Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta (part 4 of 4)

Gleanings from the Harvest-Fields of Literature: A Melange of Excerpta (part 4 of 4)

ON GENERAL WOLFE.

On the death of General Wolfe, a premium was offered for the best epitaph on that officer. One of the candidates for the prize sent a poem, of which the following stanza is a specimen:—

He marched without dread or fears, At the head of his bold grenadiers; And what was more remarkable—nay, very particular— He climbed up rocks that were perpendicular.

§REBECCA ROGERS, FOLKESTONE§, 1688.

A house she hath, ’tis made of such good fashion, The tenant ne’er shall pay for reparation; Nor will her landlord ever raise her rent, Or turn her out of doors for non-payment: From chimney-tax this cell’s forever free,— To such a house, who would not tenant be?

IN DORCHESTER, MASS. 1661.

Heare lyes our captaine, and major of Suffolk was withall, A godly magistrate was he, and major generall. Two troops of hors with him here came, such worth his love did crave, Ten companyes of foot also mourning marcht to his grave. Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as he hath don; With Christ he lives now crownd. His name was Humphry Atherton.

IN KNIGHTSBRIDGE CHURCHYARD.

On a man who was too poor to be buried with relations in the church:—

Here I lie at the chancel door, And I lie here because I am poor; For the further in, the more you pay,— But here I lie as warm as they.

IN BIDEFORD CHURCHYARD, KENT.

The wedding-day appointed was, And wedding-clothes provided, But ere the day did come, alas! He sickened, and he die did.

IN WHITTLEBURY CHURCHYARD, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.

John Heath, 1767, æt. 27. While Time doth run, from sin depart; Let none e’er shun Death’s piercing dart; For read and look, and you will see A wondrous change was wrought on me. For while I lived in joy and mirth, Grim Death came in and stopped my breath; For I was single in the morning light, By noon was married, and was dead at night.

IN LONGNOR CHURCHYARD, STAFFORD.

William Billings, a soldier in the British army 75 years, Died 1793, aged 114 years. Billeted by death, I quartered here remain, And when the trumpet sounds, I’ll rise and march again.

IN ROCHESTER CHURCHYARD, ENG.

Though young she was, Her youth could not withstand, Nor her protect From Death’s impartial hand. Life is a cobweb, be we e’er so gay, And death a broom that sweeps us all away.

HUMPHREY COLE.

Here lies the body of good Humphrey Cole; Though black his name, yet spotless is his soul; But yet not black, though Carbo is the name, Thy chalk is scarcely whiter than his fame. A priest of priests, inferior was to none, Took heaven by storm when here his race was run. Thus ends the record of this pious man: Go and do likewise, reader, if you can.

IN EAST HARTFORD, CONN.

Now she is dead and cannot stir; Her cheeks are like the faded rose; Which of us next shall follow her, The Lord Almighty only knows.

Hark, she bids all her friends adieu; An angel calls her to the spheres; Our eyes the radiant saint pursue Through liquid telescopes of tears.

ON A TOMBSTONE IN NEW JERSEY.

Reader, pass on!—don’t waste your time On bad biography and bitter rhyme; For what I am, this crumbling clay insures, And what I was, is no affair of yours!

IN A NEW ENGLAND GRAVEYARD.

Here lies John Auricular, Who in the ways of the Lord walked perpendicular.

* * * * *

Many a cold wind o’er my body shall roll, While in Abraham’s bosom I’m a feasting my soul.

AT AUGUSTA, MAINE.

—After Life’s Scarlet Fever, I sleep well.

The following illustrated epitaph is copied from a tombstone near Williamsport, Pa.

Sacred to the memory of §Henry Harris§, Born June 27th, 1821, of Henry Harris and Jane his wife. Died on the 4th of May, 1837, by the kick of a colt in his bowels. Peaceable and quiet, a friend to his father and mother, and respected by all who knew him, and went to the world where horses don’t kick, where sorrows and weeping is no more.

In Dorchester, Mass. may be seen the following queer epitaph on a young woman:—

On the 21st of March God’s angels made a sarche. Around the door they stood; They took a maid, It is said, And cut her down like wood.

A Dutchman’s epitaph on his twin babes:—

Here lies two babes, dead as two nits, Who shook to death mit aguey fits. They was too good to live mit me, So God he took ’em to live mit he.

MORTUARY PUNS.

Peter Comestor, whom the following epitaph represents as speaking, was the author of a Commentary on the Scriptures. He died in 1198:—

I who was once called Peter [a stone], am now covered by a stone [petra]; and I who was once named Comestor [devourer], am now devoured. I taught when alive, nor do I cease to teach, though dead; for he who beholds me reduced to ashes may say,—“This man was once what we are now; and what he is now, we soon shall be.”

ON A YOUTH WHO DIED FOR LOVE OF MOLLY STONE.

Molle fuit saxum, saxum, O! si Molle fuisset, Non foret hic subter, sed super esset ei.

Luttrell wrote the following on a man who was run over by an omnibus:—

Killed by an omnibus! Why not? So quick a death a boon is: Let not his friends lament his lot— Mors omnibus communis.

WILLIAM MORE, STEPNEY CHURCHYARD.

Here lies one More, and no more than he; One More, and no more! how can that be? Why one More and no more, may lie here alone; But here lies one More, and that’s more than one!

On the tombstone of John Fell, superintendent of the turnpike-roads from Kirby Kendal to Kirby Irleth, are the following lines:—

Reader, doth he not merit well thy praise, Whose practice was through life to mend his ways?

IN SELBY CHURCHYARD, YORK.

This tombstone is a Milestone; ha, how so? Because, beneath lies Miles, who’s Miles below.

ON DU BOIS, BORN IN A BAGGAGE-WAGON, AND KILLED IN A DUEL.

Begot in a cart, in a cart first drew breath, Carte tierce was his life, and a carte was his death,

ON LILL.

Here lies the tongue of Godfrey Lill, Which always lied, and lies here still.

On the tombstone of Dr. Walker, who wrote a work on “English Particles,” is inscribed,—

Here lies Walker’s Particles.

Dr. Fuller’s reads,—

Here lies Fuller’s Earth.

And Archbishop Potter’s,—

Alack and well-a-day, Potter himself is turned to clay.

Proposed by Jerrold for Charles Knight, the Shakspearian critic:—

Good Knight.

On a well-known Shakspearian actor:—

Exit Burbage.

On the tomb of an auctioneer at Greenwood:—

Going,—going,—§GONE§!

Miss Long was a beautiful actress of the last century, so short in stature that she was called the Pocket Venus. Her epitaph concludes,—

Though Long, yet short; Though short, yet Pretty Long.

On the eminent barrister, Sir John Strange:—

Here lies an honest lawyer—that is Strange.

On William Button, in a churchyard near Salisbury:—

O sun, moon, stars, and ye celestial poles! Are graves, then, dwindled into Button-holes?

On Foote, the comedian:—

Foote from his earthly stage, alas! is hurled; Death took him off, who took off all the world.

In the chancel of the church of Barrow-on-Soar, Leicestershire, is the following on Theophilus Cave:—

Here in this Grave there lies a Cave. We call a Grave a Cave; If Cave be Grave, and Grave be Cave, Then, reader, judge, I crave, Whether doth Cave here lye in Grave, Or Grave here lye in Cave: If Grave in Cave here bury’d lye, Then Grave, where is thy victory? Goe, reader, and report here lyes a Cave, Who conquers Death and buries his own Grave.

The following, in Harrow Churchyard, is ascribed to Lord Byron:—

Beneath these green trees rising to the skies, The planter of them, Isaac Greentree, lies; A time shall come when these green trees shall fall, And Isaac Greentree rise above them all.

ON THOMAS GREENHILL, OXFORDSHIRE, 1624.

He once a Hill was fresh and Green, Now withered is not to be seen; Earth in earth shovelled up is shut, A Hill into a Hole is put; But darksome earth by Power Divine, Bright at last as the sun may shine.

ON A CORONER WHO HANGED HIMSELF.

He lived and died By suicide.

ON A CELEBRATED COOK.

Peace to his hashes.

ON MR. FISH.

Worms bait for fish; but here’s a sudden change; Fish is bait for worms—is not that passing strange?

ON TWO CHILDREN.

To the memory of Emma and Maria Littleboy, the twin-children of George and Emma Littleboy of Hornsey, who died July 16, 1783.

Two little boys lie here, Yet strange to say, These little boys are girls.

ON MISS NOTT.

Nott born, Nott dead, Nott christened, Nott begot; So here she lies that was and that was Nott. Reader behold a wonder rarely wrought, Which while thou seem’st to read thou readest Nott.

ON MARY ANGEL, STEPNEY, 1693.

To say an angel here interred doth lie, May be thought strange, for angels never die; Indeed some fell from heaven to hell, Are lost to rise no more; This only fell from death to earth, Not lost but gone before; Her dust lodged here, her soul perfect in grace, Among saints and angels now hath took its place.

Beloe, in his Anecdotes, gives the following on William Lawes, the musical composer, who was killed by the Roundheads:—

Concord is conquered! In his turn there lies The master of great Music’s mysteries; And in it is a riddle, like the cause, Will Lawes was slain by men whose Wills were Laws.

ON MR. JOSEPH KING.

Here lies a man than whom no better’s wal-king, Who was when sleeping even always tal-king; A king by birth was he, and yet was no king, In life was thin-king, and in death was §Jo-King§.

On John Adams, of Southwell, a carrier, who died of drunkenness.—§Byron.§

John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell, A carrier who carried the can to his mouth well; He carried so much, and he carried so fast, He could carry no more,—so was carried at last; For the liquor he drank being too much for one, He could not carry off, so he’s now carri-on.

ON A LINEN-DRAPER.

Cottons and cambrics, all adieu, And muslins too, farewell, Plain, striped, and figured, old and new, Three quarters, yard, or ell; By nail and yard I’ve measured ye, As customers inclined, The churchyard now has measured me. And nails my coffin bind.

ON A WOMAN WHO HAD AN ISSUE IN HER LEG.

Here lieth Margaret, otherwise Meg, Who died without issue, save one in her leg. Strange woman was she, and exceedingly cunning, For while one leg stood still, the other kept running.

FROM LLANFLANTWYTHYL CHURCHYARD, WALES.

Under this stone lies Meredith Morgan, Who blew the bellows of our church-organ; Tobacco he hated, to smoke most unwilling, Yet never so pleased as when pipes he was filling; No reflection on him for rude speech could be cast, Though he made our old organ give many a blast. No puffer was he, though a capital blower, He could fill double G, and now lies a note lower.

ON A LAST-MAKER.

Stop, stranger, stop, and wipe a tear, For the last man at last lies here. Though ever-last-ing he has been, He has at last passed life’s last scene. Famed for good works, much time he passed In doing good,—he has done his last.

FROM ST. ANNE’S CHURCHYARD, ISLE OF MAN.

Daniel Tear, ob. Dec. 7, 1787, æt. 110 years. Here, friend, is little Daniel’s tomb; To Joseph’s age he did arrive, Sloth killing thousands in their bloom, While labor kept poor Dan alive. Though strange, yet true, full seventy years His wife was happy in her Tears.

In the Greek Anthology is a punning epitaph on a physician, by Empedocles, who lived in the fifth century before Christ. The pun consists in the derivation of the name Pausanias,—causing a cessation of pain or affliction,—and therefore only a portion of the double meaning can be preserved in a translation:—

_Paus_anias,—not so named without a cause, As one who oft has given to pain a pause,— Blest son of Esculapius, good and wise, Here in his native Gela buried lies; Who many a wretch once rescued by his charms From dark Persephone’s constraining arms.

CURIOUS AND PUZZLING EPITAPHS.

On the monument of Sardanapalus was inscribed, in Assyrian characters,—

ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ ΤΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ

EAT, DRINK, BE MERRY. THE REST IS NOT WORTH THAT!

meaning a snap of the fingers, which is represented by a hand engraved on the stone, with the thumb and middle finger meeting at the top. Casaubon translates παιζειν, to love (παιζειν nihil aliud significat nisi ερᾶν). Solomon said, all is vanity, but not till he had eaten, drunk, and loved to a surfeit; and Swift left the well-known lines,—

Life’s a farce, and all things show it, I thought so once, but now I know it,—

but this information was for the tomb, when the capacity to eat, drink, and love was gone.

* * * * *

At the entrance of the church of San Salvador, in the city of Oviedo, in Spain, is a remarkable tomb, erected by a prince named Silo, with a very curious Latin inscription, which may be read two hundred and seventy ways, by beginning with the capital S in the centre:—

§Silo Princeps Fecit.§

T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T I O E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P C F E C E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P E C N I R P O L I =S= I L O P R I N C E P E C N I R P O L I L O P R I N C E P S P E C N I R P O L O P R I N C E P S F S P E C N I R P O P R I N C E P S F E F S P E C N I R P R I N C E P S F E C E F S P E C N I R I N C E P S F E C I C E F S P E C N I N C E P S F E C I T I C E F S P E C N C E P S F E C I T

On the tomb are inscribed these letters:—

H. S. E. S. S. T. T. L.

Which are the initials of the following Latin words:—

Hic situs est Silo, sit tibi terra levis. [Here lies Silo. May the earth lie lightly upon him.]

FROM ST. AGNES’, LONDON.

Qu an tris di c vul stra os guis ti ro um nere vit. H san chris mi t mu la

The middle line furnishes the terminal letters or syllables of the words in the upper and lower lines, and when added they read thus:—

Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit Hos sanguis Christi miro tum munere lavit. [Those who have felt the serpent’s venomed wound In Christ’s miraculous blood have healing found.]

FROM A CHURCHYARD IN GERMANY.

O quid tua te be bis bia abit ra ra ra es et in ram ram ram i i Mox eris quod ego nunc.

Taking the position of the words in the first line, which are placed above or over (super) those in the second, and noting the repetition of the syllables ra and ram thrice (ter), and the letter i twice (bis), the reading is easy.

O _super_be quid _super_bis? tua _super_bia te _super_abit. _Ter_ra es et in _ter_ram i_bis_. Mox eris quod ego nunc.

FROM CUNWALLOW CHURCHYARD, CORNWALL.

(May be read backwards or forwards, up or down.)

Shall we all die? We shall die all, All die shall we,— Die all we shall.

FROM LAVENHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK, ENG.

John Weles, ob. 1694. Quod fuit esse, quod est; Quod non fuit esse, quod esse; Esse quod est, non est; Quod non est, hoc erit esse.

[What was existence, is that which lies here; that which was not existence, is that which is existence; to be what is now is not to be; that which is now, is not existence, but will be hereafter.]

Or thus:—

That which a being was, what is it? show; That being which it was, it is not now; To be what is, is not to be, you see; That which now is not shall a being be.

ON THE MONUMENT OF JOHN OF DONCASTER, 1579.

Habeo, dedi quod alteri; Habuique quod, dedi mihi; Sed quod reliqui, perdidi.

[What I gave, I have; What I spent, I had; What I saved, I lost.]

IN THE CHURCHYARD OF LLANGERRIG, MONTGOMERYSHIRE.

O } { O } { observe this well,— That } Earth { to } Earth { shall come to dwell; Then } { in } { shall close remain, Till } { from } { shall rise again.

IN HADLEY CHURCHYARD, SUFFOLK.

The charnel mounted on the w } Sets to be seen in funer } A matron plain domestic } In care and pain continu } Not slow, not gay, not prodig } §ALL§. Yet neighborly and hospit } Her children seven, yet living } Her sixty-seventh year hence did c } To rest her body natur } In hopes to rise spiritu }

WRITTEN IN 1748.

Ye witty mortals, as you’re passing by, Remark that near this monument doth lie, Centered in dust, Two husbands, two wives, Two sisters, two brothers, Two fathers, a son, Two daughters, two mothers, A grandfather, grandmother, and a granddaughter, An uncle, an aunt, and their niece followed after. This catalogue of persons mentioned here Was only five, and all from incest clear.

IN ST. PAUL’S, DEPTFORD.

Rev. Dr. Conyers expired immediately after the delivery of a sermon from the text, “Ye shall see my face no more,” æt. 62, 1786.

Sent by their Lord on purposes of grace, Thus angels do his will, and see his face; With outspread wings they stand, prepared to soar, Declare their message, and are seen no more.

Underneath is a Latin inscription, of which the following is a translation:—

I have sinned, I repented, I believed, I have loved, I rest, I shall rise again, And by the grace of Christ, However unworthy, I shall reign.

PARALLELS WITHOUT A PARALLEL.

AT WINCHESTER, ENG.

On the north side of this church is the monument of two brothers of the surname Clarke, wherewith I was so taken as take them I must; and as I found them I pray accept them.

Thus an union of two brothers from Avington, the Clarkes’ family, were grandfather, father, and son, successivelie clerkes of the Privy Seale in Court.

The grandfather had but two sons, both Thomas. Their wives both Amys, Their heyres both Henry, And the heyres of Henries both Thomas. Both their wives were inheritrixes, And both had two sons and one daughter. And both their daughters issuelesse. Both of Oxford; both of the Temple; Both officers to Queen Elizabeth and o^r noble King James. And both Justices of the Peace. Togeather both agree in armes, one a knight, y^e other a captain. Si quæras plura; both—; and so I leave y^m.

BATHOS.

HOWELL’S EPITAPH ON CHARLES I.

So fell the royal oak by a wild crew Of mongrel shrubs, that underneath him grew; So fell the lion by a pack of curs; So the rose withered ’twixt a knot of burs; So fell the eagle by a swarm of gnats; So the whale perished by a shoal of sprats!

TRANSCENDENTAL.

FROM THE CHURCHYARD OF ST. EDMUND’S, SALISBURY.

Written by a Swedenborgian named Maton, on his children.

Innocence embellishes divinely complete To prescience co-egent now sublimely great In the benign, perfecting, vivifying state. So heavenly guardian occupy the skies The pre-existent God, omnipotent, all-wise; He shall surpassingly immortalize thy theme And permanent thy bliss, celestial, supreme. When gracious refulgence bids the grave resign, The Creator’s nursing protection be thine; Then each perspiring ether shall joyfully rise Transcendently good, supereminently wise.

CENTO.

AT NORTHBOROUGH, MASS.

On the tombstone of Rabbi Judah Monis, 40 years Hebrew Instructor in Harvard University, who was converted to Christianity in 1722, and died in 1764.

A native branch of Jacob see, Which once from off its olive broke; Regrafted from the living tree, Rom. xi. 17, 24. Of the reviving sap partook. From teeming Zion’s fertile womb, Isa. lxvi. 8. As dewy drops in early morn, Ps. cx. 3. Or rising bodies from the tomb, John v. 28, 29. At once be Israel’s nation born. Isa. lxvi. 8.

ACROSTICAL.

AT DORCHESTER, MASS.

James Humphrey, 1686. I nclosed within this shrine is precious dust, A nd only waits the rising of the just; M ost useful while he lived, adorned his station, E ven to old age served his generation, S ince his decease thought of with veneration.

H ow great a blessing this ruling elder he U nto this church and town and pastors three! M ather, the first, did by him help receive; F lint he did next his burden much relieve; R enowned Danforth did he assist with skill, E steemed high by all, bear fruit until, Y ielding to death, his glorious seat did fill.

IN ASH CHURCH, KENT.

©J© John Brooke of the Parish of Ashe, ©O© Only he is nowe gone, ©H© His days are past; his corps is layd ©N© Now under this marble stone.

©B© Brookstrete he was the honor of, ©R© Robd now it is of name, ©O© Only because he had no sede ©O© Or children to have the same; ©K© Knowing that all must pass away, ©E© Even when God will, none can denay. He passed to God in the yere of Grace One thousand fyve hundredth fower score and two it was, The sixteenth daye of January, I tell now playne, The fyve and twentieth yere of Elizabeth rayne.

ABORIGINAL.

IN THE MOHEAGAN BURIAL-GROUND, CONN.

Here lies the body of §Sunseeto§, Own son to Uncas, grandson to Oneeko, Who were the famous sachems of Moheagan, But now they are all dead, I think it is werheegen.[29]

Footnote 29:

Meaning, All is well, or good news.

ORONO, CHIEF OF THE PENOBSCOTS, OLDTOWN, MAINE, 1801, ÆT. 113

Safe lodged within his blanket, here below, Lie the last relics of old §Orono§; Worn down with toil and care, he in a trice Exchanged his wigwam for a paradise.

AFRICAN.

AT CONCORD, MASS.

God wills us free; man wills us slaves. I will as God wills: God’s will be done. Here lies the body of §John Jack§, a native of Africa, who died, March, 1773, aged about 60 years. Though born in a land of slavery, he was born free; though he lived in a land of liberty, he lived a slave, till, by his honest though stolen labors, he acquired the source of slavery, which gave him his freedom, though not long before death, the grand tyrant, gave him his final emancipation, and set him on a footing with kings. Though a slave to vice, he practised those virtues, without which, kings are but slaves.

AT ATTLEBORO, MASS.

Here lies the best of slaves, Now turning into dust. Cesar, the Ethiopian, craves A place among the just. His faithful soul is fled To realms of heavenly light; And by the blood that Jesus shed, Is changed from black to white January 15, he quitted the stage, In the 77th year of his age.

HIBERNIAN.

AT BELTURBET.

Here lies John Higley, whose father and mother were drowned in their passage from America. Had they both lived, they would have been buried here.(!)

* * * * *

Here lies the body of John Mound, Lost at sea and never found.

* * * * *

O cruel Death! how could you be so unkind, To take him before and leave me behind? You should have taken both of us if either; Which would have been more pleasing to the survivor!

* * * * *

Here lies father and mother, and sister and I,— They all died within the short space of one year. They all be buried at Wimble but I, And I be buried here.

AT MONKNEWTON, NEAR DROGHEDA.

Erected by Patrick Kelly, Of the town of Drogheda, Mariner, In Memory of his Posterity. Also the above Patrick Kelly, Who departed this Life the 12th August 1844, Age 60 years, Requiescat in pace.

AT MONTROSE, 1757.

Here lyes the Bodeys of George Young and Isabel Guthrie, and all their Posterity for more than fifty years backwards.

AT ST. ANDREW’S, PLYMOUTH.

Here lies the body of James Vernon, Esq., only surviving son of Admiral Vernon: died 23rd July 1753.

AT LLANMYNECH, MONTGOMERYSHIRE.

Here lies John Thomas And his children dear; Two buried at Oswestry, And one here.

IN OXFORDSHIRE.

Here lies the body of John Eldred, At least he will be here when he is dead; But now at this time he is alive, The 14th of August ’sixty-five.

GREEK EPITAPHS.

Christopher North, speaking of the celebrated epitaph written by Simonides and graved on the monument erected in commemoration of the battle of Thermopylæ, says:—The oldest and best inscription is that on the altar-tomb of the Three Hundred. Here it is,—the Greek,—with three Latin and eighteen English versions. Start not: it is but two lines; and all Greece, for centuries, had them by heart. She forgot them, and “Greece was living Greece no more!”

Of the various English translations of this celebrated epitaph, the following are the best:—

O stranger, tell it to the Lacedæmonians, That we lie here in obedience to their precepts.

Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by, That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

ON MILTIADES.

Miltiades! thy valor best (Although in every region known) The men of Persia can attest, Taught by thyself at Marathon.

ON THE TOMB OF THEMISTOCLES.

By the sea’s margin, on the watery strand, Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand. By this directed to thy native shore, The merchant shall convey his freighted store; And when our fleets are summoned to the fight, Athens shall conquer with this tomb in sight.

ON ÆSIGENES.

Hail, universal mother! lightly rest On that dead form Which when with life invested ne’er opprest Its fellow-worm.

ON TIMOCRITUS.

Timocritus adorns this humble grave; Mars spares the coward, and destroys the brave.

ON THREE NEIGHBORING TOMBS.

This is a sailor’s—that a ploughman’s tomb;— Thus sea and land abide one common doom.

* * * * *

My lot was meagre fare, disease and shame. At length I died—you all must do the same.

* * * * *

Fortune and Hope, farewell! I’ve found the port: You’ve done with me—go now, with others sport.

HELIODORA.

Tears, Heliodora! on thy tomb I shed, Love’s last libation to the shades below; Tears, bitter tears, by fond remembrance fed, Are all that Fate now leaves me to bestow.

Vain sorrows! vain regrets! yet, loveliest, thee, Thee still they follow in the silent urn, Retracing hours of social converse free, And soft endearments never to return.

How thou art torn, sweet flower, that smiled so fair! Torn, and thy honored bloom with dust defiled; Yet, holy earth, accept my suppliant prayer, And in a mother’s arms enfold thy child.

FROM THE ALCESTIS OF EURIPIDES.

We will not look on her burial sod As the cell of sepulchral sleep: It shall be as the shrine of a radiant god, And the pilgrim shall visit this blest abode To worship, and not to weep. And as he turns his steps aside, Thus shall he breathe his vow:— Here slept a self-devoted bride; Of old, to save her lord she died, She is an angel now.

ON A YOUNG BRIDE.

Not Hymen,—it was Ades’ self alone That loosened Clearista’s virgin zone: The morning ’spousal song was raised,—but oh! At once ’twas silenced into threnes of woe; And the same torches which the bridal bed Had lit, now showed the pathway to the dead.

ON A BACHELOR.

At threescore winters’ end I died, A cheerless being, sole and sad; The nuptial knot I never tied, And wish my father never had.

* * * * *

My name, my country, what are they to thee? What, whether base or proud my pedigree? Perhaps I far surpassed all other men; Perhaps I fell below them all,—what then? Suffice it, stranger, that thou seest a tomb; Thou know’st its use,—it hides,—no matter whom.

ANTITHESIS EXTRAORDINARY.

The following singular inscription may be seen on a monument in Horsley Down Church, Cumberland, England:—

Here lie the bodies of Thomas Bond and Mary his wife. She was temperate, chaste, and charitable. But She was proud, peevish, and passionate. She was an affectionate wife and a tender mother, But Her husband and child, whom she loved, seldom saw her countenance without a disgusting frown; Whilst she received visitors whom she despised with an endearing smile. Her behaviour was discreet towards strangers, But Imprudent in her family. Abroad her conduct was influenced by good breeding, But At home by ill temper. She was a professed enemy to flattery, and was seldom known to praise or commend; But The talents in which she principally excelled Were difference of opinion and discovering flaws and Imperfections. She was an admirable economist, And, without prodigality, Dispensed plenty to every person in her family, But Would sacrifice their eyes to a farthing candle. She sometimes made her husband Happy with her good qualities, But Much more frequently miserable with her Many failings. Insomuch that in thirty years’ cohabitation, He often lamented that, Maugre all her virtues, He had not on the whole enjoyed two years Of matrimonial comfort.

At length, Finding she had lost the affection of her husband, as well as the regard of her neighbors, family disputes having been divulged by servants, She died of vexation, July 20, 1768, Aged 48 years. Her worn-out husband survived her four months and two days, and departed this life November 22, 1768, In the 54th year of his age. William Bond, brother to the deceased, Erected this stone as a Weekly monitor to the wives of this parish, That they may avoid the infamy of having Their memories handed down to posterity With a patchwork character.

THE PRINTER’S EPITAPH.

Here lies his form in pi, Beneath this bank with briers overgrown; How many cases far unworthier lie ’Neath some imposing stone!

No column points our loss, No sculptured caps his history declare; Although he lived a follower of the cross, And member of the bar.

The golden rule he prized, And left it as a token of his love; And all his deeds, corrected and revised, Are registered above.

The copy of his wrongs, The proofs of all his pi-ety are there, And the fair title, which to truth belong Will prove his title fair.

Though now, in death’s em-brace, A mould-ering heap our luckless brother lies, He’ll re-appear on Gabriel’s royal-chase, And frisk-it to the skies.

BREVITY.

Thorpe’s Corpse.

The epitaph on Dr. Caius, the founder of the college which bears his name, cannot be blamed for prolixity. Dr. Fuller remarks, “few men might have had a longer, none ever had a shorter epitaph.”

Fui Caius (I was Caius)

ON MR. MAGINNIS.

Finis Maginnis.

Camden, in his Remaines,—a collection of fragments illustrative of the habits, manners and customs of the ancient Britons and Saxons,—gives examples of great men who had little epitaphs. For himself it has been suggested that the name of the work in question would be the most fitting:—

Camden’s Remains.

LAUDATORY.

Following the inscription to the memory of Albert, Prince Consort, on the Cairn at Balmoral, is the following quotation from the Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 13, 14.

He being made perfect in a short time, Fulfilled a long time: For his soul pleased the Lord; Therefore hasted He to take Him away from among the wicked.

* * * * *

Could he disclose who rests below, The things beyond the grave that lie, We more should learn than now we know. But know no better how to die.

* * * * *

Dust to its narrow house beneath, Soul to its place on high; They that have seen thy look in death, No more may fear to die.

* * * * *

His youth was innocent—his riper age Marked with some act of goodness every day; And watched by eyes that loved him, calm and sage, Faded his late declining years away; Cheerful he gave his being up, and went To share the holy rest that waits a life well spent.

EPITAPHIUM CHEMICUM.

1791.

Here lieth to digest, macerate, and amalgamate with clay In balneo arenæ, stratum super stratum, The residuum, terra damnata, and caput mortuum OF A CHEMIST. A man who in his earthly Laboratory Pursued various processes to obtain The §Arcanum Vitæ§, Or the secret to Live; Also the §Aurum Vitæ§, or The Art of getting, not making, Gold. Alchemist-like, he saw all his labor and projection, As mercury in the fire, evaporated in fume. When he dissolved to his first principles, He departed as poor As the last drops of an alembic. Though fond of novelty, he carefully avoided The fermentation, effervescence, and Decrepitation of this life. Full seventy years His exalted essence Was hermetically sealed in its terrene matrass; But the radical moisture being exhausted, The Elixir Vitæ spent, And exsiccated to a cuticle, He could not suspend longer in his vehicle: But precipitated gradatim, Per campanam, To his original dust. May the light above, More resplendent than Bolognian phosphorus, Preserve him From the athanor, empyreuma, and Reverberatory furnace of the other world; Depurate him from the fæces and scoria of this; Highly rectify and volatilize His ethereal spirit; Bring it safely out of the crucible of earthly trial, Place it in a proper recipient Among the elect of the Flowers of Benjamin; Never to be saturated till the general resuscitation, Deflagration, calcination, And sublimation of all things.

MISCELLANEOUS.

ON SIR JOHN VANBRUGH, THE ARCHITECT.

Lie heavy on him, earth; for he Laid many heavy loads on thee.—§Evans.§

THE ORATOR’S EPITAPH.

Here, reader, turn your weeping eyes, My fate a useful moral teaches; The hole in which my body lies Would not contain one-half my speeches.—§Brougham.§

IN LYDFORD CHURCHYARD, NEAR DARTMOOR.

Here lies, in horizontal position, the outside Case of §George Routleigh§, Watchmaker; Integrity was the Mainspring, and prudence the Regulator, of all the actions of his life. Humane, generous, and liberal, his Hand never stopped, till he had relieved distress. So nicely regulated were all his Motions, that he never went wrong, except when set a-going by people who did not know his Key: Even then he was easily set right again. He had the art of disposing his time so well, that his Hours kept running on in a continual round of pleasure, till an unlucky Minute put a stop to his existence. He departed this life Nov. 14, 1802, æt. 57, in hopes of being taken in hand by his Maker; and of being thoroughly Cleaned, Repaired, Wound up, and Set a-going in the world to come.

AT KITTERY, MAINE.

I was drowned, alas! in the deep, deep seases. The blessed Lord does as he pleases. But my Kittery friends did soon appear, And laid my body right down here.

ON A SAN FRANCISCO MONEY-LENDER.

Here lies old thirty-five per cent.: The more he made, the more he lent; The more he got, the more he craved; The more he made, the more he shaved; Great God! can such a soul be saved?

ON AN IMPORTUNATE TAILOR.

Here lies W. W., Who never more will trouble you, trouble you.

IN SOHAM CHURCHYARD, CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

A.D. 1643, Ætatis suæ 125.

Here lies Dr. Ward, whom you knew well before; He was kind to his neighbors, good to the poor. 1 2 3 4 5 6 To God, to Prince, Wife, kindred, friend, the poor, 1 2 3 4 5 6 Religious, loyal, true, kind, stedfast, dear, 1 2 3 4 5 6 In zeal, faith, love, blood, amity, and store, He hath so lived, and so deceased, lies here.

IN THE CHURCH OF ST. GREGORY, SUDBURY.

Viator, mirum referam. Quo die efflavit animam Thos. Carter, prædictus, Acus foramen transivit Camelus Sudburiensis. Vade, et si dives sis, tu fac similiter. Vale.

(Traveller, I will relate a prodigy. On the day whereon the aforesaid Thos. Carter breathed out his soul, a Sudbury camel passed through the eye of a needle. Go, and if thou art wealthy, do thou likewise. Farewell.)

IN LLANBEBLIG, CARNARVONSHIRE.

Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. Here lie the remains of Thomas Chambers, Dancing Master; Whose genteel address and assiduity in Teaching Recommended him to all that had the Pleasure of his acquaintance.

ON AN INFIDEL.

From the Latin.

Beneath this stone the mouldering relics lie Of one to whom Religion spoke in vain; He lived as though he never were to die, And died as though he ne’er should live again.

PROPOSED BY A FRENCH THEOLOGIAN FOR VOLTAIRE.

In poesi magnus, In historia parvus, In philosophia minimus, In religione nullus.

Hume, the classic historian of England, denied the existence of matter, and held that the whole congeries of material things are but impressions and ideas in the mind, distinguishing an impression from an idea by its stronger effect on the thinking faculty. Dr. Beattie sufficiently exposed the absurdity; but his famous essay has nothing more pointed than the witty epitaph that somebody wrote on the marble shaft that stands over the infidel’s grave:—

Beneath this circular idea, vulgarly called tomb, Impressions and ideas rest, which constituted Hume.

ON TOM PAINE.

Tom Paine for the Devil is surely a match. In leaving old England he cheated Jack Ketch; In France (the first time such a thing had been seen) He cheated the watchful and sharp guillotine; And at last, to the sorrow of all the beholders, He marched out of life with his head on his shoulders.

EARTH TO EARTH.

Few persons have met with the following poem, now nearly four centuries old; but many will recognise in some of the stanzas, particularly the first four and the last four, the source of familiar monumental inscriptions. The antiquary can refer to many a dilapidated stone on which these quaint old lines can yet be traced.

Vado mori Rex sum, quid honor quid gloria mundi, Est vita mors hominum regia—vado mori. Vado mori miles victo certamine belli, Mortem non didici vincere vado mori. Vado mori medicus, medicamine non relevandus, Quicquid agunt medici respuo vado mori, Vado mori logicus, aliis concludere novi, Concludit breviter mors in vado mori.

Earth out of earth is worldly wrought; Earth hath gotten upon earth a dignity of nought; Earth upon earth has set all his thought, How that earth upon earth might be high brought.

Earth upon earth would be a king, But how that earth shall to earth he thinketh no thing; When earth biddeth earth his rents home bring, Then shall earth from earth have a hard parting.

Earth upon earth winneth castles and towers, Then saith earth unto earth this is all ours; But when earth upon earth has builded his bowers, Then shall earth upon earth suffer hard showers.

Earth upon earth hath wealth upon mould; Earth goeth upon earth glittering all in gold, Like as he unto earth never turn should; And yet shall earth unto earth sooner than he would.

Why that earth loveth earth wonder I think, Or why that earth will for earth sweat and swink. For when earth upon earth is brought within the brink, Then shall earth for earth suffer a foul stink.

As earth upon earth were the worthies nine, And as earth upon earth in honor did shine; But earth list not to know how they should incline, And their gowns laid in the earth when death hath made his fine.

As earth upon earth full worthy was Joshua, David, and worthy King Judas Maccabee, They were but earth none of them three; And so from earth unto earth they left their dignity.

Alisander was but earth that all the world wan, And Hector upon earth was held a worthy man, And Julius Cæsar, that the Empire first began; And now as earth within earth they lie pale and wan.

Arthur was but earth for all his renown, No more was King Charles nor Godfrey of Boulogne; But now earth hath turned their nobleness upside down, And thus earth goeth to earth by short conclusion.

Whoso reckons also of William Conqueror, King Henry the First that was of knighthood flower, Earth hath closed them full straitly in his bower,— So the end of worthiness,—here is no more succor.

Now ye that live upon earth, both young and old, Think how ye shall to earth, be ye never so bold; Ye be unsiker, whether it be in heat or cold, Like as your brethren did before, as I have told.

Now ye folks that be here ye may not long endure, But that ye shall turn to earth I do you ensure; And if ye list of the truth to see a plain figure, Go to St. Paul’s and see the portraiture.

All is earth and shall to earth as it sheweth there, Therefore ere dreadful death with his dart you dare, And for to turn into earth no man shall it forbear, Wisely purvey you before, and thereof have no fear.

Now sith by death we shall all pass, it is to us certain, For of earth we come all, and to the earth shall turn again; Therefore to strive or grudge it were but vain, For all is earth and shall be earth,—nothing more certain.

Now earth upon earth consider thou may How earth cometh to earth naked alway, Why should earth upon earth go stout alway, Since earth out of earth shall pass in poor array?

I counsel you upon earth that wickedly have wrought, That earth out of earth to bliss may be brought.

BYRON’S INSCRIPTION ON THE MONUMENT OF HIS DOG.

Near this spot Are deposited the remains of one Who possessed beauty without vanity, Strength without insolence, Courage without ferocity, And all the virtues of man without his vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the memory of Boatswain, a dog, Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey, Nov. 18, 1808.

Inscriptions.

TAVERN-SIGNS.

I’m amazed at the signs As I pass through the town. To see the odd mixture,— A magpye and crown, The whale and the crow, The razor and hen, The leg and seven stars, The axe and the bottle, The tun and the lute, The eagle and child, The shovel and boot.—British Apollo, 1710.

The absurdities which tavern-signs present are often curious enough, but may in general be traced to that inveterate propensity which the vulgar of all countries have, to make havoc with every thing in the shape of a proper name. What a magpie could have to do with a crown, or a whale with a crow, or a hen with a razor, it is as difficult to conjecture as to trace the corruption of language in which the connection more probably originated. The sign of the leg and the seven stars was merely an orthographical deviation from the league and seven stars, or seven united provinces; and the axe and bottle was, doubtless, a transposition of the battle-axe, a most appropriate sign for warlike times. The tun and lute formed suitable emblems enough of the pleasures of wine and music. The eagle and child, too, had meaning, though no application; but when we come to the shovel and boot, nonsense again triumphs, and it is in vain that we look for any rational explanation of the affinity.

The Swan-with-two-necks has long been an object of mystery to the curious. This mystery is solved by the alteration of a single letter. The sign, as it originally stood, was the swan with two nicks; the meaning of which we find thus explained in a communication made by the late Sir Joseph Banks to the Antiquarian Society. Sir Joseph presented to the Society a curious parchment roll, exhibiting the marks, or nicks, made on the beaks of swans and cygnets in all the rivers and lakes in Lincolnshire, accompanied with an account of the privileges of certain persons keeping swans in these waters, and the duties of the king’s swanherd in guarding these fowls from depredation and preventing any two persons from adopting the same figures or marks on the bills of their swans. The number of marks contained in the parchment roll amounted to two hundred and nineteen, all of which were different and confined to the small extent of the bill of the swan. The outlines were an oblong square, circular at one end, and containing dots, notches, arrows, or suchlike figures, to constitute the difference in each man’s swans. Laws were enacted so late as the 12th of Elizabeth, for the preservation of the swans in Lincolnshire.

The goat and compasses has been supposed to have its origin in the resemblance between the bounding of a goat and the expansion of a pair of compasses; but nothing can be more fanciful. The sign is of the days of the Commonwealth, when it was fashionable to give scriptural names to every thing and everybody, and when God-be-praised Barebones preferred drinking his tankard of ale at the God-encompasseth-us to anywhere else. The corruption from God-encompasseth-us to goat and compasses is obvious and natural enough.

In Richard Flecknoe’s Enigmatical Characters, published 1665, speaking of the “fanatic reformers,” (the Puritans,) he observes, “As for the §SIGNS§, they have pretty well begun their reformation already, changing the sign of the salutation of the angel and our lady into the soldier and citizen, and the Katherine Wheel into the cat and wheel; so as there only wants then making the dragon to kill St. George, and the devil to tweak St. Dunstan by the nose, to make the reformation complete. Such ridiculous work they make of their reformation, and so zealous are they against all mirth and jollity, as they would pluck down the sign of the cat and fiddle too, if it durst but play so loud as they might hear it.”

The cat and fiddle is a a corruption of Caton fidele.

The bag of nails, at Chelsea, is claimed by the smiths and carpenters of the neighborhood as a house designed for their peculiar accommodation; but, had it not been for the corruption of the times, it would still have belonged to the bacchanals, who, in the time of Ben Jonson, used to take a holiday stroll to this delightful village. But the old inscription satyr and bacchanals is now converted into Satan and bag o’nails.

The origin of the chequers, which is so common an emblem of public houses, has been the subject of much learned conjecture. One writer supposes that they were meant to represent that the game of draughts might be played there; another has been credibly informed that in the reign of Philip and Mary the then Earl of Arundel had a grant to license public-houses, and, part of the armorial bearings of that noble family being a chequer-board, the publican, to show that he had a license, put out that mark as part of his sign. But, unfortunately for both solutions, unfortunately for the honors of Arundel, Sir W. Hamilton presented, some time ago, to the Society of Antiquaries, a view of a street in Pompeii, in which we find that shops with the sign of the chequers were common among the Romans! The real origin of this emblem is still involved in obscurity. The wittiest, though certainly not the most genuine, explanation of it was that of the late George Selwyn, who used to wonder that antiquaries should be at any loss to discover why draughts were an appropriate emblem for drinking-houses.

An annotator on Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature says, “I remember, many years ago, passing through a court in Rosemary Lane, where I observed an ancient sign over the door of an ale-house, which was called The Four Alls. There was the figure of a king, and on a label, ‘I rule all;’ the figure of a priest, motto, ‘I pray for all;’ a soldier, ‘I fight for all;’ and a yeoman, ‘I pay all.’ About two years ago I passed through the same thoroughfare, and, looking up for my curious sign, I was amazed to see a painted board occupy its place, with these words inscribed:—‘The Four Awls.’ In Whitechapel road is a public house which has a written sign, ‘The Grave Morris.’ A painter was commissioned to embody the inscription; but this painter had not a poet’s eye; he could not body forth the form of things unknown. In his distress he applied to a friend, who presently relieved him, and the painter delineated, as well as he could, ‘The Graafe Maurice,’ often mentioned in the ‘Epistolæ Hoelinæ’”

The Queer Door is corrupted from Cœur Doré (Golden Heart); the Pig and Whistle, from Peg and Wassail-Bowl; the Goat in the Golden Boots, from the Dutch Goed in der Gooden Boote (the god—Mercury—in the golden boots).

Many signs are heraldic and represent armorial bearings. The White Heart was peculiar to Richard II.; the White Swan to Henry IV. and Edward III.; the Blue Boar to Richard III.; the Red Dragon to the Tudors; the Bull, the Falcon, and the Plume of Feathers to Edward IV.; the Swan and Antelope to Henry V.; the Greyhound and Green Dragon to Henry VII.; the Castle, the Spread Eagle, and the Globe were probably adopted from the arms of Spain, Germany, and Portugal, by inns which were the resort of merchants from those countries. Many commemorate historical events; others derive their names from some eminent and popular man. The Coach and Horses indicated post-houses; the Fox and Goose denoted the games played within; the Hare and Hounds, the vicinity of hunting-grounds. In the Middle Ages, a bush was always suspended in front of the door of a wine-shop,—whence the saying, “Good wine needs no bush.” Some of the mediæval signs are still retained, as the Pilgrim, Cross-Keys, Seven Stars, &c.

The following is a literal copy of the sign of a small public house in the village of Folkesworth, near Stilton, Hants. It contains as much poetry as perhaps the rustic Folkesworth folks are worth; and doubtless they think it (in the Stilton vernacular) “quite the cheese.”

[A rude figure of a Fox.]

§I . ham . a . cunen . fox§ You . see . ther . his No . harme . atched To . me . it . is . my . Mrs. Wish . to . place . me here . to . let . you . no he . sels . good . beere.

The Rawlinson of the district has deciphered this inscription, and conjectures its meaning to be as follows:—

I am a cunning fox, you see; There is no harm attached to me: It is my master’s wish to place me here, To let you know he sells good beer.

In King Street, Norwich, at the sign of “The Waterman,” kept by a man who is a barber and over whose door is the pole, are these lines:—

Roam not from pole to pole, But step in here; Where nought exceeds the shaving, But—the beer.

This was originally an impromptu of Dean Swift, written at the request of his favorite barber.

* * * * *

Over the door of a tippling-house in Frankford, Pa., is this:—

In this Hive we’re all alive; Good liquor makes us funny; If you’re dry, step in and try The flavor of our honey.

ON A TAVERN-SIGN NEAR CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND.

Rest, traveller, rest; lo! Cooper’s ready hand Obedient brings “zwei glass” at thy command. Rest, traveller, rest, and banish thoughts of care. Drink to thy friends, and recommend them here.

* * * * *

PUNISHMENT FOR TREASON.

Tell them how Edward put to death a citizen, Only for saying he would make his son Heir to the Crown; meaning indeed his house, Which, by the sign thereof, was termed so.—Rich. III., Act iii. sc. 5.

On the sign of “The Baker and the Brewer,” in Birmingham, is the following quatrain:—

The Baker says, “I’ve the staff of life, And you’re a silly elf.” The Brewer replied, with artful pride, “Why this is life itself.”

At the King’s Head Inn, Stutton, near Ipswich, is this address to wayworn travelers:—

Good people, stop, and pray walk in; Here’s wine and brandy, rum and gin; And what is more, good purl and ale Are both sold here by old Nat Dale.

This tap-room inscription is in a wayside tavern in Northumberland, England:—

Here stop and spend a social hour In harmless mirth and fun; Let friendship reign, be just and kind, And evil speak of none.

At the Red Lion Inn, Hollins Green, an English village, is this:—

Call freely, Drink merrily, Pay honestly, Part quietly. These rules, my friends, will bring no sorrow; You pay to-day, I’ll trust to-morrow.

In the county of Norfolk, Eng., is this singular inscription:—

More beer score clerk For my my his Do trust pay sent I I must has Shall if I brewer What and and my[30]

Footnote 30:

Read from the bottom of the columns upward, commencing with the right.

On the sign-board of the Bull Inn at Buckland, near Dover:—

The bull is tame, so fear him not, All the while you pay your shot; When money’s gone, and credit’s bad, It’s that which makes the bull run mad.

At Swainsthorpe, near Norwich, England, is a public-house known as the Dun Cow. Under the portrait of the cow is this couplet:—

Walk in, gentlemen; I trust you’ll find The dun cow’s milk is to your mind.

On the Basingstoke road, near Reading, England:—

This is the Whitley Grenadier, A noted house for famous beer. My friend, if you should chance to call, Beware and get not drunk withal; Let moderation be your guide, It answers well whene’er ’tis tried. Then use but not abuse strong beer, And don’t forget the Grenadier.

The author of Tavern Anecdotes records the following:—

Rhyming Host at Stratford.

At the Swan Tavern, kept by Lound The best accommodation’s found— Wine, spirits, porter, bottled beer, You’ll find in high perfection here. If, in the garden with your lass, You feel inclined to take a glass, There tea and coffee, of the best, Provided is for every guest; Or, if disposed a pipe to smoke, To sing a song, or crack a joke, You may repair across the green, Where nought is heard, though much is seen; Then laugh, and drink, and smoke away, And but a moderate reckoning pay.

BEER-JUG INSCRIPTION.

Come, my old friend, and take a pot, But mark me what I say: Whilst thou drink’st thy neighbor’s health. Drink not thy own away.

For it too often is the case, Whilst we sit o’er a pot, And while we drink our neighbor’s health, Our own is quite forgot.

INSCRIPTIONS ON INN WINDOW-PANES.

SHENSTONE’S, AT HENLEY.

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round, Where’er his journeys may have been, May sigh to think he still has found His warmest welcome at an inn.

A gentleman who stopped at an inn at Stockport, in 1634, left this record of his bad reception on a window of the inn:—

If, traveller, good treatment be thy care, A comfortable bed, and wholesome fare, A modest bill, and a diverting host, Neat maid, and ready waiter,—quit this coast. If dirty doings please, at Stockport lie: The girls, O frowsy frights, here with their mistress vie.

Yet Fynes Moryson, in his Itinerary, thus speaks of English inns in the olden time:—

As soon as a passenger comes to an inne, the servants run to him, and one takes his horse and walkes him about till he be cool, then rubs him down, and gives him meat; another servant gives the passenger his private chamber and kindles his fire; the third pulls off his bootes and makes them cleane; then the host and hostess visit him, and if he will eate with the hoste or at a common table with the others, his meale will cost him sixpence, or in some places fourpence; but if he will eate in his chamber, he commands what meat he will, according to his appetite; yea, the kitchen is open to him to order the meat to be dressed as he likes beste. After having eaten what he pleases, he may with credit set by a part for next day’s breakfast. His bill will then be written for him, and should he object to any charge, the host is ready to alter it.

“Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis!”

ON A WINDOW-PANE OF THE HOTEL SANS SOUCI, BADEN-BADEN.

Venez ici, sans souci. Vous Partirez d’ici sans six sous.

THREE TRANSLATIONS WHICH FOLLOW.

You come to this city plumed with felicity, You’ll flutter from this city plucked to mendicity.

With plenty of tin, purse-proud you come in. You’ll go a sad ninkum from outgo of income!

Not a bit pensive, you come here expensive. Soon you’ll go hence with a curse the expense.

INSCRIPTIONS ON BELLS.

Vivos voco—Mortuos plango—Fulgura frango. I call the living—I mourn the dead—I break the lightning.

This brief and impressive announcement—the motto of Schiller’s ever-memorable Song of the Bell—was common to the church-bells of the Middle Ages, and may still be found on the bell of the great Minster of Schaffhausen, and on that of the church near Lucerne. Another and a usual one, which is, in fact, but an amplification of the first, is this

Funera plango—Fulgura frango—Sabbato pango. Excito lentos—Dissipo ventos—Paco cruentos.

I mourn at funerals—I break the lightning—I proclaim the Sabbath. I urge the tardy—I disperse the winds—I calm the turbulent.

The following motto may still be seen on some of the bells that have swung in their steeples for centuries. It will be observed to entitle them to a sixfold efficacy.

Men’s death I tell by doleful knell, Lightning and thunder I break asunder, On Sabbath all to church I call, The sleepy head I raise from bed, The winds so fierce I do disperse, Men’s cruel rage I do assuage.

On the famous alarm-bell called Roland, in the belfry-tower of the once powerful city of Ghent, is engraved the subjoined inscription, in the old Walloon or Flemish dialect:—

Mynen naem is Roland; als ik klep is er brand, and als ik luy is er victorie in het land.

Anglicé. My name is Roland; when I toll there is fire, and when I ring there is victory in the land.

On others may be found these inscriptions:—

Deum verum laudo, plebem voco, clerum congrego, Defuncto ploro, pestum fugo, festa decoro.

I praise the true God, call the people, convene the clergy, I mourn for the dead, drive away pestilence, and grace festivals.

Gaudemus gaudentibus, Dolemus dolentibus.

Let us rejoice with the joyful, and grieve with the sorrowful.

INSCRIPTIONS ON THE BELLS OF ST. MICHAEL’S, COVENTRY, CAST IN 1774.

I.

Although I am both light and small, I will be heard above you all.

II.

If you have a judicious ear, You’ll own my voice is sweet and clear.

III.

Such wondrous power to music’s given, It elevates the soul to heaven.

IV.

While thus we join in cheerful sound, May love and loyalty abound.

V.

To honour both of God and king, Our voices shall in concert sing.

VI.

Music is a medicine to the mind.

VII.

Ye ringers all, that prize your health and happiness, Be sober, merry, wise, and you’ll the same possess.

VIII.

Ye people all that hear me ring, Be faithful to your God and king.

IX.

In wedlock’s bands all ye who join, With hands your hearts unite; So shall our tuneful tongues combine To laud the nuptial rite.

X.

I am and have been called the common bell, To ring, when fire breaks out, to tell.

