CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. 191 



published in 1562, in writing of the reign of King John, has made 

 no mention of Magna Charta : our surprise is diminished when we 

 remember that he was printer to Queen Elizabeth, and probably 

 considered his silence complimentary to that arbitrary princess. 



Upon the subject of this essay little has been written, and that 

 little is scattered in many voluj«|s — some of them not easily acces- 

 sible. I have not affected to give a complete view of the subject, 

 or to do more than trace a faint outline ; but I think I have shewn 

 that the subject, in all its parts and bearings, is reducible to princi- 

 ple and system ; and if I have awakened or gratified curiosity, or 

 agreeably filled up the brief space which I have occupied, my end 

 will have been answered, and I shall be more than satisfied. 



EXPRESSION IN MUSIC. 



By IVIatthew Macroskelles, Mus. Doc. 



Market Mowbray ! — Above all places commend me to Mar- 

 ket Mowbray for an example of one of those towns peculiar to Old 

 England which seem to have had no origin, no birth, but rose at 

 once into a maturity that has suffered no decline ; one of those me- 

 morials of the olden time which, (like the vast piles of Stonehenge), 

 has undergone no change, no new combination, no improvement, no 

 alliance with the white, staring, stucco of modern buildings, but re- 

 poses in the solemn grandeur of the hereditary title, silent, soli- 

 tary, and antique. As the traveller looks at the low, overhanging 

 thatched houses, with the grotesque fronts chequered with the black 

 inlaid timber, crossing and recrossing, like so many giant hiero- 

 glyphics, the small diamond-paned windows ensconced deeply in 

 the imperishable blocks, he readily fancies the dark, oak-wainscotted 

 parlour, mellowed in the light of that perpetual chirioscura so 

 essential to the ponderous structure of Gothic architecture, the 

 massive, unearthly, carved chairs, and all the fashions of those 

 departed times, when the green-kirtled maidens busied themselves 

 with no science but that of pickling and preserves, or threw their 

 rosy fingers over the flying weft, or framed the varied threads of 

 the magical tapestry. Market Mowbray is like an old tombstone 

 with its half-effaced inscription of forgotten names with which the 



