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TEMPLE BAR.

(From Good IForcfs.) We now arrive where, black and grimy, in much sooty dignity, Temple Bar still ends the Strand, and marks the division between the City i of Loudon and the Liberty of Westminster. It was never a city gate, but as marking tho city bounds has, according to ancient exxstom, beexx invariably closed, and only then when a Sovereign approaches the city on some public occasion. When the monarch arrives, one herald sounds a trumpet, another herald knocks, a parley ensues, the gates are flung open, and tho Lord Mayor presents the sword of tho city to the Sovereign, who returns it to him again. Thxxs it xvas at the old Temple Bar with Elizabeth, when she went to return thanks at St. Paul’s for the destruction of tho Armada ; so it was xvith Cromxvell, when ho went to dine in state in the city, in 1649 ; so with Queen Anne, after the battle of Blenheim ; so with Queen "Vic-' toria, when she has gone to tho city iu state.

Strype says that “ anciently there were only posts, rails, and a chain” at Temple Bar. In the time of Henry VII., it is believed that the wooden edifice was erected, beneath which the bier of Elizabeth of York, on its way from the Tower to Westminster, was sprinkled with holy water by the abbots of Be mondsey and Westminster. This was the gate which was repainted for the entrance of Anne Boleyu, and again for the coronation of Edward VI. The present Temple Bar was built from designs of Wren, in 1670 ; the feeble statues on the west side are Charles I. and Charles 11., on the east, Elizabeth and James I. They are the work of Buslmell, a sculptor who died mad in 1701. No one can see Temple Bar without connecting it with the human remains—dried by summer heats, and beaten and occasionally hurled to the ground by winter storms—by which it was so long surmounted. The first ghastly ornament of the Bar was one of the quarters of cSir William Armstrong, who was concerned in the Bye House Plot, and who, after his execution (1681), was boiled in pitch and divided into four parts. The head and quarters of Sir William Perkins, and the quarters of Sir John Friend, who had conspired to assassinate William 111., “ from love to King James and the Prince of Wales,” were next exhibited. The last heads which were exposed here were those which were concerned in the “ rebellion of ’45.” It is difficult to believe that it is scarcely more than a hundred and twenty years since Colonel Francis Townley, George Fletcher, and seven other Jacobites were so barbarously dealt with—‘hanged on Kennington Common, cut down, disembowelled, beheaded, quartered, their hearts tossed into a fire, from which one of them was snatched by a bystander, who devoured it, to show his loyalty. Walpole afterwards saw their heads on Temple Bar, and says that people used to make a trade of letting out spyglasses to look at them, at a halfpenny a look. The spikes which supported the heads were only removed in the present century. It was in front of the Bar that Titus Oates stood jn the pillory, pelted with dead cats and rotten eggs. Whenever Temple Bar is removed, it will sweep away with it an immensity of the associations of the past. Almost all the wellknown authors of the last two centuries hava somehow had occasion to mention it. Fleetstreet, just within its bounds, is still the centre for the offices of nearly all the leading newspapers and magazines, and those who stand beneath the soot-begrimed arches may still have somewhat of the experience which Dr. Johnson describes in his “ Project for the Employment of Authors” (1756). “Itis my practice,” says Dr. Johnson, “ when I am in want of amusement, to place myself for an hour at Temple Bar, and examine one by one the looks of the passengers ; and I have commonly found that between the hours of 11 and 4, every sixth man is an author. They are seldom to be seen very early in the morning or late in the evening ; but about dinnertime they are all in motion, and have one uniform eagerness in their faces, which gives little opportunity of discovering their hopes or fears, t' eir pleasures or their pains. But in the afternoon, when they have all dined, or composed themselves to pass the day without a dinner, their passions have full play, and I can perceive one manwonderingat the stupidity of the public, by which his new book has been totally neglected; another, cursing the French, who fight away literary curiosity by their threat of an invasion ; another, swearing at his bookseller, who will advance no money without copy ; another, perusing as he walks his publisher’s bill; another, murmuring at an unanswerable criticism ; another, determining to write no more to a generation of barbarians; and another, wishing to try once again whether he cannot awaken a drowsy world to a sense of his merit.”

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTIM18770414.2.27.7

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5010, 14 April 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

Word count
Tapeke kupu
848

TEMPLE BAR. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5010, 14 April 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

TEMPLE BAR. New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5010, 14 April 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

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