iii. 15) requiring a minstrel to play, that the hand of the Lord may

come upon him. External objects disturb the senses, so that night is best for contemplation, as Malebranche is said to have shut himself up in a dark room to study and think out his “Recherche de la Vérité.” Solitude is essential to prophecy. A man cannot commune with heaven in the busy haunts of men. Nature is the presence-chamber of the Deity. Every man of sensibility knows this; and the prophet most of all men feels the pith and central depth of Pope’s fine line, and that he must reach prophecy “Looking through Nature up to Nature’s God.” Society demands that you sacrifice your convictions constantly to good manners. Social convention contaminates noble originality and high principle. Truth never dwells in the court of kings, and the drawing-rooms of the well-to-do are no fitter for its shrine, for the men and women there are royalties divested of respect and state-trappings; they are over-pampered humanities for the most part: to be much in their company you must compromise the divinest part of you--your convictions--and it is by pursuing conviction that the soul flies heavenward. One might write an essay on the Brazen Stool with its proverb _ex tripode loqui_, but anyhow these opening verses convey to the mind with wonderful brevity a vivid picture of a mediæval magician at his work.

Garencières allegorises here so widely as to show what havoc ingenuity can play with _analogy_, which is a key to the occult things of the universe in good hands--those of the prophet, poet, or genius of any sort. The rod, he says, is the _pen_, placed in the middle of the branches means the _fingers_ of the hand, the water he dips it in is the _ink_ he writes with, wetting limb and foot is the _paper_ covered from top to bottom. Was manuscript ever, since the world began, more mystically shadowed forth?

The interest of English readers will perhaps be most readily drawn to Nostradamus, by dealing first with some of the most remarkable prophecies concerning England; and with the invaluable aid of M. Anatole le Pelletier’s admirable work on Nostradamus, this can at any rate for a few of the quatrains be most readily accomplished. He gives six examples from the various “Centuries.” The first relates to the supremacy of England at sea: “L’Angleterre le Panpotent des mers.” The word Panpotent is a barbarous Græco-Latin word for πᾶν-potens, all-powerful. The periods M. le Pelletier would assign to these changes or revolutions in England extend from 1501, the birth of Lutheranism, to 1791, the commencement of the French Revolution.

He selects Century iii., quatrain 57:--

“Sept fois changer verrez gent Britanique, Teints en sang en deux cens nonante an; Franche non point, par appuy Germanique; Aries doubte son pole Bastarnan.”

“You shall see the British nation, inundated with blood, change seven times in 290 years. But France not so, thanks to the firmness of her Germanic kings. The sign of the Ram shall no longer recognise the north of Europe (son pole Bastarnan) it will so have changed.”[55]

Here we have to notice that 1501 plus 290 equals 1791, which may if you like be taken as the date of the commencement of the French Revolution, though commonly it is reckoned from 1789, the taking of the Bastille. The Germanic kings are the descendants of Hugh Capet. Bastarnia stands for Poland as its ancient name. The first dismemberment of Poland took place in 1772. Then Russia grew into power, Peter ascended the throne 1682, and Lutheranism triumphed in Germany. Such changes might well startle the Ram from all recognition of the northern world.

1501 is the date of the Renaissance, and from that to 1792 England is to undergo seven revolutions.

1. In England Henry VIII. breaks free from Rome, and the Church of England is set up in 1532.

2. 1553 Mary restores the Papal religion.

3. 1558 Elizabeth re-establishes Anglican independence.

4. In 1649 Charles I. is beheaded, and the Republic established under Cromwell’s Protectorate.

5. In 1660 Charles II. is restored.

6. In 1689 James II. abdicating, is displaced by William III., his son-in-law.

7. In 1714 George I., of the House of Hanover, is called to the throne.

The brevity with which all this is inferred is as remarkable as the curious precision with which it was fulfilled.

The accession of James I. to the death of Charles I. (1603-1649) is set forth in

CENTURY X. QUATRAIN 40.

“Le jeune nay au regne Britannique, Qu’ aura ce père mourant recommandé, Iceluy mort, _Lonole_[56] donra topique,[57] Et à son fils le regne demandé.”[58]

“The young prince[59] of the kingdom of Britain (then first called Great Britain) is born, whose father (Henry Darnley, assassinated by Bothwell) in dying commended him to the protection of the principal Scottish nobility. When this prince (James I. of England, and VI. of Scotland) is dead, _Lonole_ by the employment of Puritanical eloquence (or canting rhetoric) will despoil his son (Charles I.) of his kingdom.”

Le Pelletier thinks it is quite clear that _Lonole_ Ολλὑων stands for Cromwell, but a further coincidence arises, namely, that _Lonole_ is an all but correct anagram of _Ole Nol_ or _Old Noll_, the Protector’s nickname. Garencières prints _Londre_ for _Lonole_, and so renders what at best is obscure entirely unintelligible, and fancies that he clearly discerns it to be a prophecy concerning Charles II., because he was commended to the care of his subjects by Charles I. on the scaffold.

