Chapter 2

Stowe tells us--"About the year 1585, certain gallant, active, and forward citizens, having had experience abroad and at home, voluntarily exercised themselves, and trayned uppe others, for the readie use of warre, so as within two years, there was almost three hundredth marchants, and others of like quality, very sufficient and skillful to traine and teache common souldiers, the managing of their peeces, pikes, and holberds, to march countermarch, and ring; which said marchants, for their owne perfection in military affairs and discipline, met every Tuesday in the year, practising all usual points of warre, and every man by turn bare orderly office, from the Corporall to the Captain: some of them in the yeare 1588 had charge of men in the great Campo at Tilbury, and were generally called _Captaines of the Artillery Garden_."

After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the association soon fell to decay. The ground they used was at the north extremity of the city, nigh Bishopsgate, and had before been occupied (says Ellis) by the "fraternity of artillery," or gunners of the Tower.

From the company's register, the only book they saved in the civil wars, it appears that the association was revived in the year 1611, by warrant from the privy council; and the volunteers soon amounted to six thousand. In the year 1640, they quitted their old field of discipline, and entered upon a plot of ground in Bunhill-fields, leased to them by the city.--(See Ellis's History of Shoreditch, and Nicholson's London Artillerie.)

In the thirteenth year of the reign of Henry VII. "All the gardens which had continued time out of mind without Moorgate: to wit, about and beyond the lordship of Fensberry (Finsbury) were destroyed: and of them was made plain field for archers to shoote in." This was the origin of what is now called the Artillery Ground. P.T.W.

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HINDOO BURIAL SERVICE.

During the funeral ceremony, in some parts of Hindostan, the Brahmins address the respective elements in words to the following purport:--

"O Earth! to thee we commend our brother; of thee he was formed, by thee he was sustained, and unto thee he now returns!

"O Fire! thou hadst a claim in our brother during his life; he subsisted by thy influence in nature, to thee we commit his body, thou emblem of purity, may his spirit be purified on entering a new state of existence!

"O Air! while the breath of life continued, our brother respired by thee; his last breath is now departed, to thee we yield him!

"O Water! thou didst contribute to the life of our brother, thou wert one of his sustaining elements. His remains are now dispersed, receive thy share of him, who has now taken an everlasting flight." SWAINE.

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ORIGIN OF THE ACADEMY DELLA CRUSCA.

Crusca is an Italian term, signifying _bran_, hence the name Academy _della Crusca_, or the _Bran_ Academy, which was established at Florence, for purifying and perfecting the Tuscan language; it was formed in the year 1582, but scarcely heard of before the year 1584, when it became noted for a dispute between Tasso and several of its members. According to its origin, its device is a sieve, and its motto, _Il piu bel fior ne coglie_; that is, _It gathers the finest flour thereof_.

In the hall or apartment where the Academy meets, every thing bears allusion to the name and device: the seats are in the form of a baker's basket; their backs like a shovel for moving of corn; the cushions of grey satin in form of sacks, or wallets; and the branches, where the lights are placed, likewise resemble sacks. This Academy is now united with two others, viz. the Fiorentina, and the Apatisti, under the name of _Reale Accademia Fiorentina_.

P.T.W.

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ANGLO-SAXON DRESS.

(_For the Mirror_.)

"Among the ornaments," says Mr. Turner, "worn by the ladies, mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon documents, we read of a golden fly, beautifully adorned with gems; of golden vermiculated necklaces; of a bulla; of golden head-bands, and of a neck-cross. The ladies had also gowns; for a Bishop of Winchester sends us a present, 'a shot gown (_gunna_) sown in our manner.' Thus we find the mantle, the kirtle, and the gown mentioned by these names among the Saxons, and even the ornaments of cuffs. In the drawings of the manuscripts of these times, the women appear with a long, loose robe, reaching down to the ground, and large loose sleeves. Upon their head is a hood or veil, which falling down before, was wrapped round the neck and breast. All the ladies in the drawing having their necks, from the chin, closely wrapped in this manner, and in none of them is a fine waist attempted to be displayed, nor have their heads any other covering than their hoods."

W.G.C.

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR; AND LITERARY NOTICES OF _NEW WORKS._

* * * * *

ARLINGTON,

_By the Author of "Granby,"_

Is not the most striking novel of the season. This may by some readers be attributed to the absence of that dashing _caricatura_ style and constant aiming at antitheses, which, if it relieve the vapidness of the story, does not add to its natural attractions. Nevertheless, there are pictures of life and manners in these volumes which have the easy and unconstrained air of an author who is not writing for mere effect, but for the purpose of "holding the mirror up to nature," and correcting the follies and vices of the age without attempting to exaggerate them.

