OUR engraving represents the façade of the New Corn Exchange, just completed, in Mark Lane. The ordonnance adopted in this building is the Greek Doric of singular elegance and purity-and as classical as the most critical disciple of Vitruvius could wish: -By Greece refined, Indeed, the accuracy of its details almost corresponds with the fora of the ancients, except that its halls are appropriated to the Philosophy of Statistics, or of those provoking items £. s. d. and its specula tions restricted to the Smiths and the Malthuses of our days.' Nevertheless, as we are friends to ornament," we do not quarrel with the architect of the New Corn Exchange, For putting on so new a fashioned robe; but we rather object to see such architectural beauty as is displayed in the above engraving, pent up in one of the narrowest of our city lanes, and consequently concealed from all who are not directly concerned in the business of the building. Besides, we are tempted to this objection, when we see one of our national theatres stripped of ornament, and the houses of many of our nobility rather resembling factories than abodes of rank and opulence; whilst we have a corn market as classical as an university, and sufficiently correct for a temple of Ceres. The façade consists of a peristyle of six fluted Doric columns; with two rectangular ends, with thin corresponding 319 pilasters at the angles. In the frieze, Greek laurel wreaths have been substi- ̈ tuted for the triglyphs, to avoid an interference with the proportions, &c., and with the purity of the Greek style, which is best shown in colossal dimensions, although, in the present instance, the architect, Mr. Smith, has successfully adapted the building for a confined situ ation. Above the central part of the building is a bold representation of the Royal Arms, grouped with a plough, rake, and other implemental emblems of husbandry; and over the windows of the basement story, (lighting the coffee and sale rooms) are decorations of the latter description. The arches which surmount the wings or ends of the building contribute much to its tasteful effect, and as in many similar recent buildings in the metropolis, relieve the massiveness of the other portions of the structure. It may be necessary to acquaint some of our readers who are only familiar with the "MARK LANE" of the Newspapers, that the Corn Exchange stands between Tower and Fenchurch-streets. On their road to the Mint, the Tower of London, St. Katherine's and other Docks, the lionizing public will find it worth while to pay a passing visit to this elegant specimen of modern art; especially as it is a place which brings up many grateful associations for country friends. ANTIQUITY OF AUCTIONS. (For the Mirror.) AMONG the ancient Romans, auctions were performed by the public crier "sub hasta;" that is, under a spear stuck up on that occasion, and by some magistrate, who made good the sale by delivery of the goods. The custom of setting up a spear at an auction seems to have been derived from this circumstance, that at first only those things which were taken in war were sold in that manner. day, and sometimes the hour, and the terms of the auction, were advertised, either by the common crier, or in writing; The and there were courts in the forum where auctions were made. A money-broker, "argentarius," was also present, who marked down what was bidden, and to whom the purchasers either paid down the price, or gave security for it. The seller was called "auctor," and the right of property conveyed to the purchaser was called "auctoritas." The first auction in England was about 1700, by Elisha Yale, a governor of Fort George, in the East Indies, of the goods he brought home with him. P. T. W. Ancient Roman Festivals. JUNE. THE Vestalia were festivals in honour of Vesta, observed at Rome on the 5th of the Ides of June, or the 9th of that month. Banquets were then prepared before the houses, and meat was sent to the vestals to be offered to the gods; millstones were decked with garlands, and the asses that turned them were led round the city covered with garlands. The ladies walked in the procession barefooted to the temple of the goddess, and an altar was erected to Jupiter, surnamed Pistor. The Matralia was a festival at Rome in honour of Matuta, or Ino, held on the 11th of June. Only matrons and freeborn women were admitted. They made offerings of flowers, and carried their relations children in their arms, recommending them to the care of the goddess whom they worshipped. The Fabaria were festivals in honour of Carna, wife of Janus, which took place in the calends of June, when beans were presented to her as an oblation, being then first ripe. She was the goddess who presided over hinges, and the vital parts of mankind, and had a temple on Mount Cœlus. P. T. W. HISTORY OF CLOCKS AND (For the Mirror.) (Continued from page 369.) A NEW great clock for Canterbury Ca thedral is mentioned to have been put up in 1292, and to have cost 30%. The first clock at Bologna was put up in 1356. In 1364 Charles V. of France caused a large clock to be placed in the tower of his palace. In 1370 Strasburg had a clock.