pose that so pointed a bearing on the contested fact, manifest alike in the most eminent of the Latin fathers and greatest of Roman writers' works, could have eluded their notice, as it did Mr. Green's and Dr. Burney's, whose son Charles, a profound classical scholar, must, we may presume, have been ignorant of it, or he would, doubtless, have indicated it to his father, when publishing his history in 1789. Charles was then in highest literary repute. " Rousseau's article on Counterpoint, in his Dictionary of Music, is quite satisfactory as to explanation, though too peremptory in conclusion, which refuses all knowledge of it to the ancients. "On voit clairement qu'ils n'en eurent jamais la moindre idée." His authority is Aristoxenus, a native of Tarentum, then in Magna Græcia, or Southern Italy, and disciple of Aristotle. This writer's treatise, « Περί Αρμονιχών Στοιχείων,” or Harmonic Elements, as it may be rendered, is followed in the collection of Marcus Meibomius, "Antiquæ Musicæ Auctores Septem," (Amsterd. 1652, two volumes, 4to.) by Euclides, Nichomachus, Alypius, Gaudentius, Bacchius, and Aristides, constituting the stated number. It is on the construed tenor of the third book of Aristoxenus that Rousseau grounds his view of the subject; but might not the improvement have been introduced during the two centuries that intervened between the Greek musician and Cicero, whose exposition was unknown to Rousseau? What advances has not the art made during the same space in modern times? But see Allegemeine Geschichte der Musik, von Johan Nicolaus Forkel, Goettingen, 1788-1801, 4to. Erster Band." It is a work of deep research, and not sufficiently known. The author, an excellent performer likewise, died in 1818, leaving, besides numerous published works, some unedited essays on Counterpoint. As the personal friend and biographer of Emanuel Bach, he was much too partial to that composer, of great merit no doubt, but surely inferior to Glück, the rival in fame of Haydn and Mozart, in conjunction with whom he formed the renowned German triumvirate of the past century in the art. Yet far be yond that illustrious musician Forkel extols his favourite. Since writing the above, which necessarily makes frequent reference to St. Augustine, I happened to inspect the successive numbers of the Athenæum, containing a review of Mrs. Jameson's able publication, "Sacred and Legendary Art," or description, personal and historical, of the sanctified characters exhibited for popular veneration in Catholic countries, or collected as the decorating treasures of pictorial galleries, by royal or individual love of art. In the list of the early doctors of the Church here presented, St. Augustine of course obtains due notice and just appreciation. So, indeed, do his three equally sainted associates; thus disarming any special criticism, with the exception of a statement relating to St. Gregory the Great, or first of the name, who is there represented as "the last canonized Pope." Whether the assertion proceed from the lady or the reviewer, I cannot discover, for I have no immediate access to the original volume; but at all events it is erroneous, and rather surprises me, from its direct variance with history, independently of its ecclesiastical interest, in so well conducted a journal as the Athenæum. Now among the successors of Gregory, even within the compass of a single century posterior to his death, from 604 to 701, not less than three shine in celestial honours,-Martin I., Agatho, and Leo II. Then, though more separately as we advance to later ages, Gregory II. (from 715 to 731); Leo IV. (from 847 to 855); Leo IX. (from 1049 to 1054); Celestine V. who died in 1294; and Benedict XI. in 1304. The last Pontiff who received this posthumous homage was Pius V. Michael Ghisleri, of the Dominican order, whose decease occurred in 1572, though not canonised till 1702, not a very unusual interval of suspense. It was this Pope who, when apprized of the signal overthrow of the Ottoman Fleet at Lepanto in 1571, chaunted forth in tones of jubilation the words of the Evangelist, in allusion to the name of the conqueror, Don John of Austria, "Fuit homo missus a Deo, cui nomen erat Joannes." This announcement of the sacred text has been applied, with similar exultation of feeling and ex pression, to the Greek Emperor John Zimisces in the tenth century, after his victorious career in Syria against the infidels. Again to the renowned John Corvinus Huniades, in the fifteenth century, on his triumphs in Hungary, Wallachia, &c. over the same enemies of our faith; and, finally, to the great John Sobieski, when he delivered Vienna from the impending grasp of the Vizier Kara-Mustapha, in September 1683,-a service immense in obligation to all Europe, though reluctantly acknowledged by the Emperor Leopold, the most directly benefited by the consequent security of his capital, and general protection of his threatened hereditary states. French writers pretend that Sobieski in his youth had served in the Mousquetaires of Louis XIV. M. de Châteaubriand, in his recent biography of the celebrated Abbé de Rancé, a work little calculated to enhance his literary fame, alleges it, but the assumption seems destitute of proof. Our young Pretender Charles Edward Stuart was The mention of this hapless name suggests a little personal reminiscence. In 