shore, having the railway station on the right, and St. Clement's Church on the left. We step over a stile, proceed along Paternoster-row, where the grass grows high indeed, and in a few minutes find ourselves in front of the great Norman tower.

We are painfully struck with the air of desolation around. The churchyard is overrun with weeds, many of the tombstones have fallen, and the rest seem about to follow. The church is of good size, but the walls are here covered with a crop of rank herbage, there vilely patched with plaster or brick; windows are some half closed up, others wholly so; unsightly clumps of brickwork alone seem to sustain some parts of the fabric; the tower is weather-worn, and the stone is decaying, but it still looks solid, and we may hope it will endure until better times shall restore some degree of comeliness to the whole. The interior, which we enter by the heavy iron-studded north door, looks bare and comfortless as the exterior; the pavement is a confused mass of gravestones, glazed and common tiles, bricks, and triangular pieces of stone, apparently once the floor of some other edifice. There are, however, an ancient font, ornamented with armorial bearings and fanciful sculptures, a raised chancel with stalls, and a panelled oak roof; but no painted glass, no stately monuments.

At a very short distance from St. Clement's we find St. Peter's Church, its square stone tower finished off with bricks in an indescribable fashion. The churchyard is kept with comparative decency, and the interior has still a few fine monuments, as of a knight and lady supposed to represent the founders of St. Thomas' Hospital adjoining, and of Sir John Grove, a Kentish magnate of the time of Henry VI., whose Ferry is now a pleasure resort from Ramsgate. The church was in 1563 or 1564 allotted to the Dutch settlers. In 1661 the tower fell and crushed the south aisle; with Puritan parsimony, the latter was left in ruin, while the former was rebuilt with the rubbish, eked out to such a height as to serve for a seamark, with bricks made from the mud of the harbour.

Hard by St. Peter's stands the gaol for the Liberties of the town, which areextensive, the gay watering-places around, as well as the hardly-known corporate town of Fordwich (near Canterbury), being "limbs" of the old Cinque Port, and its tributaries. The trustees of the Royal Harbour of Ramsgate pay a yearly sum towards the maintenance of Sandwich-bridge, and are thus by agreement exempted from a supremacy which might clash with the duties that parliament has thought fit to impose on them a

We have already noticed St. Mary's, and we now proceed beside the Delf to an institution which has somehow escaped the suppression of hospitals, and has perhaps a better claim to the appellation of the "Almshouse of Noble Poverty" than the Hospital of St. Cross at Winchester. This is the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, which affords a neat house, and something like £50 a-year each, to sixteen brethren and sisters, whose names we learn, without much surprise, are in many cases the same as those of substantial inhabitants of the town. The old gatehouse, of brick and glazed tiles, has disappeared, and the houses are modern neat cottages,

Ramsgate harbour was commenced about 1748, mainly on the recommendation of some London merchants, and after a hundred years' trial is seen to be little more than an expensive toy. People on the coast think it would have been a wiser proceeding to restore Sandwich Haven, by making a ship-canal to the Downs (about two miles in length), as has been repeatedly proposed since the time of Elizabeth; an act of parliament was passed for that purpose in 1817, and it may yet be accomplished.

with the name of "Brother A." or "Sister B." painted over the door; but the small chapel remains, and contains a fine altar-tomb of Sir Henry de Sandwich, an early benefactor, if not the founder of the charity, who lived in the time of Henry III. We see by a small gravestone that there was once a school attached to the foundation, but it exists no longer, and indeed the chapel itself is only open for divine service one Sunday in the month, and on St. Bartholomew's Day. The little graveyard is neatly kept, and, from the ages inscribed on the headstones of the brethren and sisters, we see that the marshy situation of Sandwich has not been, in their case at least, prejudicial to longevity. Opposite the hospital the clear stream of the Delf flows into the town, bordered by the row of poplars already mentioned; close to which stands the railway station, to which it is now time to repair.

But whilst we wait for the train, which is soon to arrive from Deal, we will briefly run over the history of the places we have been visiting.

The Rutupine shore is mentioned by Lucan in the first century of the Christian era, and we know that Augustine and Wilfrid landed there in the sixth and seventh. Richborough certainly then existed, and probably Sandwich also, but we hear nothing of the former, though much of the latter, during the wars of the Saxons and the Northmen. Sandwich had become a place of importance before the time of the Domesday-book; it had then 383 houses, and it has now little more than 600. The town was given in 975 to the priory of Christ Church, Canterbury, but the abbot of St. Augustine founded a rival town at Stonar, on the north side of the haven; and disputes between them arose, which endured for centuries. The men of Sandwich, however, established a superiority over Stonar, and that "vill" has now almost disappeared. It was inundated in 1365 by the sea, and in 1385 was burnt by the French. Meanwhile Sandwich was a port of high repute. The courts for the Cinque Ports were held in it, armies embarked and disembarked, and royal visits were frequent b. It, however, suffered from war and from fire, and, worse than both, its harbour began to fill up; it was thus at a low ebb when the Netherland settlers arrived early in the reign of Elizabeth, and gave a Puritan character to the place, one effect of which is painfully seen in the neglect and desecration of the churches. In the time of Charles I. the sum of £285 was demanded of the town for ship-money, and the mayor was committed to Dover Castle for refusing to assess it on the inhabitants; in 1697 Deal, the most important "limb," which had risen as Sandwich decayed, was formally withdrawn from its allegiance, and fifty years after the rival harbour of Ramsgate was commenced; since which time the ancient Cinque Port has had no important event to record.