* Courtray was celebrated for its clock, 1382. A public clock was put up at Spire, 1395. Hubert, prince of Carrara, caused the first clock ever publicly made by James Dondi, whose family erected to be put up at Padua; it was afterwards got the name of Horologia. is in Rymer's Fadera, where there is a The next mention of horologia, or clocks, protection of Edward III. (1368) to three Dutchmen from Delft, who were orlogiers. That clock-makers were really wanted at this period may be inferred from the following lines of Chaucer, when he speaks of a cock's crowing : "Full sikerer was his crowing in his loge, wonderful piece of mechanism, see the MIRROR, For a view, and further description of this Nos. 77 and 80, by which our old poet means to say, that the crowing was as certain as a bell or abbey clock. For although we at present ask so often, "What is it o'clock ?" (meaning the time-measurer,) yet it seems that in the fourteenth century, clock was often applied to a bell, which was rung at certain periods, determined by the sun-dial or hour glass. Nor does there appear any passage which alludes to a clock by that name earlier than the 13th of Henry VIII. Lydgate, therefore, who wrote before the time of that monarch, says, "I will myself be your orlogere Prologue to the Storye of Thebes. And Shakspeare, in his Othello, has the same term, which proves its use to have been retained as late as the reign of Elizabeth : "He'll watch the horolege a double set, In the recently-published History of Holyrood Palace, there is a view of an old horologe now standing in its garden. That fine specimen of ancient clockmaking in Wells Cathedral is to this day called the horologe. It was constructed by Peter Lightfoot, one of the monks of Glastonbury, about the year 1325, and is of a complicated design and ingenious execution. It was originally put up in that celebrated monastery, and was placed in the south transept; and by means of a communication, tolled the hours on the great bell of the central tower, whilst the quarters were struck by automata on two small bells in the transept. The dial shows the hours, and also the changes of the moon, the solar and other astronomical motions; on its summit there is a horizontal frame-work, which exhibits, by aid of machinery, eight knights on horseback, armed for a tournament, and pursuing each other with a rapid rotatory motion. At the reformation, this clock was removed from Glastonbury Abbey to its present situation in Wells Cathedral. The famous astronomical clock, made by one of our countrymen (Richard of Wallingford, abbot of St. Alban's) in the reign of Richard II., continued to go until the reign of Henry VIII., at which time it is mentioned in high terms of admiration by Leland, saying that all Europe could not produce such another. This celebrated piece of mechanism was called Albion by the inventer. It represented the motions of the sun, moon, and stars, and the ebbing and flowing of the sea, and, in short, the figures, operations, and effects of all the heavenly bodies. The inventer had begun this clock early in life, and then neglected it; but being encouraged by the king, (Edward II.,) when at the abbey on a visit, he resumed the work, and this royal exhortation made him very diligent in the execution; for, he would say, "though the abbey wants repairs, my successors may be able to build walls and mend tilings, but none, I believe, except myself, can ever finish this clock." This Richard of Wallingford was the son of a blacksmith, and derived his name from the place of his birth, as was the common practice; for no man was distinguished by his family name. He was bereft of his parents at ten years of age; on which the prior of Wallingford, taking compassion on the boy, took him under his care, and finding him to possess a docile genius, prepared him for the University of Oxford; and on the 30th of October, 1326, he was elected abbot of St. Alban's, succeeding his friend and patron, Hugo, the twenty-seventh abbot. The clock in Exeter Cathedral was erected by Bishop Courtenay in the year 1480. It is on the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, and of a curious construction for the age in which it was put up. The earth is represented by a globe in the centre; the sun by a fleur-de-lis; and the moon by a ball, painted half black and half white, which turns on its axis, and shows the different phases of that luminary. In Pilkington's History of Dale Abbey, Derbyshire, it says, "that when John Staunton and the other monks surrendered the abbey in 1539, the abbey-clock sold for six shillings." The oldest clock we have now in England, that is supposed to go tolerably, is of the year 1540, the initial letters of the maker's name being N. O. It is in the palace of Hampton Court. In the Times newspaper, Feb. 1827, an advertisement appeared for the "sale of a valuable and curious clock for 20%., to go for twelve months." It stated that three only of these rare clocks were ever made; one at Hampton Court, one in a nobleman's fa mily, and the other at the advertiser's. In