Description
Bristol, a seaport and city in the west of England, 118 1/2 miles by G.W.R. from London, lying partly in Gloucestershire and partly in Somersetshire. The largest area lies to the N of the Avon and is in Gloucestershire, of which county Bristol contains about a third of the population. The Somersetshire portion, which includes the ward of Redcliffe and suburb of Bedminster, lies to the S of the Avon and contains a population equal to that of the largest city in that county. Bristol, which is situated in N. latitude 51� 27' 6.3", and W. longitude 2� 35' 28.6", was, however, constituted a county in itself by a charter of Edward III. The sees of Gloucester and Bristol are still united, although an act of parliament has been passed which, when the provisions are carried out, will restore to Bristol the undivided see, of which she was deprived in 1836. In the administration of justice Bristol is considered as part of the western circuit, and therefore connected with Somersetshire. The municipality is divided into ten wards, which, with certain out-parishes, including Clifton and Westbury on Trym, comprise an area of 4879 acres with a circuit of about 15 miles. The population at the census of 1891 was 221,665. The burgesses return forty-eight members to the town council, who are elected for three years. Besides these members are sixteen aldermen, wliose first election was made under the provisions of the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. This election secured the majority of the Conservatives in the council, which they have ever since retained. Eight retire every three years, and the election to fill their places is made by the town council, but the eight retiring are disqualified from voting for their successors. The city is divided into thirteen wards, three of which-Bristol, Clifton, and Redcliffe-return six members, the remaining wards three each. The meetings of the council are presided over by the mayor, who is also a member of the different committees into which the council is subdivided, such as Docks Committee, Street Improvement Committee, Free Libraries Committee, &c.,all of which, with the exception of the Sanitary Committee, sit with closed doors. The town council on 9th November of each year elect one of the citizens to be mayor for the ensuing year. The mayor is the chief magistrate of the city, and by virtue of the office is styled the Eight Worshipful the Mayor of Bristol, and takes precedence of everyone in the city. He has the right to take his seat on the bench of any of the common law courts. As an instance of the exercise of this right it is on record that in the year 1762, when John Noble was mayor, he being in London proceeded to the Court of Admiralty at Westminster and claimed the right. The judge then sitting was much surprised, and was about to take harsh measures, until he was informed by one of the counsel that the Mayor of Bristol was by charter thus privileged. The mayor having been accommodated with a seat by the side of the judge, rose, bowed, and said that having asserted the claims of his city he would at once withdraw. The allowance to the mayor is ,£1000 a year and a carriage.
Local historians are fond of attributing a Roman foundation to Bristol, though it is hard to see upon what evidence. Cleanliness and godliness were always marks of Roman colonisation, but no altar or bath, nor indeed constructive relic of any kind, has been discovered from which to infer that these people ever settled at this point of the Avon, though it is certain they occupied the rocky heights of that river at Clifton in the neighbourhood. In the days of the Caesars the valley of the future city was an unclaimed morass constantly subject to tidal overflows-a physical condition of which evidence yet survives in the names of several districts of the municipality, such as Canons' Marsh, Marsh Street, Frogmere Street, St. Philip's Marsh, &c. At what early time the ground was recovered from the heron and wild fowl and became habitable to man is uncertain; but the process must have been gradual and of many centuries' duration. So far as history gives witness the growth of the town was as silent as the uplifting of a coral reef, the earliest testimony to its existence as a centre of human life and industry being two silver pennies of Withered the Unready (978-1016). Inscribed coinage itself is history, and even written history-it tells that a place was one of traffic and of sufficient importance to be a centre of mintage of the king's money. In the present instance it not only testifies that the Danes landed but settled at Bristol. Of the pennies of Canute, Mr. Ruding says he has found four or five varieties. At any rate the local coinage confirms the statement of Polydore Vergil (1525), that the Danes had here a habitation; and the mention of Bristol in the pages of history is certainly anterior to the date (1051) assigned by Mr Freeman and Mr Hunt. Bristol until the time of Charles I. was a section of the royal manor of Barton (still called Barton Regis), the manor house, so to speak, being the strong fortress that overlorded the town. The