  When, in the zodiac, the Fish wheel round,
They loose the floods, and irrigate the ground.
Then, husbandmen resume their wonted toil,
Yoke their strong steers, and plough the yielding soil:
Then prudent gard’ners seize the happy time,
To dig and trench, and prune for shoots to climb,
Inspect their borders, mark the silent birth
Of plants, successive, from the teeming earth,
Watch the young nurslings with paternal care,
And hope for “growing weather” all the year.
Yet February’s suns uncertain shine,
For rain and frost alternately combine
To stop the plough, with sudden wintry storms—
And, often, fearful violence the month deforms.
February 1. Flowers. A good garden in a sunny day, at the commencement of this month, has many delightful appearances to a lover of nature, and issues promises of further gratification. It is, however, in ball-rooms and theatres that many of the sex, to whose innocence and beauty the lily is likened, resort for amusement, and see or wear the mimic forms of floral loveliness. Yet this approach to nature, though at an awful distance, is to be hailed as an impulse of her own powerful working in the very heart of fashion; and it has this advantage, that it supplies means of existence to industry, and urges ingenuity to further endeavour. Artificial wants are rapidly supplied by the necessity of providing for real ones; and the wealthy accept drafts upon conditions which indigence prescribes, till it becomes lifted above poverty to independence. The manufacture of artificial flowers is not wholly unknown in England, but our neighbours, the French, eclipse us in the accuracy and variety of their imitations. Watering-places abound with these wonders of their work-people, and in the metropolis there are depÔts, from whence dress-makers and milliners are supplied by wholesale.
The annexed literal copy of a French flower-maker’s card, circulated during the summer of 1822 among the London shopkeepers, is a whimsical specimen of self-sufficiency, and may save some learners of French from an overweening confidence in their acquisition of that language, which, were it displayed in Paris, would be as whimsical in that metropolis as this English is in ours. M. MARLOTEAU et Cie. Manufacturers from Paris, 37, MONTMORENCY-STREET, ToLondon14Broadstreet, Oxfordstreet. Acquaint the Trade in general, that they have just established in London. A Warhouse for FRENCH FLOWERS, for each Season, feathar from hat ladies of their own Manufacture elegant fans of the NEWEST TASTE. And of Manufactures of Paris, complette sets ornaments for balls, snuff boxes scale gold and silver, boxes toilette, ribbons and embroidered, hat et cap, from Ladies of the newest Taste, China, all sorts, etc. He commit generally the articles from Paris, Manufacturers. And send in all BRITISH CITY. Attandance from Nine o’Clock in the Morning till five in the Afternoon.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·70.
February 2. Purification, or Candlemas. 1826.—Holiday at the Public Offices. This day, the festival of “the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” is sometimes called Christ’s Presentation, the Holiday of St. Simeon, and The Wives’ Feast. An account of its origin and celebration is in vol. i. p. 199. A beautiful composition in honour of the Virgin is added as a grace to these columns. Portuguese Hymn.
TO THE VIRGIN MARY.
By John Leyden. Star of the wide and pathless sea,
Who lov’st on mariners to shine,
These votive garments wet to thee,
We hang within thy holy shrine.
When o’er us flushed the surging brine,
Amid the warring waters tost,
We called no other name but thine,
And hoped, when other hope was lost,
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the vast and howling main,
When dark and lone is all the sky,
And mountain-waves o’er ocean’s plain
Erect their stormy heads on high;
When virgins for their true loves sigh,
And raise their weeping eyes to thee,
The star of Ocean heeds their cry,
And saves the foundering bark at sea.
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the dark and stormy sea,
When wrecking tempests round us rave,
Thy gentle virgin form we see
Bright rising o’er the hoary wave.
The howling storms that seem to crave
Their victims, sink in music sweet,
The surging seas recede to pave
The path beneath thy glistening feet,
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the desert waters wild,
Who pitying hears the seaman’s cry,
The God of mercy, as a child,
On that chaste bosom loves to lie;
While soft the chorus of the sky
Their hymns of tender mercy sing,
And angel voices name on high
The mother of the heavenly king,
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the deep! at that blest name
The waves sleep silent round the keel,
The tempests wild their fury tame
That made the deep’s foundations reel:
The soft celestial accents steal
So soothing through the realms of woe,
*****
*****
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the mild and placid seas,
Whom rainbow rays of mercy crown,
Whose name thy faithful Portuguese
O’er all that to the depths go down,
With hymns of grateful transport own,
When gathering clouds obscure their light,
And heaven assumes an awful frown,
The star of Ocean glitters bright,
Ave Maris Stella!
Star of the deep! when angel lyres
To hymn thy holy name essay,
In vain a mortal harp aspires
To mingle in the mighty lay!
Mother of God! one living ray
Of hope our grateful bosoms fires
When storms and tempests pass away,
To join the bright immortal quires.
Ave Maris Stella!
On Candlemas-day, 1734, there was a grand entertainment for the judges, sergeants, &c. in the Temple-hall. The lord chancellor, the earl of Macclesfield, the bishop of Bangor, together with other distinguished persons, were present, and the prince of Wales attended incog. At night the comedy of “Love for Love” was acted by the company of his Majesty’s revels from the Haymarket theatre, who received a present of 50l. from the societies of the Temple. The judges, according to an ancient custom, danced “round the coal fire,” singing an old French song.[51]
THE COAL AND THE DIAMOND
A Fable for Cold Weather. A coal was hid beneath the grate,
(’Tis often modest merit’s fate,)
’Twas small, and so, perhaps, forgotten;
Whilst in the room, and near in size,
In a fine casket lined with cotton,
In pomp and state, a diamond lies.
“So, little gentleman in black,”
The brilliant spark in anger cried,
“I hear, in philosophic clack,
Our families are close allied;
But know, the splendour of my hue,
Excell’d by nothing in existence,
Should teach such little folks as you
To keep a more respectful distance.”
At these reflections on his name,
The coal soon redden’d to a flame;
Of his own real use aware,
He only answer’d with a sneer—
“I scorn your taunts, good bishop Blaze,
And envy not your charms divine;
For know, I boast a double praise,
As I can warm as well as shine.”
Elizabeth Woodcock. Elizabeth Woodcock. She was in prison, as you see,
All in a cave of snow;
And she could not relieved be,
Though she was frozen so.
Ah, well a-day!
For she was all froze in with frost,
Eight days and nights, poor soul!
But when they gave her up for lost,
They found her down the hole.
Ah, well-a-day!
MS. Ballad. On Saturday, the 2d of February, 1799, Elizabeth Woodcock, aged forty-two years, went on horseback from Impington to Cambridge; on her return, between six and seven o’clock in the evening, being about half a mile from her own home, her horse started at a sudden light, probably from a meteor, which, at this season of the year, frequently happens. She exclaimed, “Good God! what can this be?” It was a very inclement, stormy night; a bleak wind blew boisterously from the N. E.; the ground was covered by great quantities of snow that had fallen during the day. Many of the deepest ditches were filled up, whilst in the open fields there was but a thin covering; but in roads and lanes, and in narrow and enclosed parts, it had so accumulated as to retard the traveller. The horse ran backwards to the brink of a ditch, and fearing lest the animal should plunge into it, she dismounted, intending to lead the animal home; but he started again, and broke from her. She attempted to regain the bridle; but the horse turned suddenly out of the road, over a common field, and she followed him. Having lost one of her shoes in the snow, and wearied by the exertion she had made, and by a heavy basket on her arm, her pursuit of the horse was greatly impeded; she however persisted, and having overtaken him about a quarter of a mile from whence she alighted, she gained the bridle, and made another attempt to lead him home. But on retracing her steps to a thicket contiguous to the road, she became so much fatigued, and her left foot, which was without a shoe, was so much benumbed, that she was unable to proceed farther. Sitting down upon the ground in this state, and letting go the bridle, “Tinker,” she said, calling the horse by his name, “I am too much tired to go any farther; you must go home without me:” and exclaimed, “Lord have mercy upon me! what will become of me?” The ground on which she sat was upon a level with the common field, close under the thicket on the south-west. She well knew its situation, and its distance from her own house. There was then only a small quantity of snow drifted near her; but it accumulated so rapidly, that when Chesterton bell rang at eight o’clock, she was completely hemmed in by it. The depth of the snow in which she was enveloped was about six feet in a perpendicular direction, and over her head between two and three. She was incapable of any effectual attempt to extricate herself, and, in addition to her fatigue and cold, her clothes were stiffened by the frost; and therefore, resigning herself to the necessity of her situation, she sat awaiting the dawn of the following day. To the best of her recollection, she slept very little during the night. In the morning, observing before her a circular hole in the snow, about two feet in length, and half a foot in diameter, running obliquely upwards, she broke off a branch of a bush which was close to her, and with it thrust her handkerchief through the hole, and hung it, as a signal of distress, upon one of the uppermost twigs that remained uncovered. She bethought herself that the change of the moon was near, and having an almanac in her pocket, took it out, though with great difficulty, and found that there would be a new moon the next day, February the 4th. Her difficulty in getting the almanac from her pocket arose, in a great measure, from the stiffness of her frozen clothes; the trouble, however, was compensated by the consolation which the prospect of so near a change in her favour afforded. Here, however, she remained day after day, and night after night, perfectly distinguishing the alterations of day and night, hearing the bells of her own and the neighbouring villages, particularly that of Chesterton, which was about two miles distant from the spot, and rung in winter time at eight in the evening and four in the morning, Sundays excepted; she was sensible to the sound of carriages upon the road, the bleating of sheep and lambs, and the barking of dogs. One day she overheard a conversation between two gipsies, relative to an ass they had lost. She recollected having pulled out her snuff-box, and taken two pinches of snuff, but felt so little gratification from it, that she never repeated it. Possibly, the cold might have so far blunted her powers of sensation, that the snuff no longer retained its stimulus. Finding her left hand beginning to swell, in consequence of her reclining on that arm, she took two rings, the tokens of her nuptial vows twice pledged, from her finger, and put them, together with a little money from her pocket, into a small box, judging that, should she not be found alive, the rings and money, being thus deposited, were less likely to be overlooked by the discoverers of her breathless corpse. She frequently shouted, in hopes that her vociferations might reach any that chanced to pass, but the snow prevented the transmission of her voice. The gipsies, who approached her nearer than any other persons, were not sensible of any sound, though she particularly endeavoured to attract their attention. A thaw took place on the Friday after the commencement of her misfortunes; she felt uncommonly faint and languid; her clothes were wetted quite through by the melted snow; the aperture before mentioned became considerably enlarged, and she attempted to make an effort to release herself; but her strength was too much impaired; her feet and legs were no longer obedient to her will, and her clothes were become much heavier by the water which they had imbibed. She now, for the first time, began to despair of being discovered alive; and declared, that, all things considered, she could not have survived twenty-four hours longer. This was the morning of her emancipation. The apartment or cave of snow formed around her was sufficiently large to afford her space to move herself about three or four inches in any direction, but not to stand upright, it being only about three feet and a half in height, and about two in the broadest part. Her sufferings had now increased; she sat with one of her hands spread over her face, and fetched very deep sighs; her breath was short and difficult, and symptoms of approaching dissolution became hourly more apparent. On that day, Sunday, the 10th of February, Joseph Muncey, a young farmer, in his way home from Cambridge, about half-past twelve o’clock, passed very near the spot where the woman was. Her handkerchief, hanging upon the twigs, where she had suspended it, caught his eye; he walked up to the place, and saw the opening in the snow, and heard a sound issue from it similar to that of a person breathing hard and with difficulty. He looked in, and saw the woman who had been so long missing. He did not speak to her, but, seeing another young farmer and a shepherd at a little distance, communicated to them the discovery he had made; upon which, though they scarcely credited his report, they went to the spot. The shepherd called out, “Are you there, Elizabeth Woodcock?” She replied, in a faint and feeble accent, “Dear John Stittle, I know your voice; for God’s sake, help me out of this place!” Stittle immediately made his way through the snow till he was able to reach her; she eagerly grasped his hand, and implored him not to leave her. “I have been here a long time,” she observed. “Yes,” answered the man, “ever since Saturday.”—“Ay, Saturday week,” she replied; “I have heard the bells go two Sundays for church.” Her husband was immediately acquainted with the discovery, and proper means were taken for conveying her home. Her husband and some neighbours brought a horse and chaise-cart, with blankets to wrap her in. The snow being somewhat cleared away, she asked for a piece of biscuit and a small quantity of brandy, from taking which she found herself greatly recruited. As a person took her up to put her into the chaise, the stocking of the left leg, adhering to the ground, came off, and she fainted. Nature was greatly exhausted, and the motion, added to the sight of her husband and neighbours, was too much for her strength and spirits. When she recovered, she was laid gently in the carriage, covered well over with the blankets, and conveyed without delay to her own house. It appears that when the horse came home, her husband and another person set out on the road with a lantern, and went quite to Cambridge, where they only learnt that she left the inn at six that evening. They explored the road afresh that night, and for four succeeding days, and searched the huts of the gipsies, whom they suspected might have robbed and murdered her, till she was unexpectedly discovered in the manner already mentioned. Mr. Okes, a surgeon, first saw her in the cart, as she was removing home. She spoke to him with a voice tolerably strong, but rather hoarse; her hands and arms were sodden, but not very cold though her legs and feet were. She was put to bed, and weak broth given her occasionally. From the time of her being lost she had eaten only snow, and believed she had not slept till Friday the 8th. The hurry of spirits, occasioned by too many visitors, rendered her feverish; and her feet were found to be completely mortified. The cold had extended its violent effects from the end of the toes to the middle of the instep, including more than an inch above the heels, and all the bottom of the feet, insomuch, that she lost all her toes with the integuments from the bottom of one foot. Her life was saved, but the mutilated state in which she was left, without even a chance of ever being able to attend to the duties of her family, was almost worse than death itself. She lingered until the 13th of July, 1799, when she expired, after a lapse of five months from the period of her discovery.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 40·37.
February 3. St. Blaise. St. Agatha. These two Romish festivals are still retained in the church of England calendar. Of St. Blaise’s festival there is an account in vol. i. p. 207.
WITCHCRAFT. The necessity for instruction is powerfully exemplified by the following narrative. Some who reflect upon it, and discover that there are other and worse consequences to be apprehended from ignorance than those related below, will consult their own safety, by providing education for the children of labouring people, and influencing their attendance where they may gain the means of distinguishing right from wrong. In February, 1808, at Great Paxton, in Huntingdonshire, Alice Brown, crossing the ice on the river Ouse, fell into the water, and narrowly escaped drowning, in the sight of her friend, Fanny Amey, a poor epileptic girl, who, in great terror, witnessed the accident. Alice arrived at her father’s house shivering with cold, and, probably from sympathetic affection, was herself seized with epilepsy. The fits returning frequently, she became emaciated, and incapable of labour. In April following, the rev. Isaac Nicholson, curate of the parish, inquiring after her health, was astonished by her brother informing him that her fits and debility were the effect of witchcraft. “She is under an evil tongue,” said the youth. “As sure as you are alive, sir,” continued a stander-by, “she is bewitched, and so are two other young girls that live near her.” The boor related, that at the town he came from in Bedfordshire, a man had been exactly in the same way; but, by a charm, he discovered the witch to be an old woman in the same parish, and that her reign would soon be over; which happened accordingly, for she died in a few days, and the man recovered. “Thomas Brown tried this charm last night for his daughter, but it did not succeed according to our wishes; so they have not at present found out who it is that does all the mischief.” Mr. Nicholson was greatly shocked at the general opinion of the people that Alice Brown, Fanny Amey, and Mary Fox were certainly bewitched by some person who had bought a familiar or an evil spirit of the devil at the expense of the buyer’s soul, and that various charms had been tried to discover who the buyer was. It was utterly out of his power to remove or diminish the impressions of his parishioners as to the enchantment; and on the following Sunday, a few minutes before he went to church, Ann Izzard, a poor woman about sixty years old, little, but not ill-looking, the mother of eight children, five of whom were living, requested leave to speak to him. In tears and greatly agitated, she told him her neighbours pretended, that, by means of certain charms, they had discovered that she was the witch. She said they abused her children, and by their violent threats frightened her so much that she frequently dropped down to the ground in fainting-fits. She concluded by asserting her innocence in these words: “I am not a witch, and am willing to prove it by being weighed against the church bible.” After the sermon, he addressed his flock on the folly of their opinions, and fatal consequences of brooding over them. It appears, however, that his arguments, explanations, and remonstrances were in vain. On Thursday, the 5th of May, Ann Izzard was at St. Neot’s market, and her son, about sixteen years old, was sent there by his master for a load of corn: his mother and another woman, a shopkeeper in the parish, accompanied him home; but, contrary to the mother’s advice, the woman put a basket of grocery on the sacks of corn One of the horses, in going down hill, became restive, and overturned the cart; and by this accident the grocery was much damaged. Because Ann Izzard had advised her neighbour against putting it in the cart, she charged her with upsetting it by the black art, on purpose to spoil the goods. In an hour, the whole village was in an uproar. “She has just overturned a loaded cart with as much ease as if it had been a spinning-wheel: this is positive proof; it speaks for itself; she is the person that does all the mischief; and if something is not done to put a stop to her baseness, there will be no living in the place.” As it grew dark, on the following Sunday, these brutal creatures assembled together, and at ten o’clock, taking with them the young women supposed to be bewitched, they proceeded to Wright Izzard’s cottage, which stood in a solitary spot at some distance from the body of the village; they broke into the poor man’s house, dragged his wife naked from her bed into the yard, dashed her head against the large stones of the causeway, tore her arms with pins, and beat her on the face, breast, and stomach with the wooden bar of the door. When the mob had dispersed, the abused and helpless woman crawled into her dwelling, put her clothes on, and went to the constable, who said he could not protect her for he had not been sworn in. One Alice Russell, a compassionate widow, unlocked her door to her at the first call, comforted her, bound up her wounds, and put her to bed. In the evening of the next day she was again dragged forth and her arms torn till they streamed afresh with blood. Alive the following morning, and apparently likely to survive this attack also, her enemies resolved to duck her as soon as the labour of the day was over. On hearing this she fled to Little Paxton, and hastily took refuge in the house of Mr. Nicholson, who effectually secured her from the cruelty of his ignorant flock, and had the mortification to learn that his own neighbours condemned him for “harbouring such a wretch.” The kindness and affection of the widow Russel were the means of shortening her days. The infatuated populace cried, “The protectors of a witch are just as bad as the witch, and deserve the same treatment.” She neither ate nor slept again from anxiety and fear; but died a martyr to her humanity in twelve days after her home became the asylum, for a few hours, of the unhappy Alice Izzard. At the Huntingdon assizes in the August following, true bills of indictment were found by the grand jury against nine of these ignorant, infuriated wretches, for assaults on Wright Izzard and Ann Izzard, which were traversed to the following assizes.[52] It does not appear how they were disposed of.
