Part 120

Theophrastus, as quoted by Plutarch, says in his History of Astronomy, which has not reached our times, that Plato, when advanced in years, gave up the error he had been in, of making the sun turn round the earth; and lamented that he had not placed it in the centre, as it deserved, instead of the earth, which he had put there contrary to the order of nature. Nor is it at all strange that Plato should reassume an opinion which he had early imbibed in the schools of the two celebrated Pythagoreans, Archytas of Tarentum, and Timæus the Locrian, as we see in St. Jerome’s Christian apology against Rufinus. In Cicero we find, that Heraclides of Pontus, who was a Pythagorean, taught the same doctrine. It may be added, that Tycho Brache’s system was known to Vitruvius, as well as were the motions of Venus and Mercury about the sun.

That the earth is round, and inhabited on all sides, and of course that there are Antipodes, or those whose feet are directly opposite to ours, is one of the most ancient doctrines inculcated by philosophy. Diogenes Laertius, in one part of his history, says, that Plato was the first who called the inhabitants of the earth opposite to us “Antipodes.” He does not mean that Plato was the first who taught this opinion, but only the first who made use of the term “Antipodes;” for, in another place, he mentions Pythagoras as the first who taught of When Plutarch wrote, it was a point in. controversy; and Lucretius and Pliny, were oppose this notion, as well as St. Augustine, serve as witnesses that it must have prevailed in their time.

The proofs which the ancients brought of the sphericalness of the earth, were the same that the moderns use. Pliny on this subject observes, that the land which retires out of sight to persons on the deck of a ship, appears still in view to those who are upon the mast. He thence concludes, that the earth is round. Aristotle drew this consequence not only from the circular shadow of the earth on the disk of the moon in eclipse, but also from this, that, in travelling south, we discover other stars, and that those which we saw before, whether in the zenith or elsewhere, change their situation with respect to us.

On whatever arguments the ancients founded their theory, it is certain they clearly apprehended that the planets revolved upon their own axis. Heraclides of Pontus, and Ecphantus, two celebrated Pythagoreans, said, that the earth turned from west to east, just as a wheel does upon its axis or centre. According to Atticus, the platonist, Plato extended this observation from the earth to the sun and other planets. “To that general motion which makes the planets describe a circular course, he added another, resulting from their spherical shape, which made each of them move about its own centre, whilst they performed the general revolution of their course.” Plotinus also ascribes this sentiment to Plato; for speaking of him he says, that besides the grand circular course observed by all the stars in general, Plato thought “they each performed another about their own centre.”

The same notion is ascribed to Nicetas of Syracuse by Cicero, who quotes Theophrastus to warrant what he advances. This Nicetas is he whom Diogenes Laertius names Hycetas, whose opinion, he says, was, that “the celerity of the earth’s motion about its own axis, and otherwise, was the only cause and reason of the apparent revolutions of the heavenly bodies.”

How useful the invention of telescopes has been to the astronomical observations of the moderns is particularly evident from their discovery, that the planets revolve on their axis, a discovery founded on the periodical revolution of the spots observed on their disks; so that every planet performs two revolutions, by one of which it is carried with others about a common centre; and, by the other, moves upon its axis round its own. Yet all that the moderns have advanced in this respect, serves only to confirm to the ancients the glory of being the first discoverers, by the aid of reason alone. The moderns in this are to the ancients, as the French philosophers to sir Isaac Newton; all whose labours and travail, in visiting the poles and equator to determine the figure of the earth, served only to confirm what sir Isaac had thought of it, without so much as stirring from his closet.

* * * * *

GRAVESEND.

A MOTHER AND HER CHILDREN.

