Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

been the writer of a miracle-play. It is certainly old enough to have been the freak of such an author, and the costumes of Shem and his brethren suggest-like Mr. Pickwick's gaiters at the soirée — the Dark Ages. Or was it the genius who alighted on the design of the willow pattern plate who constructed the first child's ark ? He would have made the elephant and the duck (not according to their kind) of exactly the same proportions as you may now see them, and he would have sacrificed a custom of old standing to economy, by freighting the ark with only one animal of each species. But let all that pass. Noah's Ark is immortal, although the constituents are occasionally swallowed. If the flock thins they are easily replaced.

What a joy is a whip with a whistle at the end of it to a child! There is a combination of delights: you may have a sly lash at the cat or at the pet dog, and when blasé of these luxuries the whistle still remains to the good. A whistle with a small pea in it is an improvement, giving a tremolo and artistic air to the instrument; but then it is likely to choke it now and then, so that perhaps the whistle pure and simple is to be preferred. This, too, is within the reach of the poor child; so is a drum, or at least a small one, out of which a good deal can be got with perseverance. To see a halfclothed urchin with a drum, albeit a paltry and diminutive drum, whacking it until he falls asleep over it, is a more enjoyable sight than the appearance of Master Howard with an expensive affair that might be played in an orchestra. Master Howard's drum has a hole in it months before the youngest of Brown's children has yielded to an impulse to see what was making the noise inside the sheepskin of his.

We doubt whether a spade and a small cart may be considered as genuine toys. We are inclined to think not. They are of modern growth. A poor child would not see much fun in a spade and cart: perhaps it has a dim notion of its own future at the tail of a plough or the side of a real waggon. A sword however, or a gun, may be included in the catalogue. Those symbols reveal the common masculine disposition. The boy who prefers a sword to a transparent slate recommends himself to any student of children. What visions a child has, pulling this bit of tin or iron from its case and flourishing it over a geranium! Puzzles, so called, are abominations. A child's intellect will quicken itself without such dry forcing. As for a boy or a girl

learning Scripture or geography in this fashion, it should not be thought of. The time for liking toys is too precious and short to be wasted upon the pursuit of knowledge.

The period when toys are given up for games is marked probably by the taste for the first kite and fairy-story book. Girls stick to dolls until they can play a quadrille on the piano; but a boy who has a kite and has once flown it, and held the string in his own hand, from that moment regards whistles, drums, and Jacks-in-thebox as vanities. In his "Robert Falconer" Mr. George MacDonald gives the following description of the manner in which his hero used to send up his "Dragon":

"The dragon flew splendidly now, and its strength was mighty. It was Robert's custom to drive a stake in the ground, slanting against the wind, and thereby tether the animal, as it were, up there grazing in its own natural region. Then he would lie down by the stake, and read the Arabian Nights,' every now and then casting a glance upwards at the creature alone in the waste air, yet all in his power by the string at his side. While he lay there gazing, all at once he would find that his soul was up with the dragon, feeling as it felt, tossing

about with it in the torrents of air. Out at his

eyes it would go, traverse the dim stairless space, and sport with the wind-blown monster." And most poor boys can make a kite when living in the country. It is only in the crowded cities and factories that toys and games are scarce, and this is to be regretted. Yet even there children will make the greatest efforts to satisfy their natural craving. Dirt-pies cost nothing, and oyster-shells and broken glass, with lovely garnishes of the wire topping of soda-water flasks, will delight a group of poor children for a whole day. A story is told of a poor child putting a paper cap on its head, and sitting contented in the sun for hours, quieted by the luxurious feeling of enacting something or other- who knows? and the story may be true and the cap no fool's-cap either.

Childhood is a mystery which genius can only touch without profaning. We may be content with observing its surface and with making one practical note at least. Charitable people might give more toys and less tracts to the children of the working classes when they visit and teach at Sunday schools. A prize at one of these latter institutions of a drum or a doll would often be more acceptable and useful than a tract containing a goody lie, enforcing obedience or truth by some nonsensical story.