CENTURY III. QUATRAIN 80 (in some Eds. 82).

“Du regne Anglois le digne dechassé[60] Le conseiller par ire[61] mis à feu, Ses adherents iront si bas tracer,[62] Que le bastard sera demy receu.”

“He who had a right to the kingdom of England is displaced, is _mis à feu_, sacrificed to the heat of popular fury. His adherents descend to such a depth of baseness that the bastard (or usurper) will be half received by the kingdom.”

That is to say, Charles I. will be deprived of power after having yielded up Strafford to the popular fury, in the hope of escaping himself. The Scotch (old adherents) will be so base as to sell him for two millions to the Cromwellites, who put him to death, and Cromwell becoming Protector, and not quite king, therefore will obtain an almost royal bastard, _i.e._, a half reception (à demy receu).

CENTURY IX. QUATRAIN 49.

“Gand et Bruceles marcheront contre[63] Anvers, Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy: Le sel et vin luy seront à l’envers, Pour eux avoir le regne en desarroy.”

“When Ghent and Brussels march over against Antwerp,[64] the Senate of London, or the Long Parliament, will put their king to death. Force and wisdom (vin et sel[65]) will be wanting to Charles’s councils (lui seront à l’envers), and they (the Independents) will in the general disorder become masters of the kingdom.”

CENTURY VIII. QUATRAIN 76.

“Plus Macelin[66] que Roi en Angleterre, Lieu obscur nay par force aura l’Empire, Lasche, sans foy, sans loy, saignera terre; Son tems s’approche si près qui je souspire.”

“More butcher than king in England, a man of obscure birth [_né_ en lieu obscur] by force shall obtain the Empire. Unprincipled, restrained by neither faith nor law, he will drench the earth with blood. His time approaches so near as to make me heave a sigh.”

This is an announcement of such unparalleled and terrific import that Nostradamus exhibits more feeling over it than he does usually over his prognostications. The butcher-like face of Cromwell, with its fleshy conch and hideous warts, seems to have been visually present to him, and to have struck him with such a sense of terror and vividness that he imagines the time must be very near at hand. Though a full century had to elapse, he sighs with a present shudder, and the blood creeps. One of the remarkable features throughout the work of Nostradamus is the general absence of any sense of time apart from the mere enumeration of years as an algebraic or arithmetical sign; on this momentous occasion he departs from his usual practice, and stands horror-stricken as in a fearful vision.

CENTURY X. QUATRAIN 100.

“Le grand Empire sera par Angleterre Le Pempotan des ans plus de trois cens: Grandes copies passer par mer et terre, Les Lusitains n’en serons par contens.”

“The great empire of England shall be all-powerful ( πᾶν-potens) for more than 300 years.[67] Then great armies shall come by sea and land, and the Portuguese shall not be satisfied therewith.”

This seems to foreshadow that the naval power of England will be suppressed by sea-borne armies overwhelming her on her own shores, and the Lusitanians, or Portuguese, the oldest allies of England, will not be content, because, probably, Portugal at the same instant will be overwhelmed by Spain simultaneously.

This is as far as we can go in English history under the guidance of Le Pelletier. But, nevertheless, I shall adduce several more quatrains, bringing the sequence down at least to the establishment of the House of Hanover on the English throne in the person of George I.

(_To be continued._)

Down a Yorkshire River.

_PART I._

Had any one been able to sail down the River Calder, say a hundred years ago, long before the present little manufacturing towns had arisen on its banks, he would have passed through some of the most lovely scenery and through one of the loveliest mountain valleys in the county of York. Even to-day, when ugly mills and numberless prosaic tenements of trade disfigure, from an artistic point of view, the once grassy glades and the once gloriously wooded slopes, the prospect in many spots retains much of its virginal sweetness and romantic beauty. There are yet long tracts which commerce has not irremediably mutilated--pleasant meadowlands as fair with wilding flowers as of old; sylvan haunts of birch and elm whose dusky quietude is well-nigh as unbroken and solemn as of yore; bonnie tributary brooklets flashing and hurrying, like silver-footed naiads, through clough and dell and dene. As the eye takes a loftier and farther sweep the rugged contour and massive forms of forest-clad and moorland-capped mountains may be seen to wear much the same aspect they wore in the primal historic days of Roman and Celt. The conquests of commerce over both material and mental difficulties are apparent almost everywhere on the lowlands, for which all sensible and right-thinking minds are grateful, plain and anti-poetical as the outward signs may be in the jumble of viaduct and railway station, of factory and shop. But the old world of chivalry and romance is not altogether pushed aside: there are the ruins of stately and curiously carved gateways whence issued squire and yeoman to join the Pilgrimage of Grace, or later, gallant cavaliers, eager to mingle in the fray on the far-away field of Marston Moor; there are a few old Elizabethan halls with mullioned window and grey stone porch, in whose cool recesses the inmates waited anxiously and breathlessly for tidings about the great Armada; and here and there, built by pious hands that have been still for centuries, there are relics of quiet, quaint chapelle, where repose the ashes of Crusader knight, and of knights who fought so fiercely in the bloody wars of the Red and White Rose; and now and then we come across a grand antique church, crowded by worshippers where the ritual and the language of the worship have undergone many changes, and around whose hallowed precincts have gathered historic traditions and saintly legends, hoarier and older than the lichens that crust the mouldering towers. The tall chimneys are rising in the busy centres of trade, but occasionally we shelter under an oak or a yew-tree whose youth was fanned by less smutty winds; railway whistles have scared the nightingale, but the lark still carols anear human dwellings; graylings no longer leap the river-weir, but the waters sing and gleam as they glide seaward down the hushed moonlit glens.

