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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. 10, No. 264.] SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1827. [PRICE 2d.



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ARCHITECTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS.


NEW CHURCH, REGENT'S PARK.

[Illustration]


The architectural splendour which has lately developed itself in and
about the precincts of the parish of St. Mary-le-Bonne, exhibits a most
surprising and curious contrast with the former state of this part of
London; and more particularly when compared with accounts extracted from
newspapers of an early date.

Mary-le-Bonne parish is estimated to contain more than ten thousand
houses, and one hundred thousand inhabitants. In the plans of London, in
1707, it was a small village one mile distant from the Metropolis,
separated by fields--the scenes of robbery and murder. The following
from a newspaper of 1716:--"On Wednesday last, four gentlemen were
robbed and stripped in the fields between Mary-le-Bonne and London." The
"Weekly Medley," of 1718, says, "Round about the New Square which is
building near Tyburn road, there are so many other edifices, that a
whole magnificent city seems to be risen out of the ground in a way
which makes one wonder how it should find a new set of inhabitants. It
is said it is to be called by the name of _Hanover Square!_ On the other
side is to be built another square, called Oxford Square." From the same
article I have also extracted the dates of many of the different
erections, which may prove of benefit to your architectural readers, as
tending to show the progressive improvement made in the private
buildings of London, and showing also the style of building adopted at
later periods. Indeed, I would wish that some of your correspondents--
_F.R.Y._, or _P.T.W._, for instance, would favour us with a _list of
dates_ answering this purpose. Rathbone-place and John-street (from
Captain Rathbone) began 1729. Oxford market opened 1732. Newman-street
and Berners-street, named from the builders, between 1723 and 1775.
Portland-place and street, 1770. Portman-square, 1764. Portman-place,
1770. Stratford-place, five years later, on the site of Conduit Mead,
built by Robert Stratford, Esq. This had been the place whereon stood
the banquetting house for the lord mayor and aldermen, when they visited
the neighbouring nine conduits which then supplied the city with water.
Cumberland-place, 1769. Manchester-square the year after.

Previous to entering upon an architectural description of the superb
buildings recently erected in the vicinity of Regency Park, I shall
confine myself at present to that object that first arrests the
attention at the entrance, which is the church; it has been erected
under the commissioners for building new churches. The architect is J.
Soane, Esq. There is a pleasing originality in this gentleman's
productions; the result of extensive research among the architectural
beauties of the ancients, together with a peculiar happy mode of
distributing his lights and shadows; producing in the greatest degree
picturesque effect: these are peculiarities essentially his own, and
forming in no part a copy of the works of any other architect in the
present day. The church in question by no means detracts from his merit
in these particulars. The principal front consists of a portico of four
columns of the Ionic order, approached by a small flight of steps; on
each side is a long window, divided into two heights by a stone transum
(panelled). Under the lower window is a raised panel also; and in the
flank of the building the plinth is furnished with openings; each of the
windows is filled with ornamental iron-work, for the purpose of
ventilating the vaults or catacombs. The flank of the church has a
central projection, occupied by antae, and six insulated Ionic columns;
the windows in the inter-columns are in the same style as those in
front; the whole is surmounted by a balustrade. The tower is in two
heights; the lower part has eight columns of the Corinthian order.
Example taken from the temple of Vesta, at Tivoli; these columns, with
their stylobatae and entablature, project, and give a very extraordinary
relief in the perspective view of the building. The upper part consists
of a circular peristyle of six columns; the example apparently taken
from the portico of the octagon tower of Andronicus Cyrrhestes, or tower
of the winds, from the summit of which rises a conical dome, surmounted
by the Vane. The more minute detail may be seen by the annexed drawing.
The prevailing ornament is the Grecian fret.

Mr. Soane, during his long practice in the profession, has erected very
few churches, and it appears that he is endeavouring to rectify failings
that seem insurmountable in the present style of architecture,--that of
preventing the tower from having the appearance of rising out of the
roof, by designing his porticos without pediments; if this is the case,
he certainly is indebted to a great share of praise, as a pediment will
always conceal (particularly at a near view) the major part of a tower.
But again, we find ourselves in another difficulty, and it makes the
remedy as bad as the disease,--that of taking away the principal
characteristic of a portico, (namely, the pediment), and destroying at
once the august appearance which it gives to the building; we find in
all the churches of Sir Christopher Wren the campanile to form a
distinct projection from the ground upwards; thus assimilating nearer to
the ancient form of building them entirely apart from the main body of
the church. I should conceive, that if this idea was followed by
introducing the beautiful detail of Grecian architecture, according to
Wren's _models_ it would raise our church architecture to a very
superior pitch of excellence.

In my next I shall notice the interior, and also the elevation towards
the altar.