From The London Review. SHAM ANTIQUITIES. WHEN Jonathan Oldbuck was holding forth to Lovel upon the outline of the supposed entrenchment, as marking without doubt the situation of a Roman outwork on the site of the decisive battle-ground between Agricola and the Caledonians, the unexpected interruption of Edie Ochiltrees "I was at the digging of it," might be taken as a warning to other antiquarians than he of Monkbairns. When once the mind allows itself to travel back to past ages, it is difficult to recall it; we canter along so smoothly upon the nag Imagination, that it seems an offence to be suddenly recalled by the voice of Common Sense. Hence we suppose the ease with which we lend ourselves so often to be duped in the matter of ancient relics by designing rascals, whose opinions upon any ordinary question would not weigh with us a rush. Never was the saying, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing," more applicable than to those persons who have a momentary antiquarian craze upon them. This is a complaint we are liable to take just like the measles, and there are quacks ever upon the watch to profit by the contagion.

[ocr errors]

to be the genuine collectors, who are well
tersed in the matter; these they avoid.
The casual passer-by, however, is sure to
fall into the snare prepared before with rare
art. It is as necessary for these knaves to
have the appropriate scenery for the little
play they have in hand as it is for the actor.
The actual fabricator, however, never ap-
pears upon the scene. The ancient relics
are beforehand given to the navigators,
who share in the plunder, and just as the
stranger passes by they are carelessly tossed
up by the spade.
That's a curious thing,
master," the rogue remarks; the other nav-
vies crowd round, and the mise en scène is
complete. As "seeing is believing," there
are very few that are able to resist the bait;
it is gorged, in fact, for fear of another
pur-
chaser appearing as a competitor.

66

The river Thames is, at the same time, the conservator of many genuine relics of a past age, and the prolific mother of many bastards. The shorerakers, as they are termed, are well versed in all the arts of getting out of this river articles that were never legitimately deposited there. In the celebrated trial of Eastwick against the Athenæum, some years since, two of these worthiesBilly and Charley-proved how lucrative the game is in experienced hands. These cunning fellows, "put up" in the matter by still more cunning fellows behind, "discovered" no less than two thousand "pilgrims' signs" in the mud of the dock then being dug at Shadwell, and, what was more cunning still, they managed to sell them to the extent of £400 to one of the largest dealers in curiosities in London.

In

Inquiring of the hall porter at the British Museum the other day if forged antiquities were ever offered there, he gave a grim smile, "Lord bless ye, sir, never a day passes over without our being brought them sort of tackle;" and suiting the action to the word, he pulled out a box from under his desk containing a miscellaneous assortment of daggers, vases with confused inscriptions upon them, knives, and other"Quentin Durward" we all remember the articles that had evidently not been long leaden image Louis XI. placed in his cap; cast in lead, subjected to an acid, and these images, it was asserted, were of a smeared with mud. The gent as brought these very important ancient relics' was quite mad because we told him they was forgedwent away in a pet, and we never saw him again." In all probability this credulous individual had boasted to his friends that these things which he had purchased as they were dug up, as he said, by some navigators in the excavations going on at Shadwell, were very valuable, and finding out his mistake, thought it best to leave them, and cover his retreat by saying they were now in the Museum.

[blocks in formation]

similar nature, used by pilgrims when visit-
ing any particular shrine. In what manner
upwards
of two thousand of them could
have fairly got into the Thames in one con-
fined spot near the present swing bridge,
puzzled the members of the British Archæo-
logical Society, and upon an examination
the whole of them were pronounced to be
forgeries, apparently cast in chalk moulds,
the graving tools being nails and pen-
knives. Bishops were equipped in mitres
of different forms, some of them dating back
to the twelfth century. The military figures
were equally absurd. It was asserted that
these relics were of the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries, hence they bore upon their
own face the proof of their having been
forged. How many of these signs have
found their way into private collections we
know not; some of them were purchased

by Mr. Franks for the British Museum, but | From an article on Proverbs, Ancient and Modern, they have never been exhibited.