Captain Burt, an officer of engineers, who, about the year 1730, was sent into the north of Scotland on government service, relates the following particulars of an interview between himself and a minister, whom he met at the house of a nobleman. Witchcraft. After the minister had said a good deal concerning the wickedness of such a diabolical practice as sorcery; and that I, in my turn, had declared my opinion of it, which you knew many years ago; he undertook to convince me of the reality of it by an example, which is as follows:— A certain Highland laird had found himself at several times deprived of some part of his wine, and having as often examined his servants about it, and none of them confessing, but all denying it with asseverations, he was induced to conclude they were innocent. The next thing to consider was, how this could happen. Rats there were none to father the theft. Those, you know, according to your philosophical next-door neighbour, might have drawn out the corks with their teeth, and then put in their tails, which, being long and spongeous, would imbibe a good quantity of liquor. This they might suck out again, and so on, till they had emptied as many bottles as were sufficient for their numbers and the strength of their heads. But to be more serious:—I say there was no suspicion of rats, and it was concluded it could be done by none but witches. Here the new inquisition was set on foot, and who they were was the question; but how should that be discovered? To go the shortest way to work, the laird made choice of one night, and an hour when he thought it might be watering-time with the hags; and went to his cellar without a light, the better to surprise them. Then, with his naked broadsword in his hand, he suddenly opened the door, and shut it after him, and fell to cutting and slashing all round about him, till, at last, by an opposition to the edge of his sword, he concluded he had at least wounded one of them. But I should have told you, that although the place was very dark, yet he made no doubt, by the glare and flashes of their eyes, that they were cats; but, upon the appearance of a candle, they were all vanished, and only some blood left upon the floor. I cannot forbear to hint in this place at Don Quixote’s battle with the borachios of wine. There was an old woman, that lived about two miles from the laird’s habitation, reputed to be a witch: her he greatly suspected to be one of the confederacy, and immediately he hasted away to her hut; and, entering, he found her lying upon her bed, and bleeding excessively. This alone was some confirmation of the justness of his suspicion; but casting his eye under the bed, there lay her leg in its natural form. I must confess I was amazed at the conclusion of this narration; but ten times more, when, with the most serious air, he assured me that he had seen a certificate of the truth of it, signed by four ministers of that part of the country, and could procure me a sight of it in a few days, if I had the curiosity to see it. When he had finished his story, I used all the arguments I was master of, to show him the absurdity of supposing that a woman could be transformed into the shape and diminutive substance of a cat; to vanish like a flash of fire; carry her leg home with her, &c.: and I told him, that if a certificate of the truth of it had been signed by every member of the general assembly, it would be impossible for me (however strong my inclinations were to believe) to bring my mind to assent to it.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Sir, As a small matter of use and curiosity, I beg to acquaint the readers of the Every-Day Book with the means of determining the gradual increase of a plant. Take a straight piece of wood, of a convenient height; the upright piece, marked A B in the figure, may be divided into as many parts as you think fit; in the manner of a carpenter’s rule: lay across the top of this another piece of wood, marked G with a small wheel, or pulley, at each end thereof, marked C D; they should be so fixed that a fine thread of silk may easily run through each of them: at the end of this thread, E, tie a small weight, or poise, and tie the other end of the thread, F, to the tip-top of the plant, as represented in the figure. plant growth meter To find the daily increase of this plant, observe to what degree the knot F rises every day, at a particular hour, or to what degree the ball E descends every day. This little machine may serve several good purposes. By this you will be able to judge how much nourishment a plant receives in the course of each day, and a tolerably just notion may be formed of its quality; for moist plants grow quicker than dry ones, and the hot and moist quicker than the cold and dry. I am, sir,
Your constant reader,
S. Thomas. January 24th, 1826.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Sir, Perhaps the following parody of Moore’s beautiful melody, “Those Evening Bells,” on p. 143, may be acceptable to your readers, at a time like the present, when a laugh helps out the spirits against matter-of-fact evils. I do not think it necessary to avow myself as an “authority” for my little communication; many of your readers will, no doubt, be able to furnish feeling evidence of the truth of the lines. Hoping you, sir, may read them without participating in the lively sensibility that the author felt, I remain, Your admiring reader,
and regular customer,
A small Bookseller! City, Jan. 1826. “These Christmas Bills!” A COMMERCIAL MELODY, 1826. These Christmas bills, these Christmas bills,
How many a thought their number kills
Of notes and cash, and that sweet time
When oft’ I heard my sovereigns chime.
Those golden days are past away,
And many a bill I used to pay
Sticks on the file, and empty tills
Contain no cash for Christmas bills.
And so ’twill be—though these are paid,
More Christmas bills will still be made,
And other men will fear these ills,
And curse the name of Christmas bills!
COPY OF A LETTER
Written to a Domestic at Parting. The cheerfulness and readiness with which you have always served me, has made me interested in your welfare, and determined me to give you a few words of advice before we part. Read this attentively, and keep it; it may, perhaps, be useful. Your honesty and principles are, I firmly trust, unshaken. Consider them as the greatest treasure a human being can possess. While this treasure is in your possession you can never be hurt, let what will happen. You will indeed often feel pain and grief, for no human being ever was without his share of them; but you can never be long and completely miserable but by your own fault. If, therefore, you are ever tempted to do evil, check the first wicked thought that rises in your mind, or else you are ruined. For you may look upon this as a most certain and infallible truth, that if evil thoughts are for a moment encouraged, evil deeds follow: and you need not be told, that whoever has lost his good conscience is miserable, however he may hide it from the world, and whatever wealth and pleasures he may enjoy. And you may also rely upon this, that the most miserable among the virtuous is infinitely happier than the happiest of the wicked. The consequence I wish you to draw from all this is, never to do any thing except what you certainly know to be right; for if you doubt about the lawfulness of any thing, it is a sign that it ought not to be done.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 40·32.
February 4. Chronology. On the 4th of February, 1800, the rev. William Tasker, remarkable for his learning and eccentricity, died, aged 60, at Iddesleigh, in Devonshire, of which church he was rector near thirty years, though he had not enjoyed the income of the living till within five years before his death, in consequence of merciless and severe persecutions and litigations. “An Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain, 1778,” 4to., was the first effusion of his poetical talent. His translations of “Select Odes of Pindar and Horace” add to his reputation with the muses, whose smiles he courted by many miscellaneous efforts. He wrote “Arviragus,” a tragedy, and employed the last years of his checkered life on a “History of Physiognomy from Aristotle to Lavater,” wherein he illustrated the Greek philosopher’s knowledge of the subject in a manner similar to that which he pursued in “An Attempt to examine the several Wounds and Deaths of the Heroes in the Iliad and Æneid, trying them by the Test of Anatomy and Physiology.” These erudite dissertations contributed to his credit with the learned, but added nothing to his means of existence. He usually wore a ragged coat, the shirt peeping at the elbows, and shoes of a brownish black, sometimes tied with packthread. Having heard that his spirited “Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain” had been read by the late king, George III., he presented himself, in his customary habit, on the esplanade at Weymouth, where it excited curiosity; and his majesty asking an attendant who that person was? Mr. Tasker approached, avowed his name, and obtained a gratifying reception. His productions evince critical skill, and a large portion of poetic furor. But he was afflicted and unsuccessful; frequently struggling with penury, and sometimes with oppression. His irritability subjected him to numerous mortifications, and inflicted on him many pangs unknown to minds of less feeling or less delicacy. Mr. Nichols, in his “Literary Anecdotes,” gives a letter he received from Mr. Tasker, dated from Iddesleigh, in December, 1798, wherein he says, “I continue in very ill health, and confined in my dreary situation at Starvation Hall, forty miles below Exeter, out of the verge of literature, and where even your extensive magazine [‘The Gentleman’s’] has never yet reached.” The works he put forth from his solitude procured him no advancement in the church, and, in the agony of an excruciating complaint, he departed from a world insensible to his merits:—his widow essayed the publication of his works by subscription without effect. Such was the fate of an erudite and deserving parish priest, whose right estimation of honourable independence barred him from stooping to the meanness of flattery; he preserved his self-respect, and died without preferment, and in poverty.
A CHARACTER.
The Old Lady. If the Old Lady is a widow and lives alone, the manners of her condition and time of life are so much the more apparent. She generally dresses in plain silks that make a gentle rustling as she moves about the silence of her room; and she wears a nice cap with a lace border that comes under the chin. In a placket at her side is an old enamelled watch, unless it is locked up in a drawer of her toilet for fear of accidents. Her waist is rather tight and trim than otherwise, as she had a fine one when young; and she is not sorry if you see a pair of her stockings on a table, that you may be aware of the neatness of her leg and foot. Contented with these and other evident indications of a good shape, and letting her young friends understand that she can afford to obscure it a little, she wears pockets, and uses them well too. In the one is her handkerchief, and any heavier matter that is not likely to come out with it, such as the change of a sixpence;—in the other is a miscellaneous assortment, consisting of a pocket-book, a bunch of keys, a needle-case, a spectacle-case, crumbs of biscuit, a nutmeg and grater, a smelling-bottle, and according to the season, an orange or apple, which, after many days, she draws out, warm and glossy, to give to some little child that has well behaved itself. She generally occupies two rooms, in the neatest condition possible. In the chamber is a bed with a white coverlet, built up high and round to look well, and with curtains of a pastoral pattern, consisting alternately of large plants, and shepherds and shepherdesses. On the mantle-piece also are more shepherds and shepherdesses, with dot-eyed sheep at their feet, all in coloured ware, the man perhaps in a pink jacket and knots of ribbons at his knees and shoes, holding his crook lightly in one hand, and with the other at his breast turning his toes out and looking tenderly at the shepherdess:—the woman, holding a crook also, and modestly returning his look, with a gipsy-hat jerked up behind, a very slender waist, with petticoat and hips to counteract, and the petticoat pulled up through the pocket-holes in order to show the trimness of her ancles. But these patterns, of course, are various. The toilet is ancient, carved at the edges, and tied about with a snow-white drapery of muslin. Beside it are various boxes, mostly japan: and the set of drawers are exquisite things for a little girl to rummage, if ever little girl be so bold,—containing ribbons and laces of various kinds,—linen smelling of lavender, of the flowers of which there is always dust in the corners,—a heap of pocket-books for a series of years,—and pieces of dress long gone by, such as head-fronts, stomachers, and flowered satin shoes with enormous heels. The stock of letters are always under especial lock and key. So much for the bed-room. In the sitting-room, is rather a spare assortment of shining old mahogany furniture, or carved arm-chairs equally old, with chintz draperies down to the ground,—a folding or other screen with Chinese figures, their round, little-eyed, meek faces perking side-wise;—a stuffed bird perhaps in a glass case (a living one is too much for her;)—a portrait of her husband over the mantle-piece, in a coat with frog-buttons, and a delicate frilled hand lightly inserted in the waistcoat:—and opposite him, on the wall, is a piece of embroidered literature, framed and glazed, containing some moral distich or maxim worked in angular capital letters, with two trees or parrots below in their proper colours, the whole concluding with an ABC and numerals, and the name of the fair industrious, expressing it to be “her work, Jan. 14, 1762.” The rest of the furniture consists of a looking-glass with carved edges, perhaps a settee, a hassock for the feet, a mat for the little dog, and a small set of shelves, in which are the Spectator and Guardian, the Turkish Spy, a Bible and Prayer-book, Young’s Night-Thoughts, with a piece of lace in it to flatten, Mrs. Rowe’s Devout Exercises of the Heart, Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery, and perhaps Sir Charles Grandison, and Clarissa. John Buncle is in the closet among the pickles and preserves. The clock is on the landing-place between the two room-doors, where it ticks audibly but quietly; and the landing-place, as well as the stairs, is carpeted to a nicety. The house is most in character, and properly coeval, if it is in a retired suburb, and strongly built, with wainscot rather than paper inside, and lockers in the windows. Before the windows also should be some quivering poplars. Here the Old Lady receives a few quiet visitors to tea and perhaps an early game at cards; or you may sometimes see her going out on the same kind of visit herself, with a light umbrella turning up into a stick and crooked ivory handle, and her little dog equally famous for his love to her and captious antipathy to strangers. Her grandchildren dislike him on holidays; and the boldest sometimes ventures to give him a sly kick under the table. When she returns at night, she appears, if the weather happens to be doubtful, in a calash; and her servant, in pattens, follows half behind and half at her side, with a lantern. Her opinions are not many, nor new. She thinks the clergyman a nice man. The duke of Wellington, in her opinion, is a very great man; but she has a secret preference for the marquis of Granby. She thinks the young women of the present day too forward, and the men not respectful enough: but hopes her grand-children will be better; though she differs with her daughter in several points respecting their management. She sets little value on the new accomplishments: is a great though delicate connoisseur in butcher’s meat and all sorts of house-wifery: and if you mention waltzes, expatiates on the grace and fine breeding of the minuet. She longs to have seen one danced by sir Charles Grandison, whom she almost considers as a real person. She likes a walk of a summer’s evening, but avoids the new streets, canals, &c. and sometimes goes through the church-yard where her other children and her husband lie buried, serious, but not melancholy. She has had three great Æras in her life,—her marriage,—her having been at court to see the king, queen, and royal family,—and a compliment on her figure she once received in passing from Mr. Wilkes, whom she describes as a sad loose man, but engaging. His plainness she thinks much exaggerated. If any thing takes her at a distance from home, it is still the court; but she seldom stirs even for that. The last time but one that she went was to see the duke of Wirtemberg: and she has lately been, most probably for the last time of all, to see the princess Charlotte and prince Leopold. From this beatific vision, she returned with the same admiration as ever for the fine comely appearance of the duke of York and the rest of the family, and great delight at having had a near view of the princess, whom she speaks of with smiling pomp and lifted mittens, clasping them as passionately as she can together, and calling her, in a sort of transport of mixed loyalty and self-love, a fine royal young creature, and daughter of England.—Indicator.
The Season. Sudden storms of short duration, the last blusters of expiring winter, frequently occur during the early part of the present month. These gales and gusts are mostly noticed by mariners, who expect them, and therefore keep a good “look out for squalls.” The observations of seamen upon the clouds, and of husbandmen on the natural appearances of the weather generally, would form an exceedingly curious and useful compendium of meteorological facts. Stilling the Sea with Oil. Dr. Franklin suggests the pouring of oil on the sea to still the waves in a storm, but, before he lived, Martin wrote an “Account of the Western Islands of Scotland,” wherein he says, “The steward of Kilda, who lives in Pabbay, is accustomed in time of a storm to tie a bundle of puddings, made of the fat of sea-fowl, to the end of his cable, and lets it fall into the sea behind the rudder; this, he says, hinders the waves from breaking, and calms the sea; but the scent of the grease attracts the whales, which put the vessel in danger.”
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 38·34.
February 5. Browne Willis, Esq. LL.D. Browne Willis, Esq. LL.D. A Doctor in Antiquity was he,
And Tyson lined his head, as now you see.
Kind, good “collector!” why “collect” that storm?
No rude attempt is made to mar his form;
No alteration ’s aim’d at here—for, though
The artist’s touch has help’d to make it show,
The meagre contour only is supplied—
Is it improved?—compare, and then decide.
Had Tyson, “from the life,” Browne Willis sketch’d,
And left him, like old Jacob Butler,[53] etch’d,
This essay had not been, to better trace
The only likeness of an honour’d face.
* The present engraving, however unwinning its aspect as to drawing, is, in other respects, an improvement of the late Mr. Michael Tyson’s etching from a picture painted by Dahl. There is no other portrait of “the great original” published. On the 5th of February, 1760, Dr. Browne Willis died at Whaddon hall, in the county of Bucks, aged 78; he was born at St. Mary Blandford, in the county of Dorset, on the 14th of September, 1682. He was unexcelled in eagerness of inquiry concerning our national antiquities, and his life was devoted to their study and arrangement. Some interesting particulars concerning the published labours and domestic habits of this distinguished individual, will be given in a subsequent sheet, with one of his letters, not before printed, accompanied by a fac-simile of his handwriting.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·20.
February 6. Collop Monday. See vol. i. p. 241. The Season and Smoking. At this time, Dr. Forster says that people should guard against colds, and, above all, against the contagion of typhus and other fevers, which are apt to prevail in the early spring. “Smoking tobacco,” he observes, “is a very salutary practice in general, as well as being a preventive against infection in particular. The German pipes are the best, and get better as they are used, particularly those made of merschaum, called Ecume de Mer. Next to these, the Turkey pipes, with long tubes, are to be recommended; but these are fitter for summer smoking, under the shade of trees, than for the fireside. The best tobacco is the Turkey, the Persian, and what is called Dutch canaster. Smoking is a custom which should be recommended in the close cottages of the poor, and in great populous towns liable to contagion.” The Rule of Health. Rise early, and, take exercise in plenty,
But always take it with your stomach empty.
After your meals sit still and rest awhile,
And with your pipe a careless hour beguile.
To rise at light or five, breakfast at nine,
Lounge till eleven, and at five to dine,
To drink and smoke till seven, the time of tea,
And then to dance or walk two hours away
Till ten o’clock,—good hour to go to nest,
Till the next cock shall wake you from your rest.
On the virtues of tobacco its users enhance with mighty eloquence, and puff it bravely. In praise of Tobacco. Much food doth gluttony procure to feed men fat like swine,
But he’s a frugal man indeed who on a leaf can dine.
He needs no napkin for his hands, his finger ends to wipe,
Who has his kitchen in a box, his roast-meat in a pipe.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·47.
February 7. 1826.—SHROVE TUESDAY. Several of the customs and sports of this day are related in vol i. p. 242-261. It is the last meat day permitted by the papacy before Lent, which commences to-morrow, and therefore in former times, full advantage was taken of the expiring opportunity to feast and make merry. Selden observes, “that what the church debars us one day, she gives us leave to eat another—first, there is a carnival, and then a Lent.” This period is also recorded in the homely rhymes of Barnaby Googe. Shrove-tide. Now when at length the pleasant time of Shrove-tide comes in place,
And cruell fasting dayes at hand approach with solemne grace.
Then olde and yong are both as mad, as ghestes of Bacchus’ feast,
And foure dayes long they tipple square, and feede and never reast.
Downe goes the hogges in every place, and puddings every wheare
Do swarme: the dice are shakte and tost, and cardes apace they teare:
In every house are showtes and cryes, and mirth, and revell route,
And daintie tables spred, and all be set with ghestes aboute:
With sundrie playes and Christmasse games, and feare and shame away,
The tongue is set at libertie, and hath no kinde of stay.
Naogeorgus. The Great Seal in Danger. February 7, 1677, about one in the morning, the lord chancellor Finch’s mace was stolen out of his house in Queen-street; the seal laid under his pillow, so the thief missed it. The famous thief that did it was Thomas Sadler, he was soon after taken, and hanged for it at Tyburn on the 16th of March.[54]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 37·37.
