WAIT A LITTLE LONGER.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume III, Issue 122, 30 September 1846, Page 4

WAIT A LITTLE LONGER.

(From Dickent' London News.J There's a good time coming, boys, , A good time coming i We may not live to see the day, , But earth ehall glisten in the ray Of the good time coming. * Cannon balls may aid the truth, , But thought's a weapon stronger? We'll win our battle by its aid ; — Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boyi, A good time coming 1 : The pen shall supersede the sword, , And right, not might, shall be the lordj In the good time coming. Worth, not birth, shall rule mankind, And be acknowledged stronger ; , The proper impulse has been given ;— Wait a little longer. ' There's a good time coming, boys, A good time coming : War in all men's eyes shall be A monster of iniquity, ' "In "the good time coming. Nations shall not quarrel then, To prove which is the" stronger)' - Nor slaughter iren for glory's sake ;— W-ait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, A: good time coming : Hateful rivalries of creed , ._ Shall not make their masters bleed In the good time coming. Religion shall be shorn of pride, ' And flourish all the stronger ; And charity shall trim her lamp ;— Wait a. little longer. There's a good time coming, boys, A good time coming-: And a poor man's family Shall not be his misery, In the good time coming. Every child shall be a help, To make his right arm stronger ? 'The happier he, the more he has ; Wait a little longer. -^ 'There's a good time coming, boyi, A good time coming : Little children shall not toil Under, or above, the soil, In the good time coming. , ■But shall play in healthful field*, Till limbs and mind grow stronger, And every one shall read and write ;— Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, ooys, 'A good time coming : The people shall be temperate, And shall love instead of hate, In the good time coming. They shall use, and not abuse, And make all virtue stronger* The reformation has begun ; — Wait a little longer. There's a good time coming, boya, A good time coming : Let us aid it all we can, Every woman, every man, good time coming : Smallest helps, if rightly given, Make the impulse stronger ; 'Twill be strong enough one day'; — Wait a little longer.

. We were looking at the Gothic ornaments of the new Lincoln's-Inn Hall the other day, and wondering what object the architect could have had in making them so repulsively uglyi We asked an intelligent mason, who evidently saw the fix we were mentally in, and the ingenious fellow spoke as follows : — •' Why Sir, you see the,y have been made ugly r on purpose. Mr. Hardwicke's design, Sir, was to make them so hideous that they should frighten silly people, if possible, from going to law. Each of the heads about the building' has a meaning in it. That ugly old woman there, Sir, in- the off corner, with a* mouth large enough for the river Thames, is a-tear-ing of her hair, because she lost a chancery suit she had begun at the age of 22. The suit was against her dearest friend,- so you can imagine how savage she must have been when she lost it. The matter in dispute was of no. consequence to either,- bat by the gooi-ifrtuted ! suggestions of friends, and the utmearied '^x-_ ertions o.f- the lawyers, f the suit lasted three Lord -Chancellors,"' to say nothing ofa"num-' ber of "Vices. It was at' last given against' the lady on' the spout; and the above is * correct portrait taken of her at the moment of her learning the decision. ThY barrister, -whom' you see crawling 5 in ihe gutter,, is a celebrated: Old Bailey lawyer. Hei**epresent^4n 4b& above attitude on accwmt otiiis tfOGPfaMtio lany kind of ditty YQi4£i witb/tbfi ting on. In tht coxCer of bis left." eye yon

will-notice there is a tear. It is a faithful copy of V memorable one he shed at the trial of a murderer,' when he swore to his innocence. He is gnashing his teeth in rage, because no jury afterwards would believe him. He was obliged to leave the bar, and he is put up there as a walrniug to young barristers who have not yet'begun to ' utter.' The old gentleman near him, just over the treasurer's department, is the likeness done in stone of a celebtated Alderman. He was a churchwarden, and threw a whole parish, poor and all, into Chancery, because they expressed a desire to look at his accounts, niter one-and-tweuty-years. Only look at him, how he is affecting to be a martyr ! His facets considered, to be a most perlect bit of chiselling. At first his hands were closed, but they were afterwards opened, to express his habit of grasping at everything. The judge, to his right, is the facsimile of a i well-known Chancellor, who has an extraordinary talent for speaking on both sides and at all times. This is the reason he is held up to ridicule as an empty spout. The other heads are in the same vigorous way, all taken 1 from the life. There are trustees, cruel guardians, game preservers, bad landlords and tenants, and oppressive masters of every hideous variety. All the bad passions, on which the law feeds and fattens, are there depicted in their true ugliness, so that the public may see that they are real pillars that support a Itgal institution like the present. They are done in stone, as being the best material to express the hard hearts of those who make it their business to go to law." We thanked the mason for the lecture he had read us in illustration of Mr. Hardwicke's expressive imps and eloquent monsters, that, with a prodigality of diablerie, he hasthrown about the building ; but, as we left them, we could not help feeling that the legal scarecrows which the architect has hung over every door'of the benchers' granary to warn all birds of prey from the fields of litigation, would drive very few away, for it is well known that 1 persons do not rush into chancery with their' eyes open. But, as they return, they may not be so stone-blind to the many-pointed moralities of the new Lincoln-Inns Hall; and this instruction, enforced by an empty pocket, may prevent them from paying the domains of Chancery a second visit. — Punch.

Russian Celebration of Easter. — The Emperor embraces all his court, and all the officers of the guard, on the first day of the holidays, and the Empress allows them to kiss her hand. On these occasions it is the custom to say, " Christ is risen," and to answer " Risen indeed !" One day, when the Emperor Nicholas thus saluted a Jewish sentinel, the latter replied, " It is a terrible lie!" The Czar very considerately ordered that the Jews should not again be made to mount guard on those days. — Russia under Nicholas I. The Caudle Lectures. — The London coi respondent of the Inverness Courier says — "So popular have these trifles become, that in Regerit-stVeet a man gains his livelihood — a very »nug one, seemingly — by reading the articles aloud to an admiring audience. They have quite taken the town by storm, and beaten the Polka out of the field. In the music shops j we have Mr. and Mrs. Caudle quadrilles and ! waltzes."