But now the train has arrived from thriving Deal. We sweep at a good pace past St. Bartholomew's, over the Polders, and pass under the walls of Richborough; and, if we look out at the right moment, have a farewell glance at its noble north wall. We find by the rattle of the train that we pass at every few minutes over some pool or stream, pause a minute at the pretty flower-decked station of Minster, and occupy our thoughts rather

Of these, perhaps the most remarkable is that of Richard I., who landed here on his return from captivity, and proceeded on foot to Canterbury, to return thanks in the cathedral. Edward III. was often here; Elizabeth was a visitor in 1572, and in 1670 Katherine of Braganza, but she did not alight, though she partook of a banquet seated in her coach at the mayor's door.

with the repentant founder of the handsome church before us, than with its Puritan desecrator, Richard Culmer. Then we start again, pass by a deep cutting through the scene of some great battle, where bones and spearheads have been found in abundance, hurry by the square tower of St. Lawrence, and jump out at the station, if somewhat tired, yet gratified by our day's stroll, and hasten to our lodgings to compare our bunch of wild flowers with the sea-weed, and shells, and pebbles which the juveniles have, in our absence, gathered on the beach.

THE LATE M. AUGUSTIN THIERRY.

IN M. Thierry, whose death occurred at Paris on the 22nd of May, not France only, but the world of letters, has lost a great ornament, and Parisian society feels a blank which it will be difficult to fill up.

M. Augustin Thierry was born at Blois, on the 20th of May, 1795, of poor and humble parents. The family, however, is one which at all events was once of note in France. One of that name published, in 1576, the Corpus Juris Civilis, and the "Works of St. Jerome;" his nephew, Rolin Thierry, gave to the world the "Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas," and this nephew's son and grandson were authors in their day. We find, again, one Marc Anthony Thierry, of Ville d'Avray, holding the post of valet de chambre to Louis XVI., remaining faithful to his royal master when all other friends forsook him, and perishing in the massacre of 1792.

It may possibly have been through the effects of the French Revolution that M. Thierry ranked himself throughout life as a plebeian. Be this, however, as it may, it is certain that he was at an early age sent to the college of his native town, where he passed through his studies with marked success. His earliest productions (since reproduced in his Dix Ans d'Etudes Historiques) shew him to have been even at that time a person of singular energy and enthusiasm, gifted with an extreme sensibility, a fondness for theory and speculation, and a vivid and poetic imagination. In the preface to his Recits du Temps Merovingiens, M. Thierry himself relates how the author of Les Martyrs gave the first impetus to his future vocation-how, having lit upon a dramatic picture of a battle between the Franks and Romans, the young student felt within him, as it were, a revelation of historic truth disfigured by classic historians and restored by the powerful genius of a great poethow he rose from his seat and made the apartment resound, as he marched up and down it, with the war-song of the terrible Franks, "Pharamond! Pharamond! we have fought with the sword!"-and lastly, how the memory of this electric impression remained stamped on his mind in indelible characters. The genius of Chateaubriand is the parent to which France owes Thierry.

In 1811 Augustin Thierry quitted college and entered the Normal School; and, after passing two years there, was appointed professor in a provincial college. The events of the year 1814 brought him to Paris. He hated military discipline and imperial regime, yet was equally averse to the tyranny of revolutionists. Without a decided preference for any

particular form of Government, and with a great contempt for the prevalent idea of aping the English constitution-to use his own words— he "yearned for a future, he knew not exactly what; for a liberty such as the following:-a Government with the greatest amount of individual guarantees, and the least possible amount of administrative action."

