Chapter II: The Horse Eclipse (6)

The arrest of the abbate was followed up by a measure of more rigour, and of far greater importance. The contract itself was annulled on the ground of incompetence in the seller--the three hundred crowns were ordered to be paid back, and Dr. W. permitted to appeal, and satisfy himself with civil answers as well as he could, and with what every jurisconsult of the Curia Innocenziana had decided, or would decide if called upon by the secretary, to be the ancient and existing law of Rome.

The doctor made, through himself and others, the ordinary applications, each of which were received and answered in the ordinary manner. This was encouraging; and he vented his indignation amongst his acquaintances; and, when the access and struggle was over, lay like Gulliver, fatigued on his back.

In the mean time, a vessel arrived from England at Cività Vecchia, and a boat’s crew a little after from Fiumicino at Rome. The papers were released and embarked. The doctor expostulated, and the cardinal secretary received him with his usual urbanity. His visit was quite as satisfactory as any of the preceding, and as conclusive as such visits generally are at Rome. The cardinal heard every thing with the most dignified composure, and simply replied, that any application to him personally was now unavailing, and that he could not do better than apply to the king of England, in whose hands the papers in question would probably be found in the course of another month.

The doctor bowed and took the advice,--but, in leaving the room, it occurred to him that he might not meet a more favourable reception at Downing-street than at the Vatican. A friend at that time resident at Rome proposed to act as his representative to the minister, and acquitted himself in the sequel with a fidelity as rare amongst ambassadors as attorneys.

I never heard any thing decisive of the result of this interview;--but I have no doubt the cardinal was in the right. No inquiries at all disquieting were made, or questions asked, of the keeper of the king’s conscience, on the adjudication of the court of Rome. The king of England, in right of his Stuart blood, keeps, and will leave to his descendants, probably, the care of publishing all the Stuart MSS.

But in the momentous interval between the discovery of the papers, and their voyage to England, more eyes than those of an English duchess and a cardinal secretary of state contrived to glance over the treasure. For a day or two they were exposed to the inspection of the privileged few, at the head of whom was the late professor Playfair, lord S----, lord of session, &c.: to one of these favoured individuals I am indebted for most of the particular which follow.

On entering the chamber where they were arranged, which was a small room, on the first floor, of a small apartment in a secondary quarter of Rome, he found the walls to a great height literally covered with piles of paper of every size and quality. They were packed so close, had been so long unopened, and had so much suffered from the humidity, that each packet was found to contain, on examination, a very much larger quantity than had at first been expected. They were arranged in the most perfect order, and classed according to the age, country, or writer. Several were autographs, and copies, where they existed, were in the best preservation, and generally under the eye, and by the order of the first authority. The series commenced about the period of the king’s arrival in France, and were continued down, with scarcely any interruption or hiatus, to the demise of the last direct heir, the cardinal de York. They embraced not only every document connected with political matters, but entered into the most minute details on the domestic and personal affairs of the illustrious individuals, to whom they related, and threw a very singular light on transactions which have been long concealed, or viewed under very partial bearings, by the British public. Not only the private and confidential correspondence between the different members of the royal family, but references to the most trivial circumstances connected with the interior of the royal household, and various other matters of similar interest, were everywhere observable. The revenues, the expenditure, were regularly noted; a large volume or ledger, almost completely filled with items of this kind, gave no bad scale of the gradation or diminution of expense, calculated on country, time, and situation, and therefore a very fair estimate of their means under the successive fortunes to which they had been exposed. But by far the most interesting documents of the collection referred to the important political transactions of that memorable epoch. James II. occupies a considerable, and, indeed, a principal portion of this interest. His letters to his son, written and corrected in his own hand, give a very flattering portrait, and perhaps a very authentic one, of his character in almost all his domestic relations, without much claim, but also without much pretension, to style--the sin of that age, and not less of the succeeding: they are not without a certain tinge of the elegance of manner, which, though by no means his apanage, had more or less been contracted in those dissolute circles which had inspired Hamilton. But there were other qualities with which they abounded, of much higher value and importance, greater depth of feeling than what usually exists in courts, paternal affection in all the bitterness of an unrequited fondness, and a settled and unavailing despair (he died, indeed, of a lethargy) of the future destinies of his house, grounded on the frail support he could anticipate from the depraved habits of his son. The reproaches addressed to him are frequent, and fraught with the overflowing waters of fatherly disappointment; the _brouillon_, or rough draft of the letter, which was sometimes preserved, was often blotted, and the wavering and agitation of his mind betrayed itself very visibly in his very hand. The general view which they give is favourable, and presents a kindlier aspect of his character than what we are habituated to meet with in the generality of the Whig writers.[213]