There is in the abbey church at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, a fire-bell confined exclusively to alarms in case of conflagrations. The motto around the rim or carrel runs thus:—

1652. Lord, quench this furious flame; Arise, run, help, put out the same.

The books of the Roman Catholic faith contain a ritual for the baptism of bells, which decrees that they be named and anointed,—a ceremonial which was supposed to insure them against the machinations of evil spirits.

On the largest of three bells placed by Edward III. in the Little Sanctuary, Westminster, are these words:—

King Edward made me thirtie thousand weight and three; Take me down and wey me, and more you shall find me.

The Great Tom of Oxford was cast after two failures, April 8, 1680, from the metal of an old bell, on which was the following curious inscription, whence its name:—

In Thomæ laude resono bim bom sine fraude.

On a bell in Durham Cathedral is inscribed,—

To call the folk to church in time, I chime. When mirth and pleasure’s on the wing, I ring. And when the body leaves the soul, I toll.

On a bell at Lapley, in Staffordshire:—

I will sound and resound to thee, O Lord, To call thy people to thy word.

On a bell in Meivod Church, Montgomeryshire:—

I to the church the living call, And to the grave do summon all.

On Independence bell, Philadelphia, from Lev. xxv. 10:—

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.

In St. Helen’s Church, Worcester, England, is a chime of bells cast in the time of Queen Anne, with names and inscriptions commemorative of victories gained during her reign:—

1. §Blenheim.§

First is my note, and Blenheim is my name; For Blenheim’s story will be first in fame.

2. §Barcelona.§

Let me relate how Louis did bemoan His grandson Philip’s flight from Barcelon.

3. §Ramillies.§

_Deluged in blood, I, Ramillies, advance Britannia’s glory on the fall of France._

4. §Menin.§

Let Menin on my sides engraven be; And Flanders freed from Gallic slavery.

5. §Turin.§

When in harmonious peal I roundly go, Think on Turin, and triumphs on the Po.

6. §Eugene.§

With joy I hear illustrious Eugene’s name; Fav’rite of fortune and the boast of fame.

7. §Marlborough.§

But I, for pride, the greater Marlborough bear; Terror of tyrants, and the soul of war.

8. §Queen Anne.§

Th’ immortal praises of Queen Anne I sound, With union blest, and all these glories crowned.

The inscriptions are all dated 1706, except that on the seventh, which is dated 1712.

* * * * *

On one of eight bells in the church tower of Pilton, Devon, is a modern achievement in this kind of literature:—

Recast by John Taylor and Son, Who tho best prize for church bells won At the Great Ex-hi-bi-ti-on In London, 1—8—5 and 1.

In St. John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong:—

I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. (Acts xxii. 21.)

At Fotheringay, Northamptonshire:—

Domini laudem, non verbo sed voce resonabo.

At Hornby:—

When I do ring, God’s praises sing; When I do toll, Pray heart and soul.

At Nottingham:—

I toll the funeral knell; I hail the festal day; The fleeting hour I tell; I summon all to pray.

At Bolton:—

My roaring sound doth warning give That men cannot here always live.

Distich inscribed on a bell at Bergamoz, by Cardinal Orsini, Benedict XIII.:—

Convoco, signo, noto, compello, concino, ploro, │ │ │ │ │ │ Arma, Dies, Horas, Fulgura, Festa, Rogos.

Similar in form is an inscription on Lindsey Court-house:—

Hæc domus Odit amat punit conservat honorat │ │ │ │ │ Nequitiam, pacem, crimina, jura, bonos.

On the clock of the town hall of Bala, North Wales, is the following inscription:—

Here I stand both day and night, To tell the hours with all my might; Do thou example take by me, And serve thy God as I serve thee.

FLY-LEAF INSCRIPTIONS IN BOOKS.

The following lines, formerly popular among youthful scholars, may still be found in school-books:—

This book is mine By right divine; And if it go astray, I’ll call you kind My desk to find And put it safe away.

* * * * *

This book is mine,—that you may know, By letters two I will you show: The first is J, a letter bright; The next is S in all men’s sight. But if you still my name should miss, Look underneath, and here it is:— §John Smith§.

* * * * *

Whoe’er this book, if lost, doth find, I hope will have a generous mind, And bring it to the owner,—me, Whose name they’ll see page fifty-three.

The curious warning subjoined—paradoxical in view of the improbability of any honest friend pilfering—has descended to our times from the days of black-letter printing:—

Steal not this book, my honest friend, For fear the gallows be your end; For if you do, the Lord will say, Where is that book you stole away?

Another often met with is this:—

Hic liber est meus, Testis et est Deus; Si quis me quærit, Hic nomen erit.

The two following admonitions are full of salutary advice to book-borrowers:—

Neither blemish this book, or the leaves double down, Nor lend it to each idle friend in the town; Return it when read; or, if lost, please supply Another as good to the mind and the eye. With right and with reason you need but be friends, And each book in my study your pleasure attends.

* * * * *

If thou art borrowed by a friend, Right welcome shall he be, To read, to study, not to lend, But to return to me.

Not that imparted knowledge doth Diminish learning’s store; But books, I find, if often lent, Return to me no more.

☞ Read slowly, pause frequently, think seriously, keep clean, =RETURN DULY=, with the corners of the leaves not turned down.

* * * * *

Of the warning and menacing kind are the following:—

This book is one thing, My fist is another; Touch this one thing, You’ll sure feel the other.

* * * * *

Si quisquis furetur This little _libellum, Per Bacchum per Jovem_! I’ll kill him, I’ll fell him, In ventum illius I’ll stick my scalpellum, And teach him to steal My little libellum.

* * * * *

Ne me prend pas; On te pendra.

* * * * *

Gideon Snooks, Ejus liber. Si quis furetur; Per collum pendetur, Similis huic pauperi animali.

Here follows a figure of an unfortunate individual suspended “in malam crucem.”

Small is the wren, Black is the rook; Great is the sinner That steals this book. This is Thomas Jones’s book— You may just within it look; But you’d better not do more, For the Devil’s at the door, And will snatch at fingering hands; Look behind you—there he stands!

The following macaronic is taken from a copy of the Companion to the Festivals and Fasts, 1717:—

To the Borrower of this Book.

Hic Liber est meus, Deny it who can, Samuel Showell, Jr., An honest man. In vico corvino [locale appended] I am to be found, Si non mortuus sum, And laid in the ground. At si non vivens, You will find an heir Qui librum recipiet; You need not to fear. Ergo cum lectus est Restore it, and then Ut quando mutuaris I may lend again. At si detineas, So let it be lost, Expectabo Argentum, As much as it cost (viz.: 5_s._)

To the Finder.

If I this lose, and you it find, Restore it me, be not unkind; For if not so, you’re much to blame, While as below you see my name.—[Name appended.]

Taken from an old copy-book:

All you, my friends, who now expect to see A piece of writing, here performed by me, Cast but a smile on this my mean endeavor, I’ll strive to mend, and be obedient ever.

On the fly-leaf of a Bible may sometimes be seen:

Could we with ink the ocean fill, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And were the skies of parchment made, And every man a scribe by trade, To tell the love of God alone Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky.

The two following are very common in village schools:—

This is Giles Wilkinson, his book; God give him grace therein to look; Nor yet to look, but understand That learning’s better than house and land; For when both house and land are spent, Then learning is most excellent.

* * * * *

John Smith is my name, England is my nation, London is my dwelling-place, And Christ is my salvation, And when I’m dead and in the grave, And all my bones are rotten, When this you see, remember me, Though I am long forgotten.

This pretty presentation-verse is sometimes met with:—

Take it,—’tis a gift of love That seeks thy good alone; Keep it for the giver’s sake, And read it for thy own.

The early conductors of the press were in the habit of affixing to the end of the volumes they printed some device or couplet concerning the book, with the names of the printer and proof-reader added. The following example is from Andrew Bocard’s edition of The Pragmatic Sanction, Paris, 1507:—

Stet liber, hic donec fluctus formica marinos Ebibat; et totum testudo perambulet orbem

(May this volume continue in motion, And its pages each day be unfurled; Till an ant to the dregs drink the ocean, Or a tortoise has crawled round the world.)

On the title-page of a book called Gentlemen, Look about You, is the following curious request:—

Read this over if you’re wise, If you’re not, then read it twice: If a fool, and in the gall Of bitterness, read not at all.

MOTTO ON A CLOCK.

Quæ lenta accedit, quam velox præterit hora! Ut capias, patiens esto, sed esto vigil!

Slow comes the hour: its passing speed how great: Waiting to seize it,—vigilantly wait!

WATCH-PAPER INSCRIPTION.

Onward perpetually moving, These faithful hands are ever proving How quick the hours fly by; This monitory, pulse-like beating Seems constantly, methinks, repeating, Swift! swift! the moments fly. Reader, be ready,—for perhaps before These hands have made one revolution more, Life’s spring is snapt,—you die!

Here, reader, see in youth, in age, or prime, The stealing steps of never-standing Time: With wisdom mark the moment as it flies; Think what a moment is to him who dies.

Little monitor, impart Some instruction to the heart; Show the busy and the gay Life is hasting swift away. Follies cannot long endure, Life is short and death is sure. Happy those who wisely learn Truth from error to discern.

Could but our tempers more like this machine, Not urged by passion, nor delayed by spleen, And true to Nature’s regulating power, By virtuous acts distinguish every hour; Then health and joy would follow as they ought The laws of motion, and the laws of thought; Sweet health to pass the present moment o’er, And everlasting joy when time shall be no more.

SUN-DIAL INSCRIPTIONS.

Sine sole sileo. (Without sunlight I give no information.)

Scis horas; nescis horam. (You know the hours; you know not the hour [of death].)

Afflictis lentæ, celeres gaudentibus horæ. (The hours pass slowly for the afflicted, rapidly for the joyous.)

Vado e vegno giorno; Ma tu andrai senza ritorno.

(I go and come every day; But thou shalt go without return.)

May the dread book at our last trial, When open spread, be like this dial; May Heaven forbear to mark therein The hours made dark by deeds of sin; Those only in that record write Which virtue like the sun makes bright.

If o’er the dial glides a shade, redeem The time, for lo! it passes like a dream; But if ’tis all a blank, then mark the loss Of hours unblest by shadows from the cross.

INSCRIPTION OVER A SPRING.

Whoe’er thou art that stays’st to quaff The streams that here from waters dim Arise to fill thy cup and laugh In sparkling beads about the brim, In all thy thoughts and words as pure As these sweet waters mayst thou be; To all thy friends as firm and sure, As prompt in all thy charity.

INSCRIPTIONS ON AN ÆOLIAN HARP.

AT THE ENDS.

Fingent Æolio carmine nobilem. (Hor. iv. 3.)

Partem aliquam, oh venti, divum referatis ad aures. (Virg. Buc. 3.)

ON THE SIDE.

Hail, heavenly harp, where Memnon’s skill is shown, That charm’st the ear with music all thy own! Which, though untouched, canst rapturous strains impart. Oh, rich of genuine nature, free from art! Such the wild warblings of the chirping throng, So simply sweet the untaught virgin’s song.

Mr. Longfellow’s admirers will remember his beautiful little poem commencing:—

I like that ancient Saxon phrase which calls The burial-ground God’s acre.

This “Saxon phrase” is not obsolete. It may be seen, for instance, inscribed over the entrance to a modern cemetery at Basle—

=Gottes Acker.=

Over a gateway near the church of San Eusebio, Rome:—

Tria sunt mirabilia; Trinus et unus, Deus et homo, Virgo et mater.

Over the door of the house in which Selden was born, Salvington, Sussex:—

Gratus, honesti, mihi; non claudar, inito sedeq’. Fur, abeas; non su’ facta soluta tibi.

Thus paraphrased:—

Thou’rt welcome, honest friend; walk in, make free; Thief, get thee gone; my doors are closed to thee.

HOUSE INSCRIPTIONS.

On the Town-house Wittenberg:—

Ist’s Gottes Werk, so wird’s bestehen; Ist’s Menschens, so wird’s untergehen.

(If God’s work, it will aye endure; If man’s, ’tis not a moment sure.)

Over the gate of a Casino, near Maddaloni:—

AMICIS— Et ne paucis pateat, Etiam fictis.

(My gate stands open for my friends; But lest of these too few appear, Let him who to the name pretends Approach and find a welcome here.)

On a west-of-England mansion:—

Welcome to all through this wide-opening gate; None come too early, none depart too late.

Fuller (Holy and Profane State) and Walton (Life of George Herbert) notice a verse engraved upon a mantelpiece in the Parsonage House built by George Herbert at his own expense. The faithful minister thus counsels his successor:—

If thou dost find A house built to thy mind, Without thy cost, Serve thou the more §God§ and the poor: My labor is not lost.

The following is emblazoned around the banqueting hall of Bulwer’s ancestral home, Knebworth:—

Read the Rede of the Old Roof Tree. Here be trust fast. Opinion free. Knightly Right Hand. Christian knee. Worth in all. Wit in some. Laughter open. Slander dumb. Hearth where rooted Friendships grow, Safe as Altar even to Foe. And the sparks that upwards go When the hearth flame dies below, If thy sap in them may be, Fear no winter, Old Roof Tree.

On a pane of glass in an old window in the coffee-room of the White Lion, Chester, England:—

Right fit a place is window glass To write the name of bonny lass; And if the reason you should speir, Why both alike are brittle geir, A wee thing dings a lozen lame— A wee thing spoils a maiden’s fame.

Tourist’s wit on a window pane at Lodore:—

When I see a man’s name Scratched upon the glass, I know he owns a diamond, And his father owns an ass.

On a pane of the Hotel des Pays-Bas, Spa, Belgium:—

1793. I love but one, and only one; Oh, Damon, thou art he. Love thou but one and only one, And let that one be me.

MEMORIALS.

An English gentleman, who, in 1715, spent some time in prison, left the following memorial on the windows of his cell. On one pane of glass he wrote:—

That which the world miscalls a jail, A private closet is to me; Whilst a good conscience is my bail, And innocence my liberty.

On another square he wrote, Mutare vel timere sperno, and on a third pane, sed victa Catoni.[31]

Footnote 31:

Lucan’s Pharsalia. (Lib. 1.)

A Mr. Barton, on retiring with a fortune made in the wool-trade, built a fair stone house at Holme, in Nottinghamshire, in the window of which was the following couplet,—an humble acknowledgment of the means whereby he had acquired his estate:—

I thank God, and ever shall; It is the sheep hath paid for all.

FRANCKE’S ENCOURAGING DISCOVERY.

It is said that when Francke was engaged in the great work of erecting his world-known Orphan-House at Halle, for the means of which he looked to the Lord in importunate prayer from day to day, an apparently accidental circumstance made an abiding impression on him and those about him. A workman, in digging a part of the foundation, found a small silver coin, with the following inscription:—

“Jehova, Conditor, Condita Coronide Coronet.” (May Jehovah, the builder, finish the building.)

GOLDEN MOTTOES.

A vain man’s motto,— Win gold and wear it. A generous man’s motto,— Win gold and share it. A miser’s motto,— Win gold and spare it. A profligate’s motto,— Win gold and spend it. A broker’s motto,— Win gold and lend it. A fool’s motto,— Win gold and end it. A gambler’s motto,— Win gold and lose it. A sailor’s motto,— Win gold and cruise it. A wise man’s motto,— Win gold and use it.

POSIES FROM WEDDING-RINGS.

Portia. A quarrel, ho, already! What’s the matter?

Gratiano. About a hoop of gold, a paltry ring That she did give me: whose posy was For all the world like cutler’s poetry Upon a knife:[32] Love me, and leave me not.— Merchant of Venice, Act V.

Footnote 32:

Knives were formerly inscribed, by means of aqua-fortis, with short sentences in distich.

Hamlet. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?— Hamlet, Act III. sc. 2.

Jacques. You are full of pretty answers: have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths’ wives, and conned them out of rings?—

As You Like It, Act III. sc. 2.

The following posies were transcribed by an indefatigable collector, from old wedding-rings, chiefly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The orthography is, in most cases, altered:—

Death never parts Such loving hearts.

Love and respect I do expect.

No gift can show The love I owe.

Let him never take a wife That will not love her as his life.

In loving thee I love myself.

A heart content Can ne’er repent.

In God and thee Shall my joy be.

Love thy chaste wife Beyond thy life. 1681.

Love and pray Night and day.

Great joy in thee Continually.

My fond delight By day and night.

Pray to love; Love to pray. 1647.

In thee, my choice, I do rejoice. 1677.

Body and mind In thee I find.

Dear wife, thy rod Doth lead to God.

God alone Made us two one.

Eternally My love shall be.

All I refuse, And thee I choose.

Worship is due To God and you.

Love and live happy. 1689.

Joy day and night Be our delight.

Divinely knit by Grace are we; Late two, now one; the pledge here see. 1657.

Endless my love As this shall prove.

Avoid all strife ’Twixt man and wife.

Joyful love This ring doth prove.

In thee, dear wife, I find new life.

Of rapturous joy I am the toy.

In thee I prove The joy of love.

In loving wife Spend all thy life. 1697.

In love abide Till death divide.

In unity Let’s live and die.

Happy in thee Hath God made me.

Silence ends strife With man and wife.

None can prevent The Lord’s intent.

God did decree Our unity.

I kiss the rod From thee and God.

In love and joy Be our employ.

Live and love; Love and live.

God above Continue our love.

True love will ne’er forget.

Faithful ever, Deceitful never.

As gold is pure, So love is sure.

Love, I like thee, Sweet, requite me.

God sent her me, My wife to be.

Live and die In constancy.

My beloved is mine, And I am hers.

Within my breast Thy heart doth rest.

God above Increase our love.

Be true to me That gives it thee.

Both heart and hand At your command.

My heart you have, And yours I crave.

Christ and thee My comfort be.

As God decreed, So we agreed.

No force can move Affixed love.

For a kiss Take this.

The want of thee Is grief to me.

I fancy none But thee alone.

One word for all, I love and shall.

Your sight, My delight.

God’s blessing be On thee and me.

I will be yours While breath endures.

Love is sure Where faith is pure.

Thy friend am I, An so will die.

God’s appointment Is my contentment.

Knit in one By Christ alone.

My dearest Betty Is good and pretty.

Sweetheart, I pray Do not say nay.

Parting is pain While love doth remain.

Hurt not that heart Whose joy thou art.

Thine eyes so bright Are my delight.

Take hand and heart, I’ll ne’er depart.

If you consent, You’ll not repent.

’Tis in your will To save or kill.

As long as life, Your loving wife.

If you deny, Then sure I die.

Thy friend am I, And so will die.

Let me in thee Most happy be.

God hath sent My heart’s content.

You and I Will lovers die.

Thy consent Is my content.

I wish to thee All joy may be.

In thee my love All joy I prove.

Beyond this life Love me, dear wife.

Love and joy Can never cloy.

The pledge I prove Of mutual love.

I love the rod And thee and God.

Desire, like fire, Doth still inspire.

My heart and I, Until I die.

This ring doth bind Body and mind.

Endless as this Shall be our bliss.—§Thos. Bliss.§ 1719.

I do rejoice In thee my choice.

Love him in heart, Whose joy thou art.

I change the life Of maid to wife.

Endless my love For thee shall prove.

Not Two, but One. Till life be gone.

Numbers, vi. 24, 25, 26.

In its circular continuity, the ring was accepted as a type of eternity, and, hence, the stability of affection.

Constancy and Heaven are round, And in this the Emblem’s found.

This is love, and worth commending, Still beginning, never ending.

Or, as Herrick says,—

And as this round Is nowhere found To flaw or else to sever, So let our love As endless prove, And pure as gold forever.

LADY KATHERINE GREY’S WEDDING-RING.

The ring received by this excellent woman, who was a sister of Lady Jane Grey, from her husband, the Earl of Hertford, at their marriage, consisted of five golden links, the four inner ones bearing the following lines, of the earl’s composition:—

As circles five by art compact shewe but one ring in sight, So trust uniteth faithfull mindes with knott of secret might, Whose force to breake but greedie Death noe wight possesseth power, As time and sequels well shall prove. My ringe can say no more.

Parallel Passages.

INCLUDING IMITATIONS, PLAGIARISMS, AND ACCIDENTAL COINCIDENCES.

Pretensions to originality are ludicrous.—§Byron’s§ Letters.

_An apple cleft in two is not more twin Than these two creatures._—Twelfth Night, V. 1.

Milton “borrowed” other poets’ thoughts, but he did not borrow as gipsies borrow children, spoiling their features that they may not be recognized. No, he returned them improved. Had he “borrowed” your coat, he would have restored it with a new nap upon it!—§Leigh Hunt.§

* * * * *

Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long.—§Goldsmith§: Hermit.

Evidently stolen from §Dr. Young§:—

Man wants but little, nor that little long.—Night Thoughts.

* * * * *

Be wise to-day: ’tis madness to defer.—Night Thoughts.

But §Congreve§ had said, not long before,—

Defer not till to-morrow to be wise; To-morrow’s sun to thee may never rise.—Letter to Cobham.

* * * * *

Like angels’ visits, few and far between.—§Campbell§: Pleasures of Hope.

Copied from §Blair§:—

——like an ill-used ghost Not to return;—or if it did, its visits, Like those of angels, short and far between.—Grave.

But this pretty conceit originated with §Norris§, of Bemerton, (died 1711,) in a religious poem:—

But those who soonest take their flight Are the most exquisite and strong: Like angels’ visits, short and bright, Mortality’s too weak to bear them long.—The Parting.

* * * * *

Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart.—§Gray’s§ Bard.

§Gray§ himself points out the imitation in §Shakspeare§:—

You are my true and honorable wife; As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart.—Julius Cæsar, Act II. Sc. 1.

§Otway§ also makes Priuli exclaim to his daughter,—

Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life, Dear as these eyes that weep in fondness o’er thee.—Venice Preserved.

* * * * *

And leave us leisure to be good.—§Gray§: Ode to Adversity.

And know, I have not yet the leisure to be good.—§Oldham.§

* * * * *

Thou tamer of the human breast, Whose iron scourge and torturing hour The bad affright, afflict the best.—§Gray§: Ode to Adversity.

When the scourge Inexorably, and the torturing hour, Calls us to penance.—§Milton§: Paradise Lost.

* * * * *

Lo, where the rosy-bosomed hours, Fair Venus’ train, appear!—§Gray§: Ode to Spring.

The graces and the rosy-bosomed hours Thither all their bounties bring.—§Milton§: Comus.

En hic in roseis latet papillis.—§Catullus.§

* * * * *

Full many a gem, of purest ray serene, The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear; Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.—§Gray§: Elegy.

There kept my charms concealed from mortal eye, Like roses that in deserts bloom and die.—§Pope§: Rape of the Lock.

In distant wilds, by human eye unseen, She rears her flowers and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace, And waste their music on the savage race.—§Young.§

And, like the desert’s lily, bloom to fade.—§Shenstone§: Elegy IV.

* * * * *

Nor waste their sweetness on the desert air.—§Churchill§, Gotham.

Which else had wasted in the desert air. §Lloyd§: Ode at Westminster School.

* * * * *

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.—§Gray§: Elegy.

And left the world to wretchedness and me.—§Moss§: Beggar’s Petition.

* * * * *

The swallow oft beneath my thatch Shall twitter from her clay-built nest, &c.—The Wish.

Doubtless suggested to §Rogers§ by the lines in §Gray’s§ Elegy:—

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from her straw-built shed, &c.

* * * * *

The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.—§Gray.§

Lumenque juventæ purpureum.—§Virgil.§ Æn. I. 590.

And quaff the pendent vintage as it grows. §Gray§: Alliance of Education and Government.

For this expression §Gray§ was indebted to §Virgil§:—

Non eadem arboribus pendet vindemia nostris, &c.—Georg. ii. 89.

* * * * *

The attic warbler pours her throat.—§Gray§: Ode to Spring.

Is it for thee the linnet pours her throat?—§Pope§: Essay on Man.

§Gray§ says concerning the blindness of Milton,—

He passed the flaming bounds of space and time: The living throne, the sapphire blaze, Where angels tremble while they gaze, He saw; but, blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.

(§Dr. Johnson§ remarks that if we suppose the blindness caused by study in the formation of his poem, this account is poetically true and happily imagined.)

* * * * *

§Hermias§, a Galatian writer of the second century, says of Homer’s blindness,—

When Homer resolved to write of Achilles, he had an exceeding desire to fill his mind with a just idea of so glorious a hero: wherefore, having paid all due honors at his tomb, he entreats that he may obtain a sight of him. The hero grants his poet’s petition, and rises in a glorious suit of armor, which cast so insufferable a splendor that Homer lost his eyes while he gazed for the enlargement of his notions.

(§Pope§ says if this be any thing more than mere fable, one would be apt to imagine it insinuated his contracting a blindness by too intense application while he wrote the Iliad.)

* * * * *

§Hume’s§ sarcastic fling at the clergy in a note to the first volume of his history is not original. He says,—

The ambition of the clergy can often be satisfied only by promoting ignorance, and superstition, and implicit faith, and pious frauds; and having got what Archimedes only wanted,—another world on which he could fix his engine,—no wonder they move this world at their pleasure.

In §Dryden’s§ Don Sebastian, Dorax thus addresses the Mufti:—

Content you with monopolizing Heaven, And let this little hanging ball alone; For, give you but a foot of conscience there, And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.

§Dryden§ says of the Earl of Shaftesbury,—

David for him his tuneful harp had strung, And Heaven had wanted one immortal song.—Absalom and Achitophel.

§Pope§ adopts similar language in addressing his friend Dr. Arbuthnot:—

Friend of my life! which did not you prolong, The world had wanted many an idle song.

For truth has such a face and such a mien, As to be loved needs only to be seen.—§Dryden.§

Vice is a monster of such hideous mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen.—§Pope.§

* * * * *

Great wits to madness nearly are allied.—§Dryden§: Abs. and Achit.

§Seneca§ said, eighteen centuries ago,—

Nullum magnum ingenium absque mistura dementiæ est:—De Tranquil.;

and Aristotle had said it before him (Problemata).

* * * * *

Praise undeserved is satire in disguise.—§Pope§: Imit. Horace.

§Sir Walter Scott§ says in his Woodstock,—in the scene where Alice Lee, in the presence of Charles II. under the assumed name of Louis Kerneguy, describes the character she supposes the king to have:—

Kerneguy and his supposed patron felt embarrassed, perhaps from a consciousness that the real Charles fell far short of his ideal character as designed in such glowing colors. In some cases exaggerated or inappropriate praise becomes the most severe satire.

* * * * *

Ye little stars, hide your diminished rays.—§Pope§: Epistle to Bathurst.

At whose sight all the stars Hide their diminished heads.—§Milton.§

* * * * *

Laugh where we must, be candid where we can, But vindicate the ways of God to man.—§Pope§: Essay on Man.

And justify the ways of God to man.—§Milton§: Paradise Lost.

* * * * *

On Butler who can think without just rage, The glory and the scandal of the age?—§Oldham§: Satire against Poetry.

Probably borrowed by §Pope§ in the following lines:—

At length Erasmus, that great injured name, The glory of the priesthood and the shame.—Essay on Criticism.

* * * * *

And more true joy Marcellus, exiled, feels, Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels.—§Pope§: Essay on Man.

Drawn from §Bolingbroke§, who plagiarized the idea from §Seneca§, who says,—

O Marcellus, happier when Brutus approved thy exile than when the commonwealth approved thy consulship.

* * * * *

For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight: He can’t be wrong whose life is in the right—§Pope§: Essay on Man.

Taken from §Cowley§:—

His faith perhaps in some nice tenets might Be wrong: his life, I’m sure, was in the right.

* * * * *

Is it, in heaven, a crime to love too well?—§Pope§: Elegy.

Imitated from §Crashawe’s§ couplet:—

And I,—what is my crime? I cannot tell, Unless it be a crime to have loved too well.

§Lamartine§, in his Jocelyn, has the same expression:—

Est-ce un crime, O mon Dieu, de trop aimer le beau?

* * * * *

A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.—Dunciad.

This smart piece of antithesis §Pope§ borrowed from §Quinctilian§, who says,—

Qui stultis eruditi videri volunt; cruditi stulti videntur.

§Dr. Johnson§ also hurled this missile at Lord Chesterfield, calling him “A lord among wits, and a wit among lords.” The earl had offended the rugged lexicographer, whose barbarous manners in company Chesterfield holds up, in his Letters to his son, as things to be avoided.

* * * * *

Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair.—§Pope§: Rape of the Lock.

This has a strong affinity with a passage in §Howell’s§ Letters:—

’Tis a powerful sex: they were too strong for the first, for the strongest, and for the wisest man that was: they must needs be strong, when one hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.

* * * * *

Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made.—§Goldsmith§: _Deserted Vil._

Probably from §De Caux§, an old French poet, who says,—

———————— C’est un verre qui luit, Qu’un souffle peut détruire, et qu’un souffle a produit.

* * * * *

Kings are like stars,—they rise and set,—_they have The worship of the world, but no repose_.—§Shelley§: Hellas.

Stolen from §Lord Bacon§:—

Princes are like to heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration, but no rest.—Of Empire.

§Burke§, in speaking of the morals of France prior to the Revolution, says,—

Vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

This statement—the falsity of which is apparent—is disproved by a score of contradictions. Let Lord Bacon suffice:—

Another [of the Rabbins] noteth a position in moral philosophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much corrupt manners as those that are half good and half evil.—Advancement of Learning.

Things not to be trusted:—

A bright sky, A smiling master, The cry of a dog, A harlot’s sorrow. Howitt’s Literature and Romance of Northern Europe.

Grant I may never be so fond To trust man in his oath or bond, Or a harlot for her weeping, Or a dog that seems a-sleeping. Apemantus’ Grace.—Timon of Athens.

The collocation of dogs and harlots in both passages is very remarkable.

* * * * *

All human race, from China to Peru, Pleasure, howe’er disguised by art, pursue. §Warton§: Universal Love of Pleasure, 1748.

Let observation, with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru. §Dr. Johnson§: Vanity of Human Wishes, 1749.

* * * * *

§Shakspeare’s§ dreamy Dane says,—

Man delights not me, nor woman neither.

A sentiment very nearly expressed in §Horace’s§ Ode to Venus:—

Me nec femina, nec puer, Jam nec spes animi credula mutui. Nec certare juvat mero, &c.—Lib. IV.

(As for me, neither woman, nor youth, nor the fond hope of mutual inclination, &c. delight me.)

* * * * *

The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage, Which God and nature do with actors fill; Kings have their entrance with due equipage, And some their parts play well, and others ill. §Thomas Heywood§: Apology for Actors, 1612.

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his life plays many parts. §Shakspeare§: As You Like It.

§Palladas§, a Greek poet of the third century, has the following, translated by Merivale:—

This life a theatre we well may call, Where every actor must perform with art, Or laugh it through and make a farce of all, Or learn to bear with grace his tragic part.

§Pythagoras§, who lived nearly two centuries later, also said,—

This world is like a stage whereon many play their parts.

* * * * *

Among the epigrams of §Palladas§ may be found the original of a modern saw, the purport of which is that an ignoramus, by maintaining a prudent silence, may pass for a wise man:—

Πᾶς τις ἀπαιδευτος φρονιμώτατος ἔστι σιωπῶν.

§Shakspeare§ uses it in the Merchant of Venice:—

O my Antonio, I do know of these That therefore only are reputed wise For saying nothing.—Act I. Sc. 1.

* * * * *

We come crying hither: Thou knowest the first time that we smell the air We wawl and cry.—— When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools.—King Lear, IV. 6.

Tum porro puer,—— Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut æquum est Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum. §Lucretius§: De Rer. Nat.

* * * * *

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveller returns.—Hamlet, Act III.

Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum Illuc unde negant redire quemquam.—§Catullus.§

A similar form of expression occurs in the Book of Job, x. 21, and xvi. 22; but it is probable, from this and other passages, that Shakspeare’s acquaintance with the Latin writers was greater than has been generally supposed. One of the commentators on Hamlet, in pointing out the similarity of ideas in the lines commencing, “The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,” &c. (Act I.) and the hymn of St. Ambrose in the Salisbury collection,—

Preco diei jam sonat, Noctis profundæ pervigil; Nocturna lux viantibus, A nocte noctem segregans. Hoc excitatus Lucifer, Solvit polum caligine; Hoc omnis errorum chorus Viam nocendi deserit. Gallo canente spes redit, &c.,

has the following remark. “Some future Dr. Farmer may, perhaps, show how Shakspeare became acquainted with this passage, without being able to read the original; for the resemblance is too close to be accidental. But this, with many other passages, and especially his original Latinisms of phrase, give evidence enough of a certain degree of acquaintance with Latin,—doubtless not familiar nor scholar-like, but sufficient to give a coloring to his style, and to open to him many treasures of poetical thought and diction not accessible to the merely English reader. Such a degree of acquirement might well appear low to an accomplished Latinist like Ben Jonson, and authorize him to say of his friend,—

Though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek;—

yet the very mention of his ‘small Latin’ indicates that Ben knew that he had some.”

Mr. Fox, the orator, remarked on one occasion that Shakspeare must have had some acquaintance with Euripides, for he could trace resemblances between passages of their dramas: e.g. what Alcestis in her last moments says about her servants is like what the dying Queen Katharine (in Henry the Eighth) says about hers, &c.

That Shakspeare “may often be tracked in the snow” of §Terence§, as Dryden remarks of Ben Jonson, is evident from the following:—

Master, it is no time to chide you now: Affection is not rated from the heart. If love hath touched you, naught remains but so,— Redime te captum quam queas minimo.—Taming of the Shrew, I. 1.

The last line is manifestly an alteration of the words of Parmeno in The Eunuch of §Terence§:—

Quid agas, nisi ut te redimas captum quam queas minimo?—Act I. Sc. 1.

In another play §Terence§ says,—

Facile omnes, cum valemus, recta consilia, ægrotis damus; Tu si hic sis, aliter censeas.—Andrian XI. 1.

§Shakspeare§ has it,—

Men Can counsel and give comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it, Their counsel turns to passion.

.tb

’Tis all men’s office to speak patience To those that wring under the load of sorrow; But no man’s virtue, nor sufficiency, To be so moral when he shall endure The like himself.—Much Ado about Nothing, V. 1.

Apropos of this sentiment, §Swift§ says,—

I never knew a man who could not bear the misfortunes of others with the most Christian resignation.—Thoughts on Various Subjects.

And §La Rochefoucauld§,—

We have all of us sufficient fortitude to bear the misfortunes of others.—Max. 20.

* * * * *

Falstaff says, in 1 Henry IV. ii. 4,—

For though the camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.

Shakspeare evidently here parodied an expression in §Sir John Lyly§’s Euphues:—

Though the camomile, the more it is trodden and pressed downe, the more it spreadeth; yet the violet, the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner it withereth and decaieth.

Two verses in Titus Andronicus appear to have pleased Shakspeare so well that he twice subsequently closely copied them:—

She is a woman, therefore may be wooed, She is a woman, therefore may be won.—Titus Andron. II. 1.

She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won.—First Part Henry VI., V. 3.

Was ever woman in this humor wooed? Was ever woman in this humor won?—Richard III., I. 2.

Though Shakspeare has drawn freely from others, he is himself a mine from which many builders have quarried their materials,—a Coliseum

“from whose mass Walls, palaces, half cities, have been reared.”

* * * * *

Honor and shame from no condition rise: Act well your part, there all the honor lies.—§Pope§: Essay on Man.

This is only a new rendering of the thought thus expressed by Shakspeare:—

From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer’s deed.—_All’s Well that Ends Well, II. 3._

* * * * *

Let rusty steel a while be sheathed, And all those harsh and rugged sounds Of bastinadoes, cuts, and wounds, Exchanged to love’s more gentle style.—Hudibras, P. II. c. 1.

Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.—Richard III, I. 1.

* * * * *

The military figure of Shakspeare’s musical lines,—

Beauty’s ensign yet Is crimson in thy lips and on thy cheeks, And Death’s pale flag is not advanced there.—Romeo and Juliet, V. 3,

is closely imitated by §Chamberlain§:—

The rose had lost His ensign in her cheeks; and tho’ it cost Pains nigh to death, the lily had alone Set his pale banners up.—Pharonidas.

* * * * *

A dream Dreamed by a happy man, while the dark cast Is slowly brightening to his bridal morn.—§Tennyson.§

Copied from the Merchant of Venice:—

Then music is As those dulcet sounds in break of day, That creep into the dreaming bridegroom’s ear And summon him to marriage.—III. 2.

* * * * *

How can we expect another to keep our secret if we cannot keep it ourselves?—§La Rochefoucauld§, Max. 90.

Toute révélation d’un secret est la faute de celui qui l’a confié.—§La Bruyere§: De la Société.

I have played the fool, the gross fool, to believe The bosom of a friend would hold a secret Mine own could not contain.—§Massinger§: Unnatural Combat, V. 2.

Ham.—Do not believe it.

Ros.—Believe what?

Ham.—That I can keep your counsel, and not mine own. §Shakspeare§: Hamlet, IV. 2.

* * * * *

Anger is like A full-hot horse, who being allowed his way, Self mettle tires him.—Henry VIII. I. 1.

Let passion work, and, like a hot-reined horse, ’Twill quickly tire itself.—§Massinger§: Unnatural Combat.

* * * * *

Is this the Talbot so much feared abroad That with his name the mothers still their babes?—Henry VI. II. 3.

Nor shall Sebastian’s formidable name Be longer used to lull the crying babe.—§Dryden§: Don Sebastian.

Chili’s dark matrons long shall tame The froward child with Bertram’s name.—§Scott§: Rokeby.

* * * * *

It were better to be eaten to death with rust than to be scoured to nothing by perpetual motion.—Henry IV., Second Part, I. 2.

Reversed by §Byron§:—

Better to sink beneath the shock Than moulder piecemeal on the rock.—Giaour.

* * * * *

’Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus.—Cymbeline.

No lips did seem so fair In his conceit—through which he thinks doth fly So sweet a breath that doth perfume the air. §Marston§: Pygmalion’s Image.

* * * * *

Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just; And he but naked, though locked up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.—2 Henry VI. III. 2.

I’m armed with more than complete steel— The justice of my quarrel.—§Marlowe§: Lust’s Dominion.

* * * * *

All that glisters is not gold.—Merchant of Venice, II.

Yet gold all is not that doth golden seeme. §Spenser§: Faerie Queene, II.

* * * * *

Double, double, toil and trouble.—Macbeth.

Πόνος, πόνῳ, πόνον, φέρει.—§Sophocles§: Ajax.

* * * * *

We shall not look upon his like again.—Hamlet, I.

Quando ullum inveniet parem?—§Horace.§

* * * * *

None but himself can be his parallel.—§Theobald.§

Quæris Alcidæ parem? Nemo est nisi ipse.—§Seneca§: Hercules Furens.

* * * * *

The following song from §Shakspeare’s§ Measure for Measure, commencing as follows, is copied verbatim in §Beaumont§ and §Fletcher’s§ Bloody Brother:—

Take, O! take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn; And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn. But my kisses bring again, Seals of love, but sealed in vain.

* * * * *

The following line occurs both in §Pope’s§ Dunciad and §Addison’s§ Campaign:—

Rides on the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

* * * * *

§Ben Jonson§ borrowed his celebrated ballad To Celia,—

Drink to me only with thine eyes, &c.,

from §Philostratus§, a Greek poet, who flourished at the court of the Emperor Severus.

* * * * *

In §Milton’s§ description of the lazar-house occurs the following confused metaphor:—

Sight so deform what heart of rock could long Dry-eyed behold?

Derived from a similar combination in §Tibullus§:—

Flebis; non tua sunt duro præcordia ferro Vincta, nec in tenero stat tibi corde silex.—El. I. 63.

* * * * *

When Christ, at Cana’s feast, by power divine, Inspired cold water with the warmth of wine, See! cried they, while in redd’ning tide it gushed, The bashful water saw its God and blushed.—§Aaron Hill.§

Lympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.[33]—§Richard Crashawe.§

Footnote 33:

It is not a little singular that Mr. Arvine, in his excellent Cyclopædia, gives Milton and Dryden, while boys at school, equal credit for originating, in the same way, this beautiful idea.

* * * * *

Fond fool! six feet shall serve for all thy store, And he that cares for most shall find no more.—§Hall.§

His wealth is summed, and this is all his store: This poor men get, and great men get no more. §G. Webster§: Vittoria Corombona.

* * * * *

God made the country, and man made the town.—§Cowper§: Task.

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.—§Cowley.§

* * * * *

Hypocrisy, detest her as we may, May claim this merit still,—that she admits The worth of what she mimics with such care, And thus gives virtue indirect applause.—§Cowper§: Task.

Le vice rend hommage à la vertu en s’honorant de ses apparences.—§Massillon.§

* * * * *

Love is sweet Given or returned. Common as light is love, And its familiar voice wearies not ever; They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now; but those who feel it most Are happier still.—§Shelley§: Prometheus Unbound.

It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.—

It makes us proud when our love of a mistress is returned: it ought to make us prouder still when we can love her for herself alone, without the aid of any such selfish reflection. This is the religion of love.—§Hazlitt§: Characteristics.

* * * * *

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.—§Sterne§: Koran.

Preserving the health by too strict a regimen is a wearisome malady.—§La Rochefoucauld§: Max. 285.

* * * * *

The king can make a belted knight, A marquis, duke, and a’ that,—

* * * * *

The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man’s the gowd for a’ that.—§Burns.§

I weigh the man, not his title; ’tis not the king’s stamp can make the metal bettor or heavier. Your lord is a leaden shilling, which you bend every way, and debases the stamp he bears.

§Wycherly§: Plain Dealer.

Titles of honor are like the impressions on coin, which add no value to gold and silver, but only render brass current.—§Sterne§: Koran.

Kings do with men as with pieces of money: they give them what value they please, and we are obliged to receive them at their current, and not at their real, value.—§La Rochefoucauld§: Max. 160.

§Kossuth’s§ “To him that wills, nothing is impossible,”[34] is thus expressed by §La Rochefoucauld§:—

Nothing is impossible: there are ways which lead to every thing; and if we had sufficient will, we should always have sufficient means.—Max. 255.

Footnote 34:

Mirabeau’s hasty temper is well known. “Monsieur le Compte,” said his secretary to him one day, “the thing you require is impossible.” “Impossible!” exclaimed Mirabeau, starting from his chair: “never again use that foolish word in my presence.”

§Shelley§ gives the idea as follows:—

It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise: we might be all We dream of, happy, high, majestical. Where is the beauty, love, and truth we seek But in our minds? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire? Julian and Maddolo.

* * * * *

To most men, experience is like the stern-lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it has passed.—§Coleridge.§

We arrive complete novices at the different ages of life, and we often want experience in spite of the number of our years.—§La Rochefoucauld§: Max. 430.

The same idea may be found in the Adelphi of §Terence§, Act V. Sc. 2, v. 1–4.

* * * * *

For those that fly may fight again, Which he can never do that’s slain.—Hudibras.

He who fights and runs away May live to fight another day.—§Sir John Minnes.§

But §Demosthenes§, the famous Grecian orator, had said, long before,—

Ἀνὴρ ὁ φεύγων καὶ πάλιν μαχήσεται.

* * * * *

She could love none but only such As scorned and hated her as much.—Hudibras.

§Horace§, in describing such a capricious kind of love, uses the following language:—

—Leporem venator ut alta In nive sectatur, positum sic tangere nolit; Cantat et apponit: meus est amor huic similis; nam Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.—Satires, Book I. ii.,

which is nearly a translation of the eleventh epigram of §Callimachus§.

* * * * *

What woful stuff this madrigal would be In some starved hackney sonneteer, or me! But let a lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! §Pope§: Essay on Criticism.

§Molière§ has the same sentiment:—

Tous les discours sont des sottises Partant d’un homme sans éclat; Ce seraient paroles exquises, Si c’était un grand qui parlat.

It may also be found in §Ennius§, §Euripides§, and other writers. The last notability who has expressed the idea is §Emerson§, who says,—

It adds a great deal to the force of an opinion to know that there is a man of mark and likelihood behind it.

* * * * *

Others may use the ocean as their road, Only the English make it their abode:— We tread the billows with a steady foot.—§Waller.§

§Campbell§ adopts the thoughts of these italicized words in the Mariners of England:—

Britannia needs no bulwark, No towers along the steep: Her march is on the mountain-waves, Her home is on the deep.

* * * * *

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of the lake; So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom, and be lost in me.—§Tennyson§: Princess.

And like a lily on a river floating, She floats upon the river of his thoughts. §Longfellow§: Spanish Student.

* * * * *

You must either soar or stoop, Fall or triumph, stand or droop; You must either serve or govern, Must be slave or must be sovereign; Must, in fine, be block or wedge, Must be anvil or be sledge.—§Goethe.§

In this world a man must be either anvil or hammer. §Longfellow§: Hyperion.

Lockhart says, in his Life of Sir Walter Scott, “It was on this occasion, I believe, that Scott first saw his friend’s brother Reginald (§Heber§), in after-days the Apostolic Bishop of Calcutta. He had just been declared the successful competitor for that year’s poetical prize, and read to Scott at breakfast, in Brazennose College, the MS. of his Palestine. Scott observed that in the verses on Solomon’s Temple one striking circumstance had escaped him, namely, that no tools were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful lines,—

No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung: Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence!” &c.

§Cowper§ had previously expressed the same idea:—

Silently as a dream the fabric rose: No sound of hammer nor of saw was there: Ice upon ice, &c.—Palace of Ice.

§Milton§ had also said,—

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation.—Paradise Lost.

* * * * *

Speech is the light, the morning of the mind: It spreads the beauteous images abroad Which else lie furled and shrouded in the soul.—

§Dryden§ evidently had in mind the language of §Themistocles§ to the King of Persia:—

Speech is like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in packs (i.e. rolled up, or packed up).

* * * * *

Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.—§Pope§: Homer’s Iliad, Book XIV.

§Voltaire§, in his Œdipus, makes Jocasta say,—

Tout parle contre nous, jusqu’à notre silence.

In §Milton’s§ Samson Agonistes we find,—

The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer.

* * * * *

“A SORROW’S CROWN OF SORROW.”

A similar thought may be found in §Dante§:—

——nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.—Inferno, Canto v. 121.

(There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness.)

Also §Chaucer§:—

For of Fortune’s sharpe adversite The worst kind of infortune is this: A man to have been in prosperite And it remember when it passid is. Troilus and Cresside, B. III.

The same thought occurs in the writings of other Italian poets. See §Marino§, Adone, c. xiv.; §Fortinguerra§, Ricciardetto, c. xi.; and §Petrarch§, canzone 46. The original was probably in §Boetius§, de Consol. Philosoph.:—

In omni adversitate fortunæ infeliCissimum genus est infortunii fuisse felicem et non esse.—L. ii. pr. 4.

* * * * *

The famous pun in the imitation of §Crabbe§ in the Rejected Addresses:—

The youth, with joy unfeigned, Regained the felt, and felt what he regained,

and of §Holmes§ in his Urania:—

Mount the new Castor:—ice itself will melt; Boots, gloves, may fail; the hat is always felt,

had been anticipated by §Thomas Heywood§ in a song:—

But of all felts that may be felt, Give me your English beaver.

* * * * *

§Falstaff’s§ pun:—

Indeed I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift,—(Merry Wives of Windsor.)

had also been anticipated, and may be found in §Heywood’s§ “Epigrammes,” 1562:—

“Where am I least, husband?” Quoth he, “In the waist; Which cometh of this, thou art vengeance strait-laced. Where am I biggest, wife?” “In the waste,” quoth she, “For all is waste in you, as far as I see.”

The same play on the word occurs subsequently in §Shirley’s§ comedy of The Wedding, 1629:—

He is a great man indeed; something given to the waist, for he lives within no reasonable compass.

* * * * *

§Moore§, in his song Dear Harp of my Country, sings,—

If the pulse of the patriot, soldier, or lover Have throbbed at our lay, ’tis thy glory alone; I was but as the wind passing heedlessly over, And all the wild sweetness I waked was thy own;—

an idea probably caught from §Horace’s§ Ode to Melpomene:—

Totum muneris hoc tui est, Quod monstror digito prætereuntium Romanæ fidicen lyræ: Quod spiro, et placeo, si placeo, tuum est.

(That I am pointed out by the fingers of passers-by as the stringer of the Roman lyre, is entirely thy gift: that I breathe and give pleasure, if I do give pleasure, is thine.)

* * * * *

Now, by those stars that glance O’er Heaven’s still expanse, Weave we our mirthful dance, Daughters of Zea!—§Moore§: Evenings in Greece.

Beneath the moonlight sky The festal warblings flowed Where maidens to the Queen of Heaven Wove the gay dance.—§Keble§: Christian Year.

* * * * *

Her ‘prentice han’ she tried on man, An’ then she made the lassies, O. §Burns§: Green Grow, &c.

Man was made when Nature was but an apprentice, but woman when she was a skilful mistress of her art.—Cupid’s Whirligig (1607).

* * * * *

A book, upon whose leaves some chosen plants By his own hand disposed with nicest care, In undecaying beauty were preserved;— Mute register, to him, of time and place And various fluctuations in the breast; To her a monument of faithful love Conquered, and in tranquillity retained. §Wordsworth§: Excursion.

Like flower-leaves in a precious volume stored, To solace and relieve Some heart too weary of the restless world.—§Keble§: Christian Year.

* * * * *

Her pretty feet, Like smiles, did creep A little out, and then, As if they started at bo-peep, Did soon draw in again.—§Herrick.§

Imitated by §Sir John Suckling§ in his ballad of The Wedding:—

Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light; But, oh, she dances such a way, No sun upon an Easter day Is half so fine a sight!

* * * * *

So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart: Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel, While the same plumage that had warmed his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. §Byron§: On the Death of Kirke White.

§Waller§ says, in his Lines to a Lady singing a song of his own composing,—

That eagle’s fate and mine are one, Which, on the shaft that made him die, Espied a feather of his own Wherewith he’d wont to soar so high.

§Moore§ uses the same figure:—

Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom, See their own feathers plucked to wing the dart Which rank corruption destines for their heart.—Corruption.

The original in The Myrmidons of §Eschylus§ has been thus translated:—

An eagle once,—so Libyan legends say,— Struck to the heart, on earth expiring lay, And, gazing on the shaft that winged the blow, Thus spoke:—“Whilst others’ ills from others flow, To my own plumes, alas! my fate I owe.”

* * * * *

Even as a broken mirror, which the glass In every fragment multiplies, and makes A thousand images of one that was, The same, and still the more, the more it breaks. §Byron§: Childe Harold.

Suggested by the following passage:—

And as Praxiteles did by his glass when he saw a scurvy face in it, brake it to pieces, but for that one he saw many more as bad in a moment.

§Burton§: Anatomy of Melancholy, Part II., Sect. 3, (mem. 7.)

* * * * *

In her first passion woman loves her lover, In all the others, all she loves is love, &c.—§Byron§: Don Juan.

Borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—

Dans les premières passions les femmes aiment l’amant; dans les autres elles aiment l’amour.—Max. 494.

In the same place §Byron§ adds:—

Although, no doubt, her first of love-affairs Is that to which her heart is wholly granted, Yet there are some, they say, who have had none; But those who have ne’er end with only one.

And in some observations upon an article in Blackwood’s Magazine, he says,—

Writing grows a habit, like a woman’s gallantry. There are women who have had no intrigue, but few who have had but one only: so there are millions of men who have never written a book, but few who have written only one.

This idea is also borrowed from §La Rochefoucauld§:—

On peut trouver des femmes qui n’ont jamais eu de galanterie; mais il est rare d’en trouver qui n’en aient jamais eu qu’une.—Max. 73.

* * * * *

A thousand years scarce serve to form a state, An hour may lay it in the dust.—§Byron§: Childe Harold.

Cento si richieggono ad edificare; un solo basta per distruggere tutto.—§Muratori’s§ Annals.

* * * * *

Even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are formed.—Childe Harold.

Yet monsters from thy large increase we find, Engendered in the slime thou leav’st behind.—§Dryden§: The Medal.

* * * * *

I am not altogether of such clay As rots into the souls of those whom I survey.—Childe Harold.

The gods, a kindness I with thanks repay, Had formed me of another sort of clay.—§Churchill.§

* * * * *

What exile from himself can flee? To zones though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where’er I be, The blight of life,—the demon Thought.—Childe Harold.

Patriæ quis exul se quoque fugit?—§Horace§: Ode to Grosphus.

Vide also Epist. XI. 28.

