cast his eyes with greater admiration on the surrounding unlimited prospect. We here have a view in clear weather of no less than four counties, Sussex, Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire. The reader, in order to form a small idea of this delightful spot, must imagine that he is travelling over an uninteresting country, where are followed no agricultural labours, and totally uninteresting, excepting the view of the sea, then suddenly he arrives at the extremity of this mountainous portion of country; with pleasure has a view which he can scarcely believe to be real, consisting of woods, mansions, fields, gardens, villages, and farms, as far as the eye can reach. From this spot the descent is very sudden and precipitous, so much so, that my friend threw a stone from the summit, with but little force, winch rolled to the bottom unobstructed. For the information of the visitor it is neces sary to observe, that a long path is formed, which is accessible for horses as an easy descent into this spacious valley. The nearest village we meet with after descending, is a very pretty little place called Poynings. There have been conjectures with regard to the origin of the term Devil's Dyke ;' this question, has, I think, been solved satisfactorily, upon the following ground, that this sudden transition from mountainous to level country, must have received some human labour, but which seems almost improbable to have been effected by human efforts, and that it has given rise to the appellation of Devil's Dyke, as being the work of infernal labour. I must add, that I am sure that every visitor of Brighton will be amply repaid by making a little excursion to Devil's Dyke. THE W. W. C. Nebuchadnezar laid siege to Jerusalem in 3414, defeated the king of Egypt, who was marching to relieve it, aud took that city in 3416, burned the temple, caused the eyes of Sedecias to be put out, whom he had formerly appointed king of Judea, and carried him to Babylon. But in the second year of Darius Hystaspis, of the world 3483, on the prophets Aggarus and Zachary encouraging the Jews, and with the leavo of that prince, the foundation of the temple was laid. It was completed, and dedicated on the eighth year of his -reign, and of the world 3488. He filled the throne 36 years, and his son Xerxes 21 years. In the 7th year of Artaxerxes Lonjemanus, after he was associated by his father Xerxes, and the first after the death of Xerxes, Esdras, a holy priest and prophet, obtained leave to lead back from Babylon to Judea the remainder of his people, and to finish the buildings begun at Jerusalem. In the 20th year of the same prince, Nehemias, his cup-bearer, a most zealous and virtuous Jew, whether of the tribe of Juda or of Levi, is uncertain, procured the most' ample authority to encompass Jerusalem with walls, and to restore its splendour ; which authority was again confirmed to him two years after. This excellent man re-established over all Judea the common-wealth of the Jews, though still subject to the Persians. The empire of the latter flourished during 267 years, under 13 kings. H. M. L. RECEIPT TO KEEP A PERSON WARM THE WHOLE WINTER. Take a billet of wood, and running up three pair of stairs, throw it out of the window, then run down and pick it up; repeat these exercises as often as you feel cold, but take care if another be passing, or you may chance to break a crown! ERATO. TO CORRESPONDENTS. In answer to numerous inquiries, we beg to state, that it is our intention to conclude the First Volume of TEE CASKET with the end of the present year, and to commence the next as a New Series, with various improvements, both in matter and embellishments; which, we trust, will merit the approbation of all our Subscribers. Printed and published by CowIE and STRANGE, 60, Paternoster-row and 24, Fetter-lane. They I once witnessed the trial and impalement of two men at Damascus. had for a long time infested the neighbouring roads, and had committed many and cruel outrages. At length, a party of the Pasha's guard succeeded in tracing them to one of those obscure suburban haunts, with which every large and populous city abounds, and captured them, though not without a desperate resistance. They were immediately taken before the Pasha to receive the sentence of death, rather than for trial, their doom being already sealed. Both were powerful and athletie young men, with dark fiery eyes, swarthy complexions, and sinewy limbs; they were clothed in close dark coloured vests and sashes, with small turbans of the same materials; their legs and arms bare, and their sunburnt and hairy bosoms open and exposed. The Pasha, a meagre, ferocious looking man, about forty years of age, lis tened to the accusation made against the ruffians with haughty calmness; and when the accusers had finished, he drew up the smoke of his hooka' with a long gurgle-a cold cruel smile just illumined his large black eye-slowly he lifted his arm, and his jewelled finger pointed to the door! His minions well understood that deadly smile, and silent gesture; thrice they salaamed' reverently to their prince, then laying their hands on the prisoners, they led them forth from the divan, to an open space without the city and the stubborn hardihood of the criminals was surprising; even now on the brink of so torturing and lingering a death, the stern fixed gaze quailed not, the habitual cold sneer still curled the nether lip, and they went forth to the death with a firm and free step. I followed in the