Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.Various
History
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878.
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
It is quite as curious to note what Pope omits as what he mentions. He
is much taken with a commonplace square, and with the mingling of ships
and houses (which is truly effective), but the modern traveller would
find the chief beauty of the city in its Gothic architecture, to which
Pope gives one line--"a cathedral, very neat, and nineteen parish
churches." Let the visitor ascend any one of the hills which overhang
Bristol, and a beautiful scene at once bursts upon his view: this is due
to the pre-eminent beauty of the church-towers, the great stone lilies
of the fifteenth century soaring above the dingy town; each,
For holy service built, with high disdain
Surveys this lower stage of earthly gain;
and a hard struggle they have to hold their own against the menacing
chimney-stacks of manufacturing England. All the poetry and aspiration
of the past seems contending, shoulder to shoulder, in thick air with
the material interests of the present.
Strolling about through the grimy streets, one's eye is caught by the
sign "Quakers' Friars," and following up the narrow court to seek the
meaning of this odd combination of opposing ideas, one comes to the
Friends' school, occupying the remnant of a former priory of Black
Friars. It is a spot intimately associated with recollections of the
early Friends. In 1690 the father of Judge Logan of Pennsylvania was
master of this school. Adjoining the school is the Friends'
meeting-house, built in 1669 on what was then an open space near the
priory, where George Fox often preached; and within the walls of the
meeting-house this Quaker father took upon himself the state of
matrimony. A local bard is inspired to sing:
Many years ago, six hundred or so,
The Dominican monks had a praying and eating house
Just on the spot where a little square dot
On the Bristol map marks the old Quakers' meeting-house.
A different scene it was once, I ween:
No monk is now heard his prayers repeating;
And the singers and chaunters and black gallivanters
Had never a thought of "a silent meeting."
[Illustration: "TIMES AND MIRROR" PRINTING-OFFICE, NOW PULLED DOWN.]
The streets near by, called Callowhill, Philadelphia and Penn streets,
recall the residence here of William Penn in 1697, after his marriage
with Hannah, daughter of Thomas Callowhill and granddaughter of Dennis
Hollister, prominent merchants of _Bristol_. These streets are believed
to have been laid out and named by Penn on land belonging to Hollister.
Another Friend was Richard Champion, the inventor of Bristol china and
the friend of Burke. Champion's manufactory was not commercially a
success, but his ware is now highly prized, and some few remaining
pieces of a tea-service, presented by Mr. and Mrs. Champion to Mrs.
Burke at the time the latter's husband was returned member for Bristol,
have brought thrice their weight in gold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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