* * * * *

To-morrow for the Moon we depart, But not to-night,—to-night is for the heart.—§Byron§: The Island.

Nunc vino pellite curas; Cras ingens iterabimus æquor.—§Horace§: Ode to Munatius Plancus.

(Now drown your cares in wine; To-morrow we shall traverse the great brine.)

* * * * *

§Dryden§, alluding to his work, says,—

When it was only a confused mass of thoughts tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished, and there either to be chosen or rejected by the judgment.—Rival Ladies (1664).

§Byron§ thus appropriates the idea:—

——As yet ’tis but a chaos Of darkly brooding thoughts; my fancy is In her first work, more nearly to the light Holding the sleeping images of things For the selection of the pausing judgment.—Doge of Venice, I. 2.

* * * * *

And if I laugh at any mortal thing, ’Tis that I may not weep.—§Byron§: Don Juan.

§Richardson§ had said, long before,—

Indeed, it is to this deep concern that my levity is owing; for I struggle and struggle, and try to buffet down my cruel reflections as they rise; and when I cannot, I am forced to try to make myself laugh that I may not cry; for one or other I must do: and is it not philosophy carried to the highest pitch for a man to conquer such tumults of soul as I am sometimes agitated by, and in the very height of the storm to quaver out a horse-laugh?

Clarissa Harlowe, Let. 84.

In the Antiquary of Sir §Walter Scott§, Maggie says to Oldbuck of Monkbarns (ch. xi.):—

It’s no fish ye’re buying, its men’s lives.

§Tom Hood§, appears to have borrowed this idea in the Song of the Shirt:—

It is not linen you’re wearing out. But human creatures’ lives.

* * * * *

In §Rogers’§ poem, Human Life is this couplet describing a good wife:—

A guardian angel o’er his hearth presiding, Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing.

In the Tatler, No. 49, it is said of a model couple, Amanda and Florio, that “their satisfactions are doubled, their sorrows lessened, by participation.”

* * * * *

Of the buccaneering adventurer described in Rokeby, Sir §Walter Scott§ says:—

Inured to danger’s direst form, Tornade and earthquake, flood and storm, Death had he seen by sudden blow, By wasting plague, by torture slow, By mine or breach, by steel or ball, Knew all his shapes and scorned them all.

Sir §Walter Raleigh§, in a letter to his wife on the eve, as he supposed, of his execution, speaks of himself as “one who, in his own respect, despiseth death in all his misshapen and ugly forms.”

* * * * *

Speaking of Burke, §Goldsmith§ says in his Retaliation:—

Who, born for universe, narrowed his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

§Pope§, in his Last Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, (Atterbury,) said:—

At this time, when you are cut off from a little society and made a citizen of the world at large, you should bend your talents, not to serve a party or a few, but all mankind.

* * * * *

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be, blest.—§Pope.§

Nous no jouissons jamais; nous espérons toujours.—§Massillon§, Sermon pour le Jour de St. Benoit.

* * * * *

The jocular saying of §Douglas Jerrold§, that a wife of forty should, like a bank-note, be exchangeable for two of twenty, was anticipated by §Byron§:—

Wedded she was some years, and to a man Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty; And yet, I think, instead of such a one ’Twere better to have two of five-and-twenty. Don Juan, lxii.

And still earlier by §Gay§ in Equivocation. In the colloquy between a bishop and an abbot, the bishop advises:—

These indiscretions lend a handle To lewd lay tongues to give us scandal For your vow’s sake, this rule I give t’ye, Let all your maids be turned of fifty.

The priest replied, I have not swerved, But your chaste precept well observed; That lass full twenty-five has told; I’ve yet another who’s as old; Into one sum their ages cast, So both my maids have fifty past.

* * * * *

Many readers will remember the lines by §Burns§, commencing:—

The day returns, my bosom burns, The blissful day we twa did meet; Though winter wild in tempest toiled, Ne’er summer morn was half sae sweet.

The turn of thought in this stanza bears a striking resemblance to the concluding lines of Ode cxi., of §M. A. Flaminius§. The following translation is close enough to point the resemblance:—

When, borne on Zephyr’s balmy wing Again returns the purple spring Instant the mead is gay with flowers The forest smiles, and through its bowers Once more the song-bird’s tuneful voice Bids nature everywhere rejoice. Yet fairer far and far more gay To me were winter’s darkest day, So, blessed thenceforth, it should restore My loved one to my arms once more.

* * * * *

§Moore§ says:—

Let conquerors boast Their fields of fame—he who in virtue’s arms A young warm spirit against beauty’s charms Who feels her brightness, yet defies her thrall Is the best, bravest conqueror of all.

§Howell§ in the Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ says:—

Alexander subdued the world—Cæsar his enemies—Hercules monsters—but he that overcomes himself is the true valiant captain.

* * * * *

Brutus says, in §Shakspeare’s§ Julius Cæsar, iv., 3:—

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows, and in miseries.

In §Bacon’s§ Advancement of Learning, B. 2, occurs this passage:—

In the third place, I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides and currents it hath, which, if they be not taken in due time, are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after game of reputation.

* * * * *

King Henry says, in §Shakspeare’s§ 2 Hen. VI., i. 1:—

O Lord, that lends me life, Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.

§George Herbert§ says:—

Thou that hast given so much to me, Give one thing more, a grateful heart.

* * * * *

§Vitruvius§ says:—There are various kinds of timber, as there are various kinds of flesh; one of men, one of fishes, one of beasts, and another of birds.

§St. Paul§ says:—All flesh is not the same flesh, &c., I Cor. xv. 39.

* * * * *

In §Coventry Patmore’s§ delicately beautiful poem, The Angel in the House, twice occurs the line,—

Her pleasure in her power to charm.

“An exquisite line,” says The Critic: “who could have believed that the ugly and often unjust word vanity could ever be melted down into so true and pretty and flattering a periphrasis?” §Thackeray§ uses the same idea:—

A fair young creature, bright and blooming yesterday, distributing smiles, levying homage, inspiring desire, conscious of her power to charm, and gay with the natural enjoyments of her conquests—who, in his walk through the world, has not looked on many such a one? The Newcomes.

E’en the slight hare-bell raised its head, Elastic from its airy tread. §Scott§, Lady of the Lake.

For other print her airy steps ne’er left; Her treading would not bend a blade of grass. §Ben Jonson§, The Sad Shepherd.

Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main. §Pope§, Essay on Criticism.

I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. §Tennyson§, In Memoriam, xxvii.

Magis gauderes quod habueras [amicum], quam mœreres quod amiseras.

§Seneca§, Epist. cxix.

* * * * *

The familiar epitaphic line,

Think what a woman should be—she was that,

finds a parallel in §Shakspeare’s§ Venus and Adonis:—

Look what a horse should have, he did not lack, Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

* * * * *

And homeless, near a thousand homes, I stood, And, near a thousand tables, pined and wanted food. §Wordsworth§, Guilt and Sorrow.

Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! Oh, it was pitiful, Near a whole city full Home she had none. §Hood§, Bridge of Sighs.

* * * * *

So that a doubt almost within me springs Of Providence. §Wordsworth§, Powers of Imagination.

Even God’s Providence seeming estranged. §Hood§, Bridge of Sighs.

* * * * *

Not that man may not here Taste of the cheer: But as birds drink, and straight lift up their head; So must he sip and think Of better drink He may attain to after he is dead. §George Herbert§, Man’s Medley.

Look at the chicken by the side of yonder pond, and let it rebuke your ingratitude. It drinks, and every sip it takes it lifts its head to heaven and thanks the giver of the rain for the drink afforded to it; while thou eatest and drinkest, and there is no blessing pronounced at thy meals and no thanksgiving bestowed upon thy Father for his bounty.

§Spurgeon§, Everybody’s Sermon.

* * * * *

§Toplady§ has bequeathed to us the beautiful hymn:—

Rock of ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee! Let the water and the blood, From thy riven side which flowed, Be of sin the double cure, Cleanse me from its guilt and power.

But §Daniel Brevint§ in The Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, (1673) had made this devout and solemn aspiration:—

O Rock of Israel, Rock of Salvation, Rock struck and cleft for me, let those two streams of blood and water, which once gushed out of thy side ... bring down with them salvation and holiness into my soul.

* * * * *

She (the Roman Catholic Church) may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast Solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s. §Macaulay§, Ranke’s History of the Popes.

The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will perhaps be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last some curious traveler from Lima will visit England, and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Baalbec and Palmyra:—but am I not prophesying contrary to my consummate prudence, and casting horoscopes of empires like Rousseau?

§Horace Walpole§, Letter to Mason.

* * * * *

Readers of Don Juan sometimes descant with rapture on the beauty of the lines (c. i. v. 123),—

’Tis sweet to hear the watch-dog’s honest bark Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home,—

The epithet deep-mouthed, as applied to the bark, being especially designated as “fine.” And fine it is, but §Byron§ found it in §Shakspeare§ and in §Goldsmith§:—

And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach. Taming of the Shrew, Induc. Sc. 1.

The laborers of the day were all retired to rest; the lights were out in every cottage; no sounds were heard but of the shrilling cock, and the deep-mouthed watch-dog at hollow distance.

Vicar of Wakefield, ch. xxii.

* * * * *

“Your sermon,” said a great critic to a great preacher, “was very fine; but had it been only half the length, it would have produced twice the impression.” “You are quite right,” was the reply; “but the fact is, I received but sudden notice to preach, and therefore I had not the time to make my sermon short.”

* * * * *

§Voltaire§ apologized for writing a long letter on the ground that he had not time to condense. In these cases the idea is borrowed from classical literature. §Pliny§ says in his Letters (lib. i. ep. xx.):—

Ex his apparet illum permulta dixisse; quum ederet, omisisse; ... ne dubitare possimus, quæ per plures dies, ut necesse erat, latius dixerit, postea recisa ac purgata in unum librum, grandem quidem, unum tamen, coarctasse.

(From this it is evident that he said very much; but, when he was publishing, he omitted much: ... so that we may not doubt that what he said more diffusely, as he was at the time forced to do, having afterwards retrenched and corrected, he condensed into one single book.)

The condensation and revision required more time and thought than the first production.

* * * * *

§Campbell§ says in O’Connor’s Child,—

For man’s neglect we loved it more.

And again, Lines on leaving a Scene in Bavaria,—

For man’s neglect I love thee more.

* * * * *

And §Walter Scott§ likewise imitates himself thus:—

His grasp, as hard as glove of mail, Forced the red blood drop from the nail. _Rokeby.__Canto_i.

He wrung the Earl’s hand with such frantic earnestness, that his grasp forced the blood to start under the nail.—Legend of Montrose.

* * * * *

In Rob Roy, Sir Walter makes Frank Osbaldistone say in his elegy on Edward the Black Prince,—

O for the voice of that wild horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, The dying hero’s call, That told imperial Charlemagne, How Paynim sons of swarthy Spain Had wrought his champion’s fall.

And in Marmion, toward the close of Canto Sixth, he says:—

O for a blast of that dread horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, When Rowland brave, and Oliver, And every paladin and peer, On Roncesvalles died.

When this inadvertent or unconscious coincidence in the poem and the novel was pointed out to Sir Walter, he replied, with his natural expression of comic gravity, “Ah! that was very careless of me. I did not think I should have committed such a blunder.”

* * * * *

“I tread on the pride of Plato,” said Diogenes, as he walked over Plato’s carpet. “Yes, and with more pride,” said Plato.—§Cecil§, Remains.

Trampling on Plato’s pride, with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion, &c. §Byron§, Don Juan, xvi. 43.

Diogenes I hold to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all honors than Alexander in rejecting none.

§Browne§, Religio Medici.

* * * * *

There is an Italian proverb used, in the extravagance of flattery, to compliment a handsome lady, expressive of this idea:—“When nature made thee, she broke the mould.” §Byron§ uses it in the closing lines of his monody on the death of Sheridan:—

Sighing that Nature formed but one such man, And broke the die,—in moulding Sheridan.

§Shakspeare§ also says, in the second stanza of Venus and Adonis,—

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife, Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

* * * * *

Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas. (From the sublime to the ridiculous there is but a step.)

This saying, commonly ascribed to §Napoleon§, was borrowed by him from §Tom Paine§, whose works were translated into French in 1791, and who says,—

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

Tom Paine, in turn, adopted the idea from §Hugh Blair§, who says, in one place,—

It is indeed extremely difficult to hit the precise point where true wit ends and buffoonery begins.

In another,—

It frequently happens that where the second line is sublime, the third, in which he meant to rise still higher, is perfect bombast.

Finally, §Blair§ borrowed the saying from §Longinus§, a celebrated Greek critic and rhetorical writer, who, in a Treatise On the Sublime, uses the same expression, with this slight modification, that he makes the transition a gradual one, while Blair, Paine, and Napoleon make it but a step.[35]

Footnote 35:

A curious instance of bathos occurs in Dr. Mavor’s account of Cook’s voyages:—“The wild rocks raised their lofty summits till they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, nor even a shrub big enough to make a tooth-pick.”

* * * * *

Evil communications corrupt good manners.—1 Cor. xv. 33.

φθείρουσιν ἤθη χρησθ’ ὁμιλίαι κακαί.—§Menander.§

Bonos corrumpunt mores congressus mali.—§Tertullian§: Ad Uxorem.

* * * * *

He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.—Eccl. i. 18.

From ignorance our comfort flows, The only wretched are the wise.—§Prior.§

Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.—§Gray§: Ode to Eton.

* * * * *

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope§: On Criticism.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.—§Bacon§: On Atheism.

* * * * *

In Paradise Lost, Book V. 601, we find the expression—

Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers;

and in Book I. 261, this powerful passage put in the mouth of Satan:—

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell; Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

In §Stafford’s§ Niobe, printed when Milton was in his cradle, (1611,) is the following:—

True it is, sir, (said the Devil,) that I, storming at the name of supremacy, sought to depose my Creator; which the watchful, all-seeing eye of Providence finding, degraded me of my angelic dignities—dispossessed me of all pleasures; and the seraphs and cherubs, the Throne, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Princedoms, Arch Angels, and all the Celestial Hierarchy, with a shout of applause, sung my departure out of Heaven. My alleluia was turned into an eheu. Now, forasmuch as I was an Angel of Light, it was the will of Wisdom to confine me to Darkness and make me Prince thereof. So that I, that could not obey in Heaven, might command in Hell; and, believe me, I had rather rule within my dark domain than to re-inhabit Cœlum empyream, and there live in subjection under check, a slave of the Most High.

Cæsar said he would rather be the first man in a village than the second man in Rome.

* * * * *

A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind.—§Garrick.§

I would help others out of a fellow-feeling.—§Burton§: Anat. of Mel.

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco.—§Virgil§: Æn. I.

* * * * *

And learn the luxury of doing good.—§Goldsmith§: Traveller.

For all their luxury was doing good.—§Garth§: Claremont.

He tried the luxury of doing good.—§Crabbe§: Tales.

* * * * *

The cups that cheer but not inebriate.—§Cowper§: Winter Evening.

Tar water is of a nature so mild and benign, and proportioned to the human constitution, as to warm without heating, to cheer but not inebriate,—§Bishop Berkeley§: Siris.

* * * * *

The dome of thought, the palace of the soul.—Byron: Childe Harold.

Tea does our fancy aid, Repress those vapors which the head invade, And keeps the palace of the soul.—§Waller§: On Tea.

* * * * *

None knew thee but to love thee.—§Halleck§: On Drake.

To know her was to love her.—§Rogers§: Jacqueline.

* * * * *

Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine Enlightens but yourselves.—§Blair§: Grave.

Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years, Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres. §Pope§: Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady.

* * * * *

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.—§Gray§: Elegy.

And pilgrim, newly on his road, with love Thrills, if he hear the vesper bell from far, That seems to mourn for the expiring day.—§Dante§, Cary’s Trans.

* * * * *

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.—§Gray§: Elegy.

Yet in our ashen cold is fire yrecken.—§Chaucer.§

* * * * *

Ἐάσατ’ ἤδη γῇ καλυφθῆναι νεκρόυς, ὅθεν δ’ ἕκαστον εἰς το ζῇν ἀφίκετο ἐνταῦθ’ ἀπελθεῖν· ΠΝΕΥΜΑ μὲν πρὸς ἈΙΘΕΡΑ τὸ σῶμα δ’ εἰς ΓΗΝ.—§Euripides§: Supplices.

(Let the dead be concealed in the earth, whence each one came forth into being, to return thence again—the spirit to the §SPIRIT’S SOURCE§, but the body to the §EARTH§.)

The resemblance between the above and the beautiful expression in the “Preacher’s” homily is very remarkable:—

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.—Eccles. xii. 7.

* * * * *

Ἐπάμεροι, τί δέ τις· τί δ’ οὔ τις· Σκιᾶς ὄναρ ἄνθρωποι.—§Pindar.§

(Things of a day! What is any one? What is he not? Men are the dream of a shadow.)

Man’s life is but a dream—nay, less than so, A shadow of a dream.—§Sir John Davies.§

* * * * *

Where highest woods, impenetrable To sun or starlight, spread their umbrage broad And brown as evening.—§Milton.§

The shades of eve come slowly down, The woods are wrapped in deeper brown.—§Scott§: Lady of the Lake.

The term brown, applied to the evening shade, is derived from the Italian, the expression “fa l’imbruno” being commonly used in Italy to denote the approach of evening.

* * * * *

’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical lore; And coming events cast their shadows before. §Campbell§: Lochiel’s Warning.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—§Shelley§: Defence of Poetry.

A similar form of expression occurs in §Paul’s§ Epistle to the Hebrews, x. 1.

* * * * *

The wolfs long howl by Oonalaska’s shore. §Campbell§: Pleasures of Hope.

Stolen from a line in an obscure poem called the Sentimental Sailor:—

The screaming eagle’s shriek that echoes wild, The wolf’s long howl in dismal concert joined, &c.

* * * * *

Perhaps in some lone, dreary, desert tower That Time had spared, _forth from the window looks, Half hid in grass, the solitary fox_; While from above, the owl, musician dire, Screams hideous, harsh, and grating to the ear. §Bruce§: Loch Leven.

In the Fragments attributed to §Ossian§ by Baron de Harold, Fingal paints the following beautiful word-picture:—

I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they are desolate: the flames had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the people is heard no more; the stream of Cutha was removed from its place by the fall of the walls; the thistle shoots there its lowly head; the moss whistled to the winds; the fox looked out of the windows, and the rank grass of the walls waved round his head; desolate is the dwelling of Morna: silence is in the house of her fathers.

And again:—

The dreary night owl screams in the solitary retreat of his mouldering ivy-covered tower.—Larnul, the Song of Despair.

The Persian poet quoted by Gibbon also says,—

The spider hath hung with tapestry the palace of the Cæsars; the owl singeth her sentinel-song in the watch-towers of Afrasiab.—§Firdousi.§

* * * * *

Tell us, ye dead; will none of you in pity Disclose the secret—— What ’tis you are, and we must shortly be?—§Blair§: Grave.

The dead! the much-loved dead! Who doth not yearn to know The secret of their dwelling-place, And to what land they go? What heart but asks, with ceaseless tone, For some sure knowledge of its own?—§Mary E. Lee.§

Drawing near her death, she sent most pious thoughts as harbingers to heaven; and her soul saw a glimpse of happiness through the chinks of her sickness-broken body.—§Fuller.§

The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become, As they draw near to their eternal home.—§Waller§: Divine Poesie.

Oh! let no mass be sung, No ritual read; In silence lay me down Among the dead.—§Heine§: Memento Mori.

The great German poet was evidently familiar with Horace:—

Absint inani funere næniæ, Luctusque turpes et querimoniæ; Compesce clamorem, ac sepulchri Mitte supervacuos honores.—Lib. II. Carmen 26.

* * * * *

I am old and blind; Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown; Afflicted and deserted of my kind:— Yet am I not cast down.

I am weak, yet strong; I murmur not that I no longer see; Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong, Father Supreme, to Thee!

O merciful One! When men are farthest, then art Thou most near; When friends pass by—my weaknesses to shun— Thy chariot I hear.

Thy glorious face Is leaning toward me, and its holy light Shines in upon my lonely dwelling-place, And there is no more night.

On my bended knee I recognize Thy purpose clearly shown; My vision Thou hast dimmed that I may see Thyself, Thyself alone.

I have naught to fear! This darkness is the shadow of Thy wing: Beneath it I am almost sacred,—here Can come no evil thing, &c.—§Elizabeth Lloyd.§

The resemblance of these lines to the following passage from §Milton’s§ Second Defence of the People of England is so striking that we are inclined to regard them as a paraphrase:—

Let me then be the most feeble creature alive, so long as that feebleness serves to invigorate the energies of my rational and immortal spirit, so long as in that obscurity in which I am enveloped the light of Divine Presence more clearly shines. Then in proportion as I am weak, I shall be invincibly strong; and in proportion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. Oh that I may thus be perfected by feebleness, and irradiated by obscurity! And indeed in my blindness I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favor of the Deity, who regards me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to behold nothing but himself. Alas for him who insults me, who maligns and merits public execration! For the divine law not only shields me from injury, but almost renders me too sacred to attack,—not indeed so much from the privation of my sight, as from the overshadowing of those heavenly wings which seem to have occasioned this obscurity, and which, when occasioned, he is wont to illuminate with an interior light more precious and more pure.

* * * * *

In §Keble’s§ lines for “St. John’s Day” occurs this stanza:—

Sick or healthful, slave or free, Wealthy or despised and poor, What is that to him or thee, So his love to §Christ§ endure? When the shore is won at last, Who will count the billows past?

The first four lines resemble a stanza of §Wither§, one of the Roundhead poets (1632):—

Whether thrallèd or exiled, Whether poor or rich thou be, Whether praisèd or reviled, Not a rush it is to thee: This nor that thy rest doth win thee. But the mind that is within thee.

And the last two lines recall §Robert Burns§, who had said in his song commencing Contented wi little, and cantie wi mair:—

When at the blithe end of our journey at last, Wha the deil ever thinks o’ the road he has passed?

Two centuries before Burns, §Tasso§ said in his Gerusalemme Liberata (iii. 4):—

Cosi di naviganti, etc. ... e l’uno all ’altro il mostra e intanto oblia La noja e il mal della passata via.

Or as Fairfax renders it:—

As when a troop of jolly sailors row, etc. And each to other show the land in haste, Forgetting quite their pains and perils past.

And before dismissing “the billows past,” it is worth while to quote the following passage from §Spenser’s§ Faery Queene (I. 9. 40):—

What if some little pain the passage have That makes frail flesh to fear the bitter wave? Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease, And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave? Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life, does greatly please.

* * * * *

§Lucretius§ says:—

At jam non domus accipiet te læta; neque uxor Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati Præripere, et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent.

(No longer shall thy joyous home receive thee, nor yet thy best of wives, nor shall thy sweet children run to be the first to snatch thy kisses and thrill thy breast with silent delight.)

Compare §Gray’s§ Elegy:—

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire’s return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

And §Thomson’s§ Seasons (Winter):—

In vain for him th’ officious wife prepares The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm; In vain his little children, peeping out Into the mingled storm, demand their sire, With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold, Nor friends, nor sacred home.

* * * * *

The famous speech of §Wolsey§ after his fall—

Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not in mine age Have left me naked to mine enemies.— Henry VIII., iii. 2.

finds a counterpart in a satire of the Persian poet §Ferdousi§ on the Arabian impostor:—

Had I but written as many verses in praise of Mahomet and Allah, they would have showered a hundred blessings on me.

It also finds a parallel in a passage from Ockley’s History of the Saracens—§AN.§ Hegira 54, A. D. 673—

This year Moawiyah deposed Samrah, deputy over Basorah. As soon as Samrah heard this news, he said—“God curse Moawiyah. If I had served God so well as I have served him, he would never have damned me to all eternity.”

* * * * *

Our hearts—— ——are beating.— Funeral marches to the grave.— §Longfellow§, Psalm of Life.

Our lives are but our marches to our graves.— §Beaumont and Fletcher§, Humorous Lieutenant.

* * * * *

Next these learned Johnson in this list I bring, Who had drunk deep of the Pierian spring.—§Drayton.§

A little learning is a dangerous thing, Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.—§Pope.§

Socrates said to some Sophists, who pretended to know everything, “As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”

§Owen Feltham§, in his Resolves (Curiosity in Knowledge) remarks:—

Our knowledge doth but show us our ignorance. Our most studious scrutiny is but a discovery of what we cannot know.

§Voltaire§, in the Histoire d’un bon Bramin says:—

Le Bramin me dit un jour: Je voudrais n’être jamais né. Je lui demandai pourquoi. Il me répondit: J’étudie depuis quarante ans; ce sont quarante années de perdues; j’enseigne les autres, et j’ignore tout.

These lines will remind the reader of the opening soliloquy of Faust in §Goethe’s§ immortal tragedy. Bayard Taylor’s translation commences as follows:—

I’ve studied now Philosophy And Jurisprudence, Medicine,— And even, alas! Theology,— From end to end, with labor keen; And here, poor fool! with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before: I’m Magister—yea, Doctor—hight, And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right, These ten years long, with many woes, I’ve led my scholars by the nose,— And see, that nothing can be known!

* * * * *

In The Last Days of Pompeii (ch. v.) Glaucus, the Athenian, is made to say:—

“I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead, and the flowers faded.”

Of course, §Bulwer Lytton§ was familiar with Oft in the Stilly Night, which Moore had written twenty years before:—

I feel like one who treads alone Some banquet hall deserted, Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, And all but he departed.

* * * * *

Dr. Johnson said that “no one does anything for the last time (knowingly) but with regret.”

In Bishop §Hall’s§ Holy Observations (xxvij) is this passage:—

“Nothing is more absurd than that Epicurean resolution, ‘Let us eat and drink, to-morrow we die’; as if we were made only for the paunch, and lived that we might live. Yet has there never any natural man found savour in that meat which he knew should be his last; whereas they should say: Let us fast and pray, for to-morrow we shall die.”

SHAKSPEREAN RESEMBLANCES.

Ah! that deceit should steal such gentle shapes, And, with a virtuous vizor, hide deep vice. §Richard III.§, ii. 2.

Oh! what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover itself withal. §Much Ado About Nothing§, iv. 1.

There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts. §Merchant of Venice§, iii. 2.

Seems he a dove? his feathers are but borrowed; Is he a lamb? his skin is surely lent him, Who cannot steal a shape that means deceit? §Henry VI.§, P. II., iii. 1.

BOLD PLAGIARISM.

Charles Reade, in The Wandering Heir reproduces Swift’s Journal of a Modern Lady in a singular manner. Compare them. Reade says:—

“Mistress Anne Gregory held bad cards; she had to pawn ring after ring—for these ladies, being well acquainted with each other, never played on parole—and she kept bemoaning her bad luck. ‘Betty, I knew how ’twould be. The parson called to-day. This odious chair, why will you stick me in it? Stand farther, girl, I always lose when you look on.’ Mrs. Betty tossed her head, and went behind another lady. Miss Gregory still lost, and had to pawn her snuff box to Lady Dace. She consoled herself by an insinuation: ‘My Lady you touched your wedding-ring. That was a sign to your partner here.’

“’Nay Madam, ’twas but a sign my finger itched. But, if you go to that, you spoke a word began with H. Then she knew you had the king of hearts.’

“‘That is like Miss here,’ said another matron; ‘she rubs her chair when she hath matadore in hand.’

“‘Set a thief to catch a thief, Madam,’ was Miss’s ingenious and polished reply.

“‘Heyday!’ cries one, ‘Here spadillo got a mark on the back; a child might know it in the dark. Mistress Pigot, I wish you’d be pleased to pare your nails.’

“In short, they said things to each other all night, the slightest of which, among men, would have filled Phœnix Park next morning with drawn swords; but it went for little here; they were all cheats, and knew it, and knew the others knew it, and didn’t care.

“It was four o’clock before they broke up, huddled on their cloaks and hoods, and their chairs took them home with cold feet and aching heads.”

Swift says:—

“‘This morning when the parson came, I said I should not win a game, This odious chair, how came I stuck in’t? I think I never had good luck in’t. I’m so uneasy in my stays; Your fan a moment, if you please. Stand further, girl, or get you gone; I always lose when you look on.’

* * * * *

“‘I saw you touch your wedding-ring Before my lady called a king; You spoke a word began with H, And I know whom you mean to teach Because you held the king of hearts, Fie, Madam, leave these little arts.’ ‘That’s not so bad as one that rubs Her chair to call the king of clubs, And makes her partner understand A matador is in her hand.’ ‘And truly, madam, I know when, Instead of five, you scored me ten. Spadillo here has got a mark, A child may know it in the dark. I guessed the hand: It seldom fails. I wish some folks would pare their nails,’

* * * * *

“At last they hear the watchman’s knock: ‘A frosty morn—past four o’clock.’ The chairmen are not to be found— ‘Come let us play the other round.’ Now all in haste they huddle on Their hoods, their cloaks and get them gone.”

HISTORICAL SIMILITUDES.

In Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic is narrated the following incident:—

A bishop’s indiscretion, however, neutralized the apostolic blows of the major (Charles the Hammer). The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of his royal legs in the baptismal font when a thought struck him. “Where are my dead forefathers at present?” he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolfrau. “In hell, with all other unbelievers,” was the imprudent answer. “Mighty well,” replied Radbod, removing his leg; “then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.” Entreaties and threats were unavailing. The Frisian declined positively a rite which was to cause an eternal separation from his buried kindred, and he died as he had lived, a heathen.

Kingsley, in his Hypatia, in completing the history of the Goth Wulf, after his settlement in Spain, writes as follows:—

Wulf died as he had lived, a heathen. Placidia, who loved him well—as she loved all righteous and noble souls—had succeeded once in persuading him to accept baptism. Adolf himself acted as one of his sponsors; and the old warrior was in the act of stepping into the font, when he turned suddenly to the bishop and asked, “Where were the souls of his heathen ancestors?” “In hell,” replied the worthy prelate. Wulf drew back from the font, and threw his bear-skin cloak around him.... He would prefer, if Adolf had no objection, to go to his own people. And so he died unbaptized, and went to his own.

This has suggested the query whether Mr. Kingsley uses his privilege as a novelist to make a distant historical event subserve the purposes of fiction, or whether this curious incident occurred.

But Francis Parkman in his Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, notes a corresponding unwillingness on the part of the Indians to separate from their own kindred and people:—

The body cared for, he next addressed himself to the soul. “This life is short and very miserable. It matters little whether we live or die.” The patient remained silent, or grumbled his dissent. The Jesuit, after enlarging for a time in broken Huron on the brevity and nothingness of mortal weal or woe, passed next to the joys of heaven and the pains of hell, which he set forth with his best rhetoric. His pictures of infernal fires and torturing devils were readily comprehended, if the listener had consciousness enough to comprehend anything; but with respect to the advantages of the French paradise he was slow of conviction. “I wish to go where my relations and ancestors have gone,” was a common reply. “Heaven is a good place for Frenchmen,” said another; “but I wish to be among Indians, for the French will give me nothing to eat when I get there.” Often the patient was stolidly silent; sometimes he was hopelessly perverse and contradictory. Again nature triumphed over grace. “Which will you choose,” demanded the priest of a dying woman, “heaven or hell?” “Hell, if my children are there, as you say,” returned the mother. “Do they hunt in heaven, or make war, or go to feasts?” asked an anxious inquirer. “Oh, no!” replied the father. “Then,” returned the querist, “I will not go. It is not good to be lazy.” But above all other obstacles was the dread of starvation in the regions of the blest. Nor when the dying Indian had been induced at last to express a desire for Paradise was it an easy matter to bring him to a due contrition for his sins; for he would deny with indignation that he had ever committed any. When at length, as sometimes happened, all these difficulties gave way, and the patient had been brought to what seemed to his instructor a fitting frame for baptism, the priest, with contentment at his heart, brought water in a cup or in the hollow of his hand, touched his forehead with the mystic drop, and snatched him from an eternity of woe. But the convert, even after his baptism, did not always manifest a satisfactory spiritual condition. “Why did you baptize that Iroquois?” asked one of the dying neophytes, speaking of the prisoner recently tortured; “he will get to heaven before us, and, when he sees us coming, he will drive us out.”

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF.

Herodotus tells us (Book III. 118) that after the conspirator Intaphernes and his family had been imprisoned and held for execution by order of Darius, the wife of the condemned man constantly presented herself before the royal palace exhibiting every demonstration of grief. As she regularly continued this conduct, her frequent appearance at length excited the compassion of Darius, who thus addressed her by a messenger: “Woman, King Darius offers you the liberty of any individual of your family whom you may most desire to preserve.” After some deliberation with herself she made this reply: “If the king will grant me the life of any one of my family, I choose my brother in preference to the rest.” Her determination greatly astonished the king; he sent to her therefore a second message to this effect: “The king desires to know why you have thought proper to pass over your children and your husband, and to preserve your brother, who is certainly a more remote connection than your children, and cannot be so dear to you as your husband.” She answered: “O king! if it please the deity, I may have another husband; and if I be deprived of these I may have other children; but as my parents are both dead, it is certain that I can have no other brother.” The answer appeared to Darius very judicious; indeed he was so well pleased with it that he not only gave the woman the life of her brother, but also pardoned her eldest son.

A passage in the Antigone of Sophocles embodies the same singular sentiment. Creon forbade the rites of sepulture to Polynices, after the duel with his brother Eteocles, in which they were mutually slain, and decreed immediate death to any one who should dare to bury him. Antigone, their sister, was detected in the act of burial, and was condemned to be buried alive for her pious care. In her dangerous situation she goes on to say:—

And thus, my Polynices, for my care Of thee, I am rewarded, and the good Alone shall praise me; for a husband dead, Nor, had I been a mother, for my children Would I have dared to violate the laws— Another husband and another child Might sooth affliction; but, my parents dead, A brother’s loss could never be repaired.

A story of analogous character told by an oriental to Miss Rogers, is related in her book Domestic Life in Palestine, as follows:—

When Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mahomet Ali, ruled in Palestine, he sent men into all the towns and villages to gather together a large army. Then a certain woman of Serfurich sought Ibrahim Pasha at Akka, and came into his presence bowing herself before him, and said: “O my lord, look with pity on thy servant, and hear my prayer. A little while ago there were three men in my house, my husband, my brother, and my eldest son. But now behold, they have been carried away to serve in your army, and I am left with my little ones without a protector. I pray you grant liberty to one of these men, that he may remain at home.” And Ibrahim had pity on her and said: “O woman, do you ask for your husband, for your son, or for your brother?” And she said: “Oh, my lord, give me my brother.” And he answered: “How is this, O woman, do you prefer a brother to a husband or a son?” The woman, who was renowned for her wit and readiness of speech, replied in a blank verse impromptu:—

“If it be God’s will that my husband perish in your service, I am still a woman, and God may lead me to another husband: If on the battle-field my first-born son should fall, I have still my younger ones, who will in God’s time be like unto him. But oh! my lord, if my only brother should be slain, I am without remedy—for my father is dead and my mother is old, And where should I look for another brother?”

And Ibrahim was much pleased with the words of the woman, and said: “O, woman, happy above many is thy brother; he shall be free for thy word’s sake, and thy husband and thy son shall be free also.” Then the woman could not speak for joy and gladness. And Ibrahim said: “Go in peace; let it not be known that I have spoken with you this day.” Then she rose, and went her way to her village, trusting in the promise of the Pasha. After three days, her husband, and son, and brother returned unto her, saying: “We are free from service by order of the Pasha, but this matter is a mystery to us.” And all the neighbors marvelled greatly. But the woman held her peace, and this story did not become known until Ibrahim’s departure from Akka, after the overthrow of the Egyptian goverment in Syria, in 1840.

What the husband and the son thought of wifely and motherly affection when the mystery of their deliverance was cleared up, is not reported.

THE TWO STATESMEN.

Hume says (History of England):—

A little before he (Wolsey) expired (28th November, 1530) he addressed himself in the following words to Sir William Kingston, Constable of the Tower, who had him in custody: “I pray you have me heartily recommended unto his royal majesty (Henry VIII.), and beseech him on my behalf to call to his remembrance all matters that have passed between us especially with regard to his business with the queen, and then will he know in his conscience whether I have offended him. He is a prince of a most royal carriage, and hath a princely heart; and rather than he will miss or want any part of his will, he will endanger the one half of his kingdom. I do assure you that I have often kneeled before him, sometimes three hours together, to persuade him from his will and appetite, but could not prevail: had I but served God as diligently as I have served the king, he would not have given me over in my grey hairs. But this is the just reward I must receive for my indulgent pains and study, not regarding my service to God but only to my prince.”

Holinshead says in his famous old Chronicles:—

This year (1540), in the month of August, Sir James Hamilton of Finbert, Knight, Controller to the King (James V. of Scotland), who charged him in the king’s name to go toward within the castel of Edinburgh, which commandment he willingly obeyed, thinking himself sure enough, as well by reason of the good service he had done to the king, specially in repairing the palaces of Striviling and Linlithgow, as also that the king had him in so high favour, that he stood in no fear of himself at all. Nevertheless, shortlie after he was brought forth to judgement, and convicted in the Tolboth of Edinburgh, of certain points of treason, laid against him, which he would never confesse; but that notwithstanding, he was beheaded in the month of September next insuing, after that he had liberallie confessed at the place of execution, that he had never in any jot offended the king’s majesty; and that his death was yet worthilie inflicted upon him by the Divine justice, because he had often offended the law of God to please the prince, thereby to obtain greater countenance with him. Wherefore he admonished all persons, that moved by his example, they should rather follow the Divine pleasure than unjustlie seek the king’s favour, since it is better to please God than man.

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON.

Several parallels to Solomon’s judgment, I. Kings iii. 16–28, are recorded. One occurs in Gesta Romanorum. Three youths, to decide a question, are desired by their referee, the King of Jerusalem, to shoot at their father’s dead body. One only refuses; and to him, as the rightful heir, the legacy is awarded.

In the Harleian MS., 4523, we are told of a woman of Pegu, a province of Burmah, whose child was carried away by an alligator. Upon its restoration another woman claimed the child. The judge ordered them to pull for it; the infant cried, and one instantly quit her hold, to whom the child was awarded.

The same story, substantially, is told in the Pali commentary on the discourses of Buddha, translated by Rev. R. S. Hardy, as follows:—

A woman who was going to bathe, left her child to play on the banks of a tank, when a female who was passing that way carried it off. They both appeared before Buddha, and each declared the child was her own. The command was therefore given that each claimant should seize the infant by a leg and an arm, and pull with all her might in opposite directions. No sooner had they commenced than the child began to scream; when the real mother, from pity, left off pulling, and resigned her claim to the other. The judge therefore decided that, as she only had shown true affection, the child must be hers.

Suetonius tell us that the Emperor Claudius, when a woman refused to acknowledge her son, ordered them to be married. The mother confessed her child at once.

PRECEDENCY.

The Emperor Charles V. was appealed to, by two women of fashion at Brussels, to settle the point of precedency between them, the dispute respecting which had been carried to the greatest height. Charles, after affecting to consider what each lady had to say, decided that the greater simpleton of the two should have the pas; in consequence of which judgment the ladies became equally ready to concede the privilege each had claimed. Napoleon, on the occurrence of a similar difficulty at a Court ball supper, based his decision on the question of age. Mr. Hey, of Leeds, at a dinner-party of gentlemen, made merit the test.

THE LEGEND OF BETH GELERT.

In F. Johnson’s translation from the Sanscrit, occurs the following passage:—

In Ougein lived a Brahman named Mádhava. His wife, of the Brahmanical tribe, who had recently brought forth, went to perform her ablutions, leaving him to take charge of her infant offspring. Presently a person from the Raja came for the Brahman to perform for him a Párrana s’ráddha (a religious rite to all his ancestors.) When the Brahman saw him, being impelled by his natural poverty, he thought within himself: If I go not directly, then some one else will take the s’ráddha. It is said:—

“In respect of a thing which ought to be taken, or to be given, or of a work which ought to be done, and not being done quickly, time drinks up the spirit thereof.”

But there is no one here to take care of the child: what can I do then? Well: I will go, having set to guard the infant this weasel, cherished a long time, and in no respect distinguished from a child of my own. This he did and went. Shortly afterwards, a black serpent, whilst silently coming near the child, was killed there, and rent into pieces by the weasel; who, seeing the Brahman coming home, ran towards him with haste, his mouth and paws all smeared with blood, and rolled himself at his feet. The Brahman seeing him in that state, without reflecting, said, “My son has been eaten by this weasel,” and killed him: but as soon as he drew near and looked, behold the child was comfortably sleeping, and the serpent lay killed! Thereupon the Brahman was overwhelmed with grief.

This fable was introduced to give point to the moral:—The fool who, without knowing the true state of the case, becomes subject to anger, will find cause for regret. Its similarity to the well-known Welsh legend is so remarkable that we append Spencer’s touching ballad.

The spearman heard the bugle sound, And cheerily smiled the morn; And many a brach, and many a hound Attend Llewellyn’s horn:

And still he blew a louder blast, And gave a louder cheer: “Come, Gelert! why art thou the last Llewellyn’s horn to hear?

“Oh! where does faithful Gelert roam? The flower of all his race! So true, so brave; a lamb at home, A lion in the chase!”

In sooth he was a peerless hound, The gift of royal John; But now no Gelert could be found And all the chase rode on.

And now, as over rocks and dells The gallant chidings rise, All Snowdon’s craggy chaos yells With many mingled cries.

That day Llewellyn little loved The chase of hart or hare; And small and scant the booty proved, For Gelert was not there.

Unpleased, Llewellyn homeward hied, When, near the portal-seat, His truant Gelert he espied, Bounding his lord to greet.

But when he gain’d the castle door, Aghast the chieftain stood; The hound was smear’d with gouts of gore, His lips and fangs ran blood!

Llewellyn gazed with wild surprise, Unused such looks to meet: His favorite checked his joyful guise, And crouch’d and lick’d his feet.

Onward in haste Llewellyn passed— And on went Gelert too— And still, where’er his eyes were cast, Fresh blood-gouts shock’d his view!

O’erturn’d his infant’s bed, he found The blood-stain’d covert rent; And all around, the walls and ground With recent blood besprent.

He called his child—no voice replied; He search’d—with terror wild; Blood! blood! he found on every side, But nowhere found the child!

“Hell-hound! by thee my child’s devoured!” The frantic father cried; And to the hilt the vengeful sword He plunged in Gelert’s side!

His suppliant, as to earth he fell, No pity could impart; But still his Gelert’s dying yell Pass’d heavy o’er his heart.

Aroused by Gelert’s dying yell, Some slumberer waken’d nigh: What words the parent’s joy can tell, To hear his infant cry!

Conceal’d beneath a mangled heap, His hurried search had miss’d, All glowing from his rosy sleep, His cherub-boy he kiss’d.

Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread— But, the same couch beneath, Lay a great wolf, all torn and dead Tremendous still in death!

Oh! what was then Llewellyn’s woe; For now the truth was clear: The gallant hound the wolf had slain, To save Llewellyn’s heir.

Vain, vain was all Llewellyn’s woe; “Best of thy kind adieu! The frantic deed which laid thee low, This heart shall ever rue!”

And now a gallant tomb they raise, With costly sculpture deck’d; And marbles storied with his praise, Poor Gelert’s bones protect.

Here never could the spearman pass, Or forester unmoved; Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass, Llewellyn’s sorrow proved.

And here he hung his horn and spear; And, oft as evening fell, In fancy’s piercing sounds would hear Poor Gelert’s dying yell!

ART STORIES.

Art has parallel stories of a tragic nature. In the

Chapel proud Where Roslin’s chiefs uncoffined lie, Each baron, for a sable shroud, Sheathed in his iron panoply,

stands an exquisite example of Gothic tracery-work, known as the Apprentice’s Pillar, neighbored by corbels carved with grim, grotesque human faces. How it came by its name may best be told as the old dame who acted as cicerone at the beginning of the present century used to tell it.

“There ye see it, gentlemen, with the lace-bands winding sae beautifully roond aboot it. The maister had gane awa to Rome to get a plan for it, and while he was awa, his ’prentice made a plan himsel, and finished it. And when the maister cam back and fand the pillar finished, he was sae enraged that he took a hammer and killed the ’prentice. There you see the ’prentice’s face—up there in ae corner wi’ a red gash in the brow, and his mother greetin’ for him in the corner opposite. And there, in another corner, is the maister, as he lookit just before he was hanged; it’s him wi’ a kind o’ ruff roond his face.”

In the same century that the Prince of Orkney founded the chapel at Roslin, the good people of Stendal employed an architect of repute to build them one new gate, and entrusted the erection of a second to his principal pupil. In this case, too, the aspiring youth proved the better craftsman, and paid the same penalty; the spot whereon he fell beneath his master’s hammer being marked to this day by a stone commemorating the event; and the story goes that yet, upon moonlight nights, the ghost of the murdered youth may be seen contemplating the work that brought him to an untimely end, while a weird skeleton beats with a hammer at the stone he wrought into beauty.

Another stone, at Grossmoringen, close by Stendal, tells where an assistant bell-caster was stabbed by his master because he succeeded in casting a bell, after the latter had failed in the attempt. It is a tradition of Rouen that the two rose-windows of its cathedral were the work of the master-architect and his pupil, who strove which of the two should produce the finer window. Again the man beat the master, and again the master murdered the man in revenge for his triumph. The transept window of Lincoln Cathedral was the product of a similar contest, but in this instance the defeated artist killed himself instead of his successful rival.

BALLADS AND LEGENDS.

Scott’s ballad of “Wild Darrell” was founded upon a story, first told by Aubrey, but for which the poet was indebted to Lord Webb Seymour. An old midwife sitting over her fire one dark November night was roused by a loud knocking at the door. Upon opening it she saw a horseman, who told her her services were required by a lady of rank, and would be paid for handsomely; but as there were family reasons why the affair should be kept secret, she must submit to be conducted to her patient blindfolded. She agreed, allowed her eyes to be bandaged, and took her place on the pillion. After a journey of many miles, her conductor stopped, led her into a house, and removed the bandage. The midwife found herself in a handsome bedchamber, and in presence of a lady and a ferocious-looking man. A boy was born. Snatching it from the woman’s arms, the man threw the babe on the blazing fire; it rolled upon the hearth. Spite of the entreaties of the horrified midwife, and the piteous prayers of the poor mother, the ruffian thrust the child under the grate, and raked the hot coals over it. The innocent accomplice was then ordered to return whence she came, as she came; the man who had brought her seeing her home again, and paying her for her pains.

The woman lost no time in letting a magistrate know what she had seen that November night. She had been sharp enough to cut a piece out of the bed-curtain, and sew it in again, and to count the steps of the long staircase she had ascended and descended. By these means the scene of the infanticide was identified, and the murderer Darrell, Lord of Littlecote House, Berkshire was tried at Salisbury. He escaped the gallows by bribing the judge, only to break his neck in the hunting-field a few months afterwards, at a place still known as Darrell’s Stile. Aubrey places Littlecote in Wiltshire, makes the unhappy mother the waiting-maid of Darrell’s wife, and concludes his narration thus: “This horrid action did much run in her (the midwife’s) mind, and she had a desire to discover it, but knew not where ’twas. She considered with herself the time that she was riding, and how many miles she might have ridden at that rate in that time, and that it must be some great person’s house, for the room was twelve feet high. She went to a justice of the peace, and search was made—the very chamber found. The knight was brought to his trial; and, to be short, this judge had this noble house, park, and manor, and (I think) more, for a bribe to save his life. Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but being a great person and a favorite, he procured a nolle prosequi.”

In Sir Walter’s ballad the midwife becomes a friar of orders gray, compelled to shrive a dying woman,

A lady as a lily bright, With an infant on her arm;

and when

The shrift is done, the friar is gone, Blindfolded as he came— Next morning, all in Littlecote Hall Were weeping for their dame.

It was hardly fair to make Darrell worse than he was, by laying a second murder at his door, merely to give a local habitation and a name to a Scotch tale of murder that might have been an adaptation of the Berkshire tragedy.

* * * * *

Somewhere about the beginning of the last century, an Edinburgh clergyman was called out of his bed at midnight on the pretext that he was wanted to pray with a person at the point of death. The good man obeyed the summons without hesitation, but wished he had not done so, when, upon his sedan-chair reaching an out-of-the-way part of the city, its bearers insisted upon his being blindfolded, and cut his protestations short by threatening to blow out his brains if he refused to do their bidding. Like the sensible man he was, he submitted without further parley, and the sedan moved on again. By and by, he felt he was being carried up-stairs: the chair stopped, the clergyman was handed out, his eyes uncovered, and his attention directed to a young and beautiful lady lying in bed with an infant by her side. Not seeing any signs of dying about her, he ventured to say so, but was commanded to lose no time in offering up such prayers as were fitting for a person at the last extremity. Having done his office, he was put into the chair and taken down-stairs, a pistol-shot startling his ears on the way. He soon found himself safe at home, a purse of gold in his hand, and his ears still ringing with the warning he had received, that if he said one word about the transaction, his life would pay for the indiscretion. At last he fell off to sleep, to be awakened by a servant with the news, that a certain great house in the Canongate had been burned down, and the daughter of its owner perished in the flames. The clergyman had been long dead, when a fire broke out on the very same spot, and there, amid the flames, was seen a beautiful woman, in an extraordinarily rich night-dress of the fashion of half a century before. While the awe-struck spectators gazed in wonder, the apparition cried, “Anes burned, twice burned; the third time I’ll scare you all!” The midwife of the Littlecote legend and the divine of the Edinburgh one were more fortunate than the Irish doctor living at Rome in 1743; this gentleman, according to Lady Hamilton, being taken blindfolded to a house and compelled to open the veins of a young lady who had loved not wisely, but too well.

BURIAL ALIVE.

In the year 1400, Ginevra de Amiera, a Florentine beauty, married, under parental pressure, a man who had failed to win her heart, that she had given to Antonio Rondinelli. Soon afterwards the plague broke out in Florence; Ginevra fell ill, apparently succumbed to the malady, and being pronounced dead, was the same day consigned to the family tomb. Some one, however, had blundered in the matter, for in the middle of the night, the entombed bride woke out of her trance, and badly as her living relatives had behaved, found her dead ones still less to her liking, and lost no time in quitting the silent company, upon whose quietude she had unwittingly intruded. Speeding through the sleep-wrapped streets as swiftly as her clinging cerements allowed, Ginevra sought the home from which she had so lately been borne. Roused from his slumbers by a knocking at the door, the disconsolate widower of a day cautiously opened an upper window, and seeing a shrouded figure waiting below, in whose upturned face he recognized the lineaments of the dear departed, he cried, “Go in peace, blessed spirit,” and shut the window precipitately. With sinking heart and slackened step, the repulsed wife made her way to her father’s door, to receive the like benison from her dismayed parent. Then she crawled on to an uncle’s, where the door was indeed opened, but only to be slammed in her face by the frightened man, who, in his hurry, forgot even to bless his ghostly caller. The cool night air, penetrating the undress of the hapless wanderer, made her tremble and shiver, as she thought she had waked to life only to die again in the cruel streets. “Ah” she sighed, “Antonio would not have proved so unkind.” This thought naturally suggested it was her duty to test his love and courage: it would be time enough to die if he proved like the rest. The way was long, but hope renerved her limbs, and soon Ginevra was knocking timidly at Rondinelli’s door. He opened it himself, and although startled by the ghastly vision, calmly inquired what the spirit wanted with him. Throwing her shroud away from her face, Ginevra exclaimed, “I am no spirit, Antonio; I am that Ginevra you once loved, who was buried yesterday—buried alive!” and fell senseless into the welcoming arms of her astonished lover, whose cries for help soon brought down his sympathizing family to hear the wondrous story, and bear its heroine to bed, to be tenderly tended until she bad recovered from the shock, and was as beautiful as ever again. Then came the difficulty. Was Ginevra to return to the man who had buried her, and shut his doors against her, or give herself to the man who had saved her from a second death? With such powerful special pleaders as love and gratitude on his side, of course Rondinelli won the day, and a private marriage made the lovers amends for previous disappointment. They, however, had no intention of keeping in hiding, but the very first Sunday after they became man and wife, appeared in public together at the cathedral, to the confusion and wonder of Ginevra’s friends. An explanation ensued, which satisfied everybody except the lady’s first husband, who insisted that nothing but her dying in genuine earnest could dissolve the original matrimonial bond. The case was referred to the bishop, who, having no precedent to curb his decision, rose superior to technicalities, and declared that the first husband had forfeited all right to Ginevra, and must pay over to Rondinelli the dowry he had received with her: a decree at which we may be sure all true lovers in fair Florence heartily rejoiced.

