Where poor Augustin rests; yet there is one Who knows the spot, and often turns aside Is that Crockern Tor? It is. Much have many antiquaries written about it, though but few have seen it, and here in a note is some account of the grey antiquity. We see it more distinctly in the vignette-for 'tis within an inch of our nose-than glimmering yonder in the blue hazy distance, an undistinguishable cairn-like heap. The President's, or Judge's chair, part of the bench for the jurors, and three irregular steps, are still partially visible, but 'tis in a sad state of delapidation. 'Tis indeed one of the most interesting relics extant of old British manners -memorial of the Saxon Witenagemot, which, like the Stannary Parliament, was held in the open air. "Nor waving crops, nor leaf, nor flowers adorn Thy sides, deserted Crockern! Over thee Art still their heritage, and fierce they sweep The Thy solitary hill, what time the storm Turns from thy utter loneliness. Yet man, In days long flown, upon the mount's high crest Has braved the highland gale, and made the rocks Re-echo with his voice. Not always thus Has hover'd, Crockern, o'er thy leafless scalp, Still the naked hill Of that rude fabric piled by nature, bloom'd The heath-flower. Sublime its granite pyramid, and while With beauteous ruin, the enduring Tor, Of old, above the Senate of the Moor." That Dartmoor and its borders were once rather thickly inhabited, agrees with tradition, and is obvious from the many remains of rude houses, standing singly, but more or less near each other, generally on the sides of the hills, built of unwrought stones placed upon each other, in the simplest manner, without cement, having entrances, but now no roof, and varying in diameter, the largest being about twelve feet. Fosbrook, in his Architectural Antiquities, gives the representation of a dwelling of the ancient Britons, which corresponds with the remains on the moor. We agree with the annotator on this poem, (is it the it is absurd to suppose as some have author or his ingenious son?) that supposed, that these small and inconvenient houses were used for penning sheep, and preserving them during the night from wild beasts. We believe with him that they were the residences of shepherd men. The Britons retiring before the Romans who evidently had permanent footing both in Devon and Cornwall, found a place of shelter in Dartmoor. And there are many erect stones, some inscribed, and some not, on and near the moor, which he conjectures plausibly might have been erected to perpetuate the memory of Athelstane's victorious advance when he assumed the title of King of all Britain, after having driven the natives across the Tamar, at a time when Cornwall and Anglo-Cornubia, (under the heptarchy,) comprehended half of the city of Exeter, Totness, and all westward. The silence and the solitude that now sat The hardy mountain council. O'er them bent No other dome but that in which the cloud Sails, the blue dome of heaven. The ivy brained there a human victim on hung Its festoons round the Tor, and at the the stone of sacrifice. 'Tis right Many an old remain would lose ninety-nine parts of its hundred Druid power over us, did we know for certain that a Druid had ever glooms; and therefore are they haunted. All the thin ghosts of buried generations would go, if they thought we knew in what age they had dropped the dust. They inhabit oblivion; and to them it is oblivion, when the Past mocks the living with the faint Apparition of Time who is now their Monarch, having succeeded, nobody knows when, to Death. But the Poet peoples those huts on the moor -those roofless huts, with their feeble walls, solitary, and decayed amid the silent flight of ages-he peoples them with the fierce Danmoniigiving the phantoms both-" local habitation and a name." hymn of inarticulate joy wide over the whole wilderness! But intensely listening, we perceive that it has fine modulations in its melody; for it is the voice of streams, and each is singing, with a somewhat different voice, the same serene tune, accompanied with a stilly sound" even more etherial, which can be nothing else, surely, than one echo composed of many echoes, some of them wild and sweet, from the mystery of the Tors. We can dream down each desert-born from source to sea. 66 Not one of them all trips it more deftly, "on light fantastic toe," while yet in his childish glee among the moorlands, than the TEIGN; not one of them all sooner flows into a statelier beauty among wooded hills -or bare granite rocks-till at High Bridge, near Drewsteignton antiquities, it finds its way between mountainous ridges-and ere long we behold "The hoary Cromlech wildly raised Above the nameless dead." Tradition generally magnifies what it mystifies; but this Cromlech is believed that three spinsters, or