The Calder, one of the most picturesque of northern rivers, rises near Cliviger Dene, in Lancashire, and enters the county of York through a wild gorge at Todmorden. As to the origin of the word there have been many conjectures, some plausible, but none to my mind satisfactory. An able writer in a provincial publication gives the derivation from two Celtic words, _coll_, the hazel-tree, and _dur_, water. The fatal objection to this is that hazel-trees never grew in such abundance in this valley as to be a distinguishing feature. Place-names with the Celtic _coll_ and the Saxon _hæsel_ are very rarely found. Had copses or shaws of the hazel flourished to such an extent as to give a name to the river, their former existence would still be traceable in the abiding nomenclature of the country through which the Calder runs its course. The Rev. Thomas Wright, who published a work on the antiquities of the parish of Halifax, where he was curate for more than seventeen years, noticing the Calder states that the spring is called _Cal_ or _Col_, and is joined by the River _Dar_. This is a purely fanciful supposition, and, I believe, not borne out by facts. Dr. Whitaker urges a Danish derivation. The Danes unquestionably won and maintained a lasting hold on the hills overlooking the Calder. As soon as this mountain-born stream assumes the dignity and proportions of a river at Todmorden, it washes on the one hand Langfield, the Long Range of hills, and on the other Stansfield, the Stony Range, whilst a few miles lower down it flows at the foot of Norland, the North-land--all Danish, or more correctly Scandinavian, terms. Then, on the slopes rising from the south banks, we have Sowerby and Fixby, two ancient “by’s,” where families of predatory Danes took up their abode. Other nomenclature traces of the same nation, of the great Canute himself possibly, might be mentioned in favour of the argument on this side of the question; though (I write from memory) I believe Dr. Whitaker does not point out the surrounding Danish indications I have here advanced. Another historian surmised that the original Celtic name was _Dur_, and that the Saxons on settling in this neighbourhood added the adjective _ceald_ or _cold_. But this is very improbable, the river in question being no cooler than any other.

I venture to urge a derivation different from any of the above, viz., from the Celtic _caoill_ (wood) and _dur_ (water). That Celts, the Brigantian clan, lived in this locality is an historic fact, the proofs of which need not be here adduced. The Calder beck as soon as it issues from the spring in Cliviger Dene flows by a long stretching sweep of woodland, and farther on among the hills of Yorkshire, a broader and a nobler stream, pursues its course for miles through dense primeval forests, among which may be mentioned the once famous forest of Hardwick. Its precipitous banks were clothed with no mere hazel coppice, but with vast masses of the more majestic oak and ash and birch, woodland in its wilder and more imposing form. Even to-day, though most of the primeval forest has been cut down, and manufacturing villages have sprung up on the ancient sylvan sites, the tourist starting above Todmorden would not, in a walk of thirty miles by the river side, be able to lose sight of the picturesque and far-stretching belts of woodland scenery. It is yet emphatically the _Caoill-dur_, the water winding through the woods. Of course, in this case the Saxons took up the word as they found it in use among the conquered Celts. Then, to strengthen this conjecture, the very first tributary brook on the north--of size and importance, at least, to give a name to the valley--joining the parent stream is the Colden or Caldene, which probably is the _Caoill-dene_, the woodland valley. The reader will judge how accurately the word describes this lonely mountain glen when he is told that at a distance the eye can scarcely catch a flash of the waters of this stream as they hurry down this wild sylvan region, so thickly is it overshadowed by a forest of ash and birch. A topographical word derived from two languages is rare in this part, and when we come across one it is generally a Saxon grafted on the more primitive Celtic name of mountain or river. Colden or Caldene is probably an instance to the point.

