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.”

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Prayer moves the hand That moves the universe.

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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.

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The Mexicans say to their new-born offspring, “Child, thou art come into the world to suffer. Endure, and hold thy peace.”

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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.

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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.§

[Illustration]

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.