The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 487, April 30, 1831. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.

      The Olympian Hippodrome, or horse-course, was a space of ground of six hundred paces long, surrounded with a wall, near the city of Elis, and on the banks of the river Alpheus. It was uneven, and in some degree irregular, on account of the situation;—in one part was a hill of moderate height; and the circuit was adorned with temples, altars, and other embellishments. There was a very famous hippodrome at Constantinople, which was begun by Alexander Severus, and finished by Constantine. This circus, called by the Turks atmeican, is four hundred paces long, and above one hundred paces wide. At the entrance of the hippodrome there is a pyramidical obelisk of granite, in one piece, about fifty feet high, terminating in a point, and charged with hieroglyphics. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on its base show that it was erected by Theodosius. The machines that were employed to raise it are represented upon it in basso-relievo. We have some vestiges in England of the hippodromus, in which the ancient inhabitants of this country performed their races. The most remarkable is that near Stonehenge, which is a long tract of ground, about three hundred and fifty feet, or two hundred Druid cubits wide, and more than a mile and three quarters, or six thousand Druid cubits in length, enclosed quite round with a bank of earth, extending directly east and west. The goal and career are at the east end. The goal is a high bank of earth, raised with a slope inwards, on which the judges are supposed to have sat. The metæ are two tumuli, or small barrows, at the west end of the course. These hippodromes were called, in the language of the country, rhedagua; the racer, rhedagwr; and the carriage, rheda—from the British word rhedeg, to run.

      One of these hippodromes, about half a mile to the southward of Leicester, retains evident traces of the old name, rhedagua in the corrupted one of Rawdikes. “There is another of these,” says Dr. Stukely, “near Dorchester; and another on the banks of the river Lowther, near Penrith, in Cumberland; and another in the valley just without the town of Royston.”

      THE SKETCH-BOOK

      THE BEGGAR WOMAN OF LOCARNO

      At the foot of the Alps, near Locarno, was an old castle, belonging to a marquess, the ruins of which are still visible to the traveller, as he comes from St. Gothard—a castle with lofty and roomy apartments, high towers, and narrow windows. In one of these rooms, an old sick woman was deposited upon some straw, which had been shaken down for her by the housekeeper of the marquess, who had found her begging before the gate. The marquess, who was accustomed to go into this room on his return from hunting, to lay aside his gun, ordered the poor wretch to get up immediately out of her corner, and begone.

      The creature arose, but slipping with her crutch upon the smooth floor, she fell, and injured her back so much, that it was with great difficulty she got up, and, moving across the room as she had been desired, groaning and crying sadly, sank down behind the chimney. Several years afterwards, when the circumstances of the marquess had been much reduced by war and the failure of his crops, a Florentine gentleman visited the castle, with the intention of purchasing it, in consequence of the beauty of the situation. The marquess, who was very anxious to have the bargain concluded, gave his wife directions to lodge the stranger in the same upper room in which the old woman had died, it having, in the meantime, been very handsomely fitted up; but, to their consternation, in the middle of the night, the stranger entered their room, pale and agitated, protesting loudly that the chamber was haunted by some invisible being; for that he had heard something rise up in the corner, as if it had been lying among straw, move over the chamber with slow and tottering steps, and sink down, groaning and crying, near the chimney.