_To the Editor._

_Rochester, Sept. 29, 1827._

Sir,--On the beach at Gravesend yesterday morning, I saw a gaily dressed young female walking and fondling an infant in her arms, whom she called Henry; with a fine, lively, bluff boy of about three years old running before, who suddenly venturing to interrupt the gravity of a goat, by tickling his beard with a switch, became in immediate danger of over-punishment from the provoked animal. I ran to “the rescue,” and received warm thanks for its achievement. After the manner of mothers she kissed and scolded her “dear Lobski,” as she called the little rogue; and I involuntarily and inquisitively repeated the appellation. “Sir,” said she,--and she smiled--“it is perfectly ridiculous; but his father and I so frequently give him that name in joke, that we sometimes let it fall when in earnest--his _real Christian_ name is Robert.” I laughed at the whim, shook hands with young “Lobski,” wished his mother good morning, set off by the first conveyance to London, and wholly forgot my little adventure.

----It was brought to my recollection this afternoon through an incident on the roof of a stage-coach, by which I was travelling to Rochester with several passengers; all of whom, except myself, alighted at Gravesend. One of them, a Londoner, a young man of facetious remark, let an expression or two fall, from whence I strongly suspected he was the husband of Lobski’s mother. He had sat next to me at the back of the coach, and had been particularly anxious respecting the safety of a goose--whereon, as I learned, he anticipated to regale with his wife in honour of Michaelmas. Being left to pursue the short remainder of my journey alone, I was proceeding to change my place in the rear, for the box-seat, when I perceived a letter, with the direction so obliterated by friction, as to be undecipherable. There could not be a doubt that it had escaped from my late fellow-traveller’s pocket; and as it seemed to have been left to me as an _air_loom, I took the liberty to examine the contents. It was from his wife; and in connection with my surmise, and with my beach-story, it furnished the strongest presumptive evidence that I had rightly conjectured his identity. He was an entire stranger to the driver; and I am scarcely sorry that the absence of all clue to his address at Gravesend, or in London, allows me a fair opportunity of laying before the readers of the _Table Book_ a sprightly epistle, from a mother who leaves her home in the metropolis to visit Gravesend, as a watering place, with a couple of young children whom she loves, and with the pleasure of expecting and receiving an occasional pop-visit from her good man.

COPY OF THE LETTER.

_Gravesend, Thursday aft._

Dear Henry,--We arrived here after a very pleasant voyage in one of the Calais steamers. Lobski, as usual, was, and is, quite at home. He really appears to be the flower of Gravesend. He spars with all the sailors who notice him, which are not a few--nods to the old women--halloes at the boys, and runs off with their hoops--knocks at the windows with his stick--hunts the fowls and pigs, because they run away from him--and admires the goats, because they are something new. As we walk on the beach he looks out for “_anoner_ great ship”--kisses the little girls--thumps Mary--and torments me. The young ones in the road call him “Cock Robin.” He is, _indeed_, what E. D. calls “a _tainted_ one.”

Upon first coming down I immediately commenced inquiries about the bathing, and found some who talked of _mud-rubbing_. No one gave it such a character as Mrs. E.--I met with a lady on the beach, who told me she had brought a little boy of hers down last year to be _mud-rubbed_; but after a month’s stay his legs were no way improved--she then _bathed_ him for a month, and the boy is a fine little fellow. I considered, as _Lobski’s_ legs really brought us here, it was best to bathe him at once; and accordingly paid 5_s._ 3_d._ for a month, otherwise it is 1_s._ each time. Since going in, which he took pretty well, considering the instantaneous plunge, he calls to me when he looks at the sea, “There is my _tub_, Ma.” He was rather frightened, and thought he fell into the water, but not near so much, the guide says, as most children are. Harry is getting fatter every day, and very jealous of Bob when with me--but, out of doors, the little fellow glories in seeing Lobski run on before. They grow very fond of each other.

Monday will be a grand day here in choosing the mayor, and at night a mock election takes place, with fireworks, &c.--and this day month Greenwich-fair is held in the fields. The people here are any thing but sociable, and “keep themselves to themselves.” The sailors are the most obliging, and very communicative--they usually carry Bob over any dirty place or so for me--and, to tell the truth, I have almost changed my mind from a parson to a sailor.

