THE

YOUTHS' MAGAZINE;

OR,

EVANGELICAL MISCELLANY.

DECEMBER, 1848.

THORNTON COLLEGE.

(See the Vignette.)

THORNTON COLLEGE, before the dissolution of monasteries, was one of the wealthiest of the Lincolnshire abbeys. It was founded in A. D. 1139, and canons distinguished by black gowns, sought refuge and solitude within its walls: a few years afterwards the priory was raised to the rank of an abbey. Henry the Eighth visited the abbot there A.D. 1541, and the hospitality he received induced him to spare the establishment at the general suppression, and to convert it into a college. In the reign of his boy-successor, the college was dissolved, and the property was exchanged with the Bishop of Lincoln. Vignette gives the principal features now remaining.

Our

THE LIVING RILL.

OUR narrative commenced the year of the great rebellion, 1745, though we date not the rise of our little branch of living waters until some considerable time afterwards, when, through the operations of the Divine Spirit, it sprang up in the breast of a solitary and afflicted widow, and thence passed on through a period of nearly a hundred years.

A a

It was at the termination of the summer, not many years since, that two ladies repaired to a small sea-bathing place, on the southern shores of Devonshire. They were partly inclined to chose this obscure watering place, from their love of retirement, and partly from the wish to be near an ancient family friend, whom Mrs. Levet, the elder of the two ladies, had heard of from a child, as a school fellow of her father's, though she had never seen him. This old friend of the family, was a clergyman, who with a good kind wife, and no children, had inhabited a little rectory, a few miles from the said obscure bathing place, for nearly fifty years.

It is anticipated, that the young reader, when he finds himself brought into company with three or four strangers, just at the end of the little series, when there are so few pages of the "Living Rill" to look forward to, may perhaps become somewhat puzzled; but, is it not the very nature of these springs from on high to follow a devious course in the lower world, and to carry those who would go with them, into every variety of scene, from the rich pleasure grounds, the parks and pleasaunces of the nobleman, to the potatoe garden and kail yard of the humblest rustic.

Neither does this stream always pursue the lines of natural descent, as if the grace of God were the right of man, by other inheritance than that which is spiritually derived from the spiritual Father.

But let not the reader be uneasy. Hitherto our little Living Rill has been faithfully followed through the whole series of our narratives, and if we seem to have lost sight of it for a little while, we shall assuredly find it again ere long, and find it perchance as we have not seen it before, like the river which went out from Eden, parting into many heads, all prepared to go forth into as many lands.

It was on the last day of July, that Mrs. Levet and her sister Miss Prideaux, received a letter of a square form, in an old Italian hand, sent by a purpose-messenger from Mrs. Hemming, the lady of the old rector above mentioned, inviting them to spend the second day of the next month at Beefield. This letter imported also, that this was a great day among the smaller inhabitants of the parish; a day when a flag was hoisted on a pole in the yard of the endowed parish school house, when the

three bells of the church were rung by great boys, when beef was roasted, and when cakes were made, and tea boiled in a kettle, and every garden stripped of the residue of the summer flowers. "Good! very good!" said Mrs. Levet; we must make sure of a car and a steady driver, and if the weather is as good as it now promises to be, we will try if we cannot recover some of the sweet feelings which we had on occasions of such summer fêtes in rural scenes, which were the very embodiment of all happiness to us in our younger days."

-"When we used," returned Miss Prideaux "to sing the old stanza of Dr. Watts.

"These are the joys he makes us know,

In fields and villages below,

Gives us a relish of his love,

But keeps his noblest feast above."

The morning was bright as ever summer morning could be wished to be, when the ladies set out for Beefield. Their way lay upwards from the coast, chiefly along a deep lane, over which the boughs of the trees on the wild well-wooded banks intercepted the full glare of day.