king's head representative was in fact the constable of the castle, to whom the town in the person of the mayor was tributary. The right to choose a mayor annually was given by Henry III., who held his first parliament in his castle of Bristol after his coronation at Gloucester. As the Tower of London was without the city, so was the Castle of Bristol without the town; and as the mayor of London took office before the Constable of the Tower, so the mayor of Bristol took oath of the constable of the royal castle. For the confirmation of their charters and privileges, including the right of choosing their mayor as in London, presenting him in due form to the constable of the castle, the burgesses in 1300 paid Edward I., who held the Castle, Barton, and Town, a tribute of 300 marks. At this time the manor of Bedminster, including Redcliffe on the S side of the Avon, was held by the Lords of Berkeley, who attempted by violent measures to compel the burgesses to be answerable to their authority in the courts held within 252 their jurisdiction. Between the tyranny of the Berkeleys on one side the Avon and the domination of the castle on the other, the townsmen must have had need of patience-In 1331 (5, Edw. III.) parliament interfered on behalf o( the oppressed burgesses; the claims of the Berkeleys were annulled, and the lordship of the castle was suspended; the custody of Town and Barton being delivered to the mayor and burgesses, to be held by them for five years at the annual rent of £240. Thenceforward the mayor no longer took oath within the Castle barbican, but of his predecessor in the Guildhall before the townsmen. From the marriage of Edward I. to Eleanor of Castile, Bristol was called the Queen's Chamber, from the fact that it was generally assigned to her as part of her marriage portion. She received the renfc of the town, and usually leased it to the mayor and corporation. This lasted to the days of Henrietta Maria, by whose-request the castle was detached from the county of Gloucester and incorporated with Bristol. The rental of the city was finally redeemed in the reign of Charles I., and the burgesses became their own landlords.
With regard to the ancient munition of the place, from Brandon Mount, between the City and Clifton, might have been counted as many as twenty-three strong towers upon the lines of embattled walls that encompassed the town, besides nine over the principal gates. The inner of these double walls sustained in its circuit five parish churches, of which St John's, with its spired tower springing from the crest of a. 14th century portcullised gateway, yet exists. To the east were the embrasured walls and seven towers of the feudal castle, of which the donjon keep was like in form and dimensions to the White Tower of London. Within the area. thus guarded there were no less than eighty towers, besides crosses, conduits, holy wells, and the numberless gabled houses and Gothic public buildings, every one of which was more or less a study for a painter when no one painted.
No single episode of the Civil War affected Charles more deeply, or proved more decisive of the entire struggle, than, the disloyalty of Bristol and its final deliverance into the hands of the Parliament, " We had not killed of ours in the storm," says Cromwell, " nor in all this siege 200 men. He who runs may read that this is none other than the work of God. He must be a very Atheist that doth not acknowledge it." Soon after this the " Committee for Establishing a Godly and Pious Ministry " was appointed, and Cromwell rejoices that " Presbyterians, Independents, all have here-(Bristol) the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer: that they agree here, have no names-of difference; pity it should be otherwise anywhere."
Since the Great Rebellion local events have been of domestic rather than of national importance, and the energies. of the citizen have been characterised by devotion to the expansion of trade and commerce, and to works of philanthropy, with buildings related to which latter the city abounds; the general quiet being occasionally disturbed by outbreaks on the part of the ruder population of the place, the Reform Bill Riots of 1831 being the most considerable of these events. Owing to the temporary paralysis, or possibly humane forbearance, of both civil and military dictatorship, an important section of the city was laid in ashes by the dregs of the populace. Forty-one spacious houses in Queen Square were consumed, besides four toll houses, the Bridewell, Gaol, and Lawford's Gate Prison, and the Bishop's Palace. The delirium of destruction lasted three days, when afc last peremptory request was sent from the mayor to the chief officer of the 14th Dragoons, who had been summoned to the scene, to quell the riots at any cost. The troops thereupon spread across Queen Square, the focus of the devilish revels, and picked out the rioters, ten or twelve of whom they immediately cut down. Four of the leaders were subsequently hanged. The compensation for damages fixed. by the Parliamentary Commissioners and assessed on the citizens amounted to £68,208.