crowd, whom the report of an execution had collected to the spot on which the painful tragedy was to be acted: it was surrounded by a file of Turkish soldiers; within them were the executioners, two gigantic Nubians. and close at their feet laid the fatal stakes, made of a black hard wood, in length about fourteen feet, and cut into a triangular form, gradually lessening from one end, and ending at the other in a perfectly, sharp point. The unhappy men entered within the line of soldiers-their features moved not-but there was a deadly paleness on them, and a yet darker tint than that of nature, blackened the eyelid and the hollow of the eye; they looked on each other with the vacant and spectre glare of unconsciousness, but they said not a word. One executioner approached his victim; he stripped him of his vest and turban, and threw him on his belly on the sand, and knelt his brawny knee on the. wretch's back, and with a broad twoedged knife inflicted a deep gash, while at the same instant his fellow applied a composition to stanch the blood; they then raised the stake and thrust it into the robber's back, till it came out a few iuches from his breast, and raising it on its blunt end, they planted it firmly in a hole that had been dug for the purpose: -And there he hung.-his face was towards me-the teeth were tirmly set,' the muscles drawn up, and the brows knit, till they almost hid the staring, glassy eye beneath, as though with a desperate effort to suppress all audible tokens of the agony he endured, and the cold perspiration covered his shaking and shivering limbs :-one stifled alone had escaped him, when the Nubian plunged his long knife into his back, afterwards with a firmness almost superhuman, he had preserved a stubborn silence. groan All this time his companion stood watching that terrible operation so immediately to be inflicted on his own person and big drops of perspiration fell in rapid succession from his brow, low gasping moans burst from his blanched and livid lips, and his limbs shrank and quivered as though already under the torturing infliction. The Nubian, his hands yet reeking with the other's blood, now turned to seize upon and strip him. Unconsciously and unresistingly, like the unhappy prey upon which the deadly serpent had fixed his fascinating gaze, he submitted to the iron gripe of the slave. At that moment there arose a confused murmur, and jostling to and fro among the crowd, and an aged woman veiless, her grizzled hair flying in disorder from her head, the long hollow features (so peculiar to the lower class of eastern women, at that advanced period of life) wan and horror. struck, and the full moist eye, starting from the socket, rushed franticly from the crowd, regardless of the threats and even blows of the soldiery, and throwing her arms around the neck of the robber, clasped him. with the passionate warmth of maternal affection to her breast, and exclaimed in a voice broken and indistinct, My son -my brave, my dear boy.' It was a moving sight, the wild agony of that aged mother-the cold desperate misery of her dying child!-Tuey clung to each other's breasts, as though they would for ever grow together and become one! even the rugged, and scarcely human Nubian, faltered for a moment; the savage features of the Turkish soldier relaxed into something like emotion; and the multitude, that eastern multitude, the mussulman, the wild Arab, and the Syrian Christian, habituated as they were to the scenes of infernal torture, practised by their cruel Pacha, were moved, and a murmur of compassion, and a cry even of deprecation from the more fearless, or less cautious, arose on the still burning noon air. Alas! it was the pause the feeling of a moment-the Turkish officer raised his sabre, in a threatening attitude, and impatiently exclaimed, You African dogs! to your duty-drive the old hag hence! And the Nubians, with terror in their features, tore them apart, and the old woman's shrieks, and the silent sobbing anguish of the robber, hecame more soul harrowing: but they thrust her through the line of soldiers, whose natural brutality had again resumed its ascendency; they replied to her frantic ravings with mockery and laughter, repulsing the efforts she made to again break through their line, with blows from the broad part of their sabres. The Nubians cast her son naked to the earth, the upraised knife flashed in the sun light-it descended, and there was a cry so sharply, so abruptly piercing, it rang to the very heart, and every drop of blood that circled in my veins, seemed for an instant frozen; the wretched mother echoed back that thrilling shriek, and the wild birds who had sought shelter amid the deep foliage of those delightful groves in which Damascus may almost be said to be embowered, started from their shady retreats, and with clamourous alarm, cir. cled rapidly and confusedly above our heads. I would have looked upon the man at that moment, but I could not; I turned my eyes that way, but with sickness and loathing I immediately withdrew them. I recollect a large gout of blood on the white sand-and two dark, they seemed to me almost fiendlike figures, struggling with a prostrate wretch, but even their united strength appeared scarcely able to subdue his convulsive, desperate writhing. A long succession of deep fetched sobbing groans announced the thrusting of the fatal stake through the criminal's body, and the unconcerned chattering of the Nubians, as they directed each other in its elevation, that the last