uncalled the Spinster's Rock. It was married women, erected it one morning before breakfast for their amusement. Perhaps they were the Fates— "And near the edge Of the loud howling stream a LOGAN stands, Haply self-poised, for Nature loves to work Such miracles as these amid the depths Of forest solitudes. Her magic hand With silent chisel fashion'd the rough rock, And placed the central weight so tenderly, That almost to the passing breeze it yields Submissive motion." Many auxiliar brooks soon swell thee, Teign! into no unnoble river, and many a merry mansion laughs towards thee on thy silvan course, in itself a grove." from lawn bedropt with trees," each And we see thee town, glad, but not impatient to passing that pleasant picture of a bear dancing on thy back or bosom, with twinkling oar or red-dyed sail, a flock of fishing,-or are they all pleasure-boats?-in among the billows of the bay that in its homefelt quietude hardly seems belonging to the sea. Is it from the Urn of Cranmere, the urn that lies guarded from the hill-ponies leaping like roes, by many quaking bogs, which to venturous footsteps send up a long low muttering groan, as if to say, "Procul, procul, este profani!" that thou, sweet DART! dost in truth draw thy mysterious birth? The Mere of Cranes! with its earthquake-planted pillar, tall as Gog or Magog!-Well dost thou deserve thy name; for while the desert above thee lifts his Tors, thou art "Swift as an arrow from the Tartar's bow." But after a mad conflict of cataracts with cliffs, sometimes in the open air, and sometimes in the gloom of woods, thou seem'st to take breath among the lovely enclosures near Holne Chase, and flowing apparently slow, but really swift, through Ashburton's charming valley, softening as if thou fain would'st linger there, Totness rejoices in thy margin so beautifully fringed with woods, and thence, varying thy character with a gay inconstancy, sinuous and insinuating as a serpent, thou expandest thyself gradually into grandeur, and with a good offing between BerryHead and the Start in squally weather the ship-boy sees thee from the giddy mast ending thy career in the lee-shore foam. Oh! that we had been born many centuries ago, and had been a monk of Tavistock. To our ears, by that Abbey's mouldering walls, seems now the silver Tavy to be complainingly flowing on; but ere long "In bays indenting all the bowery shore," he gathers gladness from mead-mingled woods, till he clasps the "Virtuous Lady" in his arms, and then, as if afraid of her frowns, lays himself down wimpling at her haughty feet. But lo! the Walkham, "Swollen by fresh brooklets from the deep-seam'd hills," in twilight gloom is mingling with his clearer waters, and we pause Where erst, all danger past, in silvan scene, "In yonder dome, Above whose aged tower the leafy elm Lifts its tall head, the hand of genius graves The deathless name of ELLIOT. For the brave Demand our homage, and with pensive step, As slow we follow where the devious flood Reposed immortal DRAKE.” Buckland Abbey! A square massive tower, a turret in the court-yard, and a few trifling vestiges-all that remains of the old structure! wildly wreathed with the funeral ivy-the richest we ever saw-mosses and lichens in which ages are softly imbedded-a dream of old undisturbed and undisturbable among the newnesses, not ungraceful, of the modern day! Son of the Brave! thyself as brave! wilt thou, when sailing in thy ship along the Indian seas, (Hyacinth on hyacinth,) sometimes remember the day we wandered, each following his own fancies, but seldom far apart, among the sweet secrecies of those Here are many-coloured woods! some lines that might almost seem to have been written for or by ourselves; except that the fits of melancholy amid our mirth were almost imperceptible, as the faint shadows of the fleecy clouds on the sunshine that kept dancing round our feet, as thou, in the pride of youthful manhood, and the stately strength of thy prime, we "somewhat declined, yet that not much," (oh! say it not, "into the vale of years!") like a young and an old stag bounded together, along long high green Walkham Common, nor sought the shelter of that crowning grove, though lured thither by temptation that hath drawn many men of all from the safe high-way of love and fealty to the image that in their souls they adored! Refreshed magnificently, tree on tree rock Allures, with reverence mark the spot Shew'd its grey naked scalp. But swift spot on all against the Breakwater, which the little waves, like so many lambs, lay themselves down "Upon the anchor'd vessel's side." But that vision will rise again, at our bidding, in all its magnificence and now we turn to take farewell of the Moor. And it shall be in the words of Carrington, whom, in gratitude, we pronounce a Poet― "On the