Chapter XXXII: The Gilds of Lincolnshire (2)

GREAT changes are to be carried out at Genoa; the fortifications to the east of the city, and the marble walk round the lower part of the harbour are to be pulled down, to make room for a military parade ground and for purposes of trade, and the famous old “Bank of St. George,” now used as the Custom House, is to be turned into an Art Museum.

THE second year’s issue of Mr. Henry Morley’s “Universal Library” will include Herrick’s “Hesperides,” Boccaccio’s “Decameron,” Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” George Chapman’s “Translation of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’” “Mediæval Tales,” “The Alchemist and other Plays,” by Ben Jonson, Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Butler’s “Hudibras,” More’s “Utopia,” Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” &c.

AN inventory has just been made of the National Library of France. It contains 2,500,000 volumes. The cabinet of manuscripts includes 92,000 volumes, as well as 144,000 medals of all periods, both French and foreign. The engravings comprise over two millions of plates, preserved in 14,500 vols. and 4,000 portfolios. The more precious volumes, amounting to 80,000, are kept in the reserved gallery. In 1868 24,000 readers attended the reading-room, and in 1883 the number was 70,000.

THE _Times_ records the discovery of a Roman villa at Woolstone, in the Vale of the White Horse, Berkshire, where some fine tesselated pavements have been disclosed. Several interments have also been revealed, apparently of the Anglo-Saxon period. The seax or knife dagger is, strange to say, still attached to the girdle of two of the bodies, presumed to be those of Anglo-Saxon ladies. The excavations, which are closed to the general public, were inspected on May 23rd by the members of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, and the Newbury District Field Club.

THE following articles, more or less of an antiquarian character, appear among the contents of the magazines for June: _Art Journal_, “The Western Riviera;” _Cornhill_, “Some Literary Recollections;” _Literary Chronicle_, “Researches for MSS. in the Levant,” and “Contents of the British Museum Library;” _Blackwood_, “New Views of Shakespeare’s Sonnets;” _Army and Navy Magazine_, “Pepys as an Official;” _Eastward Ho!_ “Bethnal-green Museum;” _Cassell’s Magazine_, “The Folk-lore of Colours,” and “A Pilgrimage to Holy Island;” _Magazine of Art_, “Raphael and the Fornarina,” “The Keramics of Fiji,” and “Greek Myths in Greek Art.”

A ROMAN family burial-place has been lately discovered during some excavations at Lincoln. It contained a large number of urns, with a furnace or oven at the eastern end. “Unfortunately for the interests of archæology,” writes the Rev. Precentor Venables, “the discovery was made just when the excavators commenced their work, and from their ignorance of the value of the remains much of interest was destroyed before the foreman arrived. The whole of the oven had been demolished, only leaving one reddened wall, indicating the action of intense heat, and the blackened stones of the flue. The burial-place or ‘loculus’ was, however, perfect. It consisted of a stone-chamber, 5 ft. 10 in. in length, its breadth varying from 2 ft. ½ in. at the lower end to 3 ft. 1 in. in the middle.”

CATALOGUES of rare and curious books, all of which contain the names of works of antiquarian interest, have reached us from Messrs. Meehan, 32, Gay-street, Bath; Messrs. Reeves & Turner, 196, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Fawn & Son, 18, Queen’s-road, Bristol; Mr. W. P. Bennett, 3, Bull-street, Birmingham; Mr. C. Hutt, Clement’s-inn-gateway, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Robson & Kerslake, 43, Cranbourne-street, W.C.; Mr. W. H. Gee, 28, High-street, Oxford; Mr. W. Wesley, 28, Essex-street, Strand, W.C.; Messrs. Jarvis & Son, 28, King William-street, W.C. The last-named is called the “Dickens’s Catalogue,” and may be regarded as complete a list as possible of the various editions of Dickens’s Works and “Dickensana.” The complete set, inclusive of works, extra illustrations, and portraits, is priced at £200; the price for the “Dickensana,” which is described as “very interesting and scarce,” is set down at another £60.

ON May 22 was celebrated in London, at Lutterworth, where he died, and at other places in England, the Quincentenary of Wycliffe, the great English Reformer. Among the most noticeable features of the commemoration was the opening of a Wycliffe Exhibition at the British Museum. Contemporary printed books and engravings and commemorative medals formed the chief attractions in the Luther celebration last year. To illustrate the life and works of his English predecessor the resources of the manuscripts department have been chiefly drawn upon; and as Wycliffe’s name, before all others, is identified with the translation of the Bible into English, a great part of the collection displayed in the King’s Library consisted of a fine series of manuscripts of the two versions of the Wycliffe translation.