We do not attempt to unravel the story of Arlington, but quote a few flying extracts. First is a

_Scandal-loving Letter_

from Sir Gerald Denbigh to Lady Ulverston, a lady distinguished by a congenial love of _tracasserie_, and a congenial idolization of social distinctions; an address which passed for cleverness; unimpeachable taste in self-adornment; and who was courted by the ball-going part of London as a dispenser of tickets for Almack's.

"Do you know you are paying us all a very undeserved compliment in being curious about our proceedings; and I will not turn the head of any one here, by imparting a syllable touching your inquiries. You ask what the party is composed of--a sign that you don't consume your invaluable time in spelling newspapers--for Berwick announces the accessions to his menagerie as diligently as Pidcock. Our last arrivals were those Polar bears, the Rochdales, with their pretty youngest daughter, who is surprisingly little, chilly and frozen for a creature that has always been living among icebergs. We are doomed to them for a week, Lord Rochdale having promised to stay so long; and he is one of those patterns of inconvenient precision, who, having once promised, will certainly pay the heavy debt of visitation to the uttermost minute. Arlington is here--brought expressly to play suitor, and looking affectingly conscious of his _rôle_. Berwick, I believe, has told him that he shall die of disappointment, or, what is as bad, shut up his house, if he quits them unaccepted. What an alternative for the poor youth--to be forced to marry at one-and-twenty, or deprive the world of the fortunate master of the best cook in Christendom.

"There is a strange heterogeneous medley here. Fancy, of all living creatures, the Bolsovers being brought hither to meet the Rochdales, whom they suit like point ruffles with a shooting-jacket. Either Berwick has acquired a taste for contrasts, or, in assorting his party, has overlooked every thing but the prospective match, and drawn the rest of the company by lot. His only other considerate arrangement is having Charles Theobald here to swain Lady Bolsover, and talk 'Turf' with her Lord. This is one of Berwick's 'good-natured things.' To do him justice, nobody knows better how to place _chacun avec sa chacune_; but it is a pity that in this case it contributes so little to the general amusement; for really Theobald's intense flirtation with Lady Bolsover, is the flattest piece of dull indecorum that ever met my virtuous eyes. They are dull, these people--keep him from quadrupeds, and Theobald is a cipher; and Lady B. has little more than the few ideas which she gets sent over with her dresses from Paris. I know it is _mauvais ton_ to cry them down--but I cannot help it. My sincerity will ruin me some fine day.

"The Hartlands are here: he talks parliament, and she talks strong sense, and tells every body how to do every thing, and seems to say, like Madame de Sevigné's candid Frenchwoman, _Il n'y a que moi qui ai toujours raison_. To close the list, we have that good-looking puppy, young Leighton, an underbred youth, spoiled by premature immersion in a dandy regiment, who goes about saying the same things to every body, and labouring to reward the inconsiderate benevolence of you soft-hearted patronesses, by talking as if London lay packed in Willis's rooms, and nobody existed but on Wednesday nights. Forgive my impertinence; you know how, in my heart, I revere your oligarchy.

"You will wonder how I amuse myself in the midst of this curious specimen of a social _Macedoine_--quite well--and am acquiring a taste for that true epicurean apathy which one enjoys in perfection, among people whom one expects neither to interest, nor to be interested by; and I sit down among them as calmly comfortable as I can conceive a growing cabbage to be in wet weather. I hold my tongue and watch the chaos as gravely as I can, while Berwick labours to make the jarring elements of his party harmonize, and offends every one in turn by trying to talk to him in his own way. I observe this generally irritates people; nobody likes to be so well understood.

"I can hardly judge at present, but I don't think Arlington's suit will prosper, and you will laugh when I tell you why: it is not that the youth is too shy and the maiden too cold; it is not the officiousness of the Berwicks;--it is because Lord Arlington has some thirty or forty thousand a-year. He is so rich, and the Rochdales so poor, and so stiffly disinterested withal; and it is such a mortal sin to think of money in this dirty world, where we cannot live without it, that they actually discourage him, and make it a point of honour to snub him daily, to prove their superiority to mercenary considerations. What weak things your strong-minded people sometimes do! and what horrors arise from acting upon principle! I, who have none, fancy I sometimes stumble into right by just doing what I please, and letting others do the same.

"Pray be bountiful, and send me some news, true or false--only if the latter, tell me the inventors. I have had nothing of the kind save a letter from Neville, full of comfortable lies, which I have already re-told, and now dearth is staring us in the face--not five minutes consumption in the house--and we are reduced to talk about each other, Berwick excepted, who falls back upon himself, and tells one again and again the 'very good thing' he said ten years ago. Tell me something about your intimates--what are their high mightinesses, Ladies Crawford and Cheadle, now doing for the edification of the world? Has the former forgiven his Majesty of ----? or is she _brouillée_ with any other potentate! Has the latter made peace with the Cabinet? or are Ministers still doomed to exclusion from her parties unless they will be good boys, and do as she bids them? and is she still chattering party gossip, and thinks all the while she is talking politics? Send me our dear friend's last silly thing; and if you don't know which is the last, do, pray do, go to her house and gather one.