February 8. 1826.—Ash Wednesday, The First Day of Lent. To the particulars concerning this day, and the ashes, (in vol. i. p. 261,) is to be added, that the ashes, made of the branches of brushwood, properly cleansed, sifted, and consecrated, were worn four times a year, as at the beginning of Lent; and that on this day the people were excluded from church, husbands and wives parted bed, and the penitents wore sackcloth and ashes.[55] According to the Benedictine rule, on Ash Wednesday, after sext, the monks were to return to the cloister to converse; but, at the ringing of a bell, be instantly silent. They were to unshoe themselves, wash their hands, and go to church, and make one common prayer. Then was to follow a religious service; after which the priest, having consecrated the ashes, and sprinkled holy water on them, was to throw them on the heads of the monks, saying, “Remember that you are but dust, and to dust must return.” Then “the procession” was to follow.[56] In former times, on the evening of Ash Wednesday, boys used to run about with firebrands and torches.[57]
Lent Assizes and Sessions. These follow, in due course, after Hilary Term, which is within a week of its expiration. The importance of assize and sessions business is frequently interrupted by cases not more serious than The Trial
Of Farmer Carter’s Dog
PORTER
For Murder. Edward Long, esq., late judge of the admiralty court of Jamaica, wrote and published this “Trial,”[58] which is now scarce, and here somewhat abridged from the original without other alteration. He commences his report thus:— County of SEX-
GOTHAM, ss. At a High Court of Oyer and Terminer and Gaol-Delivery, holden this — day of —— 1771, at Gotham-Hall. Present: The Worshipful
J. Bottle, Esq. A. Noodle,
Mat o’ the Mill,
Osmyn Ponser, } Esqs., Just-asses and Associates. Game-act Plaintiff
versus
Porter Defendant. The Court being met, the indictment was read, which we omit, for sake of brevity. Court. Prisoner, hold up your paw at the bar. First Counsel. He is sullen, and refuses. Court. Is he so? Why then let the constable hold it up, nolens volens. [Which was done, according to order.] Court. What is the prisoner’s name? Constable. P-P-Po-rt-er, an’t please your worship. Court. What does the fellow say? Constable. Porter! an’t please you; Porter! Mat. He says Porter. It’s the name of a liquor the London kennel[59] much delight in. Ponser. Ay, ’tis so; and I remember another namesake of his. I was hand in glove with him, I’ll tell you a droll story about him— Court. Hush, brother. Culprit, how will you be tried? Counsel for the Prosecution. Please your worship, he won’t say a word. Stat mutus—as mute as a fish. dog on trial Court. How?—what?—won’t the dog speak? Won’t he do what the court bids him? What’s to be done? Is the dignity of this court to be trifled with in such a manner? Counsel for Pros. Please your worships—it is provided by the statute in these cases, that when a culprit is stubborn, and refuses to plead, he is to be made to plead whether he will or no. Court. Ay? How’s that, pray? Counsel for Pros. Why, the statute says—that he must first of all be thumb-screwed— Court. Very good. Counsel for Pros. If that will not do, he must be laid flat on his back, and squeezed, like a cheese in a press, with heavy weights. Court. Very well. And what then? Counsel for Pros. What then? Why, when all the breath is squeezed out of his body, if he should still continue dumb, which sometimes has been the case, he generally dies for want of breath. Court. Very likely. Counsel for Pros. And thereby saves the court a great deal of trouble; and the nation, the expense of a halter. Court. Well, then, since the land stands thus—constable, twist a cord about the culprit’s— Counsel for Pros. Fore-paws. Constable. Four paws? Why he has but two. Court. Fore-paws, or fore-feet, blockhead! and strain it as tight as you can, ’till you make him open his mouth. [The constable attempted to enforce the order, but in drawing a little too hard, received a severe bite.] Constable. ’Sblood and suet! He has snapped off a piece of my nose. Court. Mr. Constable, you are within the statute of swearing, and owe the court one shilling. Constable. Zounds and death! your worships! I could not help it for the blood o’ me. Court. Now you owe us two shillings. Constable. That’s a d——d bad plaster, your worships, for a sore nose! Court. That being but half an oath, the whole fine amounts to two shillings and sixpence, or a half-crown bowl. So, without going further, if you are afraid of his teeth, apply this pair of nut-crackers to his tail. Constable. I shall, your worships. [He had better success with the tail, as will now appear.] Prisoner. Bow, wow, wow, ow, wow! Court. Hold! Enough. That will do. It was now held that though the prisoner expressed himself in a strange language, yet, as he could speak no other, and as the law can not only make dogs to speak, but explain their meaning too, so the law understood and inferred that the prisoner pleaded not guilty, and put himself upon his trial. Issue therefore being joined, the Counsel for the Prosecution proceeded to address the Court; but was stopped by the other side. Prisoner’s Counsel. I take leave to demur to the jurisdiction of the court. If he is to have a trial per pares, you must either suppose their worships to be his equals, that is to say, not his betters, which would be a great indignity, or else you must have a venire for a jury of twelve dogs. I think you are fairly caught in this dilemma. Counsel for Pros. By no means. It is easily cured. We’ll send the constable with a Mandamus to his Grace’s kennel. Pris. Counsel. They are fox hounds. Not the same species; therefore not his equals. I do not object to the harriers, nor to a tales de circumstantibus. Counsel for Pros. That’s artful, brother, but it won’t take. I smoke your intention of garbling a jury. You know the harriers will be partial, and acquit your client at any rate. Neither will we have any thing to do with your tales. Mat. No—no—you say right. I hate your tales and tale-bearers. They are a rascally pack altogether. Counsel for Pros. Besides, the statute gives your worships ample jurisdiction in this case; and if it did not give it, your worships know how to take it, because the law says, boni est judicis ampliare jurisdictionem. Pris. Counsel. Then—I demur for irregularity. The prisoner is a dog, and cannot be triable as a man—ergo, not within the intent of the statute. Counsel for Pros. That’s a poor subterfuge. If the statute respects a man, (a fortiori) it will affect a dog. Ponser. You are certainly right. For when I was in the Turkish dominions, I saw an Hebrew Jew put to death for killing a dog, although dog was the aggressor. Counsel for Pros. A case in point, please your worship. And a very curious and learned one it is. And the plain induction from it is this, that the Jew (who I take for granted was a man) being put to death for killing dog, it follows that said dog was as respectable a person, and of equal rank in society with the said Jew; and therefore—ergo—and moreover—That, said dog, so slain, was, to all and every purpose of legal inference and intendment, neither more nor less than—a man. Court. We are all clearly of that opinion. Counsel for Pros. Please your worships of the honourable bench. On Saturday the day of February inst. on or about the hour of five in the afternoon, the deceased Mr. Hare was travelling quietly about his business, in a certain highway or road leading towards Muckingham; and then, and there, the prisoner at the bar being in the same road, in and upon the body of the deceased, with force and arms, a violent assault did make; and further, not having the fear of your worships before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of a devilish fit of hunger, he the said prisoner did him the said deceased, in the peace of our lord of the manor then and there being, feloniously, wickedly, wantonly, and of malice aforethought, tear, wound, pull, haul, touzle, masticate, macerate, lacerate, and dislocate, and otherwise evilly intreat; of all and singular which tearings, woundings, pullings, haulings, touzleings, mastications, and so forth, maliciously inflicted in manner and form aforesaid, the said Hare did languish, and languishing did die, in Mr. Just-ass Ponser’s horsepond, to wit, and that is to say, contrary to the statute in that case made and provided, and against the peace of our said lord, his manor and dignity. This, please your worships, is the purport of the indictment; to this indictment the prisoner has pleaded not guilty, and now stands upon his trial before this honourable bench. Your worships will therefore allow me, before I come to call our evidence, to expatiate a little upon the heinous sin, wherewith the prisoner at the bar is charged. Hem!—To murder,—Ehem—To murder, may it please your worships, in Latin, is—is—Murderare;—or in the true and original sense of the word, Murder-ha-re. H—, as your worships well know, being not as yet raised to the dignity of a letter by any act of parliament, it follows that it plainly is no other than Murder-a-re, according to modern refined pronunciation. The very root and etymology of the word does therefore comprehend in itself a thousand volumes in folio, to show the nefarious and abominable guilt of the prisoner, in the commission and perpetration of this horrid fact. And it must appear as clear as sunshine to your worships, that the word Murderare, which denotes the prisoner’s crime, was expressly and originally applied to that crime, and to that only, as being the most superlative of all possible crimes in the world. I do not deny that, since it first came out of the mint, it has, through corruption, been affixed to offences of a less criminal nature, such as killing a man, a woman, or a child. But the sense of the earliest ages having stamped hare-murder, or murder-ha-re, (as the old books have it,) with such extraordinary atrociousness, I am sure that Just-asses of your worships’ acknowledged and well-known wisdom, piety, erudition, and humanity, will not, at this time of the day, be persuaded to hold it less detestable and sinful. Having said thus much on the nature of the prisoner’s guilt, I mean not to aggravate the charge, because I shall always feel due compassion for my fellow-creatures, however wickedly they may demean themselves.—I shall next proceed, with your worships’ leave, to call our witnesses.—Call Lawrence Lurcher and Toby Tunnel. Pris. Counsel. I must object to swearing these witnesses.—I can prove, they were both of them drunk, and non compos, during the whole evening, when this fact is supposed to have been committed. Bottle. That will do you no service. I am very often drunk myself, and never more in my senses than at such times. Court. We all agree in this point with brother Bottle. [Objection overruled and witnesses sworn.] Lurcher. As I, and Toby Tunnel here, was a going hoam to squire Ponser’s, along the road, one evening after dark, we sees the prisoner at the bar, or somebody like him, lay hold of the deceased, or somebody like him, by the back, an’t please your worships. So, says I, Toby, says I, that looks for all the world like one of ’squire Ponser’s hares. So the deceased cried out pitifully for help, and jumped over a hedge, and the prisoner after him, growling and swearing bitterly all the way. So, says I, Toby, let’s run after ’um. So I scrambled up the hedge; but Toby laid hold of my leg, to help himself up; so both of us tumbled through a thick furze bush into the ditch. So, next morning, as we was a going by the squire’s, we sees the deceased in his worship’s horse-pond. Pris. Counsel. Are you sure he was dead? Lurcher. Ay, as dead as my great grandmother. Pris. Counsel. What did you do with the body? Ponser. That’s not a fair question. It ought not to be answered. Lurcher. I bean’t ashamed nor afeard to tell, not I. We carried it to his worship, squire Ponser; and his worship had him roasted, with a pudding in his belly, for dinner, that seame day. Council for Pros. That is nothing to the purpose. Have you any more questions for the witness? Pris. Counsel. Yes, I have. Pray friend, how do you know the body you found was the very same you saw on the evening before? Lurcher. I can’t tell; but I’m ready to take my bible oath on’t. Pris. Counsel. That is a princely argument, and I shall ask you nothing farther. Mrs. Margery Dripping, cook to his worship squire Ponser, deposed to the condition of the deceased. DEFENCE Prisoner’s Counsel. Please your worships, I am counsel for the prisoner, who, in obedience to your worships’ commands, has pleaded not guilty; and I hope to prove that his plea is a good plea; and that he must be acquitted by the justice of his cause. In the first place, the witnesses have failed in proving the prisoner’s identity. Next, they have not proved the identity of the deceased. Thirdly, they do not prove who gave the wounds. Fourthly, nor to whom they were given. Fifthly, nor whether the party died of the wounds, if they were given, as supposed, to this identical hare. For, I insist upon it, that, because a hare was found in the squire’s horse-pond, non sequitur, that he was killed, and thrown in by the defendant. Or, if they had proved that defendant had maliciously, and animo furioso, pursued the deceased into the horse-pond, it does not prove the defendant guilty of his death, because he might owe his death to the water; and therefore, in that case, the pond would be guilty; and if guilty, triable; and if triable, punishable for the same, and not my client. And I must say, (under favour,) that his worship would likewise be particeps criminis, for not having filled it up, to prevent such accidents. One evidence, who never saw the prisoner till now, nor the deceased till after the fact supposed to have happened, declares, he is sure the prisoner killed the deceased. And why? Because he is ready to take his bible oath on’t. This is, to be sure, a very logical conviction. Court. It is a very legal one, and that’s better. Pris. Counsel. I submit to your wisdoms. But I must conclude with observing, that admitting a part of the evidence to be true, viz. that the prisoner did meet the deceased on the highway, and held some conference with him; I say, that supposing this, for argument sake; I do insist, that Mr. Hare, the deceased, was not following a lawful, honest business, at that late hour; but was wickedly and mischievously bent upon a felonious design, of trespassing on farmer Carter’s ground, and stealing, consuming, and carrying off, his corn and his turnips. I further insist that the defendant, knowing this his felonious and evil machination, and being resolved to defend the property of his good friend and patron from such depredations, did endeavour to divert him from it. Which not being able to effect by fair means, he then was obliged to try his utmost, as a good subject and trusty friend, to seize and apprehend his person, and bring him, per habeas corpus, before your worships, to be dealt with according to law. But the deceased being too nimble for him, escaped out of his clutches, and tumbling, accidentally, in the dark, into his worship’s horse-pond, was there drowned. This is, I do not doubt, a true history of the whole affair; and proves that, in the strictest construction of law, it can only be a case of per infortunium—unless your worships should rather incline to deem it felo de se. Noodle. A fall in the sea! No such thing: it was only a horse-pond, that’s clear from the evidence. Pris. Counsel. Howsoever your worships may think fit to judge of it, I do humbly conceive, upon the whole matter, that the defendant is not guilty; and I hope your worships, in your wisdoms, will concur with me in opinion, and acquit him. The Counsel for the Prosecution replied in a long speech. He contended that Mr. Hare, the deceased, was a peaceable, quiet, sober, and inoffensive sort of a person, beloved by king, lords, and commons, and never was known to entertain any idea of robbery, felony, or depredation, but was innocently taking the air, one afternoon, for the benefit of his health, when he was suddenly accosted, upon his majesty’s highway, by the prisoner, who immediately, and bloody-mindedly, without saying a syllable, made at him, with so much fury in his countenance, that the deceased was put in bodily fear; and being a lover of peace, crossed the other side of the way: the prisoner followed him close, and pressed him so hard, that he was obliged to fly over hedge and ditch with the prisoner at his heels. It was at this very juncture they were observed by the two witnesses first examined. The learned counsel further affirmed from circumstances, which he contended amounted to presumptive evidence, that, after various turnings and windings, in his endeavour to escape, his foot slipped, and the prisoner seized him and inflicted divers wounds; but that the deceased finding means to get away, took to the pond, in order to swim across; when the prisoner, running round the pond incessantly, prevented his escape: so that, faint and languishing under his wounds and loss of blood, the hapless victim there breathed his last, in manner and form as the indictment sets forth. He also alleged that, as Mr. Hare lived within his worship’s territory, where there are several more of the same family, he could not, therefore, be going to farmer Carter’s; for that would have been absurd, when he might have got corn and turnips enough on his worship’s own ground. Can there, said the learned gentleman, be a stronger, a weightier, a surer, a—a—a—? Court. We understand you. It is as clear as crystal. [Their worships in consultation.] Court. Has the prisoner’s counsel any thing further to offer in his behalf? Pris. Counsel. Call farmer Carter. Pray, farmer Carter, inform the court what you know of the prisoner’s life, character, and behaviour. Carter. I have known the prisoner these several years. He has lived in my house great part of the time. He was always sober— Court. Never the honester for that. Well, go on. Carter. Sober, honest, sincere, trusty, and careful. He was one of the best and most faithful friends I ever knew. He has many a time deterred thieves from breaking into my house at night, and murdering me and my family. He never hated nor hurt any body but rogues and night-walkers. He performed a million of good offices for me, for no other recompense than his victuals and lodging; and seemed always happy and contented with what I could afford him, however scanty the provision. He has driven away many a fox that came to steal my geese and turkies; and, for taking care of a flock of sheep, there is not his equal in the county. In short, whenever he dies I shall lose my best friend, my best servant, and most vigilant protector. I am positive that he is as innocent as a babe of the crime charged upon him; for he was with me that whole evening, and supped and slept at home. He was indeed my constant companion, and we were seldom or never asunder. If your worships please, I’ll be bail for him from five pounds to five hundred. Court. That cannot be: it is not a bailable offence. Have you any thing else to say, Mr. Positive? Carter. Say? I think I’ve said enough, if it signified any thing. Bottle. Drag him away out of hearing. Carter. I will have justice! You, all of ye, deserve hanging more than your prisoner, and you all know it too. Court. Away with him, constable.—Scum of the earth! Base-born peasant! [Carter is hauled out of the court, after a stout resistance.] Court. A sturdy beggar! We must find out some means of wiring that fellow! The Counsel for the Prosecution prayed sentence of death upon the culprit at the bar. Court. How says the statute? Are we competent for this? Counsel for Pros. The statute is, I confess, silent. But silence gives consent. Besides, this is a case of the first impression, and unprovided for by law. It is your duty, therefore, as good and wise magistrates of the Hundreds of Gotham, to supply this defect of the law, and to suppose that the law, where it says nothing, may be meant to say, whatever your worships shall be pleased to make it. Bottle. It is now incumbent upon me to declare the opinion of this high and right worshipful court here assembled. Shall the reptile of a dunghill, a paltry muckworm, a pitch-fork fellow, presume for to go for to keep a dog?—and not only a dog, but a dog that murders hares? Are these divine creatures, that are religiously consecrated to the mouths alone of squires and nobles, to become the food of garlic-eating rogues? It is a food, that nature and policy forbid to be contaminated by their profane teeth. It is by far too dainty for their robustious constitutions. How are our clayey lands to be turned up and harrowed, and our harvests to be got in, if our labourers, who should strengthen themselves with beef and ale, should come to be fed with hare, partridge, and pheasant? Shall we suffer our giants to be nourished with mince-meat and pap? Shall we give our horses chocolate and muffins? No, gentlemen. The brains of labourers, tradesmen, and mechanics, (if they have any,) should ever be sodden and stupified with the grosser aliments of bacon and dumpling. What is it, but the spirit of poaching, that has set all the lower class, the canaille, a hunting after hare’s-flesh? You see the effects of it gentlemen; they are all run mad with politics, resist their rulers, despise their magistrates, and abuse us in every corner of the kingdom. If you had begun hanging of poachers ten years ago, d’ye think you would have had one left in the whole kingdom by this time? No, I’ll answer for it; and your hares would have multiplied, till they had been as plenty as blackberries, and not left a stalk of corn upon the ground. This, gentlemen, is the very thing we ought to struggle for; that these insolent clowns may come to find, that the only use they are good for, is to furnish provision for these animals. In short, gentlemen, although it is not totally clear from the evidence, that the prisoner is guilty; nevertheless, hanged he must and ought to be, in terrorem to all other offenders. Therefore let the culprit stand up, and hearken to the judgment of the court. Constable. Please your worship, he’s up. Bottle. Porter! Thou hast been found guilty of a most daring, horrible, and atrocious crime. Thou hast, without being qualified as the law directs, and without licence or deputation from the lord of the manor, been guilty of shedding innocent blood. In so doing, thou hast broken the peace of the realm, set at naught the laws and statutes of thy country, and (what is more than all these) offended against these respectable personages, who have been sitting in judgment upon thee. For all this enormity of guilt, thy life doth justly become forfeit, to atone for such manifold injuries done to our most excellent constitution. We did intend, in Christian charity, to have given some moments for thy due repentance, but, as the hour is late, and dinner ready, now hear thy doom. Thou must be led from the bar to the end of the room, where thou art to be hanged by the neck to yonder beam, coram nobis, till you are dead, dead, dead! Hangman, do your duty. Constable. Please your worships, all is ready. Ponser. Hoist away, then, hoist away. [Porter is tucked up.] Mat. Come, it seems to be pretty well over with him now. The constable has given him a jerk, and done his business. Bottle. He’s an excellent fellow. Ponser. The best informer in the whole county. Bottle. And must be well encouraged. Ponser. He shall never want a licence, whilst I live. Noodle. Come, shall we go to dinner? Bottle. Ay—he’ll never course hares again in this world. Gentlemen, the court is adjourned. [Exeunt omnes. EPITAPH, Composed by Sam. Snivel, the parish clerk, proposed to be put, at Farmer Carter’s expense, on the unfortunate malefactor’s tombstone: Here lie the remains
of
honest PORTER;
who,
after an innocent and well-spent life,
was dragged hither, and
tried,
for a crime he never committed,
upon laws to which he was unamenable,
before men who were no judges,
found guilty without evidence,
and hanged without mercy:
to give to future ages an example,
that the spirit
of Turkish despotism, tyranny, and
oppression,
after glutting itself with the conquest of
liberty
in British men,
has stooped at length to wreak its bloody
vengeance
on British dogs!