1784, on a Christmas visit to my grandfather, then on the eve of his 86th year, I heard him relate, that, at the accession of George the First to the throne in 1714, he happened to be in society when the exclusion of the Stuarts from their birthright became naturally enough at that moment the topic of discussion, and a venerable gentleman in the course of conversation stated that he had witnessed the execution of Charles the First. His name was Martin, born, he said, the same day as Charles the Second, or the 29th of May, 1630. On the 30th of January, 1649, the date of the royal decapitation, he was in his nineteenth year, consequently quite competent to observe and recollect the sanguinary act in all its details; and his presence at that memorable crisis was confirmed by many uncontested proofs. Between me then and this spectator of the deed, now removed from us by an interval of nearly two centuries, only a single intermediate person appears in the channel of transmission. It was on that visit that I read for my grandparent the death of Dr. Johnson, then announced in the news of the day, while enjoying the school holidays of Christmas. At page 402 of the Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1832, I find two anecdotes of oral tradition, The one relating to the this monarch's maternal great-grandson. (See, with regard to the battle of Lepanto, &c. this Magazine for July, 1839, page 33.) The last actually canonized Pope, I repeat, was Pius V.; but may we not legitimately pronounce the late Pius VII. entitled to this high reward of his merits and sufferings in the cause of religion, and expect his beatification by an authentic recognition? Amongst ourselves, too, and our immediate contemporaries, will not the transcendent services of the Apostle of Temperance, the living example, as he is the most impressive preacher, of every virtue, in rescuing from a debasing vice his countrymen, and diffusing, as he un battle of Flodden Field is, indeed, extrabut Henry Jenkins, a link of the chain ordinary in the long period it embraces; united in transmitted recollection, exceeded any instance of longevity on English record, if, as stated, his life extended beyond one hundred and sixty years; and the case was therefore wholly an exceptional one. I could adduce multiplied examples surpassing the second anecdote. What occurred to myself, as above related, does so considerably, as well as another directly communicated to me, which I may therefore briefly recite. Patrick Gibson, whose death at the age of 111 years, appears in this Journal for July, 1831, page 93, and whom I frequently went to see, in order to forward his occasional donations to his Irish relatives, told me that his father, a Scotchman and Covenanter, had served under the Earl of Argyle, in his ill-fated expedition against James II. in 1685, the very year of Oates's punishment, as mentioned in the second anecdote; but here, the communication of Argyle's execution, which Gibson's father beheld, was immediate to his son, and not descending, as to this Magazine's correspondent, through a second person. The father again fought against James at the Boyne, but settling in Tipperary, where he obtained the grant of some land, he married a Catholic and embraced her faith, the emancipation of whose professors, in 1829, the period of my visit, no one gloried in more than his son, whose enthusiasm for O'Connell was not less ardent than that of the Agitator's most juvenile adherents. He was pressed into the naval service during the war that closed by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, when the gang seized him on the quay of Waterford. I resided in Paris at his death, or I could have added some interesting facts to his article in the Obituary. tiringly pursues his glorious and hallowed course, the principles and habits of genuine reform, ensure for him the same consecrated distinction and tribute of veneration? And if miracles be the test or indispensable attribute of officially proclaimed sanctity, can their evidence be made more manifest than in the spectacle which daily gladdens our view, in this happy transformation of an entire people—of millions, I may say-thus regenerated by the resistless puissance of his inspired voice, and presenting to surrounding nations the most attractive pattern of imitation? 'Si miracula requiris, circumspice " we can unhesitatingly reply to the demander of such a criterion. Of sanctified men was our island in past ages the teeming parent and fostering nursery. That the soil is not wholly effete in congenial fruit, nor the germ extinct in reproductive power, we are now cheered by a signal proof; and addressing him we may express an auspicious hope, that " "Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, Irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras." Yours, &c. J. R. MR. URBAN, York, March 6. I SHOULD be much interested if I could induce any of your correspondents learned in Highland arms, to give a complete account of them in your Magazine. The notices I have met with are very scanty. In the first place, there is in Grose's Armour a plate of one of the old Highland soldiers, an interesting account of whose mutiny is given in the Gentleman's Magazine, and the cause of it in Lord Mahon's History of England. In the Abbotsford edition of Waverley are some beautiful