Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/272

262[February 13, 1869] bishop, being at the time in the fields, though almost too proud to show fear, rode straight to the northern door of St. Paul's to take sanctuary. But it was too late. The mob closed round him, tore him off his horse, stripped him of his armour, dragged him, wounded and bleeding, to Cheapside, proclaimed him there a traitor, a seducer of the king, and an enemy of the people's interests, and, chopping off his head, set it on a pole. His disfigured corpse was tossed into a hole in the sand in an old churchyard of the Pied Friars. His brother and some servants were also beheaded, and their bleeding and naked bodies thrown on a heap of rubbish by the river side. The body of the luckless bishop was six months afterwards disinterred, and brought to Exeter for solemn and stately burial by the queen's command.

The towers and steeples of Exeter have many traditions the crow learns as he flits from one to the other, and on the lichened and corroded stones he croaks them in crow language to the chattering starlings, who respect him greatly for his blackness and his age.

Of St. Mary Major's, in the cathedral yard, it is said that the noise of the weathercock so disturbed Catherine of Arragon when she slept in the deanery on her way to London, that it was taken down. St. Mary Steps, in West-street, boasts an ancient clock with three quaint figures, which the townspeople call Matthew the Miller and his two sons (Matthew is really burly Henry the Eighth). The local rhyme about the old horologer's automata is,

If Exeter had been a Spanish city we should have had a hundred legends about these figures, the magicians who framed them and the goblins who haunted them. From one of the church towers, after the great rebellion of Edward the Sixth's time, one of the leaders, a vicar, was hung in his priestly robes.

Exeter is justly proud of her children. That humbly wise man, Richard Hooker, the author of the Ecclesiastical Polity, was born at Heavitree, which is a suburb. Tired of disputation, he only prayed to leave all public employment and retire to some quiet parsonage, where he might, to use his own beautiful language, "see God's blessings spring out of the earth and eat his bread in peace and privacy." One of his friends found him, tormented by his shrew of a wife, rocking a cradle while busy studying the Greek Testament. Sir Thomas Bodley, the founder of the great Oxford Library, was another worthy son of Exeter. Gandy, the painter, whom Reynolds imitated and whom Kneller admired, was a third. Budgell, Addison's friend, is also on the roll, and Jackson, the composer—Incledon's master. When Incledon was ragingly jealous of Braham he used to say,

"If my dear old master could only come down from heaven and take an Exeter post-chaise, and come up to town and hear this condemned Jew, he'd soon settle the matter."

The crow lifting from the Exeter roof, now bears swift away to the Tamar and the granite strewn and haunted moors of Cornwall. 

 —Heaven is very good—too good to me. I go to bed more cheerful. Something drew me into those vile rooms after my wandering about miserable and purposeless; indeed it was to escape from myself during those weary hours. I felt a sort of thrill and sinking at my heart. I drew near and looked at the fatal table; it was another winning night, and every one in spirits and excitement, and picking up gold and silver. My trembling fingers were really drawn by an overpowering instinct to my pocket, and, literally without my knowledge, I found I had my only stake in my hand ready to put down. Then there was a new combination. I remarked there was an alternation, a zigzag going backwards and forwards, and taking advantage of this, I was impelled irresistibly to put down. I won, and breathed. I won again, and went on, and have now got back six out of my ten. O, God is very good—too good! I meet Grainger going out.

"Well done," he said, "I saw you, though I did not wish to show myself, for fear of making you nervous. Your moves were bold, and worthy of a general, and your retreat just in time."

"To-morrow I know I shall get back the rest, perhaps more. Even a few louis more would be something, but I should be quite content."

I went back again.

One o'clock —As I went out of the Kursaal down the steps on to the terrace, I could hardly keep myself from giving a cry. My heart so light, so airy, so bounding, so full of hope. I had to walk round and round those gardens before I could trust myself to sit down calmly, and take out what I had in my pocket. O my sweet darling pieces, there they are on the table before me, all come home to me again, rescued from the vile harpies who would destroy us all, wreck the happiness of families for a single double florin. Let me look again, and set them out on the table before me, eight, nine, ten. Then, again, one, two, three, four, five, and five double florins,