This Italian romance of real life has its counterpart in a French cause célèbre, but the Gallic version unfortunately lacks names and dates; it differs, too, considerably in matters of detail; instead of the lady being a supposed victim of the plague, which in the older story secured her hasty interment, she was supposed to have died of grief at being wedded against her inclination; instead of coming to life of her own accord, and seeking her lover as a last resource, the French heroine was taken out of her grave by her lover, who suspected she was not really dead, and resuscitated by his exertions, to flee with him to England. After living happily together there for ten years, the strangely united couple ventured to visit Paris, where the first husband accidentally meeting the lady, was struck by her resemblance to his dead wife, found out her abode, and finally claimed her for his own. When the case came for trial, the second husband did not dispute the fact of identity, but pleaded that his rival had renounced all claim to the lady by ordering her to be buried, without first making sure she was dead, and that she would have been dead and rotting in her grave if he had not rescued her. The court was saved the trouble of deciding the knotty point, for, seeing that it was likely to pronounce against them, the fond pair quietly slipped out of France, and found refuge in “a foreign clime, where their love continued sacred and entire, till death conveyed them to those happy regions where love knows no end, and is confined within no limits.”

RING STORIES.

Of dead-alive ladies brought to consciousness by sacrilegious robbers, covetous of the rings upon their cold fingers, no less than seven stories, differing but slightly from each other, have been preserved; in one, the scene is laid in Halifax; in another, in Gloucestershire; in a third, in Somersetshire; in the fourth, in Drogheda; the remaining three being appropriated by as many towns in Germany.

Ring-stories have a knack of running in one groove. Herodotus tells us how Amasis advised Polycrates, as a charm against misfortune, to throw away some gem he especially valued; how, taking the advice, Polycrates went seaward in a boat, and cast his favorite ring into the ocean; and how, a few days afterward, a fisherman caught a large fish so extraordinarily fine, that he thought it fit only for the royal table, and accordingly presented it to the fortunate monarch, who ordered it to be dressed for supper; and lo! when the fish was opened, the surprised cook’s astonished eye beheld his master’s cast-away ring; much to that master’s delight, but his adviser’s dismay; for when Amasis heard of the wonderful event, he immediately dispatched a herald to break his contract of friendship with Polycrates, feeling confident the latter would come to an ill end, “as he prospered in everything, even finding what he had thrown away.” The city of Glasgow owes the ring-holding salmon figuring in its armorial bearings to a legend concerning its patron saint, Kentigern, thus told in the Acta Sanctorum: A queen who formed an improper attachment to a handsome soldier, put upon his finger a precious ring which her own lord had conferred upon her. The king, made aware of the fact, but dissembling his anger, took an opportunity, in hunting, while the soldier lay asleep beside the Clyde, to snatch off the ring, and throw it into the river. Then returning home along with the soldier, he demanded of the queen the ring he had given her. She sent secretly to the soldier for the ring, which could not be restored. In great terror, she then despatched a messenger to ask the assistance of the holy Kentigern. He, who knew of the affair before being informed of it, went to the river Clyde, and having caught a salmon, took from the stomach the missing ring, which he sent to the queen. She joyfully went with it to the king, who, thinking he had wronged her, swore he would be revenged upon her accusers; but she, affecting a forgiving temper, besought him to pardon them as she had done. At the same time, she confessed her error to Kentigern, and solemnly vowed to be more careful of her conduct in future. In 1559, a merchant and alderman of Newcastle, named Anderson, handling his ring as he leaned over the bridge, dropped it into the Tyne. Some time after, his servant bought a salmon in the market, in whose stomach the lost ring was found: its value enhanced by the strange recovery, the ring became an heirloom and was in the possession of one of the Alderman’s decendants some forty years ago. A similar accident, ending in a similar way, is recorded to have happened to one of the dukes of Lorraine.

DEATH PROPHECIES.

Monk Gerbert, who wore the tiara as Sylvester II., a man of whom it was said that—thanks to the devil’s assistance—he never left anything unexecuted which he ever conceived, anticipating Roger Bacon, made a brazen head capable of answering like an oracle. From this creature of his own, Gerbert learned he would not die until he had performed mass in Jerusalem. He thereupon determined to live forever by taking good care never to go near the holy city. Like all dealers with the Evil One, he was destined to be cheated. Performing mass one day in Rome, Sylvester was seized with sudden illness, and upon inquiring the name of the church in which he had officiated, heard, to his dismay, that it was popularly called Jerusalem; then he knew his end was at hand; and it was not long before it came. Nearly five hundred years after this event happened, Master Robert Fabian, who must not be suspected of inventing history, seeing, as sheriff and alderman, he was wont to pillory public liars, wrote of Henry IV., “After the feast of Christmas, while he was making his prayers at St. Edward’s shrine, he became so sick, that such as were about him feared that he would have died right there; wherefore they, for his comfort, bare him into the abbot’s place, and lodged him in a chamber; and there, upon a pallet, laid him before the fire, where he lay in great agony a certain time. At length, when he was come to himself, not knowing where he was, he freyned [asked] of such as were there about him what place that was; the which shewed to him that it belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster; and for he felt himself so sick, he commanded to ask if that chamber had any special name. Whereunto it was answered, that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the king, ‘Laud be to the Father of Heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me beforesaid, that I should die in Jerusalem;’ and so after, he made himself ready, and died shortly after, upon the Day of St. Cuthbert, on the 20th day of March, 1413.”

BATTLES.

Three of the most famous battles recorded in English history were marked by a strange contrast between the behavior of the opposing armies on the eve of the fight. At Hastings, the Saxons spent the night in singing, feasting, and drinking; while the Normans were confessing themselves and receiving the sacrament. At Agincourt, “the poor condemned English” said their prayers, and sat patiently by their watch-fires, to “inly ruminate the morrow’s danger;” while the over-confident French revelled the night through, and played for the prisoners they were never to take. “On the eve of Bannockburn,” says Paston, who fought there on the beaten side, “ye might have seen the Englishmen bathing themselves in wine, and casting their gorgets; there was crying, shouting, wassailing, and drinking, with other rioting far above measure. On the other side we might have seen the Scots, quiet, still, and close, fasting the eve of St. John the Baptist, laboring in love of the liberties of their country.” Our readers need not be told that in each case the orderly, prayerful army proved victorious, and so made the treble parallel perfect.

BISHOP HATTO.

The legend of Hatto, bishop of Mayence, has been preserved in stanzas which are well remembered by school children. To avoid the importunity of the starving during a period of famine, the wicked prelate collected them into a barn,

“And while for mercy on Christ they call, He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.”

Thereupon he was attacked by an army of mice, and escaped to his tower (the Mäuseschloss) on a rock in the Rhine. But they quickly followed him and poured in by thousands, “in at the windows and in at the door,” until he was overpowered and destroyed.

“They gnawed the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him.”

The same story is told of the Swiss baron, von Güttingen, who was pursued and devoured by mice in his castle in Lake Constance. It is also told, with a variation, of the Polish King Popiel. When the Poles murmured at his bad government, and sought redress, he summoned the chief remonstrants to his palace, poisoned them, and had their bodies thrown into the lake Gopolo. He sought refuge from the mice within a circle of fire, but was overrun and eaten by them.

Prototypes.

THE OLDEST PROVERB.

It appears from I Samuel xxiv. 13, that the oldest proverb on record, is, “Wickedness proceedeth from the wicked;” since David, in his time, declared it to be “a proverb of the ancients;” consequently older than any proverb of his son Solomon.

SHAKSPEARE SAID IT FIRST.

In one of Clough’s letters he tells an amusing story of a Calvinistic old lady, who, on being asked about the Universalists, observed,—“Yes, they expect that everybody will be saved, but we look for better things.” How like this is to the admirable confusion of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who, in his letter of challenge, (Twelfth Night, iii. 4,) concludes thus:—

“Fare thee well, and God have mercy upon one of our souls! He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better!”

CINDERELLA’S SLIPPER.

A story somewhat similar to that of Cinderella has been handed down from the Greek. It is reported of Rhodopis,—a Thracian slave, who was purchased and manumitted by Charaxus of Mytilene, and afterward settled in Egypt,—that one day, while she was in the bath, an eagle, having flown down, snatched one of her slippers from an attendant, and carried it to Memphis. Psammitichus, the king, at the time, was sitting on his tribunal, and while engaged in dispensing justice, the eagle, settling above his head, dropped the sandal into his bosom. Astonished by the singularity of the event, and struck by the diminutive size and elegant shape of the sandal, the king ordered search to be made for the owner throughout the land of Egypt. Having found her at Naucratis, she was presented to the king, who made her his queen.

CURTAIN LECTURES.

Jerrold, in his preface to the later editions of Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures, makes this curious statement:—

It has happened to the writer that two, or three, or ten, or twenty gentlewomen have asked him ... What could have made you think of Mrs. Caudle? How could such a thing have entered any man’s mind? There are subjects that seem like rain-drops to fall upon a man’s head, the head itself having nothing to do with the matter.... And this was, no doubt, the accidental cause of the literary sowing and expansion—unfolding like a night-flower—of §Mrs. Caudle§.... The writer, still dreaming and musing, and still following no distinct line of thought, there struck upon him, like notes of sudden household music, these words—§Curtain Lectures§.

Nevertheless, this phrase may be traced back more than two centuries, while the idea will be found in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, who says:—

Semper habet lites, alternaque jurgia lectus, In quo nupta jacet: minimum dormitur in illo, &c.

Stapylton’s translation of this passage was published in 1647:—

Debates, alternate brawlings, ever were I’ th’ marriage bed: there is no sleeping there.

In the margin of the translation are the words Curtain-Lectures.

Dryden in his translation of the same passage (published 1693) introduces the phrase into the text:—

Besides, what endless brawls by wives are bred; The Curtain-Lecture makes a mournful bed.

And Addison, in the Tatler, describing a luckless wight undergoing the penalty of a nocturnal oration, says:—

I could not but admire his exemplary patience, and discovered, by his whole behavior, that he was then lying under the discipline of a curtain lecture.

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE.

The metre, movement, and idea of Tennyson’s Charge of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, are evidently derived from Michael Drayton’s Battle of Agincourt, published in 1627. The first, middle and last stanzas of Drayton’s poem run thus:—

1.

Faire stood the Wind for France When we our Sayles advance, Nor now to prove our chance Longer will tarry; But putting to the Mayne, At Kaux, the Mouth of Seyne, With all his Martiall Trayne, Landed King Harry.

8.

They now to fight are gone, Armour on armour shone, Drumme now to Drumme did grone, To heare was wonder: That with the Cryes they make, The very earth did shake, Trumpet to Trumpet spake, Thunder to Thunder.

15.

Upon Saint Crispin’s day Fought was this Noble Fray, Which Fame did not delay To England to carry; O when shall English Men With such Acts fill a Pen, Or England breed againe Such a King §Harry§!

THE FAUST LEGENDS.

About the middle of the thirteenth century began to spread the notion of formal written agreements between the Fiend and men who were to be his exclusive property after a certain time, during which he was to help them to all earthly good. This, curious to say, came with Christianity from the East. The first instance was that of Theophilus, vicedominus of the Bishop of Adana, a city of Cilicia, in the sixth century, whose fall and conversion form the original of all the Faust legends. The story of Theophilus may be found in various works, among them Ennemoser’s Universal History of Magic, which was translated by William Howitt.

AIR CUSHIONS.

Ben Jonson, in the Alchemist, makes Sir Epicure Mammon, in his expectation of acquiring the secret of the philosopher’s stone, enumerate to Surly a list of anticipated luxuries. Among these indulgences is this prophetic forecast of modern inflated India-rubber beds and cushions:—

“I will have all my beds blown up, not stuffed; Down is too hard.”

THE CAT IN THE ADAGE.

Lady Macbeth thus taunts her husband:—

Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem; Letting I dare not wait upon I would, Like the poor cat i’ the adage?

The adage is thus given in Heywood’s Proverbs, 1566:—

“The cat would eate fishe, and would not wet her feete.”

The proverb is found among all nations. The Latin form of mediæval times was as follows:—

“Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas.”

The Germans say:—

“Die Katze hätt’ die Fische gern; aber sie will die Füsse nit nass machen.”

And the Scotch have it:—

“The cat would fain fish eat, But she has no will to wet her feet.”

CORK LEGS.

A gentleman in Charleston conceived a very decided liking to a young lady from Ireland, and was on the eve of popping the question, when he was told by a friend that his dulcinea had a cork leg. It is difficult to imagine the distress of the young Carolinian. He went to her father’s house, knocked impatiently at the door, and when admitted to the fair one’s presence, asked her if what he had heard respecting her were true. “Yes, indeed, my dear Sir, it is true enough, but you have heard only half of my misfortune. I have got two cork legs, having had the ill-luck to be born in Cork.” This is the incident on which is founded Hart’s afterpiece called Perfection.

THE POPE’S BULL AGAINST THE COMET.

When President Lincoln was first asked to issue a proclamation abolishing slavery in the Southern States, he replied that such an act would be as absurd as the Pope’s bull against the comet.

The comet referred to is Halley’s. Concerning its first authenticated appearance, Admiral Smyth, in his Cycle of Celestial Objects, says:—

In 1456 it came with a tail 60° in length, and of a vivid brightness; which splendid train affrighted all Europe, and spread consternation in every quarter. To its malign influences were imputed the rapid successes of Mahomet II., which then threatened all Christendom. The general alarm was greatly aggravated by the conduct of Pope Calixtus III., who, though otherwise a man of abilities, was but a poor astronomer; for that pontiff daily ordered the church bells to be rung at noontide, extra Ave Marias to be repeated, and a special protest and excommunication was composed, exorcising equally the devil, the Turks, and the comet.

SWAPPING HORSES.

The celebrated maxim of President Lincoln, “not to swap horses while fording the stream,” was anticipated centuries ago by Cyrus the Elder, King of Persia, in directing his troops to take up their several stations, when he said, “When the contest is about to begin, there is no longer time for any chariot to unyoke the horses for a change.”

WOODEN NUTMEGS.

Judge Haliburton, in that amusing book The Clockmaker, puts the following in the mouth of Sam Slick:—

That remark seemed to grig him a little; he felt oneasy like, and walked twice across the room, fifty fathoms deep in thought; at last he said, “Which way are you from, Mr. Slick, this hitch?” “Why,” says I, “I’ve been away up South a speculating in nutmegs.” “I hope,” says the Professor, “they were a good article,—the real right down genuine thing?” “No, mistake,” says I, “no mistake, Professor; they were all prime, first chop; but why did you ax that ’ere question?” “Why,” says he, “that eternal scoundrel, that Captain John Allspice of Nahant, he used to trade to Charleston, and he carried a cargo once there of fifty barrels of nutmegs. Well, he put half a bushel of good ones into each end of the barrel, and the rest he filled up with wooden ones, so like the real thing, no soul could tell the difference until he bit one with his teeth, and that he never thought of doing until he was first bit himself. Well, it’s been a standing joke with them Southerners agin us ever since.”

TRADE UNIONS.

Trade unions are not of such recent origin as many people suppose. “I am credibly informed,” wrote Mandeville, the philosophic author of the Fables of the Bees, one hundred and fifty years ago, in his Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, “that a parcel of footmen are arrived to that height of insolence as to have entered into a society together, and made laws by which they oblige themselves not to serve for less than such a sum, nor carry burdens, or any bundle or parcel above a certain weight not exceeding two or three pounds, with other regulations directly opposite to the interest of those they serve, and altogether destructive to the use they were designed for. If any of them be turned away for strictly adhering to the orders of this honorable corporation, he is taken care of till another service is provided for him; but there is no money wanting at any time to commence and maintain a lawsuit against any that shall pretend to strike or offer any other injury to his gentleman footman, contrary to the statutes of their society. If this be true, as I believe it is, and they are suffered to go on in consulting and providing for their own ease and conveniency any further, we may expect quickly to see the French comedy ‘Le Maitre le Valet’ acted in good earnest in most families; while, if not redressed in a little time, and these footmen increase their company to the number it is possible they may, as well as assemble when they please with impunity, it will be in their power to make a tragedy of it whenever they have a mind to.”

CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.

On page 454 of Senator Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, he says (of a speech of the late Mr. Giddings): “He referred to the Treaty of Indian Springs, by which, after paying the slaveholders of Georgia the sum of $109,000 for slaves who had escaped to Florida, it added the sum of $141,000 as compensation demanded for the offspring which the females would have borne to their masters had they remained in bondage; and Congress actually paid that sum for children who were never born, but who might have been if their parents had remained faithful slaves.”

There is no clearer case of the payment of “consequential damages” in English or American history than this.

THE ORIGINAL SHYLOCK.

Gregory Leti, in his biography of Sextus V., tells us that Paul Secchi, a Venetian merchant, having learned by private advices that Admiral Francis Blake had conquered St. Domingo, communicated the news to a Jewish merchant named Sampson Ceneda. The latter was so confident that the information was false, that, after repeated protestations, he said, “I bet a pound of my flesh that the report is untrue.” “And I lay a thousand scudi against it,” rejoined the Christian, who caused a bond to be drawn to the effect that in case the report should prove untrue, then the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is bound to pay the Jewish merchant the sum of 1000 scudi, and on the other hand, if the truth of the news be confirmed, the Christian merchant, Signor Paul Secchi, is justified and empowered to cut with his own hand, with a well-sharpened knife, a pound of the Jew’s fair flesh, of that part of the body it might please him. When the news proved true, the Christian insisted on his bond, but the governor, having got wind of the affair, reported it to the Pope, who condemned both Jew and Christian to the galleys, from which they could only be ransomed by paying a fine of double the amount of the wager.

Shakspeare reverses the order, and makes the Jew usurer demand the pound of flesh from the Christian merchant.

EXCOMMUNICATION.

The excommunication of the Roman Catholic Church, exactly described by anticipation in Cæsar’s account of their predecessors, the Heathen Druids, will be found in Cæsar, de Bello Gallico, Book VI. Chap, iii., the passage beginning “Si quis aut privatus aut publicus,” and ending “Neque honos ullus communicatur.”

They decree rewards and punishments, and if any one refuses to submit to their sentence, whether magistrate or private man, they interdict him the sacrifices. This is the greatest punishment that can be inflicted among the Gauls; because such as are under this prohibition are considered as impious and wicked; all men shun them, and decline their conversation and fellowship, lest they should suffer from the contagion of their misfortunes. They can neither have recourse to the law for justice, nor are capable of any public office.

NAPOLEON I.

Compare the character and fall of Bonaparte with that of the king of Babylon as described in the remarkable language of the prophet Isaiah, chapter xiv., verses 4–22.

THE FALLS OF LANARK.

The following lines in an album formerly kept at the inn at Lanark evidently suggested to Southey his playful verses on The Cataract of Lodore:—

What fools are mankind, And how strangely inclined To come from all places With horses and chaises, By day and by dark, To the Falls of Lanark! For, good people, after all, What is a waterfall? It comes roaring and grumbling, And leaping and tumbling, And hopping and skipping, And foaming and dripping, And struggling and toiling, And bubbling and boiling, And beating and jumping, And bellowing and thumping. I have much more to say upon Both Linn and Bonniton; But the trunks are tied on, And I must be gone.

In the varied music of Schiller’s Song of the Bell may be found the same style:—

Der Mann muß hinaus The man must be out Ins feindliche Leben, In hostile life toiling, Muß wirken und streben Be struggling and moiling, Und pflanzen und schaffen, And planting, obtaining, Erlisten, erraffen, Devising and gaining, Muß wetten und wagen, And daring, enduring, Das Glück zu erjagen. So fortune securing.

TURGOT’S EPIGRAPH ON FRANKLIN.

Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis.

This inscription, the highest compliment ever paid to the American philosopher and statesman, and originally ascribed to Condorcet and Mirabeau, was written by Turgot, Louis XVI.’s minister and controller-general of finance, and first appeared in the correspondence of Grimm and Diderot, April, 1778. It is, however, merely a modification of a line in the Anti-Lucretius of Cardinal de Polignac, lib. i., v. 37:—

Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, Phœboque sagittas,

which is in turn traced to the Astronomicon of Marcus Manilius, a poet of the Augustan age, who says of Epicurus, lib. i. v. 104,—

Eripuitque Jovi fulmen, viresque Tonanti.

Taking the laurel from the brow of Epicurus to place it upon the head of Franklin is not so inappropriate, when we recall the sketch of the former by Lucretius illustrans commoda vitæ.

THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Among those who sympathized most deeply with the oppressed inhabitants of New England, and who were earliest to express indignation at the outrages of British tyranny, were the militia-officers of North Carolina, most of whom were Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish nativity. On the 20th of May, 1775, the delegates of the Mecklenburg convention, “after sitting in the court-house all night, neither sleepy, hungry, nor fatigued, and after discussing every paragraph,” unanimously passed the following resolutions. It will be observed that this memorable Declaration of Independence contains many of the ideas, and some of the very phrases and forms of expression, afterwards employed by Mr. Jefferson, and incorporated in his draft of that great national document whose adoption, on the 4th of July, 1776, gave birth to a nation of freemen. The more striking similarities are here shown in Italics:—

§Resolved§, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form, or manner countenanced, the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this country, to America, and to the inherent and inalienable rights[36] of Man.

Footnote 36:

The same expression will be found in the original draft of Mr. Jefferson. Congress changed the words “inherent and inalienable” to “certain inalienable.”

§Resolved§, That we, the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the mother country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association with that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties, and inhumanly shed the blood of American patriots at Lexington.

§Resolved§, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people; are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing association, under the control of no power other than that of §our God§, and the general Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

§Resolved§, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this country, we do hereby ordain and adopt as a rule of life all, each, and every of our former laws; wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authorities therein.

§Resolved§, That it is further decreed that all, each, and every military officer in this county is hereby reinstated in his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations; and that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz.: a Justice of the Peace in the character of a “Committee-man,” to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, union, and harmony in said county; and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and organized government be established in the Province.

After discussing the foregoing resolves, and arranging by-laws and regulations for the government of a Standing Committee of Public Safety, who were selected from their delegates, the whole proceedings were unanimously adopted and signed. A select committee was then appointed to draw up a more full and definite statement of grievances, and a more formal Declaration of Independence. The delegation then adjourned about two o’clock §A.M.§

THE KNOW-NOTHINGS.

The recent political organization under this odd title, which presented one of the most singular features that has yet diversified American history, has its archetype in the Church whose progress in this country it was designed to oppose. In Italy there was formerly a strange order of monks calling themselves Fratres Ignorantiæ, “Brothers of Ignorance.” They used to bind themselves by oath not to understand nor to learn any thing, and answered all questions by saying, Nescio, “I do not know.” Their first proposition was, “Though you do not understand the words you speak, yet the Holy Ghost understands them, and the devil flees.” In opposing mental acquirements, they argued thus:—“Suppose this friar studies and becomes a learned man, the consequence will be that he will want to become our superior: therefore, put the sack around his neck, and let him go begging from house to house, in town and country.”

THE ORIGINAL OF BUNYAN’S PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.

The Isle of Man, or the Legal Proceedings in Manshire against Sin, wherein, by way of a continual Allegory, the chief malefactors disturbing both Church and Commonwealth are detected and attached, with their arraignment and judicial trial, according to the laws of England; the spiritual use thereof, with an apology for the manner of handling most necessary to be first read, for direction in the right use of the allegory. By the Rev. Richard Bernard.

An allegory with the above title, originally published more than two hundred years ago, was reprinted in Bristol, England, in 1803. In a note to this edition, addressed to the reader, the editor states that the work is prized as well on account of the ingenuity of the performance as the probability of its having suggested to Mr. John Bunyan the first idea of his Pilgrim’s Progress, and of his Holy War, which was intimated on a leaf facing the title-page, by the late Rev. Mr. Toplady.

The editor says, “That Bunyan had seen the book may be inferred from its extensive circulation, for in one year only after its first publication it ran through seven editions.” He then proceeds to the internal evidence, and points out a supposed similarity between the characters in the two works, as between Wilful Will of the one and Will-be-Will of the other; Mr. Worldly Wiseman of Bunyan and Sir Worldly Wise of Bernard; Soul’s Town of Bernard and Bunyan’s Town of Man’s Soul, &c.

That the book has no very high order of genius to commend it is evident from the fact that it has passed into comparative obscurity. The world does not suffer the works of true prophets to die. Still, there is enough in it to render it worthy of being held in remembrance; and, antedating Bunyan as it does, passing through seven editions immediately after its first publication, presenting some striking analogies with the great master of allegory, and sinking into obscurity before the brighter and more enduring light of the Bedford tinker, its author deserves honorable mention for his attempt to present religious truth in a striking and impressive form at a period when such attempts were rare.

Southey, in his Commonplace Book, gives a long quotation from Lucian’s Hermotimus, to show how Bunyan was anticipated, in the main idea of his allegory, by a Greek writer, as far back as the second century.

Another claimant for this Telemachus of Protestant religious literature has recently been brought to light by Catherine Isabella Curt, who has just published in London a translation of an old French manuscript in the British Museum, which is almost word for word the Pilgrim’s Progress. The manuscript is the work of a clergyman, G de Grideville, who lived in the fifteenth century. Its title, in Norman English, is Pylgremage of the Sowle. The printer, Caxton, who occupied the same position in London as the Etiennes of Paris, published in 1483 a translation of this manuscript, of which the authenticity appears incontestable. It would seem, therefore, that the credit of this celebrated book belongs to France, although France hitherto has shown less appreciation of the original than England has bestowed on the copy.

ROBINSON CRUSOE: WHO WROTE IT?

Disraeli, in his ever-charming Curiosities of Literature, expresses boldly the opinion that “no one had, or perhaps could have, converted the history of Selkirk into the wonderful story we possess but De Foe himself.” So have we all been accustomed to believe, from those careless, happy days of boyhood when we pored intently over the entrancing pages of “Robinson Crusoe” and wished that we also could have a desert island, a summer bower, and a winter-cave retreat, as well as he. But there is, alas! some slight ground at least for believing that De Foe did not write that immortal tale, or, at all events, the better portion of it, viz., the first part or volume of the work. In Sir H. Ellis’s Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Soc. Pub. 1843, vol. 23), p. 420, Letter 137 is from “Daniel De Foe to the Earl of Halifax, engaging himself to his lordship as a political writer.” In a note by the editor a curious anecdote is given, quoted from “a volume of Memoranda in the handwriting of Thomas Warton, poet-laureate, preserved in the British Museum,” in relation to the actual authorship of the “Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” The extract is as follows:—

“Mem. July 10, 1774.—In the year 1759, I was told by the Rev. Mr. Hollaway, rector of Middleton Stoney, in Oxfordshire, then about seventy years old, and in the early part of his life chaplain to Lord Sunderland, that he had often heard Lord Sunderland say that Lord Oxford, while prisoner in the Tower of London, wrote the first volume of the History of Robinson Crusoe, merely as an amusement under confinement, and gave it to Daniel De Foe, who frequently visited Lord Oxford in the Tower and was one of his pamphlet-writers; that De Foe, by Lord Oxford’s permission, printed it as his own, and, encouraged by its extraordinary success, added himself the second volume, the inferiority of which is generally acknowledged. Mr. Holloway also told me, from Lord Sunderland, that Lord Oxford dictated some parts of the manuscript to De Foe. Mr Hollaway,”—Warton adds,—“was a grave, conscientious clergyman, not vain of telling anecdotes, very learned, particularly a good Orientalist, author of some theological tracts, bred at Eton School, and a Master of Arts of St. John’s College, Cambridge. He used to say that ‘Robinson Crusoe at its first publication, and for some time afterward, was universally received and credited as a genuine history. A fictitious narrative of this sort was then a new thing.’”

Besides, it may be added, the real and somewhat similar circumstances of Alexander Selkirk’s solitary abode of four years and four months on the island of Juan Fernandez, had, only a few years previously, been the subject of general conversation, and had therefore prepared the public mind for the possibility, if not the probability, of such adventures.

PROVERB MISASCRIBED TO DEFOE.

In an article on the writings of Daniel Defoe, in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, the critic refers to the True-Born Englishman, the opening quatrain of which is quoted as being “all that will ever be remembered of the poem.”

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The devil is sure to build a chapel there; And ’twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.

A recent number of Chambers’s Papers for the People also contains an article on Defoe, in which the same lines are quoted as having since grown into a proverb. It is evident that the two critics believed the idea to be original with Defoe. But they were both in error; for in an old tract, entitled The Vineyarde of Vertue, printed in 1591, seventy-seven years before Defoe was born, may be found the following sentence:—

It is oftentimes seene, that as God hath his Churche, so will the Deuill have a Chappell.

It was also used before Defoe’s time by George Herbert and Robert Burton. The former says, in his Jacula Prudentum, “No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil builds a chapel hard by;” and the latter, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, thus expresses it: “Where God hath a Temple the Devil will have a Chapel.” It is evident that Defoe only versified a well-known proverb of his day.

THE USE OF LANGUAGE.

To Talleyrand has generally been attributed the authorship of the maxim that “the use of language is to conceal our thoughts.” (La parole a été donnée à l’homme pour aider à cacher sa pensée.)

In Pycroft’s Ways and Words of Men of Letters, a quotation is made from an article on The Use of Language, published in a periodical called the Bee, under date of October 20, 1759, which reads as follows: “He who best knows how to conceal his necessity and desires is the most likely person to find redress; and the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.”

Nearly a century before this, Dr. South preached a sermon in Westminster Abbey, on The Wisdom of the World, in which he said, “Men speak with designs of mischief, and therefore they speak in the dark. In short, this seems to be the true inward judgment of all our politic sages, that speech was given to the ordinary sort of men whereby to communicate their mind, but to wise men whereby to conceal it.”

SCANDINAVIAN SKULL CUPS.

What a pretty tale was slaughtered when Grenville Piggot pointed out, in his Manual of Scandinavian Mythology, the blundering translation of the passage in an old Scandinavian poem relating to the occupation of the blest in the halls of Valhalla, the Northern paradise! “Soon shall we drink out of the curved horns of the head,” are the words in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog; meaning by this violent figure to say that they would imbibe their liquor out of cups formed from the crooked horns of animals. The first translators, however, not seeing their way clearly, rendered the passage, “Soon shall we drink out of the skulls of our enemies;” and to this strange banqueting there are allusions without end to be met with in our literature. Peter Pindar, for example, once said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine out of the skulls of authors.

GREAT LITERARY PLAGIARISM.

The London Athenæum asserts that Paley’s Natural Theology is copied from a series of papers which appeared about the end of the seventeenth century, in the Leipsic Transactions, written by a Dutch philosopher named Nieuwentyt. It is extraordinary that this discovery was not made before, inasmuch as the papers, after having been published at Amsterdam about the year 1700, were afterwards translated into English by Mr. Chamberlayne, and published by Longman & Co., in 1818, about fifteen years after Paley’s Natural Theology appeared. As Paley quotes Dr. Nieuwentyt from the Leipsic Transactions, he, of course, must have known and perused them. Parallel passages are printed side by side in the Athenæum, for the purpose of proving the assertion.

OLD BALLADS.

It was not the more polished author of Ivanhoe who gave us the unfading picture of the Black Knight, but he who sang of

—a stranger knight whom no man knewe, He wan the prize eche daye. His acton it was all of blacke, His hewberke, and his sheelde, Ne no man wist whence he did come, Ne no man knewe where he did gone, When they came from the feelde.

It was not the “thousand-souled Shakspeare” who gave birth to the story of the pound of flesh; for Shylock is no other than Gernutus the Jew of Venice. We subjoin two stanzas from Percy’s Reliques:—

But we will have a merry jest For to be talkéd long: You shall make me a bond (quoth he) That shall be large and strong.

* * * * *

The bloody Jew now ready is, With whetted blade in hand; To spoil the blood of innocent By forfeit of his bond.

Even the tragedy of Lear was set to the tune of “When flying Fame” before it was known to the stage. Nor will it be unjust to the memory of the good and gifted Goldsmith to say that the Old Harper sang:—

Thus every day I fast and pray, And ever will doe till I dye; And gett me to some secrett place, For soe did hee, and soe will I,—

before the gentle Angelina thought of saying:—

And there forlorn, despairing hid, I’ll lay me down and die: ’Twas so for me that Edwin did, And so for him will I.

THE WANDERING JEW.

The success of Le Juif Errant of M. Sue, when first published, arose doubtless from two causes: the deep hold upon the popular heart which the legend of the lonely wanderer naturally acquired, and the reaction against papacy at that period. The efforts of the church, and particularly of the Society of Jesus, against which it was specially directed, to either suppress it or neutralize its effects, tended the more to extend its influence. The legend of a wanderer, pursued by some fate or power above, suffering, solitary and deathless, is as old as the human race. It takes a new form with every step in human progress, adapting itself to the character of the period and place where it reappears. It belongs to the early East, notably the Hindoo legendary literature, to Greece and Rome, and to Christendom, taking shape rather from the religious than the ethical elements of character. The Wandering Jew of Christendom varies with times and places, as his name also varies. He is Salathiel, Ahasuerus, Cartaphilus, Theudas, Zerib Bar Elia, Isbal, Michob-Ader, Bultadœus, Isaac Laquedon or something else, as circumstances determine. The German designation—the Everlasting Jew, der ewige Jude—is more specifically significant really than that of other languages, in most of which it is “wandering.”

The weird figure, wandering in fulfillment of his doom in the Carpathians, or halting at Nürnberg or Bamberg, or going in and out among the peasantry of Brittany or Wales, is an attractive subject: a vague, shadowy form; mortal and yet immortal; typical at once of man’s liability to death, and of his everlasting existence. He has the passions and anxieties and sorrows of manhood, and is endowed with a function which places him beyond the operations of Providence. From the earliest notice of this hero, which occurs in the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, he appears in numerous and manifold literary forms—drama, lyric, ballad, historical poem, legend, novel, study, essay, chronicle, biography, myth and paragraph, to the extent of perhaps a hundred volumes. The legends of most of these agree in representing the Jew as a wanderer since the day of the crucifixion, sometimes repentant and sometimes defiant, but always going. From this general voice Dr. Croly, in his Salathiel, upon a true artistic principle, departs, and makes his doomed one live only the usual period of man’s life. His Jew is repentant and anxious to die, and dies in due season. The Jew of M. Eubule-Evans, in the Curse of Immortality, also is repentant, but, pursued by implacable vengeance of the Almighty, he refuses, in his morbid pride, to purchase the repose of death at the price of self-abasement; but at last reaches contrition through the softening influence of human love, repents and dies.

With similar general characteristics the wanderer of M. Sue’s powerful melodramatic story seeks death in every clime and form: but lives on, wanders on, and toils to achieve human ends, until the close of the romance, when the hero sets out anew. Our readers are doubtless familiar with the story—the scattered heirs of a fortune of two million francs to be divided among them upon condition of their assembling at a given hour in a given room in Paris; and the machinations of the wily Jesuit Rodin, whose end was to secure the money for his own society.

The Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Albans, already referred to, report the following circumstantial details:—

In the year 1228, a certain archbishop of Armenia came on a pilgrimage to England to see the relics of the saints, and visit the sacred places in this kingdom, as he had done in others; he also produced letters of recommendation from his Holiness the Pope to the religious men and prelates of the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive and entertain him with due reverence and honor. On his arrival, he came to St. Albans, where he was received with all respect by the abbot and monks; and at this place, being fatigued with his journey, he remained some days to rest himself and his followers. In the course of conversation by means of their interpreters, he made many inquiries relating to the religion and religious observances of this country, and told many strange things concerning the countries of the East. In the course of conversation he was asked whether he had ever seen or heard anything of Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and spoke to him, and who is still alive, in evidence to the Christian faith; in reply to which a knight in his retinue, who was his interpreter, replied, speaking in French, “My Lord well knows that man, and a little before he took his way to the western countries, the said Joseph ate at the table of my lord the archbishop in Armenia, and he has often seen and held converse with him.” He was then asked about what had passed between Christ and the said Joseph, to which he replied, “At the time of the suffering of Jesus Christ, he was seized by the Jews and led into the hall of judgment, before Pilate, the governor, that he might be judged by him on the accusation of the Jews; and Pilate finding no cause for adjudging him to death, said to them, ‘Take him and judge him according to your law;’ the shouts of the Jews, however, increasing, he, at their request, released unto them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus to them to be crucified. When, therefore, the Jews were dragging Jesus forth, and had reached the door, Cartaphilus, a porter of the hall, in Pilate’s service, as Jesus was going out of the door, impiously struck him on the back with his hand, and said in mockery, ‘Go quicker, Jesus, go quicker; why do you loiter?’ and Jesus looking back on him with a severe countenance, said to him, ‘I am going and you will wait till I return.’ And according as our Lord said, this Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time of our Lord’s suffering he was thirty years old, and when he attains the age of a hundred years, he always returns to the same age as he was when our Lord suffered. After Christ’s death, when the Catholic faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by Ananias (who also baptized the apostle Paul), and was called Joseph. He dwells in one or other division of Armenia, and in divers Eastern countries, passing his time amongst the bishops and other prelates of the church; he is a man of holy conversation, and religious; a man of few words, and circumspect in his behavior, for he does not speak at all unless when questioned by the bishops and religious men, and then he tells of the events of old times, and of those which occurred at the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the witnesses of the resurrection, namely, those who rose with Christ, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the apostles, and of their separation and preaching. And all this he relates without smiling or levity of conversation, as one who is well practised in sorrow and the fear of God; always looking forward with fear to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judgment he should find him in anger, whom, when on his way to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Numbers come to him from different parts of the world, enjoying his society and conversation; and to them, if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts on the matters on which he is questioned. He refuses all gifts that are offered to him, being content with slight food and clothing.”

Of the myths of the Middle Ages, none is more striking than that of the Wandering Jew; indeed it is so well calculated to arrest the attention and to excite the imagination, that it is remarkable that we should find an interval of three centuries between its first introduction into Europe by Matthew Paris and Philip Mouskes, and its general acceptance in the sixteenth century. Of the romances of Eugéne Sue and Dr. Croly, founded upon the legend, the less said the better. The original legend is so noble in its severe simplicity that none but a master mind could develop it with any chance of success. Nor have the poetical attempts upon the story fared better. It was reserved for the pencil of Gustave Doré to treat it with the originality it merited, and in a series of wood-cuts to produce at once a poem, a romance, and a chef-d’œuvre of art.

Curious Books.

ODD TITLES OF OLD BOOKS,

Mostly Published in the time of Cromwell.

A Fan to drive away Flies: a theological treatise on Purgatory.

A most Delectable Sweet Perfumed Nosegay for God’s Saints to Smell at.

A Pair of Bellows to blow off the Dust cast upon John Fry.

A Proper Project to Startle Fools: Printed in a Land where Self’s cry’d up and Zeal’s cry’d down.

A Reaping-Hook, well tempered, for the Stubborn Ears of the coming Crop; or, Biscuit baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation.

A Sigh of Sorrow for the Sinners of Zion, breathed out of a Hole in the Wall of an Earthly Vessel, known among Men by the Name of Samuel Fish (a Quaker who had been imprisoned).

A Shot aimed at the Devil’s Head-Quarters through the Tube of the Cannon of the Covenant.

Crumbs of Comfort for the Chickens of the Covenant.

Eggs of Charity, layed by the Chickens of the Covenant, and boiled with the Water of Divine Love. Take Ye and eat.

High-heeled Shoes for Dwarfs in Holiness.

Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches.

Matches lighted by the Divine Fire.

Seven Sobs of a Sorrowful Soul for Sin, or the Seven Penitential Psalms of the Princely Prophet David; whereunto are also added, William Humius’ Handful of Honeysuckles, and Divers Godly and Pithy Ditties, now newly augmented.

Spiritual Milk for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments for their Souls’ Nourishment: a catechism.

The Bank of Faith.

The Christian Sodality; or, Catholic Hive of Bees, sucking the Honey of the Churches’ Prayer from the Blossoms of the Word of God, blowne out of the Epistles and Gospels of the Divine Service throughout the yeare. Collected by the Puny Bee of all the Hive not worthy to be named otherwise than by these Elements of his Name, F. P.

The Gun of Penitence.

The Innocent Love; or, the Holy Knight: a description of the ardors of a saint for the Virgin.

The Shop of the Spiritual Apothecary; or a collection of passages from the fathers.

The Sixpennyworth of Divine Spirit.

The Snuffers of Divine Love.

The Sound of the Trumpet: a work on the day of judgment.

The Spiritual Mustard Pot, to make the Soul Sneeze with Devotion.

The Three Daughters of Job: a treatise on patience, fortitude, and pain.

Tobacco battered, and the Pipes shattered about their Ears that idly idolize so loathsome a Vanity, by a Volley of holy shot thundered from Mount Helicon: a poem against the use of tobacco, by Joshua Sylvester.

Vox Cœlis; or, Newes from Heaven: being imaginary conversations there between Henry VIII., Edward VI., Prince Henrie, and others.

THE MOST CURIOUS BOOK IN THE WORLD.

The most singular bibliographic curiosity is that which belonged to the family of the Prince de Ligne, and is now in France. It is entitled Liber Passionis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, cum Characteribus Nulla Materia Compositis. This book is neither written nor printed! The whole letters of the text are cut out of each folio upon the finest vellum; and, being interleaved with blue paper, it is read as easily as the best print. The labor and patience bestowed in its completion must have been excessive, especially when the precision and minuteness of the letters are considered. The general execution, in every respect, is indeed admirable; and the vellum is of the most delicate and costly kind. Rodolphus II. of Germany offered for it, in 1640, eleven thousand ducats, which was probably equal to sixty thousand at this day. The most remarkable circumstance connected with this literary treasure is, that it bears the royal arms of England, but it cannot be traced to have ever been in that country.

SILVER BOOK.

In the Library of Upsal, in Sweden, there is preserved a translation of the Four Gospels, printed with metal types upon violet-colored vellum. The letters are silver, and hence it has received the name of Codex Argenteus. The initial letters are in gold. It is supposed that the whole was printed in the same manner as bookbinders letter the titles of books on the back. It was a very near approach to the discovery of the art of printing; but it is not known how old it is.

BOOK AMATEURS.

It was the Abbé Rive, librarian to the Duke de la Vallière, who made the following classification:—

A Bibliognoste is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; when and where printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiæ of a book.

A Bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements.

A Bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy.

A Bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure.

A Bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass cases.

Literariana.

THE LETTERS OF JUNIUS.

“Junius” was the name or signature of a writer who published, at intervals between 1769 and 1772, a series of political papers on the leading questions and men of that day. They appeared in the newspaper called the Public Advertiser, and attracted immense attention, partly from the high position of the characters assailed, (among whom was George III. himself,) and still more from their brilliancy of style, their boldness of tone, and the tremendous severity of the invectives employed in them. The letters are still models of that species of writing,—though it has since risen to such a point of excellence generally as would greatly weaken the force of any similar phenomena if appearing in our day. However, from the monarch to the meanest of his subjects, all men were impressed deeply at the time by the letters of Junius, the mystery attending their authorship adding largely to their influence. It was a mystery at the moment, and remains a puzzle still. Not even the publisher, Woodfall, knew who his correspondent was, or, at least, not certainly. Yet all the world felt the letters to be the work of no common man. Their most remarkable feature, indeed, was the intimate familiarity with high people and official life which they so clearly evinced. “A traitor in the camp!” was the cry of the leading statesmen of the period. Hence it occurred that almost every person of talent and eminence then living fell, or has since fallen, more or less under the suspicion of being Junius. But his own words to Woodfall have as yet proved true:—“It is not in the nature of things that you or anybody else should know me, unless I make myself known.” He adds that he never will do so. “I am the sole depository of my secret, and it shall die with me.” If it has not died with him, he at least has gone to the grave without its divulgement by himself. But there may still be circumstantial evidence sufficient to betray him, in despite of all his secretive care.

In Rush’s Residence at the Court of London is preserved an anecdote relating to the authorship of Junius, of interest and apparent importance to the investigators of this vexed question. It is as follows:—

Mr. Canning related an anecdote pertinent to the topic, derived from the present king when Prince of Wales. It was to the following effect. The late king was in the habit of going to the theatre once a week at the time Junius’s Letters were appearing, and had a page in his service of the name of Ramus. This page always brought the play-bill in to the king at teatime, on the evenings when he went. On the evening before Sir Philip Francis sailed for India, Ramus handed to the king, at the same time when delivering the play-bill, a note from Garrick to Ramus, in which the former stated that there would be no more letters from Junius. This was found to be the very night on which Junius addressed his laconic note to Garrick, threatening him with vengeance. Sir Philip did embark for India next morning, and in point of fact the letters ceased to appear from that very day. The anecdote added that there lived with Sir Philip at the time a relation of Ramus, who sailed in the morning with him. The whole narrative excited much attention, and was new to most of the company. The first impression it made was, not only that it went far towards showing, by proof almost direct, that Sir Philip Francis was the author, but that Garrick must have been in the secret.

The Bengal Hurkaru, a Calcutta paper, dated Feb. 19, 1855, contains the following paragraph, which is the more interesting when taken in conjunction with several facts connected with Francis’s residence there, as a member of the council, for several years (1774–80).

“The Englishman (a military newspaper published in Calcutta) states that there is a gentleman in Calcutta who possesses ‘an original document, the publication of which would forever set at rest the vexata quæstio as to the authorship of the Letters of Junius.’ The document which we have seen is what our cotemporary describes it to be, and bears three signatures: that of ‘Chatham,’ on the right-hand side of the paper; and on the left, those of Dr. Wilmot, and J. Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton. The paper, the ink, and the writing all induce us to believe that the document is genuine; and we understand that the gentleman in whose possession it is has other documentary evidence corroborative of this, which still further tends to clear up the riddle which so many have attempted to read with small success.”

The incident related by Mr. Canning acquires additional value and significance when considered in connection with the evidence in favor of Francis, so concisely drawn up by Macaulay in his Essay on the impeachment of Warren Hastings. After an introductory allusion to the disputed authorship, Macaulay goes on to say:—

The external evidence is, we think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a criminal, proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are the most important facts which can be considered as clearly proved: first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of the Secretary of State’s office; secondly, that he was intimately acquainted with the business of the War Office; thirdly, that he, during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary at War; fifthly, that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of State’s office. He was subsequently chief clerk of the War Office. He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham; and some of those speeches were actually printed from his notes. He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced into the public service. Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe that more than two of them can be found in any other person whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.

The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The style of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius; nor are we disposed to admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters. The argument from inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at least equal force against every claimant that has ever been mentioned, with the single exception of Burke, who certainly was not Junius. And what conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every writer must produce his best work; and the interval between his best and his second-best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than three or four of Corneille’s tragedies to the rest; than three or four of Ben Jonson’s comedies to the rest; than the Pilgrim’s Progress to the other works of Bunyan; than Don Quixote to the other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain that the Man in the Mask, whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no further than the letters which bear the signature of Junius,—the letter to the king and the letters to Horne Tooke have little in common except the asperity; and asperity was an ingredient seldom wanting either in the writings or in the speeches of Francis.

Indeed, one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis was Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is not difficult from the letters which, under various signatures, are known to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity,—a man whose vices were not of a sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public virtue. “Doest thou well to be angry?” was the question asked in old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, “I do well.” This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to this cause we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong self-delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may be added, that Junius, though allied with the democratic party by common enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity which perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he regarded the most defective parts of old institutions with a respect amounting to pedantry, pleaded the cause of Old Sarum with fervor, and contemptuously told the capitalists of Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might buy land and become freeholders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All this, we believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, for a character of Philip Francis.

It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have been willing at that time to leave the country which had been so powerfully stirred by his eloquence. Every thing had gone against him. That party which he clearly preferred to every other, the party of George Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its chief, and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex election had gone down. Every faction must have been an object of aversion to Junius. His opinions on domestic affairs separated him from the Ministry, his opinions on colonial affairs from the Opposition. Under such circumstances, he had thrown down his pen in misanthropic despair. His farewell letter to Woodfall bears date January 19, 1773. In that letter he declared that he must be an idiot to write again; that he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both were given up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily together on any question. “But it is all alike,” he added, “vile and contemptible. You have never flinched, that I know of; and I shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity.” These were the last words of Junius. Soon afterwards Sir Philip Francis started on his voyage to Bengal.

One of the ablest articles in favor of Lord Chatham may be found in Hogg’s Instructor, already quoted from. The writer sums up his evidence in a masterly manner, and almost conclusively, were it not that he still leaves, like others who have preceded him, a large space for an entering wedge. Nay, more: he even divides the palm, and, though he gives the great William Pitt the chief glory, he intimates that Francis not only wrote some of the epistles, but originated “the idea of so operating on the public mind.” He says in his closing remarks, in answer to the question, “Had Sir Philip Francis no share in the Junian Letters?” “He certainly was privy, we imagine, to the whole business, and, indeed, very probably wrote some of the earlier and less important epistles. He had been private secretary to Chatham at one time, and was his friend, or rather idolizing follower, through life. But he was not Junius. He may even have begun the epistolary series, and may deserve the credit, perhaps, of having suggested the idea of so operating on the public mind. But still he was not Nominis Umbra himself. In answering the queries of Lord Campbell, Lady Francis, while owning that Sir Philip never called himself Junius to her, assumes nevertheless that he was that mystic being, but adds that after he had begun the letters a ‘new and powerful ally’ came to his assistance. The whole mystery is here laid bare. Lord Chatham is clearly the ally meant; and the testimony of Lady Francis, therefore, founded on the revelations of her husband, may be held as fully establishing our present hypothesis.”

Yet Francis and Chatham both “died and left no sign:” the question is therefore still open to discussion, and, as a late writer has remarked, it is not a mere question of curiosity. He recommends it to the study of every barrister who wishes to make himself acquainted with the Theory of Evidence. There is scarcely a claim that has been put forward as yet, which he will not find worthy of his attention, especially when he considers the remarkable coincidences which have generally been the occasion of their being brought forward. He adds that he has during the last thirty years successively admitted the claims of five or six of the candidates, but that now he does not believe in one of them.

GRAY’S ELEGY.

Never the verse approve and hold as good Till many a day and many a blot has wrought The polished work, and chastened every thought By tenfold labor to perfection brought.—§Horace.§

The original MS. of this immortal poem was lately sold at auction in London. At a former sale (1845) it was purchased, together with the “Odes,” by a Mr. Penn. He gave $500 for the Elegy alone. He was proud, says the London Athenæum, of his purchase,—so proud, indeed, that binders were employed to inlay them on fine paper, bind them up in volumes of richly-tooled olive morocco with silk linings, and finally enclose each volume in a case of plain purple morocco. The order was carefully carried out, and the volumes were deposited at Stoke Pogis, in the great house adjoining the grave of Gray. The MS. of the Elegy is full of verbal alterations: it is the only copy known to exist, and is evidently Gray’s first grouping together of the stanzas as a whole. As the Elegy is known and admired by almost every one conversant with the English language, we select some of the verses, to show the alterations made by the author. The established text is printed in Roman type, the MS. readings as originally written, in Italics:—

Of such as wandering near her secret bower stray too The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep village The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, Forever sleep; the breezy call of The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn Or Chanticleer so shrill, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share coming doubtful Let not ambition mock their useful toil, homely Their homely joys rustic Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault Forgive, ye proud, th’ involuntary fault Can honor’s voice provoke the silent dust awake Chill penury repress’d their noble rage had damp’d Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Tully Some Cromwell Cæsar Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined struggling They kept the noiseless tenor of their way silent Even in our ashes live their wonted fires And buried ashes glow with social Brushing with hasty steps the dews away With hasty footsteps brush There, at the foot of yonder nodding beech Oft hoary spreading Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn With gestures quaint Muttering his wayward fancies, he would rove fond conceits, he wont to Along the heath, and near his favorite tree By the heath side The next, with dirges due, in sad array meet Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn Wrote that Carved Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere heart Or draw his frailties from their dread abode Nor seek to draw them There they alike in trembling hope repose His frailties there

In the original manuscript copy, after the eighteenth stanza, are the four following verses, which were evidently intended to complete the poem, but the idea of the hoary-headed swain occurring to the author, he rejected them:—

The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, Exalt the brave and idolize success; But more to innocence their safety owe, Than power or genius ere conspired to bless.