and finishing act of the tragedy was performing. With a determined effort, I lifted my eyes to the sad spectacle. The first robber who had suffered still preserved his proud stubborn silence; the distorted and leaden features, and the creeping shivering of the limbs, told of the torments of hell-but the tongue was mute! But the other! the Nubians had been unable, as he struggled beneath them, to staunch the blood, as in his companion, and it issued from the gaping wound, made still more hideous by his writhings, in a black flood, trickling down his back, matting together with the black masses of his hair, and thence dvscending in clotted gouts to the ground. His face too! the eye was white and orbless, and the black and ', frothy lips muttered indistinct curses and appeals to his prophet. But the crowd! was pity and compassion there? Alas! no-the phlegmatic Turk looked on with cold indifference—the fiery restless eye of the Bedouin, bred in the desert, and familiarised from his childhood to acts of violence and blood, glared with savage satisfaction, and the native christian, though more painfully affected than these, yet, so callous had custom made him to such scenes, that even he looked on with pity and disgust, the mere fleeting impression of the mo ment. I passed from the scene of death and horror. On the verge of the crowd, I beheld the poor childless mother-the violence of grief had passed away, and she had sat down on the sand, a very monument of despair and desolation; her head was bent down on her knees— her dishevelled and wild hair veiled her features and the large folds of her dress hung loosely about her person, and were spread out on the sand around her. She uttered a low and continued moaning, heedless of the pity and entreaties of her companions, who would have compassionately led her from the spot. I entered a coffee-house, and sat down among a group of the native Mussulmen, who, like me, had witnessed that morning's tragedy, and between each draw they took at their small hookahs,' they gravely discussed the subject. I learned that the robber, whose execution had been for a space interrupted by the agonized interference of his unhappy mother, was her only child-the staythe supporter of her widowed age. Hassan Chia was originally an industrious porter in the bazars, (a favoured and trusted one among the most eminent traders,) and he supported his parent and himself by the honest fruits of his labour comfortably, and even reputably, till, at length, falling into dissolute and loose company, his principles were undermined, and gradually he went on in guilt, till at last he became one of a desperate few, the terror and scourge of Damascus. Such a course could not be pursued with impunity. Hassan at last met with the fate he had braved, and by a lingering death of torture expiated the deeds of rapine he had committed, and the blood in which he had stained his hands. Purser. Mineral Waters. No. IV. (Continued) A sulphureous Derindaff, Cavan. spring, slightly saline. Derry-hinch, Fermanagh. A sulphureous spring. Dog and Duck, St. George's Fields, Southwark. A saline spring. Drig-well, Cumberland. An acidulous chalybeate spring. Drumasnave, Leitrim. A strong sul. phureous spring, slightly saline. Dublin. Several weak saline springs. Dulwich, Kent. Pretty strong saline springs. Dunblane, Perthshire. Two saline springs, with a minute portion of iron. Dunse, Scotland. A chalybeate spring, Durham. A strong sulphureous water, slightly saline. Egra, Bohemia. A celebrated saline chalybeate spring. Epsom. A celebrated saline spring. Felstead, Essex. A chalybeate spring. Filah, Yorkshire. A saline chalybeate spring. Francfort on the Maine. Saline sulphureous springs. Galway, Ireland. A chalybeate spring, mal springs. Glanmille, Ireland. A chalybeate spring. Glastonbury. A chalybeate spring, slightly saline. Granshaw, Downshire. A chalybeate spring. Haigh, Lancashire. A chalybeate spring. Hampstead. A chalybeate water. Hanbridge, Lancashire. A chalybeate spring, slightly saline. Hanlys, Shropshire. Two springs, one saline, and the other chalybeate. Harrowgate. Saline sulphureous springs. Hartfell, Annandale. A chalybeate spring. Hartlepool, A chalybeate spring. Holt, Wilts. A weak saline water. Holt-Nevil, Leicestershire. A chalybeate spring. Jessop's Well, near Cobham, Surrey. A strong saline water, slightly chalybeate. Ilmington, Warwickshire. A chalybeate spring. Inglewhite, Lancashire. chalybeate spring. A strong Isle of Wight. A very strong chalybeate water, sulphate of iron. Islington. A chalybeate spring. Kanturk, Cork. Á chalybeate spring. Kaltrine Loch, Scotland. On the north side of this lake is a strong chalybeate spring. Kiddlestone, Derbyshire. A strong sulphureous water. Kensington. A saline spring, Kilbrew, Meath. A chalybeate water; sulphate of iron. Kilburn, Middlesex. A saline spring. Kilroot, Antrim. A saline spring. Kiling-shanvally, Fermanagh. A chalybeate water slightly saline. Killaster, Fermanagh. A strong sulphureous water. Kinalton, or Kynolten, Nottinghamshire. A weak saline water. Kincardine. A chalybeate spring, King's Cliff, Northampton, A chalybeate spring, weakly saline. Kirby, Westmoreland. Two chalybeate springs. Knaresborough, (the Dropping Well) Lime held in solution by carbonic acid. Knowsley, Lancashire. A chalybeate spring, Korytna, Moravia. A very strong sulphureous spring. Kuka, Bohemia. A chalybeate acidulous water. Lancaster. slightly saline, A chalybeate spring Latham, Lancashire. A chalybeate spring. |