Our country friends, however, cannot afford to grin at the Cockneys for the facility with which they are imposed upon. They should remember the exploit in the same line of the celebrated Flint Jack, by whom Yorkshire and the northern counties have been flooded with fraudulent flint instruments. This celebrated individual, who has not long since come out of prison, manages, with a piece of bent iron rod, a soft hammer, and a bradawl, to manufacture adzeheads and arrow-heads which cannot be distinguished from the genuine articles. We believe, indeed, that it is impossible to distinguish them from the undoubted specimens of the Stone Age that are occasionally found in barrows and other places of sepulture of the inhabitants of that period. The flint is so hard that any amount of time is insufficient to mar the sharpness of its edges when buried in a state of rest; neither does time tell upon the material in any other way; hence the only guarantee of the genuineness that can be obtained for any flint adze or arrow head, is the fact that it has been obtained from a barrow that has never been disturbed. Flint Jack knows this well, and the proof of his having manufactured them, independently of his confession of the fact and public exhibition of the method in which he made them before the Geological Society, rests upon his indiscretion in having on one occasion stuck upon an arrow-head he had made, by the aid of alum, some chips inadvertently broken off. Upon these specimens being boiled, to free them from the dirt in which they were incrusted, these pieces fell off and discovered

the cheat.

This clever vagabond has been going about the northern counties for the last fiveand-twenty years, not only manufacturing false Celts, but making British pottery. For this purpose he has been in the habit of visiting various local museums to note the ornamentation and the lettering occasionally to be found on such articles-forging in fact in clay, just as the forger of bank-notes works with the real paper currency before him. Some of the dealers in antiquities, unknowingly of course, sometimes sell these clever vagabonds old coins, who hide, in order to find them at an ap propriate moment. Mr. Eastwood admitted that he sold coins to navigators, and such-like. He was not aware what they did with them; but reading as we do, by the light of these transactions in sham antiquities, there can be little doubt they are not purchased for any honest purpose.

in The Quarterly Review. PROVERBS FROM THE TALMUD.

we cannot but allude to those classical proBEFORE quitting these antique realms, verbs from the Talmud' which have lately Their wisdom appeared in these pages.* and their tenderness do indeed speak louder than any other argument for the exceptionused them as their household words. Anxally high state of culture among those who ious to produce some specimens, and yet not wishing to repeat what has already become familiar to our readers, we have obTalmud' the following new budget, which tained from the author of the article on the he has translated from Talmudical sources. Those who wish for further information must consult certain portions of the Mishnah,' together with the labors of Buxtorf, Drusius, Landau, Dukes, &c.

6

[ocr errors]

Let

believe it:

Between the wolf and the shepherd the lamb has come to grief. One thing acquired with pain, is better than a hundred with ease. the grapes pray for the welfare of the branches; without branches there would be no grapes. Silence is beautiful in a wise man ; but how much more in a fool. More than the calf wishes to drink, the cow wishes to give it suck. If they tell you that your friend is dead that he has come into a fortune, doubt it. An ass feels chilly in July. He who lends money to the poor is often better than he who gives them alms. Here is a table, and meat, and knives; but we have no mouths to eat. Be prudent and be silent. The world is like the wheel of the well, with its two buckets: the full one is ever emptied, and the empty one is ever filled. A quarrel is like a squirt of water issuing from a cleft; wider and wider gets the cleft, more and more powerful the squirt. Here is the sack, the corn, and the money; now you go and measure. He who has been legally deprived of his ill-gotten garment should go on his way rejoicing. He who has learnt and does not teach is like a

myrtle in the desert. There is threefold death in the slanderer's tongue: it kills him who slanders, him who is slandered, and him who receives the slander. Some people's judgment is that of a blind man at a window. You cannot touch a fool: a dead man's body does not feel the knife.† For a man who has been ruined by woman, there is no law and no judge. Many an arrowsmith is shot by his own arrows. Greater is he who causes good deeds than he who does leaven is to the dough. He who struts about the them. Great is peace: it is to the land what market in the philosopher's toga, will not come into the dwelling-place of God. Where song (joy of life) is dead, a hundred geese may be had for a brass farthing, and a hundred bushels of wheat