ON Wednesday, May 28, Mr. J. T. Wood, F.S.A., lectured in the Ephesian Gallery of the British Museum on “The Marbles from the Great Temple of Diana.” The lecturer said it was needless for him to tell the story of his finding the temple of the great goddess of the Ephesians. It would take too much time, and it had been so often told before that he might take for granted that his audience knew all about it; but he might say that it was a very difficult thing to accomplish, and that it was six years before he succeeded in hitting upon the site. It was found one mile from the city of Ephesus, among corn fields, on level ground, where there was not the slightest sign of any ruins. Having found the site he discovered sufficient of the remains to enable him to make a true elevation of the temple, but there were some details still missing which he hoped would be obtained by further excavations. They had before them a rough diagram from which they would see that it had 100 columns externally, each 6 ft. in diameter, and nearly 60 ft. in height. Only a portion of the superstructure had been found, which was the lower part underneath the capitals, some of the lions’ heads, and some of the enrichment of the cornice. The coloured diagrams were meant to show that the whole of the temple was coloured. The remains which they saw before them had lost their colour since they were placed in the museum, with but few exceptions, but there was one specimen before them in which the colour was clearly demonstrated. Several of the coloured diagrams would, however, show the state in which he found the fragments. He should tell them that these remains were found between 20 ft. and 24 ft. underground, and their being at so great a depth beneath the surface accounted for the great expense of these excavations, the Government having spent £12,000 upon them during the five years which it took him to clear out the temple. He need scarcely tell them that the remains they now saw were from the last of the three successive temples. He found evidence that all the bases were of about the same size, and that the same marble was used. There were two stones at the end of the temple which, he believed, belonged to the frieze of the temple, and which were got out from the drums of the last temple. One, which was marked H 4, he believed would be proved to be, what he had always thought it was, a portion of the frieze. Upon it was a representation of Hercules struggling with a female figure, and he believed it was Hercules taking the girdle of the Queen of the Amazons. The stone was very much hacked and disfigured. Mr. Fergusson thought that a column had been placed upon this; but there were reasons to the architectural mind which precluded the idea that this stone could have been part of the pedestal of a column. There was a second stone which he believed was a portion of the frieze of the temple. Upon one side of it was a representation of either Hercules lifting Antæus, or Hercules struggling with Cacus, probably the latter. On the other side they had the figure of a stag. These were the only stones which he claimed to be portions of the frieze. There was a third stone which was found in the aqueduct, and another which might or might not have been a fragment of the frieze, but it was at all events a corner-stone. All these blocks were supposed to have come from the same building, but whether they were portions of pedestals, on which columns had been placed, as contended by Mr. Fergusson, was a question which would probably be decided by further excavations. Alluding to a fragment of a sculptured column marked H 3, Mr. Wood said the question was whether Pliny would have called it a sculptured column if it had been of the height of this drum. Some people thought the columns in the diagram could not have been sculptured above the height of one drum, but he begged to differ from them. Passing on to another fragment of a sculptured column, the lecturer said he looked upon it as the most beautiful of all, and it was a pity it had been so much hacked about. This temple was built in the time of Alexander the Great, and when he visited Ephesus he wished to have his name inscribed upon it. The lecturer pointed out other specimens, one being a beautiful stone which had formed part of the base of a column, and another in which the delicate proportions of the fillet between the flutings were very noteworthy. He further remarked upon fragments of roof tiles, lions’ heads, and various fragmentary specimens of Ionic columns. There were also some splendid specimens of profiles of base mouldings, a representation of a medal of Gordianus found on the site, &c. Mr. Wood gave a continuation of his lecture on Wednesday, June 18.

Antiquarian Correspondence.

Sin scire labores,
Quære, age: quærenti pagina nostra patet.

_All communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication._

“THE SENTENCE OF PONTIUS PILATE.”

(See vol. v. pp. 80, 217.)

SIR,--This document appeared in English in _Galignani’s Messenger_ of March 23, 1859, copied from the _Herald_ of about that date. D. K. T.

A BAKER BLESSED.

SIR,--Can you explain the origin of the blessing invoked on the baker in the following rhyme, sung by village children in Norfolk, and perhaps in other counties also, on St. Valentine’s Day?

Good-morrow, Valentine,
God bless the baker!
You be the giver,
And I’ll be the taker.

_Haileybury College, Hertford._

JOHN HUSSEY.

WESLEYANISM IN LONDON.

SIR,--Can you tell me who was the popular preacher at the Wesleyan Chapel in Great Queen-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields, about 1811? Macready when first in London became acquainted with him, and was fascinated by his manners and learning, but was warned against him as a reprobate of most dangerous character. I fancy that he finally came to be publicly disgraced. The London Directories are useless at that date, and the Wesleyan Mission Books equally so. Do you know anything about him, or can you indicate where to search?

C. A. WARD.

_159, Haverstock Hill, N. W._

HISTORICAL CHAIRS.

SIR,--Will you kindly enable me to ask through your columns for descriptive particulars, with engravings, drawings, or photographs, of celebrated chairs in family residences, or in cathedrals, churches, colleges, town-halls, and public institutions at home or abroad? I am preparing an illustrated account of Historical Chairs from available literary sources; but as many interesting examples have escaped my search, and as I wish to make the proposed work as copious as possible, I thus beg your assistance.

C. B. STRUTT.

_34, East-street, Red Lion-square, London, W.C._

THE VISCOUNTY OF CULLEN.