June, 1826, a discovery was made of the chef d'œuvre of the celebrated Tompion, which had been so long lost. It was made for "The Society for Philosophical Transactions," and is a yeargoing clock. It is a singular circumstance, that a record exists, which states that Tompion was at work on this clock when the great plague broke out in London; and, on the day he finished it, he himself was attacked with the pestilence. His friends removed him to the continent, where he died. On the dial there is this inscription "Sir James Moore caused : this inovement to be made with great care, anno domini 1676, by Thomas Tompion." Tompion was paid one hundred guineas, and the clock was removed to the society's house, and there, in the confusion of the moment, it was placed in the lumber-room, where it lay without a case, exactly a century and a half. One thing wonderful attended this discovery all the steel pins, on being cleared from dust, were found to be as brilliant as ever. The late Lord Orford had a clock in his possession at Strawberry-Hill, which appears by the inscription to have been a present from Henry VIII. to Anne Bullen. Poynet, bishop of Winchester, likewise gave an astronomical clock to the same king. Mr. Gainsborough, a dissenting minister, at Henley-upon-Thames, who died October 27, 1775, aged 64, made a clock of peculiar construction. It told the hour by a little ball, and was kept in motion by a leaden bullet, which dropped from a spiral reservoir at the top of the clock into a little ivory bucket. This was so contrived as to discharge it at the bottom, and, by means of a counter-weight, was carried up to the top of the clock, where it received another bullet, which was discharged as the former. This was evidently an attempt at the perpetual motion, which he thought attainable. This clock was presented to Mr. Philip Thicknesse, who gave it to the British Museum, where it is now deposited. William Kennedy, the celebrated blind mechanic, of Banbridge, co. Down, Ireland, who died about the year 1790, actually made many clocks, common and musical. Among the recent inventions which have sprung out of the ingenuity of our Parisian neighbours is a curious one of making clocks of paper. These horologes, ou pendules en carton, are asserted to be an improvement on metallic machinery. They never require oil, are wonderfully light, very simple in their movements, and possess many other advantages. "A friend of ours," says the editor of the Literary Gazette, June 3, 1826, "who has seen them, informs us they are really very clever, go well for thirty hours without winding up, and cost only fifty francs." Illuminated Cloek Dials, showing the hour at any time of the night, were, on April 23, 1827, first exhibited at the church of St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, London, the ingenious invention of Mr. Paine, for which he received a silver medal from the Society of Arts, June 4, 1827. WATCHES are not of such ancient invention as clocks, but were made much earlier than has been generally supposed. This fact was proved some years since by a discovery made by some labourers, who, being employed at Bruce Castle, in Fifeshire, found there a watch, together with some coin, both of which they disposed of to a shopkeeper at St. Andrew's, who sent the watch to his brother in London, considering it a curious piece of antiquity, and from whom it came into the possession of his late majesty. The outer case of this very curious relic of antiquity was of silver, raised, in rather a handsome pattern, over a ground of blue enamel, with the ciphers, very indistinct, of R. B. at each corner of the enchased work. On the dial-plate was written Robertus B. Rex Scottorum, and over it was a thin, convex, transparent horn, instead of the glasses which we use at present. Robert Bruce, king of Scotland, to whom this watch evidently belonged, died in 1328, a date far beyond that generally assigned to this species of invention. What is singular, this watch is not much larger than those now in common use. In the sixteenth century they were made much smaller. Derham (in his Artificial Clock-Maker, published 1714) mentions a watch of Henry VIII. which was still in order; and Dr. Demainbray affirmed, that he had heard both Sir Isaac Newton and Demoivre speak of this watch. The Emperor Charles V. (Henry's contemporary) had a watch in the jewel of his ring; and he was so much pleased with these time-measurers, that he used to sit after his dinner with several watches on the table, his bottle before him in the centre; and when he retired to the monastery of St. Just, he continued still to amuse himself by keeping them in order, which is said to have produced a reflection from him on the absurdity of his attempt to regulate the motions of the different powers of Europe. Some of the watches used at this time seem to have been strikers; at least we find in the Memoirs of Literature, that such watches having been stolen both from Charles V. and Louis XI. of France whilst they were in a crowd, the thief was detected by their striking the hour. In the elector of Saxony's