Anno Dom. 1771.
Requiescat in pace! S. S.
This humorous “Trial” was written in consequence of “a real event which actually took place, in 1771, near Chichester.” The persons who composed the court are designated by fictitious names; but to a copy of the pamphlet, in the possession of the editor of the Every-day Book, there is a manuscript-key to their identity. The affair is long past, and they are therefore added in italics. ’SQUIRES.
J. Bottle—Butler.
A. Noodle—Aldridge.
Mat o’ the Mill—Challen.
O. Ponser—Bridger. It appears that “the actors in the tragedy were well known by their nicknames, given in Mr. Long’s pamphlet.”
Edward Long, esq. was called to the bar in 1757, and sailed immediately for Jamaica, where he, at first, filled the post of private secretary to his brother-in-law, sir Henry Moore, bart., then lieutenant-governor of the island. He was afterwards appointed judge of the vice-admiralty court, and left the island in 1769. The remainder of his long life was spent in England, and devoted to literature. Mr. Long’s first production was the facetious report of the case of “Farmer Carter’s Dog Porter.” He wrote ably on negro slavery, the sugar trade, and the state of the colonies; but his most distinguished work is “The History of Jamaica,” in three quarto volumes, which contains a large mass of valuable information, much just reasoning, and many spirited delineations of colonial scenery and manners, and is almost as rare as the curious and amusing tract that has contributed to the preceding pages. He was born on the 23d of August, 1734, at Rosilian, in the parish of St. Blaize, Cornwall, and died, on the 13th of March, 1813, at the house of his son-in-law, Henry Howard Molyneux, esq. M.P. of Arundel Park, Sussex, aged 79. Further particulars of his life, writings, and family, are in Mr. Nichols’s “Literary Anecdotes,” and the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” vol. lxxiii., from whence this brief notice is extracted.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 37·27.
February 9. St. Apollonia. She is called, by Butler, “the admirable Apollonia, whom old age and the state of virginity rendered equally venerable.” He relates, that in a persecution of the Christians, stirred up by “a certain poet of Alexandria,” she was seized, and all her teeth were beaten out, with threats that she should be cast into the fire, “if she did not utter certain impious words;” whereupon, of her own accord, she leaped into the flames. From this legend, St. Apollonia is become the patron saint of persons afflicted by tooth-ach.
In the “HorÆ B. Virginis” is the following prayer:— “O Saint Apollonia, by thy passion, obtain for us the remission of all the sins, which, with teeth and mouth, we have committed through gluttony and speech; that we may be delivered from pain and gnashing of teeth here and hereafter; and loving cleanness of heart, by the grace of our lips we may have the king of angels our friend. Amen.”
If her teeth and jaws in Romish churches be good evidence, St. Apollonia superabounded in these faculties; the number of the former is surprising to all who disbelieve that relics of the saints multiply of themselves. A church at Bononia possesses her lower jaw, “which is solemnly worshipped by the legate;” St. Alban’s church at Cologne also has her lower jaw—each equally genuine and of equal virtue. Chronology. 1555. On the 9th of February in this year, Dr. Rowland Taylor, vicar of Hadleigh in Suffolk, one of the first towns in England that entertained the Reformation, suffered death there for resisting the establishment of papal worship in his church. The engraving beneath is a correct representation of an old stone commemorative of the event, as it appeared in 1825, when the drawing was made from it, by a gentleman who obligingly transmits it for the present purpose. The Martyr’s Stone at Hadleigh in Suffolk. The Martyr’s Stone at Hadleigh in Suffolk. Besides the rude inscription on this old stone, as it is represented in the engraving, there is another on a neat monument erected by the side of the original in 1818. The lines are as follows: they were supplied by the Rev. Dr. Hay Drummond, rector of Hadleigh. Mark this rude Stone, where Taylor dauntless stood,
Where Zeal infuriate drank the Martyr’s blood:
Hadleigh! that day, how many a tearful eye
Saw the lov’d Pastor dragg’d a Victim by;
Still scattering gifts and blessings as he past
“To the blind pair” his farewell alms were cast;
His clinging flock e’en here around him pray’d
“As thou hast aided us, be God thine aid;”
Nor taunts, nor bribes of mitred rank, nor stake,
Nor blows, nor flames, his heart of firmness shake;
Serene—his folded hands, his upward eyes,
Like Holy Stephen’s, seek the opening skies;
There, fix’d in rapture, his prophetic sight
Views Truth dawn clear, on England’s bigot night;
Triumphant Saint! he bow’d, and kiss’d the rod,
And soar’d on Seraph-wing to meet his God.
Rowland Taylor was “a doctor in both the civil and canon lawes, and a right perfect divine.” On induction to his benefice, he resided with his flock, “as a good shepherd abiding and dwelling among his sheep,” and “not only was his word a preaching unto them, but all his life and conversation was an example of unfained christian life, and true holinesse: he was void of all pride, humble and meeke as any child, so that none were so poore, but they might boldly, as unto their father, resort unto him; neither was his lowlinesse childish or fearfull; but, as occasion, time, and place required, he would be stout in rebuking the sinfull and evil doers, so that none was so rich, but he would tell him plainly his fault, with such earnest and grave rebukes as became a good curate and pastor.” He continued in well-doing at Hadleigh during the reign of king Edward VI. till the days of queen Mary, when one Foster, a lawyer, and one John Clerk, of Hadley, “hired one Averth, parson of Aldam, a right popish priest, to come to Hadley, and there to give the onset to begin again the popish masse: to this purpose they builded up, with all haste possible, the altar, intending to bring in their masse again about the Palme Munday.” The altar was thrown down in the night, but on the following day it was replaced, and the Aldam priest entered the church, attended by Foster and Clerk, and guarded by men with swords and bucklers. Dr. Taylor, who was in his study, and ignorant of this irruption, hearing the church bells ring, repaired thither, and found the priest, surrounded by his armed force, ready to begin mass, against whom he was unable to prevail, and was himself thrust, “with strong hand, out of the church.” Two days afterwards, he was summoned by Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, to come before him at London, and answer complaints. His friends counselled him to fly, but Taylor determined to meet his enemies, “and, to their beards, resist their false doings.” He took his departure amidst their weeping, “leaving his cure with a godly old priest named sir Richard Yeoman, who afterwards, for God’s truth, was burnt at Norwich.” On his appearance, bishop Gardiner, who was also lord chancellor, reviled him, “calling him knave, traitor, heretike, with many other villainous reproaches.” Taylor listened patiently: at last he said, “My lord, I am neither traitor nor heretike, but a true subject, and a faithfull christian man; and am come, according to your commandment, to know what is the cause that your lordship hath sent for me?” The bishop charged upon him that he was married. “Yea,” quoth Taylor, “that I thank God I am, and have had nine children, and all in lawful matrimony; and blessed be God that ordained matrimony.” Then the bishop charged him with having resisted the priest of Aldam in saying mass at Hadleigh. Taylor also admitted this, and, after stout dispute, was committed to the king’s bench, where he spent his time in praying, reading the scriptures, writing, preaching, and exhorting the prisoners to repentance and amendment of life. There he found “master Bradford,” whom he comforted by his courage. While imprisoned, he was cited to appear “in the Arches at Bow church,” and was carried thither, and “deprived of his benefice because he was married.” On the 20th of January, 1555, Taylor was again taken before Gardiner and other bishops. He gives a long account of his disputations with them on that and like occasions. They urged him, and others with him, to recant: the prisoners refused, and “then the bishops read sentence of death upon them.” After condemnation, Dr. Taylor was “bestowed in the Clinke till it was toward night, and then he was removed to the counter by the Poultry.” On the 4th of February, Bonner, bishop of London, came to the counter to degrade him; first wishing him to return to the church of Rome, and promising him to sue for his pardon. Whereunto Taylor answered, “I woulde you and your fellowes would turne to Christ; as for me I will not turn to Antichrist.” “Well,” quoth the bishop, “I am come to degrade you, wherefore put on these vestures.” “No,” quoth doctor Taylor, “I will not.” “Wilt thou not?” said the bishop. “I shall make thee, ere I goe.” Quoth doctor Taylor, “You shall not, by the grace of God.” Then Bonner caused another to put them on his back; and when thus arrayed, Taylor, walking up and down, said, “How say you, my lord, am I not a goodly fool? How say you, my masters; if I were in Cheap, should I not have boys enough to laugh at these apish toys, and toying trumpery?” The bishop proceeded, with certain ceremonies, to his purpose, till at the last, when, according to the form, he should have struck Taylor on the breast with his crosier, the bishop’s chaplain said, “My lord, strike him not, for he will sore strike again.” Taylor favoured the chaplain’s suspicion. “The cause,” said he, “is Christ’s; and I were no good christian if I would not fight in my master’s quarrel.” It appears that “the bishop laid his curse upon him, but struck him not;” and after all was over, when he got up stairs, “he told master Bradford (for both lay in one chamber) that he had made the bishop of London afraid; for, saith he, laughingly, his chaplain gave him counsell not to strike with his crosier-staff, for that I would strike again; and by my troth, said he, rubbing his hands, I made him believe I would doe so indeed.” Thus was Taylor still cheerful from rectitude. In the afternoon his wife, his son, and John Hull his servant, were permitted to sup with him. After supper, walking up and down, he impressively exhorted them, with grave advice, to good conduct and reliance on Providence. “Then they, with weeping tears, prayed together, and kissed one the other; and he gave to his wife a book of the church service, set out by king Edward, which in the time of his imprisonment he daily used; and unto his sonne Thomas he gave a latine booke, containing the notable sayings of the old martyrs, gathered out of Ecclesiastica Historia; and in the end of that booke he wrote his testament and last vale.” In this “vale,” dated the 5th of February, he says to his family, “I goe before, and you shall follow after, to our long home. I goe to the rest of my children. I have bequeathed you to the onely Omnipotent.” In the same paper he tells his “dear friends of Hadley, to remain in the light opened so plainely and simply, truly, throughly, and generally in all England,” for standing in which he was to die in flames. In the morning at two o’clock, the sheriff of London with his officers brought him, without light, from the counter to Aldgate. His wife, suspecting that he would be carried away thus privately, had watched, from the time they had parted, within the porch of St. Botolph’s church, having her daughter Mary with her, and a little orphan girl named Elizabeth, whom the honest martyr had reared from three years old to her then age of thirteen: and when the sheriff and his company came nigh to where they stood, the child Elizabeth cried, “O my dear father! Mother, mother, here is my father led away.” The darkness being so great that the one could not see the other, his wife cried, “Rowland, Rowland, where art thou?” Taylor answered, “Dear wife! I am here,” and he stayed; and the sheriff’s men would have forced him, but the sheriff said, “Stay a little, my masters, I pray you, and let him speak to his wife.” Then he took his daughter Mary in his arms, and he, and his wife, and the orphan girl kneeled and prayed; and the sheriff, and many who were present, wept; and he arose and kissed his wife, and shook her by the hand, and said, “Farewell, my dear wife, be of good comfort, for I am quiet in my conscience; God shall stir up a father for my children.” He had three others, besides his daughter Mary and the young Elizabeth. He then kissed Mary, and then Elizabeth, and he bade them, also, farewell and enjoined them to stand steadfast in their faith. His weeping wife said, “God be with thee, dear Rowland, I will, with God’s grace, meet thee at Hadleigh.” Then he was led on to the Woolsack inn, at Aldgate, where he was put in a chamber, under the custody of four yeomen of the guard and the sheriff’s men. Here his wife again desired to see him, but was restrained by the sheriff, who otherwise treated her with kindness, and offered her his own house to abide in; but she preferred to go to her mother’s, whither two officers conducted her, charging her mother to keep her within till their return. Meantime so soon as Taylor entered the chamber he prayed; and he remained at the inn until the sheriff of Essex was ready to receive him. At eleven o’clock the inn gates were shut, and then he was put on horseback within the gates. When they arrived outside, Taylor saw his son Thomas standing against the rails, in the care of his man John Hull; and he said, “Come hither, my son Thomas.” John Hull lifted the child up, and set him on the horse before his father; and Taylor put off his hat, and spoke a sentence or two to the people in behalf of matrimony, and then he lifted up his eyes and prayed for his son, and laid his hat on the child’s head, and blessed him. This done he delivered the child to John Hull, whom he took by the hand, and he said to him, “Farewell, John Hull, the faithfullest servant that ever man had.” Having so said, he rode forth with the sheriff of Essex and the yeomen of the guard to go to his martyrdom in Suffolk. When they came near to Brentwood, one Arthur Taysie, who had been servant to Taylor, supposing him free, took him by the hand and said, “Master Doctor, I am glad to see you again at liberty;” but the sheriff drove him back. At Brentwood, a close hood was put over Taylor’s face, with holes for his eyes to look out at, and a slit for his mouth to breathe through. These hoods were used at that place to be put on the martyrs that they should not be known, and that they should not speak to any one, on the road to the burning-places. Yet as they went, Taylor was so cheerful, and talked to the sheriff and his guards in such wise, that they were amazed at his constancy. At Chelmsford they met the sheriff of Suffolk, who was there to carry him into his county. At that time he supped with the two sheriffs. The sheriff of Essex laboured during supper to persuade him to return to queen Mary’s religion, telling him that all present would use their suit to the queen for his pardon, nor doubted they could obtain it. The sheriff reminded him, that he had been beloved for his virtues, and honoured for his learning; that, in the course of nature, he was likely to live many years; and that he might even be higher esteemed than ever; wherefore he prayed him to be advised: “This counsel I give you,” said the sheriff, “of a good heart and good will towards you;” and, thereupon he drank to him; and the yeomen of the guard said, “In like manner, upon that condition, master Doctor, we all drink to you.” When they had so done, and the cup came to Taylor, he staid awhile, as studying what he might say, and then answered thus: “Master sheriff, and my masters all, I heartily thank you for your good will. I have hearkened to your words and marked well your counsels; and to be plain with you, I do perceive that I have been deceived myself, and am likely to deceive a great many of their expectation.” At these words they were exceedingly glad. “Would ye know my meaning plainly?” he said. “Yea, good master Doctor,” answered the sheriff, “tell it us plainly.” “Then,” said Taylor, “I will tell you:” and he said, that, as his body was of considerable bulk, and as he thought, if he had died in his bed, it would have been buried in Hadleigh church-yard, so he had deceived himself; and, as there were a great many worms there abiding, which would have mealed handsomely upon him, so they, as well as himself, were deceived; “for” said he, “it must be burnt to ashes, and they will thereby lose their feeding.” The sheriff and his company were thereupon astonished at him, as being a man without fear of death, and making a jest of the flames. During their progress, many gentlemen and magistrates were admitted to see him, and entreated him, in like manner, but he remained immovable. Thus they drew near to Hadleigh: and when they rode over Hadleigh bridge, a poor man with his five small children awaited their coming. When they saw Taylor, they all fell down on their knees and held up their hands, and cried aloud, “God help and succour thee, as thou hast many a time succoured me and my poor children.” The streets of Hadleigh were crowded on each side by men and women, of the town and country, sorely weeping, and with piteous voices loudly bewailing the loss of their pastor, praying that he might be strengthened and comforted in his extremity, and exclaiming, “What shall become of this wicked world!” Taylor said, “I have preached to you God’s word and truth, and am come to seal it with my blood.” When he came to the almshouses, he put some money, that had been bestowed on him during his imprisonment, into a glove, and this he is said to have given to the poor almsmen as they stood at their doors, to see their wonted benefactor pass. At the last of the almshouses he inquired, “Is the blind man, and blind woman, that dwelt here, alive?” He was answered, “Yes; they are there, within.” Then he threw glove and all in at the window, and so rode forth towards the field of his death. Coming where a great multitude were assembled, he asked, “What place is this, and what meaneth it that so much people are gathered hither?” It was answered, “This is Aldham common, the place where you must suffer.” He said, “Thanked be God, I am even at home.” Then he alighted from his horse, and with both his hands rent the hood from his head. His hair was unseemly, for Bonner, when he degraded him, had caused it to be clipped in manner of a fool’s. At the sight of his ancient and reverend face, and his long white beard, the people burst into tears, and prayed for him aloud. He would have spoken to them, but whenever he attempted, one or other of the yeomen of the guard thrust a tipstaff into his mouth. Then he desired licence to speak, of the sheriff; but the sheriff refused him, and bade him remember his promise to the council: “Well,” quoth Taylor, “promise must be kept.” What the promise was is unknown. Seating himself on the ground he called to one in the crowd, “Soyce, I pray thee come and pull off my boots, and take them for thy labour; thou hast long looked for them, now take them.” Then he arose, and putting off his underclothes, them also he bestowed. This done, he cried with a loud voice, “Good people! I have taught you nothing but God’s holy word, and those lessons that I have taken out of God’s blessed book, the Holy Bible; and I am come hither this day to seal it with my blood.” One Holmes, a yeoman of the guard, who had used him cruelly all the way, then struck him a violent blow on the head “with a waster,” and said, “Is that the keeping of thy promise, thou heretick?” Whereupon Taylor knelt on the earth and prayed, and a poor, but faithful woman, stepped from among the people to pray with him: the guards would fain have thrust her away, they threatened to tread her down with their horses, but she was undismayed, and would not remove, but remained and prayed with him. Having finished his devotions he went to the stake, and kissed it, and placed himself in a pitch-barrel which had been set for him to stand in; and he stood with his back upright against the stake, and he folded his hands together, and he lifted his eyes towards heaven, and he prayed continually. Then they bound him with chains, and the sheriff called one Richard Donningham, a butcher, and commanded him to set up the faggots, but he said, “I am lame, sir, and not able to lift a faggot.” The sheriff threatened to send him to prison, but the man refused to obey his command notwithstanding. Then the sheriff appointed to this labour one Mullcine of Carsey, “a man for his virtues fit to be a hangman.” Soyce, a very drunkard, a man named Warwick, and one Robert King, “a deviser of interludes.” These four set up the faggots, and prepared for making ready the fire, and Warwick cast a faggot at the martyr, which lit upon his head and wounded his face, so that the blood ran down. Taylor said, “O, friend! I have harm enough, what needed that?” Then, while he repeated the psalm Miserere, in English, sir John Shelton struck him on the mouth: “You knave,” said he, “speak Latin; or I will make thee.” At last they set the faggots on fire, and Taylor, holding up both his hands, called on God, crying, “Merciful Father of Heaven! for Jesus Christ our saviour’s sake, receive my soul into thy hands!” He stood, during his burning, without crying or moving, till Soyce struck him on the head with a halberd, and the brains falling out, the corpse fell down into the fire.[60]
While some may deem this narrative of Rowland Taylor’s conduct too circumstantial, others perhaps may not so deem. It is to be considered as exemplifying the manners of the period wherein the event occurred, and may at least be acceptable to many. It will assuredly be approved by a few who regard inflexible adherence to principle, at the hazard of death itself, as preferable to a conscience-consuming subserviency, which, while it truckles to what the mind judges to be false, depraves the heart, and saps the foundations of public virtue.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·05.