SIR,--In reply to the inquiry of HERALDICUS MUS, I beg to inform him that the limitation of this dignity is correctly given in Sir Bernard Burke’s _new_ “Extinct Peerage,” and included, as he suggests, a remainder to the Berties, but that the original patent of creation being lost (and having, unfortunately, never been enrolled), the Earl of Lindsey cannot _prove_ his right, unless the patent should yet be discovered. The second Viscount having taken his seat, no difficulty could arise so long as there remained male issue of his body; but when that became extinct, the special remainder would have to be established by proof. I speak, of course, of England or Ireland, for, in the anomalous chaos beyond the Tweed, it is possible to take a remainder for granted, as in the Ruthven case, at one’s own sweet will.

J. H. ROUND.

_Brighton._

VISCOUNT HAMPDEN’S ANCESTRY.

(See vol. v. pp. 197, 331.)

SIR,--If your correspondent “Trombone” will re-peruse my letter on this subject, which appears at the first-named reference, he (or she) will see that whatever faults there may be of omission, there are none of commission, in regard to the families of Trevor and Hampden.

Nothing is certainly said concerning the bequest of the Glynde estates to the Honourable Richard Trevor, afterwards Bishop of Durham; but it is probable that he devised them on his decease to his brother Robert, then Baron Trevor, afterwards Viscount Hampden of Hampden. On the death of the last Viscount in 1824, the extensive estates were divided amongst co-heirs, from one of whom the present Viscount Hampden of Glynde is descended.

My first curacy was Bromham, in Bedfordshire, and I have, as the guest of George, Lord Dynevor, to whose daughters that estate belonged, sat at dinner under the portraits, in the dining-room at Bromham Hall, of the Lords Trevor and Hampden.

_Newbourne Rectory, Woodbridge._

JOHN PICKFORD, M.A.

WAS MILTON A PAINTER?

(See vol. ii. p. 1.)

SIR,--The following passage from the pen of the greatest critic of modern times, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, seems rather to militate against the argument in a former number of the ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE, that the portrait of Milton there spoken of might have been painted by the poet himself: “It is very remarkable that in no part of his writings does Milton take any notice of the great painters of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art, whilst every other page breathes his love and taste for music. Yet it is curious that in one passage of the “Paradise Lost” Milton has certainly copied the fresco of the Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean those lines--

“Now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts; then springs as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane,” &c.;

an image which the necessities of the painter justified, but which was wholly unworthy, in my judgment, of the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over the sleeping Eve in the “Paradise Lost” (book vii. 463), and Delilah approaching Sampson in the “Agonistes” (book v. 8), are the only two proper pictures I remember in Milton.

F. H.

OLD BELLMEN’S BROADSIDES.

(See vol. v. p. 221.)

SIR,--It may be interesting to some of your readers to know that these quaint poetical productions continued to be issued by the bellmen of the city of Hereford down to the year 1835, and perhaps even later.

I have in my collection of Herefordian matters a series of six of them as follows:

(1) A copy of verses | for 1811 | Humbly presented to all my worthy Masters and Mistresses | in the City of Hereford | by James Lingham | Bellman and Crier of the said City. This has a quaint 17th century woodcut of the bellman, with bell in right hand, staff and lanthorn in left, accompanied by his dog. In background to left a house, with cock crowing on roof, to right a church, probably intended to represent St. Peter’s. The bellman wears a three-cornered hat, a long-skirted coat, confined at waist with belt, with a short coat underneath, embroidered down the front. Street shown as paved in chequers, as in the engraving in your ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE. W. H. Parker, printer, Hereford.

(2) Another copy of verses for 1824, by same bellman, with a later woodcut of bellman, in cocked hat and cloak with cape, in the act of proclaiming in the High Town, with view of old town-hall and St. Peter’s Church. W. H. & J. Parker, printers, 4, High Town, Hereford.

(3) A copy of verses for 1826, by Richard Jones, with a woodcut of bellman, similarly equipped to last, but the town-hall is shown on larger scale, and the church does not appear. W. H. Vale, printer, 5, Eign-street, Hereford.

(4) Another similar copy of verses for 1827, by Thomas Hall, and the same woodcut as last.

(5) Another for 1830, by James Davies, with woodcut as No. 2. John Parker, printer, High Town, Hereford.

(6) Another copy of verses for 1835, by James Davies, with same woodcut as last.

They all bear verses in same style as those quoted in the ANTIQUARIAN MAGAZINE, viz., Prologues, Epilogues, and on the various Saints, Festivals, addresses to the King, Queen, Princes, Masters, Mistresses, Young Men and Maidens, &c., but no two are alike.

In the Hereford Permanent Library is a copy of verses for 1822, by James Langham (?), City Crier.

JAMES W. LLOYD.

_Kington, Herefordshire._

PORTS AND CHESTERS.

SIR,--Mr. Round (see vol. v. p. 282) claims “Port as an English word, in itself distinct from the Latin _porta_ or _portus_;” later on (p. 283), “Port was in itself essentially an English word;” yet at p. 286 we read, “The English _borrowed_ it ... after the settlement ... or before the settlement.” How can it be generically an English word, yet borrowed from Latin? There is lamentable confusion throughout this paper, truly distressing confusion, and the little bits of assertion and argument are so cut into slices and sandwiched between slips of quotation and extract, that it is like dissecting a Chinese puzzle to ramify its purport.

We have the words ‘castor,’ ‘port,’ ‘street,’ and ‘wall;’ now, if these words were English forms of some Teutonic roots, they will have analogues in the allied tongues: where are those analogues?