That _caoill_ was contracted to, or commonly pronounced, _cal_ may be pretty safely supposed, when we know that in the Latinised form or transformation it became _cal_, as in Caledonii, that is, _Caoill-daoin_, the people inhabiting the woods. The reader will perceive that _caoill_ is closely akin to the Greek κᾶλον, also signifying a wood.

The Calder, which is a very sinuous stream, runs a most irregular but charmingly diversified course as it winds under scout and scar, now gliding smoothly past belts of woodland or by long stretches of fair pastoral field, or again in narrower channel foaming more rapidly through wild ravine or over rocky weir, only again to slip into more tranquil waters, pleasantly gladdening as with quiet familiarity village and thorpe. Leaving Todmorden the tourist passes on the right the precipitous woods of Erringden, the dene or valley of the Irringas, where of yore probably dwelt a branch of the family of the Aruns; and on the other hand, towering far away on the heights to the north may be seen the bleak, solitary, altar-like mass of rock known as Llads-Law, conjectured by some to be a Druidical ruin. The Celt lived here beyond all doubt, though but few are the traces he has left behind in cromlech or cairn, in speech or blood. The Roman, we know, cut his way through the primeval forests, and on these very mountains laid down his military roads, the long lines of which we can map out, and oft-times does the plough turn up fragments of rusted sword and broken spear which tell how the pierced hand had to drop them for ever. On and near these roads, after the iron legions had ceased to tramp them, sprung up many a Saxon “ton” or town and Danish “by.” There, on the one hand, upon the heights still difficult to scale except to born mountaineers, is perched Saxon Heptonstall, with its grand old tower of Saint Thomas à Becket and antique homesteads clustering around; and yonder, on the far opposite slope to the south-east, is Danish Sowerby, taking us back in thought to the times when the Vikings settled down and fortified their “by” in the forest fastnesses of the hill. Here, too, to this Sowerby came later the Earl of Warren and built himself a castle, and took to his own possession vast tracts of mountain slope and wooded glen, which long retained the name of the Forest of Hardwick, and therein he hunted in right baronial style the boar and the wild deer. Sowerby with its Danish and Norman memories has a not uninteresting story in later ages, and is not a little proud in having given birth to John Tillotson, one of England’s most illustrious primates. Haugh-End, the quaint old house where he was born, is on the southern slope of the hill, and many the pilgrims who turn aside to have a look at the grey old roof sheltered behind the trees and the ivied high wall. Not a bow-shot from the riverside, and nearly opposite Sowerby, is Eawood Hall, the birthplace of Bishop Ferrar, the martyr. Eawood, snugly and picturesquely nestled under the greenwood scars of Midgley, has a conspicuous place in the ecclesiastical history of the county. Here John Wesley preached on several occasions, on one of which he remarked, “I preached to near an hour after sunset. The calmness of the evening agreed well with the seriousness of the people; every one of whom seemed to drink in the Word of God as a thirsty land the refreshing showers.” William Grimshaw, curate of Todmorden and afterwards incumbent of Haworth, a not unworthy coadjutor of Whitefield and the Wesleys, married his first wife from this place, and often preached and stayed here on his home-missionary tours. Not more than a couple of miles away is the birthplace of John Foster, whose Essays at one time had a considerable reputation. Close to Eawood there is many a neighbouring hall of more than local interest, one especially, Brearley Hall, beautifully embosomed in the trees on a gentle eminence on the north side of the river, and formerly the seat of a younger branch of the Lacy family. About half an hour’s walk down the valley brings the pedestrian to Daisy Bank Wood, and Chaucer’s favourite flower still grows on the daisied bank, and there stands yet the old-fashioned house below the wood where was born, in the reign of Elizabeth, Henry Briggs, of logarithm renown, and the first Savilian professor of geometry at the University of Oxford.

(_To be continued._)

Archaeology a Confirmation of Historic and Religious Truth.[68]

BY THE REV. GEORGE HUNTINGTON, M.A., _Rector of Tenby_.

JEREMIAH’S lot was cast in the darkest period of his country’s history. He was called on to declare the Divine will to the exiles in Babylon and the remnant in Palestine. In the context he is warning his countrymen against false prophets and false priests who were deceiving the people by proclaiming peace when there was no peace. He urges them to inquire after the ancient faith revealed to the patriarchs and prophets of old. Thus, and thus only, would they find “rest for their souls.”