The position of Bristol at the head of the great estuary, the Bristol Channel, which runs up towards the middle of the southern half of England, obviously gives the port enormous advantages, as the centre from which sea-borne commodities. can be most cheaply distributed to the Midland districts, and from which shipments from these districts can be most cheaply made. The direct course which can be taken by vessels to and from the American continents, and to and from the south, are advantages to shipowners, to which is added, now that the Severn Tunnel is complete, a supply of coal almost as cheap as at the coal shipping port of South Wales. An old traveller describes the place as appearing to float upon the waters, and to Pope the poet's eye the streets seemed full of ships, for the Avon and Frome with their tall masts and busy wharves meet us in almost every direction.
The Society of Merchant Venturers is the one pro-Reformation guild which escaped suppression. In respect to their being a kind of feudal corporation and monopolists of foreign trade, their once enormous authority has collapsed, but they have renewed their youth in even nobler form than mercantile sway over the great world of waters by becoming the almoners of civic charities and promoters of educational institutions, in which dispensations they have proved most faithful stewards. While the powerful fellowships of weavers, of fullers, of tailors, of bakers, of brewers, and numerous others have passed away, and their halls, where each guildmaster, fenced by the ordinances and penal laws of bis fraternity, was as safe from interlopers as the neighbouring Baron of Berkeley, secured by fosse and portcullis in his castlehold, have been forsaken and desolated, the Merchant Venturers of Bristol retain their proud superiority of being a select community of leading citizens entitled to respect both by their inherited territorial wealth and chartered privileges, as well as by their interesting history and traditions and public benefactions. In the settlement of Virginia and other American colonies the merchants of Bristol took a prominent part. On 20 Feb., 1632, a patent was granted to Robert Aldworth and Giles Elbridge, merchants, of 12,000 acres of land in New England, and an additional 100 acres for every person transported by them to New England within 7 years. The 12,000 acres were to be laid out near the nver Primaquid, and were allotted in consideration of their having undertaken to build a town there, and settle inhabitants for the good of that country. A kind of freightage for which the merchant ships of Bristol were sometimes found useful consisted of Irish prisoners. In the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland a short and easy method was found of unpeopling the country to make room for English settlers by transporting cargoes of natives to the West Indian plantations. On October 7, 1652, the Council of. State wrote to the Commissioners in Ireland to deliver to Thomas Speed, merchant of Bristol, from such places as they may think fit 200 Irish rebels, to be carried to Barbadoes for the plantation; the effect of such banishment being that the lands of the exiles became the property of English settlers without the embarrassment of the neighbourhood of the Irish owners. On July 19 and 20, 1666, 23 Virginia ships came into Bristol port laden with tobacco, sugar, indigo, and cotton, and a good quantity of beaver. They had been guarded by six men of war; the customs due from them amounted to upwards of, £30,000. They were in time for St James's Fair, one of the greatest fairs in England. At the period of their arrival a splendid fifty gun frigate, the Saint Patrick, having been lately built and launched at Bristol, and waiting for a crew, 500 able seamen were pressed from the Virginia ships. Almost the only part of their charter now observed with strictness by the merchants, is the care they take to elect none into their society who are not already freemen of the city. No salary is paid to the master of the merchants, nor does any pecuniary benefit accrue to members. The Merchants' Hall, so renowned for its banqueting, is a quiet-looking Italian structure, rebuilt in 1701.