Such was the leading idea of his mind at the age of twenty. At this time the celebrated political economist, St. Simon, was living in Paris, and to him M. Thierry attached himself as secretary and disciple. The connexion, however, was of short duration. Against the gloomy, narrow, and despotic tendencies of St. Simon's sectarianism the lofty mind of his pupil rebelled, and in 1817 the latter quitted the society of that great and original genius. Henceforth he gave himself up to journalism. He first joined the Censeur Européen, which, under the editorship of Conte and Dunoyer, enjoyed the reputation of being the first liberal journal of the day. Here he was the first to move out of the beaten track of traditionary records, and to deal with the early history of France as Niebuhr dealt with that of Rome. Carried along in the torrent of youthful fervour, Thierry soon began to revel in the regions of paradox, and when Montlosier propounded his aristocratic theory of the French nation as composed of two distinct races, the conquerors and the conquered, and claimed superiority for the former, M. Thierry came forward into the field of controversy as a plebeian, and proud of his plebeian origin-much as the Abbé Dubos, a century before, had come forward to combat the Count de Bouanvilliers. Admitting the historical truth of Montlosier's distinction, he "combated his menaces with menace, and paradox with paradox;" declaring, "we are one nation, yet two nations in the same land; two nations, hostile in our recollections of the past, and irreconcilable in our future projects." Once engaged in solving this enigma in France, the active mind of M. Thierry undertook to follow it into other countries, and to combat it wherever he could find it. He commenced this philosophic war by giving in the Censeur a sketch of the English revolutions from the Norman invasion down to the death of Charles I. In this sketch, says Hazlitt, "not content with metamorphosing the Cavaliers and Roundheads into Normans and Saxons, he carried the theory of the conquest and the subjection of one race to the other even beyond the reign of Charles II. At length he saw, and frankly confessed that he saw, himself carried away by a theory beyond the bounds of fact. Puzzled as to his future calling, he paused for a time, and, like Gibbon meditating on the dismemberment of the great Roman empire, he resolved to aim high and become an historian."

After the public censorship had put a stop to the Censeur Européen, M. Thierry began to contribute to the Courier Français a series of letters which contained an outline of his plan for reforming the study of history; and when the polemics of the day excluded the publication of his theories, he withdrew himself from the world and society, and gave himself for some five years to an intense study of historic facts, which resulted in the publication of two works, which Hazlitt rightly terms books "destined to a permanent existence among the proudest annals of learning,"-"two masterpieces of literature, in which the erudition of a Benedictine is combined with the glowing style of a poet." These where his "Conquest of England by the Normans," and his "Letters on the History of France." An immense sensation was produced by these works, coming from an author

minister of public instruction and worship; a minister of finance, and a secretary of state for foreign affairs. There is also a second council, termed the ordinary administrative council, composed of the secretary of state for foreign affairs, of the minister of finance, and of the minister of the interior, who is president.

The extraordinary general assembly, who elect the prince in Wallachia, is composed, 1. of the metropolitan of Bucharest, and of the three bishops of Bouzés, Rimnik, and Argis; 2. of fifty boyards of the first rank; 3. of seventy-three boyards of the second rank; 4. of the deputy nobles from the districts, each district sending two; 5. of twenty-seven deputies from the corporations: 190 members in all.

The extraordinary general assembly of Moldavia numbers only 132 members, recruited in the same manner.

The ordinary general assembly of Wallachia is composed of forty-three deputies; that of Moldavia of thirty-five only. The police is under a chief, who enjoys the title of aga.

For administrative purposes, each Principality is divided into districts, or departments, subdivided into arrondissements; these latter are composed of communes.

The judiciary administration of the Principalities comprehends two supreme courts, sitting at Bucharest and Jassy; three courts of appeal ; thirty-one primary tribunals, and three tribunals of commerce, at Bucharest, Crayova, and Galatz.

There is also in every village a kind of jury, whose attributes are similar to those of our justices of the peace, and is composed of three villagers elected annually by the commune. Their sittings are held on Sunday, after leaving church, in the house and under the presidency of the priest.

In religion, the Roumanyos belong to the Greek Church. Each of the two provinces is spiritually governed by a metropolitan dependant on the patriarch of Constantinople. Generally, this subjection is merely nominal, and is limited to an almonry which the metropolitans send to the patriarch upon their installation. The two metropolitans preside over the assemblies, of which the bishops make part. An ecclesiastical tribunal, acting under their direction, judges of the differences between man and wife, and has the power of granting divorce. The clergy, as throughout the Greek Church, is divided into two orders,-the caloyers, or monks of St. Basil, who are subjected to celibacy, and the secular priests, who may marry before taking orders. Only the first can attain to the highest dignities of the Church. The secular priests are entrusted with the ordinary duties of worship in the parishes, and, as well as the caloyers, are exempt from taxation.

With the exception of the Mussulman, all other religions are tolerated in Moldo-Wallachia, according to the terms of the capitulations. Turks can neither dwell in the country nor maintain mosques.

In spite of the obstacles thrown in the way by Russia during the last fifteen years, the commerce of the Principalities has increased tenfold, and it is particularly with this country that the increase has been greatest, having doubled during the last ten years.

Moldo-Wallachia, although incessantly overrun and ravaged by barbarians, is still rich in remains of the middle ages, which are mostly unknown to the antiquary. They belong to three different epochs-the Dacian, the Roman, and the Domni, or voyvodes. To the first period belong the remains of intrenchments, the so-called rampart of Trajan, an earthen embankment of considerable extent, but exhibiting no traces of Roman con