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Instruction, Vol. 14, Issue 389, September 12, 1829, by Various

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Title: The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14,
Issue 389, September 12, 1829

Author: Various

Release Date: November 10, 2004 [eBook #14011]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.

VOL. XIV., NO. 389.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1829. [PRICE 2d.

* * * * *

SION HOUSE.

[Illustration: Sion House.]

Taylor, the water poet, or Samuel Ireland, the picturesque Thames
tourist, could not, in all their enthusiasm of jingling rhymes and
aquatint plates, have exceeded our admiration of Sion House. Its
whitened towers and battlemented roof are known to all the swan-hopping
and steam navigators of our day, and none who have floated

To where the silver Thames first rural grows,--

can be strangers to the magnificence of the river-front.

Sion House stands in the parish of Isleworth, on the Middlesex bank
of the Thames, and opposite Richmond gardens. It is called Sion
from a nunnery of Bridgetines of the same name, originally founded at
Twickenham, by Henry V. in 1414, and removed to this spot in 1432.
This conventual association consisted of sixty nuns, the abbess,
thirteen priests, four deacons, and eight lay brethren; the whole thus
corresponding, in point of number, with the Apostles and seventy-two
disciples of Christ. But the inmates were neither sinless nor spotless;
many irregularities existed in the foundati