(1) Castor, Caster, Caister, Ceaster, Chester, are all from the Latin castrum, as muddled by alien tongues; yet, at p. 285, we are told that the “English would presumably have only met, not with the Latin castrum, but the Welsh caer or kair.” Why so? As a fact, the Welsh forms are not borrowed from Latin, but come from an independent Celtic root--as I think, direct from the Hindu gir, giri, and far older than Latin. We find Keir in Dumfriesshire; Cardiff in Glamorganshire; Carhaix, Kersanton, Kervrin, Kerentrec, Plessis-Kaer, all in Brittany; Caerleon and Caerwent, both famous places in Monmouthshire, pronounced, the former, Karleen, the latter, Kerwent, thus showing the affiliation with Armorican forms.

(2) Port: note that “port” is the equivalent of hithe or haven; thus we have Hythe in Kent, as a substitute for Portus Lemanis; at Oxford, the Port-meadow adjoins Hythe Bridge, and was evidently the town haven. The conditions are similar at Gloucester, where certain meadows, inundated at floods, are called the Portham; adjoining we find Dockham, and Dockham ditch, which is a reduplicated name. The port-walls of Chepstow are the harbour defences on the land side, it being the port or gate of Wye River. New_port_, Mon., is in succession to Caerleon, the old port of River Usk. It follows, as a dead certainty, that the modern word port as used at London, where Port reeve was the precursor of our Lord Mayor, is in succession to the Latin portus, not introduced as a new English word, but preserved by Celto-Romans from Latin usage. Let Mr. Round study the course of those old English roadways throughout England, known as Portways, and called Roman; can the prefix be of English origin if it means “carry,” _i.e._, the portage of merchandise, from the Latin _portare_, to bear?

(3-4) Street and wall speak for themselves, and their plain facts will survive any amount of word-twisting.

A. H.

_TO CORRESPONDENTS._

THE Editor declines to pledge himself for the safety or return of MSS. voluntarily tendered to him by strangers.

Books Received.

1. History of the House of Arundel. By J. P. Yeatman. Mitchell & Hughes. 1883.

2. Nantwich. By James Hall. Privately printed. 1884.

3. New Light on Some Obscure Words in the Works of Shakespeare. By Charles Mackay, LL.D. Reeves & Turner. 1884.

4. Western Antiquary. May, 1884. Plymouth: Latimer & Son.

5. A Booke of Fishing. By L. M. 1599. (Reprinted.) Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1884.

6. John Hopkins’ University Studies. Second Series. iv. Baltimore. April, 1884.

7. English Etchings. Part xxxvii. D. Bogue, 3, St. Martin’s Place, W.C.

8. Lord Beaconsfield on the Constitution. Edited by F. Hitchman. Field & Tuer. 1884.

9. Guildford and its Coinage. By G. C. Williamson. Privately printed.

10. Hanley and the House of Lechmere. By the late E. P. Shirley, M.P., F.S.A. Pickering. 1883.

11. The Congo Treaty. By T. Tomlinson, M.A. E. Stanford. 1884.

12. Clergyman’s Magazine. June. Hodder & Stoughton.

13. Charities Register and Digest. Longmans & Co. 1884.

14. Le Livre, No. 54. Paris, 7, Rue St. Benoit. June, 1884.

Books, etc., for Sale.

_Guardian Newspaper_, from commencement to 1864, bound; and 1865-70, in numbers. Offers to E. Walford, Hyde Park Mansions, Edgeware-road, N.W.

Books, etc., Wanted to Purchase.

_Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer_, several copies of No. 2 (February, 1882) are wanted, in order to complete sets. Copies of the current number will be given in exchange at the office.

Dodd’s Church History, 8vo., vols. i. ii. and v.; Waagen’s Art and Artists in England, vol. i.; East Anglian, vol. i., Nos. 26 and 29. The Family Topographer, by Samuel Tymms, vols. iii. and iv.; Notes and Queries, 5th series, vols. vi., vii. (1876-7); also the third Index. Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” (Ingram and Cooke’s edition), vol. iii. A New Display of the Beauties of England, vol. i., 1774. Chambers’ Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. i. Address, E. Walford, 2, Hyde Park Mansions, Edgeware-road, N.W.

From Livett’s “Southwell Minster.”]

_The

Antiquarian Magazine

& Bibliographer._

Southwell Minster.

Now that the Bishopric of Southwell has become an accomplished fact, and its ancient collegiate church has been elevated into the dignity of a cathedral, Mr. Livett’s recently-published work[13] on the history of that fabric will doubtless awaken additional interest. An Act of Parliament passed early in the present reign deprived Southwell Minster of its collegiate character, while another and later Act has made it the mother church of a new diocese, consisting of the counties of Nottingham and Derby, which had hitherto belonged to the dioceses of Lincoln and Lichfield respectively. The church of Southwell was despoiled of all its monuments and early records during the troubles of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the only MS. of any importance that has come down to us besides the Statutes of Queen Elizabeth is the “Registrum Album,” or “White Book of Southwell.” The former are printed both in Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” and in the appendix to Dickenson’s “History of the Antiquities of Southwell.” Mr. Dimock, the Editor of the “Magna Vita St. Hugonis,” in the Rolls Series, published some years ago a history of the fabric of Southwell Minster; and other local histories, one by Shilton, issued in 1818, and a third by Clarke & Killpack, in 1838, are, as Mr. Livett tells us, little more than abridgments of Dickenson’s work. Hitherto a general history of the origin and development of the ancient secular college, and of the position which it held in the Middle Ages, seems never to have been taken in hand; and this want Mr. Livett has endeavoured to meet in the little volume now before us.