And thou who, mindful of the unhonored dead, Dost in these notes their artless tale relate; By night and lonely contemplation led To wander in the gloomy walks of fate:

Hark! how the sacred calm that breathes around Bids every fierce, tumultuous passion cease, In still, small accents breathing from the ground A grateful earnest of eternal peace.

No more with reason and thyself at strife, Give anxious cares and endless wishes room; But through the cool sequestered vale of life Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom.

After the twenty-fifth stanza was the following:—

Him have we seen the greenwood side along, While o’er the heath we hied, our labor done, Oft as the woodlark piped her farewell song, With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun.

Preceding the epitaph was the following beautiful allusion to the rustic tomb of the village scholar:—

There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen, are showers of violets found; The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

Gray began the composition of this exquisite poem in 1742; but so carefully did he proceed, that it remained on his hands for seven years. It is believed to have been mostly written within the precincts of the church at Granchester, about two miles from Cambridge; and the curfew in the poet’s mind was accordingly the great bell of St. Mary’s, tolled regularly every evening at nine o’clock in Gray’s time and since.

As a piece of finished composition, possessing all the elements of true poetry, in conception, in illustration, in the mechanical structure of the verse, in the simplicity of the style, in the touching nature of the ideas, the Elegy won from the outset a fame which, as a century of time has but served to make it more certain and more illustrious, is likely to last as long as mankind have the feelings of mortality.

As illustrations of the popularity of this poem, we may cite two historical incidents that will be interesting and acceptable to the reader.

On the night of September 13, 1759,—the night before the capture of Quebec by the English,—as the boats were floating down the river to the appointed landing, under cover of the night, and in the stillness of a silence constrained on pain of death, Gen. Wolfe, just arisen from a bed of sickness, harassed with the anxieties of a protracted yet fruitless campaign, and his mind filled with the present hazard, slowly and softly repeated its soothing lines; and he added to the officers around him, “Now, gentlemen, I would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow.”

On the night of October 23, 1852,—the night before Daniel Webster’s death,—the great statesman, having already been informed by his medical attendant that nothing further could be done, except to render his last hours more quiet, said, somewhat indistinctly, the words, “Poetry, poetry,—Gray, Gray!” His son repeated the opening line of the Elegy, and Mr. Webster said, “That is it! that is it!” The volume was brought, and several stanzas of the poem were read to him, which gave him evident pleasure.

Among the many who have sought notoriety by pinning themselves to the skirts of Gray is a Mr. Edwards, author of The Canons of Criticism. This gentleman, though a bachelor, was more attentive to the fair sex than the pindaric Elegist, and, thinking there was a defect in the immortal poem that should be supplied, wrote the following creditable stanzas, which remind one of Maud Muller, to be introduced immediately after “some Cromwell guiltless,” &c.

Some lovely fair, whose unaffected charms Shone forth, attraction in herself unknown, Whose beauty might have blest a monarch’s arms, And virtue cast a lustre on a throne.

That humble beauty warmed an honest heart And cheered the labors of a faithful spouse; That virtue formed for every decent part The healthful offspring that adorned their house.

The following beautiful imitation, by an American poet, is the best that has ever been offered to supply another remarkable deficiency,—the absence of such reflections on the sublime truths and inspiring hopes of Christianity as the scene would naturally awaken in a pious mind. With the exception of two or three somewhat equivocal expressions, Gray says scarcely a word which might not have been said by any one who believed that death is an eternal sleep, and who was disposed to regard the humble tenants of those tombs as indeed “each in his narrow cell forever laid.” A supplement according so well with the Elegy, both in elevation of sentiment and force of diction, as the following, might appropriately have followed the stanza,—

“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”

No airy dreams their simple fancies fired, No thirst for wealth, nor panting after fame; But truth divine sublimer hopes inspired, And urged them onward to a nobler aim.

From every cottage, with the day, arose The hallowed voice of spirit-breathing prayer; And artless anthems, at its peaceful close, Like holy incense, charmed the evening air.

Though they, each tome of human lore unknown, The brilliant path of science never trod, The sacred volume claimed their hearts alone, Which taught the way to glory and to God.

Here they from truth’s eternal fountain drew The pure and gladdening waters, day by day; Learned, since our days are evil, fleet, and few, To walk in Wisdom’s bright and peaceful way.

In yon lone pile o’er which hath sternly passed The heavy hand of all-destroying Time, Through whose low mouldering aisles now sigh the blest, And round whose altars grass and ivy climb,

They gladly thronged, their grateful hymns to raise, Oft as the calm and holy Sabbath shone; The mingled tribute of their prayers and praise In sweet communion rose before the throne.

Here, from those honored lips which sacred fire From Heaven’s high chancery hath touched, they hear Truths which their zeal inflame, their hopes inspire, Give wings to faith, and check affliction’s tear.

When life flowed by, and, like an angel, Death Came to release them to the world on high, Praise trembled still on each expiring breath, And holy triumph beamed from every eye.

Then gentle hands their “dust to dust” consign; With quiet tears, the simple rites are said, And here they sleep, till at the trump divine The earth and ocean render up their dead.

SCENE FROM THE PARTING INTERVIEW OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

From the manuscript of Pope’s translation of Homer’s Iliad we select a passage, with its alterations and emendations, characteristic, like those of the foregoing, of the taste and precision of the author. It is interesting to note the variety of epithets, the imperfect idea, the gradual embellishment, and the critical erasures. But in their contemplation, rather than say, with Waller,—

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot,

we should feel with Dr. Johnson, who remarked, upon examining the MSS. of Milton, that “such relics show how excellence is acquired: what we hope ever to do with ease we must learn first to do with diligence.” Johnson himself employed the limæ laborem on The Rambler to an extent almost incredible, and, according to Boswell, unknown in the annals of literature.

Dr. Nash remarks that it is more difficult, and requires a greater mastery of art, in painting to foreshorten a figure exactly than to draw three at their just length; so it is more difficult in writing, to express any thing naturally and briefly than to enlarge and dilate.

And therefore a judicious author’s blots Are more ingenious than his first free thoughts.

Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy Extends his eager arms to embrace his boy, lovely Stretched his fond arms to seize the beauteous boy; babe The boy clung crying to his nurse’s breast, Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. each kind With silent pleasure the fond parent smiled, And Hector hasted to relieve his child. The glittering terrors unbound, His radiant helmet from his brows unbraced, on the ground he And on the ground the glittering terror placed, beamy And placed the radiant helmet on the ground; Then seized the boy, and raising him in air, lifting Then, fondling in his arms his infant heir, dancing Thus to the gods addressed a father’s prayer: glory fills O thou, whose thunder shakes th’ ethereal throne, deathless And all ye other powers, protect my son! Like mine, this war, blooming youth with every virtue bless! grace _The shield and glory of the Trojan race; Like mine, his valor and his just renown, Like mine, his labors to defend the crown._ Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, the Trojans, To guard my country, to defend the crown; In arms like me, his country’s war to wage, Against his country’s foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age! successful So when, triumphant from the glorious toils, Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may All Troy shall hail him, with deserved acclaim, own the son And cry, This chief transcends his father’s fame; While, pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy. fondly on her He said, and, gazing o’er his consort’s charms, Restored his infant to her longing arms: on Soft in her fragrant breast the babe she laid, Pressed to her heart, and with a smile surveyed; to repose Hushed him to rest, and with a smile surveyed; passion But soon the troubled pleasure mixed with rising fears dashed with fear, The tender pleasure soon chastised by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.

In the established text will be found still further variations. These are marked below in Italics:—

Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy. The babe clung crying to his nurse’s breast, Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest. With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled, And Hector hasted to relieve his child. The glittering terrors from his brows unbound, And placed the beaming helmet on the ground; Then kissed the child, and lifting high in air, Thus to the gods preferred a father’s prayer:—

O thou, whose glory fills th’ ethereal throne, And all ye deathless powers, protect my son! Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown, To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown; Against his country’s foes the war to wage, And rise the Hector of the future age! So when, triumphant from successful toils, Of heroes slain, he bears the reeking spoils, Whole hosts may hail him, with deserved acclaim, And say, This chief transcends his father’s fame; While, pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy, His mother’s conscious heart o’erflows with joy.

He spoke, and, fondly gazing on her charms, Restored the pleasing burden to her arms: Soft on her fragrant breast the babe she laid, Hushed to repose, and with a smile surveyed. The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear, She mingled with the smile a tender tear.

POPE’S VERSIFICATION.

The mechanical structure of Pope’s verses may be shown by omitting dissyllabic qualifying words, which are comparatively unimportant, and converting a ten-syllable into an eight-syllable metre, as in the following examples. First read the full text as in the original, and then read with the words in brackets omitted:—

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the [direful] spring Of woes unnumbered, [Heavenly] Goddess, sing! That wrath which hurled to Pluto’s [gloomy] reign The souls of [mighty] chiefs untimely slain; Whose limbs unburied on the [naked] shore, Devouring dogs and [hungry] vultures tore—

Now turn from the Iliad to the Rape of the Lock:—

And now [unveiled] the toilet stands displayed, Each silver vase in [mystic] order laid. A [heavenly] image in the glass appears, To that she bends, [to that] her eyes she rears; The [inferior] priestess at her altar’s side, [Trembling] begins the sacred rights of pride. Unnumbered treasures ope [at once], and here The [varied] offerings of the world appear. From each she nicely culls with [curious] toil, And decks the goddess with the [glittering] spoil.

IMPORTANCE OF PUNCTUATION.

The following passage occurs in Marlowe’s Edward II.:—

Mortimer Jun.—This letter written by a friend of ours, Contains his death, yet bids them save his life. Edwardum occidere nolite timere, bonum est. Fear not to kill the king, ’tis good he die. But read it thus, and that’s another sense: Edwardum occidere nolite, timere bonum est. Kill not the king, ’tis good to fear the worst. Unpointed as it is, thus shall it go, &c.

Mr. Collier appends the following note:—

Sir J. Harington has an Epigram [L. i., E. 33] “Of writing with double pointing,” which is thus introduced:—“It is said that King Edward, of Carnarvon, lying at Berkely Castle, prisoner, a cardinal wrote to his keeper, Edwardum occidere noli, timere bonum est, which being read with the point at timere, it cost the king his life.”

The French have a proverb, Faute d’un point Martin perdit son ane, (through want of a point [or stop] Martin lost his ass,) equivalent to the English saying, A miss is as good as a mile. This proverb originated from the following circumstance:—A priest named Martin, being appointed abbot of a religious house called Asello, directed this inscription to be placed over his gate:—

§Porta patens esto, nulli claudatur honesto.§

(Gate, be thou open,—to no honest man be shut.)

But the ignorant painter, by placing the stop after the word nulli, entirely altered the sense of the verse, which then stood thus:—

Gate, be open to none;—be shut against every honest man.

The Pope being informed of this uncharitable inscription, took up the matter in a very serious light, and deposed the abbot. His successor was careful to correct the punctuation of the verse, to which the following line was added:—

Pro solo puncto caruit Martinus Asello.

(For a single stop Martin lost Asello.)

The word Asello having an equivocal sense, signifying an ass as well as the name of the abbey, its former signification has been adopted in the proverb.

A nice point has recently occupied the attention of the French courts of law. Mons. de M. died on the 27th of February, leaving a will, entirely in his own handwriting, which he concludes thus:—

“And to testify my affection for my nephews Charles and Henri de M., I bequeath to each d’eux [i.e. of them] [or deux, i.e. two] hundred thousand francs.”

The paper was folded before the ink was dry, and the writing is blotted in many places. The legatees assert that the apostrophe is one of those blots; but the son and heir-at-law maintains, on the contrary, that the apostrophe is intentional. This apostrophe is worth to him two hundred thousand francs; and the difficulty is increased by the fact that there is nothing in the context that affords any clew to the real intention of the testator.

Properly punctuated, the following nonsense becomes sensible rhyme, and is doubtless as true as it is curious, though as it now stands it is very curious if true:—

I saw a pigeon making bread; I saw a girl composed of thread; I saw a towel one mile square; I saw a meadow in the air; I saw a rocket walk a mile; I saw a pony make a file; I saw a blacksmith in a box; I saw an orange kill an ox; I saw a butcher made of steel; I saw a penknife dance a reel; I saw a sailor twelve feet high; I saw a ladder in a pie; I saw an apple fly away; I saw a sparrow making hay; I saw a farmer like a dog; I saw a puppy mixing grog; I saw three men who saw these too, And will confirm what I tell you.

The following is a good example of the unintelligible, produced by the want of pauses in their right places:—

Every lady in this land Hath twenty nails upon each hand; Five and twenty on hands and feet, And this is true without deceit.

Punctuated thus, the true meaning will at once appear:—

Every lady in this land Hath twenty nails: upon each hand Five; and twenty on hands and feet; And this is true without deceit.

The wife of a mariner about to sail on a distant voyage sent a note to the clergyman of the parish, expressing the following meaning:—

A husband going to sea, his wife desires the prayers of the congregation.

Unfortunately, the good matron was not skilled in punctuation, nor had the minister quick vision. He read the note as it was written:—

A husband going to see his wife, desires the prayers of the congregation.

* * * * *

Horace Smith, speaking of the ancient Oracles, says, “If the presiding deities had not been shrewd punsters, or able to inspire the Pythoness with ready equivoques, the whole establishment must speedily have been declared bankrupt. Sometimes they only dabbled in accentuation, and accomplished their prophecies by the transposition of a stop, as in the well-known answer to a soldier inquiring his fate in the war for which he was about to embark. §Ibis, redibis. Nunquam in bello peribis.§ (You will go, you will return. Never in war will you perish.) The warrior set off in high spirits upon the faith of this prediction, and fell in the first engagement, when his widow had the satisfaction of being informed that he should have put the full stop after the word nunquam, which would probably have put a full stop to his enterprise and saved his life.”

INDIAN HERALDRY.

A sanguine Frenchman had so high an opinion of the pleasure to be enjoyed in the study of heraldry, that he used to lament, as we are informed by Menage, the hard case of our forefather Adam, who could not possibly amuse himself by investigating that science or that of genealogy.

A similar instance of egregious preference for a favorite study occurs in a curious work on Heraldry, published in London, in 1682, the author of which adduces, as an argument of the science of heraldry being founded on the universal propensities of human nature, the fact of having seen some American Indians with their skins tattooed in stripes parallel and crossed (barries). The book bears the following title:—Introductio ad Latinam Blasoniam. Authore Johanne Gibbono Armorumservulo quem a mantilio dicunt Cæruleo. The singular and amusing extract appended is copied from page 156:—

The book entitled Jews in America tells you that the sachem and chief princes of the Nunkyganses, in New England, submitted to King Charles I., subscribing their names, and setting their seals, which were a §BOW BENT§, §CHARGED WITH AN ARROW§, §a T reversed§, §A TOMAHAWK OR HATCHET ERECTED§, such a one borne §BARRYWISE§, edge downward, and a §FAWN§. A great part of Anno 1659, till February the year following, I lived in Virginia, being most hospitably entertained by the honorable Col. R. Lee, sometime secretary of state there, and who after the king’s martyrdom hired a Dutch vessel, freighted her himself, and went to Brussels, surrendered up Sir William Barclaie’s old commission (for the government of that Province), and received a new one from his present majesty (a loyal action, and deserving my commemoration): neither will I omit his arms, being §Gul. a Fes. chequy, or, Bl between eight billets Arg.§ being descended from the Lees of Shropshire, who sometimes bore eight billets, sometimes ten, and sometimes the Fesse Contercompone (as I have seen by our office-records). I will blason it thus: In Clypeo rutilo; Fasciam pluribus quadratis auri et cyani, alternis æquisque spaciis (ducter triplici positis) confectam et inter octo Plinthides argenteas collocatam. I say, while I lived in Virginia, I saw once a war-dance acted by the natives. The dancers were painted some §party per pale Gul. et sab.§ from forehead to foot (some §PARTY PER FESSE§, of the same colors), and carried little ill-made shields of bark, also painted of those colors (for I saw no other), some §PARTY PER FESSE§, some §PER PALE§ (and some §BARRY§), at which I exceedingly wondered, and concluded that heraldry was engrafted naturally into the sense of the human race. If so, it deserves a greater esteem than is now-a-days put upon it.

THE ANACHRONISMS OF SHAKSPEARE.

Poets, in the proper exercise of their art, may claim greater license of invention and speech, and far greater liberty of illustration and embellishment, than is allowed to the sober writer of history; but historical truth or chronological accuracy should not be entirely sacrificed to dramatic effect, especially when the poem is founded upon history, or designed generally to represent historical truth. In the matchless works of Shakspeare we look instinctively for exactness in the details of time, place, and circumstance; and it is therefore with no little surprise that we find he has misplaced, in such instances as the following, the chronological order of events, of the true state of which it can hardly be supposed he was ignorant.

In the play of Coriolanus, Titus Lartius is made to say, addressing C. Marcius,—

Thou wast a soldier even to Cato’s wish.

It is a little curious how Marcius could have been a soldier to “Cato’s wish,” for Marcius, surnamed Coriolanus, was banished from Rome and died more than two hundred years before Cato’s eyes first saw the light. In the same play Menenius says of Marcius, “He sits in his state as a thing made for Alexander,” or like Alexander. The anachronism made in this case is almost as bad as that just given, for Coriolanus was banished from Rome and died not far from §B.C.§ 490, and Alexander was not born until almost one hundred and fifty years after. And the poet in the same play makes still another error in the words which he puts in the mouth of Menenius:—“The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic.” Now, as the renowned “father of medicine” was not born until §A.D.§ 130, of which fact it seems hardly probable that Shakspeare could have been ignorant, he has overleaped more than six hundred years to introduce Galen to his readers.

In the tragedy of Julius Cæsar occurs a historical inaccuracy which cannot be excused on the ground of dramatic effect. It must be imputed to downright carelessness. It is in the following lines:—

Brutus. Peace! count the clock.

Cassius. The clock has stricken three.

Cassius and Brutus both must have been endowed with the vision of a prophet, for the first striking clock was not introduced into Europe until more than eight hundred years after they had been laid in their graves. And in the tragedy of King Lear there is an inaccuracy, in regard to spectacles, as great as that in Julius Cæsar respecting clocks. King Lear was king of Britain in the early Anglo-Saxon period of English history; yet Gloster, commanding his son to show him a letter which he holds in his hands, says, “Come, let’s see: if it be nothing, I shall not want spectacles.” It is generally admitted that spectacles were not worn in Europe until the end of the thirteenth or the commencement of the fourteenth century.

Shakspeare also anticipates in at least two plays, and by many years, the important event of the first use of cannon in battle or siege. In his great tragedy of Macbeth, he speaks of cannon “overcharged with double cracks;” and King John says,—

Be thou as lightning in the eyes of France, For ere thou canst report, I will be there; The thunder of my cannon shall be heard.

Cannon, it will be recollected, were first used at Cressy, in 1346, whereas Macbeth was killed in 1054, and John did not begin to reign until 1199. In the Comedy of Errors, the scene of which is laid in the ancient city of Ephesus, mention is made of modern denominations of money, as guilders and ducats; also of a striking clock, and a nunnery.

SHAKSPEARE’S HEROINES.

Ruskin says:—Shakspeare has no heroes—he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage, and the still slighter Valentine in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as to leave him the prey of every base practice around him; but he is the only example even approximating the heroic type. Hamlet is indolent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an impatient boy. Whereas there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast in grave hope and errorless purpose. Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogene, Queen Katherine, Perdita, Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless.

SHAKSPEARE AND TYPOGRAPHY.

The great Caxton authority in England—Mr. William Blades—has turned his attention to Shakspeare, and applies his knowledge as a practical printer to the poet’s works, in order to see what acquaintance they show with the compositor’s art. The result is strikingly set forth in a volume entitled “Shakspeare and Typography.” Many instances of the use of technical terms by Shakspeare are cited by Mr. Blades, such as the following:—

1. “Come we to full points here? And are et ceteras nothing?—2 Henry IV., ii. 4.”

2. “If a book is folio, and two pages of type have been composed, they are placed in proper position upon the imposing stone, and enclosed within an iron or steel frame, called a ‘chase,’ small wedges of hard wood, termed ‘coigns’ or ‘quoins,’ being driven in at opposite sides to make all tight.

By the four opposing coigns Which the world together joins.—Pericles, iii. 1.

This is just the description of a form in folio, where two quoins on one side are always opposite to two quoins on the other, thus together joining and tightening all the separate stamps.”

SHAKSPEARE’S SONNETS.

Schlegel says that sufficient use has not been made of Shakspeare’s Sonnets as important materials for his biography. Let us see to what conclusions they may lead us. In Sonnet §XXXVII.§, for example, he says:—

As a decrepit father takes delight To see his active child do deeds of youth, So I, made lame by fortune’s dearest spite, Take all my comfort of thy worth and truth.

And again, in Sonnet §LXXXIX.§,—

Say that thou didst forsake me for some fault, And I will comment upon that offence; Speak of my lameness, and I straight will halt, Against thy reasons making no defence.

Was Shakspeare lame? “A question to be asked;” and there is nothing in the inquiry repugnant to poetic justice, for he has made Julius Cæsar deaf in his left ear. Where did he get his authority?

HAMLET’S AGE.

Shakspeare’s Hamlet was thirty years old, as is indicated by the text in Act. V. Sc. 1:—

§Ham.§ How long hast thou been a grave-maker?

§1 Clo.§ Of all the days i’ the year, I came to’t that day that our last King Hamlet o’ercame Fortinbras.

§Ham.§ How long is that since?

§1 Clo.§ Cannot you tell that? Every fool can tell that: it was the very day that young Hamlet was born: he that is mad and sent into England.

* * * * *

§Ham.§ Upon what ground?

§1 Clo.§ Why, here in Denmark. I have been sexton here, man and boy thirty years.

HAMLET’S INSANITY.

It is strange that there should be any doubts whether Hamlet was really or feignedly insane. His assertion to the Queen, after putting off his assumed tricks (iii. 4.),

That I essentially am not in madness, But mad in craft,

is surely admissible testimony. But he gives us other evidence based upon the difficulty of recalling a train of thought, an invariable accompaniment of insanity, inasmuch as it is an act in which both brains are concerned. He says,—

Bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from.

There are no instances of insanity on record, however slight and uncognizable by any but an experienced medical man, where the patient, after relating a short history of his complaints, physical, moral, and social, could, on being requested to reiterate the narrative, follow the same series, and repeat the same words, even with the limited correctness of a sane person.[37]

Footnote 37:

“There was disorder in the mind—a disturbance of the intellect, something more than that which he was feigning; but if the question of insanity involve the question whether his mind ceased to be under the mastery of his will, assuredly there was no such aberration.” (Reed’s Lectures.)

Dr. Johnson goes further, declaring that Hamlet “does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of sanity.”

ADDITIONAL VERSES TO HOME, SWEET HOME.

In the winter of 1833, John Howard Payne, the author of Home, Sweet Home, called upon an American lady, the wife of an eminent banker living in London, and presented to her a copy of the original, set to music, with the two following additional verses addressed to her:—

To us, in despite of the absence of years, How sweet the remembrance of home still appears! From allurements abroad, which but flatter the eye, The unsatisfied heart turns, and says, with a sigh, Home, home, sweet, sweet home! There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!

Your exile is blest with all fate can bestow, But mine has been checkered with many a woe! Yet, though different our fortunes, our thoughts are the same, And both, as we think of Columbia, exclaim, Home, home, sweet, sweet home! etc.

THE STEREOTYPED FALSITIES OF HISTORY.

Thinking to amuse my father once, after his retirement from the ministry, I offered to read a book of history. “Any thing but history,” said he; “for history must be false.”—Walpoliana.

What massive volumes would the reiterated errors and falsities of history fill, could they be collected in one grand omniana! Historians in every period of the world, narrowed and biassed by surrounding circumstances, each in his pent-up Utica confined, have lacked the fairness and impartiality necessary to insure a full conviction of their truthfulness. Men not only suffer their opinions and their prejudices to mislead themselves and others, but frequently, in the absence of material, draw upon their imaginations for facts. Often, too, when sincerely desirous of presenting the truth so as to “nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice,” the sources of their information are lamentably deficient.

The discrepancies of historical writers are very remarkable. If one who had never heard of Napoleon were to read Scott’s Life of the great military chieftain, and then read Abbott’s work, in what a maze of perplexity would he be involved between the disparagement of the one and the deification of the other! If one writer asserts that the Duke of Clarence was drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Tower of London, and another derisively treats it as a “childish improbability,” and if one expresses the belief that Richard of Gloucester exerted himself to save Clarence, and another that he was the actual murderer, who, or what, are we to believe?

Knowing, as we do, that modern history abounds with errors, what are we to think of ancient history? If fraudulent and erroneous statements can be distinctly pointed out in Hume, and Lingard, and Alison, how far can we place any reliance upon Cæsar, and Herodotus, and Xenophon?

The monstrous absurdities and incongruities related of Xerxes, which have descended to our day under the name of history, are too stupendous for any credulity. The imposture, like vaulting ambition, “o’erleaps itself.” Such extravagant demands upon our faith serve to deepen our doubt of alleged occurrences that lie more nearly within the range of possibility. If it be true that Hannibal cut his way across the Alps with “fire, iron, and vinegar,” how did he apply the vinegar?

If falsities in our American history can creep upon us whilst our eyes are open to surrounding evidence, is it to be wondered at that there are so many contradictions and so many myths in the history of Rome? The very name America is a deception, a fraud, and a perpetuation of as rank injustice as ever stained the annals of human events. It is to be hoped that the time will yet come when Columbus shall receive his due. When that millennial day arrives which will insist on calling things by their right names, the battle of Bunker’s Hill will be called the battle of Breed’s Hill.

It seems incredible, and it certainly is singular, that so many errors in our history should continue to prevail in utter defiance of what is known to be fact. Historians, for instance, persist in saying, and people consequently persist in believing, that the breast-works of General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans were made of cotton-bales covered with earth, whilst intelligent survivors strenuously deny that there was a pound of that combustible material on the ground.[38] A well-known painting frequently

Footnote 38:

General W. H. Palfrey, of New Orleans, who served in Major Planche’s battalion, which was stationed from Dec. 23, 1814, to Jan. 15, 1815, in the centre of General Jackson’s line, makes the following statement, (dated April 5, 1859,) which is confirmed by Major Chotard, General Jackson’s Assistant Adjutant-General:—

“About twenty or twenty-five bales of cotton were used in forming the embrasures of five or six batteries. There were four batteries of one piece of artillery, or howitzer, and four of two pieces, established at different points of the lines. Four bales were used at some of the batteries and six at others. None were used in any other portions of the works, which consisted of breast-works formed of earth thrown up from the inside, branches of trees, and rubbish. Each company threw up its own breastwork; and the more it was affected by the enemy’s artillery and Congreve rockets, the more industriously the soldiers toiled to strengthen it.”

copied by line-engravers represents Lord Cornwallis handing his sword to General Washington, at the surrender of Yorktown, and this in spite of the glaring fact that, to spare Cornwallis that humiliation, General O’Hara gave his sword to General Lincoln.

The blood shed at the battle of Lexington is commonly believed and said to have been the first drawn in the contest of the Colonists with the oppressive authorities of the British Government. Aside from the Boston massacre, which occurred March 5, 1770, it will be found, by reference to the records of Orange county, North Carolina, that a body of men was formed, called the “Regulators,” with the view of resisting the extortion of Colonel Fanning, clerk of the court, and other officers, who demanded illegal fees, issued false deeds, levied unauthorized taxes, &c.; that these men went to the court-house at Hillsboro’, appointed a schoolmaster named York as clerk, set up a mock judge, and pronounced judgment in mock gravity and ridicule of the court, law, and officers, by whom they felt themselves aggrieved; that soon after, the house, barn, and out-buildings of the judge were burned to the ground; and that Governor Tryon subsequently, with a small force, went to suppress the Regulators, with whom an engagement took place near Alamance Creek, on the road from Hillsboro’ to Salisbury, on the 16th of May, 1771,—nearly four years before the affair of Lexington,—in which nine Regulators and twenty-seven militia were killed, and many wounded,—fourteen of the latter being killed by one man, James Pugh, from behind a rock.

The progress of the natural and physical sciences, together with the increased facilities of intercommunication by steam, have done much towards disproving and exposing the fabulous stories of travelers. The extravagant character, for example, of the assertions of Fœrsch and Darwin in regard to the noxious emanations of the Bohun Upas is now shown by the fact that a specimen of it growing at Chiswick, England, may be approached with safety, and even handled, with a little precaution. It is equally well established that the famous Poison Valley in the island of Java affords the most remarkable natural example yet known of an atmosphere overloaded with carbonic acid gas, to which must be referred the destructive influence upon animal life heretofore attributed to the Upas-tree.

CONFLICTING TESTIMONY OF EYE-WITNESSES.

Sir Walter Raleigh, in his prison, was composing the second volume of his History of the World. Leaning on the sill of his window, he meditated on the duties of the historian to mankind, when suddenly his attention was attracted by a disturbance in the court-yard before his cell. He saw one man strike another, whom he supposed by his dress to be an officer; the latter at once drew his sword and ran the former through the body. The wounded man felled his adversary with a stick, and then sank upon the pavement. At this juncture the guard came up and carried off the officer insensible, and then the corpse of the man who had been run through.

Next day Raleigh was visited by an intimate friend, to whom he related the circumstances of the quarrel and its issue. To his astonishment, his friend unhesitatingly declared that the prisoner had mistaken the whole series of incidents which had passed before his eyes. The supposed officer was not an officer at all, but the servant of a foreign ambassador; it was he who had dealt the first blow; he had not drawn his sword, but the other had snatched it from his side, and had run him through the body before any one could interfere; whereupon a stranger from among the crowd knocked the murderer down with his stick, and some of the foreigners belonging to the ambassador’s retinue carried off the corpse. The friend of Raleigh added that government had ordered the arrest and immediate trial of the murderer, as the man assassinated was one of the principal servants of the Spanish ambassador.

“Excuse me,” said Raleigh, “but I cannot have been deceived as you suppose, for I was eye-witness to the events which took place under my own window, and the man fell there on that spot where you see a paving-stone standing up above the rest.” “My dear Raleigh,” replied his friend, “I was sitting on that stone when the fray took place, and I received this slight scratch on my cheek in snatching the sword from the murderer, and upon my word of honor, you have been deceived upon every particular.”

Sir Walter, when alone, took up the second volume of his History, which was in MS., and contemplating it, thought—“If I cannot believe my own eyes, how can I be assured of the truth of a tithe of the events which happened ages before I was born?” and he flung the manuscript into the fire.

WIT AND HUMOR.

The distinction between wit and humor may be said to consist in this,—that the characteristic of the latter is Nature, and of the former Art. Wit is more allied to intellect, and humor to imagination. Humor is a higher, finer, and more genial thing than wit. It is a combination of the laughable with tenderness, sympathy, and warm-heartedness. Pure wit is often ill-natured, and has a sting; but wit, sweetened by a kind, loving expression, becomes humor. Wit is usually brief, sharp, epigrammatic, and incisive, the fewer words the better; but humor, consisting more in the manner, is diffuse, and words are not spared in it. Carlyle says, “The essence of humor is sensibility, warm, tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence;” and adds, of Jean Paul’s humor, that “in Richter’s smile itself a touching pathos may lie hid too deep for tears.” Wit may be considered as the distinctive feature of the French genius, and humor of the English; but to show how difficult it is to carry these distinctions out fairly, we may note that England has produced a Butler, one of the greatest of wits, and France a Molière, one of the greatest of humorists. Fun includes all those things that occasion laughter which are not included in the two former divisions. Buffoonery and mimicry come under this heading, and it has been observed that the author of a comedy is a wit, the comic actor a humorist, and the clown a buffoon. Old jests were usually tricks, and in coarse times we find that little distinction is made between joyousness and a malicious delight in the misfortunes of others. Civilization discountenances practical jokes, and refinement is required to keep laughter within bounds. As the world grows older, fun becomes less boisterous, and wit gains in point, so that we cannot agree with Cornelius O’Dowd when he says, “The day of witty people is gone by. If there be men clever enough nowadays to say smart things, they are too clever to say them. The world we live in prefers placidity to brilliancy, and a man like Curran in our present-day society would be as unwelcome as a pyrotechnist with a pocket full of squibs.” This is only a repetition of an old complaint, and its incorrectness is proved when we find the same thing said one hundred years ago. In a manuscript comedy, “In Foro,” by Lady Houstone, who died near the end of the last century, one of the characters observes: “Wit is nowadays out of fashion; people are well-bred, and talk upon a level; one does not at present find wit but in some old comedy.” In spite of Mr. Lever and Lady Houstone, we believe that civilized society is specially suited for the display of refined wit. Under such conditions satire is sure to flourish, for the pen takes the place of the sword, and we know it can slay an enemy as surely as steel. This notion owes its origin in part to an error in our mental perspective, by which we bring the wit of all ages to one focus, fancying what was really far apart to have been close together, and thus comparing things which possess no proper elements of comparison, and placing as it were in opposition to each other the accumulated, broad, and well-storied tapestry of the past with the fleeting moments of our day, which are but its still accumulating fringe. Charles Lamb will not allow any great antiquity for wit, and apostrophizing candle-light says: “This is our peculiar and household planet; wanting it, what savage, unsocial nights must our ancestors have spent, wintering in eaves and unillumined fastnesses! They must have laid about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed, when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor’s cheek to be sure he understood it! Jokes came in with candles.”

AN OLD PAPER.

The most amusing and remarkable paper ever printed was the Muse Historique, or Rhyming Gazette of Jacques Loret, which, for fifteen years, from 1650 to 1665, was issued weekly in Paris. It consisted of 550 verses summarizing the week’s news in rhyme, and treated of every class of subjects, grave and gay. Loret computed, in 1663, the thirteenth year of his enterprise, that he had written over 300,000 verses, and found more than 700 different exordiums, for he never twice began his Gazette with the same entère in matier. He ran about the city for his own news, never failed to write good verses upon it, and never had anybody to help him, and his prolonged and always equal performance has been pronounced unique in the history of journalism.

COMFORT FOR BOOK LOVERS.

Mr. Ruskin vigorously defends the bibliomaniac, in his Sesame and Lilies. We have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses? If a man spends lavishly on his library you call him mad—a bibliomaniac. But you never call one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses; and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature take as compared with its expenditure on luxurious eating? We talk of food for the mind as of food for the body; now, a good book contains such food inexhaustibly—it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it! Though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men’s dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more the pity; for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy; and if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wiser people forget that if a book is worth reading it is worth buying.

LETTERS AND THEIR ENDINGS.

There is a large gamut of choice for endings, from the official “Your obedient servant,” and high and mighty “Your humble servant,” to the friendly “Yours truly,” “Yours sincerely,” and “Yours affectionately.” Some persons vary the form, and slightly intensify the expression by placing the word “yours” last, as “Faithfully yours.” James Howell used a great variety of endings, such as “Yours inviolably,” “Yours entirely,” “Your entire friend,” “Yours verily and invariably,” “Yours really,” “Yours in no vulgar way of friendship,” “Yours to dispose of,” “Yours while J. H.,” “Yours! Yours! Yours!” Walpole writes: “Yours very much,” “Yours most cordially,” and to Hannah More, in 1789, “Yours more and more.” Mr. Bright, some years ago ended a controversial letter in the following biting terms: “I am, sir, with whatever respect is due to you.” The old Board of Commissioners of the British Navy used a form of subscription very different from the ordinary official one. It was their habit to subscribe their letters (even letters of reproof) to such officers as were not of noble families or bore titles, “Your affectionate friends.” It is said that this practice was discontinued in consequence of a distinguished captain adding to his letter to the Board, “Your affectionate friend.” He was thereupon desired to discontinue the expression, when he replied, “I am, gentlemen, no longer your affectionate friend.”

STUDIES AND BOOKS.

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business, for expert men can execute and perhaps judge of business one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humor of a scholar: they perfect nature and are perfected by experience,—for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty wise men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; i.e., some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man; and therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not.—§Lord Bacon.§

Literati.

ATTAINMENTS OF LINGUISTS.

Taking the very highest estimate which has been offered of their attainments, the list of those who have been reputed to have possessed more than ten languages is a very short one. Only four, in addition to a case that will be presently mentioned,—Mithridates, Pico of Mirandola, Jonadab Almanor, and Sir William Jones,—are said in the loosest sense to have passed the limit of twenty. To the first two fame ascribes twenty-two, to the last two twenty-eight, languages. Müller, Niebuhr, Fulgence, Fresnel, and perhaps Sir John Bowring, are usually set down as knowing twenty languages. For Elihu Burritt and Csoma de Koros their admirers claim eighteen. Renaudot the controversialist is said to have known seventeen; Professor Lee, sixteen; and the attainments of the older linguists, as Arius Montanus, Martin del Rio, the converted Rabbi Libettas Cominetus, and the Admirable Crichton, are said to have ranged from this down to ten or twelve,—most of them the ordinary languages of learned and polite society.

The extraordinary case above alluded to is that of the Cardinal Mezzofanti, the son of a carpenter of Bologna, whose knowledge of languages seems almost miraculous. Von Zach, who made an occasional visit to Bologna in 1820, was accosted by the learned priest, as he then was, in Hungarian, then in good Saxon, and afterwards in the Austrian and Swabian dialects. With other members of the scientific corps the priest conversed in English, Russian, Polish, French, and Hungarian. Von Zach mentions that his German was so natural that a cultivated Hanoverian lady in the company expressed her surprise that a German should be a professor and librarian in an Italian university.

Professor Jacobs, of Gotha, was struck not only with the number of languages acquired by the “interpreter for Babel,” but at the facility with which he passed from one to the other, however opposite or cognate their structure.

Dr. Tholuck heard him converse in German, Arabic, Spanish, Flemish, English, and Swedish, received from him an original distich in Persian, and found him studying Cornish. He heard him say that he had studied to some extent the Quichus, or old Peruvian, and that he was employed upon the Bimbarra. Dr. Wiseman met him on his way to receive lessons in California Indian from natives of that country. He heard “Nigger Dutch” from a Curaçoa mulatto, and in less than two weeks wrote a short piece of poetry for the mulatto to recite in his rude tongue. He knew something of Chippewa and Delaware, and learned the language of the Algonquin Indians. A Ceylon student remembers many of the strangers with whom Mezzofanti was in the habit of conversing in the Propaganda,—those whose vernaculars were Peguan, Abyssinian, Amharic, Syriac, Arabico, Maltese, Tamulic, Bulgarian, Albanian, besides others already named. His facility in accommodating himself to each new colloquist justifies the expression applied to him, as the “chamelion of languages.”

Dr. Russell, Mezzofanti’s biographer, adopting as his definition of a thorough knowledge of language an ability to read it fluently and with ease, to write it correctly, and to speak it idiomatically, sums up the following estimate of the Cardinal’s acquisitions:—

1. Languages frequently tested and spoken by the Cardinal with rare excellence,—thirty.

2. Stated to have been spoken fluently, but hardly sufficiently tested,—nine.

3. Spoken rarely and less perfectly,—eleven.

4. Spoken imperfectly; a few sentences and conversational forms,—eight.

5. Studied from books, but not known to have been spoken,—fourteen.

6. Dialects spoken, or their peculiarities understood,—thirty-nine dialects of ten languages, many of which might justly be described as different languages.

This list adds up one hundred and eleven, exceeding by all comparison every thing related in history. The Cardinal said he made it a rule to learn every new grammar and apply himself to every strange dictionary that came within his reach. He did not appear to consider his prodigious talent so extraordinary as others did. “In addition to an excellent memory,” said he, “God has blessed me with an incredible flexibility of the organs of speech.” Another remark of his was, “that when one has learned ten or a dozen languages essentially different from one another, one may with a little study and attention learn any number of them.” Again he remarked, “If you wish to know how I preserve these languages, I can only say that when I once hear the meaning of a word in any language I never forget it.”

And yet it is not claimed for this man of many words that his ideas at all corresponded. He had twenty words for one idea, as he said of himself; but he seemed to agree with Catharine de Medicis in preferring to have twenty ideas for one word. He was remarkable for the number of languages which he had made his own, but was not distinguished as a grammarian, a lexicographer, a philologist, a philosopher, or ethnologist, and contributed nothing to any department of the study of words, much less that of science.

LITERARY ODDITIES.

Racine composed his verses while walking about, reciting them in a loud voice. One day, while thus working at his play of Mithridates, in the Tuileries gardens, a crowd of workmen gathered around him, attracted by his gestures: they took him to be a madman about to throw himself into the basin. On his return home from such walks he would write down scene by scene, at first in prose, and when he had written it out, he would exclaim, “My tragedy is done!” considering the dressing of the acts up in verse as a very small affair. Magliabecchi, the learned librarian to the Duke of Tuscany, on the contrary, never stirred abroad, but lived amid books and upon books. They were his bed, board, and washing. He passed eight-and-forty years in their midst, only twice in the course of his life venturing beyond the walls of Florence,—once to go two leagues off, and the other time three and a half leagues, by order of the Grand Duke. He was an extremely frugal man, living upon eggs, bread, and water, in great moderation. Luther, when studying, always had his dog lying at his feet,—a dog he had brought from Wartburg and of which he was very fond. An ivory crucifix stood on the table before him, and the walls of his study were stuck round with caricatures of the Pope. He worked at his desk for days together without going out; but when fatigued, and the ideas began to stagnate in his brain, he would take his flute or his guitar with him into the porch, and there execute some musical fantasy, (for he was a skilful musician,) when the ideas would flow upon him as fresh as flowers after summer’s rain. Music was his invariable solace at such times. Indeed, Luther did not hesitate to say that, after theology, music was the first of arts. “Music,” said he, “is the art of the prophets: it is the only art which, like theology, can calm the agitation of the soul and put the devil to flight.” Next to music, if not before it, Luther loved children and flowers. The great, gnarled man had a heart as tender as a woman’s. Calvin studied in his bed. Every morning, at five or six o’clock, he had books, manuscripts, and papers carried to him there, and he worked on for hours together. If he had occasion to go out, on his return he undressed and went to bed again to continue his studies. In his later years he dictated his writings to secretaries. He rarely corrected any thing. The sentences issued complete from his mouth. If he felt his facility of composition leaving him, he forthwith quitted his bed, gave up writing and composing, and went about his outdoor duties for days, weeks, and months together. But as soon as he felt the inspiration fall upon him again, he went back to his bed, and his secretary set to work forthwith. Rousseau wrote his works early in the morning; Le Sage at mid-day; Byron at midnight. Villehardouin rose at four in the morning, and wrote till late at night. Aristotle was a tremendous worker: he took little sleep, and was constantly retrenching it. He had a contrivance by which he awoke early, and to awake was with him to commence work. Demosthenes passed three months in a cavern by the seaside, laboring to overcome the defects of his voice. There he read, studied, and declaimed. Rabelais composed his Life of Gargantua at Bellay, in the company of Roman cardinals, and under the eyes of the Bishop of Paris. La Fontaine wrote his fables chiefly under the shade of a tree, and sometimes by the side of Racine and Boileau. Pascal wrote most of his Thoughts on little scraps of paper, at his by-moments. Fénélon wrote his Telemachus in the Palace of Versailles, at the court of the Grand Monarque, when discharging the duties of tutor to the Dauphin. That a book so thoroughly democratic should have issued from such a source and been written by a priest may seem surprising. De Quincey first promulgated his notion of universal freedom of person and trade, and of throwing all taxes on the land,—the germ, perhaps, of the French Revolution,—in the boudoir of Madame de Pompadour! Bacon knelt down before composing his great work, and prayed for light from Heaven. Pope never could compose well without first declaiming for some time at the top of his voice, and thus rousing his nervous system to its fullest activity. The life of Leibnitz was one of reading, writing, and meditation. That was the secret of his prodigious knowledge. After an attack of gout, he confined himself to a diet of bread and milk. Often he slept in a chair, and rarely went to bed till after midnight. Sometimes he spent months without quitting his seat, where he slept by night and wrote by day. He had an ulcer in his right leg, which prevented his walking about even had he wished to do so.

CULTURE AND SACRIFICE.

The instruction of the world has been carried on by perpetual sacrifice. A grand army of teachers, authors, artists, schoolmasters, professors, heads of colleges—have been through ages carrying on war against ignorance; but no triumphal procession has been decreed to it, nor spoils of conquered provinces have come to its coffers; no crown imperial has invested it with pomp and power. In lonely watch-towers the fires of genius have burned, but to waste and consume the lamp of life, while they gave light to the world. It is no answer to say that the victims of intellectual toil, broken down in health and fortune, have counted their work a privilege and joy. As well deny the martyr’s sacrifice because he has joyed in his integrity. And many of the world’s intellectual benefactors have been martyrs. Socrates died in prison as a public malefactor; for the healing wisdom he offered his people, deadly poison was the reward. Homer had a lot, so obscure at least, that nobody knew his birthplace; and, indeed, some modern critics are denying that there ever was any Homer.

Plato traveled back and forth from his home in Athens to the court of the Syracuse tyrant, regarded indeed and feared, but persecuted and in peril of life; nay, and once sold for a slave. Cicero shared a worse fate. Dante all his life knew, as he expressed it,

“How salt was a stranger’s bread, How hard the path still up and down to tread, A stranger’s stairs.”

Copernicus and Galileo found science no more profitable than Dante found poetry. Shakspeare had a home, but too poorly endowed to stand long in his name after he left it; the income upon which he retired was barely two or three hundred pounds a year, and so little did his contemporaries know or think of him that the critics hunt in vain for the details of his private life. The mighty span of his large honors shrinks to an obscure myth of life in theatres in London or on the banks of the Avon.

A LITERARY SCREW.

An English paper says that Sharon Turner, author of the History of the Anglo-Saxons, who received three hundred pounds a year from Government as a literary pension, wrote his third volume of his Sacred History of the World upon paper which did not cost him a farthing. The copy consisted of torn and angular fragments of letters and notes, of covers of periodicals, gray, drab, or green, written in thick round hand over a small print; of shreds of curling-paper, unctuous with pomatum of bear’s grease, and of white wrappers in which his proofs had been sent from the printers. The paper, sometimes as thin as a bank-note, was written on both sides, and was so sodden with ink, plastered on with a pen worn to a stump, that hours were frequently wasted in discovering on which side of it certain sentences were written. Men condemned to work on it saw their dinner vanish in illimitable perspective, and first-rate hands groaned over it a whole day for tenpence. One poor fellow assured the writer of that paper that he could not earn enough upon it to pay his rent, and that he had seven mouths to fill besides his own. In the hope of mending matters in some degree, slips of stout white paper were sent frequently with the proofs; but the good gentleman could not afford to use them, and they never came back as copy. What an inveterate miser this old scribbler must have been, notwithstanding his pension and his copyrights!

DRYDEN AND HIS PUBLISHER.

When Dryden had finished his translation of Virgil, after some self-deliberation, he sent the MS. to Jacob Tonson, requiring for it a certain sum, which he mentioned in a note. Tonson was desirous of possessing the work, but meanly wished to avail himself of Dryden’s necessities, which at that time were particularly urgent. He therefore informed the poet that he could not afford to give the sum demanded. Dryden, in reply, sent the following lines descriptive of Tonson:—

With leering look, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, with Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.

When they were delivered to Tonson, he asked if Mr. Dryden had said any thing more. “Yes,” answered the bearer: “he said, ‘Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more like them.’” Jacob immediately sent the money.

Personal Sketches and Anecdotes.

ANECDOTE OF WASHINGTON.

During General Washington’s administration, he almost daily attended his room, adjoining the Senate-chamber, and often arrived before the Senate organized. On one occasion, but before his arrival, Gouverneur Morris and some other senators were standing together, conversing on various topics, and, among them, the natural but majestic air of General Washington, when some one observed there was no man living who could take a liberty with him. The sprightly and bold Morris remarked, “I will bet a dozen of wine I can do that with impunity.” The bet was accepted.

Soon after, Washington appeared, and commenced an easy and pleasant conversation with one of the gentlemen, at a little distance from the others. While thus engaged, Morris, stepping up, in a jocund manner, familiarly tapped Washington on the shoulder, and said,—

“Good morning, old fellow!”

The General turned, and merely looked him in the face, without a word, when Morris, with all his assumed effrontery, stepped hastily back, in evident discomposure, and said:—

“Gentlemen, you have won the bet. I will never take such a liberty again!”

The writer obtained this fact from a member of the Senate, who witnessed the occurrence.

ANECDOTE OF LAFAYETTE.

Shortly after Lafayette’s second return from America, he was at Versailles when the king was about to review a division of troops. Lafayette was invited to join in the review. He was dressed in the American uniform, and was standing by the side of the Duc de Condé, when the king, in his tour of conversation with the officers, came to him, and, after speaking on several topics, asked him questions about his uniform and the military costume in the United States. The king’s attention was attracted by a little medal, which was attached to his coat in the manner in which the insignia of orders are usually worn in Europe; and he asked what it was. Lafayette replied that it was a symbol which it was the custom of the foreign officers in the American service to wear, and that it bore a device. The king asked what was the device: to which Lafayette answered that there was no device common to all, but that each officer chose such as pleased his fancy. “And what has pleased your fancy?” inquired the king. “My device,” said the young general, pointing to his medal, “is a liberty-pole standing on a broken crown and sceptre.” The king smiled, and, with some pleasantry about the republican propensities of a French marquis in American uniform, turned the conversation to another topic. Condé looked grave, but said nothing.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

The name Napoleon, being written in Greek characters, will form seven different words, by dropping the first letter of each in succession:—

Ναπολεων, Ἀπολέον, Πόλεον, Ὁλεον, Λέον, Ἐόν, ὧν.

These words make a complete sentence, meaning, Napoleon, the destroyer of whole cities, was the lion of his people.

MILTON AND NAPOLEON.

Napoleon Bonaparte declared to Sir Colin Campbell, who had charge of his person at the Isle of Elba, that he was a great admirer of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and that he had read it to some purpose, for that the plan of the battle of Austerlitz he borrowed from the sixth book of that work, where Satan brings his artillery to bear upon Michael and his angelic host with such direful effect:—

“Training his dev’lish enginery impaled On every side with shadowing squadrons deep To hide the fraud.”

This new mode of warfare appeared to Bonaparte so likely to succeed, if applied to actual use, that he determined upon its adoption, and succeeded beyond expectation. By reference to the details of that battle, it will be found to assimilate so completely with Milton’s imaginary fight as to leave no doubt of the assertion.

PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF NAPOLEON.

Captain Maitland gives the following description of the person of Napoleon, as he appeared on board the Bellerophon, in 1815:—

He was then a remarkably strong, well-built man, about five feet seven inches high, his limbs particularly well formed, with a fine ankle and a very small foot, of which he seemed very vain, as he always wore, while on board the ship, silk stockings and shoes. His hands were also small, and had the plumpness of a woman’s rather than the robustness of a man’s. His eyes were light gray, his teeth good; and when he smiled, the expression of his countenance was highly pleasing; when under the influence of disappointment, however, it assumed a dark and gloomy cast. His hair was a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black, and, though a little thin on the top and front, had not a gray hair amongst it. His complexion was a very uncommon one, being of a light sallow color, different from any other I ever met with. From his being corpulent, he had lost much of his activity.

HIS OPINION OF SUICIDE.

In the Journal of Dr. Warden, Surgeon of the Northumberland, the British frigate that conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena, are recorded the following remarkable sentiments of the imperial prisoner, as expressed to Warden:—

In one paper, I am called a liar; in another, a tyrant; in a third, a monster; and in one of them, which I really did not expect, I am described as a coward; but it turned out, after all, that the writer did not accuse me of avoiding danger in the field of battle, or flying from an enemy, or fearing to face the menaces of fate and fortune; he did not charge me with wanting presence of mind in the hurry of battle, and in the suspense of conflicting armies. No such thing. I wanted courage, it seems, because I did not coolly take a dose of poison, or throw myself into the sea, or blow out my brains. The editor most certainly misunderstands me: I have, at least, too much courage for that.

On another occasion he expressed himself in the following terms:—

Suicide is a crime the most revolting to my feelings, nor does any reason suggest itself to my understanding by which it can be justified. It certainly originates in that species of fear which we denominate poltroonery. For what claim can that man have to courage who trembles at the frowns of fortune? True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge him to the combat.

DR. FRANKLIN’S WIFE.

Franklin, in a sketch of his life and habits, relates the following anecdote of his frugal and affectionate wife. A wife could scarcely make a prettier apology for purchasing her first piece of luxury.

We have an English proverb, that says,—

“He that would thrive Must ask his wife.”

