Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 May 1875 — The Tower of London. [ARTICLE]

The Tower of London.

A fresh chapter in the history of the Tower of London was begun on Saturday, when for the first time the grim fortress was thrown open to the public. In future twice a week, on Mondays and Saturdays, the tower may be visited by all who come, without the payment of any fee, the only formality to be gone through being that of applying for a ticket at the entrance-lodge which stands on the side of the old Lion’s Tower. The privilege thus conferred by the Government upon the public cannot be too highly estimated by those who value freedom of access to our few historical show-places, and the present Prime Minister may be sure that when the people come to consider his claims to their popularity his action in this particular matter will not be overlooked. “If prison walls could only speak what tales of mystery and horror they would relate!” We often hear such a phrase quoted with reference to some dungeon or castellated fortress whose gray* stones are moldering into dust. But we do not ask that the walls Of the Tower of London might speak, for, thanks to such intelligent students as Mr. Dixon, we know almost as much of the tower’s history as the ancient stone walls themselves. From the days of the Conqueror, the tyranical Norman King who caused the famous military architect, Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester, to build the Middle Tower, down to yesterday, we have the complete story of the tower before us. And what a marvelous narrative it is! It should be written in blood. Every inch of the ground, every foot of masonry, is associated with some cruel deed, some tyrannous act. To use the words of that Countess of Somerset who, with her husband, poisoned Overbury and subsequently occupied the prison in which he had been confined, the place is “full of the ghosts of the dead.” These specters confront the visitor at every step and will not be shaken off. In the White Tower, with its watchtowers at each angle, and its walls fifteen feet thick, was imprisoned Maud, the third daughter of Earl Fit»water, that stout Baron who, to the King’s treatment of his child, compelled him to sign Magna Charts at Runnymede. Here, in a dungeon compared with which the Black Hole at Calcutta would be a palatial residence, was Imprisoned Guy, or Guido, Fawkes; and here was the prison home of the seven Bishops, at whose knees even the soldiers of the guard fell, imploring their benediction, while the shore was crowded by prostrate spectators asking a blessing. The persecuted prelates were lodged in the Earl of Leicester’s Tower, where Heriot first observed the satellites of Jupiter. The sun-dial of this famous astronomer yet remains, and the story of Heriot and “ the three, magi,” as his companions were called, is by no ineans one of the least interesting episodes of the tower. In the Bloody Tower, called the Garden Tower until the murder of the two little Princes—perhaps the most tragic and pitiful incident in the annals of the fortress—Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley held their conference, asking only a Bible from which to get counsel and instruction in their hour of need. Here, too, Sir Walter Raleigh wrote his “ History of the World,” his essay entitled “The Parliament of Man,” and other political treatises. Memories of those ill-fated great ones rise everywhere, and it does not {require overmuch imagination to conjure up those dread mornings when Raleigh passed out of his little room to the block, and when the executioner waited with his glittering ax on the green for patient Lady Grey, who was lodged in the house where now resides Mr. Hughes, the Yeoman jailer. Indeed, we walk upon stones which cover piles of royal and noble dust, that of the unfortunate Earl of Monmouth among tfie rest; and then, issuing into the fresh air again, we find ourselves gazing at a little slab in the center of a railed-off space, placed there by the Queen, in memory of Anne Boleyn. It was on this green that royal and illustrious persons were executed. Now the Constables of the Tower are installed there, and very shortly such a ceremony will be witnessed. Of the bloody scenes enacted within the precincts of the tower century after century, nothing now remains but their memory. The scaffold, the masked headsman with his shining white ax poised on his shoulder, the little knot of soldiers, the priest, and doubtless cruel eyes gazing from some turret-window upon the grim scene, the sharp cry of agony from the victim’s lips—of these things naught exists but their written memorial and the storied walls of the fortress. —London Morning Post.

Centreville, Md., contains a prodigy in the way of a citizen aged eighty-one years, who never attended school twelve months in his life, but whose natural talent for mathematics is so great that he has yet to find a problem which he cannot solve. His rules are entirely of his own devising, and many of them are said to be curiosities of their kind. r- "■ ♦ It is statistically computed that 100,000,000 nuts of various kinds are annually eaten in this country. Which fact the New Orleans Picayune thinks may account for the prodigious number of colonels. * Pennsylvania, in 1874, produced 21, 677,000 tons of anthracite coal, and yet all this digging made a hole in her coal deposits' no more appreciable than a bucket of water taken out of Lake Roland. There are five or six manufactories of condensed milk in this country. There is an extensive trade with Germany in this article, and some of the companies do a large business with China and Japan. , WEfEN are 'stockings like dead men? When they are men-ded; when their soles are departed; when they are in j holes; when they are past healing; when. • they are no longer on their last legs.