"I know nothing of Beauchamp but that he is now in Scotland, chin-deep in heather, killing grouse against time for a bet of some hundreds, which he has persuaded some simpleton to make with him. No man knows better than Beauchamp how to get paid for amusing himself. I had never heard, and don't believe, that Beauchamp is going to take a wife. Whatever you know of this, pray tell me; and say _whose_ wife--not Sir Robert Ridware's, I hope; that would be so illiberal, and so unnecessary! I hate monopolies; and, moreover, I have always admired, the example of the poet Thomson, who ate his peaches off the tree. Forgive this pedantry, and any other sins in my letter; or if you are to scold me, let it be in person. Addio! fair lady. Yours,--not unalterably, for that is tiresome,--but as long as it pleaseth you.

"G.D."

A pleasant anecdote follows, by Sir James Berwick, "a busy, meddling, vain, good-humoured man, whose chief ambition it was to be considered thoroughly 'a man of the world,' and 'a good member of society.'"

"I was asked to dine with a Sir Dixie Hickson, a stiff, bluff, beef-eating sort of man, who was under some obligation to me, or I to him, I don't know which. Well, I forgot name, residence all but the day--came home in a hurry, looked into the Court Guide, found a Sir Hicks Dixon, drove to his house, found a party assembled, bowed to a fat woman in a turban who sailed forward _â la maitresse de maison_, and simpered an apology, for Sir Hicks', or Sir Dicks', or whatever he might be, 'unavoidable absence;' I forget why, 'but did not like to put off the party, and hoped to look in in the evening.' (Mind I had never seen the _femme_ Hickson.) Down we went to dinner; a guest had failed, so there was a place for me; did not know a soul of the party; such a set of creatures were never before assembled on God's earth! Well, I ate, drank, and talked with the savages, told them some of my best lies, and was growing immensely popular, when in drops Sir Hicks from the country. You should have seen us! we set each other like two pointers backing in a stubble, with a covey between them, while the _femme_ Dixon kept fussing with an introduction--'Sir Hicks, Sir James,--Sir James, Sir Hicks!' At last the light broke in, and I explained, and we laughed about it for a whole hour. I was afraid when all was over I should have had to pay my debt of dinner to Sir Dixie; but the best of it is, I have not seen or heard more of either him or Sir Hicks. It would have served me right if they had asked me to dinner once a week for ever visiting such people. It is not likely that you should know them."

There is much truth in the following satire upon fashionable travelling; though persons of fashion are not the only unimproved tourists. In travelling, a man must carry half the entertainment along with him.

"'Listen,' said he, 'and you will hear more of the uses and advantages of travel.'

"Mr. Theobald at that instant was speaking to Lord Bolsover.

"'I will just tell you what I did. Brussels, Frankfort, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Milan, Naples and Paris; and all that in two months. No man has ever done it in less.'

"'That's a fast thing; but I think I could have done it,' said Lord Bolsover, 'with a good courier. I had a fellow once, who could ride a hundred miles a day for a fortnight.'

"'I came from Vienna to Calais,' said young Leighton, 'in less time than the Government courier. No other Englishman ever did that.'

"'Hem! I am not sure of that,' said Lord Bolsover; 'but I'll just tell you what I have done--from Rome to Naples in nineteen hours; a fact, upon my honour--and from Naples to Paris in six days.'

"'Partly by sea?'

"'No! all by land;' replied Lord Bolsover, with a look of proud satisfaction.

"'I'll just tell you what I did,' Mr. Leighton chimed in again, 'and I think it is a devilish good plan--it shows what one can do. I went straight an end, as fast as I could, to what was to be the end of my journey. This was Sicily; so straight away I went there at the devil's own rate, and never stopped any where by the way; changed horses at Rome and all those places, and landed in safety in ---- I forget exactly how long from the time of starting, but I have got it down to an odd minute. As for the places I left behind, I saw them all on my way back, except the Rhine, and I _steamed_ down that in the nighttime.'

"'I have travelled a good deal by night,' said Theobald. 'With a _dormeuse_ and travelling lamp I think it is pleasant, and a good plan of getting on.'

"'And you can honestly say, I suppose,' said Denbigh, 'that you have slept successfully through as much fine country as any man living?'

"'Oh, I did see the country--that is, all that was worth seeing. My courier knew all about that, and used to stop and wake me whenever we came to any thing remarkable. Gad! I have reason to remember it, too, for I caught an infernal bad cold one night when I turned out by lamp-light to look at a waterfall. I never looked at another.'"