It was lucky for me that I have one as much disposed to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my business, and in stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing old linen rags for the paper-makers, &c. We kept no idle servant; our table was plain and simple; our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was for a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a two-penny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress in spite of principle: being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a china bowl, with a spoon of silver. They had been bought for me without my knowledge, by my wife, and had cost her the enormous sum of three-and-twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse or apology to make but that she thought her husband deserved a silver spoon and china bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the first appearance of plate or china in our house, which afterwards, in the course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to several hundred pounds in value.

MAJOR ANDRÉ.

In a satirical poem written by Major André some time prior to his arrest as a spy, he, curiously enough, alludes to the means of his own death. A newspaper published soon after the Revolutionary War gives some extracts from the poem, and calls it a “remarkable prophecy.” Could the ill-starred poet and soldier have looked into futurity and seen his own sad end, he would hardly have indulged in the humor which is indicated in his poem. The piece was entitled “The Cow-Chase,” and was suggested by the failure of an expedition undertaken by Wayne for the purpose of collecting cattle. Great liberties were taken with the names of the American officers employed on the occasion,—

Harry Lee and his dragoons, And Proctor with his cannon.

But the point of his irony seemed particularly aimed at Wayne, whose entire baggage, he asserts, was taken along, comprising

His Congress dollars and his prog, His military speeches, His corn-stalk whiskey for his grog, Black stockings and blue breeches.

The satirist brings his doggerel to a close by observing that it is necessary to check the current of his satire,—

Lest the same warrior-drover Wayne Should catch and hang the poet!

AN ENGLISH VIEW OF ANDRÉ AND ARNOLD.

Many historians have been inclined to blame Washington for unnecessary severity in not acceding to the request of the prisoner (André), that he might be shot instead of hanged. We cannot agree with them: the ignominious death was decided upon by Washington—after much and anxious deliberation, and against his own feelings, which inclined to grant the prayer—as a strictly preventive punishment; and it had its effect. The social qualities and the letters of André, although they are always brought forward in his favor, do not extenuate but rather aggravate his crime, as they show that, whatever his moral principles may have been, he had the education of an English gentleman. If any thing, his memory has been treated with too great leniency. If monuments are to be erected in Westminster Abbey to men of such lax morality, it is time for honesty to hide its head.

The conduct of Sir Henry Clinton, in receiving Arnold when he fled to the English ranks, and giving him a high command, is only in keeping with his countenance of the plot that cost André his life. Arnold, who seems to have been a miserable scoundrel, born to serve as a foil to the virtuous brightness of George Washington, might have redeemed his character by giving himself up in place of André, who was entrapped by Arnold’s cowardice and over-caution; but such a piece of self-sacrifice never entered his head. A villain himself, he never believed in the success of the struggle of honest men, and his conduct after obtaining the protection of Sir Henry Clinton proves this beyond a doubt. Let him rest with all his British honors thick upon him.—English Newspaper.

FLAMSTEED, THE ASTRONOMER ROYAL.

In the London Chronicle for Dec. 3, 1771, is the following anecdote of Dr. Flamsteed:—

He was many years Astronomer Royal at Greenwich Observatory; a humorist, and of warm passions. Persons of his profession are often supposed, by the common people, to be capable of foretelling events. In this persuasion a poor washerwoman at Greenwich, who had been robbed at night of a large parcel of linen, to her almost ruin, if forced to pay for it, came to him, and with great anxiety earnestly requested him to use his art, to let her know where her things were, and who had robbed her. The Doctor happened to be in the humor to joke: he bid her stay: he would see what he could do; perhaps he might let her know where she could find them; but who the persons were, he would not undertake; as she could have no positive proof to convict them, it would be useless. He then set about drawing circles, squares, &c., to amuse her; and after some time told her if she would go into a particular field, that in such a part of it, in a dry ditch, she would find them all tumbled up in a sheet. The woman went, and found them; came with great haste and joy to thank the Doctor, and offered him half-a-crown as a token of gratitude, being as much as she could afford. The Doctor, surprised himself, told her: “Good woman, I am heartily glad you have found your linen; but I assure you I knew nothing of it, and intended only to joke with you, and then to have read you a lecture on the folly of applying to any person to know events not in human power to tell. But I see the devil has a mind that I should deal with him: I am determined I will not. Never come or send any one to me any more, on such occasions; for I will never attempt such an affair again whilst I live.”

LORD NELSON’S SANG-FROID.

Jack was what they called loblolly boy on board the Victory. It was his duty to do anything and everything that was required—from sweeping and washing the deck, and saying amen to the chaplain, down to cleaning the guns, and helping the doctor to make pills and plasters, and mix medicines. Four days before the battle that was so glorious to England, but so fatal to its greatest hero, Jack was ordered by the doctor to fetch a bottle that was standing in a particular place. Jack ran off, post-haste, to the spot, where he found what appeared to be an empty bottle. Curiosity was uppermost; “What,” thought Jack, “can there be about this empty bottle?” He examined it carefully, but could not comprehend the mystery, so he thought that he would call in the aid of a candle to throw light on the subject. The bottle contained ether, and the result of the examination was that the vapor ignited, and the flames extended to some of the sails, and also to a part of the ship. There was a general confusion—running with buckets and what-not—and, to make matters worse, the fire was rapidly extending to the powder-magazine. During the hubbub, Lord Nelson was in the chief cabin writing dispatches. His lordship heard the noise—he couldn’t do otherwise—and so, in a loud voice, he called out, “What’s all that infernal noise about?” The boatswain answered, “My Lord, the loblolly boy’s set fire to an empty bottle, and it’s set fire to the ship.” “Oh!” said Nelson, “that’s all, is it? I thought the enemy had boarded us and taken us all prisoners—you and loblolly must put it out, and take care we’re not blown up! but pray make as little noise about it as you can, or I can’t go on with my dispatches,” and with these words Nelson went to his desk, and continued his writing with the greatest coolness.

* * * * *

Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, speaking of Gœthe as the mightiest intellect that has shone on the earth for centuries, says: “It has been my rare good fortune to have seen a large proportion of the greatest minds of our age, in the fields of poetry and speculative philosophy, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Schiller, Tieck, but none that I have ever known came near him.”

MARTIN LUTHER.

Roma orbem domuit, Romam sibi Papa subegit; Viribus illa suit, fraudibus iste suis, Quanto isto major Lutherus, major et illa, Istum illamque uno qui domuit calamo.—§Beza.§

(Rome won the world, the Pope o’er Rome prevailed, And one by force and one by fraud availed: Greater than each was Luther’s prowess shown, Who conquered both by one poor pen alone.)

Luther, in the lion-hearted daring of his conduct and in the robust and rugged grandeur of his faith, may well be considered as the Elijah of the Reformation; while his life, by the stern and solemn realities of his experiences, and the almost ideal evolutions of events by which it was accompanied, constitutes indeed the embodied Poem of European Protestantism.

§R. Montgomery.§

Heine sketches the following unique portrait of Luther:—

He was at once a mystic dreamer and a man of action. His thoughts had not only wings, they had hands likewise. He spoke, and, rare thing, he also acted; he was at once the tongue and the sword of his age. At the same time he was a cold scholastic, a chopper of words, and an exalted prophet drunk with the word of God. When he had passed painfully through the day, wearing out his soul in dogmatical instructions, night come, he would take his flute, and, contemplating the stars, melt in melodies and pious thoughts. The same man who could abuse his adversaries like a fish-fag knew also how to use soft and tender language, like an amorous virgin. He was sometimes savage and impetuous as the hurricane that roots up oaks, then gentle and murmuring as the zephyr that lightly caresses the violets. He was full of the holy fear of God, ready for every sacrifice in honor of the Holy Spirit; he knew how to vault into the purest regions of the celestial kingdom; and yet he perfectly knew the magnificence of this earth: he could appreciate it, and from his mouth fell the famous proverb:—

Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang, Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenlang.

(Who loves not woman, wine, and song, Remains a fool his whole life long.)

In short, he was a complete man. To call him a spiritualist would be to commit as great a mistake as it would be to call him a sensualist. What shall I say more? He had something about him clever, original, miraculous, inconceivable.

In an article on John de Wycliffe, in the North British Review, is the following paragraph:—

Abundant as is our historical literature, and fond as our ablest writers have recently become of attempting careful and vivid renderings of the physiognomies of important historical personages, we are still without a set of thoroughly good portraits of the modern religious reformers of different nations, painted, as they might be, in series, so that the features of each may be compared with those of all the rest. Wycliffe, Huss, Savonarola, Luther, Zwingle, Calvin, Knox, and Cranmer,—all men coming under the same general designation,—all heroes of the same general movement; and yet what a contrast of physiognomies! Pre-eminent in the series will ever be Luther, the man of biggest frame and largest heart; the man of richest and most original genius; the great, soft, furious, musical, pliant, sociable, kiss-you, knock-you-down German. None of them all had such a face; none of them all said such things; of none of them all can you have such anecdotes, such a collection of ana.

Luther, says another writer, speaking of his fondness for music, was not solely nor chiefly a theologian, or he had been no true reformer. As the cloister had not been able to bound his sympathies, so the controversial theatre could not circumscribe his honest ambition. He in whom “the Italian head was joined to the German body” would not only free the souls of men, but win the hearts of women and little children. Much had he to feel proud of during his busy life. It was no light thing to have waged successful combat with the most powerful hierarchy that the world had ever seen, or to have held in his hands the destinies of Europe. But dearer to his kind heart was the sound of his own verses sung to his own melodies, which rose from street and market-place, from highway and byway, chanted by laborers going to their daily work, during their hours of toil, and as they returned home at even-tide. How would it have gladdened his heart to have heard these same hymns, two hundred years later, sung by the miners of Cornwall and Gloucestershire!

“I always loved music,” said he: “whoso has skill in this art is of a good temperament, fitted for all things.” Many times he exemplified this power in his own person. When sore perplexed and in danger of life, he would drive away all gloomy thoughts by the magic of his own melodies. On that sad journey to Worms, when friends crowded round him and sought to change his purpose, warning him, with many tears, of the certain death that awaited him,—on the morning of that memorable 16th of April, when the towers of the ancient city appeared in sight,—the true-hearted man, rising in his chariot, broke forth with the words and music of that Marseillaise of the Reformation, Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott, which he had improvised two days before at Oppenheim,—the same stirring hymn that Gustavus Adolphus and the whole Swedish army sang a century later, on the morning of the battle of Lutzen:—

A safe stronghold our God is still, A trusty shield and weapon; He’ll help us clear from all the ill That hath us now o’ertaken. The ancient Prince of hell Hath risen with purpose fell. Strong mail of craft and power He weareth in this hour; On earth is not his fellow.

With force of arms we nothing can, Full soon were we down-ridden; But for us fights the proper man, Whom God himself hath bidden. Ask ye, Who is this same? §Christ Jesus§ is his name, The Lord Sabaoth’s son: He, and no other one, Shall conquer in the battle.

And were the world all devils o’er, And watching to devour us, We lay it not to heart so sore, Not they can overpower us. Then let the Prince of ill Look grim as e’er he will, He harms us not a whit: For why? His doom is writ:— A word shall quickly slay him.

God’s word for all their craft and force One moment will not linger, But spite of hell shall have its course: ’Tis written by his finger. And though they take our life, Goods, honor, children, wife, Yet is their profit small: These things shall vanish all; The Church of God remaineth.[39]

Footnote 39:

Carlyle’s translation.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Queen Bess is thus described in Sir John Hayward’s Annals:—

Shee was a lady upon whom nature had bestowed, and well placed, many of her fayrest favours; of stature meane, slender, straight, and amiably composed; of such state in her carriage, as every motion of her seemed to beare majesty; her haire was inclined to pale yellow, her foreheade large and faire, and seeming seat for princely grace; her eyes lively and sweete, but short-sighted; her nose somewhat rising in the middest. The whole compasse of her countenance somewhat long, but yet of admirable beauty; not so much in that which is termed the flower of youth, as in a most delightful compositione of majesty and modesty in equall mixture.... Her vertues were such as might suffice to make an Ethiopian beautifull, which, the more man knows and understands, the more he shall love and admire. Shee was of divine witt, as well for depth of judgment, as for quick conceite and speedy expeditione; of eloquence as sweete in the utterance, as ready and easy to come to the utterance; of wonderful knowledge, both in learning and affayres; skilfull not only in Latine and Greeke, but alsoe in divers foraigne languages.

In Paul Heintzner’s Travels, 1598, is the following description:—

She was said to be fifty-five years old. Her face was rather long, white, and somewhat wrinkled; her eyes small, black, and gracious; her nose somewhat bent; her lips compressed; her teeth black (from eating too much sugar). She had earrings of pearls, red hair (but artificial), and wore a small crown. Her breast was uncovered (as is the case with all unmarried ladies in England), and round her neck was a chain with precious gems. Her hands were graceful, her fingers long. She was of middle size, but stepped on majestically. She was gracious and kind in her address. The dress she wore was of white silk, with pearls as large as beans. Her cloak was of black silk, with silver lace, and a long train was carried by a marchioness. She spoke English, French, and Italian; but she knew also Greek and Latin, and understood Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Wherever she turned her eyes, people fell on their knees. When she came to the door of the chapel, books were handed to her, and the people called out, “God save the Queen Elizabeth!” whereupon the Queen answered, “I thanke you, myn good peuple.”

Among the spirited repartees and impromptus of the queen which have descended to our time is her ingenious evasion of a direct answer to a theological question respecting the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. On being asked by a Popish priest whether she allowed the real presence, she replied,—

Christ was the word that spake it: He took the bread and brake it; And what that word did make it, That I believe and take it.

In an old folio copy of the Arcadia, preserved at Wilton, have been found two interesting relics,—a lock of Queen Elizabeth’s hair, and some lines in the handwriting of Sir Philip Sidney. The hair was given by the queen to her young hero, who complimented her in return as follows:—

Her inward worth all outward worth transcends; Envy her merits with regret commends; Like sparkling gems her virtues draw the light, And in her conduct she is always bright. When she imparts her thoughts, her words have force, And sense and wisdom flow in sweet discourse.

The date of this exchange was 1583, when the queen was forty and the knight twenty-nine. Elizabeth’s hair is very fine, soft, and silky, with the undulation of water; its color, a fair auburn or golden brown, without a tinge of red, as her detractors assert. In every country under the sun, such hair would be pronounced beautiful.

SHAKSPEARE’S ORTHODOXY.

The numerous biographers of the immortal bard have said little or nothing of his religious character, leaving the inference that he was indifferent to religion and careless as to the future. They seem to forget such passages as his beautiful reference to Palestine in Henry IV.:—

Those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nailed, For our advantage, on the bitter cross.

Shakspeare’s will, written two months before his death, (April, 1616,) is remarkable for its evangelical character. He says:—

“First, I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping, and assuredly believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth whereof it is made.”

Nor should we overlook the bond of Christian sympathy with his parish minister, Rev. Richard Byfield, whose church he constantly attended during his retirement at Stratford.

OLIVER CROMWELL.

The subjoined sketch of the person and character of the great Protector is from a letter of John Maidstone to Governor Winthrop, of Connecticut, written soon after Cromwell’s death:—

Before I pass further, pardon me in troubling you with the character of his person, which, by reason of my nearness to him, I had opportunity well to observe. His body was well compact and strong; his stature under six feet (I believe about two inches); his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse and shop, both a vast treasury of natural parts. His temper exceeding fiery, as I have known; but the flame of it kept down for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endowments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure, though God had made him a heart wherein was left little room for any fear but what was due to himself, of which there was a large proportion; yet did he excel in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was. I do believe, if his story were impartially transmitted and the unprejudiced world well possessed with it, it would add him to her nine worthies and make that number a decemviri. He lived and died in comfortable communion with his seed, as judicious persons near him well observed. He was that Mordecai that sought the welfare of his people, and spake peace to his seed; yet were his temptations such as it appeared frequently that he that hath grace enough for many men may have too little for himself; the treasure he had being but in an earthen vessel, and that equally defiled with original sin as any other man’s nature is.

The following newspaper notices in relation to Cromwell’s head are interesting:—

The curious head of Cromwell, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has had the good fortune to procure, is to be shown to his majesty. How much would Charles the First have valued the man that would have brought him Cromwell’s head!—September, 1786.

The real embalmed head of the powerful and renowned usurper, Oliver Cromwell, styled Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland; with the original dyes for the medals struck in honor of his victory at Dunbar, &c., &c., are now exhibiting at No. 5 in Mead Court, Old Bond Street (where the Rattlesnake was shown last year). A genuine narrative relating to the acquisition, concealment, and preservation of these articles to be had at the place of exhibition.—Morning Chronicle, March 18, 1799.

Cromwell died at Hampton Court in 1658, giving the strongest evidence of his earnest religious convictions and of his sincerity as a Christian. After an imposing funeral pageant, the body having been embalmed, he was buried in Westminster. On the restoration of the Stuarts he was taken up and hung in Tyburn. Afterwards his head was cut off, a pike driven up through the neck and skull, and exposed on Westminster Hall. It remained there a long while, until, by some violence, the pike was broken and the head thrown down. It was picked up by a soldier and concealed, and afterwards conveyed to some friend, who kept it carefully for years. Through a succession of families, which can easily be traced, it has come into the possession of the daughter of Hon. Mr. Wilkinson, ex-member of Parliament from Buckingham and Bromley.

The head is almost entire. The flesh is black and sunken, but the features are nearly perfect, and the hair still remains. Even the large wart over one of the eyes—a distinctive mark on his face—is yet perfectly visible. The pike which was thrust through the neck may still be seen, the upper part of iron, nearly rusted off, and the lower or wooden portion in splinters, showing that it was broken by some act of violence. It is known historically that Cromwell was embalmed; and no person thus cared for was ever publicly gibbeted except this illustrious man. It is a curious keepsake for a lady; but it is carefully preserved under lock and key in a box of great antiquity, wrapped in a number of costly envelopes. And when it is raised from its hiding-place and held in one’s hand, what a world of thought is suggested!

POPE’S SKULL.

William Howitt says that, by one of those acts which neither science nor curiosity can excuse, the skull of Pope is now in the private collection of a phrenologist. The manner in which it was obtained is said to have been this:—On some occasion of alteration in the church, or burial of some one in the same spot, the coffin of Pope was disinterred, and opened to see the state of the remains. By a bribe to the sexton of the time, possession of the skull was obtained for the night, and another skull was returned instead of it. Fifty pounds were paid to manage and carry through this transaction. Be that as it may, the skull of Pope figures in a private museum.

WICKLIFFE’S ASHES.

The Council of Constance raised from the grave the bones of the immortal Wickliffe forty years after their interment, burned them to ashes, and threw them into a neighboring brook. “This brook,” says Fuller, “conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.” “So,” says Foxe, “was he resolved into three elements, earth, fire, and water, thinking thereby utterly to extinguish both the name and doctrine of Wickliffe forever. But as there is no counsel against the Lord, so there is no keeping down of verity. It will spring and come out of dust and ashes, as appeared right well in this man; for, though they digged up his body, burnt his bones, and drowned his ashes, yet the word of God and truth of his doctrines, with the fruit and success thereof, they could not burn. They to this day remain.”

* * * * *

Cardan, and Burton, the author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, who were famous for astrological skill, both suffered a voluntary death merely to verify their own predictions.

TALLEYRANDIANA.

A banker, anxious about the rise or fall of stocks, came once to Talleyrand for information respecting the truth of a rumor that George III. had suddenly died, when the statesman replied in a confidential tone: “I shall be delighted, if the information I have to give be of any use to you.” The banker was enchanted at the prospect of obtaining authentic intelligence from so high a source; and Talleyrand, with a mysterious air, continued: “Some say the King of England is dead; others, that he is not dead: for my own part, I believe neither the one nor the other. I tell you this in confidence, but do not commit me.”

During Talleyrand’s administration, when the seals of private letters were not very safe, the Spanish Ambassador complained, with an expressive look, to that Minister, that one of his despatches had been opened. “Oh!” returned the statesman, after listening with profound attention, “I shall wager I can guess how the thing happened. I am convinced your despatch was opened by some one who desired to know what was inside.”

When Louis XVIII., at the Restoration, praised the subtile diplomatist for his talents and influence, he disclaimed the compliment, but added, what might serve both as a hint and a threat: “There is, however, some inexplicable thing about me, that prevents any government from prospering that attempts to set me aside.”

After the Pope excommunicated his apostate Abbé, that unworthy son of the church wrote to a friend, saying: “Come and comfort me: come and sup with me. Everybody is going to refuse me fire and water; we shall therefore have nothing this evening but iced meats, and drink nothing but wine.”

When the Abbé Dupanloup told him, during his last hour, that the Archbishop of Paris had said he would willingly die for him, the dying statesman said, with his expiring breath: “He might make a better use of his life.”

He proposed that the Duchess de Berri should be threatened for all her strange conspicuous freaks, thus: “Madame, there is no hope for you, you will be tried, condemned, and pardoned!”

Speaking of a well-known lady on one occasion, he said emphatically:—

“She is insufferable.”

Then, as if relenting, he added:

“But that is her only fault.”

Madame de Stael cordially hated him, and in her story of Delphine was supposed to have painted herself in the person of her heroine, and Talleyrand in that of a garrulous old woman. On their first meeting, the wit pleasantly remarked, “They tell me that we are both of us in your novel, in the disguise of women.”

While making a few days’ tour in England, he wrote this note to a gentleman connected with the Treasury:—

“My dear Sir,

“Would you give a short quarter of an hour to explain to me the financial system of your country?

“Always yours,

“§Talleyrand§.”

PORSON.

A favorite diversion of Porson, when among a party of literary men, was to quote a few lines of poetry, and ask if any of the company could tell where they came from. He frequently quoted the following lines without finding any one able to name the author:—

For laws that are inanimate, And feel no sense of love or hate, That have no passion of their own, Or pity to be wrought upon, Are only proper to inflict Revenge on criminals as strict: But to have power to forgive Is empire and prerogative; And ’tis in crowns a nobler gem To grant a pardon than condemn.

The lines remind the Shakspeare student of a similar verse in Measure for Measure, (Act III, Sc. 2.):—

He that the sword of state would bear, Should be holy as severe; Pattern in himself to know, Grace to stand, and virtue go, &c.

The company generally guessed every likely author but the right one. When conjecture was exhausted, Porson would satisfy curiosity by telling them the lines were in Butler’s Hudibras, and would be found in The Heroic Epistle of Hudibras to his Lady, which few people ever did read, and no one now thinks of reading.

Historical Memoranda.

THE FIRST BLOOD SHED IN OUR REVOLUTION.

The “First Blood of the Revolution” is commonly supposed to have been shed at Lexington, April 19, 1775; but Westminster, Vt., files a prior claim in favor of one William French, who it is asserted was killed on the night of March 13, 1775, at the King’s court-house, in what is now Westminster. At that time Vermont was a part of New York, and the King’s court officers, together with a body of troops, were sent on to Westminster to hold the usual session of the court. The people, however, were exasperated, and assembled in the court-house to resist. A little before midnight the troops of George the Third advanced and fired indiscriminately upon the crowd, instantly killing William French, whose head was pierced by a musket ball. He was buried in the churchyard, and a stone erected to his memory, with this quaint inscription:—

“In Memory of William French, Who Was Shot at Westminster March ye 12th, 1775, by the hand of the Cruel Ministerial tools of Georg ye 3rd at the Courthouse at 11 o’clock at Night in the 22d year of his age.

“Here William French his Body lies, For Murder his Blood for Vengeance Cries. King Georg the third his Tory crew that with a bawl his head Shot threw, For Liberty and his Countrys Good he Lost his Life his Dearest blood.”

THE “TEA-PARTY” AND THE “TEA-BURNING.”

The world has rung with the story of the “Boston tea-party,” how in the darkness of night certain men disguised as Indians threw overboard the cargo which bore the obnoxious duty, and kept their secret so well that even their own families were not trusted with it. It was a resolute and patriotic act, and answered its purpose. But why all the darkness, the disguise and mystery? Because the number of those who opposed the act, either from loyalty to Great Britain, from timidity, or from pecuniary interest in the cargo, was so great, that only by such means could the deed be done and the doers of it escape punishment.

How does this compare with the “tea-burning” in Annapolis in the same year? Here the course to be taken was publicly and calmly discussed in open assembly; the resolution arrived at was openly announced, and carried out in the face of day, the owner of the vessel himself applying the torch. This was the Maryland way of doing the thing; and it may well be asked whether the calm judicial dignity of the procedure, the unanimity of sentiment, the absence alike of passion and of concealment, are not far worthier of commemoration and admiration than the act of men who, even for a patriotic purpose, had to assume the garb of conspirators and do a deed of darkness.

The local historians thus tell the story:—

On the 14th of October, the brig Peggy Stewart arrived at Annapolis, having in its cargo a few packages of tea. The duty was paid by the owner of the vessel. The people were outraged at the attempt to fix upon them the badge of servitude, by the payment of the tax.

A meeting was held, at which it was determined that the tea should not be landed. The owner, fearing further trouble, proposed to destroy the tea. But that was not sufficient punishment. The offence was a grave one, for had this attempt succeeded, it would have been followed by others more aggressive, and thus the very principle which was contended for would have been overthrown in the end. It was the head of the ugly beast that was thrust in the door, and it must not only be put out, but driven out by blows, lest growing bold, it should push its whole body in.

After much discussion it was proposed to burn the vessel. The meeting did not consent to this, but many expressed their determination to raise a force to accomplish the brig’s destruction.

Acting under the advice of Mr. Carroll of Carrollton, the owner, seeing that the loss of his property was certain, and willing to repair his good name, even by that loss, proposed to destroy the vessel with his own hands. In the presence of the assembled multitude he set fire to it, with the tea on board,—expiating his offence by the destruction of his property.

The striking features of this transaction were not only the boldness with which it was executed, but the deliberation and utter carelessness of concealment in all the measures leading to its accomplishment.

It was not until the 28th of November that the Dartmouth arrived in Boston harbor, and not until the 16th of December that protracted discussion ended in the overthrow of its cargo. The tea-ship sent to South Carolina arrived December 2d, and the tea-ship to Philadelphia, December 25th. The cargo of the former perished in storage; that of the latter was sent back.

THE UNITED STATES NAVY.

A South Carolina correspondent of the American Historical Record writes as follows concerning the inception of the Navy:—

A few years ago, while looking over a volume of manuscript letters in the Charleston (South Carolina) Library, I found a leaf of coarse foolscap, with the following endorsement:—

ORIGIN OF THE NAVY.

At a caucus in 1794, consisting of Izard, Morris, and Ellsworth of the Senate, Ames, Sedgwick, Smith, Dayton, &c. of the Representatives, and of Secretaries Hamilton and Knox, to form a plan for a national navy, Smith began the figuring as Secretary of the meeting. Hamilton then took the pen, and instead of minuting the proceedings, he amused himself by making a variety of flourishes during the discussion. In consequence of the plan adopted at this meeting, a bill was reported for building six frigates, which formed the foundation or origin of the American Navy.

The “figuring” on the top of the page consists of five lines, and is as follows:—

First cost of a frigate, 44 guns, of 1,300 tons, and provision for six months $150,000 350 men 51,000 Provision for six months 11,000 ———————— Total $212,000

Then follows an estimate of the annual cost of such a vessel. The rest of the page below these estimates is occupied by bold flourishes, which seem, if they mean anything, to imitate a drawing of a peacock’s tail “in its pride.” Similar scratching, but to a less extent is on the other side of the page.

* * * * *

The only letter addressed to Shakspeare, which is undoubtedly genuine, is that now in the museum at Stratford, from Richard Quinn, the actor, asking for a loan of £20. This letter is endorsed: “To my lovinge good ffriend and countreyman, Mr. William Shackespere deliver Thees.” If the writer spelled names no better than other words, this affords little aid to the solution of the perplexing question, for notwithstanding the outrageous fashion in which our forefathers spelled English, he is considerably ahead of his age in this respect.

QUAKER “MALIGNANTS.”

There has been discovered in Boston the following letter relative to William Penn, written “September ye 15, 1682.” by Cotton Mather, to “ye aged and beloved Mr. John Higginson”:—

There bee now at sea a shippe (for our friend Mr. Esaias Holcraft, of London, did advise me by ye last packet that it wolde sail some time in August) called ye Welcome, R. Greenaway, master, which has aboard an hundred or more of ye heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penne, who is ye chief scampe at ye hedde of them. Ye General Court has accordingly given secret orders to Master Malachi Huxett, of ye brig Porpusse, to waylaye ye said Welcome as near the coast of Codde as may be, and make captive ye said Penne and his ungodlie crew, so that ye Lord may be glorified and not mocked on ye soil of this new countrie with ye heathen worshippe of these people. Much spoyl can be made by selling ye whole lotte to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rumme and sugar, and we shall not only do ye Lord great service by punishing ye wicked, but shall make great gayne for his ministers and people.

Master Huxett feels hopeful, and I will set down ye news he brings when his shippe comes back.

Yours in ye bowels of Christ, §Cotton Mather§.

AN AMERICAN MONARCHY.

After the downfall of Napoleon I., in 1815, several young Americans who subsequently earned high position as writers and statesmen, among them Irving, Everett, Ticknor, Legaré, and Preston, (afterward Senator from South Carolina,) went to Europe for the benefit of foreign travel. While abroad, they took an opportunity to pay a visit to Sir Walter Scott, and Mr. Preston relates that during the evening, in the course of conversation, Sir Walter gave an account of a curious discovery he had made.

Not long after it had been divulged who was the author of the “Waverley Novels,” Scott was the Regent’s (afterward George the Fourth) guest in the royal palace, where, one day, the latter ordered the key of a certain room to be given to the great writer, saying that it opened the door of the Stuart Chamber, where all the papers concerning the Stuarts and their pretenders were kept. George gave Scott full permission to rummage among all these records, and to use what he liked for his works. “I depend on your discretion,” he said, and Scott went. He spent several days in this curious chamber, and, so he told Preston, one day stumbled upon what seemed to him a remarkable paper. It consisted of a call and petition, by Scottish in America, chiefly, however, by the Gaelic Scottish who had a settlement—“saddle-bagging” as it is sometimes expressed in the West—in North Carolina, addressed to the Pretender (Prince Charles Edward, grandson of James the Second), as he was then called, to come to America and assume the crown of this realm.

The question whether this country had not best be turned into a monarchy was seriously and very naturally mooted, in the earliest days of our national existence, but until this singular revelation was made, it was not known that such a positive offer, a very strange one, to say the least, had been made.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER.

The following description of the significance of the different parts of our national flag was written by a member of the committee appointed by the Continental Congress to design a flag for the young Republic:—

The stars of the new flag represent the new constellation of States rising in the West. The idea was taken from the constellation of Lyra, which in the land of Orpheus signifies harmony. The blue in the field was taken from the edges of the Covenanter’s banner, in Scotland, significant of the league-covenant of the United Colonies against oppression, incidentally involving the virtues of vigilance, perseverance and justice. The stars were disposed in a circle symbolizing the perpetuity of the Union; the ring, like the serpent of the Egyptians, signifying eternity. The thirteen stripes showed with the stars, the number of the United Colonies, and denoted the subordination of the States to the Union, as well as equality among themselves. The whole was the blending of the various flags of the army and the white ones of the floating batteries. The red color, which in Roman days was the signal of defiance, denoted daring; and the white purity.

THE FRENCH TRICOLOR.

The French tricolor, so far from being a revolutionary flag, is more ancient than the white flag, and was, in fact, the flag of the House of Bourbon. Clovis, when he marched through Tours to fight the Visigoths, adopted as his banner the scope of St. Martin, which was blue, and thus blue was, so to speak, the first French color. The oriflamme, which was the particular flag of the Abbey of St. Denis, and was red, became to a certain extent the national flag, when St. Denis came under the protection of the kings of France, the kings still preserving their blue flag studded with golden fleurs de lis. The white flag (which was also the banner of Joan of Arc) has in all countries, and through all times, been the sign of authority. And when Louis XIV. destroyed the functions of the colonels-general of the different corps that bore the white standard, the color became the emblem of Royal authority. Nevertheless, it is useless to dispute the fact that the tricolor took its rise as the badge of the National Guard at the French Revolution, and that it will be as difficult to separate it from the idea of revolution as to separate the white flag from the idea of legitimacy.

THE POLITICAL GAMUT.

In 1815 the French newspapers announced the departure of Bonaparte from Elba, his progress through France, and his entry; into Paris, in the following manner:—

March 9. The Anthropophagus has quitted his den.—March 10. The Corsican Ogre has landed at Cape Juan.—March 11. The Tiger has arrived at Gap.—March 12. The Monster slept at Grenoble.—March 13. The Tyrant has passed through Lyons.—March 14. The Usurper is directing his steps towards Dijon, but the brave and loyal Burgundians have risen en masse, and surrounded him on all sides.—March 18. Bonaparte is only sixty leagues from the capital; he has been fortunate enough to escape the hands of his pursuers.—March 19. Bonaparte is advancing with rapid steps, but he will never enter Paris.—March 20. Napoleon will, to-morrow, be under our ramparts.—March 21. The Emperor is at Fontainebleau.—March 22. His Imperial and Royal Majesty yesterday evening arrived at the Tuileries, amidst the joyful acclamations of his devoted and faithful subjects. 5 The Journal des Débats, in reference to the escape from Elba, spoke of Napoleon on the 9th of March, as “the Poltroon of 1814.” On the 15th it said to him, “Scourge of generations thou shall reign no more!” On the 16th he is “a Robespierre on horseback”; on the 19th, “the adventurer from Corsica”; but on the 21st, we are gravely told that “the §EMPEROR§ has pursued his triumphal course, having found no other enemies than the miserable libels which were vainly scattered on his path to impede his progress.”

THE FLIGHT OF EUGENIE.

The following particulars of the flight of the Empress of France from Paris, in consequence of the subversion of the Napoleonic dynasty by the capitulation of Sedan, were furnished by the late Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio, who obtained them from one who aided the flight of Eugenie, and are therefore stamped with the essentials of authenticity.

The safety of the Empress had been assured to her by General Trochu, who had solemnly promised to inform her of the approach of danger. For some unexplained reasons he failed to do so, and when on Sunday the mob began to assemble about the Tuileries, three of her friends, Prince Metternich, the Spanish Ambassador and M. Lesseps, formed a plan for her escape, and went to her rescue. M. Lesseps stood outside and harangued the mob for the purpose of detaining them, while the two other gentlemen went in search of the Empress. They found her partaking of a very frugal lunch with one of her ladies, and her fears could not be aroused. Seeing it impossible to persuade her, the two gentlemen used force to remove her. At this she consented to make a slight preparation, and without at all changing her dress, (for the mob had already entered the Palace), catching up a small leathern reticule, she put into it two pocket-handkerchiefs, and two books, the New Testament and a prayer-book. On her head she put a riding hat, and then by that time thoroughly aroused, she fled through the Palace, through long corridors, up and down flights of stairs, through chamber and salon, a long distance before they came down to the Rue Rivoli, on which side of the Palace the mob had not collected. Here a cab awaited her. She, with the lady in attendance, was put into it. “Now,” said the friends, “we must leave you; too well-known, our attendance would bring destruction upon you! Make good speed!” Yes, good speed, for she heard the cries of the furious mob, and as she was entering the cab a little boy exclaimed, “There is the Empress,” and she thought all was lost; but it proved that there was no one there to take notice, and so the two ladies drove off. Soon they came into the midst of the excited crowd, and the lady accompanying her questioned on this side and the other the meaning of it all, and appeared to be lost in wonder at the proceedings, while the Empress sank back out of sight in the carriage. They had a long ride out beyond the Champs Élysées to the quieter parts of the city, when they alighted, dismissed the cab, to avoid giving any clew in case of pursuit, and walked some distance. Where should she go? To whom flee? What friend trust? There was but one to whom she would venture, and that one an American gentlemen of some note, who, with his wife, had long been a friend of both Emperor and Empress. So they took another cab for the house of this gentleman (whom we will call Mr. W——), arriving there to find him away from home, and his wife absent for the summer at a small seaport on the coast. The servant under these circumstances was extremely ungracious, and quite refused to admit these strange ladies, and when at last, upon their insisting, they were admitted to the house, she was unwilling to show them into an apartment suitable for them, and it was not without some difficulty that they were allowed to wait in the library for the owner’s return. When at last he returned and entered the room, judge of his surprise at the sight of the Empress. “You must get me immediately out of France,—this very night,” exclaimed the Empress the moment she saw him. Out of France that very night? He told her it was impossible. He was expecting a party of friends to dinner, but would plead sudden business and excuse himself, and make preparations as quickly as possible for her flight; but, in the meantime, she must be quiet and rest. This she was prevailed upon to do, and, supplying herself from Mrs. W——’s wardrobe, retired for the night.

The dinner party, receiving the excuses of the host, and overcome with a sense of mystery, soon withdrew in spite of the cordial message and wishes of the gentleman that they would make themselves merry in his absence. At four o’clock in the morning a carriage stood at the door, into which Mr. W—— put the two ladies, and, driving himself, they set off on their way out of France, pursuing quiet streets, confining their course to unfrequented roads and lanes of the country, and avoiding the more public highways, until the horses were worn out. They were then near a little village; and the question arose how to get a carriage brought to them, and explain why they could not go to it. Mr. W—— went to the inn and, having found a private carriage which was waiting over there, agreed with the servant to come out a mile or so and carry his party, Mr. W——’s two sisters—one of whom was very lame indeed, and could not walk a step—some miles on, till they should come to a railway. This done and the lame lady with much difficulty put into the carriage by her “brother” and “sister,” they proceeded for a distance until they came to a railway, where they left the carriage to break up the clew, and rode a short distance in the rail-car without attracting attention. Then they took another carriage, riding in roundabout ways, until at the end of two days they reached the little seaport where Mrs. W—— was spending the summer. How must Mr. W—— conduct the ladies into the presence of his wife without being observed by every one? After some reconnoitring, this was successfully accomplished, and throwing her arms around the neck of Mrs. W——, Eugenie exclaimed: “You and your husband are the only friends left to me in the world.” She, with the lady who accompanied her, remained in the room of Mrs. W——, lest some one should see and recognize her. No servant could be allowed to enter the room. Mrs. W—— brought food to the two ladies and served the Empress in everything, who expostulated at the inconvenience she was causing her friend, and insisted upon waiting upon herself, her behavior being of such a sweet character as still more to endear her to her friends, who were risking nearly all they possessed in her cause.

Their plan was now to get her across the Channel to the Isle of Wight, and thence to England. There were but two conveyances in the harbor—both private yachts—and only one able to get out to sea. The owner of that one flatly refused to take the ladies over, but at last, after the identity of the ladies had been made known and much persuasion used, he consented, and Mr. W—— and the two ladies, with the reticule containing two pocket-handkerchiefs, set out the day after their arrival in the little seaport town on their voyage to England.

This is a journey usually made in a few hours; but a terrible storm arising, it was prolonged to twenty-seven. The same night and in the same waters the ever-memorable vessel the Captain went down. But although the gentleman in command lost all control of himself and ship, they weathered the storm.

During this time Eugenie showed the most remarkable self-possession, and evidently looked upon death as a relief from her woes. But this was not to be, and after a passage fraught with the most imminent danger, she was landed on the Isle of Wight, to find on English ground that asylum which had been sought by so many fugitives before her. And to add to her relief, her son, of whose whereabouts she knew nothing, was found to be in Hastings, not far from her.

Such is the true story of Eugenie’s escape from Paris and France. What a sad, sad tale of fallen greatness! How much must she have suffered in those few days! the fury of a Paris mob in her ears; the fear of pursuit at her back; how often did she start, and give herself up for lost! What threatening meaning did many an accidental phrase assume! No wonder her courage sustained the fearful storm; the thunder and lightning, the waters, however dark and cold and deep, would be far more merciful than that dreadful mob that called out her name, the mob that had shown no pity to the little child or tender woman, and derided with the bitterest insults the fond Marie Antoinette at the guillotine. Oh, France! when we remember those days of terror, can we wonder at this retribution?

NAPOLEON III.

The following lines, suggested by the rise of Louis Napoleon, were written January 6th, 1853. The capitulation of Sedan occurred September 1, 1870, and the death of the exile of Chiselhurst, January 9, 1873.

The light-house that once crowned the pointed rock Of Eddystone, its bold inventor deem’d A work to last for centuries, nor dream’d It would succumb beneath the tempest’s shock: And, therefore, as if Providence to mock, He housed within it when the lightning gleam’d Mid storm and darkness, but when morning beam’d, Nought stood upon the bare and granite block! Ambition thus dares all, and rears on high, With the audacity of human pride, A pile that may with Egypt’s wonders vie; Perceiving not—presumptuous homicide!— The ministers of wrath, that lurking nigh, Will scatter the proud fabric far and wide.

THE EMPIRE IS PEACE.

This memorable utterance was originally made at Toulouse in the autumn of 1852, while Louis Napoleon was feeling the public pulse in the vineyards of Southern France, preparatory to re-establishing the imperial régime. At the close of a splendid banquet given to him by the Chamber of Commerce, in the Bourse, the Prince-President, emboldened by the mad enthusiasm of the company present, suddenly cast off all reserve, and unequivocally announced the impending change. “There is one objection,” he urged in vindication of his purpose, “to which I must reply. Certain minds seem to entertain a dread of war; certain persons say, the Empire is only war. But I say, §the Empire is Peace§ (l’Empire c’est la Paix), for France desires it, and when France is satisfied the world is tranquil.”

JEFFERSON ON MARIE ANTOINETTE.

Mr. Jefferson’s estimate of Marie Antoinette is not so favorable as that of some writers; for many years after his return from France he wrote of her thus:—

This angel, as gaudily painted in the rhapsodies of Burke, with some smartness of fancy, but no sound sense, was proud, disdainful of restraint, indignant at all obstacles to her will, eager in the pursuit of pleasure, and firm enough to hold to her desires, or perish in their wreck. Her inordinate gambling and dissipations, with those of the Count d’Artois and others of her clique, had been a sensible item in the exhaustion of the treasury, which called into action the reforming hand of the nation; and her opposition to it, her inflexible perverseness and dauntless spirit, led herself to the guillotine, drew the king on with her, and plunged the world into crimes and calamities which will forever stain the pages of modern history. I have ever believed that had there been no queen there would have been no Revolution. No force would have been provoked or exercised. [He adds, that he would not have voted for the execution of the sovereign. He would have shut the queen up in a convent, and deprived the king only of irresponsible and arbitrary power.]

GENERAL BLÜCHER.

This “personal” of Blücher is from the Recollections of Lady Clementina Davies:—When the special messengers arrived to inform Blücher that Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and that his services would be immediately required in the field, they were astonished to find him literally running round and round a large room, the floor of which was covered with sawdust, and in which he had immured himself under the delusion that he was an elephant. For the time it was feared that Blücher was hopelessly insane, or that he was so far suffering from delirium tremens that his active co-operation in the anticipated campaign would be impossible; but when the urgent news was brought him he at once recovered himself, and proceeded to give his advice in a perfectly sound state of mind, the tone of which was thus, as by a sudden shock, restored to him.

THE MOTHER OF CHARLES V.

An interesting historical discovery has been made by a Prussian savant, of the name of Bergenroth, who was commissioned by the English Government to investigate various collections of Spanish archives for papers illustrating the relations between Spain and England in the middle ages. Among other important documents, M. Bergenroth discovered a hitherto unpublished mass of correspondence of Ferdinand the Catholic and Charles V.

From this correspondence it appears that Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and mother of Charles, was not really mad, as all the world has hitherto believed. The story was an atrocious fabrication, under cover of which, first her father, and then her son kept her incarcerated, in order to keep possession themselves of the crown of Castile, which was hers by right of her mother Isabella. After long years of rigorous and even cruel captivity, the unfortunate lady did at last lose her senses, but not until her old age.

We are continually called upon to reconstruct our views of history, which, the more we study it, more and more resembles Hamlet’s cloud, taking whatever shape partisanship may determine. We must draw a new likeness of Charles, who is no longer the prince full of Flemish bonhomie, good knight, and boon companion, rigorous and despotic, but not personally cruel; and when this is done, Philip II. will appear a less surprising anomaly.

THE TRADITIONAL MARY MAGDALENE.

The injurious and probably unjust inferences respecting Mary Magdalene, as drawn by the general assent of the Christian Church from the narratives of the Evangelists, in which mention is made of her attendance on our Lord, want the stamp of confirmation. Such portraiture is more traditional than authoritative. The prevailing conjecture that the infirmity of which she had been cured implied moral guilt was rejected, or mentioned with hesitation, by the early Greek and Latin Fathers. It was taken up by Gregory the Great, and stamped with his authority in the latter part of the sixth century. It is sanctioned by the Roman Breviary, and its truth has been assumed by most ecclesiastical writers, who seem to think that Mary loved much because she had much to be forgiven. Painters and poets have described the supposed illustrious penitent, in loose array, without giving her costume the benefit of her conversion! By these means it became established in the popular mind. This was the more easy, as it supplied an agreeable and interesting contrast. It made one Mary serve as a foil to set off the excellencies of another. Mary, the mother of our Lord, became the type of feminine purity; but the leaders of opinion were not content with giving her those honors to which all Christians consider her justly entitled. To give it, however, the advantage of a striking contrast, and thus make it shine with greater splendor, a female character of an opposite description was wanted—a type of fallen womanhood, penitent and restored. And as “the woman which was a sinner,” mentioned by St. Luke in the seventh chapter of his Gospel, is left by the historian strictly anonymous, Mary Magdalene, whose name occurs in the next chapter, was seized on for this purpose, and her character treated in a way which, by any honest woman, would be deemed worse than martyrdom.

MOTHER GOOSE.

Mother Goose, instead of being a traditional bard, or a creature of fancy, as commonly supposed, was a veritable personage. The mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, the editor, in 1731, of the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, was the original Mother Goose—the “old woman” of the world-famous melodies. Mother Goose belonged to a wealthy family in Boston, where her eldest daughter, Elizabeth Goose, was married by Cotton Mather, in 1715, to Fleet, and in due time gave birth to a son. Like most mothers-in-law in our own day, the importance of Mrs. Goose increased with the appearance of her grandchild, and poor Mr. Fleet, half distracted with her endless nursery ditties, finding all other means fail, tried what ridicule could effect, and actually printed a book with the title: “Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at his printing house, Pudding Lane, Boston. Price ten coppers.”

Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen children, and hence we may easily trace the origin of that famous classic:—

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn’t know what to do.”

HISTORY AND FICTION.

The archbishop of Canterbury once put the following question to Betterton, the actor: “How is it that you players, who deal only with things imaginary, affect your auditors as if they were real; while we preachers, who deal only with things real, affect our auditors as if they were imaginary?” “It is, my lord,” replied the player, “because we actors speak of things imaginary as if they were real, while you preachers too often speak of things real as if they were imaginary.” Whitefield used to tell this anecdote as an explanation of his own vehement and dramatic style of preaching. The remark may be applied to historical and fictitious writing. The old school historians were so solid and stately that they conveyed only feeble images to the mind, while poets and romancers out of airy nothings have created living and breathing beings. How much more readily we remember romance than history, and yet “truth is stranger than fiction.” Shakspeare’s Macbeth and Richard are not the Macbeth and Richard of history, yet we cling to the poet’s portraits of them, and discard the sober truth. “Macbeth,” Sir Walter Scott tells us, “broke no law of hospitality in his attempt on Duncan’s life. He attacked and slew the king at a place called Bothgowan, or the Smith’s house, near Elgin, in 1039, and not, as has been supposed, in his own castle of Inverness. The act was bloody, as was the complexion of the times; but in very truth, the claim of Macbeth to the throne, according to the rules of Scottish succession, was better than that of Duncan. As a king, the tyrant so much exclaimed against, was, in realty, a firm, just and equitable prince. Early authorities show us no such persons as Banquo and his son Fleance, nor have we reason to think that the latter ever fled further from Macbeth than across the flat scene according to the stage direction. Neither were Banquo or his son ancestors of the house of Stuart. All these things are now known, but the mind retains pertinaciously the impressions made by the imposition of genius. While the works of Shakspeare are read, and the English language exists, history may say what she will, but the general reader will only recollect Macbeth as the sacrilegious usurper and Richard as the deformed murderer.”

CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM.

Robert Greene, the Elizabethan dramatist and novelist, indulged in the following disparaging criticism in reference to Shakspeare:—

“There is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers that, with his tiger’s heart wrapt in a player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”

The line in italics is a parody of one in 3 Henry VI., i. 4:—

“O! tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide,” which was taken from an old play called the First Part of the Contention of the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster. Shakspeare is known to have founded his Henry VI. upon this piece and another which are supposed to have been written by Greene or his friends, and hence, no doubt, Greene’s acrimonious remark.

Says Dugald Stewart in his Essays:—A curious specimen of cotemporary criticism is found in the Letters of the celebrated Waller, who speaks thus of the first appearance of Paradise Lost:—“The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the Fall of Man. If its length be not considered as merit, it has no other!” Johnson also says, in his Lives of the Poets: “Thompson has lately published a poem, called the Castle of Indolence, in which there are some good stanzas!”

Why do not men of superior talents strive, for the honor of the arts which they love, to conceal their ignoble jealousies from the malignity of those whom incapacity and mortified pride have leagued together as the covenanted foes of worth and genius? What a triumph has been furnished to the writers who delight in levelling all the proud distinctions of humanity! and what a stain has been left on some of the fairest pages of our literary history by the irritable passions and petty hostilities of Pope and Addison!

Michelet, the historian, showed his extreme aversion to the First Napoleon by describing him as “without eyelashes or eyebrows; with a small quantity of hair of an uncertain brown; with eyes gray, like a pane of glass, wherein one sees nothing; in short, an incomplete and obscure impersonality which appears phantasmagorical.”

GREAT EVENTS FROM LITTLE CAUSES.

Fortuna quæ plurimum potest, cum in aliis rebus, tum præcipue in bello, in parvis momentis magnus rerum mutationes efficit.—§Cæsar§, De Bello Civili.

In Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1758, Franklin quotes,—“He adviseth to circumspection and care even in the smallest matters, because sometimes ‘A little neglect may breed great mischief,’ adding, ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the rider was lost’; being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.” And St. James (ch. iii. v. 5) gives a fine illustration in respect to the government of the tongue, “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.”

In the relations of cause and consequence there must, of course, be many greater causes in readiness to act. An accidental spark may blow up a fortress—provided there be gunpowder in the magazine. But it is as legitimate as it is curious to trace the successive links of a chain of events back to small accidents.

“How momentous,” says Campbell, “are the results of apparently trivial circumstances! When Mahomet was flying from his enemies, he took refuge in a cave; which his pursuers would have entered, if they had not seen a spider’s web at the entrance. Not knowing that it was freshly woven, they passed by, and thus a spider’s web changed the history of the world.”

When Louis VII., to obey the injunctions of his bishops, cropped his hair and shaved his beard, Eleanor, his consort, found him, with this unusual appearance, very ridiculous, and soon very contemptible. She revenged herself as she thought proper, and the poor shaved king obtained a divorce. She then married the Count of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. of England. She had for her marriage-dower the rich provinces of Poitou and Guienne; and this was the origin of those wars which for three hundred years ravaged France, and cost the French three millions of men. All this probably had never occurred had Louis not been so rash as to crop his head, and shave his beard, by which he became so disgustful in the eyes of Queen Eleanor.

Warton mentions, in his Notes on Pope, that the Treaty of Utrecht was occasioned by a quarrel between the Duchess of Marlborough and Queen Anne about a pair of gloves.

The expedition to the island of Ré was undertaken to gratify a foolish and romantic passion of the Duke of Buckingham.

The coquetry of the daughter of Count Julian introduced the Saracens into Spain.

What can be imagined more trivial, remarks Hume, in one of his essays, than the difference between one color of livery and another in horse races? Yet this difference begat two most inveterate factions in the Greek empire, the Prasini and Veneti; who never suspended their animosities till they ruined that unhappy government.

The murder of Cæsar in the capitol was chiefly owing to his not rising from his seat when the senate tendered him some particular honors.

The negotiations with the Pope for dissolving Henry VIII.’s marriage (which brought on the Reformation) are said to have been interrupted by the Earl of Wiltshire’s dog biting his holiness’s toe, when he put it out to be kissed by that ambassador; and the Duchess of Marlborough’s spilling a basin of water on Mrs. Masham’s gown, in Queen Anne’s reign, brought in the Tory Ministry, and gave a new turn to the affairs of Europe.