That Southwell held an important position in the diocese of York before the Norman Conquest is certain; but it is difficult to fix a date for the foundation of the church. Mr. Livett writes: “Tradition points to St. Paulinus as the founder of a church here--the founder alike of York and Lincoln, the friend and companion of St. Augustine, the great missionary of Northumbria under King Edwin, and the first Archbishop of York, A.D. 627-633. This tradition rests upon statements to this effect contained in certain _private histories_ of the church, which are no longer extant. They are quoted, however, by Camden, in his ‘Magna Britannia,’ which first appeared in 1586, and were probably lost during the civil wars of the following century, when most of the church records were either destroyed, or, for safety, carried away. They tell us how St. Paulinus founded the church at Southwell when he was baptizing the people of this district in the Trent; and a careful consideration of the Venerable Bede’s account of the missionary work of St. Paulinus gives support to the statement. The ecclesiastical historian makes no direct reference to Southwell, but internal evidence in his account of Paulinus’ missionary work, more especially the evidence of the place-names mentioned, is strong in favour of the view that Paulinus extended his labours to the close neighbourhood of Southwell.”

No part of the present fabric, with the exception of one or two fragments, dates farther back than the 12th century; but there is abundant evidence that a stone church of considerable size existed here at any rate in the previous century. The Norman parts of the church, as it stands, remarks Mr. Livett, contain unmistakable evidence of an earlier building. “In the north transept, over the doorway leading to the newel by which one ascends the central tower there is a large sculptured stone which is worked into the building in such a way as to show at a glance that it is old material used up again. It is supposed by good judges to have formed the tympanum of an early Norman doorway.” The year 1110 is the date assigned to the nave and transepts. The choir is of the Early English period (1230-50), and appears to have been built during the episcopate of Walter Gray, for in Torre’s “Collectanea,” in the library at York, is preserved an indulgence, addressed by Walter Gray to the bishops and archdeacons of his province, “granting a release of thirty days from penance enjoined to all who, being truly penitent, should contribute to the construction of the church of Southwell, since the means of the church were insufficient for the consummation of the fabric a while since begun.” Torre gives 1235 as the date of the indulgence, but the document itself says, “in the nineteenth year of our Pontificate,” which, according to Drake, would be 1233.

The architectural details of the north transept chapel give the chief clue to its date, 1260. The cloister is somewhat later; but the chapter-house and its vestibule date from the close of the 13th century, and the organ-screen from about 1340.

The minster, as it now stands, consists of a clerestoried nave, with aisles and north porch, and two massive towers flanking the western front, each surmounted by a spire; a lantern tower, with its parapet adorned with pinnacles, rises from the intersection of the nave, transept, and choir; and cloister and chapter-house on the north side of the choir. “‘What either Cologne Cathedral, or Ratisbon, or Wiesen Kirche are to Germany; Amiens Cathedral, or the Sainte Chapelle are to France; the Scalegere, in Verona, to Italy, are the choir of Westminster and the chapter-house at Southwell to England.’ So writes Mr. G. E. Street; and assuredly Southwell chapter-house is placed in the foremost rank of our geometrical buildings. In the refined and natural treatment of the foliage which adorns it, it anticipated the artistic perfection of works of many years later date, and is excelled by none. In its more general features it may be compared with the earlier parts of the cloisters at Norwich, and with the ruins of the banqueting-hall in the palace grounds at Wells. It strongly reminds us, too, of its contemporary, the chapter-house at Wells; in its octagonal shape it follows the plan adopted in almost all the chapter-houses of secular communities. The resemblance to York is still more complete, the date of which is uncertain, but it is the only chapter-house besides Southwell which has no central pillar to support the vault, and the arrangement is more striking there on account of its greater size.”

Mr. Livett gives a minute description of the various parts of the Minster, which we have not space to follow, and his work is illustrated with drawings of some of its chief architectural features, one plate of which, by the courtesy of the author, we are enabled to reproduce. This shows (1) a circular window in the clerestory of the nave; (2) the ancient tympanum in the north transept, mentioned above; and (3) window tracery removed from the south-west tower. The ancient tympanum here referred to, which is in the form of a sculptured stone, now forms the lintel of the belfry door. “It must at one time have been the tympanum of an earlier doorway, and a part of it has unfortunately been cut away to make it fit into its present position. The sculpture embodies a double subject, rudely executed in low relief, the one representing probably David rescuing the lamb from the lion, the other very clearly representing St. Michael encountering the dragon.... The sculpture cannot be of later date than the middle of the eleventh century, when the church seems to have been considerably enlarged, perhaps altogether rebuilt, and it might be of earlier date still.”

The Congress Afield.

If you would know of olden days,
You need not only read or look
On quaintest type in early book
Or learn almost forgotten lays.