• October, 1867 [Living Age, No. 1231]. Η σμίλη,

comes a blessing; to him who does not, it grows into a poison. Why is the lobe of the ear soft? that you may close up the ear when you hear aught improper. A bad wife is like a hailstorm. Do not dwell too long upon your friend's praises : you will end by saying things against him. Do much or little-so that you do it for a good purpose. Refined music is liked by refined people weavers do not much care for it. Three cry out but get no pity: he who lends out his money without witnesses, the hen-pecked husband, and he who cannot get on in one place and does not try another. Even the common talk of the wise should be pondered over. One goose generally follows another. Bad servants first ask only when they have already committed the blun der. The load is laid upon the camel according to its strength. If a word is worth a pound, silence is worth two. A pig is the richest animal : everything is a piece of goods to him. Whoever does too much, does too little. The greater a man, the greater his passions. He who press es the hour, the hour will press him. May our future reward be like that of him who remains silent under a false imputation. One peppercorn is better than a hundred gourds. A learned man whose deeds are evil is like a man who has a door but no house. He who prays for his neighbour, will be heard first for himself. He who marries his daughter to an uneducated man, throws her before a wild beast. He who throws out suspicions, should at once be suspected himself. Three keep good fellowship: strangers, slaves, and ravens. A fool always rushes to the fore. Do not cry out before the calamity has really happened. The hatred the unlearned bear toward the learned is even greater than that of the heathens against Israel. The righteous is greater after his death than during his life. If a great man says something strange, beware to mock at it wantonly. Passion is at first like a thin thread, by-and-by it becomes like a cable. Woe is me when I speak, woe is me when I keep silence.'

for the asking; but no one asks. Woman spins her little web, while she talks. Throw no stones into the well whence you have drunk. A small allowance at home is much better than a large one abroad. He is a book-case, not a scholar. Cut off his head, but mind you don't kill him. It is the hole that makes the thief. When the camel kicks the scorpion away with its heel, the scorpion swears that the camel shall perceive it in its head. In his own house the weaver is king. The salt of money is almsgiving. A hundred shillings invested in trade will give a man meat and wine; in acres it will give him cabbage and salt. To move from one house into another costs a garment; from one country into another, a life. When the axe already touches thy neck, still hope in God's saving grace. Flight is the beginning of defeat. Hang the sweetest grass round a pig's neck, it will still go and wallow in its native mire. The lives of three are no lives; that of the too compassionate, of the man with a temper, and the misanthrope. Three men are beloved by God: he who is of a sweet temper, he who is moderate in his habits, and he who does not always obstinately adhere to his first resolves. Poor is only he who lacks common sense. If the old people tell you to pull down, and the young ones to build up: pull down. You must not drink out of one cup, and look at another. He who cannot moderate his grief will soon have a new grief to weep over. Where Satan cannot go himself, he takes wine as his messenger. Whoever has been bitten by a serpent is afraid of a rope. He who has bread in his basket should not be compared to him who has not: (though neither be hungry at the time). When the jackal has his day, make him a bow. Would you carry sorcery to Egypt? Pharoah said to Moses. The way man wishes to go, thither his feet will carry him. An old man in the house is a sorrow to the house; an old woman in the house is a blessing to it. Seven years lasted the famine, but no workman starved. Seven years lasted the plague, but no one died before his time. He who rents one garden, may eat birds; who rents many, the birds will eat him. If you hired yourself out to him, you must beat out his wool. Honour your wives; they will enrich you. Eat below your means, dwell according to your means; but spend upon your wife and children EVERY traveller, it may be presumed, above your means. First understand, then ar- cares about something. Every place, too, gue. Heart and eye are the twin go-betweens. contains something that would interest someYou must not refute a lion after his death. body, could the thing and the body be Much have I learnt from my masters, more brought into juxtaposition. There are, of from my colleagues, most from my disciples. course, some tastes the want of which must In a quarrel it is always the well-born who will render all continental travelling more or first give way. Do not stand in a place of dan-less wearisome and altogether unprofitable. ger, trusting in miracles. Iron sharpens iron; There is one, failing which the non-commerscholar, the scholar Man has been created on the last day; even the gnat is of a more ancient cial traveller will do well never to cross the lineage. The thought of the sin is worse than French frontier. I speak of a taste for, regthe sin. Eat quickly, drink quickly: this world ulated too by some knowledge of, architecis but a brief wedding-feast. The older the ture, and especially the architecture of the wise man gets, the wiser he grows; the fool, Middle Ages. In the abundance and the when he ages, becomes but an old fool. He who splendour of its examples of this phase of studies for a good purpose, to him his study be- art, the French is not merely richer beyond

[ocr errors]

Part of an article in Macmillan's Magazine. FRENCH MEDIEVAL ARCHITECTURE.

