MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Colonist and Port Nicholson Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 59, 21 February 1843, Page 2

MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS.

Antiquity and Historic Associations or the Towdr. —The Tower of London is not merely the most memorable spot in England, but one of the most memorable in Europe. It is unquestionably more connected with the history of the country in which it stands than any other public edifice, or group of edifices, with that of its respective country. It is older than the Bastile, older than the Seraglio, or at east than its Turkish possession, and oldert than any of the Imperial or Royal palaces, prisons, or fortresses, on the Continent! * * * The history of the Tower is one of the most curious in existence. If the Tower had a tongue it could tell more thoughts of great men and great women, of festal days and nights of sorrow, of triumphant bigotry and hallowed martyrdom, than perhaps any castle in the wildest region of romance. It has been everything in turn; originally the palace of the Monarch —It. became a fortress. This was the fruit of the desperate times which men are in the habit of calling the good old days of their ancestors. Force was the grand instrument, and defence the grand object. Every man’s hand was against every man; and from the King to the peasant, every man’s safety was in the sword by his side. * * * * The

Tower chapel contains the dent” of some of the most memorable names of the times of national trouble. In front of the communiontable are those of Anne Boleyn and her brother, Lord Rochford ; of Queen Katherine Howard ; of Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, the last of the Plantagenets; of Thomas Cromwell, chief Minister of Henry the Eighth in the suppression of the Papal supremacy; of the two Seymours of Sudley, and their clever, and, perhaps, innocent brother, the Protector; of Lord Dudley and his beautiful and guiltless wife ; of the wily Duke of Northumberland ; of the Duke of Norfolk, the aspirant to the hand of the Queen of Scots; of the chivalrous and brilliant Earl of Essex, the lover of Elizabeth ; of James, the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, who lies under the communion-table; and of the unhappy victims of their rash attachment to a worthless king and an unconstitutional cause, the Lords Kilmarnock and Balmerino; with that clever old man, but giddy rebel, Lord Lovat, who perished for the outbreak of 1745. Tower-hill furnished this little last receptacle with most of its dead; and, perhaps, there is no spot on the globe which might supply a more solemn and immediate moral against the vanity of human things, and the equal distribution of good and evil among the highest and the lowest. — Blackwood's Magazine.

The Wealthy Miser. —The sale of the furniture of the late Mr. Smith, of Great St Andrew-street, Seven Dials, took place on Friday. The interest excited by the event in so populous a neighbourhood caused such a rush of people to the house as to render necessary the interferance of the police necessary The lots were, as may be sudposed, of an ordinary description, but realised extravagant prices, owing to a prevalent idea among the buyers that they contained hidden treasures. The story of the fortunate man who recently bought a pair of old shoes, in which lay concealed a quantity of bank-notes, contributed in no small degree to promote this delusion. The library of the deceased consisted of a few sacred volumes, of which the Bible announced in the catalogue was not forthcoming, it having probably been purloined by some one who expected to find it interleaved with bank-notes. The late Mr. Smith used to attend the Whitfield chapel in Tottenham-court-road. The sister, who

acted as housekeeper to him, enjoyed an income of 1/. per tyeek, not from the liberality of her brother, blit by right of her father’s will, who died many 1 years, ago. She has long laboured under an imbecile state of mind. Until within a Very few years Mr. Smith used to labour actively, at the forge,, which his father had left him, together with upwards of 20,000/., buj; latterly his toil was restricted to the supply of locks, bars, bells, &c., required at his various houses in Mornington-square and elsewhere. Mr. Smith was, in the strictest sense of the word, a miser ; and the anecdotes related in the

neighbourhood of his penurous habits would form a volume as interesting as that of the eccentric Mr Elwes. He was of the Phineas Phiddy school, and formed a striking illustration of the degree of wealth to which a man may attain by regarding self in every momeni and movement in life. Mr. Smith is supposed to have died worth two hundred thousand pounds. It is said that his funeral expenses, though moderate, would have swallowed up his expenditure for three years while living.

Two Admirable Reasons for Going to War. —Whoever has considered the wars in Europe for some centuries past, may seldom find a better reason for them than that which induced the King of Pegu to declare war, in 1558, against his Majesty of Siam. The King of Pigu, it seems having been informed that the King of Siam had two white elephants—which are very rare, and much admired in those parts—sent an ambassador to the Court of Siam to demand one of them at any price that might be fixed; but the Siamese monarch refusing to comply with this demand, his exasperated neighbour entered his territories with a vast army, conquered the whole country, and made it tributary at the trifling expense of 500,000 men! An admirable Asiatic reason for going to war! An European one of equal moment! Not a white elephant , but a window ! —The French minister Louvois having been very harshly treated by Louis XIV., on account of the window of a building he was making for the King, came home filled with indignation, which he vented in the presence of Tilladet, St. Romaine, and Villacerf. “I am undone,” he said, “ if I do not find business for a man whom the slightest trifles put into a question. War is the only thing which can take him from the buildings. By , he shall have it, since either he or I must.” In consequence * of this the famous League of Augsburgh was disunited, and all Europe put into a flame, because a window was made too broad or too narrow.