* * * * *

SCRIPTURAL ANTIQUITIES.

We resume our quotations from this treasurable little volume already noticed in No. 551, of _The Mirror_. Taken altogether, it is an exhaustless mine of research upon subjects which have awakened curiosity from childhood to old age--from the little wonder-struck learner on the school form to the patient inquirer with spectacle on nose.

_The Raven and the Dove at the Deluge._

"We shall quote the interesting account which the Sacred Volume supplies us, of the singular messenger employed by the patriarch, to procure information as to the state of the diluvial waters;--'And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made: and he sent forth a raven, which went to and fro (in going forth and returning), until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also, he sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground: but the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark: for the waters were on the face of the whole earth. Then he put forth his hand, and took her and pulled her (caused her to come) in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark: and the dove came into him in the evening; and lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf, plucked off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. And he stayed yet other seven days, and sent forth the dove which returned not again unto him any more.' This narrative, though simple in its style, is expressive and beautiful. There is an eloquent charm which, while it touches the chords of truth, makes the heart respond to the tale. The raven would find sufficient for its carnivorous appetite in the floatage of the animal remains, on the briny flood, and would return to roost on the ark; but it was far different with Noah's bird, so long as the waters prevailed, there could be no pause for her weary wing, and the messenger would return to the ark. So soon, however, as the subsidence of the waters had permitted the olive to emerge, a sprig was plucked off, and borne to the patriarch in triumph. Emphatic symbol of peace! Commemorated through ages, it is still the symbol of peace. Along with the fig tree and vine, it is associated, as the emblem of man's inheritance, and in the geography of its locality, the patriarch would hail the plain on which it flourished, and from which it was borne, as the place of his former abode. The dove would return, though the olive had emerged, because no food had as yet been provided. How long this ambassador of peace was absent, we cannot tell: we are only informed that the dove returned in the _evening_. If the winged messenger was despatched early in the day, it is not improbable that the delightful trophy was obtained from Mount Olivet, where, according to the late Dr. Clarke, 'the olive still vindicates its parental soil.' In considering the question of the geographical distribution of plants, this would likely be the nearest olive plane from the mountains of Armenia. It may be remarked also, that the olive remarkably synchronizes with the habits of the dove; since, according to Dr. Chandler, in his Travels in Greece, as soon as the olive matures its berries, vast numbers of doves, among other birds, repair for food to the olive groves. It cannot be irrelevant to remind our readers of the habits of the _columba tabellaria_, or the carrier pigeon, so called from the office to which it has been applied, viz. that of carrying letters, in the Levant, &c. Those of Mesopotamia are the most famous in the world, and the Babylonian carrier pigeon is employed even on ordinary occasions at Bagdad. The geographical locality, therefore, of the carrier pigeon, it is interesting to remember, is in the vicinity of those very mountains where the ark finally rested. With us the carrier pigeon is an exotic, and is now acclimated, or naturalized. Carrier pigeons fly at the rate of fifty miles an hour.--'Napoleon,' the name of one of the carrier pigeons which was despatched from London a short time ago, at four o'clock A.M., reached Liege, in France, about ten o'clock in the day. Mr. Audubon states his having shot the passenger pigeon (_columba migratoria_) in America, and found in its stomach, _rice_, which could not have been obtained within a distance of eight hundred miles."

_Parable of the Good Samaritan._

"Our readers will remember the beautiful parable of the _good Samaritan_, and his kindness and compassion for the wounded stranger 'who fell among thieves,' on his journey from _Jerusalem to Jericho_. Sichem or Sychar, the district of the Samaritans, and which they now inhabit, is about forty miles from Jerusalem. Jericho is about nineteen miles from the capital of Judea; and, as it was in the first century, so the intervening country _still remains_ infested by banditti. Sir Frederick Henniker, as late as 1820, on his journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, was way-laid, attacked by a band of predatory Arabs, and plundered. He was stripped naked, and left severely wounded; and in this state was carried to Jericho."

_David and Goliath._

"David's encounter with Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, is mentioned in I Samuel xvii.: and in the 40th verse is described the simple armour with which the shepherd boy, Jesse's son, repaired to the contest. Many a thirsty pilgrim, as he passes through the valley of Eluh, on the road from Bethlehem to Jaffa (Joppa), has drunk of 'the brook in the way'--that very brook from whence the minstrel youth 'chose him five smooth stones.' 'Its present appearance,' says a recent traveller, 'answers exactly to the description given in Scripture; the two hills on which the armies stood, entirely confined it on the right and left. The valley is not above half a mile broad. Tradition was not required to identify this spot. Nature has stamped it with everlasting features of truth. The brook still flows through it in a winding course, from which David took the smooth stones.'"

_The Willows of Babylon._