which workmen were busily engaged in pulling down. Be assured this was no figure of speech, no rhetorical artifice by which to call attention to a hidden truth, but a plain account of a not uncommon incident.

comparison than any other nation, but richer | Ruskin, some years ago, said that he had than all other European nations combined. more than once been engaged in drawing It is not merely that Amiens, Soissons, one side of a building the other side of Noyon, Laon, Rheims, Chartres, Le Mans, Poitiers, Sens, Auxerre it is useless to multiply examples - contain cathedrals or other churches altogether unrivalled in size, proportion, or detail, beyond the Rhine or the Alps; but that, the Revolution of 1791 But the interest of French travelling does notwithstanding, the rage for improvement not depend exclusively on, however much it (more destructive than a hundred revolu- may be increased by, French towns. With tions), nay, restoration itself notwithstand- great deference to those whose knowledge ing, it is hardly possible to pass over ten of France is derived from an annual trip by miles of French soil without coming upon railway from Boulogne to Paris, and from some monument, generally great and always Paris to Basle, France is as highly favoured beautiful, of French medieval genius and by nature as it has been by art, and on the constructive skill. For the most part, with whole richly deserves her old epithet, la the magnificent exceptions of a few military belle. Were some of our autumn tourists, structures, such as Coucy-le-Château, these on their way back even from Switzerland, are exclusively ecclesiastical monuments, for to alight at Dijon, and, turning westward, there is comparatively little domestic archi- make their way by carriage or on foot toward tecture in France older than the Renais- Nevers or La Charité, they would pass over sance; but such is the number of ecclesias- a country altogether unlike that which they tical monuments, and such is their variety had left, no doubt, but unsurpassed in its of style, that the most accomplished French archæologist might, in a week's tour in some parts of France, meet with a hundred structures of whose existence as yet no account has been got in- structures which have blushed unseen for centuries, structures still unknown, unmeasured, and unsketched, and happily unrestored. Nor are there many towns in France (a few years ago there were none) albeit no longer rich in domestic Gothic, which are altogether deficient in examples of that rapidly disappearing element, the picturesque. True, the Prefect is abroad. There are Baron Hausmanns

(Hausmännerchen) in the provinces. Historical Paris is not the only French city which, in the recollection of all but the youngest inhabitant thereof, has been improved off the face of the earth. Rouen

mean the Rouen of five-and-twenty years ago-is a thing of the past. A quartier of gabled houses and the choir of a fourteenthcentury church lay in ruins, necessitated by a new alignement, the last time I visited it: while the existing ancient dwellings, once glorying in their construction-their crosstimbered, herring-boned façades, and visible roofs are now masked under plaster of Paris and parapets; wanting alike the freshness of youth and the dignity of age. - like old ladies with paint on their cheeks and "fronts" on their temples. Hasten, then, ye lovers of mediæval architecture! lose not a season, nay, lose not a day, in securing a last look at the glories of which the clever and tasteful French people are despoiling their country-the rich inheritance which they are busy scattering to the winds. Mr.

own kind, - -a country made up of hills almost worthy of a nobler title, and these covered, not by woods, but vast forests of magnificent timber, and watered by numerous and rapid streams, the tributaries of one of the most pleasing and beneficent of French rivers, the Yonne.

From The Spectator.

A HOUSEHOLD BOOK OF ENGLISH
POETRY.*

To produce a fine selection of English poetry is perhaps one of the most difficult of this wealth must be extracted is so vast, editorial labours. The mine from whence and contains so much of what seems like gold but is in reality mere pinchbeck, that hard work is requisite, before it is even not only critical insight, but downright possible to separate the counterfeit from the pure metal. And this sifting process, infinitely wearisome though it be, is but one has been cast aside, the gold itself requires step in the investigation. When the dross to be weighed with the most careful and delicate precision. So much wealth has to that the labourer is forced to reject much be compressed within a narrow compass, of sterling worth for the sake of what he deems worthier. His aim should be to bring together not what is intrinsically good, but what is unquestionably best; to meet the reasonable demands of readers capable of

*A Household Book of English Poetry. Selected and arranged with Notes. By Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D., Archbishop of Dublin. London: Macmillan & Co.

« AnteriorContinuar »