I A curious illustration of the circular theory i of storms has been afforded by a circumstance recorded in the log of the Charles Heddle. i For four days, from the 25th to the 28th of February in this year, she scudded round and round in a hurricane circle : during which time I ehe ranupwardsof 1,300 miles ; and the direct distance made by her, from point to point, was only 354 miles . — Falmouth Packet.

The Secret Prison House. — Some workmen lately, in taking down an old monastic building in Hereford, came to a prison, in which there is reason to believe some unfortunate victim was immured alive. A correspondent of tb'e Hereford Times gives the following interesting account of the d.scovery : " In taking down the south-east corner the workmen came to a paving-stone, which, on being removed, disclosed to view an aperture about eighteen inches by twelve in dimensions. On further examination, 1 by removing the jwalls, it appeared that it was a sort of niche, [five feet six inches high, capable of containjing a human form, broad at the head and tajpering down to the feet, where it was ten Inches broad ; it had been plastered in the interior on the front, back, and east side, 'on the opposite it was closed up with rough wall stone .; a'tthe bottom was another paving-stone,' and upon it the heap of collapsed bones, a glass bottle, and earthen pan, portions of the leather and high heel of shoes, and a piece of wood which/ it has been asserted, bears the marks' of having been gnawed, as if in the last frenzied' effort to sustain a famishing and desperate nature. The fragments of the bottle and ! pan t for we regret to say they were broken.and the other portions carried away/ the leather and the sole, and the piece 6f wood referred to, are before you. Was it in refiuem«ut of «nielty that these vessels were deposited at the feet> where the wretched sufferer

from the straijjhtness of the narrow eel], could Hot reach the viands they contained ? What crime could deserve' such awful retribution, or rather what human being' might dare to visit ori his fellow sinner such agonising, torment,' such accumulation of the pangs of many deaths ? What else could have been the tragedy which these walls have witnessed-— what other the agonies which they assisted in administering? The very heart sickens at the contemplation, arid the religion of peace and mercy repudiates the deeds as that, of demons rather than the ministers of reconciliation, of salvation to the sinner's soul. But to proceed. The poor | wretch does not seem to have been, alone in this appalling exigency ; another similar niche at the south-west corner of the wall was subsequently revealed, built up in the same manner, but standing sideways to the other ; at the bottom of this too, were the mournful indications of the purpose to which it had been applied, a heap of bones. It a mystery hangs over the history of this spot as to its material fabric, much more must this dark deed elude the scrutiny of man. That such things have been, and under the most sacred pretex', is, also, incontrovertible. I had purposed to have searched out some of the decretals which touch on this most melancholy subject ; but time has not sufficed me (or the purpose, aud prrhaps it is well. [ shay content myself with reading to you some extracts from writers well known to you, and shall then leave the narrative and its accompaniments to your contemplation, until such time as foitune or subsequent discovery may throw new light upon the spot. " In Headley's Letters from Italy, it is recorded that in the church of San Lorenzo, in the town of San Giovanna, is the withered form of a man cased in a side wall. A sort of trap-door is, thrown open, when you are slwwn a human skeleton, perfect ia all its parts ; it stands erect and motionless among naked jagged stones. This church had been built centuries ago, and remained untouched till within a few years, when, in making some repairs, the workmen had occasion to pierce the wall, and struck upon this skeleton. They carefully uncovered it, without disturbing its position or loosening a single bone: A narrow door has been made to swing 1 over it, to protect it from injury, and shield it from the eye of those who worship in the church. The frame indicates apoweiful man, and though it is but a skeleton, the whole attitude and aspect gives one the impression of a death of agony. The arras are folded across the breast in forced resignation, the head is slightly bowed, and the shoulders elevated, as if in the effort to breathe, while the very face — bereft of muscles as it is — seems full of suffering. This unhappy man seems to have died of suffocation, as he was built up alive in ti e wall ; it is evident it must have been a case of murder, for there are no grave clothes, no coffin, and no mason work round the body, The poor civility of a savage was not shown here, in knocking off the points of the stones, to give even the appearance of regularity to the enclosure. He was packed into a rough wall aud built over, beginning at the feet. It is difficult to tell anything of the manner of death, whether painful or not, by any skeleton, for the face has always the appearance of suffering, but there are certain indications about this which show that the death was a painful one, and caused by suffocation. The arms are not crossed gently or quietly in the decent composure of death, but far over, as by a painful effort or, by force. The shoulders are elevated, as if the last strong effort of the man was for breath. The bones of the toes are curled over the edge of the stone on which he stands, as if contracted in agony when life parted. He appears to have been fully six' feet high, with broad chest and shoulders, and strong limbed. " Again — In the notes of Sir Walter Scott's exquisite poem of ' Marraion,' we read (note' xvii.)— * It is well known that the religious persons who broke their vows were subjected to the same penalty as the Roman' vestals in sl similar case. A' small niche, sufficient to inclose their bodies, was made in the* massive wall of the convent, a slender pittance of iood and water was deposited in it, and the awful words Vade in pace' were the signal for immuring the criminal. It is not likely that, in latter times, this punishment was often resorted to';' but among the ruins of the Abbey 6? iColdingham were, some years ago, discovered jthe remains of a female' skeleton, which, from | the shape of the niche and position of the i figure, seemed to be that of an immured nun.' "