In order to remedy the evils occasioned by the rapid ebb of the Avon, and to give the city a better dock than a mere tidal river, a Dock Company was formed in 1803. This company dug a new channel for the Avon, called the New Cut, from Rownham to Totterdown, turned the Frome and the Avon into a floating harbour of 2 1/2 miles in extent by a system of dams and locks, and, in addition, made Bathurst Basin.
Steam communication was begun between Bristol and Ireland as early as 1826 ; and to Bristol belongs the honour of being the first port in the kingdom that established a regular steam communication with the United States, the first voyage having been performed by the Great Western steamship. This vessel was built at Bristol at a cost of £60,000: and the Great Britain and the ill-fated Cemerara were also cradled here, the former costing £120,000. Leaving Bristol on April 8, 1838, the Great Western reached New York in 15 days and 10 hours, and the small amount of coal she consumed afforded the first proof that steam traffic with America could be conducted with advantage. The importance of the event was so fully appreciated in New York that 100,000 people gathered to see her start on her homeward voyage, which occupied 14 days. Great rejoicings were made in Bristol on her return, and the G.W.S. Company hoped to secure the permanence of the American trade. Unfortunately they made the fatal mistake of attempting to begin a line of navigation with a single ship. The Cunard Company entered into competition, building four large ships for the Transatlantic service, and, obtaining the mail contract, made Liverpool the chief port for communication with America. To regain her position Bristol has since 1877-80 established two fresh docks, one at Avonmouth, on the Gloucestershire side, and the other at Portshead, on the Somerset side of the Avon. Each dock, however, was built by a separate and private company, and their situation outside the tortuous and narrow passage of the Avon, and in ready communication with the ocean, intercepted ships to the city harbour. This dislocation of commerce was not of long duration. In 1884 the several docks were consolidated under the control of the Town Council. At the present time a large extension of dock accommodation is going on, with resolution to recover lost ground in mercantile enterprise.
Perhaps the chief manufacture is Fry's Chocolate Works, which employ 2000 hands. Tobacco is another great article of preparation. The wholesale boot and shoe trade is also an important industry. The imports of grain have much increased of late years, and now amount to 3,000,000 quarters per annum. The value of imports of all kinds in 1892 was £9,742,482, and of the exports £1,753,000. The customs revenue was £1,261,410. The number of vessels registered as belonging to the port in 1893 was: sailing, 99 (16,579 tons); steam, 77 (27,196 tons); total, 176 (43,775 tons). The entries in 1892 were: 9049 (1,343,960 tons), and the clearances 8633 (1,381,511 tons).
Though greatly modernised Bristol still retains many interesting remains of the past. Anglo-Norman or 12th century construction is exemplified by the rude and heavy tower of St Peter's, the mother church of the town; by the massive nave and west front of St James's, once the church of a Benedictine Priory; by the singularly enriched chapter room of the Cathedral, once the Abbey Church of St Augustine Black Canons; together with the great gateway and some lesser features of the same Abbey; and much excellent early English work will also be found in the Cathedral, which mainly consists, however, of Decorated work of the time of Edward II. St Mary Redcliffe is a church of sovereign beauty, consisting mainly of the best type of Perpendicular, but including some fine remains of 13th and 14th century construction. It should have been a proud moment for Bristol when Redcliffe with its glorious church was in 1373 added to its municipality. The whole building is a choice study for both architect and artist. The new spire was added in 1872; height, 267 feet. More than £40,000 have been spent in the restoration of the fabric during the present reign.
Conventual remains of the 13th century will be found at St Bartholomew's Priory, Christmas Street, and at the Dominican Priory, Merchant Street. Two chambers of the castle of the days .of Henry III. are preserved in Castle Green, and a massive portal of the old walled town of the same epoch may be seen at the end of Broad Street.