If you _can_, do come down on Sunday; but, by no means, empty-handed, or rather, empty-pocketed--my cash is now very low, though I have been as saving as possible. I find no alteration in the price of provisions except potatoes and milk--every thing else I think is as in London. I should like some pens, paper, and a book or two--for one, the Duchess D’Orleans’ Court of Louis the XIV., I think it is--and any thing, as poor Mrs. ---- says, _w_ery amusing; for the evenings are “cursedly” dull--stop--it’s your own word--and as I have said it, it may relieve a little of _this_ evening’s _ennui_. Whatever you bring you can put into the little portmanteau, which I shall find very useful when we return. Bob and Harry send you a kiss apiece, and mine “I will twist up in a piece of paper, and bring with me when I come to town.”

This is a scribble--but Bob is asleep on my lap.

I am, my dear Harry,

Yours, very affectionately,

***** ****

N.B. Please to send me word the day of the month, and what’s o’clock.

Can you, Mr. Editor, imagine any thing more expressive of loneliness, and desire for intelligence, than this young wife’s capital N.B., with the execratory citation from her husband’s vocabulary--or more sportively affectionate than the “twist up” of her kiss, with “Bob” Lobski asleep on her lap. I like a letter, and a letter writer of this sort mightily: one with a fearless and strong expression of feeling--as in the epithet about the dull evenings, which a female can scarcely extenuate, except by such a confession and assignment to its right owner, implying its impropriety, as this female makes. How oddly, and yet how well, her fondness for reading and her domestic management collocate--the Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV. and the price of provisions. How natural is her momentary hesitation between mud-rubbing and bathing. Then the instant determination, so essential when there is no time to spare, marks such “decision of character!”--even the author of the excellent essay on that noble quality would admire it. I presume that “Lobski” may be rickety; and I take this opportunity of observing, on the authority of a medical friend, that town-bred children, who eat profusely of sugar, and are pampered with sweets, usually are. Sugar has the effect of softening the bones, and causes the rickets: it should form no part of the food of rickety children, or only in a small degree; and such children should be allowed and encouraged to eat common salt freely.

To return however to the letter.--I should really like to know the secret of the allusion respecting the “parson” and the “sailor,” so naturally called forth by the playful services of the tars; which, I have observed, are ever exerted on such occasions, and remind one of the labours of Hercules with the distaff. Her account of Lobski’s “animated nature” is so pretty and true a sketch of boyish infancy, that you may perceive the hand of the _mother_ in every line. In the anticipation of the mayoralty show and the fair, and the unsociableness of Gravesend society, I think I can trace something of the _woman_. I hope she may live to see her boys “good men and true,” gladdening her heart by fearless well-doing. She must look well to Lobski:--he’s a “Pickle.” It is in the power of a mother to effect more in the formation of a child’s early disposition than the father.

Lastly, that you may be assured of the genuineness of the letter I found, and have copied, the _original_ accompanies this communication to your publishers; with authority, if its ownership be claimed, to deliver it to the claimant, on the production of a line in the handwriting of the epistle itself.

I am, Sir, &c.

CURIO SO.

* * * * *

“POOR BILLY W----.”

_For the Table Book._

Some years ago my pen was employed to attempt the sketch of a Character, but apprehending that the identity might be too strong and catch his eye,--he was my friend, and a great reader of “periodicals”--I desisted. I meant to say nothing ill-natured, yet I feared to offend a harmless and inoffensive man, and I destroyed what had given me an hour’s amusement. The reason no longer exists--death has removed him. Disease and a broken spirit, occasioned by commercial misfortunes and imprudences, weighed him down, and the little sphere in which he used to shine has lost its chief attraction.

