EXCURSION TO WINDSOR AND ITS VICINAGE

BY THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.

RETURNING to town, we are at liberty, whenever time and opportunity serve, to make an excursion to Windsor and its enchanting vicinage, which, though not strictly forming part and parcel of the "Environs of London " topographically considered, have yet been so approximated by the power of steam as to form a legitimate object of our publication.

Continuing to adopt the natural order of our subjects, we will first take notice of the objects on and near the line of the Great Western Railway, now the usual means of communication with Windsor and its vicinage.

PADDINGTON, (where the traveller resigns himself to the locomotive agency of steam,) like Islington, and many other suburban villages, has now ceased to form part and parcel of our environs, being absorbed in the far-extending

town.

In the churchyard lie interred Vivares the engraver, Nollekens the painter, and father of the celebrated sculptor; Dubourg, the Paganini of his day; Barret, the landscape painter; Merlin, the machinist; Banks, the well-known sculptor; the Earl of Shelburne, remembered in the political world; Caleb Whitefoord, a wine-merchant and humourist, contributor to the "Foundling Hospital for Wit," and mentioned by Goldsmith in his poem of "Retaliation."

"Here Whitefoord reclines, and, deny it who can,
Though he merrily lived, he is now a grave man;
Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun,
Who relish'd a joke, and rejoiced in a pun;
Whose temper was generous, open, sincere-
A stranger to flattery, a stranger to fear;
Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will,
Whose daily bon-mots half a column might fill;
A Scotchman, from pride and from prejudice free;
A scholar, yet surely no pedant was he."

Paul Sandby, the painter in water-colours, is interred here, as also the Rev. Dr. Alexander Geddes, a bishop of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and a ripe scholar, upon whose tomb is the following extract from his works: "Christian

is my name, and Catholic my sirname; I grant that you are a Christian as well as I, and embrace you as my fellow disciple of Jesus; and if you were not a disciple of Jesus, still I would embrace you as my fellow man." A life of this learned and liberal divine was published by the well-known Dr. John Mason Good.

At Paddington is a field, exchanged for a piece of ground, now Carnaby Market, which was given by one of the Lords Craven as a burying-place if ever London should again be desolated by the plague.

The manor of Paddington appertained by charter of King Edgar to Westminster Abbey, to which it was confirmed by the first and second Henries, and Stephen.

Walter, Abbot of Westminster, on hospitable thoughts intent, assigned the whole rents and profits of this manor for the celebration of the anniversary of his birth, in what he chose to call a solemn manner; that is to say, a profusion of fine manchets, cakes, crumpets, cracknells, and wafers, with good ale in abundance, in the great tankard of twenty-two quarts; there was, moreover, provision to be made honourably and in all abundance for the guests that should dine that day in the refectory, particularly for those of higher rank that should sit at the upper table: there was also abundant provision to be made for all comers in general, from the hour when the memorial of the anniversary was said, to the end of the following day, meat, drink, and provender of all sorts in abundance; and no one either on foot or on horseback was to be denied admittance at the gates.

An extraordinary allowance was ordered to be made for the nuns at Kilbourn, who on that account were not to lose their ordinary provision. An allowance of a loaf each and a bottle of ale were to be given to three hundred poor; five casks of the best beer were to be provided for this anniversary, and mead for the cup of charity.

This feasting was afterwards abolished, as Mr. Lysons observes, for obvious reasons,—since, if every abbot had appointed such an anniversary, it would have consumed the whole revenues of the convent.

Upon the dissolution of religious houses, the manor of Paddington formed part of the revenue of the Bishop of Westminster, and, on the abolition of that see, was given by King Edward the Sixth to Dr. Ridley, Bishop of London, and his successors.

The church, built at no great distance from the site of a former structure, which, being old and ruinous, was taken down, was consecrated in 1791 :

the design is Grecian, with a portico of the Doric order to the south, and a cupola at the top. The church is a curacy, or donative, in the Bishop of London's patronage, as lord of the manor, and was formerly a chapel of ease to St. Margaret, Westminster. In Bishop Aylmer's time, his enemies accused him of ordaining his porter to this curacy, which was not denied ; and justified on the ground, that being a man of honest life and conversation, the bishop had ordained him to preach to a small congregation at Paddington, where commonly, on account of the meanness of the stipend, no preacher could be had.

The place of public execution, for many years, was in this parish, near where a stone marks the former site of Tyburn Gate, not far from the Oxford Street end of the Edgeware Road.

A little farther to the west is a cemetery, formerly belonging to the parish, but separated from it by an Act of Parliament, and annexed to that of St. George's, Hanover Square.

The only monument of general interest in the cemetery is that to the memory of Sterne.

The inscription upon his tomb is as follows:

ALAS, POOR YORICK!

NEAR TO THIS PLACE LIES THE BODY

OF

THE REVEREND LAWRENCE STERNE, A.M.

DIED SEPTEMBER 13TH, 1768,

AGED 53 YEARS.

AH! MOLLITER OSSA QUIESCANT.

If a sound head, warm heart, and humane breast,
Unsullied worth, a soul without a stain-

If mental powers could ever justly claim

The well-won tribute of immortal fame,
STERNE was the man who, with gigantic stride,
Mow'd down luxurious follies far and wide.
Yet what though keenest knowledge of mankind
Unseal'd to him the springs that move the mind-
What did it boot him, ridiculed, abused,
By fools insulted, and by power accused?

Like him, mild reader, view the future state;
Like him despise what 'twere a sin to hate.

"This monumental stone was erected to the memory of the deceased by his brother Masons; for although he did not live to be a member of the society, yet all his incomparable performances evidently prove him to have acted by rule and square; they rejoice in the opportunity of perpetuating his high and unimpeachable character to after ages."