very edge Of the vast moorland, startling every eye, To whom, in days long flown, the suppliant knee In trembling homage bow'd. The hamlets near Have legends rude connected with the Dartmoor! Thou art the Father of Plymouth-for thou art the Father of Plym. We hear thee rushing by Sheepstore's Dark-browed rockSheepstore, where is a cavern, so believe the rural dwellers, the Palace of the Pixies-the Devonshire Fairies. Seats like those of art, but to our eyes liker those of nature-and a spring of purest water! The imaginative dark-eyed daughters of Devon never visit it, with their sweethearts on a holyday, without leaving some offering of moss or eatables for the "Silent People." Beneath the Tor lies the village of the same namewith its fine foamy cascade. Then comes the Meavy from that part of the Moor where once stood Siward's Cross, and with its tributaries takes the name of Plym. There stands the Dead-alive Meavy Oak! Now he is hollow-hearted-for Time with his scythe has scooped a cavity that once accommodated nine persons at a dinner party, but is now used as a turf-house. Wide enough to shelter a flock of sheep is the canopy of the lower and living branches-but the top is singed, and blasted, and bald, and black, save where the outer part of the wood has mouldered off in the stormy rains, and left a preternatural whiteness, which, when seen glimmering against the back ground of a serene evening sky, has a melancholy aspect, like the ghost of a giant. Comes now the ever-howling Cad, to join the Plym " near thy bridge, romantic Shaugh!" nor far from Dewerstone, with its hawks and ravens -a rock-mountain split by thunderbolts-yet beautiful, in his terrors, with a passionate profusion of clasping ivy, and a loving flush of flowers happy in the crevices of the cliffs. We have a vision, the Lara Bridge, and hear the billowy surge broken within spot, (Wild swept by every wind,) on which he stands, The giant of the Moor. Unnumbered shapes By nature strangely form'd, fantastic, vast, The silent desert throng. 'Tis said that here The Druid wander'd. Haply have those hills Printed by Ballantyne and Company, Paul's Work, Edinburgh. BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No. CCVIII. MAY, 1833. A LETTER TO THE KING ON THE IRISH CHURCH BILL. SIRE-I approach your Majesty with all the deference due to the possessor of the throne, and to the rightful head of the Church of England. No subject of your Majesty can feel a deeper veneration for your rank as the Sovereign, or a more loyal and unshaken zeal for the support of all your royal privileges. If now presume to address your Majesty in person, as the third estate and final voice in the decisions of the Legislature, it is only from an earnest desire to see those privileges retained in their full exercise, your constitutional power still standing forth, as of old, the sure refuge to your people, and your throne guarded from assaults, which no honourable or religious mind can contemplate without the strongest abhorrence and indignation. VOL. XXXIII. I A Bill has been brought forward in Parliament, enacting a series of changes in that branch of the British Protestant Church which yet exists in Ireland. The Bill has been brought in by your Majesty's Ministers. make no charge against those Ministers. They are men of character, some of distinguished name, all of much popularity. In those they have great materials of public good and evil. Their intentions are in their own breasts. They may be un conscious of the extent of their Bill. VOL. XXXIII. NO. CCVIII. But I shall tell your Majesty, that the simple announcement of the measure has raised a tumult of congratulation through the lowest depths of Jacobinism in the land. That the whole faction of the hostile to Government, the rapacious for plunder, and the malignant against religion, have rejoiced throughout all their borders. That the enemies of your Majesty's line have heard it as the sound of a trumpet to awake them from their sleep, to put them in array for the day of revolt, and march to the assault of every great protecting institution of the Empire. Those men are wise in their generation. They speculate at a distance upon their effect. They do not strike in the first instance at those things which rouse national alarm. They leave the warehouses of the merchant yet untouched. They have yet but half avowed their determination against the lands of the Nobles. They have not gone much beyond a sneer at the throne; but they dig into the foundations of the Church. There they lay their combustibles. They call the people to look on and applaud their labours in preparing the fall, of what they pronounce the cumberer of the land. When all is ready then will come the explosion; the Church will sink into the gulf, and the whole loosened fabric of 3 A |