----What a man he was!--of the pure, real London cut. Saint Paul’s was stamped on his forehead. He was the great oracle of a certain coffee-house, not a hundred miles from Gray’s Inn; where he never dined but in one box, nor placed himself but in one situation. His tavern dignities were astounding--the waiters trembled at his approach--his orders were obeyed with the nicest precision. For some years he was the king of the room--he was never deposed, nor did he ever abdicate. His mode of calling for his pint of wine, and the bankrupt part of the Gazette, had a peculiar character past describing. I have now and then seen a “rural,” in the same coffee-room, attempt the _thing_--but my friend was “Hyperion to a satyr.”----

----I have him in my eye now--traversing to the city and back--regulating his watch by the Royal Exchange clock daily; and daily boasting he had the best “goer” in England. Like his watch, he was a curious piece of mechanism. He seldom quitted London, for he was persuaded every thing would “stand still” in his absence. It seemed, as though he imagined that St. Paul’s clock would not strike--that the letters by the general post would not be delivered.--Was he not right? To me, the city was a “void” without him.----

----What a referee he was! He would tell you the price of stocks on any past day; and dilate for hours on the interesting details in the charters of the twelve city companies. He had a peculiar mode of silencing an antagonist who ventured to obtrude an opinion--by adducing a scriptural maxim, “Study to be quiet,” and “mind your own business;” and now and then a few Latin mottos, obtained from the Tablet of Memory, would be used with great felicity. His observations were made in an elevated tone, they commanded attention--he used to declare that “money was money;” that “many people were great fools;” and that “bankrupts could not be expected to pay much.” After a remark of this kind he would take a pinch of snuff, with grave self-complacency, and throw his snuff-box on the table with inimitable importance--a species of dignified ingenuity that lived and died with him. His medical panacea was a certain “vegetable sirup,” whereon he would descant, by the hour together, as a specific for all human maladies, and affirm “your physicians and apothecaries--mere humbugs!”----

Then, he would astound the coffee-room by declaring he once bid the king of Spain £700,000 for the island of Porto Rico--this was his grandest effort, and if his ear ever caught the question “Who is he?” uttered by a country listener, his thrown-back shoulders and expansion of chest betrayed the delight he felt, that his bounce had been overheard.

Now and then, on a Saturday, he would break his city chains, and travel to “The Spaniard” at Hampstead for a dinner; but no argument or persuasion could get him to Richmond. His reply was always the same--“the hotels at Richmond employ too much capital.” He was an economist.

In his pleasantest humours, and he had few unpleasant ones, after dining with him I have sometimes importuned him to pay the _whole_ bill; his answer was peculiar and conclusive; “My good friend,” said he, “if I had adopted the plan of paying for others, I might have kept company with all the princes and nobles in the land, instead of plebeians like you.”

His Sunday, till one o’clock, was passed in “spelling the newspapers;” after that he walked on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with his hands behind him, till three--he then entered Lincoln’s Inn chapel, and returned to boiled beef and suet pudding at five, which were always brought to him first.--If an old friend or two dropped in, his happiness was complete.

He was a philosopher too, at least he indulged in a _sort_ of philosophy, and I am not sure that it was not a good sort, although not a very elevated or poetical one. He evinced a disregard for life. The sooner “we are all dead the better” was one of his favourite phrases. And now _he is dead_.--Peace to his ashes!

This is the only tablet raised to his memory; the inscription is feeble, but it has the novelty of truth, and may occasion some of his many acquaintances to remember the quaintness and eccentricities of “POOR BILLY W----.”

W. H.

* * * * *

ABORIGENES.

This word is explained in every dictionary, English, Latin, or French, as a general name for the indigenous inhabitants of a country; when in reality it is the proper name of a peculiar people of Italy, who were not indigenous, but supposed to have been a colony of Arcadians. The error has been founded chiefly on the supposed derivation of the word from _ab origine_. Never (except in Swift’s ludicrous work) was a more eccentric etymology--a preposition, with its governed case, made plural by the modern final s! The university of Oxford, some years ago, added to this solecism by a public prize poem on the Aboriginal Britons.

The most rational etymology of the word seems to be a compound of the Greek words απο, ορος, and γενος, a race of mountaineers. So Virgil calls them,

“--Genus indocile ac dispersum montibus altis.”