At the end of a progress, which was any thing but tedious to the ladies, a branch road brought the party in view of a little village, sweetly nestled among woody uplands, from which poured more than one pure spring, hastening to lose its identity in the sea, which even there was visible, where the trees did not shut out the distant prospect. This was Beefield, of the near approach to which the ladies had been aware some time, by the joyous sound of the three bells, spoken of in Mrs. Hemming's epistle. Nor was the village itself unworthy of its sweet position, with its rustic cottages, each standing in its own fragrant and fruitful garden, its church with a white wooden spire and bright weathercock, its neat churchyard which contained the mortal remains of many generations, with the old parsonage-house, its gables, and porch opening at the higher end of it; and close by its side, a venerable school-house, the architect of which last, was probably the same who built the parsonage. There was a flag flying in the rear of the school-house, in what the ladies supposed to be the play-yard. The flag bore the English colors; and there were voices too, of many children, which mingled with the perpetual

chime, for the ringers were the school boys, each party of whom had been relieved before he wished it, from the moment that the clerk had given permission for handling the ropes, which came down into the inner porch.

It needeth not to enter into a full detail of how the ladies were received by Mr. and Mrs. Hemming, and how wine and slices of cake were tendered to them in the parlour below, which faced the church-yard, and how impatient the rector was to take them up to his study on the first floor, from the oriel window of which, there was almost an equally near and unincumbered view of his own well furnished garden, and as he said, of the grounds of the far better furnished school-house.

"There," he said, as he seated his visitors-"there flies our flag; it always sees the light once a year, on this second of August. Mark how the staff is wreathed with garlands; have not the young rogues cruelly despoiled Mrs. Hemming's parterres for the purpose; and does she not murmur at this spoliation every year; though she never summons courage to say the little beggars nay?"

"But," said Mrs. Levet, "I see only merry girls playing in that court; I thought that this was an endowed boys' school?"

"And you thought rightly, madam," replied Mrs. Hemming: "this is a boys' school, but, place aux dames, this day, the master takes his lads abroad into the woods during the morning hours. I wonder you heard not their cries, as they hunt each other through the trees; three at a time coming down to relieve the ringers. The time has been when I should have desired to be one of those three. Our boys' school, and our girls' school-nay and our pulpit, and our desk, I trust-being all one concern; all engaged in the service of one master, we accommodate each other; and the boys give up their play ground for this one day, for the service of their sisters. There they are, those bright ones, he added "they have found me out: they smile and curtsey." "Yes, you dears; yes, you dears;" added the venerable man, calling to the children below; "there Emmeline, there Barbara, take your pupil's hand, and dance them round the flag staff, foot it to the bells; no, forsooth, but you must mark the time by singing-well sing away-sing away-for you will be merrier yet."

"Merrier yet" repeated Miss Prideaux, "when is that to be, good sir?" That accords not with the old words, "you will never be younger, and therefore can never be merrier."

"You shall hear," replied the rector: but Mrs. Levet, mark those tall fair young people, whom I addressed by the names of Emmeline and Barbara. These are our school-mistresses, and for the last two years they have been working with the little girls in the village, under the eye of Mrs. Hemming." "But where is my old dame," he added,-"looking, no doubt, to the ducks and the custards. Well! well! where was I?--but those girls are the daughters of the schoolmaster, and he has three sons fit to be their brothers. One, the eldest, helps him in his school work, and what do the two younger do, through the divine blessing, but maintain among their playfellows, that pure and holy spirit, which for some years has operated in this village school, more decidedly than in any other which ever came under my observation.

"But I have so much to tell you ladies; where can I commence?" So saying, he asked Mrs. Levet if she had ever heard of the loss of the "Arethusa" on the Scilly rocks?

She had so done, she answered; and then that venerable man opened out, and gladly would the narrator repeat all he said, if space would permit; but as that may not be, his information must be compressed into the smallest possible limits.

It seems that the master of the adjoining school was no other than Damien Vere; for Beefield was the home from which he had fled as a boy, and his father had been his predecessor in the place! When the Arethusa was dashed to pieces, he had been washed on the rocks, having unconsciously seized hold of a spar : he had been found and recovered by some French smugglers, and by them, in their kindness, so drenched with ardent spirits, as not to recover his recollection till he had been conveyed over the channel, and laid in an out-house; every thing having been taken from him by an old woman who undertook to tend him, but the Bible which had belonged to Horace Langford; which last, though much discolored by sea-water, was still in a legible condition.

It may be as well mentioned here as in another place, that the names written in this Bible were the means, among some inferior facilities, which have rendered it possible to trace up the Living