[212] His Royal Highness the Cardinal de York, or as he was sometimes
called, “Your Majesty,” reposes in the subterraneous church of St.
Peter, under a plain sarcophagus, which bears the name of Hen. IX. No
one will dispute the title of a few handfuls of dust, but it is worth
observing that something very similar reappears on the monument in St.
Peter’s itself. This is consistent in a Roman: legitimacy, like the
priesthood, is indelible, and cannot be rubbed out by misfortune or
wrong. The sketch in Forsyth is interesting and delicate, though
rather Jacobite and Scotch. I met many persons who retained
recollections of him at Rome, but none of these recollections are
worth noticing. He seems to have rendered himself more remarkable by
petty peculiarities, than any great quality of heart or head. He was
supposed to be the quickest driver for a cardinal of the whole
college, and sometimes came in from Frascati, (his bishopric and
habitual residence,) a distance of about fourteen miles, in an hour
and a quarter. This was thought in the first instance marvellous, and
in the next indecorous. The only honours he retained were his titles
great and little, and the privilege of mounting the Vatican in a
sedan-chair.

[213] New Monthly Magazine.

* * * * *

THE PLANETS.

THEIR COMPARATIVE SIZES AND POSITIONS.

To assist the mind in framing a conception of the magnitude and relative distances of the primary planets, let us have recourse to the following method. The dome of St. Paul’s is 145 feet in diameter. Suppose a globe of this size to represent the Sun; then a globe of 9⁷⁄₁₀ inches will represent Mercury; one of 17⁹⁄₁₀ inches, Venus; one of 18 inches, the Earth; one of 5 inches diameter, the Moon, (whose distance from the earth is 240,000 miles;) one of 10 inches, Mars; one of 15 feet, Jupiter; and one of 11½ feet, Saturn, with his ring four feet broad, and at the same distance from his body all round.

In this proportion, suppose the Sun to be at St. Paul’s, then

☿ Mercury might be at the Tower of London,

♀ Venus at St. James’s Palace,

⊖ The Earth at Marylebone,

♂ Mars at Kensington,

♃ Jupiter at Hampton Court,

♄ Saturn at Clifden;

all moving round the cupola of St. Paul’s as ☉ their common centre.

* * * * *

ACCOUNT OF THE BEE-EATER

_Of Selborne, Hampshire._

BY THE REV. GILBERT WHITE, 1789.

We had in this village, more than twenty years ago, an idiot boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to bees: they were his food, his amusement, his sole object; and as people of this cast have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dosed away his time, within his father’s house, by the fire-side, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, humble-bees, and wasps, were his prey, wherever he found them: he had no apprehensions from their stings, but would seize them _nudis manibus_, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of these captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very _merops apiaster_, or _bee-bird_, and very injurious to men that kept bees; for he would slide into their bee-gardens, and, sitting down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where metheglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called _bee-wine_. As he ran about, he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favourite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more modern exhibiter of bees; and we may justly say of him now,

“Thou,
Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
Should’st _Wildman_ be.”

When a tall youth, he was removed from hence to a distant village, where he died, as I understand, before he arrived at manhood.

* * * * *

Before the Reformation, says Anthony à Wood, “in every church was a poor man’s box, but I never remembered the use of it; nay, there was one at great inns, as I remember it was, before the wars.”

Poor-boxes are often mentioned in the twelfth century. At that period pope Innocent III. extended papal power to an inordinate height; absolved subjects from allegiance to their sovereigns; raised crusades throughout Europe for the recovery of the holy sepulchre; laid France under an interdict; promised paradise to all who would slaughter the Albigenses; excommunicated John, king of England; and ordered hollow trunks to be placed in all the churches, to receive alms for the remission of the sins of the donors.[214]

A communication to the Antiquarian Society, accompanied by drawings of the poor-boxes on this and the opposite page, briefly describes them.[215] The common poor-box in the churches appears to have been a shaft of oak, hollowed out at the top, covered by a hinged lid of iron, with a slit in it, for the money to fall through into the cavity, and secured by one or two iron locks.