The metaphor is a striking one; it is that of a traveller who comes to a place where several roads meet. He hesitates till he discerns the most beaten track, or till he hails another traveller from whom he can ask his way. Those were days of doubt and difficulty, when the royal counsellors were urging conformity to the idolatrous rites of the powerful nations around them as a policy of wisdom and conciliation. But Jeremiah regarded it as nothing less than apostasy. Those idolatries were abomination in the sight of Jehovah. Hence the people must return to the worship of the one true God--the God “who made heaven and earth,” to be true to the covenant which “He made with Abraham, the oath which He swore unto Isaac, and confirmed the same to Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”

But the text applies to ourselves. The days in which our lot is cast are days of doubt and difficulty--days when ancient landmarks are being removed, and the beaten tracks so effaced as almost to be indiscernible. So that we may well stand, like the traveller in the metaphor, to see and ask for the old paths, for the good way, amid the clouds of scepticism and unbelief which gather athwart our pathways; amid the Babel of voices saying “Who will show us the good?” we may say, with the Psalmist, “Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us.”

For what are those ways, those old paths, that good way, but the original revelation of God as our Father in heaven--subsequently manifested in the Person of His Incarnate Son as the Revealer of the Divine will, in the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, acting through the Church as His agent for making His “ways known to the sons of men.”

“The history of the race of Adam before the Advent,” says a great statesman,[69] “is the history of a long and varied, but incessant preparation for the Advent;” and the history of the human race since the Advent, it may be added, is but a record of the gradual but sure progress of that kingdom which Christ came to establish upon earth, an earnest of the time when the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever as King of kings and Lord of lords.

And to this, as it seems to me, all historical research as well as scientific discovery points. There are those who to exalt Christianity would represent the world as in total darkness before the Advent. The truer estimate of the Gospels shows us that Christ was in fact the “true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” The investigation of the records of the past assures us of this fact, confirms us in this belief, proves to us that God never “left Himself without witness,” teaches us that Christ drew as it were into a focus all the truths that men had previously held, only freeing them from error and bringing them into clearer light. “The words,” says a great scholar,[70] “by which God was known in the far-off ages are but mere words; but they bring before us with all the vividness of an event which we witnessed ourselves but yesterday, the ancestors of the whole Aryan race, thousands of years, it may be, before Homer and the Vedas, worshipping an unseen Being under the self-same name, the best, the most exalted name they could find in their vocabulary.” Plutarch wrote ages ago: “If you travel through the whole world, well, you may find cities without walls, without literature, without kings, moneyless, and such as desire no coin; which know not what theatres or public halls or bodily exercise mean; but never was there, nor ever shall be, any one city seen without temple, church, or chapel, without some God or other, which useth no prayers, nor oaths, no prophecies and divinations, no sacrifices either to obtain good blessings, or to avert heavy curses and calamities. Nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city built in the air without any plot of ground whereon it is seated than any commonwealth altogether void of religion.... This is that containeth and holdeth together all human society, this is the foundation prop and stay of all.”[71]

Brethren of the Archæological Association, I venture to think that you will not fail to see the application of these remarks to your own researches, and to the consequences which are happily arising from these researches. Of course I speak of archæology in its widest sense. Your investigations of the records of antiquity, your examination of ancient remains, your discovery of the sites and foundations of temples, tombs, altars, and cromlechs, confirm the testimony of philologists, historians, and philosophers, nay the witness of the human heart; they all speak with more or less clearness of a belief in the Supreme Being, of a longing for a clearer revelation of His will, of a hope of immortality, of a sense of sin and desire for reconciliation with Him, obscured it may be, often perverted, debased by superstitious, cruel, and unholy rites, sometimes feebly held, but never totally lost.

And the same observations apply to the attestation by archæology to the scriptural records. Nothing is more remarkable than the recovery of ancient monuments, unless it be the deductions of science which are marking the intellectual activity of the age. What a revelation was that finding of the famous Rosetta stone[72] which by its triple inscription in the Sacred, the popular Egyptian, and the Greek languages, gave the key to unlock the mysteries of figure writing, so that thanks to Egyptologists, who are but archæologists under a local name, we may picture to ourselves the Egypt of the Pyramids, of Abraham, of Joseph, and the Exodus, and see the Pharaohs in their colossal palaces, and learn something of that wisdom of the Egyptians in which we are told “Moses was learned.” Think, too, how the unshapely mounds on the banks of the Euphrates have given up their treasures, so that we may now know the history of those mighty empires which each in its day exercised its influence on the chosen people, and through that chosen people on the destinies of the Church. Think of the excavations of a Layard, the researches of a Rawlinson in Babylon and Assyria, and of the Palestine explorers, which bring before us not only the land of the Judges and the Kings, but the scenes of the earthly ministry of the Son of God Himself.

And what is it but archæology that led to the exhuming of those long-lost cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii which have thrown such a lurid glare on the morals of the Græco-Roman world, confirming as it does the keen satires not only of a Juvenal or a Persius, but the mournful testimony of a Paul, showing as nothing else could show the world’s need of a divine Saviour, and a newer and fuller revelation of the Divine will.