February 10. Biographical Notice. 1818. On this day died in London, captain Thomas Morris, aged 74, a man of highly cultivated mind, who was born in its environs, and for whom when young a maternal uncle, of high military rank, procured an ensigncy. He beat for recruits at Bridgewater, and enlisted the affections of a Miss Chubb of that town, whom he married. He was ordered with his regiment to America, where he fought by the side of general Montgomery. Captain Morris at one time was taken by the Indians, and condemned to the stake; at the instant the women and children were preparing to inflict its tortures, he was recognised by an old sachem, whose life he had formerly saved, and who in grateful return pleaded so powerfully in his behalf, that he was unbound and permitted to return to his friends, who had given him up for lost. He published an affecting narrative of his captivity and sufferings; yet he was so attached to the Indian mode of life, that he used to declare they were the only human beings worthy of the name of MEN. On his return from America to England, he quitted the army and gave himself to literary studies, and the conversation of a few enlightened friends. In the midst of “the feast of reason, and the flow of soul,” he often sighed for the grand imagery of nature, the dashing cataracts of Columbia, the wild murmurs of rivers rolling through mountains, woods, and deserts. Having met with some disappointments which baffled his philosophy, he sought a spot for retirement, and found it in a nursery garden, at Paddington. Here in a small cottage, he compared Pope’s translation of Homer with the original, in which he was assisted by Mr. George Dyer, a gentleman well qualified for so pleasing a task. In this pursuit he passed some years, which he declared were the happiest of his life. With partiality for the dead languages, he was sensible to the vigour and copiousness of his own: he translated Juvenal into English, and enriched it with many notes, but it was never printed. He published a little poem, entitled “Quashy, or the Coal-black Maid,” a pathetic West India story. He lived in the style of a gentleman, and left a handsome sum to his children.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·92.
February 11. CHRONOLOGY. 1763. William Shenstone, the poet, died at his celebrated residence the Leasowes, near Hagley, in Worcestershire. He was born at Hales Owen, Shropshire, in 1714.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 40·00.
February 12. 1826.—First Sunday in Lent. The communion service of the church of England for the Sundays in Lent, was extracted from the offices appointed for these Sundays by the missal of Sarum, excepting the collect for the first Sunday, which was composed by the compilers of the liturgy, and also excepting the gospel for the second Sunday.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 38·37.
February 13. Valentine’s Eve. 1826. Hilary term ends. Cambridge term begins. VALENTINE’S EVE AT SWAFFHAM. For the Every-Day Book. At Swaffham in Norfolk it is customary to send valentines on this evening. Watching for a convenient opportunity, the door is slyly opened, and the valentine, attached to an apple or an orange, is thrown in; a loud rap at the door immediately follows, and the offender, taking to his heels, is off instantly. Those in the house, generally knowing for what purpose the announcing rap was made, commence a search for the juvenile billet doux: in this manner, numbers are disposed of by each youth. By way of teasing the person who attends the door, a white oblong square, the size of a letter, is usually chalked on the step of the door, and, should an attempt be made to pick it up, great amusement is thus afforded to some of the urchins, who are generally watching. K.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 38·10.
February 14. OLD CANDLEMAS DAY. Valentine. Referring to vol. i. from p. 215 to 230, for information concerning the origin of this festival of lovers, and the manner wherein it is celebrated, a communication is subjoined concerning a custom now observed in Norfolk. VALENTINE’S DAY AT LYNN. For the Every-Day Book. Independent of the homage paid to St. Valentine on this day at Lynn, (Norfolk,) it is in other respects a red-letter day amongst all classes of its inhabitants, being the commencement of its great annual mart. This mart was granted by a charter of Henry VIII., in the twenty-seventh year of his reign, “to begin on the day next after the feast of the purification of the blessed virgin Mary, and to continue six days next following,” (though now it is generally prolonged to a fortnight.) Since the alteration of the style, in 1752, it has been proclaimed on Valentine’s day. About noon, the mayor and corporation, preceded by a band of music, and attended by twelve decrepit old men, called from their dress “Red coats,” walk in procession to proclaim the mart, concluding by opening the antiquated, and almost obsolete court of “Piepowder.” Like most establishments of this nature, it is no longer attended for the purpose it was first granted, business having yielded to pleasure and amusement. Formerly Lynn mart and Stourbridge (Stirbitch) fair,[61] were the only places where small traders in this and the adjoining counties, supplied themselves with their respective goods. No transactions of this nature now take place, and the only remains to be perceived, are the “mart prices,” still issued by the grocers. Here the thrifty housewives, for twenty miles round, laid in their annual store of soap, starch, &c., and the booth of “Green” from Limehouse, was for three generations the emporium of such articles; but these no longer attend. A great deal of money is however spent, as immense numbers of persons assemble from all parts. Neither is their any lack of incitements to unburthen the pockets: animals of every description, tame and wild, giants and dwarfs, tumblers, jugglers, peep-shows, &c., all unite their attractive powers, in sounds more discordant than those which annoyed the ears of Hogarth’s “enraged musician.” The year 1796 proved particularly unfortunate to some of the inhabitants of Marshland who visited the mart. On the evening of February 23, eleven persons, returning from the day’s visit, were drowned by the upsetting of a ferryboat; and on the preceding day a man from Tilney, going to see the wild beasts, and putting his hand to the lion’s mouth, had his arm greatly lacerated, and narrowly escaped being torn to pieces. In the early part of the last century, an old building, which, before the reformation, had been a hall belonging to the guild of St. George, after being applied to various uses, was fitted up as a theatre, (and by a curious coincidence, where formerly had doubtless been exhibited, as was customary at the guild feasts, religious mysteries and pageants of the catholic age, again was exhibited the mysteries and pageants of the protestant age,) during the mart and a few weeks afterwards; but with no great success, as appears by an anecdote related of the celebrated George Alexander Stevens. Having in his youthful days performed here with a strolling company, who shared amongst them the receipts of the house, after several nights’ performance to nearly empty benches, while performing the part of Lorenzo, in Shakspeare’s “Merchant of Venice,” he thus facetiously parodied the speech of Lorenzo to Jessica, in the fifth act, as applicable to his distressed circumstances: “Oh Jessica! in such a night as this we came to town,
And since that night we’ve shar’d but half a crown;
Let you and I then bid these folks good night,
For if we longer stay, they’ll starve us quite.”
This neglect of the drama is not, however, to be attributed to the visitors or the inhabitants at the present day, a very elegant and commodious theatre having been erected in 1814, at a considerable expense, in another part of the town. But even here, a fatality attends our catholic ancestors, indicative of the instability of all sublunary affairs. The theatre has been erected on the site of the cloisters and cemetery of the grey friars’ monastery, the tall, slender tower of which is still standing near, and is the only one remaining out of ten monasteries found in Lynn at the dissolution; where, but for the lustful rapacity of that tyrannical “defender of the faith,” Henry VIII., this sacred asylum of our departed ancestors would not have been profaned, nor their mouldering particles disturbed, by a building as opposite to the one originally erected, as darkness is to light. Thus time, instead of consecrating, so entirely obliterates our veneration for the things of yesterday, that the reflecting mind cannot forbear to exclaim with the moralist of old,—“Sic transit gloria mundi.” K. David Love, of Nottingham, Aged 74, A. D. 1824. David Love, of Nottingham,
Aged 74, A. D. 1824. “Here’s David’s likeness for his book,
All those who buy may at it look,
As he is in his present state,
Now printed from a copper-plate.”
These lines are beneath the portrait from whence the above engraving is taken. It is a very faithful likeness of David Love, only a little too erect:—not quite enough of the stoop of the old man of 76 in it,—but it is a face and a figure which will be recognised by thousands in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The race of the old minstrels has been long extinct;—that of the ballad-singers is fast following it—yet David is both one and the other. He is a bard and a caroller,—a wight who has wandered over as many hills and dales as any of the minstrels and troubadours of old;—a man who has sung, when he had cause enough for crying—who has seen many ups and downs, and has seldom failed to put his trials and hardships into rhyme. He is the poet of poverty and patience—teaching experience. He has seen the “huts where poor men lie”
all his life; yet he has never ceased to chant as he proceeded on his painful pilgrimage, like the “nightingale with a thorn in her breast.” It is true, he does not carry his harp to accompany his strains, but he carries his life, “The Life, Adventures, and Experience of David Love, written by Himself. Fifth edition:” and well doth it deserve both its title and sale. A curious, eventful story of a poor man’s it is. First he is a poor parent-deserted lad; then he has wormed himself into good service, and afterwards into a coal-pit, where he breaks his bones and almost crushes out life; then he is a traveller, a shopkeeper, a soldier fighting against the Highland rebels; he falls in love, gets into wedlock and a workhouse, is never in despair, and never out of trouble; with a heart so buoyant, that, like a cork on a boisterous flood, however he might be plunged into the depths, he is sure to rise again to the surface, and in all places and cases still pours out his rhymes—pictures of scenes around him, strange cabins and strange groups, love verses, acrostics, hymns, &c. “I have composed many rhymes,
On various subjects, and the times,
And call’d the trials of prisoners’ crimes
The cash to bring;
When old I grew, composed hymns,
And them did sing.”
So David sped, and so he speeds now in his 77th year, only that his travels have left him finally fixed at Nottingham. His wars and his loves have vanished; his circle of action has annually become more and more contracted; till, at length, the town includes the whole field of his perambulations, and even that is almost more than his tottering frame can traverse. Yet there he is! and the stranger who visits Nottingham will be almost sure to see him, as represented in the print, crossing the market-place, with a parcel of loose papers in his hand;—a rhyming account of the last Goose Fair, a flood, an execution, or one of David’s own marriages,—for be it known to thee, gentle reader, that David Love has been a true son of the family of the Loves. He has not sung his amatory lays for naught; he has captivated the hearts of no less than three damsels, and he has various and memorable experience in wives. David, like many of our modern geniuses, is a Scotchman. He tells us that he was born near Edinburgh, but the precise place he affects not to know. The fact is, he is not very strong in his faith that, as he has tasted the sweets of a parish, he cannot be removed, and thinks it best to keep his birth-place secret: but the spot is Torriburn, on the Forth, the Scotch Highgate. David “has been to mair toons na Torriburn,” as the Scotch say, when they intimate that they are not to be gulled. After sustaining many characters in the drama of life whilst yet very young, a schoolmaster among the rest, he fairly flung himself and his genius upon the world, and rambled from place to place in Scotland, calling around him all the young ears and love-darting eyes by his original ballads. It was a dangerous life, and David did not escape scatheless. “At length so very bold I grew,
My songs exposed to public view,
And crowds of people round me drew,
I was so funny;
From side to side I nimbly flew
To catch the money.”
And he caught not only money, but matrimony,—and such a wife! alas! for poor David! “As she always will rule the roast,
I’d better be tied to a post,
And whipped to death,
Than with her tongue to be so tossed,
And bear her wrath.
She called me both rogue and fool,
And over me she strove to rule;
I sat on the repenting stool—
There tears I shed;
Sad my complaint, I said, O dool!
That e’er I wed.”
The next step evidently enough was enlisting, which he did into the duke of Buccleugh’s regiment; where, he says, he distinguished himself by writing a song in compliment of the regiment and its noble commander, concluding with, “Now, at the last, what do you think
Of the author, David Love?”
And whenever the duke and the officers saw him, they were sure to point, and say, “What do you think of the author, David Love?” These seem to have been David’s golden days. Not only— “One hand the pen, and one the sword did wield,”
but he was also an actor of plays for the amusement of the officers. However, his discharge came, and adventures crowded thickly upon him. He traversed England in all directions, married a second and a third time, figured away in London and Edinburgh, and finally in Nottingham, with ballads and rhymes of his own composing; saw the inside of a prison, was all but hanged for his suspicious and nomadic poverty, and after all, by his own showing, is now to be classed with the most favoured of mortals:— “I am now 76 years of age, and I both see and hear as well as I did thirty years ago. My wife is aged about fifty, and has been the space of a year in tolerable health. She works hard at her silk-wheel, to assist me; is an excellent housewife; gossips none: cleanly in cooking, famous at washing, good at sewing, marking, and mending her own and children’s clothes. For making markets none can equal her. Consults me in every thing, to find if I think it right, before she proceeds to buy provisions, or clothes; strives to please me in every thing; and always studies my welfare, rejoicing when I am in health, grieved when I am pained or uneasy. She is my tender nurse to nourish me, my skilful doctress to administer relief when I am in sickness or in pain; in short, a better wife a poor man never had.” Truly, David, I think so too! A happy man art thou to be possessed of such an incomparable helpmate; and still happier that, unlike many a prouder bard, thou art sensible of thy blessings. To show that although our minstrel often invokes the muse to paltry subjects for paltry gains, yet he can sometimes soar into a higher region, I give the following:— THE CHILD’S DREAM.
The substance thereof being founded on fact I’ll tell you who I saw last night,
As I lay sleeping on my bed;
A shining creature all in light,
To me she seemed a heavenly maid.
I meet her tripping o’er the dew,
Fine as a queen of May, mamma;
She saw, she smiled, she to me flew,
And bade me come away, mamma.
I looked, I loved, I blushed awhile,
Oh! how could I say no, mamma?
She spoke so sweet, so sweet did smile,
I was obliged to go, mamma.
For love my tender heart beguiled,
I felt unusual flames, mamma;
My inward fancy turned so wild,
So very strange my dream, mamma.
Indeed I was, I know not how,
Oh had you only been with me;
Such wonders opened to my view,
As few but holy angels see.
Methought we wandered in a grove,
All green with pleasant fields, mamma;
In joyful measures on we move,
As music rapture yields, mamma.
She took me in her snow-white hand,
Then led me through the air, mamma.
Far higher above sea and land,
Than ever eagles were, mamma.
The sea and land, with all their store,
Of rivers, woods, and lofty hills,
Indeed they did appear no more
Than little streams or purling rills.
I sought my dear papa’s estate,
But found it not at all, mamma;
The world in whole seemed not so great
As half a cannon-ball, mamma.
We saw the sun but like a star,
The moon was like a mustard seed;
Like Elias in his fiery car,
All glorious winged with light’ning speed.
Swift as our thoughts, oh joyful day.
We glanced through all the boundless spheres;
Their music sounding all the way,
Heaven sweetly rushing in our ears,
Now opens, and all we saw before
Were lost entirely to our view;
The former things are now no more,
To us all things appeared new.
No death is there, nor sorrow there,
E’er to disturb the heavenly bliss,
For death, sin, hell, and sorrow are,
Entirely lost in the abyss.
With wintry storms the ground ne’er pines
Clothed in eternal bloom, mamma;
For there the sun of glory shines,
And all the just with him, mamma.
I saw my sister Anna there,
A virgin in her youthful prime;
More than on earth her features fair,
And like the holy angels’ fine.
Her robe was all a flowing stream
Of silver dipt in light, mamma,
But ah! it ’woke me from my dream,
It shone so strong and bright, mamma.
With this specimen of David’s poetical faculties, I leave him to the kind consideration of the well disposed. January, 1826. M. T.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 37·42.
February 15. 1826. Ember Week. Ember weeks are those in which the Ember days fall. A variety of explanations have been given of the word Ember, but Nelson prefers Dr. Marechal’s, “who derives it from the Saxon word importing, a circuit or course; so that these fasts being not occasional, but returning every year in certain courses, may properly be said to be Ember days, because fasts in course.” The Ember days are the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after the first Sunday in Lent, and after the 13th of December. It is enjoined by the xxxi. canon of the church, “that deacons and ministers be ordained, or made, but only on the Sundays immediately following these Ember feasts.”[62]
1731. Their majesties king George II. and the queen, being desirous of seeing “the noble art of printing,” a printing press and cases were put up at St. James’s palace on the 15th of February, and the duke (of York) wrought at one of the cases, to compose for the press a little book of his own writing, called “The Laws of Dodge-Hare.” The two youngest princes, likewise, composed their names, &c., under the direction of Mr. S. Palmer, a printer, and author of the “History of Printing,” which preceded Mr. Ames’s more able work.[63]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·22. [62] Audley’s Companion to the Almanac.[63] Gentleman’s Magazine.
February 16. CHRONOLOGY. A question was carried in the house of commons for building a bridge over the Thames, from Palace-yard to the Surrey side. During the debate, that river overflowed its banks by reason of a strong spring tide; the water was higher than ever known before, and rose above two feet in Westminster-hall, where the courts being sitting, the judges, &c. were obliged to be carried out. The water came into all the cellars and ground rooms near the river on both sides, and flowed through the streets of Wapping and Southwark, as its proper channel; a general inundation covered all the marshes and lowlands in Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Lincolnshire, and some thousands of cattle were destroyed, with several of their owners in endeavouring to save them. The tide being brought in by a strong wind at N. W. was the highest in Lincolnshire of any for 135 years past. Seventeen breaches were made, about sunrise, in the banks of the river between Spalding and Wisbech, with several between Wisbech and Lynn, and irreparable damage done; some graziers having lost all their cattle. At Clay, in Norfolk, waters came over the great beach, almost demolished the town, and left nine feet of water in the marshes. At Gold Ongar, Essex, Mr. Cooper, and four of his servants, were drowned in endeavouring to save some sheep, the sea wall giving way of a sudden. The little isles of Candy and Foulness, on the coast of Essex, were quite under water; not a hoof was saved thereon, and the inhabitants were taken from the upper part of their houses into boats. The particular damages may be better conceived than related.[64]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 38·90.
February 17. Sittings after Term. On the day after the expiration of every term, the courts of law continue to sit at Westminster, and try causes; and some judges come into London at the same time, for the same purpose. These sittings are called the “sittings after term,” and during these periods, suits, arising out of clashing claims of important interests, are usually decided by the verdicts of special juries, and other litigations are disposed of.
The origin and progress of every possible action, in a court of law, are succinctly portrayed by “the Tree of Common Law”—an engraving in vol. i. p. 234. It stands there for “ornament and use;”—there are plenty of books to explain technical terms, and show the practice of the courts; any uninformed person, therefore, may easily obtain further information as to the modes; and any respectable attorney will advise an inquirer, who states all the particulars of his case, concerning the costs of attempting to sue or defend, and the chances of success. After proceeding so far, it will be requisite to pause, and then, as paramount to the legal advice, common sense should weigh consequences well, before giving “instructions to sue,” or “defend,” in ———— that wide and pathless maze
Where law and custom, truth and fiction,
Craft, justice, strife, and contradiction,
With every blessing of confusion,
Quirk, error, quibble, and delusion,
Are all, if rightly understood,
Like jarring ministers of state,
’Mid anger, jealousy, and hate,
In friendly coalition joined,
To harmonize and bless mankind.
