lord of Rudlowe, be called for to carry all their things to fore rehersed, and the said corn shall be layd upon one borse, and he that the baconne apperteyneth shal ascend upon his horse, and shall take the chese before hym, if he have a horse, and yf he have none, the lord of Whichenour shall cause him to have one horse and sadyl, to such tyme as he passed his lordshippe, and so shal they departe the manoyr of Whichenour, with the corn and the baconne to fore him that hath wonne ytt, with trompets, tabourets, and other manoir of minstralsce; and all the free tenants of Whichenour shall conduct him to be passed the Lordship of Whichenour; and then shall they retorne, except hym to whom apperteiyneth to make the carryage and journey withoutt the countye of Stafford at the costys of his Lord of Whichenour, and yf the seid Robert Knyghtley do not cause the baconne and corne to be conveyed as is rehersed, the lord of Whichenour shal do it to be carryed, and shal distreigne the said Robert Knyghtley, for his default, for one hundred shillings in his manoir of Rudlowe, and shall kepe the distresse so takyn, irreplevisable." A similar custom of the manor of Dunmow Parva, in Essex, is generally supposed to have been instituted by one of the Fitzwalters, who are said to have possessed the lordship as parcel of their barony for eleven generations; and of whom several monuments still remain in the venerable priory church. The ceremonial established for these occasions consisted of the married couple, who claimed the bacon, kneeling on two sharppointed stones in the church-yard, when after solemn chanting and other rites performed by the convent, the following oath was demanded of them: "You shall swear by custom of confession, That you ne'er made nuptial transgression;

[wife,

Nor since you were married man and
By bousehold brawls or contentious strife,
Or otherwise, at bed or at board,
Offended each other in deed or in word:
Or since the parish clerk said Amen,
Wished yourselves unmarried again;
Or in a twelvemonth and a day
Repented not in thought any way;
But continued true in thought and desire
As when you join'd hands in the holy
quire.

If to these conditions, without all fear, Of your own accord you freely will swear,

A whole gammon of bacon you shall receive, [leave; And bear it home with love and good For this is our custom of Dunmow well known, [your own."

Tho' the pleasure be ours, the bacon's

Three instances of the delivery of the bacon are recorded in the Chartulary of the Priory, now in the British Museum; and since the suppression of the Priory, three more instances have occurred at the Courts Baron, held by the Steward of the manor. The first recorded delivery was in 1444, to Richard Wright of Bradbourge in Norfolk, and the last was in June 20, 1751, to John Shakeshanks, woolcomber, and Anne his wife, of Wethersfield in Essex.

"The Flitch of Bacon," a ballad opera, by Henry Bate, was acted at the Haymarket in 1778, and printed in 1779.

THE FLOWER POT. I remember this sign at Earls Shilton in Leicestershire, and I believe that it is not very uncommon.

To describe the beauties of the various kind of flowers has been a favorite theme, and there can be but few readers who do not recollect Perdita's pleasing appropriation of them in Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale." Darwin's "Botanic Garden" particularly abounds in bold personification and luxuriant description. Langhorne's "Fables of Flora" are natural and easy; indeed, there is hardly a writer of any eminence from whom some "Elegant Extracts" might not be obtained, but it would be utterly inconsistent with the limits of this paper to venture on such extensive transcription.

As a painter of flowers, Simon Varelst, a Dutchman, stands pre-eminent. Under one of his pieces Prior wrote, "When fam'd Varelst this little wonder [view;

drew,

Flora vouchsaf'd the growing work to Finding the Painter's science at a stand, The Goddess snatch'd the pencil from his

hand;

the Peer. "Yes," replied the painter, "You are my Lord Chancellor. And do you know me? I am Varelst. The King can make any man Chancellor, but he can make nobody a Varelst." Shaftesbury was disgusted, and sat to Greenhill.

The Floralia were instituted in the year of Rome 513, but not regularly celebrated until after 580. This festival in honour of Flora was held on the 4th of the calends of May, when the courtezans were called together and danced naked in the streets. To this custom of our Roman conquerors may be traced our present festivities in May, though happily long since divested of such grossly licentious rites. The general holiday at Helston in Cornwall, on May 8, when the inhabitants go into the country and return decked with flowers, is still called the Furry, an evident corruption of the Roman Floralia. Hall gives a circumstantial account of Henry VIII. and his queen Katharine of Arragon, riding a maying from Greenwich to Shooter's hill, attended by the Lords and Ladies of their court. At our present rustic feasts, on May-day, the prettiest girl is crowned with a chapJet of flowers, as Lady of the May, the representation of the goddess Fiora; and in many villages the May-pole is still retained. The last in London was taken down in 1717, and removed to Wanstead in Essex. It was more than 100 feet high, and stood on the East side of Somerset-house. Its remembrance is perpetuated by Pope, in "Amidst the area wide they took their stand, [the Strand." Where the tall May-pole once o'erlook'd The rural sacrifice of the Beltein fires, in the highlands of Scotland on the first of May, are described in

Can mock the foibles of surviving love."