If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter, said Pascal, in his epigrammatic and brilliant manner, the condition of the world would have been different.

Luther might have been a lawyer, had his friend and companion escaped the thunderstorm; Scotland had wanted her stern reformer, if the appeal of the preacher had not startled him in the chapel of St Andrew’s Castle; and if Mr. Grenville had not carried, in 1764, his memorable resolution as to the expediency of charging certain stamp duties on the plantations in America, the western world might still have bowed to the British sceptre.

Giotto, one of the early Florentine painters, might have continued a rude shepherd boy, if a sheep drawn by him upon a stone had not accidentally attracted the notice of Cimabue.

THE SIGNING OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

Mr. Jefferson used to relate, with much merriment, that the final signing of the Declaration of Independence was hastened by an absurdly trivial cause. Near the hall in which the debates were then held was a livery stable, from which swarms of flies came into the open windows and assailed the silk-stockinged legs of honorable members. Handkerchief in hand they lashed the flies with such vigor as they could command on a July afternoon, but the annoyance became at length so extreme as to render them impatient of delay, and they made haste to bring the momentous business to a conclusion.

After such a long and severe strain upon their minds, members seem to have indulged in many a jocular observation as they stood around the table. Tradition has it that when John Hancock had affixed his magnificent signature to the paper, he said, “There, John Bull may read my name without spectacles!” Tradition, also, will never relinquish the pleasure of repeating that, when Mr. Hancock reminded members of the necessity of hanging together, Dr. Franklin was ready with his “Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or else, most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” And this may have suggested to the portly Harrison—a “luxurious, heavy gentleman,” as John Adams describes him—his remark to slender Elbridge Gerry, that when the hanging came he should have the advantage, for poor Gerry would be kicking in the air long after it was all over with himself.

French critics censure Shakspeare for mingling buffoonery with scenes of the deepest tragic interest. But here we find one of the most important assemblies ever convened, at the supreme moment of its existence, while performing the act that gives it its rank among deliberate bodies, cracking jokes, and hurrying up to the table to sign, in order to escape the flies. It is precisely so that Shakspeare would have imagined the scene.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

According to a Spanish tradition the discovery of America is mainly due to the result of a hard-fought game of chess. Columbus had for seven weary years been dancing attendance upon the Court of Spain in pursuance of the aim of his life. The anxious petitioner for royal favor and assistance had failed to arouse in Ferdinand sufficient interest, in what was declared by the commissioners appointed to report upon the project, to be a visionary and impracticable scheme. True, he had enlisted the sympathy of the good queen Isabella, and his hopes had been encouraged and sustained by her in many ways. But after years of vain solicitation, baffled by the skepticism which could not share his aspirations, he determined to lay his plans before Charles VIII. of France, and accordingly called to take leave of their majesties before his departure from Cordova. Arriving at the palace at nightfall, he announced his purpose to the queen, who instantly sought Ferdinand with a determination to make a final effort on behalf of the sad and discouraged suitor. The king was absorbed in a game of chess with a grandee whose skill taxed his powers to the utmost. Isabella’s interruption had the effect of distracting the monarch’s attention, and of causing him to lose his principal piece, which was followed by a volley of imprecations on mariners in general, and Columbus in particular. The game grew worse, and defeat seemed imminent. With the prospect of being vanquished, Ferdinand at length told the queen that her protegé should be successful or otherwise accordingly as the game resulted. She immediately bent all her energies upon the board, and watched the long contest with concentrated interest. The courtiers clustered around the table, amused at the excitement of the king and the quiet satisfaction of his antagonist. And so the game went on which was to decide the discovery of a new world, until Isabella leaned toward her husband’s ear and whispered, “you can checkmate him in four moves.” In the utmost astonishment Ferdinand re-examined the game, found the queen’s assertion correct, and in the course of a few minutes announced that Columbus should depart on his voyage with the title of Admiral of the Elect.

THE STORY OF TWO FAVORITE BALLADS.

ANNIE LAURIE.

The birth of the heroine of the well-known ballad of Annie Laurie is quaintly recorded by her father, Sir Robert Laurie, of Maxwelltown, in the family register, in these words:—

“At the pleasure of the Almighty God, my daughter, Annie Laurie, was born on the 16th day of December, 1682 years, about 6 o’clock in the morning, and was baptised by Mr. Geo.” [Hunter, of Glencairn.]

And his own marriage is given in the same quaint style:—

“At the pleasure of the Almighty, I was married to my wife, Jean Riddle, upon the 27th day of July, 1674, in the Tron Kirk of Edinb., by Mr. Annane.”

These statements are derived from the curious collection of manuscripts left by the late Mr. W. F. H. Arundell, of Barjarg Tower, Dumfriesshire. The papers of this industrious collector contain a vast fund of information respecting the antiquities and county families of Dumfriesshire. From them we learn further that Annie was wooed by William Douglas, of Fingland, in Kirkcudbrightshire. Her charms are thus spoken of in his pathetic lyric, “Bonnie Annie Laurie”:—

Her brow is like the snow-drift, Her neck is like the swan, Her face it is the fairest That e’er the sun shone on, That e’er the sun shone on, And dark blue is her eye; And for bonnie Annie Laurie I’d lay me down and die.

“She was, however, obdurate to his passionate appeal, preferring Alexander Ferguson, of Craigdarroch, to whom she was eventually married. This William Douglas was said to have been the hero of the well-known song, “Willie was a Wanton Wag.” Though he was refused by Annie, he did not pine away in single blessedness, but made a runaway marriage with Miss Elizabeth Clark, of Glenboig, in Galloway, by whom he had four sons and two daughters.”

ROBIN ADAIR.

Robin Adair was well-known in the London fashionable circles of the last century by the sobriquet of the “Fortunate Irishman;” but his parentage and the exact place of his birth are unknown. He was brought up as a surgeon, but “his detection in an early amour drove him precipitately from Dublin,” to push his fortunes in England. Scarcely had he crossed the Channel when the chain of lucky events that ultimately led him to fame and fortune commenced.

Near Holyhead, perceiving a carriage overturned, he ran to render assistance. The sole occupant of this vehicle was a “lady of fashion, well-known in polite circles,” who received Adair’s attentions with thanks; and, being lightly hurt, and hearing that he was a surgeon, requested him to travel with her in her carriage to London. On their arrival in the metropolis she presented him with a fee of one hundred guineas, and gave him a general invitation to her house. In after life Adair used to say that it was not so much the amount of this fee, but the time it was given, that was of service to him, as he was then almost destitute. But the invitation to her house was a still greater service, for there he met the person who decided his fate in life. This was Lady Caroline Keppel, daughter of the second Earl of Albemarle and of Lady Anne Lenox, daughter of the first Duke of Richmond. Forgetting her high lineage, Lady Caroline, at the first sight of the Irish surgeon, fell desperately in love with him; and her emotions were so sudden and so violent as to attract the general attention of the company.

Adair, perceiving his advantage, lost no time in pursuing it; while the Albemarle and Richmond families were dismayed at the prospect of such a terrible mesalliance. Every means were tried to induce the young lady to alter her mind, but without effect. Adair’s biographer tells us that “amusements, a long journey, an advantageous offer, and other common modes of shaking off what was considered by the family as an improper match, were already tried, but in vain; the health of Lady Caroline was evidently impaired, and the family at last confessed, with a good sense that reflects honor on their understandings as well as their hearts, that it was possible to prevent, but never to dissolve an attachment; and that marriage was the honorable, and indeed the only alternative that could secure her happiness and life.”

When Lady Caroline was taken by her friends from London to Bath, that she might be separated from her lover, she wrote, it is said, the song of “Robin Adair,” and set it to a plaintive Irish tune that she had heard him sing. Whether written by Lady Caroline or not, the song is simply expressive of her feelings at the time, and as it completely corroborates the circumstances just related, which were the town-talk of the period, though now little more than family tradition, there can be no doubt that they were the origin of the song, the words of which, as originally written, are the following:—

What’s this dull town to me? Robin’s not near; He whom I wish to see, Wish for to hear. Where’s all the joy and mirth, Made life a heaven on earth? Oh! they’re all fled with thee, Robin Adair!

What made the assembly shine? Robin Adair! What made the ball so fine? Robin was there! What, when the play was o’er, What made my heart so sore? Oh! it was parting with Robin Adair! But now thou art far from me, Robin Adair! But now I never see Robin Adair! Yet he I love so well Still in my heart shall dwell, Oh! can I ne’er forget Robin Adair!

Immediately after his marriage with Lady Caroline, Adair was appointed Inspector General of Military Hospitals, and subsequently, becoming a favorite of George III., he was made Surgeon-General, King’s Sergeant Surgeon, and Surgeon of Chelsea Hospital. Very fortunate men have seldom many friends, but Adair, by declining a baronetcy that was offered to him by the king, for surgical attendance on the Duke of Gloucester, actually acquired considerable popularity before his death, which took place when he was nearly fourscore years of age, in 1790. In the “Gentleman’s Magazine” of that year there are verses “On the Death of Robert Adair, Esq., late Surgeon-General, by J. Crane, M. D.,” who, it is to be hoped, was a much better physician than a poet.

Lady Caroline Adair’s married life was short but happy. She died of consumption, after giving birth to three children, one of them a son. On her death-bed she requested Adair to wear mourning for her as long as he lived; which he scrupulously did, save on the king’s and queen’s birthdays, when his duty to his sovereign required him to appear at Court in full dress. If this injunction respecting mourning were to prevent Adair marrying again, it had the desired effect; he did not marry a second time, though he had many offers.

JOAN OF ARC.

The legend respecting the substitution of another person at the stake, and the subsequent marriage of the Maid to Robert des Hermoises, has been treated by no less an iconoclast than M. Octave Delepierre, the learned Belgian Consul in England, in a volume (Doute Historique), privately printed. In the Athenæum for September 15, 1855, there is a complete analysis of the story, from which it appears that more than two centuries after the alleged execution of Joan, namely in 1645, Father Vignier found documents among the archives at Metz, which spoke of the presence and recognition of Joan in that city, five years after her alleged execution. The Father was then a guest of a descendant of Robert des Hermoises, in whose muniment chest he discovered the marriage contract of Robert and Joan. The matter was forgotten, when in 1740, documents were found at Orleans which recorded, among other things, a gratuity made to Joan in 1439, “for services rendered by her at the siege of the same city, 210 livres.” The tradition has many singular points, and is full of delightful uncertainty.

AMY ROBSART.

Another time-honored illusion is gone, and Amy Robsart descends into the grave like a respectable lady, instead of disappearing through a trap-door into a vault beneath and breaking her neck. So one by one the pleasant fictions over which in youth we lingered with such keen enjoyment, are stripped of their reality, and nothing but dull prose is left in their place. The pretty legend of Pocahontas, the venerable and patriotic one of William Tell, the ingenious mystification between the island of Juan Fernandez, Alexander Selkirk, and Robinson Crusoe, all have been cast down from their shrines. Nay, attempts have been made to remove Shakspeare himself into the region of myth, by representing that Lord Bacon was the veritable author of the plays and poems supposed to have been written by the great bard of Avon. No one need now despair of the disappearance of any time-honored personage or romance.

The name of Amy Robsart has always possessed a peculiar interest, not merely on account of the historical associations connected with her, but for the halo with which romance and poetry have invested her; and not the least strange feature of the case is the fact that historians should have so generally ignored the falsity of the legend. It had lain wrapped in its venerable mantle for more than three hundred years, until very recently, when public attention was forcibly called to the subject by an article published in the Oxford Undergraduates’ Journal, England. In a communication in that periodical, from the Secretary to the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, there is a statement to the following effect: “The Rev. J. Burgon, the Vicar of St. Mary’s (Oxford), has caused an inscription to be cut on the top step of the three steps leading to the chancel of St. Mary’s Church, commemorating the site of the interment of the ill-fated Amy Robsart. The inscription is as follows: ‘In a vault of brick, at the upper end of this quire, was buried Amy Robsart, wife of Lord Robert Dudley, K. G., Sunday, 22d September, A. D. 1560.’” History tells us that the funeral was celebrated with great pomp: but previously to the ceremony, a coroner’s inquest was held on the body, and after a long and minute investigation of the circumstances, a verdict of “accidental death,” was returned. The character of the Earl of Leicester, (Lord Robert Dudley) her husband, was such as to raise grave doubts as to the mode by which she came by her death, and the popular belief that Queen Elizabeth was in love with him, and was willing to marry him, gave great countenance to the prevailing suspicion that he had kept his marriage a secret, and got rid of his wife to enable him to carry out his ambitious schemes. The historian, Hume, alludes to these reports, which, however, he derived from Camden, the antiquary, and which very probably originated in the political hostility and personal hatred of Cecil, Walsingham, and others of Leicester’s mortal enemies. Ashmole, in his work, The Antiquities of Berkshire gives the popular legend from which Sir Walter Scott derived many of the materials for his beautiful romance of Kenilworth.

Ashmole wrote his book about the middle of the seventeenth century, a hundred years after the fatal event at Cumnor Hall; he is, therefore, no authority on the subject; but William Julius Mickle, the poet, took him for one a century later, and turned the story into verse. And thus, between political hostility, personal dislike, the non-authenticated statements of historians, antiquaries, poets and novelists, it has long been accepted as an undoubted fact that Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, murdered his wife, or was accessory to her murder, at Cumnor Hall. But it has been very generally overlooked that his alleged main motive for the supposed murder could have had no existence. There is no doubt the Queen knew he was married, but she continued to disgrace herself by open professions of attachment to him notwithstanding; and after Amy’s sudden death, the inquest on her body, and her public funeral, “Good Queen Bess” was just as fond of him as ever, and showered such favors upon him as could have left him but little to wish for. He knew perfectly well that a marriage between himself and Elizabeth would have convulsed the kingdom, and probably cost him his life. He also knew that she had no real intention of parting with one iota of the royal power or prerogative, even to him, and hence the motive for the so-called murder falls to the ground, and with it the pathetic romance built upon it.

WILLIAM TELL.

William Tell is very hard to kill. German writers in the last century demolish him, over and over again, but to little purpose. He remained the Swiss hero, and what is far worse, those hideous statues at Altorf continue to assert their undying ugliness, and pretend to prove, by their presence there, the truth of the story. The giant has been recently slain once more as an impostor. Once more? Half a dozen times; and each slayer takes himself for the sole and original champion. Swiss professors even have been at the work of demolition. Three or four years ago Mr. Baring-Gould, in his “Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” set up a dozen of those myths, and bowled them all down at one bowl: he proved, as others had done, that the legend of William Tell was “as fabulous as any other historical event.” Mr. Baring-Gould, however, does more than some others have done. He traces the story as far back as it can be traced. This is the order of the tradition:—

1. In the tenth century a tippling, boasting Danish soldier, named Toki, swore he could drive an arrow through an apple, placed on the point of a stick, at a great distance. King Harald Bluetooth told the boaster that the apple should be placed on his son’s head, and if Toki did not send an arrow through it at the first attempt, his own head should pay the penalty. Toki performed the feat with perfect success; but Harald perceiving he had brought other arrows, demanded the reason thereof, and Toki replied that if he had injured his son he would have driven those other arrows into the King’s body. The story was first related by Saxo Grammaticus, in the twelfth century.

2. But in the eleventh century the above prototype of Tell had successors or imitators. King Olaf, the Saint of Norway, challenged Eindridi, among other things, to shoot with an arrow at a writing tablet on the head of Eindridi’s son. Each was to have one shot. Olaf grazed the boy’s head, whereupon the boy’s mother interfered, and Eindridi was withdrawn from the contest. Olaf remarked that his competitor had a second arrow, which Eindridi confessed that he intended for his Majesty if anything very unpleasant had happened to the boy.

3. A year or two later in this eleventh century, another Norse archer, Hemingr, had a match with King Harold. Harold set a spear-shaft for a mark in the ground. He then fired in the air; the arrow turned in its descent and pierced the spear-shaft. Hemingr followed suit, and split the King’s arrow, which was perpendicularly fixed in the spear-shaft. Then the King stuck a knife in an oak. His arrow went into the haft. Hemingr shot, and his arrow cleft the haft and went into the socket of the blade. The enraged King next fired at a tender twig, which his arrow pierced, but Hemingr’s split a hazel-nut growing upon it. “You shall put the nut on your brother Bjorn’s head,” said Harold, “and if you do not pierce it with your spear at the first attempt, your life shall be forfeited.” Of course the thing was done. Hemingr is supposed to have had his revenge by sending an arrow through Harold’s trachea at the battle of Stamford Bridge, where he fought on the English side.

4. In the Faroe Isles, the above Harold is said to have had a swimming-match with a certain Geyti, who not only beat him, but gave him a ducking. Harold condemned him to shoot a hazel-nut off his brother’s head, under the usual penalty, and with the usual result.

5. The same story is told of one Puncher, (suggestive name,) with this difference, that the object aimed at was a coin.

6. In Finland, it is a son who shoots an apple off his father’s head; for which feat some robbers, who had captured his sire, gave him up to the son.

7. In a Persian poem of the twelfth century, a King, in sport, shoots an arrow at an apple on the head of his favorite page, who, though not hurt, died of the fright.

8. The story, with a difference, is told of Egil, in the Saga of Thidrik, of no particular date.

9. It is familiar to us, in the English ballad of William of Cloudesley, chronological date of event uncertain.

10. Enter William Tell, in the first decade of the fourteenth century. We need not tell his well-known tale again. It is only necessary to remark, by way of comment, that the Tell and Gesler legend was not set up till many years afterwards, and that in no contemporary record is any mention made of either Tell, Gesler, or the apple incident. No Vogt named Gesler ever exercised authority for the Emperor in Switzerland; no family bearing the name of Tell can be traced in any part of that country.

11, and lastly. The hero’s name was not Tell at all, but M’Leod, and he came from Braemar. Mr. Baring-Gould has quite overlooked him. Therefore is the new claimant’s story here subjoined in order to make the roll of legends complete. It is taken from The Braemar Highlands; their Tales, Traditions and History, by Elizabeth Taylor. The King referred to is Malcolm Canmore.

“A young man named M’Leod had been hunting one day in the royal forest. A favorite hound of the King’s having attacked M’Leod, was killed by him. The King soon heard of the slaughter of his favorite, and was exceedingly angry—so much so that M’Leod was condemned to death. The gibbet was erected on Craig Choinnich, i.e., Kennoth’s Craig. As there was less of justice than revenge in the sentence, little time was permitted ere it was carried into execution. The prisoner was led out by the north gate of the castle. The King, in great state, surrounded by a crowd of his nobles, followed in procession. Sorrowing crowds of the people came after, in wondering amazement. As they moved slowly on, an incident occurred which arrested universal attention. A woman with a child in her arms came rushing through the crowd, and throwing herself before the King, pleaded with him to spare her husband’s life, though it should be at the expense of all they possessed. Her impassioned entreaties were met with silence. Malcolm was not to be moved from his purpose of death. Seeing that her efforts to move the King were useless, she made her way to her husband, and throwing her arms around him declared that she would not leave him—she would go and die with him. Malcolm was somewhat moved by the touching scene. Allen Durward, noticing the favorable moment, ventured to put in the suggestion that it was a pity to hang such a splendid archer. ‘A splendid archer, is he?’ replied the King; ‘then he shall have his skill tried.’ So he ordered that M’Leod’s wife and child should be placed on the opposite side of the river; something to serve as a mark was to be placed on the child’s head. If M’Leod succeeded in hitting the mark without injuring his wife or child his life would be spared, otherwise the sentence was to be carried into execution. Accordingly (so the legend goes) the young wife and child were put across the river, and placed on Tomghainmheine; according to some, a little farther down the river, near where a boat-house once stood. The width of the Dee was to be the distance separating M’Leod from his mark. He asked for a bow and two arrows, and having examined each with the greatest care, he took his position. The eventful moment came, the people gathered round him, and stood in profound silence. On the opposite side of the river his wife stood, the central figure of a crowd of eager bystanders, tears glistening on her cheeks as she gazed alternately at her husband and child in dumb emotion. M’Leod took aim; but his body shook like an aspen-leaf in the evening breeze. This was a trial for him far harder than death. Again he placed himself in position; but he trembled to such a degree that he could not shoot, and turning to the King, who stood near, he said in a voice scarcely articulate in its suppressed agony, ‘This is hard!’ But the King relented not; so the third time he fell into the attitude, and as he did so, almost roared, ‘This is hard!’ Then as if all his nervousness had escaped through the cry, he let the arrow fly—it struck the mark! The mother seized her child, and in a transport of joy seemed to devour it with kisses; while the pent-up emotion of the crowd found vent through a loud cry of wonder and triumph, which repeated itself again and again as the echoes rolled slowly away among the neighboring hills. The King now approached M’Leod, and after confirming his pardon, inquired why he, so sure of hand and keen of sight, had asked two arrows? ‘Because,’ replied M’Leod, ‘had I missed the mark, or hurt my wife and child, I was determined not to miss you.’ The king grew pale, and turned away as if undecided what to do. His better nature prevailed; so he again approached M’Leod, and with kindly voice and manner told him that he would receive him into his body-guard, and he would be well provided for. ‘Never!’ answered the undaunted Celt. ‘After the painful proof to which you have just put my heart. I could never love you enough to serve you faithfully. The King in amazement cried out, ‘Thou art a Hardy! and as Hardy thou art, so Hardy thou shalt be.’” From that time M’Leod went under the appellation of Hardy, while his descendants were termed the M’Hardy’s—Mac being the Gaelic word for son. The date of the above is the eleventh century, when the legend burst forth in several parts of the world. Here we have it in Scotland. Like many other legends it probably came originally from India.

THE TIME OF LE GRAND MONARQUE.

Thackeray draws the following graphic picture of the extremes of society in Europe in the time of Louis XIV. Rarely is the contrast between “the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,” and “the short and simple annals of the poor,” delineated with such masterly vigor. Referring to the influence of French fashions upon the German courts, he says:—

It is incalculable how much that royal bigwig cost Germany. Every prince imitated the French king, and had his Versailles, his Wilhelmshöhe or Ludwigslust; his court and its splendors; his gardens laid out with statues; his fountains, and water-works, and Tritons; his actors, and dancers, and singers, and fiddlers; his harem, with its inhabitants; his diamonds and duchies for these latter; his enormous festivities, his gaming-tables, tournaments, masquerades, and banquets lasting a week long, for which the people paid with their money, when the poor wretches had it; with their bodies and very blood when they had none; being sold in thousands by their lords and masters, who gaily dealt in soldiers,—staked a regiment upon the red at the gambling table; swapped a battalion against a dancing-girl’s diamond necklace, and, as it were, pocketed their people.

As one views Europe, through contemporary books of travel, in the early part of the last century, the landscape is awful—wretched wastes, beggarly and plundered; half-burned cottages and trembling peasants gathering piteous harvests; gangs of such tramping along with bayonets behind them, and corporals with canes and cats-of-nine-tails to flog them to barracks. By these passes my lord’s gilt carriage, floundering through the ruts, as he swears at the postillions, and toils on to the Residenz. Hard by, but away from the noise and brawling of the citizens and buyers, is Wilhelmslust or Ludwigsruhe, or Monbijou, or Versailles—it scarcely matters which—near to the city, shut out by woods from the beggared country, the enormous, hideous, gilded, monstrous marble palace, where the prince is, and the Court, and the trim gardens, and huge fountains, and the forest where the ragged peasants are beating the game in (it is death to them to touch a feather); and the jolly hunt sweeps by with its uniform of crimson and gold; and the prince gallops ahead puffing his royal horn; and his lords and mistresses ride after him; and the stag is pulled down; and the grand huntsman gives the knife in the midst of a chorus of bugles; and ’tis time the court go home to dinner; and our noble traveller, it may be the Baron of Pöllnitz, or the Count de Königsmarck, or the excellent Chevalier de Seingalt, sees the procession gleaming through the trim avenues of the wood, and hastens to the inn, and sends his noble name to the marshal of the court. Then our nobleman arrays himself in green and gold, or pink and silver, in the richest Paris mode, and is introduced by the chamberlain, and makes his bow to the jolly prince, and the gracious princess; and is presented to the chief lords and ladies, and then comes supper and a bank at Faro, where he loses or wins a thousand pieces by daylight. If it is a German court, you may add not a little drunkenness to this picture of high life; but German, or French, or Spanish, if you can see out of your palace-windows beyond the trim-cut forest vistas, misery is lying outside; hunger is stalking about the bare villages, listlessly following precarious husbandry; ploughing stony fields with starved cattle; or fearfully taking in scanty harvests. Augustus is fat and jolly on his throne; he can knock down an ox, and eat one almost; his mistress, Aurora von Königsmarck, is the loveliest, the wittiest creature; his diamonds are the biggest and most brilliant in the world, and his feasts as splendid as those of Versailles. As for Louis the Great, he is more than mortal. Lift up your glances respectfully, and mark him eyeing Madame de Fontanges or Madame de Montespan from under his sublime periwig, as he passes through the great gallery where Villars and Vendome, and Berwick, and Bossuet, and Massillon are waiting. Can Court be more splendid; nobles and knights more gallant and superb; ladies more lovely? A grander monarch, or a more miserable starved wretch than the peasant his subject, you cannot look on. Let us bear both these types in mind, if we wish to estimate the old society properly. Remember the glory and the chivalry? Yes! Remember the grace and beauty, the splendor and lofty politeness; the gallant courtesy of Fontenoy where the French line bids the gentlemen of the English guard to fire first; the noble constancy of the old king and Villars his general, who fits out the last army with the last crown-piece from the treasury, and goes to meet the enemy and die or conquer for France at Denain. But round all that royal splendor lies a nation enslaved and ruined; there are people robbed of their rights—communities laid waste—faith, justice, commerce trampled upon, and well-nigh destroyed—nay, in the very centre of royalty itself, what horrible stains and meanness, crime and shame! It is but to a silly harlot that some of the noblest gentlemen, and some of the proudest women in the world are bowing down; it is the price of a miserable province that the king ties in diamonds round his mistress’s white neck. In the first half of the last century this is going on all Europe over. Saxony is a waste as well as Picardy or Artois; and Versailles is only larger and not worse than Herrenhausen.

THE BITER BIT.

Jerry White, the Chaplain to Cromwell, carried his ambition so far as to think of becoming son-in-law to his Highness, by marrying his daughter, the lady Frances; and as Jerry had those requisites that generally please the fair sex, he won the affections of the young lady: but as nothing of this sort could happen without the knowledge of the watchful father, who had his spies in every place, and about every person, it soon reached his ears. There were as weighty reasons for rejecting Jerry as there had been for dismissing His Majesty Charles II., who had been proposed by the Earl of Orrery as a husband. Oliver therefore, ordered the informer to observe and watch them narrowly; and promised that upon substantial proof of the truth of what he had declared, he should be as amply rewarded as Jerry severely punished. It was not long before the informer acquainted his Highness that the Chaplain was then with the lady; and upon hastening to his daughter’s apartment, he discovered the unfortunate Jerry upon his knees, kissing her Ladyship’s hand: seeing which, he hastily exclaimed, “What is the meaning of this posture before my daughter Frances?” The Chaplain, with great presence of mind, replied, “May it please your Highness, I have a long time courted that young gentlewoman there, my lady’s woman, and cannot prevail: I was therefore humbly praying her Ladyship to intercede for me.” Oliver, turning to the waiting-woman, said:—“What is the meaning of this? He is my friend, and I expect you should treat him as such:” who, desiring nothing more, replied, with a low courtesy, “If Mr. White intends me that honor, I shall not oppose him.” Upon which Oliver said, “We’ll call Goodwin: this business shall be done presently, before I go out of the room.” Jerry could not retreat. Goodwin came, and they were instantly married,—the bride, at the same time, receiving £500 from the Protector.

Mr. Jerry White lived with this wife (not of his choice) more than fifty years. Oldmixon says he knew both him and Mrs. White, and heard the story told when they were present; at which time Mrs. White acknowledged “there was something in it.”

THE LAST NIGHT OF THE GIRONDISTS.

Of all the prisons of Paris, the Conciergerie is the most interesting, from its antiquity, associations, and mixed style of architecture,—uniting as it were the horrors of the dungeons of the Middle Ages with the more humane system of confinement of the present century. It exhibits in its mongrel outline the progressive ameliorations of humanity toward criminals and offenders,—forming a connecting link between feudal barbarity and modern civilization. Situated in the heart of old Paris, upon the Ile de la Cité, separated from the Seine by the Quai de l’Horologe, it is one of a cluster of edifices pregnant with souvenirs of tragedy and romance. These buildings are the Sainte Chapelle, the Prefecture de Police, and the Palais de Justice, formerly the residence of the French monarchs. The Conciergerie, which derives its name from concierge, or keeper, was anciently the prison of the palace. It is now chiefly used as a place of detention for persons during their trial. Recent alterations have greatly diminished the gloomy and forbidding effect of its exterior; but sufficient of its old character remains to perpetuate the associations connected with its former uses, and to preserve for it its interest as a relic of feudalism. The names of the two turrets flanking the gateway, Tour de César, and Tour Boubec, smack of antiquity. Compared with Cæsar, however, its age is quite juvenile, being less than nine hundred years.

The oldest legible entry in the archives of the Conciergerie is that of the regicide Ravaillac, who was incarcerated May 16, 1610. Among the memorable names on its register are those of Damiens, who attempted the life of Louis XV.; Eleonore Galigaï, the confidante of Marie de Medicis; La Voisine, the famous female poisoner, who succeeded Madame de Brinvilliers; Cartouche the noted robber, and high above them all in point of tragic interest, the innocent and unfortunate queen, Marie Antoinette.

The records of this prison furnish extraordinary illustrations of stoicism in the midst of civil calamity, and its walls bear witness to almost inconceivable indifference to the mastery of violence. We know that there is no social upheaval to which human nature, with its versatility of powers for good or evil, may not become accustomed, and if the condition be inevitable, even become reconciled. But the conduct of the prisoners of the Conciergerie, in many instances, tinged as it was with mingled sublimity and folly, surpasses comprehension. During the Reign of Terror they were almost daily decimated by the guillotine; yet their constant amusement was to play at charades and the—guillotine. Both sexes and all ranks assembled in one of the halls. They formed a revolutionary tribunal—choosing accusers and judges, and parodizing the gestures and voice of Fouquier Tinville and his coadjutors. Defenders were named; the accused were taken at hazard. The sentence of death followed close on the heels of the accusation. They simulated the toilet of the condemned, preparing the neck for the knife by feigning to cut the hair and collar. The sentenced were attached to a chair reversed to represent the guillotine. The knife was of wood, and as it fell, the individual, male or female, thus sporting with their approaching fate, tumbled down as if actually struck by the iron blade. Often while engaged in this play, they were interrupted by the terrible voice of the public crier, calling over the “names of the brigands who to-day have gained the lottery of the holy guillotine.”

But among the curious souvenirs of this celebrated jail, the most memorable is that of the last night of the Girondists, that unique festivity which was certainly the grandest triumph of philosophy in the annals of human events. Those fierce, theoretical deputies, who had so recently sent to the scaffold the King and Queen of France, were now in turn on their way thither. Christianity teaches men to live in peaceful humility, and to die with hopeful resignation. The last hour of a true believer is calmly joyous. Here was an opportunity for infidelity to assert its superiority in death, as it had claimed for itself the greatest good in life. Let us be just to even these deluded men. They had played a terrible role in the history of their country, and they resigned themselves to die with the same intrepidity with which they had staked their existence upon the success of their policy. They made it a death fête, each smiling as he awaited the dread message, and devoting his latest moments to those displays of intellectual rivalry which had so long united them in life. Mainvielle, Ducos, Gensonné, and Boyer Foufréde abandoned themselves to gayety, wit and revelry, repeating their own verses with friendly rivalry, and stimulating their companions to every species of infidel folly. Viger sang amorous songs; Duprat related a tale; Gensonné repeated the Marseillaise; while Vergniaud alternately electrified them with his eloquence, or discoursed philosophically of their past history, and the unknown future upon which they were about to enter. The discussion on poetry, literature, and general topics, was animated and brilliant; on God, religion, the immortality of the soul, grave, eloquent, calm and poetic. The walls of the prison echoed to a late hour in the morning to their patriotic cries, and were witnesses to their fraternal embraces. The corpse of Valazé, the only one of their number who by a voluntary death eluded the scaffold, remained with them.

The whole scene was certainly the wildest and most dramatic ever born of courage and reason. Yet throughout their enthusiasm there appears a chill of uncertainty, and an intellectual coldness that appals the conscience. We feel that for the Girondists it was a consistent sacrifice to their theories and their lives; but for a Christian and patriot, a sad and unedifying spectacle.

While history cannot refute the tribute of admiration to high qualities, even when misdirected, it is equally bound to record the errors and repeat the warnings of those who claim a place in its pages. The lives of the Girondists, as well as their deaths, formed a confused drama of lofty aspirations, generous sentiments and noble sacrifices, mingled with error, passion and folly. Their character presents all the cold brilliancy of fireworks, which excite our admiration only to be chilled with disappointment at their speedy eclipse. Their death-scene was emphatically a spectacle. It exhibited neither the simple grandeur of the death of Socrates, nor the calm and trustful spirit that characterized the dying moments of Washington; the one yielding up his spirit as a heathen philosopher; the other dying as a Christian statesman.

QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE RING.

Concerning the love-token which Queen Elizabeth gave to Essex, with an intimation that if he forfeited her favor, its return would secure her forgiveness, Miss Strickland quotes the testimony of Lady Spelman, who says that when Essex lay under sentence of death, he determined to try the virtue of the ring, by sending it to the queen, and claiming the benefit of her promise; but knowing he was surrounded by the creatures of those who where bent on taking his life, he was fearful of trusting it to any of his attendants. At length, looking out of his window, he saw early one morning a boy whose countenance pleased him, and him he induced by a bribe to carry the ring, which he threw down to him from above, to the Lady Scrope, his cousin, who had taken so friendly interest in his fate. The boy, by mistake, carried it to the Countess of Nottingham, the cruel sister of the fair and gentle Scrope, and, as both these ladies were of the royal bedchamber, the mistake might easily occur. The countess carried the ring to her husband the Lord Admiral, who was the deadly foe of Essex, and told him the message, but he bade her suppress both. The queen, unconscious of the accident, waited in the painful suspense of an angry lover for the expected token to arrive; but not receiving it, she concluded he was too proud to make this last appeal to her tenderness, and, after having once revoked the warrant, she ordered the execution to proceed.

Multum in Parvo.

Prior, says Leigh Hunt, wrote one truly loving verse, if no other. It is in his Solomon. The monarch is speaking of a female slave, who had a real affection for him—

And when I called another, Abra came.

* * * * *

Coleridge says that Noah’s Ark affords a fine image of the world at large, as containing a very few men, and a great number of beasts.

* * * * *

The boxes which govern the world are the cartridge-box, the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the band-box.

* * * * *

There are certain things upon which even a wise man must be content to be ignorant. “I cannot fiddle,” said Themistocles, “but I can take a city.”

* * * * *

Sir Thomas Overbury said of a man who boasted of his ancestry, that he was like a potato—the best thing belonging to him was under the ground.

* * * * *

“Go and see Carlini” (the famous Neapolitan comedian), said a physician to a patient, who came to consult him upon habitual depression of spirits. “I am Carlini,” said the man.

* * * * *

The words Abstemiously and Facetiously contain all the vowels in consecutive order.

* * * * *

When Mr. Pitt’s enemies objected to George III. that he was too young, his Majesty answered: “That is an objection the force of which will be weakened every day he lives.”

* * * * *

Prayer moves the hand That moves the universe.

* * * * *

The clock that stands still, points right twice in the four-and-twenty hours; while others may keep going continually, and be continually going wrong.

* * * * *

The Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, “Child, thou art come into the world to suffer. Endure, and hold thy peace.”

* * * * *

Balzac makes mention of a man who never uttered his own name without taking off his hat, as a mark of reverence for the exalted appellation.

* * * * *

Gibbon says: As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

* * * * *

In the works of Prof. Thomas Cooper it is said,—Mankind pay best, 1. Those who destroy them, heroes and warriors. 2. Those who cheat them, statesmen, priests and quacks. 3. Those who amuse them, as singers, actors, dancers and novel writers. But least of all, those who speak the truth, and instruct them.

* * * * *

Wax-lights, though we are accustomed to overlook the fact, and rank them with ordinary commonplaces, are true fairy tapers,—a white metamorphosis from the flowers, crowned with the most intangible of all visible mysteries—fire.

* * * * *

An illustration of false emphasis is supplied by the verse, (I. Kings xiii. 27,) “And he spoke to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him.”

* * * * *

Shakspeare, in the compass of a line, has described a thoroughly charming girl:—

Pretty, and witty; wild, and yet, too, gentle.

* * * * *

The foundation of domestic happiness is confidence in the virtue of woman; the foundation of political happiness is reliance on the integrity of man; the foundation of all real happiness, temporal and spiritual, present and eternal, is faith in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

* * * * *

Buckingham’s Epitaph on Thomas Lord Fairfax:—

He might have been a King, But that he understood How much it is a meaner thing To be unjustly great, than honorably good.

* * * * *

A favorite exclamation of the Parisian mob, who must always have a “vive” something or other, became during the Revolution, “vive la mort!”

* * * * *

Alphonso, King of Aragon, in his judgment of human life, declared that there were only four things in this world worth living for: “Old wine to drink, old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to converse with.”

* * * * *

David refers to a good old form of salutation and valediction in Psalm cxxix. 8:—

“The blessing of the Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.”

* * * * *

An eastern sage being desired to inscribe on the ring of his Sultan a motto, equally applicable to prosperity or adversity, returned it with these words engraved upon the surface: “And this, too, shall pass away.”

* * * * *

Oliver Cromwell’s grace before dinner:—

Some have meat, but cannot eat, And some can eat, but have not meat, And so—the Lord be praised.

Life and Death.

All death in nature is birth, and in death appears visibly the advancement of life. There is no killing principle in nature, for nature throughout is life: it is not death that kills, but the higher life, which, concealed behind the other, begins to develop itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself to attain a higher form.—§Fichte.§

I came in the morning,—it was spring, And I smiled; I walked out at noon,—it was summer, And I was glad; I sat me down at even,—it was autumn, And I was sad; I laid me down at night,—it was winter, And I slept.

BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATIONS OF LIFE.

What a fine passage is that of Bishop §Heber§, which is said to have suggested to §Cole§ his justly-famed series of paintings, entitled The Voyage of Life!

Life bears us on like the stream of a mighty river. Our boat at first glides swiftly down the narrow channel, through the playful murmurings of the little brook and the windings of its grassy borders: the trees shed their blossoms over our young heads, and the flowers on the brink seem to offer themselves to our young hands; we rejoice in hope, and grasp eagerly at the beauties around us; but the stream hurries us on, and still our hands are empty.

Our course in youth and manhood is along a wider and deeper flood, and amid objects more striking and magnificent. We are animated by the moving picture of enjoyment and industry that is passing before us; we are excited by some short-lived success, or depressed and rendered miserable by some short-lived disappointment. But our energy and dependence are alike in vain. The stream bears us on, and our joys and griefs are left behind us: we may be shipwrecked, but we cannot anchor; our voyage may be hastened, but cannot be delayed; whether rough or smooth, the river hastens toward its home; the roaring of the waves is beneath our keel, the land lessens from our eyes, the floods are lifted up around us, and we take our last leave of earth and its inhabitants, and of our future voyage there is no witness save the Infinite and the Eternal!

THE ROUND OF LIFE.

From the Aphorisms of Dr. Horne, Bishop of Norwich:—

Some are serving,—some commanding; Some are sitting,—some are standing; Some rejoicing,—some are grieving; Some entreating,—some relieving; Some are weeping,—some are laughing; Some are thirsting,—some are quaffing; Some accepting,—some refusing; Some are thrifty,—some abusing; Some compelling,—some persuading; Some are flattering,—some degrading; Some are patient,—some are fuming; Some are modest,—some presuming; Some are leasing,—some are farming; Some are helping,—some are harming; Some are running,—some are riding; Some departing,—some abiding; Some are sending,—some are bringing; Some are crying,—some are singing; Some are hearing,—some are preaching; Some are learning,—some are teaching; Some disdaining,—some affecting; Some assiduous,—some neglecting; Some are feasting,—some are fasting; Some are saving,—some are wasting; Some are losing,—some are winning; Some repenting,—some are sinning; Some professing,—some adoring; Some are silent,—some are roaring; Some are restive,—some are willing; Some preserving,—some are killing; Some are bounteous,—some are grinding; Some are seeking,—some are finding; Some are thieving,—some receiving; Some are hiding,—some revealing; Some commending,—some are blaming; Some dismembering,—some new-framing; Some are quiet,—some disputing; Some confuted and confuting; Some are marching,—some retiring; Some are resting,—some aspiring; Some enduring,—some deriding; Some are falling,—some are rising. These are sufficient to recite, Since all men’s deeds are infinite; Some end their parts when some begin; Some go out,—and some come in.

RULES OF LIVING.

From Rev. Hugh Peters’ Legacy to his Daughter.

London, §A.D.§ 1660.

Whosoever would live long and blessedly, let him observe these following rules, by which he shall attain to that which he desireth:—

Let thy Thoughts be divine, awful, godly. Talk — little, honest, true. Works — profitable, holy, charitable. Manners — grave, courteous, cheerful. Diet — temperate, convenient, frugal. Apparel — sober, neat, comely. Will — confident, obedient, ready. Sleep — moderate, quiet, seasonable. Prayers — short, devout, often, fervent. Recreation — lawful, brief, seldom. Memory — of death, punishment, glory.

DR. FRANKLIN’S MORAL CODE.

The great American philosopher and statesman, Benjamin Franklin, drew up the following list of moral virtues, to which he paid constant and earnest attention, and thereby made himself a better and happier man:—

Temperance.—Eat not to fulness; drink not to elevation.

Silence.—Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Order.—Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

Resolution.—Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

Frugality.—Make no expense, but do good to others as yourself; that is, waste nothing.

Industry.—Lose no time, be always employed in something useful; but avoid all unnecessary actions.

Sincerity.—Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

Justice.—Wrong no one by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

Moderation.—Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries.

Cleanliness.—Suffer no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

Tranquillity.—Be not disturbed about trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

Humility.—Imitate Jesus Christ.

EMPLOYMENT OF TIME.

The celebrated Lord Coke wrote the subjoined couplet, which he religiously observed in the distribution of time:—

Six hours to sleep,—to law’s grave studies six,— Four spent in prayer,—the rest to nature fix.

But Sir William Jones, a wiser economist of the fleeting hours of life, amended the sentence in the following lines:—

Seven hours to law,—to soothing slumber seven,— Ten to the world allot,—and all to heaven.

LIVING LIFE OVER AGAIN.

Good Sir Thomas Browne says, Though I think no man can live well once but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would not live over my hours past, nor begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero’s ground,—because I have lived them well,—but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then, because I was a child, and because I commit them still, I am yet an infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child before the days of dotage, and stand in need of Æson’s bath before threescore.

RHYMING DEFINITIONS.

§Fame.§—A meteor dazzling with its distant glare. §Wealth.§—A source of trouble and consuming care. §Pleasure.§—A gleam of sunshine, passing soon away. §Love.§—A morning stream whoso memory gilds the day. §Faith.§—An anchor dropped beyond the vale of death. §Hope.§—A lone star beaming o’er the barren heath. §Charity.§—A stream meandering from the fount of love. §Bible.§—A guide to realms of endless joy above. §Religion.§—A key which opens wide the gates of Heaven. §Death.§—A knife by which the ties of earth are riven. §Earth.§—A desert through which pilgrims wend their way. §Grave.§—A home of rest when ends life’s weary day. §Resurrection.§—A sudden waking from a quiet dream. §Heaven.§—A land of joy, of light and love supreme.

EARTH.

What is earth, sexton?—A place to dig graves. What is earth, rich man?—A place to work slaves. What is earth, greybeard?—A place to grow old. What is earth, miser?—A place to dig gold. What is earth, school-boy?—A place for my play. What is earth, maiden?—A place to be gay. What is earth, seamstress?—A place where I weep. What is earth, sluggard?—A good place to sleep. What is earth, soldier?—A place for a battle. What is earth, herdsman?—A place to raise cattle. What is earth, widow?—A place of true sorrow. What is earth, tradesman?—I’ll tell you to-morrow. What is earth, sick man?—’Tis nothing to me. What is earth, sailor?—My home is the sea. What is earth, statesman?—A place to win fame. What is earth, author?—I’ll write there my name. What is earth, monarch?—For my realm it is given. What is earth, Christian?—The gateway of heaven!

RHYMING CHARTER.

The following grant of William the Conqueror may be found in Stowe’s Chronicle and in Blount’s Ancient Tenures:—

HOPTON, IN THE COUNTY OF SALOP.

To the Heyrs Male of the Hopton, lawfully begotten:

From me and from myne, to thee and to thyne While the water runs, and the sun doth shine. For lack of heyrs to the king againe, I, William, king, the third year of my reign Give to the Norman hunter, To me that art both line[40] and deare, The Hop and the Hoptoune, And all the bounds up and downe. Under the earth to hell, Above the earth to heaven, From me and from myne To thee and to thyne; As good and as faire As ever they myne were. To witness that this is sooth,[41] I bite the wite wax with my tooth, Before Jugg, Marode, and Margery And my third son Henery, For one bow, and one broad arrow, When I come to hunt upon Yarrow.

Footnote 40:

Related, or of my lineage.

Footnote 41:

True.

NICE QUESTIONS FOR LAWYERS.

A gentleman, who died in Paris, left a legacy of $6000 to his niece in Dubuque, Iowa, who it appears also died about the same hour of the same day. The question which died first turns upon the relation of solar to true time, and must be decided by the difference of longitude. If the niece died at four o’clock §A.M.§, and her uncle at ten o’clock §A.M.§, the instants of their death would have been identical. Assuming that to be the hour of the testator’s death, if the niece died at any hour between four and ten, although the legacy would apparently revert to his estate, it would really vest in her and her heirs, since by solar time she would have actually survived her uncle.

Another case where great importance depended upon the precise time of death was that of the late Earl Fitzhardinge, who died “about midnight,” between October 10th and 11th. His rents, amounting to £40,000 a year, were payable on Old Lady-day and Old Michaelmas-day. The latter fell this year (1857) on Sunday, October 11, and the day began at midnight: so that if he died before twelve, the rents belonged to the parties taking the estate; but if after, they belonged to and formed part of his personal estate. The difference of one minute might therefore involve the question as to the title of £20,000.

THE BONE NOT DESCRIBED BY MODERN ANATOMISTS.

God formed them from the dust, and He once more Will give them strength and beauty as before, Though strewn as widely as the desert air, As winds can waft them, or the waters bear.

The Emperor Adrian—the skeptic whose epigrammatic address to his soul in prospect of death,

Animula, vagula, blandula,[42] &c.,

Footnote 42:

Byron’s Translation.

Ah! gentle, fleeting, wavering sprite, Friend and associate of this clay! To what unknown region borne, Wilt thou not wing thy distant flight? No more with wonted humor gay, But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.

is well known—asked Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah, in the course of an interview following the successful siege of Bitter, “How doth a man revive again in the world to come?” He answered and said, “From Luz, in the back-bone.” Saith he to him, “Demonstrate this to me.” Then he took Luz, a little bone out of the back-bone, and put it in water, and it was not steeped; he put it into the fire, and it was not burned; he brought it to the mill, and that could not grind it; he laid it on the anvil and knocked it with a hammer, but the anvil was cleft, and the hammer broken.

The name Luz is probably derived from Genesis xlviii. 3, where, however, it refers to a place, not to a bone. The bone alluded to is the sacrum, the terminal wedge of the vertebral column. Butler, in his Hudibras, erroneously traces to the Rabbinic belief the modern name os sacrum, its origin really being due to the custom of placing it upon the altar in ancient sacrifices.

The learned Rabbins of the Jews Write, there’s a bone, which they call Luz I’ th’ rump of man, of such a virtue No force in nature can do hurt to; And therefore at the last great day All th’ other members shall, they say, Spring out of this, as from a seed All sorts of vegetals proceed; From whence the learned sons of art Os sacrum justly style that part.—Hudibras.

DYING WORDS OF DISTINGUISHED PERSONS.

There taught us how to live; and—oh, too high A price for knowledge!—taught us how to die.—§Tickell.§

On parent knees, a naked, new-born child, Weeping thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled; So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm thou mayst smile while all around thee weep.[43] §Sir W. Jones§: Pers. Trans.

Footnote 43:

A German journal proposed that the following lines should be translated into any other language, so that the number of lines and words should not exceed those in the original (twenty words).

Sohn! Du weintest am Tage der Geburt, es lachten die Freunde; Tracht, dass am Todestag, wæhrend sie weinen, du lachst.

The English response thus complied with the conditions (seventeen words):—

When I was born I cried, while others smiled; Oh, may I dying smile, while others weep.

Napoleon.—Tête d’Armée!

Sir Walter Raleigh.—It matters little how the head lieth.

Goethe.—Let the light enter.

Tasso.—Into thy hands, O Lord.

Alfieri.—Clasp my hand, my dear friend: I die.

Martin Luther.—Father in Heaven, though this body is breaking away from me, and I am departing this life, yet I know that I shall forever be with thee, for no one can pluck me out of thy hand.

Mozart.—You spoke of refreshment, my Emilie: take my last notes, sit down at the piano, sing them with the hymn of your sainted mother; let me hear once more those notes which have so long been my solace and delight.

Haydn.—God preserve the Emperor!

Haller.—The artery ceases to beat.

Grotius.—Be serious.

Erasmus.—Lord, make an end.

Cardinal Beaufort.—What! is there no bribing death?

Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers.—Soul, thou hast served Christ these seventy years, and art thou afraid to die? Go out, soul, go out.

Queen Elizabeth.—All my possessions for a moment of time!

Charles II.—Let not poor Nelly starve.

Anne Boleyn.—It is small, very small indeed (clasping her neck).

Sir Thomas More.—I pray you see me safe up; and as for my coming down, let me shift for myself (ascending the scaffold).

John Hampden.—O Lord, save my country! O Lord, be merciful to——

Chancellor Thurlow.—I’m shot if I don’t believe I’m dying.

Addison.—See with what peace a Christian can die.

Julius Cæsar.—Et tu, Brute.

Nero.—Is this your fidelity?

Herder.—Refresh me with a great thought.

Frederick V., of Denmark.—There is not a drop of blood on my hands.

Mirabeau.—Let me die amid the sound of delicious music and the fragrance of flowers.

Madame de Staël.—I have loved God, my father, and liberty.

Lord Nelson.—Kiss me, Hardy.

Lord Chesterfield.—Give Dayrolles a chair.

Hobbes.—I am taking a fearful leap in the dark.

Byron.—I must sleep now.

Sir Walter Scott.—I feel as if I were to be myself again.

Keats.—I feel the daisies growing over me.

Robert Burns.—Don’t let that awkward squad fire over my grave.

Lawrence.—Don’t give up the ship.

Washington.—It is well.

Franklin.—A dying man can do nothing easy.

Wolfe.—Now, God be praised, I will die in peace.

Marion.—Thank God, I can lay my hand upon my heart and say that since I came to man’s estate I have never intentionally done wrong to any one.

Adams.—Independence forever!

Jefferson.—I resign my soul to God, and my daughter to my country.

J. Q. Adams.—This is the last of earth. I am content.

Harrison.—I wish you to understand the true principles of the Government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more.

Taylor.—I have endeavored to do my duty.

Daniel Webster.—I still live.

THE LAST PRAYER OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS.

Written in her Prayer-Book the morning before her Execution:

O! Domine Deus, (O my Lord and my God, Speravi in te,— I have trusted in thee; O! carè mi Jesu, O Jesus, my love, Nunc libera me. Now liberate me. In durâ catenâ, In my enemies’ power, In miserâ, pœnâ, In affliction’s sad hour, Desidero te. I languish for thee. Languendo, gemendo, In sorrowing, weeping, Et genuflectendo, And bending the knee, Adoro, imploro, I adore and implore thee Ut liberes me! To liberate me!)

REMARKABLE TRANCE.

