not go to the I'll never go there again. No, grave; Tom agra, your poor mother will never go, nor cry a tear over your cold grave, where you're lying; she'll go to Himself, the Saviour of the world."-Every-Day Scenes. Ir may be that to-morrow I shall cross the Channel, but, if it be possible, I must see Netley Abbey to-day. Much have I heard of this picturesque ruin, and of the sweet seclusion and romantic beauty of its situation. Were I a bird, thither would I fly; or were I a fish, this Southampton water would soon be crossed by me; but being neither the one nor the other, I must wait till the ferryman, who is at the moment absent, arrives, to put me across in his boat. Southampton is the birth-place of Dr. Isaac Watts, a fact that will render the place more interesting to many than if it had been the birth-place of a king. Much business is carried on by the inhabitants, with the Channel islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. The wind has been rising ever since midnight, and is now whistling around me in right earnest. Its fitful bursts, accompanied with sunshine as they are, raise my spirits. How animating is the energy of the elements! "There is a fearful spirit busy now: Already have the elements unfurled Their banners; the great sea wave is upcurled; The cloud comes; the fierce winds begin to blow About, and blindly on their errands go; And quickly will the pale-red leaves be hurled From their dry boughs, and all the forest world Stripped of its pride, be like a desert show. I love the moaning music which I hear, In the bleak gusts of autumn, for the soul Seems gathering tidings from another sphere, And in sublime mysterious sympathy, Man's bounding spirit ebbs and swells more high, Accordant to the billows' loftier roll." Here comes the ferryman, as leisurely | quays; gloomy arches and intricate enas though it would hardly serve his pur- trances to the buildings on the river pose to put a single passenger across side; immense warehouses, with folding the water. We shall have a rough pass-doors, tier above tier, and oval glazed age, but no matter if we are under His apertures in the wall to let in light. Iron care who "measured the waters in the and wooden cranes are at work, high in hollow of his hand, and meted out hea- the air. Here a bulky pack of wool is ven with the span, and comprehended hoisted up, and there a heavy hogshead the dust of the earth in a measure, and is dangled down. Thick, upright beams weighed the mountains in scales, and the of timber, with ponderous cross pieces, hills in a balance," Isa. xl. 12. Without are placed against the ground floors of His protection, a breeze may bring about the warehouses, to defend them from the our destruction, and with it a whirlwind heavy wagons; straw, dirt, and filth are cannot injure a hair of our heads. swept together in an unsightly manner, while the sinell of fish is equally offensive. * This is indeed lovely! Netley Abbey is about two or three miles distant from Southampton, and I am now drawing near to the ruin, but the enchanting beauty of the surrounding landscape has spelled me to this spot, which mingles the elegance of the park with the wilder witchery of the rudest heath. Water and woodland in the distance, and the foreground entanglement of shrubs and furze, and fern, and briar, adorn the place with variegated beauty, while the unbroken solitude imparts a depth and tone to my emotions. The glowing sunshine and the gusty wind add to my delight, and give an upward tendency to all my thoughts. Sometimes the busy fancy delights in strange contrasts. Let me contrast, for a moment, the verdant and coloured foliage, the pure air, and the sweet seclusion of this fair spot with an opposite scene which I witnessed yesterday; it will make me, perhaps, value my present advantages, and I shall gaze around me with feelings of additional thankfulness and joy. How different the walk from one end of Lower Thames street in London to the other, from the bottom of Fish street hill to the Tower! Cabs, hackney coaches, and carriages, crowd on each other. Loaded porters make their way to the different steam packets, and streams of company flow on to the same place of destination. The huge wheels of heavily-laden wagons grind the ground, as they leave the different wharfs, and the iron-shod hoofs of huge horses putting forth their strength, strike fire against the stones. The cracking of whalebone whips, the clamorous contention of excited carters, and the shouts of police officers resound. On the right hand of the street are the Custom house, Billingsgate fish market, packet offices, fruit stores, wharfs, and The left hand of the street is occupied with shops, stores, offices, and public houses. Brokers, ship agents, Custom house agents, and agents of all kinds, are there found in abundance. Oranges, apples, nuts, and all sorts of fruit, British and foreign. Salmon, cod, sprats, herrings, pilchards, and all sorts of fish, salt and fresh, may be there bought; and at times, the shops are besieged with buyers. The street is too narrow for the vehicles, the footpath is too narrow for the passengers; so that what with soldiers pass ing to the Tower, and sailors to the docks, people going to Billingsgate market and the Custom house, cabs, coaches, and carriages, carts, wagons, and vans, porters, passengers, and policemen, brokers, agents, and clerks, Custom house officers; wharfingers, and boatmen; Jews, foreigners, and the constant throng set in motion by business and pleasure, Lower Thames street presents a very different scene to that which is now gladdening my eye and my heart. How delightful the contrast! A minute or two ago a shining something glided into the furze-brake at my feet. Taking it, or perhaps mistaking it, for a snake, I have vainly tried to discover the scaly reptile. Not that I want to crush its head, or disfigure its form of beauty; no, no! There is room enough in the world for thee and me, friend