his assailants. In the meantime some of the cavaliers, as soon as they perceived the position of the prince, had been engaged in rescuing him, which was not a difficult matter with the aid of the rope-ladder. He had managed to get his foot in the ring, and thus sustained himself without much fatigue; but his hands were bruised and bleeding from the way in which they had been crushed between the chain and the wall. Notwithstanding his wounds, and the effects of the terror he must have felt, he did not suffer himself to be taken down the stairs till he had examined the faces of the dead men who lay on the platform. On seeing the face of the man known as Captain Whitehead, he ordered his body to be put aside from the rest, and the next day he directed it to be taken to the nearest churchyard and buried.
I think (concluded the old gentleman), that you will agree with me, that this was one of the narrowest escapes Charles ever had. But this is not the only way in which that chain is connected with the prince. Years afterwards, Dean Bandinel and his son, who were charged with being accessories to the murder of his father, Charles I., were sent here as prisoners; and in their attempt to escape, by means of a rope fastened to that same chain, one was dashed to death and the other dreadfully maimed.
THE BARBERRY.
Sometimes nestling in the sweet centre of a sugary comfit—more often garlanding, with serried sprays of coralline ruddiness, some triumph of confectionery art, the barberry appears at our tables, usually, only in a very supplementary kind of manner; yet as it does “enter an appearance” there in due form, it cannot be denied some notice, especially as it further claims to be one of the fruits indigenous to our own country. It is thought by some to have come originally from the East, but no record remains of its having been introduced thence, and it is now at least found wild in most parts of Europe, and is also a native of America; while to endow it with a respectable classical antiquity, it has been assumed to be the fruit referred to by Pliny, when he describes “a kind of thorny bush, called appendix, having red berries hanging from the branches, which are called appendices.” Gerard informs us that in his time (1597) it was very common in England, and that near Colnbrook, especially, the hedges were nothing else but barberry bushes; but now, though still sometimes found wild, it is comparatively rare, though the stiff, sharp, triply-pointed spines, which liberally garnish the branches, fit it admirably for a protective enclosure, while, as regards appearance, it forms one of the very prettiest of hedges. Spring clothes it first with a foliage of oval serrated leaves, which being joined to the leaf-stalk by a distinct articulation, are reckoned as compound leaves reduced to a single leaflet; while the three spines which shoot out at their base are also considered as being the skeletons of undeveloped leaves, or, in the words of Bindley, “a curious state of leaf, in which the parenchyma is absorbed, and the ribs indurated.” By June the bush has garlanded itself with wreaths of blossoms, in form, size, and colour not unlike the common little yellow “everlasting” flower, but more light and delicate in make, and far more gracefully disposed, hanging in loosely-drooping clusters, while the centre of each flower displays six slender stamens surrounded by six petals and six sepals, but calyx and corolla scarcely distinguishable from each other—the whole of the blossom being tinted with one uniform hue of pale delicate yellow. By September another variation, and yet more pleasing one, has taken place; for the fruit then begins to ripen, and the bush appears in its fulness of glory—every spray hung with elegant pendant clusters of little oval berries, flushed with the most vivid scarlet. In flavour these are intensely yet agreeably sharp, owing to the presence of a powerful acid, which Scheele (according to Downing) found to be chiefly acetic, but which Royle asserted to be malic, and Lindley prouounces to be oxalic. Pickled in vinegar while green, they form an excellent substitute for capers; when ripe they supply a beautiful garnish, either while fresh or preserved in bunches; and their juice is beneficial to inflamed gums, or in affections of the tonsils, or, in the North of Europe, becomes a substitute for lemon-juice in flavouring punch, &c., while by evaporating it after fermentation tartar is procured. Preserved they make a pleasant conserve, which strengthens the stomach, creates appetite, and is useful to check diarrhœa; while even the leaves partake of the acid of the berries, and therefore were formerly, and still might be, used as salad; besides which, they are readily eaten by cattle, sheep, or goats. The bark and roots, too, yield a yellow dye, and possess also an astringent quality so powerful, that they are not only used medicinally, but are made available in Poland in the manufacture of leather—the skins being tanned and dyed yellow by one and the same process. It might well, therefore, seem strange that a plant with so many recommendations, both as regards use and beauty, should be so seldom met with in our gardens, and in many places have been almost extirpated from even our fields; but better reason can be shown for the disfavour into which the barberry has fallen than can be adduced in every case for the neglect of native plants—a great objection to its being planted very near houses being the very offensive odour of the flowers. Phillips mentions having had a monster barberry-bush in his garden, which towered twenty feet high, spreading its branches over a circumference of sixty feet, and which must therefore have presented a very beautiful appearance when decked with either flowers or fruit; but the smell of the blossoms, fragrant at first as that of cowslips, changed ere they faded into a putrid kind of scent, so exceedingly disagreeable that for about a fortnight no one could walk in the shrubbery anywhere near it. Still, for hedges in the open country it might have held its place, notwithstanding a temporary unpleasant odour, but that another and more serious objection has led the farmer to look on it as a foe to be carefully rooted out of his domain; for he has found that wherever the barberry grows near corn, there the
