Lippincotts Magazine of Popular Literature and Science

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular
Literature
by Various

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Literature
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Title: Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume
22. July, 1878.
Author: Various
Release Date: August 12, 2006 [EBook #19032]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

JULY, 1878. VOLUME XXII.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by J.B.
LIPPINCOTT & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
HERE AND THERE IN OLD BRISTOL.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF HANNAH MORE AT WRINGTON, NEAR
BRISTOL.]
The streets of Bristol are, in a modern point of view, narrow and
uninviting, yet if the visitor have a liking for the picturesque he will
find much to interest him. There are plenty of streets crammed with
old-time houses, thrusting out their upper stories beyond the lower, and
with their many-gabled roofs seeming to heave and rock against the sky.
If they lack anything in interest, it is that no local Scott has arisen to
throw over them a glamour of romance which might make more
tolerable the odors wherein they vie with the Canongate of sweet
memory.
[Illustration: CHATTERTON AS DOORKEEPER IN COLSTON'S
SCHOOL.]
Nor is the throng which fills the Bristol streets wholly prosaic in its
aspect, for the quaint garb of ancient charities holds its own against the
modern tailor. Such troops of charity-children taking their solemn
walks! Such long lines of boys in corduroy, such streams of girls in pug
bonnets, stuff gowns and white aprons, as pour forth from the schools
and almshouses to be found in every quarter of the city! The Colston
boys are less frequently seen, because the school has been removed to

one of the suburbs, yet now and then one of their odd figures meets the
eye. They wear a muffin cap of blue cloth with a yellow band around it
and a yellow ball on its apex; a blue cloth coat with a long plaited skirt;
a leathern belt, corduroy knee-breeches and yellow worsted stockings.
Just such, in outside garb, was Chatterton a century ago, and thus he is
represented on his monument near Redcliff church.
[Illustration: CHATTERTON CENOTAPH.]
You are perhaps gazing skyward at some lordly campanile when a
sudden rush of feet and hum of voices comes around the corner, and the
dark street is all aglow. These are the Red Maids, who walk the earth in
scarlet gowns, set off by white aprons: they owe the bright hues of their
existence to Alderman Whitson, who died in 1628, leaving funds to the
mayor, burgesses and commonalty of the city of Bristol, "to the use and
intent that they should therewith provide a fit and convenient
dwelling-house for the abode of one grave, painful and modest woman
of good life and conversation, and for forty poor women-children
(whose parents, being freemen and burgesses of the said city, should be
deceased or decayed); that they should therein admit the said woman
and forty poor women-children, and cause them to be there kept and
maintained, and also taught to read English and to sew and do some
other laudable work toward their maintenance; ... and should cause
every one of the said children to go and be apparelled in red cloth, and
to give their attendance on the said woman, to attend and wait before
the mayor and aldermen, their wives and others their associates, to hear
sermons on the Sabbath and festival days, and other solemn meetings
of the said mayor and aldermen and their wives," etc. etc. These maids
are admitted between the ages of eight and ten, and at eighteen are
placed at service.
Other aspects of Bristol are brought out in Pope's description of it in a
letter to Mrs. Martha Blount.[1] After describing his drive from Bath
and his crossing the bridge into Bristol, he continues: "From thence you
come to a key along the old wall, with houses on both sides, and in the
middle of the street, as far as you can see, hundreds of ships, their
masts as thick as they can stand by one another, which is the oddest and

most surprising sight imaginable. This street is fuller of them than the
Thames from London Bridge to Deptford, and at certain times only the
water rises to carry them