To some “whimsical miscellanies,” subjoined at the place aforesaid, can be added or annexed, more or many others, of the same or the like kind. The realities of law may be relieved by the pleasures of imagination, and the heaviness of the “present sittings” be enlivened by a reported case, in the words of the reporter, (Stevens’s Lect.) premising, however, that he first publicly stated, with his head in his wig, and with a nosegay in his hand, “Law is—law,—law is law, and as, in such and so forth, and hereby, and aforesaid, provided always, nevertheless, notwithstanding. Law is like a country dance, people are led up and down in it till they are tired. Law is like a book of surgery, there are a great many terrible cases in it. It is also like physic, they that take least of it are best off. Law is like a homely gentlewoman, very well to follow. Law is also like a scolding wife, very bad when it follows us. Law is like a new fashion, people are bewitched to get into it; it is also like bad weather, most people are glad when they get out of it.” The same learned authority observes, that the case before referred to, and hereafter immediately stated, came before him, that is to say, Bullum v. Boatum.
Boatum v. Bullum. There were two farmers, farmer A and farmer B. Farmer A was seized or possessed of a bull; farmer B was seized or possessed of a ferry-boat. Now the owner of the ferry-boat, having made his boat fast to a post on shore, with a piece of hay, twisted rope fashion, or as we say, vulgo vocato, a hay-band. After he had made his boat fast to a post on shore, as it was very natural for a hungry man to do, he went up town to dinner; farmer A’s bull, as it was very natural for a hungry bull to do, came down town to look for a dinner; and the bull observing, discovering, seeing, and spying out, some turnips in the bottom of the ferry-boat the bull scrambled into the ferry-boat—he eat up the turnips, and to make an end of his meal, he fell to work upon the hay-band. The boat being eaten from its moorings, floated down the river, with the bull in it: it struck against a rock—beat a hole in the bottom of the boat, and tossed the bull overboard. Thereupon the owner of the bull brought his action against the boat, for running away with the bull, and the owner of the boat brought his action against the bull for running away with the boat. At trial of these causes, Bullum v. Boatum, Boatum v. Bullum, the counsel for the bull began with saying, “My lord, and you, gentlemen of the jury, “We are counsel in this cause for the bull. We are indicted for running away with the boat. Now, my lord, we have heard of running horses, but never of running bulls before. Now, my lord, the bull could no more run away with the boat than a man in a coach may be said to run away with the horses; therefore, my lord, how can we punish what is not punishable? How can we eat what is not eatable? Or how can we drink what is not drinkable? Or, as the law says, how can we think on what is not thinkable? Therefore, my lord, as we are counsel in this cause for the bull, if the jury should bring the bull in guilty, the jury would be guilty of a bull.” The counsel for the boat affirmed, that the bull should be nonsuited, because the declaration did not specify of what colour he was; for thus wisely, and thus learnedly spoke the counsel: “My lord, if the bull was of no colour, he must be of some colour; and if he was not of any colour, of what colour could the bull be?” I overruled this objection myself (says the reporter) by observing the bull was a white bull, and that white is no colour: besides, as I told my brethren, they should not trouble their heads to talk of colour in the law, for the law can colour any thing. The causes went to reference, and by the award, both bull and boat were acquitted, it being proved that the tide of the river carried them both away. According to the legal maxim, there cannot be a wrong without a remedy; I therefore advised a fresh case to be laid before me, and was of opinion, that as the tide of the river carried both bull and boat away, both bull and boat had a right of action against the water-bailiff. Upon this opinion an action was commenced, and this point of law arose, how, whether, when, and whereby, or by whom, the facts could be proved on oath, as the boat was not compos mentis. The evidence point was settled by Boatum’s attorney, who declared that for his client he would swear any thing. At the trial, the water-bailiff’s charter was read, from the original record in true law Latin, to support an averment in the declaration that the plaintiffs were carried away either by the tide of flood, or the tide of ebb. The water-bailiffs charter stated of him and of the river, whereof or wherein he thereby claimed jurisdiction, as follows:—AquÆ bailiffi est magistratus in choisi, sapor omnibus, fishibus, qui habuerunt finnos et scalos, claws, shells, et talos, qui swimmare in freshibus, vel saltibus, riveris, lakos, pondis, canalibus et well boats, sive oysteri, prawni, whitini, shrimpi, turbutus solus; that is, not turbots alone, but turbots and soals both together. Hereupon arose a nicety of law; for the law is as nice as a new-laid egg, and not to be understood by addle-headed people. Bullum and Boatum mentioned both ebb and flood, to avoid quibbling; but it being proved, that they were carried away neither by the tide of flood, nor by the tide of ebb, but exactly upon the top of high water, they were nonsuited; and thereupon, upon their paying all costs, they were allowed, by the court, to begin again, de novo.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 37·82.
February 18. Revivification of Trees. Mr. Arthur Aikin, in his “Natural History of the Year,” narrates the first vital function in trees on the conclusion of winter. This is the ascent of the sap after the frost is moderated, and the earth sufficiently thawed. The absorbent vessels composing the inner bark reach to the extremity of the fibres of the roots, and thus, through the roots, imbibe water, which, mixing there with a quantity of saccharine matter, forms sap, and is from thence abundantly distributed through the trunk and branches to every individual bud. The birch tree in spring, on being tapped, yields its sap, which is fermented into wine. The palm tree in the tropics of the same season yields its sap by the same method, which is made into palm wine, and the sap of the sugar maple in North America being boiled, yields the maple sugar. “This great accession of nourishment (the sap) causes the bud to swell, to break through its covering, and to spread into blossoms, or lengthen into a shoot bearing leaves. This is the first process, and, properly speaking, is all that belongs to the springing or elongation of trees; and in many plants, that is, all those which are annual or deciduous, there is no other process; the plant absorbs juices from the earth, and in proportion to the quantity of these juices increases in size: it expands its blossoms, perfects its fruit, and when the ground is incapable by drought or frost of yielding any more moisture, or when the vessels of the plant are not able to draw it up, the plant perishes. But in trees, though the beginning and end of the first process is exactly similar to what takes places in vegetables, yet there is a second process, which at the same time that it adds to their bulk, enables them to endure and go on increasing through a long series of years. “The second process begins soon after the first, in this way. At the base of the footstalk of each leaf a small bud is gradually formed; but the absorbent vessels of the leaf having exhausted themselves in the formation of the bud, are unable to bring it nearer to maturity: in this state it exactly resembles a seed, containing within it the rudiments of vegetation, but destitute of absorbent vessels to nourish and evolve the embryo. Being surrounded, however, by sap, like a seed in moist earth, it is in a proper situation for growing; the influence of the sun sets in motion the juices of the bud and of the seed, and the first operation in both of them is to send down roots a certain depth into the ground for the purpose of obtaining the necessary moisture. The bud accordingly shoots down its roots upon the inner bark of the tree, till they reach the part covered by the earth. Winter now arriving, the cold and defect of moisture, owing to the clogged condition of the absorbent vessels, cause the fruit and leaves to fall, so that, except the provision of buds with roots, the remainder of the tree, like an annual plant, is entirely dead: the leaves, the flowers, and fruit are gone, and what was the inner bark, is no longer organized, while the roots of the buds form a new inner bark; and thus the buds with their roots contain all that remains alive of the whole tree. It is owing to this annual renovation of the inner bark, that the tree increases in bulk; and a new coating being added every year, we are hence furnished with an easy and exact method of ascertaining the age of a tree by counting the number of concentric circles of which the trunk is composed. A tree, therefore, properly speaking, is rather a congeries of a multitude of annual plants, than a perennial individual. “The sap in trees always rises as soon as the frost is abated, that when the stimulus of the warm weather in the early spring acts upon the bud, there should be at hand a supply of food for its nourishment; and if by any means the sap is prevented from ascending at the proper time, the tree infallibly perishes. Of this a remarkable instance occurred in London, during the spring succeeding the hard winter of the year 1794. The snow and ice collecting in the streets so as to become very inconvenient, they were cleared, and many cartloads were placed in the vacant quarters of Moorfields; several of these heaps of snow and frozen rubbish were piled round some of the elm-trees that grow there. At the return of spring, those of the trees that were not surrounded with the snow expanded their leaves as usual, while the others, being still girt with a large frozen mass, continued quite bare; for the fact was, the absorbents in the lower part of the stem, and the earth in which the trees stood, were still exposed to a freezing cold. In some weeks, however, the snow was thawed, but the greater number of the trees were dead, and those few that did produce any leaves were very sickly, and continued in a languishing state all summer, and then died.”
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 37·92.
February 19. 1826.—Second Sunday in Lent. The First Bird’s Nest in Spring. Of all our native birds, none begins to build so soon as the raven: by the latter end of this month it has generally laid its eggs and begun to sit. The following anecdote, illustrative of its attachment to its nest, is related by Mr. White in his “Natural History of Selborne.” “In the centre of this grove there stood an oak, which, though shapely and tall on the whole, bulged out into a large excrescence about the middle of the stem. On this a pair of ravens had fixed their residence for such a series of years, that the oak was distinguished by the name of the raven-tree. Many were the attempts of the neighbouring youths to get at this eyry; the difficulty whetted their inclinations, and each was ambitious of surmounting the arduous task. But when they arrived at the swelling, it jutted out so much in their way, and was so far beyond their grasp, that the most daring lads were awed, and acknowledged the undertaking to be too hazardous. So the ravens built on, nest upon nest, in perfect security, till the fatal day arrived in which the wood was to be levelled. It was in the month of February, when those birds usually sit. The saw was applied to the butt, the wedges were inserted into the opening, the woods echoed to the heavy blows of the beetle and mallet, the tree nodded to its fall, but still the dam sat on. At last, when it gave way, the bird was flung from her nest; and though her parental affection deserved a better fate, was whipped down by the twigs, which brought her dead to the ground.”[65]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 38·37.
February 20. The ways of the Season. The roads now are usually heavy, that is, the thaws have so entirely liberated the water in the earth, that the subsoil, which had been expanded by the action of the frost, becomes loosened, and, yielding mud to the surface, increases the draught of carriages. Now, therefore, the commissioners and agents who execute their duty have full employment, and the highways afford employment to a large number of persons who are destitute of their customary labour, or unfit for other work. Travelling in Ireland. Travelling in Ireland. And is it you’d be riding, by Blackwater to Fermoy?
You’ll be accommodated, to your heart’s content and joy,
There’s not a beast, nor car, but what’s beautiful and easy;
And then the pleasant road—bad’s the luck but it’ll please ye!
MS. Ballad. Mr. Crofton Croker’s “Researches in the South of Ireland,” besides accounts of scenery and architectural remains, and illustrations of popular manners and superstition, conveys a very good idea of the roads and the methods of travelling in that part of the sister kingdom. The usual conveyance is called a car; its wheels are either a solid block rounded to the desired size, or they are formed of three pieces of wood clamped together. The wheels are fixed to a massive wooden axletree; this supports the shafts, which are as commonly constructed on the outside as on the inside of the wheels. In one of these machines Mr. Croker, with a lady and gentleman who accompanied him on his tour, took their seats. The car and horse were precisely of that description and condition in the engraving. Mr. W. H. Brooke painted a picture of this gentleman’s party, from whence he has obligingly made the drawing for the present purpose; the only alteration is in the travellers, for whom he has substituted a family on their removal from one cabin to another. This, which is the common Irish car, is used throughout the province of Leinster, the midland counties, and some parts of the north. The country, or farmer’s car always has the wheels on the outside of the shafts, with a balustrade or upright railing fixed from the shaft to the side bars, which rise diagonally from them; this sort of enclosure is also at the back. This car is open at top for the convenience of carrying hay, corn, vegetables, tubs, packages, and turf, which is generally placed in wicker baskets, called a “kish;” two or four of these placed side by side occupy the entire body. The car, with the wheels between the shafts, is used for like purposes, but has the additional honour of being rendered a family conveyance, by cart ropes intertwisted or crossing each other from the top bars, whereon a ticking, stuffed with straw, and a quilt or coverlid, form a cushion for the comfort of the travellers. The car is the common, and indeed the only, mode of carrying coals in the city of Dublin to the houses of the consumers: from six to nine sacks, making about half a ton, lie very snugly across the bars. Of course, as a family conveyance, it is only in use among the poorest class in the country. The common car somewhat varies in shape, as will appear from the following figure, also drawn by Mr. Brooke. cart It must be added, that though these cars maintain their ground in uncultivated districts, they are quickly disappearing, in the improved parts of Ireland, before the Scotch carts introduced by the agricultural societies. The Irish “jaunting-car,” the “jingle,” the “noddy,” and a variety of other carriages, which ply for hire in Dublin, are wholly distinct and superior vehicles.
The following interesting narrative, in the words of its author, illustrates the nature of the car, the state of the roads, and the “manners” of the people. A JAUNT IN A COUNTRY CAR
From Lismore to Fermoy
By T. Crofton Croker, Esq. Having hired a car at Lismore to take us to Fermoy, and wishing to walk part of the way along the banks of the Blackwater, we desired the driver to meet us at a given point. On arriving there, the man pretended not to have understood we were three in party, and demanded, in consequence, an exorbitant addition to the sum agreed on. Although we were without any other means of conveyance for eight Irish miles, it was resolved not to submit to this imposition, and we accordingly withdrew our luggage and dismissed the car, intending to seek another amongst a few cabins that appeared at a little distance from the road side. A high dispute ensued with the driver, who, of course, was incensed at this proceeding, and endeavoured to enlist in his cause the few straggling peasants that had collected around us; but having taken refuge and placed our trunks in the nearest cabin, ourselves and property became sacred, and the disposition to hostility, which had been at first partially expressed, gradually died away. When we began to make inquiries for a horse and car of any kind to take us into Fermoy, our endeavours were for some time fruitless. One person had a car, but no horse. Another had a car building, which, if Dermot Leary were as good as his word, would be finished next week some time, “God willing.” At length we gained intelligence of a horse that was “only two miles off, drawing turf: sure he could be fetched in less than no time.” But then again, “that big car of Thaddy Connor’s was too great a load for him entirely. Sure the baste would never draw the car into Fermoy, let alone their honours and the trunks.” After some further consultation, a car was discovered more adapted to the capabilities of the miserable animal thus called upon to “leave work and carry wood,” and though of the commonest kind we were glad to secure it. By means of our trunks and some straw we formed a kind of lodgment on the car, which, being without springs and on the worst possible of roads, was not exactly a bed of down. The severe contusions we received on precipitating into the numerous cavities, though no joke, caused some laughter; on which the driver turned round with a most facetious expression of countenance, suggesting that “May be the motion did not just agree with the lady, but never fear, she would soon get used to it, and be asleep before we got half way to Fermoy.” This prediction, it will readily be supposed, was not fulfilled; and I believe it was three days before we recovered from the bruises of that journey. It is difficulty to say whether our situation will excite mirth or sympathy in the minds of our readers, but a sketch may do no injury to the description. [In Mr. Croker’s volume an engraving on wood is inserted.] Many Irish villages boast a post-chaise, the horses for which are not unfrequently taken from the plough, and the chaise itself submitted to a temporary repair before starting, to render it, if the parody of a nautical phrase may be allowed, “road-worthy;” but the defects are never thought of one moment before the chaise is required; and the miseries of posting in Ireland have, with justice, afforded subject for the caricaturist. Tired horses or a break-down are treated by a driver, whose appearance is the very reverse of the smart jockey-like costume of an English postilion, with the utmost resignation, as matters of unavoidable necessity. With a slouched hat—slovenly shoes and stockings—and a long, loose great coat wrapped round him, he sits upon a bar in front of the carriage and urges on his horses by repeated applications of the whip, accompanied with the most singular speeches, and varied by an involuntary burst of his musical talent, whistling a tune adapted to the melancholy pace of the fatigued animals, as he walks slowly beside them up the ascent of every hill. “Did you give the horses a feed of oats at the village where we stopped to sketch?” inquired one of my fellow-travellers of the driver, who for the last three or four miles had with much exertion urged on the jaded hacks. “I did not, your honour,” was the reply, “but sure, and they know I promised them a good one at Limerick.” Nor is this instance of pretended understanding between man and horse singular. Riding once in company with a poor farmer from Cork to Mallow, I advised him to quicken the pace of his steed as the evening was closing in, and the lurid appearance of the sky foreboded a storm. “Sure then that I would with the greatest pleasure in life for the honour I have out of your company, sir; but I promised the baste to let him walk, and I never belie myself to any one, much less to a poor creature that carries me—for, says the baste to me, I’m tired, as good right I have, and I’ll not go a step faster—and you won’t make me—I scorn it says I, so take your own way.” A verbatim dialogue on an Irish break-down happily characterises that accident: the scene, a bleak mountain, and the time, the return of the driver with another chaise from the nearest station which afforded one—seven miles distant. “Is the carriage you have brought us safe?” (One of the travellers attempts to get in.) “Oh never fear, sir; wait till I just bail out the water and put a little sop of hay in the bottom—and sure now and ’tis a queer thing that the ould black chaise should play such a trick, and it has gone this road eleven years and never broke down afore. But no wonder poor cratur, the turnpike people get money enough for mending the roads, and bad luck to the bit of it they mend, but put it all in their pockets.” “What, the road?” “Noe, your honour, the money.” To such as can bear with composure and indifference lesser and temporary misfortunes, those attendant on an Irish tour become objects of merriment; the very essence of the innate ingenuity and wit of the people is called out by such evils; and the customary benediction muttered by the peasant on the meeting a traveller, is changed into the whimsical remark or shrewd reply that mock anticipation. Of late, jingles, as they are termed, have been established between the principal towns. These are carriages on easy springs, calculated to contain six or eight persons. The roof is supported by a slight iron frame capable of being unfixed in fine weather, and the curtains, which may be opened and closed at will, afford complete protection from sun and rain; their rate of travelling is nearly the same as that of the stage-coach, and they are both a cheaper and more agreeable conveyance. On our way from Cork to Youghall in one of these machines, we were followed by a poor wretch ejaculating the most dreadful oaths and imprecations in Irish. His head was of an uncommonly large and stupid shape, and his idiotic countenance was rendered fierce and wild by a long and bushy red beard. On our driver giving him a piece of bread, for which he had run beside the jingle at least half a mile, he uttered three or four terrific screams, accompanied by some antic and spiteful gestures. I should not remark this circumstance here were it one of less frequent occurrence; but on most of the public roads in the south of Ireland, fools and idiots (melancholy spectacles of humanity!) are permitted to wander at large, and in consequence of this freedom have acquired vicious habits, to the annoyance of every passenger: throwing stones, which they do with great dexterity, is amongst the most dangerous of their practices, and a case is known to me where the wife of a respectable farmer, having been struck on the temple by a stone thrown at her by an idiot, died a few days after. Within my recollection, Cove-lane, one of the most frequented parts of Cork, as leading to the Cove-passage, Carrigaline and Monkstown roads, was the station of one of these idiots, who seldom allowed an unprotected woman to pass without following her, and inflicting the most severe pinches on her back and arms; yet this unfortunate and mischievous being for many years was suffered by the civil power to remain the terror of every female, and that too within view of a public asylum for the reception of such. But to return from this digression. The charges at inferior towns and villages are extravagant in an inverse proportion to the indifference of their accommodation, and generally exceed those of the first hotels in the metropolis. Our bill at Kilmallock was any thing but moderate, and yet the house, though the best the town afforded, appeared to be one where carmen were oftener lodged than gentry. The landlady stood at the door, and with a low curtsey and a good-humoured smile welcomed us to “the ancient city of Kilmallock;” in the same breath informed us, that she was a gentlewoman born and bred, and that she had a son, “as fine an officer as ever you could set eyes on in a day’s walk, who was a patriarch (a patriot) in South America;” then leading us up a dark and narrow staircase to the apartment we were to occupy, wished to know our names and business, whence we came and where we were going; but left the room on our inquiring, in the first place, what we could have to eat. After waiting a reasonable time our demands were attended to by a barefooted female, who to our anxiety respecting what we could have for supper, replied with perfect confidence, “Just any thing you like, sure!” “Have you any thing in the house?” “Indeed and we have not; but it’s likely I might be able to get an egg for ye.” An examination of the bedrooms will not prove more satisfactory; a glass or soap are luxuries seldom found. Sometimes one coarse and very small towel is provided; at Kilmallock, the measurement of mine was half a yard in length and a quarter in breadth; its complexion, too, evinced that it had assisted in the partial ablutions of many unfastidious persons. Mr. Arthur Young’s constant ejaculation, when he lighted on such quarters in Ireland, usually occurred to my mind, “Preserve me, Fate, from such another!” and I have no doubt he would agree with me, that two very essential requisites in an Irish tour are a stock of linen, and a tolerable partiality for bacon. But travellers, any more than beggars, cannot always be choosers, and those who will not submit with patience to the accidents and inconveniences of a journey, must sit at home and read the road that others travel. “Who alwaies walkes, on carpet soft and gay,
Knowes not hard hills, nor likes the mountaine way.”[66]
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 39·17.