It seems more probable, that the name of the oldest settlers in Italy should have a Greek than a Latin derivation.

The preceding remarks are by a late poet-laureate, Mr. Pye, who concludes by inquiring, what should we say of the etymologist who were to deduce the name of an ancient British tribe from the modern English?

* * * * *

TASTING DAYS.

_To the Editor._

Sir,--Few men enjoy, or deserve better living than the citizens of London. When they are far on the journey of life, and have acquired a useful fame in their respective companies, their elevation is delightful and complacent. Not a subject is proposed, nor a matter of reference considered, but, as a living author has observed, “it must begin or finish with a dinner.” Thus originated a most exquisite anticipation to the _select_ few, the “Tasting Day,”--a day which precedes all good _general_ eating and drinking days. Mr. Abernethy (who, by the by, is not afraid of dish or glass) may lecture profitably on abstinence, and the “Lancet” may breathe a satirical vein, yet, in compliance with social fellowship and humane _gourmanderie_, London citizens proudly patronise the preceding and succeeding engagements of “Tasting Days.”

I am, sir,

Your brother cit,

AN OLD TASTER.

* * * * *

CURIOUS SIGN.

_For the Table Book._

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

So said Pope, and so say I. At Halton East, near Skipton-in Craven, the following inscription arrests the attention of every passer-by:--

WATKINSON’S

ACADAMY

_Whatever man has done man may do._

Also

DEALER IN GROCERIES,

&c.

TIM. T----.

* * * * *

ORDERS TO MARCH.

The following parody, on a stanza of the “Blue Bonnets over the Border,” is put forth, as an advertisement, by a hatter, at Brighton, named March.

March! March! has the best hats to sell, Try him, you’ll find him no wily deceiver; March!--march! go and he’ll use you well. His is the warehouse for buying a beaver. Come then, my masters, Doff your old castors, Ragged and torn, or howe’er in disorder: For a new topper, a Round hat or opera, March is the man, so give him an order. March! March! has the best hats to sell, &c.

Vol. II.--42.

A homely picture of a homely place, Where rustic labour plies its honest toil, And gains a competence.

*

On a fine summer’s day I alighted, with my friend W----, from the roof of a stage-coach at Croydon, for a by-way walk, in a part unknown to both. We struck to the eastward through Addiscombe--it is scarcely a village, and only remarkable for the East India Company having seated it with a military establishment; which, as peaceable persons, we had no desire to see, though we could not help observing some cannon in a meadow, as smooth-shaven, and with as little of nature-like aspect, as a drill-sergeant’s face. Further onward we met a well-mounted horseman, whom some of my old readers may easily imagine I could not fail to remember--“mine host” of the “Swan” at West Wickham--the recognition was mutual and being in search of an adventure, I asked him for a direction to any little public-house within a mile or two, that was worth looking at on account of its antiquity and rustic appearance. He despaired of any thing “absolutely” of the kind in the neighbourhood; but, from his description of what he thought might be “something” near it, we took a lane to the left, and soon came to the house. Like too many of our ancient churches it had been “repaired and beautified”--deprived of every thing venerable--and was as unpicturesque as the overseers of the reparations could make it. We found better entertainment within than without--a cheerful invitation to the bar, where we had a cool glass of good ale with a biscuit, and the sight of a fine healthy family as they successively entered for something or other that was wanted. Having refreshed and exchanged “good-morning” with the good-natured proveditors of “good entertainment for man and horse,” we turned to the left, and at a stone’s throw crossed into a lane, having a few labourers’ cottages a little way along on the right, and soon came to the Broom-maker’s, represented in the engraving.

We had a constant view all the way up the lane, from beyond the man climbing the ladder, of the flickering linen at the point of the rod waving on the broom-stack. The flag was erected by the labourers on the carrying of the last shoulder-load of the rustic pile--an achievement quite as important to the interests of the Broom-maker, as the carrying of Seringapatam to the interests of the “Honourable Company.”