passed, saying, that if it was worth 47,500, it was worth 48,000*; so I closed with him for that sum, when he delivered me the stone, for which I paid him very honourably, as by my books appear. And I here farther call God to witness, that I never used the least threatening word at any of our meetings to induce him to sell it nie; and God himself knows it was never so much as in my thoughts so to do. Since which, I have had frequent and considerable dealings with this man, and trusted him with several sums of money, and balanced several accounts with him, and left upwards of 2000 pagodas in his hands at my coming away. So had I used the least indirect means to have got it from him, would not he have made himself satisfaction when he has had money so often in his hands? Or would I have trusted him afterwards, as I did, preferable to all other diamond merchants ? As this is the truth, so I hope for God's blessing upon this and all my other affairs in this world, and eternal happiness hereafter. Written and signed by me, in Bergeu, July 29th, 1710, THOMAS PITT." The Diamond was sold to the King of France for 200,000l. and the crown jewels of France, in sealed packets, numbered, were pledged for the payment of it. My great-grandfather, Mr. Cholmondeley of Vale Royal, who was for 42 years M.P. for the County Palatine of Chester, at stated periods took one of these packets to Dover, which he delivered to a messenger of the King, and received from him an instalment of the purchase money. This descended principally in the other branches of Governor Pitt's family; but the estates I possess in Dorset shire, Devon, and Wilts, were purchased with a part of this money on the marriage of his 2d son, Colonel Thomas Pitt, afterwards Earl of Londonderry, with Lady Frances, daughter of Robert Ridgeway, Earl of Londonderry. The ancient house at Woodlands, in the parish of Mere, Wilts, is a part of this property, which you will find amply described by our learned and indefatigable friend Sir R. Colt Hoare, in his elaborate and splendid History of the Hundred of Mere; and as, with his usual kindness, he has 20,400l. sterling, at 8s. 6d. per pagoda. [Aug. Ridgeway, the last Earl of Londonderry of the Pitt family, having broken his leg in shooting, died at Woodyates Manor, a part also of this property, 11 miles from Blandford. Yours, &c. WM. MEYRICK. Thomas Pitt, esq. # was born at St. Mary's, Blandford, 1653. He was in Queen Anne's reign appointed to the government of Fort St. George, in the East Indies, where he resided many years, and gained an immense fortune. In 1716 he was made Governor of Jamaica; but resigned that post 1717. He was M. P. in the 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th parliaments of Great Britain, for Old Sarum and Thirsk. He repaired and beautified the churches of Blandford St. Mary, Dorsetshire, Stratford in Wiltshire, and Abbot Inn, Hampshire. It having been reported that he gained his famous diamond by a stretch of power, he made the above solemn declaration that he purchased it fairly for 48,000 pagodas, or 20,4007. A further vindication was thought ne cessary, in a sermon preached at his funeral by Mr. Richard Eyre, Canon of Sarum. It was at the time reckoned the largest jewel in Europe, and weighed 127 carats. When polished it was as big as a pullet's egg. The cuttings amounted to 8 or 10,000/. Governor Pitt sold it to the King of France, as our Correspondent above states, for 200,000l. Other accounts say, for 120,000l. 125,000l. or 135,000l. See Gent. Mag. vol. XLVI. p. 105; LXXXV. i. p. 593, in which volumes an account of several rare Diamonds will be found. Query, what was the precise sum obtained by Governor Pitt? The Pitt Diamond, or as it was called in France, the Regency Diamond, formed the principal ornament in the French Crown before the Re A full pedigree of the Pitt family is given in the new edition of Hutchins's Dorset, vol. iii. p. 361. volution; 1825.] Governor Pitt.-Woodlands, Wilts. volution; and the form of it is shewn in the annexed representation: We understand from Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, that the Pitt Diamond is now among the King of France's jewels. There was a portrait of Governor Pitt at Boconnoc, by Kneller, with this diamond in his hat. See Camden, Brit. i. 26, 2d edit. Governor Pitt died 1726; and in Blandford St. Mary Church, Dorset, is the following handsome memorial: "To the Glory of God. Thomas Pitt, esq. of this place, in the year of our Lord 1711, very much repaired and beautified this Church; dedicating his substance to his Maker, in that place where he himself was first dedicated to his service. In this pious action he is alone his own example and copy, this being but one specimen of many of the like nature. Thus by building God's houses, he has wisely laid a most sure foundation for his own, and by honouring the name of the Almighty, has transmitted himself to posterity by such actions. He deserves not only this perishing register, but also to be had in everlasting remembrance." On the North side is also a mural monument thus inscribed, to the memory of his father, by Governor Pitt: "H. S. E. Vir reverendus Johannes Pitt, hujus ecclesiæ per annos viginti octo Pastor fidelis, Vitae integritate, morum probitate, et doctrinae puritate spectabilis. Duxit uxorem Saram, Johannis Jay, generosi, filiam, ex eque, Dei dono, suscepit liberos novem. E quibus Johannes, Sara, Thomas, Georgius, et Dorothea ipsi super stites. 