Druse village, and still more so with our hosts, the sheik and his relatives.
Our road home ran along the side of a mountain, and keeping us parallel with a magnificent deep valley, at the bottom of which ran the river Juffa, whilst the numerous villages scattered here and there on the hills, the cattle returning home from pasture, and the many peasants we met on their way home from the fields, gave the whole scene an air of peace and plenty, not often met with in the Turkish empire, and perhaps in no part of it except Mount Lebanon. The wonderful transparency of the atmosphere in this land causes some singular optical illusions. Everything appears much nearer to the beholder than it really is; and it is only after the experience of some months that one becomes sufficiently accustomed to this to estimate objects at their true distance. I was much struck with this, when on our way home from Bisoor to the mountain village in which all our party was residing for the summer, we rounded a hill on the west, and came in view of the Mediterranean, with the plains lying at the foot of Lebanon, the immense olive-grove that skirts the sea, the town and roadstead of Beyrout, with its numerous ships. It appeared almost as if a few bounds down the mountain would place us on the shores of the deep blue sea, whereas we know well that it takes a good horse nearly four hours to get over the intervening ground. It was curious to look down at the steamers now at anchor, and think that by embarking on board of one of them, we could reach Marseilles in six and London in eight days, and be in a very different climate and very different scenes from those which we had that day felt and witnessed amongst the Druses of Mount Lebanon.
LONDON CHANGES.
What changes have taken place in London during the last thirty years, over which considerable period of time, I grieve to say, my rational memory can operate with sufficient precision! In those delightful days when my serious troubles were confined to a stiff contest with the impersonal verbs, or physical discomfort in the early gooseberry season, I remember well that we children were permitted every now and then in the spring and summer time to go down a-Maying to Shepherd’s Bush. From the Marble Arch to the Green at Shepherd’s Bush—with the exception of a low row of houses near the chapel where the soldiers were buried, and the chapel itself, and another row of houses at Nottinghill, opposite Holland Park—it was all country. There were Nursery Gardens—there were Tea Gardens—there was a little row of cottages just over against the northern end of the Long Walk in Kensington Gardens, and a public-house called the Black or Red Bull; beyond that nothing but fields and rural sights. I do not remember the existence of Tyburn Turnpike—for it was removed in the year 1825, which date is happily beyond my powers of recollection—but thirty-five years ago there it stood. This gate stood originally at St. Giles’s Pound. When it was moved to the westward, the road between St. Giles’s Pound and Tyburn Gallows was called Tyburn Road—it is now Oxford Street.
The readers of the “Times” must have seen lately that there has been a somewhat animated discussion as to the exact spot on which the gallows stood. Having no precise knowledge of my own upon the matter, I turn to the excellent work of Mr. Timbs, entitled “The Curiosities of London,” and I find therein the following information upon what George Selwyn would have called this interesting point. The gallows, called “Tyburn Tree,” was originally a gallows upon three legs. The late Mr. George Robins, who never lost an opportunity of pointing out any remarkable association connected with property which it was his agreeable duty to recommend to the notice of the British public, when dealing with the house No. 49, Connaught Square, affirmed that the gallows stood upon that spot. Mr. Smith, in his History of St. Mary-le-bone (I am still giving the substance of Mr. Timbs’s statements), records that this interesting implement had been for years a standing fixture on a little eminence at the corner of the Edgware Road, near the turnpike. Thousands of Londoners still living must remember the turnpike well; but if I understand my author rightly, this was but the second Tyburnian location of the gallows. The subsequent and final arrangement was, that it should consist of two uprights and a cross-beam. It was set up on the morning of execution “opposite the house at the corners of Upper Bryanstone Street and the Edgware Road, wherein the gallows was deposited after having been used; and this house had curious iron balconies to the windows of the first and second floors, where the sheriffs attended the executions.” The place of execution was removed to Newgate in 1783. There must be many men still alive who remember the change. It is not so long since Rogers the Poet died, and he was a young man at the date of the opening of the States General, and he used to tell his friends that he was in Paris at the time, and, if I mistake not, went to Versailles to see the solemnities. Surely if this is so, there must be still amongst us some aged people who can recollect the Tyburn executions. John Austin was hung there in 1783, and that is but 77 years ago—a mere flea-bite, as one may say, on the back of Time. The controversy seems to have been the old story of the shield, black on one side and white on the other—only the Tyburn shield has three sides. These three sides are—I crave large latitude of expression—1st, 49, Connaught Square; 2ndly, the corner of Edgware Road by the old turnpike; and, 3rdly, the corner of Upper Bryanstone Street and the Edgware Road. It is possible there is confusion in the first and second suggestions. It was in the second of these localities that the bones of Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were found, having been conveyed there by the piety of the Second Charles and his advisers. On the 30th of January, 1660-1, being the first anniversary of the execution of Charles I. which it was possible to celebrate with any degree of éclat, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, of Bradshaw, and of Ireton were disinterred, and actually conveyed in their shrouds