February 21. Seasonable Rules. On p. 187 there is a “Letter,” delivered to a favourite servant at parting, which deserves to be printed in letters of gold, or, what is better, because it is easier and more useful, it should be imprinted on the memory of every person who reads it. There are sentiments in it as useful to masters and mistresses as their domestics. The following “Rules” may likewise be perused with advantage by both; they are deemed “seasonable,” because, as good-livers say, good things are never out of season. Rules for Servants. I. A good character is valuable to every one, but especially to servants; for it is their bread, and without it they cannot be admitted into any creditable family; and happy it is that the best of characters is in every one’s power to deserve. II. Engage yourself cautiously, but stay long in your place, for long service shows worth—as quitting a good place through passion, is a folly which is always lamented of too late. III. Never undertake any place you are not qualified for; for pretending to what you do not understand, exposes yourself, and, what is still worse, deceives them whom you serve. IV. Preserve your fidelity; for a faithful servant is a jewel, for whom no encouragement can be too great. V. Adhere to truth; for falsehood is detestable, and he that tells one lie, must tell twenty more to conceal it. VI. Be strictly honest; for it is shameful to be thought unworthy of trust. VII. Be modest in your behaviour; it becomes your station, and is pleasing to your superiors. VIII. Avoid pert answers; for civil language is cheap, and impertinence provoking. IX. Be clean in your business; for those who are slovens and sluts, are disrespectful servants. X. Never tell the affairs of the family you belong to; for that is a sort of treachery, and often makes mischief; but keep their secrets, and have none of your own. XI. Live friendly with your fellow-servants; for the contrary destroys the peace of the house. XII. Above all things avoid drunkenness; for that is an inlet to vice, the ruin of your character, and the destruction of your constitution. XIII. Prefer a peaceable life, with moderate gains, to great advantage and irregularity. XIV. Save your money; for that will be a friend to you in old age. Be not expensive in dress, nor marry too soon. XV. Be careful of your master’s property; for wastefulness is a sin. XVI. Never swear; for that is a crime without excuse, as there is no pleasure in it. XVII. Be always ready to assist a fellow-servant; for good nature gains the love of every one. XVIII. Never stay when sent on a message; for waiting long is painful to your master, and a quick return shows diligence. XIX. Rise early; for it is difficult to recover lost time. XX. The servant that often changes his place, works only to be poor; for “the rolling-stone gathers no moss.” XXI. Be not fond of increasing your acquaintances; for visiting leads you out of your business, robs your master of your time, and often puts you to an expense you cannot afford. And above all things, take care with whom you are acquainted; for persons are generally the better or the worse for the company they keep. XXII. When out of place, be careful where you lodge; for living in a disreputable house, puts you upon a footing with those that keep it, however innocent you are yourself. XXIII. Never go out on your own business, without the knowledge of the family, lest in your absence you should be wanted; for “Leave is light,” and returning punctually at the time you promise, shows obedience, and is a proof of sobriety. XXIV. If you are dissatisfied with your place, mention your objections modestly to your master or mistress, and give a fair warning, and do not neglect your business nor behave ill, in order to provoke them to turn you away; for this will be a blemish in your character, which you must always have from the last place you served in. ? All who pay a due regard to the above precepts, will be happy in themselves, will never want friends, and will always meet with the assistance, protection, and encouragement of the wealthy, the worthy, and the wise.
The preceding sentences are contained in a paper which a young person committed to heart on first getting a place, and, having steadily observed, obtained a character for integrity and worth incapable of being shaken. By constantly keeping in view that “Honesty is the best policy,” it led to prosperity, and the faithful servant became an opulent employer of servants.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 41·70.
February 22. GENERAL ELECTION. 1826. This year may be deemed remarkable in the history of modern times, for its being the period wherein, for the first time within the memory of man, a parliament expired by efflux of time. Most of the preceding parliaments were dissolved, but this attained to its full duration of seven years.
THE FREEMAN’S WELL AT ALNWICK. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book. Sir, Kensington, Feb. 1826. I hope the following description of an extraordinary custom which has obtained at Alnwick, in Northumberland, may be considered worthy preservation in The Every-Day Book. About four miles from the above town there is a pond, known by the name of the Freeman’s well; through which it has been customary for the freemen to pass from time immemorial before they can obtain their freedom. This is considered so indispensable, that no exemption is permitted, and without passing this ordeal the freedom would not be conferred. The pond is prepared by proper officers in such a manner, as to give the greatest possible annoyance to the persons who are to pass through it. Great dikes, or mounds, are erected in different parts, so that the candidate for his freedom is at one moment seen at the top of one of them only up to his knees, and the next instant is precipitated into a gulf below, in which he frequently plunges completely over head. The water is purposely rendered so muddy, that it is impossible to see where these dikes are situated, or by any precaution to avoid them. Those aspiring to the honour of the freedom of Alnwick, are dressed in white stockings, white pantaloons, and white caps. After they have “reached the point proposed,” they are suffered to put on their usual clothes, and obliged to join in a procession, and ride for several miles round the boundaries of the freemen’s property—a measure which is not a mere formality for parade, but absolutely indispensable; since, if they omit visiting any part of their property, it is claimed by his grace the duke of Northumberland, whose steward follows the procession, to note if any such omission occurs. The origin of the practice of travelling through the pond is not known. A tradition is current, that king John was once nearly drowned upon the spot where this pond is situated, and saved his life by clinging to a holly tree; and that he determined, in consequence, thenceforth, that before any candidate could obtain the freedom of Alnwick, he should not only wade through this pond, but plant a holly tree at the door of his house on the same day; and this custom is still scrupulously observed. In the month of February, 1824, no less than thirteen individuals went through the above formalities. I am, &c. T. A.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 42·61.
February 23. CHRONOLOGY. 1821. John Keats, the poet, died. Virulent and unmerited attacks upon his literary ability, by an unprincipled and malignant reviewer, injured his rising reputation, overwhelmed his spirits, and he sunk into consumption. In that state he fled for refuge to the climate of Italy, caught cold on the voyage, and perished in Rome, at the early age of 25. Specimens of his talents are in the former volume of this work. One of his last poems was in prospect of departure from his native shores. It is an Ode to a Nightingale. 1. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
2. O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and ProvenÇal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
3. Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
4. Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
5. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White-hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
6. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
7. Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
8. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
This ode was included with “Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems,” by John Keats, published by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who, in an advertisement at the beginning of the book, allude to the critical ferocity which hastened the poet’s death.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 41·57.
February 24. St. Matthias.—Holiday at the Public Offices. After the crucifixion, and the death of the traitor Judas, Peter, in the midst of the disciples, they being in number about a hundred and twenty, proposed the election of an apostle in his stead, “and they appointed two, Joseph, called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias: and they prayed” to be directed in their choice, “and they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.” (Acts i. 23-26.) Writers disagree as to the particular places of his mission, and the year and manner of his death, though all concur in saying he was martyred. Dr. Cave affirms, that he suffered by the cross. He is presumed to have died A. D. 61 or 64.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 42·22.
February 25. 1826.—Third Sunday in Lent. STORM SUPERSTITIONS. The stilling of the waves by oil is briefly noticed at p. 192, and another instance is subjoined. Oil for a fair Wind. C. W., in Dr. Aikin’s AthenÆum, says: “About twelve years ago, during my stay at Malta, I was introduced to the bey of Bengazi, in Africa, who was going with his family and a large retinue of servants to Mecca. He very politely offered me and my companion a passage to Egypt. We embarked on board a French brig which the bey had freighted, and very unfortunately were captured by an English letter of marque within a few leagues of Alexandria. The captain, however, was kind enough to allow us to proceed, and as we lay becalmed for two days, the bey ordered three or four Turkish flags to be hoisted, and a flask of oil to be thrown overboard. On inquiring into the purport of the ceremony, we were informed that the flask would float to Mecca (a pretty long circumnavigation) and bring us a fair wind! As we cast anchor in the port soon after, of course the ceremony had been propitious; nor did we seek to disturb the credulity of a man who had treated us so kindly.” We know, however, that there is “credulity “on board English as well as Turkish vessels; and that if our sailors do not send an oil flask to Mecca, they whistle for a wind in a perfect calm, and many seem as certainly to expect its appearance, as a boatswain calculates on the appearance of his crew when he pipes all hands. Navigation in the Clouds. Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, in the reign of Charlemagne, and his son, has the following passage in his book, “De Grandine.” “In these districts, almost all persons, noble and plebeian, townsmen and rustics, old and young, believe that hail and thunder may be produced at the will of man, that is, by the incantations of certain men who are called Tempestarii.” He proceeds: “We have seen and heard many who are sunk in such folly and stupidity, as to believe and assert, that there is a certain country, which they call Magonia, whence ships come in the clouds, for the purpose of carrying back the corn which is beaten off by the hail and storms, and which those aËrial sailors purchase of the said Tempestarii.” Agobard afterwards affirms, that he himself saw in a certain assembly four persons, three men and a woman, exhibited bound, as if they had fallen from these ships, who had been kept for some days in confinement, and were now brought out to be stoned in his presence; but that he rescued them from the popular fury. He further says, that there were persons who pretended to be able to protect the inhabitants of a district from tempests, and that for this service they received a payment in corn from the credulous countrymen, which payment was called canonicum.[67]
A Shrovetide Custom. It will appear on reading, that the annexed letter came too late for insertion under Shrove Tuesday. LUDLOW ROPE PULLING. To the Editor of the Every-Day Book Ludlow, Shrove Tuesday,
Feb. 7, 1826. Sir, Among the customs peculiar to this town, that of pulling a rope is not the least extraordinary. On Shrove Tuesday the corporation provide a rope three inches in thickness, and in length thirty-six yards, which is given out by a few of the members at one of the windows of the Market-hall at four o’clock; when a large body of the inhabitants, divided into two parties, (the one contending for Castle-street and Broad-street Wards, and the other for Old-street and Corve-street Wards,) commence an arduous struggle; and as soon as either party gains the victory by pulling the rope beyond the prescribed limits, the pulling ceases; which is, however, always renewed by a second, and sometimes by a third contest; the rope being purchased by subscription from the victorious party, and given out again. In the end the rope is sold by the victors, and the money, which generally amounts to two pounds, or guineas, is expended in liquor. I have this day been an eye-witness to this scene of confusion; the rope was first gained by Old-street and Corve-street Wards, and secondly by Castle-street and Broad-street Wards. It is supposed, that nearly 2000 persons were actively employed on this occasion. Without doubt this singular custom is symbolical of some remarkable event, and a remnant of that ancient language of visible signs, which, says a celebrated writer, “imperfectly supplies the want of letters, to perpetuate the remembrance of public or private transactions.” The sign, in this instance, has survived the remembrance of the occurrence it was designed to represent, and remains a profound mystery. It has been insinuated, that the real occasion of this custom is known to the corporation, but that for some reason or other, they are tenacious of the secret. An obscure tradition attributes this custom to circumstances arising out of the siege of Ludlow by Henry VI, when two parties arose within the town, one supporting the pretensions of the duke of York, and the other wishing to give admittance to the king; one of the bailiffs is said to have headed the latter party. History relates, that in this contest many lives were lost, and that the bailiff, heading his party in an attempt to open Dinham gate, fell a victim there. R. J.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 41·16. [67] AthenÆum.
February 26. 1826.—Third Sunday in Lent. Penderill Family. 1732, February 26. The title to an estate of 100l. per annum, which had been settled on the Penderill family “for preserving king Charles II. in the oak,” was sued for on behalf of an infant claiming to be heir-at-law, and the issue was this day tried in the court of king’s bench. It was proved that Mr. Penderill, after marrying the mother of the claimant, retired into Staffordshire two years before he died; that during that time he had no intercourse with his wife, and that the infant was born about the time of her husband’s death. In consequence of this evidence a verdict was found for the defendant, and thereby the child was declared to be illegitimate.[68]
Mayoralty Seal of the City of London. Mayoralty Seal of the City of London. A respected correspondent, S. G., not remembering to have met with a representation of this remarkable seal in any work, and conceiving its appearance in the Every-Day Book may gratify many readers, obligingly transmits a fine impression, taken in February, 1826, from whence the present engraving has been made with at least as much fidelity as the antiquity of the original permitted. “This seal,” he says, “is quite distinct from the city seal. It is kept at the Mansion-house, in the custody of the gate-porter, and is now used for the purpose of authenticating documents forwarded to foreign countries upon affidavit sworn before the lord mayor: it is also used for sealing the precepts which are issued preparatory to St. Thomas’s-day for the election of common councilmen and ward officers.” The following is the inscription round the seal, “Sigillum Officii Majoratus Civitatis Londini:” this legend is indistinct from wear. The history of this seal is especially remarkable, because it is connected with the origin of the “dagger” in the city arms. On this subject Maitland and other historians have taken so much only from Stow as seemed to them to suit their purpose; what that author relates, therefore, is here extracted verbatim. He introduces it by saying, “In the year 1381, William Walworth, then maior, a most provident, valiant, and learned citizen, did by his arrest of Wat Tyler, (a presumptuous rebell upon whom no man durst lay hands,) deliver the king and kingdome from the danger of most wicked traitors, and was for his service knighted in the field as before hath been related.” In opposition to a notion which prevailed in his time, and prevails at present, that the “dagger” in the civic shield was an augmentation of the city arms upon occasion of Walworth’s prowess in Smithfield, Stow says, “It hath also been, and is now growne to a common opinion, that in reward of this service done by the said William Walworth against the rebell, that king Richard added to the armes of this city (which was argent, a plaine crosse gules) a sword, or dagger, (for so they terme it,) whereof I have read no such record, but to the contrary. I finde that in the fourth yeere of king Richard the second, in a full assembly made in the upper chamber of the Guildhall, summoned by this William Walworth, then maior, as well of aldermen as of the common councell in every ward, for certain affaires concerning the king, it was there by common consent agreed and ordained, that the old seale of the office of the maioralty of the city being very small, old, unapt, and uncomely for the honour of the city, should be broken, and one other new seale bee had; which the said maior commanded to be made artificially, and honourably, for the exercise of the said office therafter, in place of the other. In which new seale, besides the images of Peter and Paul, which of old were rudely engraven, there should be under the feet of the said images a shield of the arms of the said city, perfectly graven, with two lyons supporting the same, and two sergeants of arms: in the other part, one, and two tabernacles, in which, above, should stand two angels, between whom (above the said images of Peter and Paul) should be set the glorious Virgin. This being done, the old seale of the office was delivered to Richard Odiham, chamberlain, who brake it, and in place thereof was delivered the new seale to the said maior, to use in his office of maioralty as occasion should require. This new seale seemeth to be made before William Walworth was knighted, for he is not there intituled Sir, as afterwards he was: and certain it is, that the same new seale then made, is now in use, and none other in that office of the maioralty; which may suffice to answer the former fable, without showing of any evidence sealed with the old seale, which was the crosse, and sword of Saint Paul, and not the dagger of William Walworth.” On a partial citation of the preceding extract, in Maitland, it is observed by S. G., that “the seal at present in use was made in pursuance of the order above cited, may be deduced from the seal itself. In the centre, within a large and square compartment, are the effigies of Peter and Paul. The former has a mitre or tiara on his head, and is attired in the pall as bishop of the catholic church, and holds a crosier in his left hand. The latter saint is known by his usual attribute, the sword, which he sustains in his right hand: above each of these saints is a rich canopy. Beneath the compartment just described is a shield, bearing the present arms of the city, a cross, with a dagger in the dexter quarter, supported by two lions. It appears to have been surmounted with a low pointed arch. The centre compartment is flanked by two niches, with rich canopies and plinths; in each is a demi-figure bearing a mace, and having on its head a triangular cap; these figures, according to the above description, are intended to represent two sergeants at arms. The canopies to these niches terminate in angular pedestals, sustaining kneeling statues in the act of paying adoration to the Virgin Mary, whose effigy, though much effaced, appears in the centre niche at the top of the seal. From these representations on the seal before us, little doubt can remain that it is the same which has been in use from the time of sir William Walworth to the present day. The canopies and stall work are of the period in which it is supposed to have been made, and are of similar design with those fine specimens which ornamented the late front of Westminster-hall, and the screen to the chapel of Saint Edward the Confessor in the abbey, and which are still to be seen in the restored portion of Westminster-hall, as well as the plaster altar-screen lately set up in the abbey church.” As Wat Tyler’s insurrection was in 1381, the fourth year of Richard II., and as that was the year wherein the old mayoralty seal was destroyed, and the present seal made, our obliging correspondent, S. G., deems it “a very reasonable opinion, which many authors have entertained on the subject, that the dagger in the city arms was really granted at that period, in commemoration of Walworth having given Tyler the blow with that instrument, which was the prelude to his death.” He says it is also further confirmed by the act of the assembly [the common council], which Maitland quotes [after Stow], inasmuch as one reason which appears to have been urged by them for destroying the old seal was on account of the same, at that time, being unbecoming the honour of the city, which, no doubt, referred to the addition of the dagger, which had then lately been made to the arms: and it likewise goes on further to state, in reference thereto, “that beside the images of Saint Peter and Paul, was placed the shield of the arms of the said city well engraved.” Our correspondent, S. G., will not conceive offence at a notion which varies from his own opinion; and probably, on reperusing the quotation from Stow and the following remarks, he may see some reason to abate his present persuasion. As a reason for the old seal, in the fourth year of Richard II., having been ordered by the common council to be broken, Stow says it was “very small, old, unapt, and uncomely for the honour of the city.” His description seems to set forth its diminutive size and age, its “being very small, old,” and “unapt,” as the ground whereon they deemed it “uncomely for the honour of the city,” and therefore caused the old seal to be destroyed, and a new one to be made. So far this appears to have been Stow’s view of the matter; and should his authority be regarded, our friend S. G. may appear to have too hastily assumed that the common council order for the destruction of the old seal, as “unbecoming the honour of the city, no doubt referred to the addition of the dagger which had then lately been made to their arms.” Unless Stow’s testimony be disputed, it may not only be doubted, but positively denied, that the dagger “had then lately been added to the city arms.” Stow speaks of it as a “common opinion,” when he wrote, that upon Walworth’s striking Wat Tyler with his dagger Richard II. therefore “added a sword, or dagger, for so they terme it,” he says, to the city arms; “whereof,” he adds, “I have read no such record, but to the contrary.” Then he takes pains to relate why the ancient seal was destroyed, and having stated the reasons already cited, he says, “this new seale,” the seal now before us, “seemeth to be made before William Walworth was knighted, for he is not there intituled Sir, as he afterwards was.” Afterwards comes Stow’s conclusion upon the whole matter: “Certaine it is,” he says, “that the same new seale then made, is now in use, and none other in that office of the maioralty: which,” mark his words, “which may suffice to answer the former fable, without shewing of any evidence sealed with the old seale, which was the crosse, and sword of St. Paul, and not the dagger of William Walworth.” What Stow here calls the “former fable,” was the “common opinion” stated by himself, “that king Richard added to the arms of this city (which [in the notion of those who entertained the opinion] was argent, a plain cross gules) a sword, or dagger.” That the city arms before the time of Richard II. was merely “argent a plain cross gules,” Stow clearly treats as a vulgar assumption, “whereof,” he says, “I have read no such record, but” and these following words are most notable, “BUT to the contrary.” This, his declaration “to the contrary” being followed by his particulars, just laid before the reader, concerning the present seal, Stow says, “may suffice to answer the former fable, without showing of any evidence sealed with the old seale:” that is, without showing or producing any document or writing “sealed with the old seale, which,” to clench the matter, he positively affirms, “was the crosse, and sword of St. Paul, and not the dagger of William Walworth.” The cathedral church of the city of London is dedicated to St. Paul, who suffered martyrdom by the sword, and “the old seale,” related by Stow to have been destroyed, he says, “was the crosse, and sword of St. Paul.” It therefore represented the present shield of the city arms, which, on Stow’s showing, existed before the time of Wat Tyler’s insurrection, and are therefore “the crosse, and sword of St. Paul, and not the dagger of William Walworth.”