The tower and spire of St John Baptist's Church has happily been the means of preserving the only portcullised gateway of the old town. The church, having formed a part of the town wall, has no eastern or western windows, transept, nor projecting porch, being a simple parallelogram pierced by eight 10th century windows on each side. It is based on a ground crypt, which served in pre-Reformation times as a chapel for a religious guild. The stately tower of St Stephen's is 133 feet in height, and is generally allowed to be one of the handsomest parish towers in England. " It is remarkable," says Mr Freeman, " for having aesthetically dispensed with buttresses." This architectural independence seems to rank St Stephen's with Mr Ruskin's ideal class of towers, which require as a point of necessity " that they shaU seem to stand in their own strength, not by help of buttresses, nor artful balancings on this side and that." The Holy Cross or Temple Church, -with its leaning tower, nearly 5 feet out of the perpendicular, retains no structural connection with the Knights Templars, but undoubtedly occupies the site of a small church of these martial monks. The present building, including the leaning tower, is mostly of 15th century date. The church was restored in 1873, when the foundations of a small Norman Church were discovered.
Opposite the Council House yet stands All Saints, the church of a curious guild named Kalendars. These were a quite distinct fraternity from the one-eyed dervishes of that name in the Arabian Nights who so delighted our boyhood with their lying tales. They were a brotherhood and sisterhood of semi-monastics, clergy and laity being of the community, including women. Over the north aisle of the church was their college and library, the latter being open to the public, and it is the earliest ascertained free library established in England. The fierce light that now radiates from a thousand centres of knowledge is, of course, in violent contrast with the mild beams from the humble lamp of learning once kindled within the windows of this church, but like the torch which sent its flame from Ida to Lemnos, and onward to the rock of Cithseron, torch answering to torch till the land was full of flame, the lamp here lit, as being the parent beam of the blaze of enlightenment from our present hundred halls of free culture for the multitude, becomes to our eyes a bright, particular star. Within the west doorway of All Saints are four stout Norman piers, originally left short to support, two on each side of the nave, the prior's house on the south, and the library on the north of the church. The prior's house yet stands. The library was destroyed by fire in 1466, after a brief existence. It was erected or re-erected by the Bishop of Worcester in 1464, who ordained that access should be freely granted from 7 to 11 in the forenoon, to all willing to receive instruction, the prior undertaking to explain difficult passages of Holy Scripture, and to give a public lecture in the library every week. This fact supplies evidence against the popular belief that the Bible was a lightly valued book in old days, and restrained from the knowledge of the people.
Christ's Church is a modern building on an old foundation. Allusion is made to this church by the self-called " Piers Plowman" in a curious alliterative poem on the deposition of Richard II. At the time of that event " Piers Plowman " was, he says, in the blessed borough of Bristowe and attending mass at Trinity Church " that Christ Church is classed among the common people,'' when " suddenly sounded selcouth things," these " selcouth " or strange things being the landing of the duke, proud Bolingbroke, whose great northern army was soon after beneath the walls of Bristol. This was followed by tragic issues close to the door of the church where priests were lifting the chalice, as Plowman says. Readers of Shakespeare's Richard II. will remember a scene connected with the beheading of Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, Sir John Bushey, and Sir Henry Greene, adherents of the falling king, which occurred before the carved imagery of the High Cross, the monarch bewailing their fall in the solemn passage wherein he refuses to be consoled, and will talk only of graves, and worms, and epitaphs. Within recent years an attempt was made to revive the earldom of Wilts, in a descendant of the Lord Scrope here executed, whose attainder involved the forfeiture of the family estates, including the right of wearing a kingly crown in the Isle of Man.
Though Bristol has always been distinguished as a borough of churches, it has never been, in point of over-lordship, an ecclesiastical town or city, such, for example, as Glastonbury, Wells, Ely, Reading, or St Albans. In these and kindred places the central power was vested in the spiritual lord; but in Bristol there was no over-lord, abbot, or bishop, and the monasteries and churches having no joint or corporate jurisdiction were separately too weak to resist the force of the secular arm. The superior of the great Abbey of Augustinian Canons, the church of which is now the cathedral, was numbered among the twenty-six mitred abbots; but even this political importance was so slighted by its possessor that, if ever he once attended the King's Parliament, he so little cared for the privilege that he craved royal exemption from the trouble of journeying to the legislative assembly. Bristol, however, became self-dependent, self-contained, and self-governed by the civil magistracy. As a seaport and commercial city it has flourished in consequence, rather than in spite of the absence or departure of the temporal or spiritual lord; and has shown the might of labour and commerce by extending its limits ten times beyond its original compass in Saxon times. The area then lay between St Nicholas' Church southward, St John's northward, St Peter's eastward, and Stuckey's Bank (near St Stephen's, Corn Street) westward. These points give the length and breadth of the first walled Saxon town.