Or think of the identification of the sites of classic Troy and Mycenæ by Dr. Schliemann, and of the discoveries of Mr. Wood at Ephesus, and of Mr. Ramsay in Phrygia. These investigations might seem to have only an indirect reference to Christianity, but they may help to attest the accuracy of the Scripture record and of the history of the isapostolic Church. Asia Minor, be it remembered, was, next to Palestine, the theatre of the earliest apostolic labours; Ephesus was the city wherein St. Paul encountered the worshippers of the Temple of the world-renowned Artemis. To the Ephesians he addressed one of his most remarkable epistles, to Ephesus he sent his son in the faith, Timothy; over the Ephesian Church St. John presided as the survivor of the Twelve; in Ephesus was held the third of the Œcumenical Councils. Who knows, then, what the archæology of the future may not discover in these interesting regions? What treasures may not yet be buried under those shapeless masses, the accumulations of ages of neglect? Who knows what light they may not shed on the annals of a hoary antiquity in which we of this busy nineteenth century may be vitally interested?--interested as we “ask for the old paths.”

The same may be said of the Catacombs of Rome, with their simple and unstudied testimony to the faith of the early Christian martyrs, so strangely contrasting with the sad records of the pagan world, so that, as has well been said, “if you cross the Appian Way, from the Columbaria to the Catacombs, and place side by side the heathen and the Christian epitaphs, you may read, in those authentic registers, how, without Christ, death meant despair; with Christ, peace.”

Think again of the recovery of MSS. I need name but one, the Codex Sinaiticus, found seemingly by a lucky accident, but one which has enabled New Testament scholars to establish the truest readings of the Gospels and the Epistles. Nor is the discovery of an authentic copy of that ancient treatise which goes by the name of the “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” without its influence on Christian archæology. It confirms what the examination of the ancient liturgies of ancient altars and altar vessels--a distinct branch of your science--teaches us, the testimony of a Pliny and a Justin as to what primitive Christian worship really was; it assures the Churchman of the nineteenth century that in all essentials of faith and worship he is one with the Church of the first century, the Church of the Apostles, the Church of Pentecost, the Church of Christ from the beginning.

But you are British archæologists; if it pleases you to visit my native county of York, you will doubtless direct your steps to Goodmanham, or Godmundenham, as its ancient name betokened--the Protection of the Gods. There in that little East Riding village archæology verified the identity of the font in which Paulinus baptized the heathen priest Coifi, with a trough out of which for years farmers had fed their swine. What a commentary on the spread of Christianity, and the need of Christianity, so early as the seventh century in the northern parts of our island is the beautiful story told by the Venerable Bede.[73] “The present life of man,” said the aged counsellor Coifi to his sovereign, “O king, seems to me in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like the swift flight of the sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within is safe from the wintry storm, but after a short space of fair weather he immediately vanishes out of your sight into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before or what is to follow we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, the new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.” In contempt of his former superstition, the king and his counsellors assenting, we are told, the arch-priest mounted the royal war-horse, armed himself with a spear, things otherwise unlawful, and profaned the temple by casting at the idol his spear; and then both king and counsellor were baptized and professed the faith of Christ.[74]

Authorities have been divided as to the diffusion of Christianity in Britain, and as to the independence of the ancient British Church. Archæology, on the other hand, by its identification of sacred sites by the nomenclature of native saints, by the designation of parishes and churches, has done much to settle these questions. The science of archæology has discovered Christian symbols, traced British bishops to far-distant Councils;[75] as at Carleon, and Bangor, and elsewhere, it has unfolded the records of a community acting under its own prelates and arch-prelates, enjoying its own native customs, adhering to its own independent rites.

Archæology is, in its widest sense, no mere question of curious antiquities, it is a confirmation of historic and religious truth. It aids the devout in the inquiry after the old ways in which the saints of God have trod. It is a teaching and a walking in that good way in which patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, found rest to their souls. To the Jews of Jeremiah’s days God promised rest from their enemies in their own land of promise, rest in the assured favour of Jehovah. To us Christ promises rest, rest from disquieting doubts and fears, rest in the sense of sins forgiven, rest in communion and union with God and Christ, in the mystical fellowship of His Body, the Church, rest hereafter in our heavenly home.

Brethren, the appeal of Christ is to the individual heart, the witness to the Saviour is in the testimony of conscience, the heart and life, the presence of His Spirit within the soul. May I beg you, then, to ask for the old paths of repentance and faith, for the good way that leadeth to life, to walk therein; to consecrate your researches to the highest and noblest of purposes, the furtherance of truth and the glory of God; and so, to use again the words of the prophet in the text, “ye shall find rest for your souls.”

Johnson and Garrick.