speckled-back; and yet, willingly would I gaze admiringly on the painted coat with which thy Maker has clothed thee. When curiosity has been fairly excited, how prodigiously it increases, the nearer it approaches its expected gratification. Not yet can I discern a tower, a buttress, or an oriel window, although so near the ruin; but this redundant foliage hides every thing from view. I am alone, and feel the calm delights of solitude; for such is the varied nature of excitément, that at one moment our eyes are lit up with pleasure, and in the next we can exclaim, "Ah, what is joy, but turbulence unholy, credit for piety and learning, possessing but one volume in their library. Without any intentional reflection on the attainments of the brotherhood, we may venture to conclude, that the amount of When with the charm compared of heavenly their acquirements could not have been melancholy?" very great, when their sources of information were so very scanty. reign of queen Elizabeth, Netley Abbey There is reason to suppose that, in the was sometimes styled Netley Castle. The earl of Huntingdon is said to have been the proprietor of the place some time in the seventeenth century; and of him the following strange story is told by Browne Willis, the antiquary. This gusty day, so alluring to me, seems to hold out but few attractions to others, otherwise my pathway would be freely peopled by visitors to the abbey. Here, at last, is the venerable pile! not so extended as my fancy had pictured it, but yet more lovely. The deep seclusion of the ruin, the elaborate beauty of its eastern window; the fallen fragments "The earl," it is said, "about the year and broken pillars lying in desolation, 1700, or soon after, made a contract and the oaks and other trees which grow with a Mr. Walter Taylor, a builder of around, and even amid the roofless walls Southampton, for the complete demoof the ruin, exercise an arresting influ-lition of the abbey; it being intended by ence over the spectator. The clustering ivy, that friend and companion of ancient buildings and aged trees, is here abund ant. Ivy! thou art ever green, Let me changeless, then, be seen; Ivy clinging round the tree, History fixes the date of the foundation of this place to be early in the thirteenth century: and Peter Roche, bishop of Winchester, is named as its founder. Though now called Netley, it formerly bore the name of Letteley; its first charter was granted by Henry III., in the year 1251. The Cistertian monks, who with all the austerities of their order, resided at the abbey, came originally from a neighbouring monastic establishment called Beaulieu. However celebrated Netley may have been for the beauty of its architecture, the number of its inmates and the amount of its revenue, must at all times have been small. At the end of the thirteenth century, it was set down as having an income of seventeen pounds only. Leland found but one book among the community-a copy of Cicero's Treatise on Rhetoric; and at the dissolution of the fraternity, it consisted of no more than twelve monks, with their abbot; their net revenue being about one hundred pounds a year. -How little can we realize in our minds, now books are so abundant among us, the possibility of a body of men, having Taylor to employ the materials in erecting buildings. After making this agreea town-house at Newport, and other ment, however, Taylor dreamed, that as he was pulling down a particular window, one of the stones forming the arch fell upon him, and killed him. His dream impressed him so forcibly, that he mentioned the circumstance to a friend, who is said to have been the father of the wellknown Dr. Isaac Watts, and in some perplexity asked his advice. His friend thought it would be the safest course for him to have nothing to do with the affair, respecting which he had been so alarmingly forwarned, and endeavoured to persuade him to desist from his intention. Taylor, however, at last decided upon paying no attention to his dream, and accordingly began his operations for the pulling down of the building; in which he had not proceeded far, when, as he was assisting in the work, the arch of one of the windows, but not the one he had dreamed of, which was the east window, still standing, fell upon his head, and fractured his skull. It was thought at first that the wound would not prove mortal; but it was aggravated through the unskilfulness of the surgeon, and the man died. It is very possible that the whole of this story may have originated from the single incident of Taylor having met with his death in the way he did; the added circumstance of the previous dream, etc., are not beyond the license of embellishment, of which rumour and tradition are accustomed to avail themselves in such cases. The accident which befell Taylor, however, being popularly attri buted to the special interposition of Heaven, is said to have, for the time, saved the abbey from demolition. But the place soon after passed out of the possession of the earls of Huntingdon, and has since been successively in that of various other families." When musing amid the broken pillars and mouldering walls of time-worn ruins, surrounded by forest trees, a consciousness of seclusion must be communicated to the mind; but when these trees are found, not only in the immediate neighbourhood of a ruin, but absolutely rooted within the building itself, and lifting up their aspiring heads through the roofless apartments, they tell a tale of yet deeper interest. Thought is compelled by them to retrograde, and reflection is flung back to a distant period. The ruined pile must have been a ruin, long before the trees could have rooted themselves in their deserted floors. It is thus that the gazer on Netley Abbey is affected: he concludes, from the desolation round him, that ages have passed in succession over the mouldering pile; but the tall trees add their living testimony to this truth. the entirety of its attractions, and the "Fallen