I shall never forget the first time I walked over them; a pheasant occasionally shifting his quarters at my intrusion, and making his noisy way through an ether so clear, so pure, so motionless, that the broad leaves subsided, rather than fell to the ground, without the least disturbance; the tall grey chimneys just breathing their smoke upon the blue element, which they scarcely stained; every green thing was beginning to wear the colour of decay, and many a tint of yellow, deepening into orange, made me sensible that “there be tongues in trees,” if not “good in every thing.”  But Montaigne says nothing is useless, not even inutility itself.

STANZA XIII.

This superb work of antiquity must indeed be seen, to be sufficiently estimated:  the great failure of that branch of the fine arts which is employed to represent all the rest, is in the inadequate idea of size which it must necessarily give where the objects to be represented are large.

The marble vases now extant are, of course, comparatively few in number, and this is, perhaps, excepting the Medicean, the finest of them all.  The best representations of it are those in Piranesi, three in number.  One great, and conspicuous beauty of this vase consists in the elegantly formed handles, and in the artful insertion of the extreme branches of the vine-stems which compose them, into its margin, where they throw off a rich embroidery of leaves and fruit.  A lion’s skin, with the head and claws attached, form a sort of drapery, and the introduction of the thyrsus, the lituus, and three bacchanalian masks on each side, complete the embellishments.  The capacity of this vase is 103 gallons, its diameter 9 feet, its pedestal of course modern.  It was discovered in 1770, in the draining of a mephitic lake within the enclosure of the Villa Adriana, called Laga di Pantanello.  Lord Warwick had reason to be proud of his vase, which had this peculiarity, that, whereas almost every other object of art in the kingdom has been catalogued and sold over and over again, this vase passed (after a sufficiently long parenthesis of time) immediately from the gardens of Adrian to his own!

Blackwood’s Magazine.

* * * * *

Manners & Customs of all Nations.

* * * * *

HEAVING.

(For the Mirror.)

They have a ludicrous custom in Staffordshire, at Easter, which they call heaving.  The males claim Easter Monday, and the females Tuesday, and on this day a group of the latter assemble, and every male they meet with they seize, and one of them salutes him with a kiss, after which they all lay hold of him and heave him up as high as they can, for this they require some donation, which, if refused, they will seize his hat, handkerchief, or any thing they can lay hold of.  This lasts till twelve o’clock.  Sometimes old women collect together, and then woe be to the person who does not present them with a trifle, and thus stop their proceedings; for if not, their snuffy beaks might come in contact with their prisoners’ lips.  They often collect 10 or 12s. and spend it in carousing at night.