There is a wider field; go forth:
And ye who seek will surely find
That which shall ever teach the mind,
Go east or west, go south or north.

The massive mound in days of yore,
The fortress hill, the castle grey,
That speaks of strife and danger’s day,
Which we in quiet know no more.

Here you may trace a Roman’s hand,
Here the rude Saxon work, and there
How Norman skill did once repair
The ruined churches of the land.

For many a little church can tell
Of other days. The ancient glass
Through which the tinted sunbeams pass
Speaks to us now. You hear the bell.

That told the tale of life and death,
Of marriage feast, of times of prayer,
When they, long dead, were gathered there,
Who sleep the quiet sod beneath.

And many a home of days gone by,
With timber gable richly dight,
And tiny panes, through which the light
Comes slowly stealing from the sky.

Go where you will, you still shall find
Not only homes of old renown,
But quaint old homes in market town,
In streets that ever sway and wind.

The land we live in is a book
In which is written much to read,
And much that to the past will lead.
Go forth, and on it kindly look.

H. R. W.

Forecastings of Nostradamus.

BY C. A. WARD.

_PART III._

(_Continued from Vol. V. p. 293._)

“Hunc solem, et stellas et decedentia certis
Tempora momentis, sunt qui formidine nullâ
Imbuti spectent.”--HOR., I. Epist. vii. 3.

Nostradamus was of a stature somewhat less than middle-size, rather thick-set, active and vigorous. He had a broad, open forehead, a straight, regular nose, grey eyes, of gentle appearance, but in anger flashing fire; the general expression was severe, but pleasant, so that through all the seriousness one could discern a benevolent disposition; his cheeks were rosy even in extreme age; he had a long thick beard, and his health was excellent, all his senses being alert and well-preserved. His spirits were good, and he comprehended readily whatever he gave his attention to. His judgment was penetrating, and his memory remarkably retentive. He was taciturn by nature, thought much and spoke little, was rather prompt, sudden, and irascible in temper, but very patient when hard work had to be encountered. He slept four or five hours only out of the twenty-four. He practised freedom of speech himself and commended it in others. He was cheerful and facetious in conversation, though in jesting a little given to bitterness. He was attached, so says De Chavigny, to the Roman Church, and held fixedly the Catholic faith; out of its pale there was for him no salvation. Though pursuing a line of thought entirely his own, he had no sympathy with the Lutheran heretics of so-called Freethought. He was given to prayer, fasting, and charity. As far as outward observance was concerned, he might be classed with the highly respectable and decent. Le Pelletier says, “sa fin fut Chrétienne;” but he adds a little further on that his style is very much more like that of the Pagan oracles of Greece and Rome than of the canonical prophets of Hebrew Inspiration. He remarks that the first Century opens with a regular incantation fortified by the most celebrated rites of Paganism, so that some suspicion of his orthodoxy may well be entertained. Certain it is, for he avows as much in the dedicatory epistle to Henry II.--which, by the way, the King never saw--that it was his custom prudently to veil in obscurity of expression whatever was likely to displease his protectors and so to damage his private interest. This is not the way with the heroes of Hebrew prophecy, Isaiah, Elijah, Samuel, but though it is somewhat cowardly, it becomes, when well reckoned up, a sort of sub-assertion of sincerity; for why should a man record the unpleasant things at all if he did not believe in them, and desired only to make himself agreeable? If he believed his own utterances he was _consciously_ a prophet: that he threw a veil over them, shows only that he declined to suffer martyrdom for his convictions. It is quite possible to be a seer, and yet not heroical, but it is the poorest of criticism not to distinguish between such frailty as this and imposture. Want of grandeur does not imply any _intention to deceive_. Modern Freethought effectually breaks down upon a point like this, it almost invariably classifies the weak spiritualist as an impostor. It reasons somewhat thus: “Astrologers are impostors--Nostradamus was an astrologer. Prophets and divines, owing to the spread of sound knowledge in modern times, are no longer to be reckoned as inspired, but as impostors; Nostradamus was a prophet and therefore an impostor. He arrived in the world a thousand years behind his time, and must lie down now under Scientific and Encyclopædic ridicule. At the close of the nineteenth century is it likely we can allow such claims to be made upon our credulity as the more rational part of the community refused to admit three hundred years ago?” To all this and to all such processes of reasoning, I need merely say that there is a credulity of superstition that has been always esteemed as degrading to human nature; but there is also a superstition of incredulity that is quite as debasing to human nature and even more so, for it springs from the folly of pride and conceit, and not, as the other does, from a misplacement of faith.

By his second wife he left three sons and three daughters. The eldest was Cæsar, to whom he dedicated his first volume of the “Centuries.” Of these he wrote twelve in quatrains, and three of them are left imperfect, the seventh, the eleventh, and twelfth. But he also left some Forecasts written in prose, which Chavigny collected and arranged in twelve books. They are said to comprehend the history of France for about a century after his death--its wars, troubles, and whispered intrigues. The book is not mentioned by Brunet, 1839-45, and I do not find it in the British Museum; but the National Library is rather imperfectly supplied with the literature relating to this remarkable man; no doubt the authorities there look down upon him from the Olympus of Bloomsbury with a scientific disregard, as being a sort of gipsy fortune-teller of the sixteenth century, not worth completing. Do we expect a Messiah from that quarter? Can there any good thing come out of Aix in Provence? “Loco exiguo, obscuro, ignobili, barbaro, impio atque prophano?”