Old domestic architecture will be found in St Maryleport Street, where the overhanging houses attached to the churcli have held their ground at least three centuries. St Peter's Hospital, in St Peter Street, is a gabled mansion of the days. of James I., and is a fine specimen of Jacobean work. At the comer of Wine Street is a cross-timbered house, marked with as many squares as a Highlander's plaid, and is strikingly picturesque. A tablet in Wine Street denotes the house in which Robert Southey was born in 1774 ; his father was a draper. The Council House, All Saints' Church, the Exchange, Commercial Rooms, and Lloyd's Bank, with its gorgeously-sculptured frontage, are enough to give importance to Corn Street. In the church are pillars of Norman date (1150). The Exchange was opened in 1743, the building (by Wood, of Bath) having cost £50,000. Lloyd's (formerly the West of England) Bank stands on the site of the Bank Inn, where lodged Mr Pickwick, according to Dickens. Small Street, with the spacious buildings of the General Post Office on one side, and the Assize Courts, incorporated with the Guild Hall on the other, seems almost entirely modern in character ; but within the library of the Assize Courts are 12th century columns of a house of Norman date. There is also a grand mullioned window of Tudor times.
The Central Free Library claims the prestige of being historically the earliest of English free libraries established after the Reformation. The founder was a Mr Robert Redwood, and the library was opened in 1615, but was reestablished under the Act in 1876. So little was it valued by the town that the building fell into a ruinous state, and the books were in danger of being spoiled by neglect. A new building, the present one, was erected in 1740, but it is quite inadequate to the requirements of the users. There are, however, five flourishing district libraries in connection with the central one. Since their first opening under the Act, no less than 7,600,000 books have been issued to borrowers, while about 15,000,000 visits have been paid to the magazine and news-rooms of the joint libraries. The issue of books increased from 74,552 in the first year (1876) to 609,557 in 1892. The total number of volumes in the six libraries jointly is about 83,000. Fifty assistants are employed, of whom 25 are female.
The staff employed at the Bristol post office is 770 ; letters annually delivered, 30,000,000.
The water supply is in the hands of a private company, and is obtained by gravitation from springs in the triassic conglomerates and in the carboniferous limestone on the sides of the Mendips, at distances of from 5 to 16 miles from the city. The company has a capital of £1,200,000, and about 8 1/2 per cent. is returned to shareholders. The supply is calculated at about 23 gallons per head a day.
The Bristol United Gaslight Company derives a profit of about £34,000 annually for shareholders, whose dividend is 10 per cent. on the original capital. The corporation instituted electricity for public lighting in 1893, when the main streets of the city were so lighted up.
The internal passenger conveyance is in the hands of the Bristol Tramways and Carriage Company, which pays its shareholders 6 per cent per annum.
Of educational establishments, the grammar school, founded in 1532 by Robert Thome, under royal charter of Henry VIII., is one of the oldest. It was re-organised by the Schools Commission, 1875, and is a public school of the highest grade. It is carried on in buildings of Tudor Gothic design, erected in the years 1877-79, on a site of nearly six acres in extent in Tyndall's Park, at the point of junction of the suburbs of Clifton, Cotham, and Kedland, and outside the northern margin of the city. There are two scholarships of £100 per annum each, tenable for five years at St John's College, Oxford. There are also several minor scholarships.