_A JEU D’ESPRIT[76] BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS._

_PART II._

(_Continued from p. 175._)

CONTINUING the dialogue between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Gibbon from the point where we broke off in our last, the _jeu d’esprit_ proceeds:--

GIBBON.--Garrick had some flippancy of parts, to be sure, and was brisk and lively in company, and by the help of mimickry and story-telling made himself a pleasant companion; but here, the whole world gave the superiority to Foote, and Garrick himself appears to have felt as if his genius was rebuked by the superior powers of Foote. It has been often observed, that Garrick never dared to enter into competition with him, but was content to act an under part to bring Foote out.

JOHNSON.--That this conduct of Garrick’s might be interpreted by the gross minds of Foote and his friends as if he was afraid to encounter him, I can easily imagine. Of the natural superiority of Garrick over Foote, this conduct is an instance; he disdained entering into competition with such a fellow, and made him the buffoon of the company, or, as you may say, brought him out, and what was at last brought out but coarse jests and vulgar merriment, indecency, and impiety, a relation of events which, upon the face of them, could never have happened, characters grossly conceived and as coarsely represented. Foote was even no mimick; he went out of himself, it is true, but without going into another man; he was excelled by Garrick even in this, which is considered as Foote’s greatest excellence. Garrick, besides his exact imitation of the voice and gestures of his original, to a degree of refinement of which Foote had no conception, exhibited the mind and mode of thinking of the person imitated. Besides, Garrick confined his powers within the limits of decency: he had a character to preserve, Foote had none. By Foote’s buffoonery and broadfaced merriment, private friendship, public decency, and everything estimable amongst men, were trod under foot. We all know the difference of their reception in the world. No man, however high in rank or literature, but was proud to know Garrick, and was glad to have him at his table; no man ever considered or treated Garrick as a player; he may be said to have stepped out of his own rank into an higher, and by raising himself he raised the rank of his profession. At a convivial table his exhilarating powers were unrivalled; he was lively, entertaining, quick in discerning the ridicule of life, and as ready in representing it, and on graver subjects there were few topics on which he could not bear a part. It is injurious to the character of Garrick to be named in the same breath with Foote. That Foote was admitted sometimes into good company (to do the man what credit I can) I will allow, but then it was merely to play tricks; Foote’s merriment was that of a buffoon, and Garrick’s that of a gentleman.

G.--I have been told, on the contrary, that Garrick in company had not the easy manners of a gentleman.

J.--Sir, I do not know what you may have been told, or what your ideas may be of the manners of gentlemen. Garrick had no vulgarity in his manners; it is true, he had not the airiness of a fop, nor did he assume an affected indifference to what was passing; he did not lounge from the table to the window, and from thence to the fire, or whilst you were addressing your discourse to him, turn from you, and talk to his next neighbour, or give any indication that he was tired of your company. If such manners form your ideas of a fine gentleman, Garrick certainly had them not.

G.--I mean that Garrick was more overawed by the presence of the great, and more obsequious to rank than Foote, who considered himself as their equal, and treated them with the same familiarity as they treated each other.

J.--He did so, and what did the fellow get by it? The grossness of his mind prevented him from seeing that this familiarity was merely suffered as they would play with a dog. He got no ground by affecting to call peers by their surnames. The foolish fellow fancied, that lowering them was raising himself to their level. This affectation of familiarity with the great, this childish ambition of momentary exaltation, obtained by the neglect of those ceremonies which custom has established as the barriers between one order of society and another, only showed his folly and meanness; he did not see that by encroaching on others’ dignity, he puts himself in their power, either to be repelled with helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and condescension. Garrick by paying due regard to rank respected himself; what he gave was returned, and what was returned he kept for ever. His advancement was on firm ground; he was recognised in public as well as respected in private, and as no man was ever more courted or better received by the public, so no man was ever less spoiled by its flattery. Garrick continued advancing to the last, till he had acquired every advantage that high birth could bestow, except the precedence of going into the room, but when he was there he was treated with as much attention as the first man at the table. It is to the credit of Garrick that he never laid any claim to this distinction; it was as voluntarily allowed as if it had been his birthright. In this, I confess, I looked on David with some degree of envy, not so much for the respect he received as for the manner of its being acquired: what fell into his lap unsought, I have been forced to claim. I began the world by fighting my way. There was something about me that invited insult, or at least a disposition to neglect, and I was equally disposed to repel insult, and to claim attention, and, I fear, continue too much in this disposition now it is no longer necessary; I receive at present as much favour as I have a right to expect. I am not one of the complainers of the neglect of merit.

G.--_Your_ pretensions, Dr. Johnson, nobody will dispute; I cannot place Garrick on the same footing: your reputation will continue increasing after your death. When Garrick will be totally forgot, you will be for ever considered as a classic.

J.--Enough, sir, enough; the company will be better pleased to see us quarrel than bandying compliments.