This prose history of a hundred years would be interesting, if only to compare with the rhymed “Centuries,” which have a much vaster range, and are supposed by many to cover all the time from Louis XIV. to the establishment of Antichrist.

Jean de Nostradamus, the brother of Michael, was Procureur to the Parliament of Aix, and wrote a work entitled “Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poëtes provensaux, qui ont floury du tems des contes de Provence,” Lyon, 1575, a book still sought for, and rather rare. It has been seen above that Cæsar also wrote on the same subject. His work was entitled “Chronique de l’Histoire de Provence:” in this he introduced the lives of the poets, and the book was published in 1614 by his nephew, Cæsar de Nostradamus.

These are almost all the facts of any importance that are recorded in the life of Nostradamus. It now remains to us to give some account of the most remarkable of his forecasts. They may be pronounced obscure, partial, useless, or what not, according to the special views and disposition of mind in each reader. That they are very curious must be admitted by all, and that some of the things foreseen with astounding particularity are inexplicable upon any hypothesis of reasoning, other than that which admits either a direct revelation in every case, or a general anticipatory faculty, forming part of the great scheme of the mental endowment of mankind. Call it divination, second sight, clairvoyance, magnetic affinity, or what you will. Everyone may in this decide, or, if you had rather, guess for himself. I prefer the second supposition, and think that there are certain organisations, somewhat rare and peculiarly wrought, that are endowed by nature with a subtle tact and anticipatory insight denied to the majorities. I further think that such exceptional instances occur more frequently in people of ancient and unmixed race, such as the Celt, the Basque, the Chaldean, Gipsy, and most frequently of all amongst those branches of them that inhabit mountain-ranges. These I imagine to retain the instincts of the birth of man more clearly than the mixed tribes that have busied and even degraded themselves in the social pursuits of money, power, and art, and have burnt down their souls to a kind of materialistic slag in the furnace of what is called civilisation.

If man is a creature born to immortality--and certainly no thought is so congenial to largeness and nobleness of heart as this is--I can see no reason why he should not have some vision given him of the minor things to happen on this theatre of the earth, which might serve as a sort of foretaste of that major light which is to clothe him as with a glorious garment when he steps forth from this his present condition of earthworm into that exalted bodily temple that he shall inhabit to all eternity. Science so-called is free to teach what it chooses: it may level man to the rank of a turnip by its insidious analysis and gradational processes. Its business is with the present, and with all its pretence of intellect it remains of the material earth, earthy. The future is out of its ken and reach. But the soul, which is the broad, many-sided reason of man in concrete, and the, so to speak, spiritually substantialised symbol of it, cannot be shut up to this. Chop logic by Aristotle’s chaff-cutter, whether handled by a Duncan, a Watts, an Aldrich, or a Whately, as you please, yet the soul, defies you with its _absoluteness_, pushes aside induction and the _contingent_ with it, and laughing at your littlenesses and your petty syllogisms, leaps at one bound into the incommensurable freedom of the future of eternity.

It now remains for me to show, not that Nostradamus is a grand type of the order of prophets, not that all the Quatrains in all of the twelve books of the “Centuries” are intelligible and of definite purpose, nor that everything he uttered and recorded is to be regarded as a prophecy either fulfilling or fulfilled. (This is not at all what I propose to do.) I intend simply to select, without over much attention to chronology or the sequence of events, such of the quatrains as by philological apparatus existing are capable of being translated into simple and intelligible language out of the occult prophetic, barbaric, and almost always pedantic phraseology (or old Franco-Provençal patois, if you like to call it so) in which it pleased or suited our prophet in his _fureur poëtique_[14] to record for us his “nocturnes et prophétiques supputations” (des astres). In doing this, if one case of unmistakable prevision can be established, the missing spiritual link is set up that connects the present with the future.

Christians generally grow almost rancorous against those who reject _their_ Scripture miracles, as Hume did, on the ground that the laws of nature being inviolable miracles become impossible; but a miracle that contravenes a law of nature is far more incredible _per se_ than such a spiritual link as the above. The miracle of bringing a man to life goes, so to speak, dead against nature and its laws customary. But a forecast, as such, is little more miraculous than a telescope that focuses and brings into range what lies out of the range of the ordinary human eye. It is really as feasible a thing to the seer, as for you and me to see that a kitten will become a cat nine months later on. He sees by imagination what you see by reasoning on association in the past. It is discovery by a different faculty, I admit. But if Christian belief accepts a future state and the immortality of the life (commonly called the _soul_) of man, then I say, that the Christian who denies the gift of prophecy to be inherent in mankind[15] is really as dead to spiritual life as if he were a materialistic member of a scientific society of the nineteenth century, or a Parisian enclycopædist of the eighteenth.