C. DAVY.

_Furnivals' Inn_,

_July 1, 1827._

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THE MONTHS

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THE SEASON.


The heat is greatest in this month on account of its previous duration.
The reason why it is less so in August is, that the days are then much
shorter, and the influence of the sun has been gradually diminishing.
The farmer is still occupied in getting the productions of the earth
into his garners; but those who can avoid labour enjoy as much rest and
shade as possible. There is a sense of heat and quiet all over nature.
The birds are silent. The little brooks are dried up. The earth is
chapped with parching. The shadows of the trees are particularly
grateful, heavy, and still. The oaks, which are freshest because latest
in leaf, form noble clumpy canopies; looking, as you lie under them, of
a strong and emulous green against the blue sky. The traveller delights
to cut across the country through the fields and the leafy lanes, where,
nevertheless, the flints sparkle with heat. The cattle get into the
shade or stand in the water. The active and air-cutting-swallows, now
beginning to assemble for migration, seek their prey about the shady
places; where the insects, though of differently compounded natures,
"fleshless and bloodless," seem to get for coolness, as they do at other
times for warmth. The sound of insects is also the only audible thing
now, increasing rather than lessening the sense of quiet by its gentle
contrast. The bee now and then sweeps across the ear with his gravest
tone. The gnats

    "Their murmuring small trumpets sounden wide:"--SPENSER.

and here and there the little musician of the grass touches forth his
tricksy note.

    The poetry of earth is never dead;
    When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
    And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
    From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead:
    That is the grasshopper's.[1]

    [1] _Poems_, by John Keats, p. 93.

The strong rains, which sometimes come down in summer-time, are a noble
interruption to the drought and indolence of hot weather. They seem as
if they had been collecting a supply of moisture equal to the want of
it, and come drenching the earth with a mighty draught of freshness. The
rushing and tree-bowing winds that precede them, the dignity with which
they rise in the west, the gathering darkness of their approach, the
silence before their descent, the washing amplitude of their
out-pouring, the suddenness with which they appear to leave off, taking
up, as it were, their watery feet to sail onward, and then the sunny
smile again of nature, accompanied by the "sparkling noise" of the
birds, and those dripping diamonds the rain-drops;--there is a grandeur
and a beauty in all this, which lend a glorious effect to each other;
for though the sunshine appears more beautiful than grand, there is a
power, not even to be looked upon, in the orb from which it flows; and
though the storm is more grand than beautiful, there is always beauty
where there is so much beneficence.--_The Months_.


BATHING


It is now the weather for bathing, a refreshment too little taken in
this country, either summer or winter. We say in winter, because with
very little care in placing it near a cistern, and having a leathern
pipe for it, a bath may be easily filled once or twice a week with warm
water; and it is a vulgar error that the warm bath relaxes. An excess,
either warm or cold, will relax, and so will any other excess; but the
sole effect of the warm bath moderately taken is, that it throws off the
bad humours of the body by opening and clearing the pores. As to summer
bathing, a father may soon teach his children to swim, and thus perhaps
may be the means of saving their lives some day or other, as well as
health. Ladies also, though they cannot bathe in the open air, as they
do in some of the West Indian islands and other countries, by means of
natural basins among the rocks, might oftener make a substitute for it
at home in tepid baths. The most beautiful aspects under which Venus has
been painted or sculptured have been connected with bathing; and indeed
there is perhaps no one thing that so equally contributes to the three
graces of health, beauty, and good temper; to health, in putting the
body into its best state; to beauty, in clearing and tinting the skin;
and to good temper, in rescuing the spirits from the irritability
occasioned by those formidable personages, "the nerves," which nothing
else allays in so quick and entire a manner. See a lovely passage on the
subject of bathing in Sir Philip Sydney's "Arcadia," where "Philoclea,
blushing, and withal smiling, makeing shamefastnesse pleasant, and
pleasure shamefast, tenderly moved her feet, unwonted to feel the naked
ground, until the touch of the cold water made a pretty kind of
shrugging come over her body; like the twinkling of the fairest among
the fixed stars."--_Ibid_.