G.--But you must allow, Dr. Johnson, that Garrick was too much a slave to fame, or rather to the mean ambition of living with the great, terribly afraid of making himself cheap with them; by which he debarred himself from much pleasant society. Employing so much attention and so much management upon such little things, implies, I think, a little mind. It was observed by his friend Coleman that he never went into company but with a plot how to get out of it; he was every minute called out, and went off or returned as there was, or was not, a probability of his shining.

J.--In regard to his mean ambition, as you call it, of living with the great, what was the boast of Pope, and is every man’s wish, can be no reproach to Garrick; he who says he despises it, knows he lies. That Garrick husbanded his fame, the fame which he had justly acquired, both at the theatre and at the table, is not denied; but where is the blame either in the one or the other of leaving as little as possible to chance? Besides, sir, consider what you have said; you first deny Garrick’s pretensions to fame, and then accuse him of too great an attention to preserve what he never possessed.

G.--I don’t understand.

J.--I can’t help that, sir.

G.--Well but, Dr. Johnson, you will not vindicate him in his over and above attention to his fame, his inordinate desire to exhibit himself to new men, like a coquet ever seeking after new conquests, to the total neglect of old friends and admirers:

“He threw off his friends, like a huntsman his pack:”

always looking out for new game.

J.--When you have quoted the line from Goldsmith, you ought, in fairness to have given what followed,

“He knew when he pleased, he could whistle them back:”

which implies at least that he possessed a power over other men’s minds approaching to fascination. But consider, sir, what is to be done. Here is a man, whom every other man desired to know. Garrick could not receive and cultivate all, according to each man’s conception of his own value: we are all apt enough to consider ourselves as possessing a right to be exempted from the common crowd. Besides, sir, I do not see why that should be imputed to him as a crime which we all so irresistibly feel and practise; we all make a greater exertion in the presence of new men than old acquaintance; it is undoubtedly true that Garrick divided his attention among so many, that but little remained to the share of an individual: like the extension and dissipation of water into dew, there was not quantity united sufficiently to quench any man’s thirst; but this is the inevitable state of things; Garrick no more than any other man could unite what was in their nature incompatible.

G.--But Garrick was by this means not only excluded from real friendship, but also accused of treating those whom he called friends with insincerity and double dealings.

J.--Sir, it is not true; his character in that respect is misunderstood: Garrick was, to be sure, very ready in promising, but he intended at that time to fulfil his promise; he intended no deceit; his politeness, or his good nature, call it which you will, made him unwilling to deny, he wanted the courage to say _No_, even to unreasonable demands. This was the great error of his life; by raising expectations which he did not, perhaps could not, gratify, he made enemies; at the same time it must be remembered that this error proceeded from the same cause which produced many of his virtues. Friendships from warmth of temper too suddenly taken up, and too violent to continue, ended, as they were like to do, in disappointment; enmity succeeded disappointment, his friends became his enemies, and those having been fostered in his bosom, knew well his sensibility to reproach, and they took care that he should be amply supplied with such bitter potions as they were capable of administering. Their impotent efforts he ought to have despised, but he felt them; nor did he affect insensibility.

G.--And that sensibility probably shortened his life.

J.--No, sir, he died of a disorder of which you or any other man may die without being killed by too much sensibility.

G.--But you will allow, however, that this sensibility, those fine feelings, made him the great actor he was.

J.--This is all cant, fit only for kitchen wenches and chamber maids; Garrick’s trade was to represent passion, not to feel it. Ask Reynolds, whether he felt the distress of Count Ugolino, when he drew it.

G.--But surely he feels the passion at the moment he is representing it.

J.--About as much as Punch feels. That Garrick himself gave in to this foppery of feelings, I can easily believe; but he knew at the time that he lied. He might think it right, as far as I know, to have what fools imagined he ought to have; but it is amazing that anyone should be so ignorant as to think that an actor will risk his reputation by depending upon the feelings, that may be excited in the presence of 200 people, on the repetition of certain words which he has repeated 200 times before in what actors call their study. No, sir, Garrick left nothing to chance; every gesture, every expression of countenance, and variation of voice, was settled in his closet, before he set his foot upon the stage.

MR. ALEXANDER GARDNER, of Paisley, has in hand a little series of books, which he proposes to name “The Antiquarian Library.” The series will consist chiefly of original works, and will be introduced by the following books from the pen of Mr. William Andrews: “Gibbet Lore: Remarkable Chapters in the Annals of Great Britain and Ireland,” “Obsolete Punishments,” “History of Bells and Wells: Their History, Legends, Superstitions, Folk-lore, and Poetry.”

The History of Gilds.

BY CORNELIUS WALFORD, F.S.S., _Barrister-at-Law_.

_PART IV._

(_Continued from p. 181._)