Again, if Christianity be a heaven-descended revelation, its foundations must be rooted deep in the spiritual world and should be full of correspondences. The material universe is full of them. There the meanest particle of dust is link by link connected at last with the grandest astral phenomena, and can we suppose that men are all possessed with an immortal spirit, and yet at the same time announce that not _one_ of them has any prescience, any foreknowledge of things coming on the earth, no sign rendered from the great unnameable Director, who, vast and invisible, also dwells in spiritual obscurity, and never gives an inkling to anyone born of woman that He cares more for an empire with its myriads of embryo angels (according to the doctrine of the Churches) than for an oak tree or a medlar? Yet we are willing to make it a point of virtue to believe that His only Son died for us, and that a whole line of prophets from Jacob to Caiaphas harped perpetually and in succession upon the Paganini string of the one great utterance of His advent. At the birth of Christ it is untruly said that the oracles stopped. So, according to the present Christian dogmatising, did the prophets. Would it not be a thousand times more fraught with hope, if we had not basely smothered such beliefs by materialistic science (or Atheism, for it is closer of kin to the blasphemy of unbelief), could we have said there _is_ a spiritual living link of prophecy existing, and now and again found amongst us; a correspondency in man with the future; a power in him to forecast it a little, though darkly--as with a dark lanthorn moving through a dark season--and touching so, through film, the future of time as to interlink the whole series into one, and make to-day, perishing--with its bells, its bustle, and its breathing--into a continuous whole, one with the glories of eternity?

It will perhaps be well before proceeding to the Quatrains to meet an objection against Nostradamus put forward by the famous Gassendi,[16] who received it from Jean-Baptiste Suffren. Gassendi, it seems, was at Salon in 1638, when Jean-Baptiste Suffren, a judge in that town, communicated to him the horoscope drawn by Nostradamus for his father Antoine Suffren, and written in our prophet’s _own hand_, giving ten points, such as he should have a long curly beard, so bent in age, that in his 37th year he should be wounded by his half-brothers, and he had none, and much more of the same sort, but invariably wrong, till the horoscope fixes Suffren’s death in 1618, whereas he died in 1597. Now, in the first place, Gassendi was of a sceptical turn of mind, so that he would be glad to find Nostradamus wrong. Then Nostradamus died in 1566, and only in 1638, seventy-two years after, do they produce this document and assert that it is in Nostradamus’s handwriting. We may assume that the MS. was eighty years old at least. Gassendi does not profess to know his handwriting, but took it to be so on Jean-Baptiste Suffren’s simple assertion. It is perfectly possible that Suffren had some desire to ridicule an astrologer, and might have invented the whole thing. At any rate, it is not likely that _every one_ of ten or eleven guesses would be precisely the contrary of the fact.[17] One of the clauses ran that at twenty-five he should cultivate rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, theology, natural science, and the occult philosophy. Jean-Baptiste has the effrontery to say that he studied not one of these, but only the science of jurisprudence. It is not likely, I say, that Nostradamus would guess wrongly in all the sciences, and leave out the only one that the man pursued. This looks as if it had been manufactured for the express purpose of bringing the name of Nostradamus into ridicule and disrepute. It is quite certain that the late John Varley, the painter, could draw some most wonderful horoscopes; a cousin of my father’s, in whose family he taught, had seen his forecasts marvellously verified. So correct had he frequently been that at the time she knew him it was with the greatest difficulty he could be induced to draw one. It is not likely that Nostradamus would fall so absurdly short of John Varley. Guessing at haphazard would correspond with the facts better than this upon the mere doctrine of probabilities. Jean-Baptiste in his haste has proved too much, and Gassendi, like a multitude of incredulous people, was quite ready to receive too much of the things for which his mouth was open and eager.

(_To be continued._)

A Dead Flemish City.

_NOTES OF A VISIT TO DAMME._

BY THE REV. JOSEPH MASKELL.

There are few cities in Europe of greater interest for the intelligent traveller than Bruges, the “cradle of opulent Flanders,” and the “Venice of the North.” The student in history, the connoisseur in art, the lover of antiquity, all find here ample instruction and enjoyment. Even the superficial traveller, hurrying on to more fashionable localities, but “doing” Bruges _en route_, as the correct thing, finds much to interest him in its quaint exteriors, silent canals, and old-world streets, to say nothing of its many treasures of pictures, sculptures, wood carvings, and other monuments of antiquity, to be seen only by penetrating into interiors, and looking deeper than the surface. “A decayed, dull place, where the grass grows in the streets,” was the verdict of a fellow-traveller, as the train from Ostend steamed into the modern Gothic unfinished station of Bruges on a wet day in last July. Not so. Bruges is neither decayed nor dull, nor does the “grass grow in its streets.” Gone is the day in which it could be written of the turbulent Flemish cities--

“Bruges et Gaud, qui toujours, ces bouillonnantes cuves,
Ecclataient à la fois, ainsi que deux Vesuves;”[18]

yet Bruges is still full of a steady kind of life and activity; and, as one of its intelligent citizens described it, “ce n’est pas ville morte; c’est une antiquité vivante,” retaining many tokens of the time when the proud Jeanne of Navarre, the Queen of Philippe le Bel, passing through streets lined with the palaces of its merchant princes, and observing the rich clothing of their ladies, cried out, “Je croyais être seule Reine de France; je vois ici cent reines que valent autant de moi.”