To the communication with which the liberty of differing has been taken, in furtherance of its object to elucidate the arms of the metropolis, our respected correspondent S. G. adds, “The origin of the seal may no doubt be traced to the source from whence sir Henry Englefield, in his walk through Southampton, derives the seal of the city of Winchester; in speaking of which his opinion appears to be, that it was first used in consequence of an act passed for the benefit of merchants, in the reign of Edward I., which was afterwards greatly extended by the statute of Staples, passed in the 27th year of the reign of Edward III., whereby it was enacted that the commerce of wool, leather, and lead should be carried on at certain towns, called Staple towns, of which several are not seaports—but to each of these inland Staples a port is assigned for entries. It was also further enacted, that in each Staple there should be a seal kept by the mayor of the Staple.”
In relation to this seal, Maitland sadly blunders. He says, “The ancient seal of this city having been laid aside in the fourth of Richard II., the present, whereof the annexed is a representation, was made in the same year, 1381.” Then he annexes his “representation,” purporting to be of this seal, which Stow so accurately describes, but, strange to say, he substitutes the “representation” of a seal wholly different. (See his History of London, edit 1772, vol. ii. p. 1193.) It is astonishing that Maitland should have so erred, for (in vol. i. p. 138.) he describes the seal almost in Stow’s words, and sufficiently at length to have saved him from the palpable mistake.
Sealing-Wax. Our present common sealing-wax for letters was not invented till the sixteenth century. The earliest letter in Europe known to have been sealed with it, was written from London, August 3, 1554, to the rheingrave Philip Francis von Daun, by his agent in England, Gerrard Herman. The wax is of a dark red, very shining, and the impression bears the initials of the writer’s name, G. H. The next seal known in the order of time is on a letter written in 1561 to the council of Gorlitz at Breslau: it is sealed in three places with beautiful red wax. There are two letters in 1563 from count Louis of Nassau to the landgrave William IV.; one dated March 3, is sealed with red wax, the other, dated November 7, is sealed with black wax. In 1566 are two letters to the rheingrave Frederick von Daun, from his steward Charles de Pousol, in Picardy, dated respectively September the 2d, and September the 7th; another from Pousol to the rheingrave, dated Paris, January 22, 1567, is sealed with red wax of a higher colour and apparently of a coarser quality. On the 15th of May, 1571, Vulcob, a French nobleman, who the year before had been ambassador from the king of France to the court of Weymar, wrote a letter to that court sealed with red wax; he sealed nine letters of a prior date with common wax. From an old expense book of 1616, in the records of Plessingburg, “Spanish wax,” and other writing materials, were ordered from a manufacturer of sealing-wax at Nuremburg, for the personal use of Christian, margrave of Brandenburg. It has been conjectured that, as the oldest seals came from England and France, and as the invention is called “Spanish wax,” it originated with the Spaniards; but this is doubted. The first notice of sealing-wax occurs in a work by Garcia ab Orto, or Horto, entitled “Aromatum et simplicium aliquot historia, &c.” first printed in 1563, and afterwards at Antwerp in 1574, 8vo., in which latter edition it is mentioned at p. 33. The oldest printed receipt for sealing-wax is in a work entitled “Neu Titularbuch, &c., Durch Samuelen Zimmerman, burger zu Augspurg 1579,” 4to. p. 112. The following is a Translation. “To make hard sealing-wax, called Spanish wax, with which if letters be sealed they cannot be opened without breaking the seal.—Take beautiful clear resin, the whitest you can procure, and melt it over a slow charcoal fire. When it is properly melted, take it from the fire, and for every pound of resin add two ounces of cinnabar pounded very fine, stirring it about. Then let the whole cool, or pour it into cold water. Thus you will have beautiful red wax. “If you are desirous of having black wax, add lamp black to it. With smalt, or azure, you may make it blue; with white lead, white; and with orpiment, yellow. “If instead of resin you melt purified turpentine, in a glass vessel, and give it any colour you choose, you will have a harder kind of sealing-wax, and not so brittle as the former.” In these receipts there is no mention of gum lac, which is at present the principal ingredient in sealing-wax of the best quality. The name “Spanish wax,” probably imports no more than “Spanish flies,” “Spanish gum,” and several other “Spanish” commodities; for it was formerly the custom to give all new things, particularly those which excited wonder, or excelled in quality, the appellation of “Spanish.”[69] Dutch sealing-wax, or wax with “brand well en vast houd,” burn well and hold fast, impressed on each stick, was formerly in great repute; but the legend having been constantly forged was no security against imposition. The “best Dutch sealing-wax” usually sold in the shops of London, is often worse than that which inferior manufacturers stamp with the names of many stationers, who prefer a large profit to a good reputation. It is not an easy matter, in 1826, to get a stick of sealing-wax that will “burn well and hold fast.” Wafers. The oldest letter yet found with a red wafer was written in 1624, from D. Krapf, at Spires, to the government at Bayreuth. Wafers are ascribed, by Labat, to Genoese economy. In the whole of the seventeenth century they were only used by private persons; on public seals they commence only in the eighteenth century.[70] Writing Ink. The ancient writing ink was a viscid mass like painter’s colours, and therefore letters in ancient manuscript frequently appear in relief.[71] Pliny’s writing ink is mentioned by Dr. Bancroft, according to whom it consisted of the simple ingredients in the following receipt. “Any person who will take the trouble of mixing pure lamp black with water, thickened a little by gum, may obtain an ink of no despicable quality in other respects, and with the advantage of being much less liable to decay by age, than the ink now in common use.” It should be observed, however, that every black pigment mixed with gum or size can be soon and easily washed out again with water.
It is not purposed to make this a “Receipt Book,” yet, as connected with this subject, two or three really good receipts may be of essential service, at some time or other, to many readers. For instance, artists, and other individuals who require it, may easily manufacture a black pigment in the following manner, with a certainty of its being genuine, which can scarcely be placed in the article sold at most shops. A pure Lamp Black. Suspend over a lamp a funnel of tin plate, having above it a pipe to convey from the apartment the smoke which escapes from the lamp. Large mushrooms of a very black carbonaceous matter, and exceedingly light, will be formed at the summit of the cone. This carbonaceous part is carried to such a state of division as cannot be given to any other matter by grinding it on a piece of porphyry. This black goes a great way in every kind of painting. It may be rendered drier by calcination in close vessels; and it should be observed that the funnel ought to be united to the pipe, which conveys off the smoke, by means of wire, because solder would be melted by the flame of the lamp.[72] Receipts for Ink. Chaptal the eminent chemist, after numerous experiments regarding writing ink, concludes, that the best ingredients and proportions are the following, viz: two parts of galls, in sorts, bruised, and one part of logwood chipped; these are to be boiled in twenty-five times their weight of water for the space of two hours, adding a little water from time to time, according to the evaporation. The decoction so made, he says, will commonly mark from 3 to 31/2 degrees upon the hydrometer of BeaumÉ, equal to about 1022 of the common standard. At the same time a solution of gum arabic is to be made with warm water, until the latter will dissolve no more of the former. This solution will mark 14 or 15 degrees, equal to about 110. A solution of calcined sulphate of iron is also to be made, and concentrated so that it will mark 10 degrees, equal to about 1071. And to this as much sulphate of copper is to be added as will be equal to one-twelfth part of the galls employed to make the decoction. The several matters being so prepared, six measures of the decoction are to be mixed with four measures of the solution of gum; and to this mixture from three to four measures of the metallic solution are to be added, by a little at a time, mixing the several matters each time by shaking. Ink so made, will, he says, form no sediment: and he estimates the proportions of solid matters contained in it to be five hundred parts of gums, four hundred and sixty-two parts of the extract of galls and logwood, and four hundred and eighty-one parts of metallic oxides. Dr. Bancroft, who gives these particulars from Chaptal, proposes the following, as being generally the most suitable proportions for composing the best and most lasting writing ink, viz: Take of good Aleppo galls, in sorts, coarsely powdered, twelve ounces, and of chipped logwood six ounces; boil these in five quarts of soft water two hours, and strain off the decoction whilst hot; then put to the residuum as much boiling water as, when properly stirred, strained, and added to the former, will suffice to make the whole of the decoction equal to one gallon; add to this five ounces of sulphate of iron, with the same quantity of gum arabic, and two ounces of good dry muscovado sugar; let these be all dissolved, and well mixed by stirring. A calcination of the sulphate of iron, which Chaptal, Proust, and some others have recommended, Dr. Bancroft does not regard as of much importance; for, he says, though the ink may be thereby made to attain its utmost degree of darkness, almost immediately, yet the strong disposition which ink has to absorb oxygen from the atmosphere until saturated therewith, will enable it, without such calcination, to attain an equal degree of blackness, in a day or two, according to the temperature of the air, if the latter be allowed free access to it. For reasons which he also states, he omits the sulphate of copper; though he observes that, if any portion of that metal were deemed beneficial, he should prefer verdigrise to the sulphate, the latter containing a much larger proportion of acid than even the sulphate of iron, and being, therefore, more likely to render the ink corrosive. He regards gum as highly useful to retard the separation and subsidence of its black part, or compound of colouring matter and iron, previous to its application to paper, as well as to hinder it, when used, from spreading and penetrating too far. Indelible Writing Ink. M. Chaptal remarks, that, since the oxygenated muriatic acid had been found capable of discharging the colour of common writing ink, both from parchment and paper, without injuring their texture, it had been fraudulently employed to efface particular parts or words of deeds, contracts, or other writings, for which others had been substituted, leaving the signatures untouched. In consequence of these frauds, the commercial parts of society, as well as governments, were solicitous for the discovery of some composition, which might be employed instead of common writing ink, without its defects; therefore Chaptal, (being then minister of the interior of France, and possessed of great chemical science,) as might be expected, occupied himself particularly with that subject; and he states, that up to the then present time, the composition which had been found most useful for this purpose, consisted of a solution of glue in water, with which a sufficient portion of lamp black and a little sea salt were intimately mixed, by rubbing them together on marble. This composition was made sufficiently thin by water, to flow readily from the pen; and he describes it as being capable of resisting the action, not merely of cold, but of boiling water, and also of acids, alkalies, and spirit of wine; and attended with no inconvenience but that of abrasion by being rubbed.
It is observed by Dr. Bancroft, that when lamp black has been incorporated with common ink, by first rubbing the former in a mortar with a mucilage of gum arabic, the writing done with it could not be rendered invisible by the application of muriatic acid; and, doubtless, such an addition of lamp black would hinder the letters from ever becoming illegible by age, at least within any length of time which the paper and parchment could be expected to last. But ink made with this addition would require to be frequently shaken or stirred, as the lamp black would otherwise be apt to separate and subside. In the making of indelible ink, the receipt for lamp black before given may be of considerable importance. Calico Printing. Perhaps no object has more engaged “the ingenious chemist’s art” than this, and leave is craved to conclude this diversion from the mayoralty seal of London, by what may be serviceable to some who are actively engaged in an extensive branch, from whence our private chambers, and the dresses of our wives and daughters, derive continual improvement. Prosubstantive, or Chemical Black, for Calico Printers. “Some years ago,” says Dr. Bancroft, “I purchased of a calico printer, possessing great knowledge of the principles and practice of his art, the secret of a composition which he had employed with success, as a prosubstantive black, and which, as far as I can judge from experiments upon a small scale, deserved the high commendations which he bestowed upon it: and though I have never obtained the smallest pecuniary advantage from this purchase, in any way, I will here give the full benefit of it to the public. The following was his recipe, with some abbreviations of language: viz. Take two pounds of the best mixed galls, in powder, and boil them in one gallon of vinegar, until their soluble part is extracted, or dissolved; then strain off the clear decoction, and add to the residuum of the galls as much water as will be equal to the vinegar evaporated in boiling; stir them a little, and after allowing the powdered galls time to subside, strain off the clear liquor, and mix it with the former decoction, adding to the mixture six ounces of sulphate of iron; and this being dissolved, put to it six ounces more of sulphate of iron, after it has been previously mixed with, and dissolved by, half of its weight of single aquafortis; let this be stirred, and equally dispersed through the mixture, which is to be thickened by dissolving therein a sufficient quantity of gum tragacanth, (of which a very small proportion will suffice.) Calico, after being printed or pencilled with this mixture, should, when the latter is sufficiently dried, be washed in lime water, to remove the gum and superfluous colour, and then either streamed or well rinsed in clear water. This composition has not been found to weaken, or injure, the texture of calico printed or pencilled with it, and the colour is thought unobjectionable in regard to its blackness and durability.”
It is added by Dr. Bancroft, that “when sulphate of iron is mixed with aquafortis, the latter undergoes a decomposition; the oxygen of the nitric acid combining with the iron, and raising it to a much higher degree of oxidation; the result of these operations is the production of a fluid which has the consistence and smooth appearance of oil, and which (though the name may not be quite unexceptionable) I will call a nitro-sulphate of iron. I have been induced to believe, from several trials, that a better prosubstantive black than any other within my knowledge may be formed, by taking a decoction, containing in each gallon the soluble matter of two pounds of the best galls, in sorts, and when cold, adding to it for each gallon twelve ounces of sulphate of iron, which had been previously mixed with half its weight of single aquafortis, (of which one wine pint should weigh about twenty ounces,) and, by the decomposition just described, converted to the nitro-sulphate of iron just mentioned. By thus employing twelve ounces of sulphate of iron, oxygenated by nitric acid, instead of six ounces of the latter, with six ounces of the green sulphate in its ordinary state, an improvement in the colour seems, by my experiments, to have been invariably produced, and without any corroding or hurtful action upon the fibres of the cotton.” With these scientific receipts and suggestions it may be agreeable to close. Matters of this kind have not been before introduced, nor is it purposed to repeat them; and those who think they are out of place at present, may be asked to recollect whether any of themselves ever obtained knowledge of any kind that, at some period or other, did not come into use?
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 40·72.
February 27. CHRONOLOGY. A Scotch newspaper of the 27th of February, 1753, relates, that on the preceding Wednesday se’nnight, the river Tweed was dried up from six o’clock in the morning to six in the evening, the current having been entirely suspended. On the 20th of February, 1748, the river Sark, near Philipston, in the parish of Kirk Andrews upon Eske, and the Liddel, near Penton, in the same parish, were both dry. At the same time other rivers also lost their waters. These remarkable phenomena are naturally accounted for in the “Gentleman’s Magazine for 1753,” vol. xxiii. p. 156.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 41·39.
February 28. Dr. Johnson. It was recorded in the daily journals, on the 28th of February, 1755, that “the university of Oxford, in full convocation, unanimously conferred the degree of master of arts on the learned Mr. Samuel Johnson, author of the New English Dictionary.” Such a testimony to distinguished merit, from a learned university, was, perhaps, such a reward as Dr. Johnson appreciated more highly than others of more seeming worth; the publicity given to it at the time is evidence of the notoriety he had attained by his literary labours, and of the interest taken in his fame by every class of society. He taught and admonished all ranks, in a style that charmed by its luxuriant amplification of simple truths, when the majority of people refused the wholesome labour of reflection. Johnson’s ethical writings verify the remark of a shrewd writer, that “a maxim is like an ingot of gold, which you may draw out to any length you please.” Gin Lane. The “Historical Chronicle” of the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” notices that on this day, in the year 1736, a proposal was submitted to the house of commons “for laying such a duty on distilled spirituous liquors as might prevent the ill consequences of the poorer sort drinking them to excess,” whereon it takes occasion to adduce the following fact: “We have observed some signs, where such liquors are retailed, with the following inscriptions, Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing.” This record establishes the reality of the inscription in Hogarth’s fearful print of “Gin-lane,” and marks a trait in the manners of that period, which, to the credit of the industrious classes of society, has greatly abated. Drunkenness exists nowhere but in the vicious or the irresolute. “Give a poor man work and you will make him rich.” Give a drunkard work and he will only keep sober till he has earned enough to drink again and get poor. While he is drinking he robs himself of his time; drinking robs him of his understanding and health; when he is unfit or disinclined to work he will lie to avoid it; and if he succeeds in deceiving, he will probably turn thief. Thus a drunkard is not to be relied on either for true speaking, or honest principle; and therefore those who see that drinking leads to falsehood and dishonesty, never attach credit to what a drunkard says, nor trust him within reach of their property.
NATURALISTS’ CALENDAR. Mean Temperature 40·44.
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