The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1852-01-22
THURSDAY, JANUARY %, 1852


who refused to cut down underwoods abutting
ON high-roads were to be held responsible for
all felonies that might he committed by per-
sons lurking in their covert" Next to London,
Winchester, the old AnglO-Saxon capital, was
the chief town of England i'll those days. At
Winchester there was held yearly great fair
and upon traders journeying to this fair with
goods or quitting it with money, robbers loved
to pounce The wooded pass OF Alton was
fayorite ambush for the outlaws, SO that
custom arose of sending five mounted sergeants-
alarms to keep this pass during the continu-
anoe of this fair at st. Giles.
OF the districts uncovered by forests, a large
part was occupied by fens and marshes ON
which cranes and storks, both now extinct in
this country, were plentiful. The roads were
such as we should not now tolerate. There
were no inns; monasteries We're the hating
places of the traveller; he received there food
and lodging gratis, and was sold provisions to
take forward on his journey. Towns were
generally walled the chief towns then being,
after London, Winchester, York Lincoln, B0s-
ton, st. Ives, Lynn, and Stamford. Dover and
Dunwich were both important seaports, and
Southampton already thriving place Var
mouth was starting into life through the her
v,
profit by its coal But over the whole country
there was nothing like the hive of people
which increase of wealth and population now
supplies for the days work of British Industry
The whole population of London itself was
under twenty thousand 4" In the fourteenth
century, the whole number of the inhabitants
of Lincoln, who contributed to an assessment
of nnths was less than eight hundred Lon
lon have IN ,,cturp a mass nf Ettto
whitewashed tenements, with an approach to
pavement in the narrow streets each street
appropriated to its own trade. Down the
centre of streets leading to the Thames ran
the town drainage into the river near the
river dwelt the merchants and the Adventures
stsx BesaJ@s ~ ~ ~ .
wi 49,, s:t.'s1@a z1a-lv K ssstsnsN
under independent lords Ahe soke lords and
their tenants had a vote as citizens but were
exempt from city jurisdiction. The conse
quence of this arrangement was a city divided
against itself, which gave comparative impunity
to malefactors. The streets were 80 dangerous
that the canons of ST. Northumberland were
| afraid to go across the road to their collegiate
| church. and so obtained leave to connect their
| lodgings with the church tower by wooden
bridge.
The main traffic out of London was to
| Dover, and this road was worked by hackney
men, who let horse at Southwark for the
stage to Rochester, where it was exchanged
| for another hackney that went on to Canter-
| bury, and 80 on The charge was for each of
those two stages sixteen pence; that is to say,
| a sovereign IN present money Carts We're
also provided to transport the luggage but
! the roads were so bad that in some districts it
was necessary to rest the cattle four days after
| travelling two, although the usage was to
travel four days and rest three 80 four days
made a week to travellers No cross-road
could be attempted without the assistance Of
| guide. Ladies of rank went out occasionally
in covered cars vehicles richly painted and lined,
but numbering wagons as to their construction.
King Henry the Third ordered "a house of deaf
| to be made, running on wheels; so a Hing of
England was the first of the long train of at
| fractions who have since travelled in caravans.
| Trade was in keeping with the poverty and
scanty numbers of the population. Goldsmiths
and others merely worked in other mems
material. Those who kept stores supplied
them from the annual fairs, and if any run
| upon the shops exhausted them, it was requisite
| TO wait until the next fair came round When
Henry the Third wanted to take Bedford
Castle, pickaxes were required, and ropes
wherewith to pull the battering machines. He
sent royal order to the sherifs of London t.
supply the necessary articles they were no,
to be raised in London and ropes and pick
axes were demanded of the sherihs of Dorset
shire and other embellishments trouble be.
ing taken. throughout several counties, to exc
cute an order which two tradosmen would now
receive o. a trlfling item in the routine of their
business
When it is remembered that the details of
home comfort which we have given, miserable
~ they are, have been drawn from the estab-
lishment Of Kings, it will be easy to imagine
what was the condition of the common people
in this country during the blessed ages of ro-
nance and chvalry Those wretched good old
times There is hardly glory in them that
will bear the light Even the Warden pie,
that phantom emblem of good cheer, which we
troll over with an oily chuckle when we sing
about the monks Of old, is-what! "The
Cistertian monks of Warden, in Bedfordshire.
produced at some early but uncertain time, a
baking variety of the pear. IL bore, and still
bears, the name of the abbey it figured on its
armoral escutcheon, and supplied the contents
of those Warden pies 30 often named in old
descriptions of feastsp The nagon of wine
and the Warden pie what have they come to |!
| Yin ordinaire in wooden mug and quashy
mess of baking pears under pie-crust of the
Middle Ages
How ANIMALS Cool Orr. DR. Wander
burgh, in m address before the New York
Academy of Medicine as quoted in the New
England Farmer, among other things says
"1he genus homo and the genus horse have
a double privilege of refrigeration, while all
other animated beings have but one You may
be surprised to learn that no other beings
sweat, except men and horses; and hence no
other beings can cool themselves when hot, by
perspiration through the skin The coDfrma-
ton of this fact is found in the whole range Of
comparative anatomy where nature has fur
nished examples on the most extended scale OF
magnitude, in the whole animal world in the
largest as well as the smallest of beings.
'In all the pachydermata or thick skinned
| animals, except the horse, are found no pores
| in the skin that exhale heat by perspiration
| the envelope on all these animals being only II
secreting surface, like others Of the internal
surface Of the body All the cleftfeet species,
including those presenting feet with toes
rounded and unprovided with claws-the ele-
plant, rhinoceros, bison, mammoth, mastodon,
buffalo, OK, swine, deer, as well as the lion, IT,
ger, bear, wolf, fox, birds, squirrels dormouse,
opossum, racoon-al alike offer the same cx-
amples AS the dog, that they have no other
means Of cooling themselves when hot, except
through the medium of the lungs, by respira-
ton"
IMPORTANT DIscovERY-From the Pacific
of the 2sth of November last published at San
Francisco, we learn that the Rev Tyler