stables is to be seen a watch in the pommel of his saddle. In most of the more ancient watches, particularly those in the late Leverian collection, and that of Mr. Ingram Foster, catgut supplied the place of a chain, whilst they were commonly of a smaller size than we use at present, and often of an oval form. And Pancirollus informs us, that about the end of the fifteenth century watches were made no larger than an almond, by a man whose name was Mermecide. From these and many other imperfec tions they were not in any degree of general request, till the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign; accordingly, in Shakspeare's Twelfth Night, Malvolio says, "I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with some rich jewel." In the 3rd of James I. a watch was found upon Guy Fawkes, which he and Percy had bought the day before, "to try conclusions for the long and short burning of the touchwood, with which they had prepared to give fire to the train of powder." În 1631, Charles I. incorporated the clock-makers, and the charter prohibits clocks, watches, and alarms from being exported, which sufficiently proves that they were now more commonly used, as well as that we had artists of our own who were expert in this branch of business. About the middle of the seventeenth century Huygens made his great improve ment in clock-work, which produced many others from our own countrymen, the latest of which was the introduction of repeating watches in the time of Charles II., who is said to have sent one of the first of these new inventions to Louis XIV. The former of these kings was very curious with regard to these watches; and an old person of the trade, many years since, was heard to say, he remembered that the watch-makers (particularly East) used to attend whilst he was playing at the mall, a watch being often the stake. And a more curious anecdote still, of royal attention to watches, is told in Dr. Derham's Artificial Clock-Maker. One Barlow had procured a patent, in concert with the Lord Chief Justice Allebone, for repeaters; but Quare, (another maker,) making one at the same time, upon ideas he had entertained before the patent was granted, James II. tried both, and giving the preference to Quare's, it was notified in the Gazette. In the succeeding reign, the reputation of the English work in this branch was such, that in the year 1698 an act passed, obliging the makers to put their names on watches, lest discreditable ones might be sold abroad for English. Bermondsey. GEO. SMEETON. SANDWICH. (For the Mirror.) SANDWICH is a considerable town and port, situated at the distance of sixty. eight miles from London, and about two miles from the sea, in the county of Kent. It is the second of the cinque-ports, and unquestionably a place of very great antiquity. The town is surrounded by a ditch; and the remains of a wall with breast works, are still to be seen, as are several gates, three of which are in a perfect condition. The first of these gates is known by the name of Woodnesborough-gate, from its leading to a little village of that name, about two miles from the town; the second is called the New-gate; and the third, which leads to Canterbury, bears the name of that city. The town-hall is a very spacious building, surrounded by a wall, through which a passage is formed of an arched gate. The first apartment which the stranger enters, is the hall; which is very ancient and commodious. The motto on the chair of justice is "Justitia Virtutum regina." Immediately above the hall is the council chamber, in which is placed a chair for the mayor; seats for the other magistrates are ranged round a table. In many small apartments are found a great variety of ancient guns, spears and swords, all remarkably heavy, though exceedingly neat in the workmanship. But the most curious collection of antiques is in a long apartment at the top of the build ing; this room is filled up with huge and heavy armour, and drums and trum pets of an extraordinary size. There is also to be seen an old commodious sidesaddle, a present from Queen Elizabeth when she visited Sandwich. Here, too, were formerly portraits of distinguished personages, particularly one of the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth's favourite, in a court dress, and one of Cromwell, who is represented in the armour which he wore at the battle of Naseby, in 1645. Among the charitable institutions of Sandwich, may be mentioned the hospital of St. Bartholomew, situated at a small distance without the New-gate; it has the appearance rather of a village than a charitable foundation, for it consists of sixteen small but convenient houses, each of which has a large private garden. In the centre of these houses is a church, in which are buried the remains of the founder, to whose memory a monument has been erected, bearing the following inscription: - "Here lies interred Sir Henry Sandwich, knight, founder of this hospital; and Sir Nicholas Sandwich his son. Near Canterbury-gate is the free-school, founded by Sir Roger Manwood, knight. It is a very capacious erection, surround, |