107: et in hanc sedem natalem redux, erga Patrem cœlestem et terrestrem, Pietatis suæ duplex erexit monumentum, anno Domini 1712." The eldest son of Governor Pitt, Robert Pitt of Boconnoc, who died 1727, was the father of the celebrated Earl of Chatham. The 2d son of Governor Pitt was created baron Londonderry 1719, and Earl of Londonderry 1726. He was succeeded by his sons Thomas and Ridgeway, successively Earls of Londonderry. These dying without issue, the title became extinct in 1765. But the property descended to the only daughter of the Earl of Londonderry, Lady Lucy, married to P. Meyrick, of Anglesea, esq. The tithing of Mere Woodlands is described by Sir R. C. Hoare, in his History of Mere. It adjoins to the town of Mere on the South, and consists chiefly of pasture lands, watered by a copious stream. The whole tithing consists of 2801 acres. The earliest possessors of the Woodlands estate, of whom Sir R. C. Hoare could procure certain intelligence, were the Dodingtons, whose armorial bearings on the outside of the present farm-house, of which our Correspondent has sent us a view (see Plate 1.), as well as over a chimney-piece in one of the apartments below stairs, attest their former residence on this spot. In 1672 Woodlands was mortgaged to Matthew Andrews, esq. afterwards knighted, who appears to have purchased the estate in 1705, and died 1709. In 1753 Woodlands was purchased of Henry Andrews, esq. by Richard Wotton and William Kay, of St. George's, Hanover-square; and by them sold in 1756, to Thomas Pitt, first Earl of Londonderry. His son, Ridgeway, 3d Earl, bequeathed it to his sister Lady Lucy, who married P. Meyrick, esq. and had issue Ridgeway Owen Meyrick, who married Diana Wynne, and had one son, Henry, who died an infant. Lady Lucy Meyrick died in 1802, and Woodlands descended to her daughter Elizabeth, who died 1816 unmarried; upon whose decease the estate devolved, by entail, on her cousin, Owen Lewis Meyrick, who died in 1819, when Woodlands descended to his son, the Rev. William Meyrick, the present possessor. The estate is estimated at EDIT. 232 acres. Mr. 108. Mr. URBAN, THE [Aug. sense, while they stimulate his curiosity to fresh efforts, flatter his anıbition with the consciousness of possessing the knowledge of truths hidden to the bulk of mankind; thus the native ardour of curiosity presses forwards the votary of research, while wonder and admiration is wont oftener to attend his march through the devious recesses of her innumerable gradations!" Reveries in Autumn. Melksham. HE day had long been on the wane, and the mild aspect of an autumnal sky portended the approach of night, as I was travelling through a romantic district of one of the western counties of England. The orb of day had sunk beneath our hemisphere, and the dusky mantle of evening had already begun to circumscribe the prospect around me to very inconsiderable limits, when I threw my eyes somewhat anxiously over the waste which opened to a considerable extent before me, endeavouring to recognize some friendly place of shelter where I might domiciliate for the night. A light which streamed across the moor presently announced to me the object I sought; and I hastened to afford to the animal which had for many hours been the companion of my solitude, that rest of which he stood in need. As wont, the beauty of the evening lured me from repose, and guided my vagrant footsteps to a spot where I might, alone, resume that train of reverie which is frequently elicited from circumstances, and a kindred association of objects. The landscape which rose on every side, and checquered my path, did not, indeed, combine those grander characterestics, amidst which Rousseau delighted to give utterance to the images of his soul. Rocks, and cataracts, and snow-capped mountains, which wrought up the imagination of the citizen of Geneva to tenderness and sublimity, had here no reality to assist the visions of the traveller. The undulating copse, the verdant pastures, the gentle declivities, sometimes, however, rising into precipitous steeps, embrowned with the tints of foliage, and the faded hue of the wild flower and the mountainous heather, rather delineated scenery in which the imaginations of our countrymen Thomson An admirer of beauty, the checquer- and Cowper would have opened to a ed scenery of a wild and romantic dis- congeniality of sentiment, and afforded trict, sequestered far from the social in rich abundance those archetypes of haunts of busy mankind, opened an Nature, in which the minds of our enthusiasm of soul in unison with that amiable Poets-the faithful, yet subwhich had very recently filled and ani- lime chroniclers of Nature, as she exmated it, while wandering on the beet-ists in her simplest and most beautiful ling eminences which crown the se- forms, would have responded with a questered summits of the Wye. "How generous reciprocity of feeling. exhaustless is the field," (was the language which involuntarily escaped me, as visions of the illimitable grandeur and extent of Nature's operations rose on my fancy), "How exhaustless is the field, which Nature, exuberant in all her departments, opens to the intelligent mind!-What worlds, teeming with unbounded variety, exquisite proportion, and matchless contrivance, rise before the philosophic eye, accustomed to mark her wide economy! To the vulgar gaze of the million she occasionally addresses herself with resistless appeal, as she strikes in her grander features, but she will habitually enchain the energies and provoke the enquiries of him who, from his retirement, watches her mul tiform operations. "Wheel within wheel," in one grand concatenated series of cause and effect, emerge on every hand to his view;-discoveries, formerly impervious to the human The moon, sole arbitress of night's dominion, from whose mild radiance. so many hearts have been led to contemplation, when the shadows of evening have closed around terrestrial objects, and calmed the active passions of the breast, shot the mirror of her light into the clear expanse of a neigh bouring river, which, in hoarse murmurs, rolled its deep waters beneath the spot where I stood. The oak, whose broad and umbrageous arms, flung in many a gnarled direction, canopied my retreat, exhibited, conjointly with the other tenants of the thicket, which rose on the opposite bank, partially, the sad remnants of former verdure, and indicated the ravages which the recent storms of an autumnal equinox had impressed upon them. Although, in certain places, the amalgamated tints of summer still retained a vestige of their former exuberance, |