pile! I ask not what has been thy fate; On this world's passing pageant, and the lot They might have sunk, like thee; though thus They lift their heads, with venerable hairs at This mingling of massy walls with the stems, branches, and foliage of goodly trees, has a strange effect. Nature appears to be asserting her sovereignty once more, and taking possession of what for ages she has been deprived. I could muse here for a day. The place is overgrown with vegetation; the grass is ranking on the cold flint stone. beneath the foot. Before me is a goodly and luxuriant shrub, springing from a fissure in the decayed stone wall; from the very bosom of the building, adorning the hoary walls with leaves and flowers. Standing, as I now am, on a fallen frag- So may we see, what time the sabbath bells Netley is undoubtedly one of the most romantic and picturesque ruins in England; though nothing but its grey stone walls are standing, to tell the tale of what it was in former years. So small a portion of the edifice remains, that it strikes the spectator as an abbey in miniature; and perhaps this circumstance increases, rather than diminishes its influence over the spectator. The eye takes in at once A visitor has entered the ruin; I see no procession: I hear no chant; the nook, the skull, and the cross are gone; the bare-headed monk has departed; the picture of my imagination is destroyed, and less disposed for company than for meditation, I leave the ruins of Netley. THE CRUSADES.-No. IV. Trembling, I look upon the secret springs THE FOURTH CRUSADE. THE rescue of the holy sepulchre from the hands of the Moslem was not the only motive the pontiffs of Rome had in view when they stirred up Christendom to the strife. While the kings and princes of Europe were spending the best blood | vernment committed to his hands, that, of their subjects in the enterprise, they were seeking the establishment of that unhallowed power which they assumed over all the nations of the West. An incident which well illustrates this, occurred on the death of the emperor Frederic Barbarossa. His eldest son, Henry vi., required pope Celestine to perform the ceremony of his coronation. After some deliberation, the demand was granted, and Henry was crowned in the church of St. Peter, having previously sworn that he would maintain the rights of the church. The ceremony was scarcely completed, when Celestine raised his foot, and kicked off the crown which he had just placed on the monarch's head, to show that he had the power of depriving him of the imperial dignity, as well as conferring it; and the insult was not resented so towering was the ambition of the pontiffs of Rome at this date-so absolute their power! The crusades were, therefore, favourable to the ambition of the pontiffs of Rome. Palestine was a field to which they could send men bold and ambitious like themselves; and, while they were thus employed, they could sit in the Vatican void of fear. Hence it was not to be expected that, while the holy sepulchre remained in the hands of the infidel, they would forego their ambitious and doubtful line of policy. "Human glory's erring path Is tracked with desolating woe; No sooner had the truce between Richard and Saladin expired, than a fourth crusade was called into existence by the ambitious pope Celestine, and Henry vi. of Germany, whom he had so grossly insulted. Before this occurred, the brave and generous Saladin had passed off the stage of life, leaving directions that, on the day of his funeral, a shroud should be borne on the point of a spear, and a herald proclaim, in a loud voice, “Saladin, the conqueror of Asia, out of all the fruits of his victories, carries with him only this piece of linen cloth!" a humbling lesson to the sons of ambition. On the death of Saladin, his army rallied round his brother Saphadin, whom they raised to the throne. Like Saladin, the new monarch was renowned for his wisdom and valour; and, by his skill and policy, he had so strengthened the go when the period of the truce expired, he was prepared to meet the combined forces of Christendom. A.D. 1197. The new champions of the cross arrived at Acre. Saphadin, who was informed of their hostile intentions, anticipated them in the field; and before they could advance to Jaffa, he had dismantled the town, and put thousands of the inhabitants to the sword. An action took place soon after, in which the strength and discipline of the Germans secured the victory; but, turning aside from the path to Jerusalem, to reduce the minor fortress of Thoron, they met with a signal overthrow. Foes, also, prevailed within the camp of the crusaders. Faction and insubordination broke down the rules of restraint and order; and, while thus distracted, the crusaders were informed that the sultans of Egypt and Syria were confederating together for their destruction. The German princes now deserted their forces in the night, and fled to Tyre. The army followed in the same direction, in indescribable confusion. As they pursued their march, another contest took place in the neighbourhood of Jaffa, which was favourable to the crusaders; but the death of the emperor Henry again disconcerted their measures. Many returned into Europe, to assist in the election of a successor, and the remainder were destroyed by a body of Turks, as they were commemorating what they considered the virtues and abstinence of St. Martin in the midst of unseemly revels. As with the stream our voyage we pursue, At the close of the fourth crusade, the people of Europe were impressed with a belief, that either the difficulties of the enterprise had been concealed, or that the time fixed in the councils of Providence for the deliverance of Palestine was not yet come. This was a feeling that required all the energies of the church to surmount. Eloquent harangues were uttered to call Europe again to arms, and the power of oratory was now seconded by pretended miracles. Foulkes of Neuilly was the chief |