INSECTS


Insects now take the place of the feathered tribe, and, being for the
most part hatched in the spring, they are now in full vigour. It is a
very amusing sight in some of our rural rambles, in a bright evening
after a drizzling summer shower, to see the air filled throughout all
its space with sportive organized creatures, the leaf, the branch, the
bark of the tree, every mossy bank, the bare earth, the pool, the ditch,
all teeming with animal life; and the mind that is ever framed for
contemplation, must awaken now in viewing such a profusion and variety
of existence. One of those poor little beings, the fragile _gnat_,
becomes our object of attention, whether we regard its form or peculiar
designation in the insect world; we must admire the first, and
innocently, perhaps, conjecture the latter. We know that Infinite
Wisdom, which formed, declared it "to be very good;" that it has its
destination and settled course of action, admitting of no deviation or
substitution: beyond this, perhaps, we can rarely proceed, or, if we
sometimes advance a few steps more, we are then lost in the mystery with
which the incomprehensible Architect has thought proper to surround it.
So little is human nature permitted to see, (nor perhaps is it capable
of comprehending much more than permitted,) that it is blind beyond
thought as to secondary causes; and admiration, that pure fountain of
intellectual pleasure, is almost the only power permitted to us. We see
a wonderfully fabricated creature, decorated with a vest of glorious art
and splendour, occupying almost its whole life in seeking for the most
fitting station for its own necessities, exerting wiles and stratagems,
and constructing a peculiar material to preserve its offspring against
natural or occasional injury, with a forethought equivalent to
reason--in a moment, perhaps, with all its splendour and instinct, it
becomes the prey of some wandering bird! and human wisdom and conjecture
are humbled to the dust. We can "see but in part," and the wisest of us
is only, perhaps, something less ignorant than another. This sense of a
perfection so infinitely above us, is the _natural_ intimation of a
Supreme Being; and as science improves, and inquiry is augmented, our
imperfections and ignorance will become more manifest, and all our
aspirations after knowledge only increase in us the conviction of
knowing nothing. Every deep investigator of nature can hardly be
possessed of any other than a humble mind.

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THE PEACOCK.

(_For the Mirror._)


Of this bird, there are several species, distinguished by their
different colours. The male of the common kind is, perhaps, the most
gaudy of all the bird-kind; the length and beauty of whose tail, and the
various forms in which the creature carries it, are sufficiently known
and admired among us. India is, however, his native country; and there
he enjoys himself with a sprightliness and gaiety unknown to him in
Europe. The translators of Hindoo poetry concur in their description of
his manners; and is frequently alluded to by the Hindoo poets.

    "Dark with her varying clouds, and peacocks gay."

It is affirmed, among the delightful phenomena which are observable at
the commencement of the rainy season, (immediately following that of the
withering hot winds,) the joy displayed by the peacocks is one of the
most pleasing. These birds assemble in groups upon some retired spot of
verdant grass; jump about in the most animated manner, and make the air
re-echo with their cheerful notes.

    "Or can the peacock's animated hail."

The wild peacock is also exceedingly abundant in many parts of
Hindoostan, and is especially found in marshy places. The habits of this
bird are in a great measure aquatic; and the setting in of the rains is
the season in which they pair; the peacock is, therefore, always
introduced in the description of cloudy or rainy weather. Thus, in a
little poem, descriptive of the rainy season, &c., the author says,
addressing his mistress,--

    "Oh, thou, whose teeth enamelled vie
      With smiling _Cunda's_ pearly ray,
    Hear how the peacock's amorous cry
      Salutes the dark and cloudy day."

And again, where he is describing the same season:--

    "When smiling forests, whence the tuneful cries
    Of clustering pea-fowls shrill and frequent rise,
    Teach tender feelings to each human breast,
    And please alike the happy or distressed."

The peacock flies to the highest station he can reach, to enjoy himself;
and rises to the topmost boughs of trees, though the female makes her
nest on the ground.

F.R.Y.

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A WARNING TO FRUIT EATERS.

(_For the Mirror_.)


The mischiefs arising from the bad custom of many people swallowing the
stones of plums and other fruit are very great. In the _Philosophical
Transactions_, No. 282, there is an account of a woman who suffered
violent pains in her bowels for thirty years, returning once in a month,
or less, owing to a plum-stone which had lodged; which, after various
operations, was extracted. There is likewise an account of a man, who
dying of an incurable colic, which had tormented him many years, and
baffled the effects of medicine, was opened after his death, and in his
bowels was found the cause of his distemper, which was a ball, composed
of tough and hard matter, resembling a stone, being six inches in
circumference, when measured, and weighing an ounce and a half; in the
centre of this there was found the stone of a common plum. These
instances sufficiently prove the folly of that common opinion, that the
stones of fruits are wholesome. Cherry-stones, swallowed in great
quantities, have occasioned the death of many people; and there have
been instances even of the seeds of strawberries, and kernels of nuts,
collected into a lump in the bowels, and causing violent disorders,
which could never be cured till they were carried off.

P.T.W.

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THE NIGHTINGALE,

BY THE AUTHOR OF "AHAB."

(_For the Mirror_.)


    In the low dingle sings the nightingale.
      And echo answers; all beside is still.
    The breeze is gone to fill some distant sail,
      And on the sand to sleep has sunk the rill.
    The blackbird and the thrush have sought the vale.
     