At the siege of Rouen, the body of François de Civille, a French captain who was supposed to have been killed, was thrown with others into the ditch, where it remained from eleven o’clock in the morning to half-past six in the evening, when his servant, observing some latent heat, carried the body into the house. During the ensuing five days and nights not the slightest sign of life was exhibited, although the body gradually recovered its warmth. At the expiration of this time the town was carried by assault, and the servants of an officer belonging to the besiegers, having found the supposed corpse of Civille, threw it out of a window, with no other covering than his shirt. Fortunately for the captain, he fell upon a heap of straw, where he remained senseless three days longer, when he was taken up by his relations for sepulture and ultimately brought to life. What was still more strange, Civille, like Macduff, had been “from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” having been brought into the world by a Cæsarian operation which his mother did not survive. After his last escape he used to add to his signature, “three times born, three times buried, and three times risen from the dead by the grace of God.”

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION.

Whether,—as in the case of the Abbé Prevost in the forest of Chantilly,—if a supposed cadaver, while subjected to the investigating knife of the anatomist, should awake from a trance only to be conscious of his horrible condition and to expire from the immediate effect of the dissection, it is any thing more than homicide per infortuniam, or not.

Whether, in the case of Lazarus, who was restored to life by the Saviour after decomposition had commenced, he could have reclaimed property already in the possession and occupancy of the heirs to whom he had willed it before death.

PRESERVED BODIES.

There is an arched vault, or burying-ground, under the church at Kilsyth, in Scotland, which was the burying-place of the family of Kilsyth until the estate was forfeited and the title became extinct in the year 1715, since which it has never been used for that purpose except once. The last earl fled with his family to Flanders, and, according to tradition, was smothered to death about the year 1717, along with his lady and an infant child, and a number of other unfortunate Scottish exiles, by the falling in of the roof of a house in which they were assembled. What became of the body of the earl is not known; but the bodies of Lady Kilsyth and her infant were disembowelled and embalmed, and soon afterwards sent over to Scotland. They were landed, and lay at Leith for some time, whence they were afterwards carried to Kilsyth, and buried with great pomp, in the vault above mentioned.

In the spring of 1796, some reckless young men, having paid a visit to this ancient cemetery, tore open the coffin of Lady Kilsyth and her infant. With astonishment and consternation they saw the bodies of Lady Kilsyth and her child as perfect as they had been the hour they were entombed. For some weeks this circumstance was kept secret; but at last it began to be whispered in several companies, and soon excited great and general curiosity. “On the 12th of June,” wrote the minister of the parish of Kilsyth, in a letter to Dr. Garnet, “when I was from home, great crowds assembled, and would not be denied admission. At all hours of the night, as well as the day, they afterwards persisted in gratifying their curiosity. I saw the body of Lady Kilsyth soon after the coffin was opened. It was quite entire. Every feature and every limb was as full, nay, the very shroud was as clear and fresh and the colors of the ribands as bright, as the day they were lodged in the tomb. What rendered this scene more striking and truly interesting was that the body of her son and only child, the natural heir of the title and estates of Kilsyth, lay at her knee. His features were as composed as if he had been only asleep. His color was as fresh, and his flesh as plump and full, as in the perfect glow of health; the smile of infancy and innocence sat on his lips. His shroud was not only entire, but perfectly clean, without a particle of dust upon it. He seems to have been only a few months old. The body of Lady Kilsyth was equally well preserved; and at a little distance, from the feeble light of a taper, it would not have been easy to distinguish whether she was dead or alive. The features, nay, the very expression of her countenance, were marked and distinct; and it was only in a certain light that you could distinguish any thing like the agonizing traits of a violent death. Not a single fold of her shroud was decayed, nor a single member impaired. Neither of the bodies appear to have undergone the slightest decomposition or disorganization. Several medical gentlemen made incisions into the arm of the infant, and found the substance of the body quite firm, and in its original state.”

The writer states, among other interesting points that attracted his attention, that the bodies appeared to have been saturated in some aromatic liquid, of the color of dark brandy, with which the coffin had been filled, but which had nearly all evaporated.

Other instances of the artificial preservation of bodies might be mentioned, still more remarkable, though perhaps less interesting, than the preceding. The tomb of Edward the First, who died on the 7th of July, 1307, was opened on the 2d of January, 1770, and after the lapse of four hundred and sixty-three years the body was found undecayed: the flesh on the face was a little wasted, but not decomposed. The body of Canute the Dane, who obtained possession of England in the year 1017, was found quite fresh in the year 1766, by the workmen repairing Winchester Cathedral. In the year 1522, the body of William the Conqueror was found as entire as when first buried, in the Abbey Church of St. Stephen at Caen; and the body of Matilda his queen was found entire in 1502, in the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity in the same city.

No device of art, however, for the preservation of the remains of the dead, appears equal to the simple process of plunging them into peat-moss.

In a manuscript by one Abraham Grey, who lived about the middle of the sixteenth century, now in the possession of his representative Mr. Goodbehere Grey, of Old Mills, near Aberdeen, it is stated that, in 1569, three Roman soldiers, in the dress of their country, fully equipped with warlike instruments, were dug out of a moss of great extent, called Kazey Moss. When found, after the lapse of probably about fifteen hundred years, they were still fresh and plump!

Modern chemistry teaches us that in these cases there is a conversion of the tissues of the body into adipocere, a substance closely resembling spermaceti, and composed, according to Chevreul, of margaric and oleic acids, with a slight addition of the alkalies. It is generally formed from bodies buried in moist earth, and especially when they have accumulated in great numbers. On the removal of the Cimetière des Innocens in Paris, in 1787, where thousands of bodies had been buried annually for several centuries, it was found that those bodies which had been placed in great numbers in the trenches were, without having lost their shapes, converted into this substance.

FOLLY OF EMBALMING CORPSES.

Full many a jocund spring has passed away, And many a flower has blossomed to decay, And human life, still hastening to a close, Finds in the worthless dust its last repose.—§Firdousi.§

Professor Johnston, in alluding to the custom of converting the human body into a frightful-looking mummy, or of attempting by various artificial processes to arrest its natural course of decomposition into kindred elements, remarks, as beautifully as truly:—

Embalm the loved bodies, and swathe them, as the old Egyptians did, in resinous cerements, and you but preserve them a little longer, that some wretched, plundering Arab may desecrate and scatter to the winds the residual dust. Or jealously, in regal tombs and pyramids, preserve the forms of venerated emperors or beauteous queens, still, some future conqueror, or more humble Belzoni, will rifle the most secure resting-place. Or bury them in most sacred places, beneath high altars, a new reign shall dig them up and mingle them again with the common earth. Or, more careful still, conceal your last resting-place where local history keeps no record and even tradition cannot betray you: then accident shall stumble at length upon your unknown tomb and liberate your still remaining ashes.

How touching to behold the vain result of even the most successful attempts at preserving apart, and in their relative places, the solid materials of the individual form! The tomb, after a lapse of time, is found and opened. The ghastly tenant reclines, it may be, in full form and stature. The very features are preserved,—impressed, and impressing the spectator, with the calm dignity of their long repose. But some curious hand touches the seemingly solid form, or a breath of air disturbs the sleeping air around the full-proportioned body,—when, lo! it crumbles instantly away into an almost insensible quantity of impalpable dust!

Who has not read with mingled wonder and awe of the opening, in our own day, of the almost magical sepulchre of an ancient Etruscan king? The antiquarian dilettanti, in their under-ground researches, unexpectedly stumbled upon the unknown vault. Undisturbed through Roman and barbaric times, accident revealed it to modern eyes. A small aperture, made by chance in the outer wall, showed to the astonished gazers a crowned king within, sitting on his chair of state, with robes and sceptre all entire, and golden ornaments of ancient device bestowed here and there around his person. Eager to secure the precious spoil, a way is forced with hammer and mattock into the mysterious chamber. But the long spell is now broken; the magical image is now gone. Slowly, as the vault first shook beneath the blows, the whole pageant crumbled away. A light, smoky dust filled the air; and, where the image so lately sat, only the tinselled fragments of thin gold remained, to show that the vision and the ornaments had been real, though the entire substance of the once noble form had utterly vanished.

For a few thousand years some apparently fortunate kings and princes may arrest the natural circulation of a handful of dust. But in what are they better than Cromwell, whose remains were pitilessly disturbed,—than Wyckliffe, whose ashes were sprinkled on the sea,—than St. Genevieve, whose remains were burned in the Place de Grève and her ashes scattered to the wind,—than Mausolus, whose dust was swallowed by his wife Artemisia,—than the King of Edom, whose bones were burned for lime,—or than St. Pepin and all the royal line of Bourbon, whose tombs were emptied by a Parisian mob? Lamartine tells us, in his History of the Girondists, that a decree of the Convention had commanded the destruction of the tombs of the kings at St. Denis. The Commune changed this decree into an attack against the dead. * * * * The axe broke the gates of bronze presented by Charlemagne to the Basilica of St. Denis. * * * They raised the stones, ransacked the vaults, violated the resting-places of the departed, sought out, beneath the swathings and shrouds, embalmed corpses, crumbled flesh, calcined bones, empty skulls of kings, queens, princes, ministers, bishops. Pepin, the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty and father of Charlemagne, was now but a pinch of gray ash, which was in a moment scattered by the wind. The mutilated heads of Turenne, Duguesclin, Louis XII., Francis I., were rolled on the pavement. * * * * Beneath the choir were buried the princes and princesses of the first race, and some of the third,—Hugh Capet, Philip the Bold, Philip the Handsome. They rent away their rags of silk and threw them on a bed of quicklime. * * * * They threw the carcass of Henry IV. into the common fosse. His son and grandson, Louis XIII. and XIV., followed. Louis XIII. was but a mummy; Louis XIV. a black, indistinguishable mass of aromatics. Louis XV. came last out of his tomb. The vault of the Bourbons rendered up its dead; queens, dauphinesses, princesses, were carried away in armfuls by the workmen and cast into the trench. A brief interval of proud separation, and they were mingled with the common dust! Their ashes dissipated, nothing but their empty tombs remain,—the houses of the dead, like the houses of the living, long surviving, as melancholy mementos of the tenants for whom they were erected.

M. de Saulcy, in his Journey Round the Dead Sea, remarks of the rock-tombs of the valley of Hinnom, “The immense necropolis, traces of which are to be met with at every step in the valley, dates from the period when the Jebusites were masters of the country. After them the Israelites deposited the remains of their fathers in the same grottoes; and the same tombs, after having become at a still later period those of the Christians who had obtained possession of the Holy City, have, since the destruction of the Latin kingdoms of Jerusalem, ceased to change both masters and occupants. Even the scattered bones are no more found in them; and from the city of the dead the dead alone have disappeared, while the abodes are still entire.”

There is a barbaric philosophy, therefore, as well as an apparent knowledge of the course of nature, in the treatment of the dead which prevails in Thibet and on the slopes of the Himalaya. In the former country the dead body is cut in pieces, and either thrown into the lakes to feed the fishes, or exposed on the hill-tops to the eagles and birds of prey. On the Himalayan slopes the Sikkim burn the body and scatter the ashes on the ground. The end is the same among these tribes of men as among us. They briefly anticipate the usual course of time,—a little sooner verifying the inspired words, “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod.—§Bryant.§

WHIMSICAL WILL.

By William Hunnis, Chapel-master to Queen Elizabeth:—

To God my soule I do bequeathe, because it is his owen, My body to be layd in grave, where to my friends best knowen; Executors I will none make, thereby great stryfe may grow, Because the goods that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.

THE TRIPOD.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Beracoth, p. 8, and in Jalkud Schimoni on Ps. lxviii, 20, “Nine hundred and three axe the kinds of death made in this world.” Physiologists drop the nine hundred, declare that life stands on a tripod, and assert that we die by the lungs, the heart, or the brain.

IMPRECATORY EPITAPH.

The Shakspearean imprecation, “Curst be he that moves my bones,” is paralleled in an epitaph in Runic characters at Greniadarstad church, in Iceland, which according to Finn Magnussen’s interpretation, concludes thus:—

“If you willingly remove this monument, may you sink into the ground.”

THE FLEUR-DE-LIS.

Nothing, says an old writer, could be more simple than the lily, which was the distinctive badge of the French monarchy; nor, at the same time, could anything be more symbolic of the state of the nobility and gentry, exempted from the necessity of working for a livelihood or for dress, than lilies, of which it is said: “They toil not neither do they spin,” neque laborant neque nent,—which was the motto of the royal arms of France.

THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.

The waters change to blood; next, frogs arise; Dust turns to lice; and then come swarms of flies; Lo! murrain strikes the beasts, but Goshen’s free! Lo! boils beset the men, save, Israel, thee! Then fires the thundering hail; then locusts bite; Then comes three days of one unbroken night; The first-born’s midnight death, from cot to throne, Winds up ten plagues that make Egyptians moan.

A STORY OF LONG AGO.

The long time ago of which I mean to tell, says Jean Ingelow, was a wild night in March, during which, in a fisherman’s hut ashore, sat a young girl at her spinning-wheel, and looked out on the dark driving clouds, and listened, trembling, to the winds and the seas. The morning light dawned at last. One boat that should have been riding on the troubled waves was missing—her father’s boat! and half a mile from the cottage her father’s body was washed upon the shore.

This happened fifty years ago, and fifty years is a long time in the life of a human being; fifty years is a long time to go on in such a course as the woman did of whom I am speaking. She watched her father’s body, according to the custom of her people, till he was laid in the grave. Then she laid down on her bed and slept, and by night got up and set a candle in her casement, as a beacon to the fishermen and a guide. She sat by the candle all night, and trimmed it, and spun; then when the day dawned she went to bed and slept in the sunshine. So many hanks as she spun before for her daily bread, she spun still, and one over, to buy her nightly candle; and from that time to this, for fifty years, through youth, maturity, and old age, she turned night into day, and in the snow-storms of Winter, through driving mists, deceptive moonlight, and solemn darkness, that northern harbor has never once been without the light of her candle.

How many lives she saved by this candle, or how many meals she won for the starving families of the boatmen, it is impossible to say; how many a dark night the fishermen, depending on it, went fearlessly forth, cannot now be told. There it stood, regular as a light-house, and steady as constant care could make it. Always brighter when daylight waned, they had only to keep it constantly in view and they were safe; there was but one thing that could intercept it, and that was the rock. However far they might have stretched out to sea, they had only to bear down straight for that lighted window, and they were sure of a safe entrance into the harbor.

Fifty years of life and labor—fifty years of sleeping in the sunshine—fifty years of watching and self-denial, and all to feed the flame and trim the wick of that one candle! But if we look upon the recorded lives of great men and just men and wise men, few of them can show fifty years of worthier, certainly not of more successful labor. Little, indeed, of the “midnight oil” consumed during the last half century so worthily deserved trimming. Happy woman—and but for the dreaded rock her great charity might never have been called into exercise.

But what do the boatmen and the boatmen’s wives think of this? Do they pay the woman? No, they are very poor; but poor or rich they know better than that. Do they thank her? No. Perhaps they feel that thanks of theirs would be inadequate to express their obligations, or, perhaps long years have made the lighted casement so familiar that it is looked upon as a matter of course. Sometimes the fishermen lay fish on her threshold, and set a child to watch it for her till she wakes; sometimes their wives steal into her cottage, now she is getting old, and spin a hank or two of thread for her while she slumbers; and they teach their children to pass her hut quietly, and not to sing and shout before her door, lest they should disturb her. That is all. Their thanks are not looked for—scarcely supposed to be due. Their grateful deeds are more than she expects and much as she desires.

How often in the far distance of my English home, I have awoke in a wild Winter night, and while the wind and storm were arising, have thought of that northern bay, with the waves dashing against the rock, and have pictured to myself the casement, and the candle nursed by that bending, aged figure! How delighted to know that through her untiring charity the rock has long since lost more than half its terror, and to consider that, curse though it may be to all besides, it has most surely proved a blessing to her.

You, too, may perhaps think with advantage on the character of this woman, and contrast it with the mission of the rock. There are many degrees between them. Few, like the rock, stand up wholly to work ruin and destruction; few, like the woman, “let their light shine” so brightly for good. But to one of the many degrees between them we must all most certainly belong—we all lean towards the woman or the rock. On such characters you do well to speculate with me, for you have not been cheated into sympathy with ideal shipwreck or imaginary kindness. There is many a rock elsewhere as perilous as the one I told you of—perhaps there are many such women; but for this one, whose story is before you, pray that her candle may burn a little longer, since this record of her charity is true.

THIS IS NOT OUR HOME.

Among the beautiful thoughts which dropped like pearls from the pen of that brilliant and talented journalist, George D. Prentice, the following sublime extract upon man’s higher destiny is perhaps the best known and most universally admitted. Coming from such a source we can well appreciate it, for that distinguished man had attained a position among his fellows which would have satisfied almost any earthly ambition. Yet all this could not recompense him for the toils and ills of life, and in the eloquent passage subjoined he portrays, most beautifully, the restless longings of the human heart for something higher and nobler than earth can afford.

“It cannot be that earth is man’s only abiding place. It cannot be that our life is a bubble cast up by the ocean of eternity to float a moment upon its waves and sink into nothingness. Else, why these high and glorious aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our hearts, forever wandering unsatisfied? Why is it that the rainbow and cloud come over us with a beauty that is not of earth, and then pass off to leave us to muse on their loveliness? Why is it the stars which hold their festival around the midnight throne, are set above the grasp of our limited faculties, forever mocking us with their unapproachable glory? And, finally, why is it that the bright forms of human beauty are presented to our view and taken from us, leaving the thousand streams of our affections to flow back in Alpine torrents upon our hearts? We were born for a higher destiny than earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like the islands that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful beings that pass before us like shadows, will stay forever in our presence.”

ILL SUCCESS IN LIFE.

One of our best American writers, Geo. S. Hillard, forcibly and truly says:—

I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for men who do not succeed in life, as those words are commonly used. Heaven is said to be a place for those who have not succeeded on earth; and it is sure that celestial grace does not thrive and bloom in the hot blaze of worldly prosperity. Ill success sometimes arises from a superabundance of qualities in themselves good—from a conscience too sensitive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic, and modesty too retiring. I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, “that the world knows nothing of its great men,” but there are forms of greatness, or at least excellence, which “die and make no sign;” there are martyrs that miss the palm but not the stake, heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

FUTURITY.

“Life is sweet,” said Sir Anthony Kingston to Bishop Hooper at the stake, “and death bitter.” “True, friend,” he replied, “but consider that the death to come is more bitter, and the life to come is more sweet.”

THE HEART.

In his charming Hyperion, Mr. Longfellow says:—

The little I have seen of the world, and know of the history of mankind, teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed,—the brief pulsations of joy,—the feverish inquietude of hope and fear,—the tears of regret,—the feebleness of purpose,—the pressure of want,—the desertion of friends,—the scorn of a world that has little charity,—the desolation of the soul’s sanctuary,—threatening voices within,—health gone,—happiness gone,—even hope, that remains the longest, gone,—I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellow-man with Him from whose hands it came,

Even as a little girl, Weeping and laughing in her childish sport.

EVENING PRAYER.

The day is ended. Ere I sink to sleep, My weary spirit seeks repose in Thine. Father, forgive my trespasses, and keep This little life of mine.

With loving kindness curtain thou my bed, And cool, in rest, my burning pilgrim feet; Thy pardon be the pillow for my head; So shall my sleep be sweet.

At peace with all the world, dear Lord, and thee, No fears my soul’s unwavering faith can shake; All’s well! whichever side the grave for me The morning light may break.

BEAUTIFUL THOUGHT.

On the shores of the Adriatic sea the wives of the fishermen, whose husbands have gone far off upon the deep, are in the habit, at even-tide, of going down to the sea-shore, and singing, as female voices only can, the first stanza of a beautiful hymn; after they have sung it they will listen till they hear, borne by the wind across the desert sea, the second stanza sung by their gallant husbands, as they are tossed by the gale upon the waves, and both are happy. Perhaps, if we listen, we, too, might hear on this desert world of ours some whisper borne from afar to remind us that there is a heaven and a home; and when we sing the hymn upon earth, perhaps we shall hear its echo breaking in the music upon the sands of time, and cheering the hearts of those that are pilgrims and strangers, and look for a city that hath foundation.

LIFE’S PARTING.

Wordsworth read less and praised less the writings of other poets, than any one of his contemporaries. This gives an especial interest to the following stanza by Mrs. Barbauld, which he learned by heart, and which he used to ask his sister to repeat to him. Once, while walking in his sitting-room at Rydal, with his hands behind him, his friend, Henry Crabb Robinson heard him say: “I am not in the habit of grudging people their good things; but I wish I had written those lines:—

Life! we’ve been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; ’Tis hard to part when friends are dear, Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me good-morning.”

DESTINY.

Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down Each with its loveliness as with a crown, Drooped in a florist’s window in a town.

The first a lover bought. It lay at rest, Like snow on snow, that night, on beauty’s breast.

The second rose, as virginal and fair, Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot’s hair.

The third, a widow, with new grief made wild, Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.

SYMPATHY.

Talfourd says in his Ion:—

“It is little: But in these sharp extremities of fortune, The blessings which the weak and poor can scatter Have their own season. ’Tis a little thing To give a cup of water; yet its draught Of cool refreshment, drain’d by fever’d lips, May give a shock of pleasure to the frame More exquisite than when nectarean juice Renews the life of joy in happiest hours. It is a little thing to speak a phrase Of common comfort, which, by daily use, Has almost lost its sense; yet, on the ear Of him who thought to die unmourn’d, ’twill fall Like choicest music; fill the gazing eye With gentle tears; relax the knotted hand To know the bonds of fellowship again; And shed on the departing soul a sense, More precious than the benison of friends About the honored death-bed of the rich, To him who else were lonely, that another Of the great family is near and feels.”

AFTER.

After the shower, the tranquil sun; After the snow, the emerald leaves; Silver stars when the day is done; After the harvest, golden sheaves.

After the clouds, the violet sky; After the tempest, the lull of waves; Quiet woods when the winds go by; After the battle, peaceful graves.

After the knell, the wedding bells; After the bud, the radiant rose; Joyful greetings from sad farewells; After our weeping, sweet repose.

After the burden, the blissful meed; After the flight, the downy nest; After the furrow, the waking seed After the shadowy river—rest!

DEATH’S FINAL CONQUEST.

[Among the poetic legacies that will “never grow old, nor change, nor pass away,” is the noble dirge of Shirley, in his Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Doubtless it was by the fall, if not by the death, of Charles I., that the mind of the royalist poet was solemnized to the creation of these imperishable stanzas. Oliver Cromwell is said, on the recital of them, to have been seized with great terror and agitation of mind.]

The glories of our mortal state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armor against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Some men with swords may reap the field, And plant fresh laurels where they kill; But their strong nerves at last must yield; They tame but one another still: Early or late, They stoop to fate, And must give up their murmuring breath, When they, pale captives, creep to death.

The garlands wither on your brow; Then boast no more your mighty deeds; Upon death’s purple altar now, See where the victor-victim bleeds: Your heads must come To the cold tomb:— Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust.

THE COMMON HERITAGE.

There is no death: what seems so is transition: This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian Whose portal we call Death.—§Longfellow.§

There is—says the author of Euthanasy—no universal night in this earth, and for us in the universe there is no death. What to us here is night coming on, is, on the other side of the earth, night ending, and day begun. And so what we call death, the angels may regard as immortal birth.

We are born—says another writer—with the principles of dissolution in our frame, which continue to operate from our birth to our death; so that in this sense we may be said to “die daily.” Death is not so much a laying aside our old bodies (for this we have been doing all our lives) as ceasing to assume new ones.

“Say,” said one who was about entering the Dark Valley, to his amanuensis, “that I am still in the land of the living, but expect soon to be numbered with the dead.” But, after a moment’s reflection, he added, “Stop! say that I am still in the land of the dying, but expect to be soon in the land of the living.”

Says old Jeremy Collier, The more we sink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden, to be decrepit one minute, and all spirit and activity the next, must be an entertaining change. To call this dying is an abuse of language.

The day of our decease—says Mountford—will be that of our coming of age; and with our last breath we shall become free of the universe. And in some region of infinity, and from among its splendors, this earth will be looked back upon like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to Duty.

§Mors mortis morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Eternæ vitæ Janua clausa foret.§

INDEX.

§Alphabetical Whims§, 25. Alphabetical advertisement, 29. Enigmas, 30. Eve’s Legend, 28. Jacobite toast, 30. Letter H, 31. Lipogrammata and pangrammata, 25. Marriage of a lady to Mr. Gee, 32. On sending a pair of gloves, 32. The three initials, 30. Univocalic verses, 32.

§Acrostics§, 39. Alliterative on Miss Stephens, 45. Brevity of human life, 48. Burke, 42. Chronogrammatic pasquinade, 45. Crabbe, 42. Death of Lord Hatherton, 40. Dryden, 42. Emblematic fish, 46. Hempe, 47. Herbert, George, 41. Huber, 42. Irving, 43. Longfellow, 43. Macaulay, 44. Macready, 43. Masonic memento, 47. Monastic verse, 45. Napoleon family, 46. Oliver’s impromptu on Arnold, 44. Rachel, 46. Reynolds, 42. Scott, Walter, 42. Southey, 44. Valentine, a, 49. Wordsworth, 43.

§Alliteration§, 34. Alphabetical, 34. Address to the Aurora, 36. Belgrade, siege of, 34. Bunker Hill Monument, 34. Prince Charles protected by Flora Macdonald, 35. Title-page for Book of Extracts, 37. Bevy of belles, 39. Complimentary of chess, 37. Couplet on Cardinal Wolsey, 35. Felicitous flight of fancy, 38. Hood’s Ode to Perry, 38. Motives to gratitude, 39. Pulci’s double alliterations, 36. Stanza from Drury’s Dirge, 36.

§Anagrams§, 49. Epitaphial inscriptions, 56. Telegram anagrammatized, 56.

§Bible, the§, 103. Accuracy of the Bible, 103. Bibliomancy, 126. Books belonging to, lost or unknown, 114. Dissection of Old and New Testaments, 112. Distinctions in the gospels, 113. English Bible translations, 108. Hexameters in the Bible, 115. Misquotations from Scripture, 123. Old and New Testament, names, 125. Parallelism of the Hebrew poetry, 116. Parallel passages between Shakspeare and the Bible, 119. Scriptural bull, 124. Scriptural sum, 126. Selah, 114. Similarity of sound, 118. Testimony of learned men, 106. True gentleman, the, 122. Wit and humor in the Bible, 124.

§Blunders§, 259. Blunders of translators, 263. Mistakes of misapprehension, 262. Serial inconsistency, 262. Slips of the press, 259. Slips of the telegraph, 261.

§Bouts Rimés§, 88. Bogart’s Impromptu, 89. Reversed rhyming ends, 90.

§Cento§, the, 73. Biblical cento, 76. Cento from Pope, 76. Life, 75. Mosaic poetry, 73. Return of Israel, the, 77.

§Chronograms§, 57.

§Churchyard Literature§, 564. Advertising notices, 583. Antithesis extraordinary, 606. Bathos, 600. Brevity, 607. Cento, 601. Earth to earth, 612. Epitaph, historical, 578. on a chemist, 609, dog, Byron’s, 614. printer, 607. transcendental, 600. Epitaphs, aboriginal, 602. acrostical, 601. African, 602. biographical, 578. curious and puzzling, 596. eulogistic, apt, appropriate, 570. Greek, 603. Hibernian, 602. laudatory, 608. miscellaneous, 610. moralizing and admonitory, 581. on eminent men, 564. on infants and children, 575. self-written, 580. unique and ludicrous, 583. Mortuary puns, 591. Parallels without a parallel, 600.

§Concatenation, or Chain Verse§, 85. Lasphrise’s novelties, 85. Ringing Song, 87. To Death, 86. Truth, 86. Trying skying, 87.

§Conformity of Sense to Sound§, 554. Articulate imitation of inarticulate sounds, 554. Imitation of difficulty and ease, 555. time and motion, 554.

§Curious Books§, 720. Book-amateurs, 722. Most curious book in the world, 722. Odd titles of old books, 720. Silver book, 722.

§Customs, Singular§, 477. Abyssinian beefsteaks, 478. Beautiful superstition, 477. Foundations of Druidical temples, 478. Hair in seals, 481. High life in the 15th century, 480. Lion-catching in South Africa, 479. Making noses, 479. Matrimonial advertisement, 481. Memento mori, 477. Ostiak regard for boars, 478. Scorning the church, 481. Strange fondness for beauty, 477.

§Ecclesiasticæ§, 143. Excessive civility, 143. Bascom, eloquence of, 145. Clerical blunders, 148. Lord Bishop, the, 146. Origin of texts, 147. Preachers of Cromwell’s time, 147. Protestant excommunication, 149. Proving an alibi, 148. Sermon on malt, 144. Short sermons, 143. Whitefield and the sailors, 149.

§Echo Verse§, 281. Acoustics, extraordinary facts in, 289. Bonaparte and echo, 286. Critic’s excuse, 287. Echo answering, 287. and the lover, 284. on woman, 285. Echoes, remarkable, 288. Gospel echo, 283. London before the Restoration, 282. Pasquinade, 283. Queen Elizabeth, 282. Song by Addison, 283. Synod of Dort, 287.

§Emblematic Poetry§, 92. Altar inscription, 96. Cross, the, 94. Crucifixion, curious piece of antiquity on, 95. Cypher, ingenious, 96. Essay to Miss Catharine Jay, 97. Hindu triplet, 93. Oxford joke, 96. Rhomboidal dirge, 94 Typographical, 96. Wine-glass, the, 93.

§English Words and Forms of Expression§, 182. Compound epithets, 211. Dictionary English, 182. Disraelian English, 184. Eccentric etymologies, 195. Excise, 189. Forlorn hope, 193. Influence of names, 209. I say, 186. Its, 185. No love lost, etc., 193. Not Americanisms, 191. Nouns of multitude, 184. Odd changes of signification, 205. Our vernacular in Chaucer’s time, 211. Pathology, 186. Pontiff, 190. Pronunciation of ough, 186. Quiz, 194. Rough, 190. Sources of the language, 183. Tennyson’s English, 194. That, 185. That mine adversary, 195. Ye for the, 185.

§Epigrams§, 515. Affinities, 524. Apollo, in return for a sketch of, 525. Author, to a living, 518. Bed, to our, 517. Blades of the shears, 523. Bonnets, 521. Butler’s monument, 518. Campbell’s album verse, 521. Clock, the, 525. Commissary Goldie’s brains, 519. Compliment, overdrawn, 518. Crier who could not cry, 524. Dentist, definition of, 522. Determination, a funny, 526. Double vision utilized, 527. Dum vivimus, vivamus, 516. D.D., on a certain, 521. Eternity, 518. Eve and the apple, 523. Fell, 520. Fiddler, on a bad, 521. Fool and poet, 516. Fools, abundance of, 527. Friend, to Dr. Robert, 516. Friend, to a capricious, 519. Friend in distress, 522. German tourist, suggested by a, 518. Giving and taking, 519. Goodenough, 523. Hog vs. Bacon, 522. Hot corn, 521. Impersonal, 524. Invisible, 524. Lady who married a footman, 521. Late repentance, 517. Law, after going to, 526. Lawyer, on an ill-read, 520. Lover to his mistress, with a mirror, 519. Marriage à la mode, 526. Marriage of Webb & Gould, 526. Martial’s, on Epigrams, 515. Masculine, 525. Medical advice, 522. Mendax, 520. Midas and modern statesmen, 515. Molly Aston, to, 516. One good turn deserves another, 520. One ignorant and arrogant, on, 516. Pale lady with red-nosed husband, 517. Parson and butcher, 525. Portmanteau, clergyman’s, loss of, 518. Queen Bess on Drake’s ship, 524. Queen, the frugal, 519. Quid pro quo, 527. Reception, a warm, 522. Reflection, a, 523. Rogers on Ward’s speeches, 526. Same jawbone, 526. Selvaggi’s distich to Milton, 517. Amplification, by Dryden, 517. Simplicity, prudent, 522. Sleep, inscription on a statue of, 516. Snow, that melted on a lady’s breast, 517. Songsters, bad, 520. Terminer sans oyer, 527. To ——, 519. Wellington’s nose, 520. What might have been, 523. Widows, 525. Woman,—contra, 527. pro, 527. Woman’s will, 520. World, the, 527.

§Equivoque§, 64. Age of French actresses, 71. Double-faced creed, 66. Fatal double meaning, 68. Handwriting on the wall, 71. Houses of Stuart and Hanover, 68. Ingenious subterfuge, 65. Love-letter, 65. Loyalty or Jacobinism, 69. Neat evasion, 70. New Regime, 68. Patriotic toast, 70. Revolutionary verses, 67. Richelieu’s letter to the French ambassador, 64. Triple platform, 61.

§Facetiæ§, 482. Association of ideas, 491. Brevity, 484. False friend, a, 488. Gasconade and hoaxing, 489. Jack Robinson, 492. Jests of Hierocles, 482. Mathews and the silver spoon, 489. Old Nick, 488. P. and Q., 491. Relics, 490. Royal quandary, 490. Russian jester and his jokes, 492. Same joke diversified, 486. Syllogism, 488. Titles for library-door, 482.

§Fabrications§, 269. Ballad literature, 274. Description of the Saviour’s person, 269. Franklin’s parable, 275. Hoax on Walter Scott, 269. Ireland’s forgeries, 276. Literary sell, 271. Moon hoax, 270. Mrs. Hemans’s forgeries, 271. Sheridan’s Greek, 273.

§Familiar Quotations from Unfamiliar Sources§, 556.

§Fancies of Fact, the§, 406. Aerolites, 443. Alligators swallowing stones, 418. America’s discoverers, fate of, 445. Amount of gold in the world, 423. Antipathies, 471. Army of women, 446. Auditoriums of last century, 409. Back action, 408. Beer-casks, capacious, 425. Bills for strange services, 407. Black hole at Calcutta, 427. Broken heart, a, 467. Chick in the egg, 416. Cloth-manufacture, celerity of, 421. Coincidences, singular, 412. Colors, diversity of, 442. Composition in dreams, 455. Cross, true form of the, 409. Crown of England, 446. Crude value vs. industrial value, 422. Devonshire superstition, 475. Diameter to circumference, ratio of, 431. Difference between English poets, 426. Diplomatic costume, 448. Equestrian expeditions, remarkable, 419. Facial expression, 466. Fear, effects of, 465. Feline clocks, 474. Heaven, dimensions of, 435. Horse, wonderful, 420. Indian and his tamed snake, 417. Innate appetite, 417. Kaleidoscope, changes of, 441. Law logic, 407. Lock, wonderful, 421. Longevity, instances of remarkable, 449. Marriage vow, 455. Mathematical prodigies, 432. Means of recognition, 454. Melrose by sunlight, 408. Memory extraordinary, 433. Minute mechanism, 430. Need of Providence, 434. Noah’s ark and the Great Eastern, 442. Number nine, 441. seven, 436. three, 440. Opium and East Indian hemp, 461. Painters, blunders of, 429. Perils of precocity, 427. Presidents, facts about the, 445. Pithy prayer, 408. Quantity and value, 422, Reciprocal conversion, 407. Romans, immense wealth of the, 424. Romantic highwayman, 476. Salt as a luxury, 428. Self-immolation, 434. Sensation and intelligence after decapitation, 469. Sheep, habits of, 418. Silent compliment, 434. Skull that had a tongue, 475. Sleep, facts about, 456. Solomon’s temple, cost of, 435. Star in the East, 447. Stone barometer, 428. Strychnia, bitterness of, 428. Sympathy, strange instance of, 473. Taste, singular change of, 429. Walking blindfolded, 473. Wine at two millions a bottle, 425. Wounds of Julius Cæsar, 406.

§Flashes of Repartee§, 495.

§Hiberniana§, 252.

§Historical Memoranda§, 782. American monarchy, 786. Amy Robsart, 808. Annie Laurie, 804. Biter bit, 818. Blücher, 794. Contemporary criticism, 798. Discovery of America, 803. Empire (the) is peace, 794. First blood of the Revolution, 782. Flight of Eugenie, 789. French tricolor, 788. Great events from little causes, 800. History and fiction, 797. Jefferson on Marie Antoinette, 794. Joan of Arc, 807. Last night of the Girondists, 819. Mary Magdalene, the traditional, 796. Mother Goose, 797. Mother of Charles, V., 795. Napoleon III., 793. Political gamut, 788. Quaker malignants, 786. Queen Elizabeth’s ring, 822. Robin Adair, 805. Signing Declaration of Independence, 802. Star-spangled banner, 787. Tea-party and tea-burning, 783. Time of Le Grand Monarque, 815. United States Navy, 784. William Tell, 810.

§Historical Similitudes§, 679. Art stories, 689. Ballads and legends, 690. Battles, 697. Bishop Hatto, 698. Burial alive, 692. Death prophecies, 696. History repeating itself, 681. Judgment of Solomon, 685. Legend of Beth Gelert, 686. Precedency, 685. Refusal to separate from kindred, 679. Ring stories, 695. Two statesmen, the, 683.

§Humors of Versification§, 230. Bryant as a humorist, 235. Curse of O’Kelly, 250. Elegy on Buckland, 233. Human ear, the, 238. Lovers, the, 230. Ologies, the, 244. Receipt of a rare pipe, 236. Reiterative vocal music, 248. Reminiscence of Troy, 234. Sir Tray, 240. Song with variations, 231. Stammering wife, 231. Thoughts while rocking the cradle, 232. Variation humbug, 246.

I. H. S., 130. Anticipatory use of the cross, 135. Beautiful legend, 131. Death-warrant of Jesus Christ, 134. De nomine Jesu, 130. Description of the Saviour’s person, 133. Double hexameter, 135. Flower of Jesse, the, 131. Persian apologue, 132.

§Impromptus§, 528.

§Inscriptions§, 615. Beer-jug, inscription on, 621. Bells, inscriptions on, 623. Books, fly-leaf inscriptions in, 627. English inns in olden time, 622. Æolian harp, inscription on, 633. Francke’s discovery, 636. Golden mottoes, 636. House inscriptions, 634. Memorials, 635. Motto on a clock, 631. Posies from wedding-rings, 636. Spring, inscription over, 633. Sun-dial inscriptions, 632. Tavern-signs, 615. Watch-paper inscription, 631. Wedding ring, Lady Grey’s, 639. Window-pane inscriptions, 622.

§Interrupted Sentences§, 277.

§Life and Death§, 826. After, 850. Beautiful thought, 848. Bodies, preserved, 836. Bone not described by modern anatomists, 832. Charter, rhyming, 830. Common heritage, the, 851. Corpses, folly of embalming, 839. Death’s final conquest, 851. Definitions, rhyming, 830. Destiny, 849. Dying words of distinguished persons, 833. Earth, 830. Evening prayer, 848. Fleur-de-lis, the, 843. Futurity, 847. Heart, the, 848. Ill success in life, 847. Imprecatory epitaph, 843. Lawyers, nice questions for, 831. Life, beautiful illustrations of 826. Life’s parting, 849. Living life over again, 829. Mary, Queen of Scots, last prayer of, 835. Moral code, Dr. Franklin’s, 828. Plagues of Egypt, 843. Questions for discussion, 836. Remarkable trance, 835. Round of life, the, 827. Rules of living, 828. Story of long ago, 844. Sympathy, 850. This is not our home, 846. Time, employment of, 829. Tripod, the, 843. Whimsical will, 843.

§Literariana§, 723. Additional verses to Sweet Home, 746. Anachronisms of Shakspeare, 742. Books and studies, 755. Comfort for book lovers, 753. Conflicting testimony of eye-witnesses, 750. Gray’s elegy, 729. Hamlet’s age, 745. Hamlet’s insanity, 746. Heraldry, Indian, 741. Letters and their endings, 754. Letters of Junius, 723. Old paper, an, 753. Parting interview of Hector and Andromache, 734. Pope’s versification, 737. Punctuation, importance of, 738. Shakspeare and typography, 744. Shakspeare’s heroines, 744. Shakspeare’s sonnets, 745. Stereotyped falsehoods of history, 747. Wit and humor, 751.

§Literati§, 756. Attainments of linguists, 756. Culture and sacrifice, 761. Dryden and his publisher, 762. Literary oddities, 758. Literary screw, 762.

§Lord’s Prayer, the§, 136. Acrostical paraphrase, 139. Echoed, 141. Gothic version, 136. Illustrated, 138. In an acrostic, 142. Metrical versions, 137. Spirit of the prayer, 136. Thy and us, 136.

§Macaronic Verse§, 78. Am Rhein, 83. Cat and rats, 82. Contenti abeamus, 81. Death of the sea serpent, 84. Fly-leaf scribbling, 82. Maginn’s alternations, 80. Parting address to a friend, 83. Polyglot inscription, 83. Suitor with nine tongues, 80. Treatise of wine, 78.

§Memoria Technica§, 327. Books of the old Testament, 327. New Testament, 327. Days in each month, 330. Decalogue, the, 329. English sovereigns, 328. Metrical Grammar, 330. Presidents of the United States, 328. Shakspeare’s plays, 328.

§Metric Prose§, 223. Cowper’s letter to Newton, 223. Disraeli’s Tale of Alvoy, 224. Example in Irving’s New York, 224. Involuntary versification in the scriptures, 228. Johnson on involuntary metre, 229. Kemble and Siddons, 229. Lincoln’s second inaugural, 229. Nelly’s funeral, 225. Niagara, 227. Night, 227. Unintentional rhymes of prosers, 228.

§Misquotations§, 266.

§Monosyllables§, 98. Power of short words, 102.

§Moslem Wisdom§, 508. Alexandrian Library, the, 510. Mohammedan logic, 509. Shrewd decision of Ali, 508. Turkish expedients, 510. Wisdom of Ali, 508.

§Multum in Parvo§, 823.

§Name of God, the§, 127. God in Shakspeare, 128. Jehovah, 128. Orthography, 127. Parsee, Jew, and Christian, 129.

§Nothing New under the Sun§, 375. Ærial navigation, 382. Anæsthesia, 383. Attraction of gravitation, 390. Auscultation and Percussion, 392. Boomerang, the, 389. Circulation of the blood, 382. Discovery of America, predictions of, 393. Early invention of rifling, 390. Magnetic telegraph, foreshadowings of, 375. Steam-power, first discoveries of, 378. Stereoscope, the, 393. Table-moving and alphabet-rapping, 391.

§Origin of Things Familiar§, 331. All Fools’ day, 332. American flag, 355. Bottled ale, 343. Blue stocking, 366. Brother Jonathan, 356. Bumper, 340. Cards, 336. Cock fighting, 364. Dollar-mark, 357. Drinking healths, 346. Dun, 340. Earliest newspapers, 372. Feather in one’s cap, 346. First doctors, 368. epigram, 371. forged bank-note, 367. piano-forte, 367. prayer in Congress, 370. printing by steam, 373. reporters, 371. telegraphic message, 373. thanksgiving proclamation, 368. Flag of England, 365. Foolscap paper, 366. Friction matches, 365. Humbug, 340. India-rubber, 364. Kicking the bucket, 340. La Marseillaise, 350. Mind your P’s and Q’s, 331. News, 372. Nine tailors make a man, 346. Old Hundred, 349. Order of the garter, 345. Over the left, 339. Pasquinades, 341. Postpaid envelopes, 349. Potato, the, 343. Royal saying, 340. Signature of the cross, 348. Skedaddle, 366. Stockings, 344. Sub rosa, 338. Tarring and feathering, 344. Turkish crescent, 348. Turncoat, 364. Uncle Sam, 357. Various inventions and customs, 358. Viz., 347. Word Book, 346. Yankee Doodle, 353.

§O. S. and N. S.§, 325. Gregorian calendar, 325. Results of change in style, 326.

§Palindromes§, 59.

§Parallel Passages§, 640. Historical similitudes, 679. Shaksperean Resemblances, 677. Plagiarism of Charles Reade, 677.

§Paronomasia§, 155. Ben, the sailor, 162. Book-larceny, 164. Classical puns and mottoes, 172. Court-fool’s pun on Laud, 181. Dr. Johnson’s pun, 160. Epitaph on an old horse, 165. Erskine’s toast, 160. Holmes on Achilles, 162. Grand scheme of emigration, 166. Marionettes, 168. Miss-nomers, the, 180. Mottoes of English peerage, 174. Old joke versified, 161. Perilous practice of punning, 167. Plaint of the old pauper, 163. Printer’s epitaph, 161. Pungent chapter, 157. Russian double entendre, 171. Sheridan’s compliment, 162. Short road to wealth, 159. Sonnet, 168. Sticky, 162. Swift’s Latin puns, 169. Sydney Smith’s pun, 160. Tom Moore, 161. To my nose, 163. Top and bottom, 161. Unconscious puns, 171. Vegetable girl, the, 164. Whiskers vs. razor, 162. Winter, 160. Women, 162.

Jeux de Mots, 175. Anagrammatic, 175. Iterative, 175. Bees of the Bible, 179. Catalectic monody, 177. Crooked Coincidences, 181. Fair letter, 176. Franklin’s Re’s, 179. November, 178. On the death of Kildare, 177. Schott and Willing, 177. Swarm of Bees, 179. Turn to the left, 177. Write written right, 177. Spiritual, 175.

§Persian Poetry, excerpta from§, 511. Beauty’s prerogative, 511. Broken hearts, 511. Caliph and Satan, 513. Double plot, 512. Earth an illusion, 511. Folly for one’s self, 512. Fortune and worth, 511. From Mirtsa Schaffy, 512. Generous man, to a, 511. Heaven an echo of earth, 511. Impossibility, the, 512. Moral atmosphere, a, 511. Proud humility, 512. Sober drunkenness, 512. Wine-drinker’s metaphors, 512. World’s unappreciation, the, 513.

§Personal Sketches and Anecdotes§, 763. André Major, 767. André and Arnold, 768. Bonaparte, name in Greek, 764. personal appearance of, 765. Milton and Napoleon, 764. opinion of suicide, 765. Cromwell, Oliver, 776. Elizabeth, Queen, 774. Flamsteed, the astronomer, 769. Franklin’s wife, 766. Lafayette’s republicanism, 764. Luther, 771. Nelson’s sang-froid, 769. Pope’s skull, 779. Porson, 781. Shakspeare’s orthodoxy, 776. Talleyrandiana, 780. Washington’s dignity, 763. Wickliffe’s ashes, 779.

§Prototypes§, 699. Air cushions, 702. Cat in the adage, 702. Charge of Light Brigade, 700. Cinderella’s slipper, 699. Consequential damages, 705. Cork-legs, 702. Curtain lectures, 700. Excommunication, 706. Falls of Lanark, 706. Faust legends, 701. Franklin, Turgot’s epigraph on, 707. Know-Nothings, the, 709. Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, 708. Napoleon I., 706. Oldest proverb, 699. Old ballads, 715. Original Shylock, 705. Pilgrim’s Progress, original of, 710. Plagiarism, great literary, 715. Pope’s bull against the comet, 703. Proverb misascribed to Defoe 713. Robinson Crusoe: who wrote it, 712. Scandinavian skull-cups, 714. Shakspeare said it first, 699. Swapping horses, 703. Trade-unions, 704. Use of language, 714. Wandering Jew, 716. Wooden nutmegs, 703.

§Puritan Peculiarities§, 150. Baptismal names, 150. Connecticut Blue Laws, extracts from, 153. Punishments, 151. Similes, 151. Virginia penalties in old times, 152.

§Puzzles§, 290. Bonapartean cypher, 292. Book of riddles, 299. Canning’s riddle, 294. Case for the lawyers, 293 Chinese tea-song, 298. Cowper’s riddle, 294. Curiosities of cipher, 301. Death and life, 298. Galileo’s logograph, 297. Newton’s riddle, 294. Number of the beast, 297. Persian riddles, 298. Prize enigma, 294. Prophetic distich, 296. Quincy’s comparison, 295. Rebus, the, 299. Bacon motto, 299. French, 291. Singular intermarriages, 296. What is it? 299. Wilberforce’s puzzle, 301.

§Reason Why§, 310. Boston, 311. Cardinal’s red hat, 312. Cutting off with a shilling, 312. Genealogy, 313. Huguenots, 311. Juggler’s mystery, 314. Roast beef of England, 313. Royal demise, 311. Sensible quack, 313. Weathercocks, 312. Why Germans eat sauer-kraut, 310. Why Pennsylvania settled, 311.

§Refractory Rhyming§, 534.

§Sexes, the§, 501. Female society, 505. Happy woman, character of, 502. Letter to a Bride, 507. My Mother, 506. Parallel of the sexes, 505. Praise of women, 504. Wife,—mistress,—lady, 505.

§Sonnets§, 551. Ave Maria, 553. Dyspepsia, 552. Humility, 553. In a fashionable church, 551. Nose, about a, 552. Proxy saint, the, 552. Writing a sonnet, 551.

§Tall Writing§, 212. Anatomist to his dulcinea, 221. Borde’s prologue, 215. Burlesque of Dr. Johnson’s style, 217. Chemical valentine, 220. Clear as mud, 218. Domicile erected by John, 212. Foote’s farrago, 216. From the Curiosities of Advertising, 213. From the Curiosities of the Post-office, 214. Indignant letter, 219. Intramural æstivation, 220. Mad poet, the, 216. Newspaper eulogy, 218. Ode to Spring, 221. Pristine proverbs for precocious pupils, 222. Spanish play-bill, 215. Transcendentalism, definition of, 212.

§Triumphs of Ingenuity§, 395. Choosing a king, 402. Discovery of the planet Neptune, 395. Discovery of Vulcan, 396. King John and the abbot, 403. Lesson worth learning, 402. Stratagem of Columbus, 399.

§Valentines§, 544. Burns, verses of, 546. Cardiac effusion, 547. Colored man’s valentine, 549. Cryptographic correspondence, 544. Digby to Archabella, 548. Egyptian serenade, 549. Lover to his sweetheart, 547. Macaronic, 548. Macaulay’s valentine, 545. Moore, verses of, 549. Strategic love-letter, 544. Teutonic alliteration, 546. Written in sympathetic ink, 544. Petitions, 550. Maids and widows, the, 550. Maladroit appeal, 550.

§Weather-Wisdom§, 317. Davy on weather-omens, 317. Sheridan’s rhyming calendar, 317. Signs of the weather, 320. Unlucky days, 324.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Did not change the various spellings of Shakspeare and Shakespeare. 2. The publisher sometimes left aligned consecutive poems by different authors but usually did not (including the chapter on parallel construction). To be consistent all poems with citations have been centered. 3. Changed “Grand Scheme of Education” to “Grand Scheme of Emigration” on p. x to agree with subheading on p. 166. 4. Changed ‘Disraeli’s “Alray”’ to ‘Disraeli’s “Alroy”’ on p.xi. 5. Changed “you sins” to “your sins” on p. 37. 6. Changed “Falloit-it que le ciel me rendit amoureux” to “Falloit-il que le ciel me rendit amoureux” on p. 86. 7. Changed “hateful lax levied” to “hateful tax levied” on p. 189. 8. Changed “takes else’s” to “takes someone else’s” on p. 216. 9. Changed “D’Israeli’s Wondrous Tale of Alvoy” to “D’Israeli’s Wondrous Tale of Alroy” on p.224. 10. Changed “Petri Andraæ Matthioli” to “Petri Andreæ Matthioli” on p. 310. 11. Changed “of conversation was” to “of conversion was” on p. 407. 12. Changed “to protects us” to “to protect us” on p. 434. 13. Added a chapter heading “The Fancies of Fact.-§Continued§” on p. 435 per the Table of Contents. 14. Changed “ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ Τ’ ΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ” to “ΕΣΤΗΙΕ, ΠΙΝΕ, ΠΑΙΖΕ. ὩΣ ΤΑΛΛΑ ΤΟΥΤΟΥ ΟΥΚ ΑΞΙΑ” on p. 596. 15. Changed “ON TWO NEIGHBORING” to “ON THREE NEIGHBORING” on p. 604. 16. Changed “Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weiber, und Gesang” to “Wer nicht liebt Wein, Weib, und Gesang” on p. 771. 17. Changed “Trom Kirk of Edinb.” to “Tron Kirk of Edinb.” on p. 804. 18. Silently corrected typographical errors. 19. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 20. Enclosed italics font in underscores. 21. Enclosed bold font in =equals=. 22. Enclosed small cap font in §section signs§. 23. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript character, e.g. M^r. 24. Upside down text is denoted by ®registered sign®. Consecutive lines should be read in reverse order as if the page was turned over. 25. Text rotated 90 degrees is denoted by ©copyright sign©. 26. The column width exceeds 72 characters wherever the essence of the text would be destroyed by allowing text to wrap.

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