The Merchant Venturers' School is a building four storeys high, and covers an area of 26,000 feet. Besides class rooms, it includes technological and engineering workshops, chemical and physical science lecture rooms, laboratories, &c.
The University College supplies for persons of either sex above the ordinary school age the means of continuing their studies in science, languages, history, literature, and theory of music, and particularly affords appropriate and systematic instruction in those branches of applied science which are more nearly connected with the arts and manufactures. The Bristol medical school is affiliated to the college.
The extensive and picturesque buildings of Clifton College now accommodate 700 boys, and is one of the most important public schools of England. It was founded in 1851, and has been incorporated by royal charter. The religious teaching is in conformity with the Church of England. There are five scholarships, varying from £25 to £90 a year.
Milller's Orphan Houses are one of the most extensive and interesting philanthropic establishments in England. Five large houses have been erected at a cost of £115,000, for the accommodation of 2050 orphans. These orphans rely for their daily bread upon the almsgiving of people in all parts of the civilized world, who are never asked, at least by any governing agent of the institution, to contribute towards their subsistence. Mr George Mttller states in his last " Brief Narrative of Facts ":-" Without anyone having been personally applied to for anything by me, £848,588, 3s. 6d. has been given to me for the orphans, as the result of prayer to God, since the commencement of the work, which sum includes the amount received for the building fund for the five houses."
Under the Redistribution of Seats Act Bristol sends 4 members to Parliament. One of the most honourable episodes in the history of the city was the election of Edmund Burke as one of its representatives in Parliament. The season was the end of autumn (1774),and during the month the poll was kept open the great statesman had ample opportunity of viewing the remarkable scenery of the neighbourhood. The acclivitous woods on one side the Avon had lost their foliage, but the majestic rocks on the Clifton side afforded him an apt illustration when, upon his election after energetic opposition, and the usual display of temper on either hand, he had the welcome duty "to thank his friends." " As for the trifling petulance," he said," which the rage of party stirs up in little minds, though it should show itself even in this Court (the Guildhall), it has not made the slightest impression on me. The highest flight of such clamorous birds is winged in an inferior region of the air. We hear them, and we look upon them, just as you, gentlemen, when you enjoy the serene air on your lofty rocks, look down upon the gulls that skim the mud of your river when it is exhausted of its tide." Burke did not, however, on the whole please the electors. He took a course that offended them on the question of the American War, on subjects relating to the Roman Catholics, &c. His defence, on the hustings of Bristol in 1780, of the policy which had dictated the course he had followed on each of these topics, is one of the most convincing pieces of popular oratory on record.
Burke was invited to stand for Bristol by Richard Champion, a Quaker, who, besides association with the eloquent senator, has a claim to be remembered by the excellence of his china manufacture. Though Bristol china is now more eagerly in request than any other porcelain, it would appear from a local advertisement in 1772, that its early reputation was very small. "The manufactory," it is remarked, "is not sufficiently known," and an N.B. is added to the effect that " there is some of the old china which will be sold very cheap." In contrast to this cheapness three fine vases were recently exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club that were valued at £1000. At an auction in London, in April, 1871, some pieces of the magnificent service presented by Champion to Burke soon after that statesman's election for the city sold as follows:-The teapot, 190 guineas; cream jug and cover, 115 guineas; a chocolate cup and saucer, 90 guineas; two tea cups and saucers, 70 and 40 guineas; the cover of the sugar basin, 60 guineas. At another sale in February, 1875, a cup and saucer of the Burke set brought £83, and a set of three jugs £120. On the dispersion of the Edkins collection in 1874, a Bristol vase with landscape sold for £300 ; four figures, emblematic of the quarters of the world, brought £610; and a pair of compotiers, £270.
The newspapers published in Bristol are The Western Daily Press (Liberal), Bristol Mercury and Daily Post (Liberal), Bristol Times and Mirror (Conservative), Clifton Chronicle (weekly, on Wednesday), Clifton Society (weekly), Bristol Observer (weekly, Liberal), Comic, Bristol Magpie (weekly).