Perhaps the most curiously constructed of the ancient poor-boxes now remaining, is that in the church of Cawston, near Aylsham. The church was built between 1385 and 1414. The poor-box was provided with three keys, two of which were for the churchwardens, and the third was most probably for the clergyman, as one of the key-holes is more ornamented than the others. The most singular part of this box is an inverted iron cup, for preventing the money from being taken out by means of any instrument through the holes on the top of the box.

The engravings above represent--1. this poor-box, as it stands on an octangular stone basement; 2. a perfect view of the lid; 3. another of the interior, with the manner wherein the cup is suspended for the security of the money; 4. a section of the box.

In places where the presumed richness of the boxes rendered them liable to be plundered, they were strongly bound or clamped with iron plates, as shown in the present engravings.

The church of Loddon, in the south-eastern angle of the county of Norfolk, about five miles from Bungay, was built about 1495, and contains a depository of this description, with two separate boxes, each of them secured by two padlocks: over one of these is a hole in the lid for the offerings. When a sufficient sum was collected, it was taken out and placed in the adjoining box in the presence of the two churchwardens.

Ben Jonson, in his “Masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies, as it was thrice presented before king James, 1621, &c.” makes a gipsy tell Tom Ticklefoot, a rustic musician,--

“On Sundays you rob the poor’s-box with your tabor;
The collectors would do it, you save them a labour.”

Whereunto a countryman answers,

“Faith, but a little: they’ll do it _non-upstant_.”[216]

From this we gather that it was customary at that time to put money in the parish poor’s-box on Sundays, and that the trustees of the poor were sometimes suspected of misapplying it.

The neglect of this mode of public contribution is noted in Hogarth’s marriage scene of the “Rake’s Progress,” by a cobweb covering the poor’s-box in the church. There is an intimation to the same effect in one of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, which further intimates that poor’s-boxes had posies--

The poor man’s box is there too: if ye find any thing
Besides the posy, and that half rubb’d out too,
For fear it should awaken too much charity,
Give it to pious uses: that is, spend it.

_Spanish Curate_, 1647.

The posies or mottoes on poor’s-boxes were short sentences to incite benevolence--such as, “He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,” &c.

[214] Fosbroke’s Encyclopædia of Antiquities.

[215] This communication from J. A. Repton, Esq., is printed, with
engravings from his drawings, in the “Archæologia,” 1821.

[216] _Non-upstant_, notwithstanding.

* * * * *

~Poetry.~

ANGEL HELP.[217]

This rare Tablet doth include
Poverty with Sanctitude.
Past midnight this poor Maid hath spun,
And yet the work not half is done,
Which must supply from earnings scant
A feeble bed-rid parent’s want.
Her sleep-charged eyes exemption ask,
And Holy hands take up the task;
Unseen the rock and spindle ply,
And do her earthly drudgery.

Sleep, saintly Poor One, sleep, sleep on,
And, waking, find thy labours done.

Perchance she knows it by her dreams;
Her eye hath caught the golden gleams
(Angelic Presence testifying,)
That round her everywhere are flying;
Ostents from which she may presume
That much of Heaven is in the room.
Skirting her own bright hair they run,
And to the Sunny add more Sun:
Now on that aged face they fix,
Streaming from the Crucifix;
The flesh-clogg’d spirit disabusing.
Death-disarming sleeps infusing,
Prelibations, foretastes high,
And equal thoughts to live or die.

Gardener bright from Eden’s bower,
Tend with care that Lily Flower;
To its leaves and root infuse
Heaven’s sunshine, Heaven’s dews;
’Tis a type and ’tis a pledge
Of a Crowning Privilege:
Careful as that Lily Flower,
This Maid must keep her precious dower;
Live a Sainted Maid, or die
Martyr to Virginity.

Virtuous Poor Ones, sleep, sleep on,
And, waking, find your labours done.