These verses, of which the first I think particularly beautiful, are taken from Mason's "Elegy in a Churchyard in South Wales," and were written in 1787, at Briton ferry in Glamorganshire, during a visit to the late Lord Vernon.

The Dutch are so excessively fond of flowers, that a tulip root has been known to sell for 5,000 florins. Young in his "Love of Fame," has severely exposed this folly in his character of "Florio."

The principal Potteries in this king. dom are near Newcastle in Staffordshire; which situation was probably chosen from coal being abundant, and the other strata consisting most commonly of clays of different kinds; some of which make excellent firebricks for building the potters' kilns, and are also used in forming the Saggers (a corruption of the German Schragers, which signify cases or supporters) in which the ware is burnt. One of the earliest authors who notices this pottery is Dr. Plott, in his "Natural History of Staffordshire," which was published in 1686, when all the ware was of the coarse yellow, red, black, or mottled kind, and the common glaze was produced by lead ore finely powdered, and sprinkled on the pieces of ware before firing. In 1690, two foreigners, of the name of Elers, invented at Bradley a new species of glaze, by throwing into the kiln, when

brought

brought to its greatest heat, a quantity of common salt, the fumes of which occasioned a superficial vitrification of the clay. This practice was succeeded in a short time by a capital improvement in the bod of the ware itself, which originated in the follow. ing incident. Mr. Artbury, a potter, in a journey to London, was recommended by the hostler of his ion at Dunstable, to use powdered flint for curing some disorder in his horse's eyes; and for that purpose a flint stone was thrown into the fire to render it more easily pulverizable. The potter observing the flint to be changed by the fire to a pure white, was immediately struck with the idea that his ware might be improved by an addition of this material to the whitest clays he could procure. Accordingly, be sent home a quantity of the fint stones, which are plentiful among the chalk hills near Duustable, and tried them with tobacco pipe clay, and thus produced the white-stone ware, which soon became the staple branch of pottery.

In 1763, Mr. Josiah Wedgewood, who had previously introduced several improvements in the composition, form, and colour of this ware, invented the improved kind now generally made. it is composed of the whitest clays from Dorsetshire and other places, mixed with a due proportion of ground flint. The pieces are fired twice, and the glaze applied after the first firing in the same manner as porcelain. The glaze is a vitreous composition of flint and other white earthy bodies, with the addition of white-lead for the flux, analogous to common flint glass. This compound being mixed with water to a proper consistence, the pieces, after the first firing, are separately dipt into it; being somewhat bibulous, they imbibe a quantity of the mere water, and the glaze which was united with that portion of the water, remains adherent uniformly all over their surface, so as to become by the second firing, a coat of perfect glass. Enamelled ware, after painting, undergoes a third firing to fix the colours.

The finest Porcelain, of which Flower-pots are sometimes composed, fully equal to that of Sevé or Dresden, is made at the Cambrian China-works at Swansea, in South Wales.

GENT. MAG. January, 1819.

The arms of the "New Inn," in Wych-street, at which Sir Thomas More was educated, are Vert, a Flowerpot argent.

Pott paper is so called from originally bearing the water-mark of a Flower-pot. (To be continued.)

**POSSESSING, from an accidental circumstance, a beautiful Engraving of Lieut.-Gen. Lord Lynedoch, G.C.B. we have much pleasure in presenting it to our Readers. (See Pl. II.) As we have not been accustomed to publish Memoirs of distinguished characters when living, it may at present suffice to refer, for the brilliant exploits of this gallant Hero,to the Gazettes which have occupied so large a space in some of our preceding Volumes; earnestly hoping that it may be long, very long, before the task devolves upon us of recording his bravery and his virtues in our Obituary. EDIT.

Mr. URBAN,

Jan. 5.

THE restoration of the Arts in

Italy, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries of the Christian æra, may be considered as the most interesting period in their history. Mr. Roscoe emphatically observes, "that under the successive but uninterrupted patronage of Julius 11. and Leo X. the talents of the great Artists then living were united in one simultaneous effort; and their rival productions may be considered as a joint tribute to the munificence of their patrous, and the glory of the age"*. By several Artists, the perfec tion of Grecian sculpture was emulated,if notequalled. Ghiberti Donatello, John of Bologna, Michel Angelo, and Fiamingo, with some others, may be ranked in no very unequal comparison (at least in all that we know) with Scopas, Phidias, and Praxiteles. They were content to follow, with respectful imitation, the traces of their antient masters; and they did not consider it as humiliating to their own efforts, to allow them the highest degree of praise. It has been truly remarked, that the mythology of Greece supplied her Artists with an infinity of subjects, and afforded other important advantages to Sculpture.

*Roscoe's Leo X. vol. IV. p. 229, 8vo.

Yet,