plates, and I may almost say a complete set of Prince Charles Edward Stuart's arms. I possess a curious dirk, which was found in the old manor office at Hexham (an ancient tower near the Moot Hall). The occasion of it being found was a singular one; a farmer attending the market at Hexham put his horse into the upper vault (that is, on the ground floor), and upon his return from market he groped round the apartment, and it was very well he did so, for the vaulting beneath had given way in the centre and the horse had fallen down. Upon lights being procured, a strange scene presented itself, the horse was found at the bottom of the vault unhurt, a descent was made by a ladder, and below was found a gloomy vault which must have been walled up; in it were three skeletons chained to the wall, and the dirk which I possess stuck in the wall beside them. This was about the year 1820. It then came into the possession of a joiner in Hexham of the name of John Grant, from whom my father procured it and presented it to me. It is about a foot long, has a buck-horn handle, which is larger at the top than towards the bottom, and the blade, the back of which is formed thicker than the front, goes to a fine point. Before the blade joins the handle there is some ornamental work, and a socket at the top of the handle to place the thumb in to throw it by, I should imagine. The bottom of the socket is held to the buckhorn handle by a neat little gothic ornament; the socket is formed of iron. It is not improbable it has belonged to some unfortunate Scotish prisoner, who, together with his companions, has been left to perish in this vault. In this same tower is an ancient inscription inscribed on a beam of oak and a face sculptured thereon, conjectured by Hutchinson in his History of Northumberland, (who has given a plate of it,) to have been the work of a Scotish prisoner. I have some broad swords said to have been used in 1715 and 1745, most of which I found at Hexham House, and the last 1 conjecture must have been left by some stragglers from the main body of Prince Charles Edward's army, in the retreat from Derby, as Dr. Andrews the clergyman then at Hexham was a Jacobite. One of these swords is an Andrew Farriara, with his name on the blade, and I remember on one occasion Mr. Andrew Wright, the author of the History of Hexham, bending the blade with its point to the hilt; it is edged on both sides. I also possess a Highland target beautifully bossed; it belonged to the late Mr. de Cardonnell Lawson, and was picked up on the field of Culloden. Pennant, in his "Tour in Scotland," (1790,) says, "he saw at the house of Colonel Campbell of Glen Lyon a curious walking staff belonging to one of his ancestors; it was of iron cased in leather, five feet long; at the top a neat pair of extended wings, like a caduceus, but on being shaken a poniard two feet nine inches long darted out." vol. I. p. 104. At page 263, vol. I, he gives an engraving of two Lochaber axes. In a note to the Abbotsford edition of Waverley, p. 113, it is stated, that the town guard of Edinburgh were, until a late period, armed with this weapon when on their police duty. There was a hook at the back of the axe, which the ancient Highlanders used to assist them to climb over walls, fixing the hook upon it, and raising themselves by the handle. The axe, which was also much used by the natives of Ireland, is supposed to have been introduced into both countries from Scandinavia. Sir Walter Scott mentions that those Highland broad swords which were marked with a crown were thought to be the most genuine. Macdonald of Glengarrie possessed two silver-hilted and very beautiful Highland broad swords, which belonged to Prince Charles Edward Stuart; they seemed of French manufacture. With regard to the name of that Prince. I believe it will appear from a manuscript now in the British Museum, called a "Prayer Book of Sigismond, the first king of Poland," which was made in 1524, (and which was in the possession of the Princess Maria Clementina, and in that of the Cardinal York until his death,) that his names at full were "Charles Edward Lewis Casimir Stuart." I have not seen this manuscript, (in which are entered the births of the children of James and Clementine,) but I have seen the engraving of a ring which belonged to Prince Charles Edward, and it bears the initials, C. E. L. C. S. Pennant, at vol. ii. p. 410, gives an engraving of a military scythe found at llay. In the Abbotsford edition, p. 452, of "The Antiquary," is given a Highland skull cap preserved at Abbotsford, formed in the same manner as chain armour. Yours, &c. W. H. CLARKE. MR. URBAN, IN the classical writers, those who have read them with curious attention have occasionally pointed out metrical passages undesignedly occurring in prose composition. Lord Hailes observes in his Antiquities of the Christian Church, p. 97, “I know not whether the metrical numbers of Tacitus have been remarked: for example, ' fatone res mortalium," and "Si quis piorum manibus;" and many might be found by the diligent reader in the compositions of our best writers. I must however presume that they were seldom intentionally introduced, or that they are successful in adding a greater grace or force to the composition. In reading the Life of Cicero by Conyers Middleton, a writer whose style has received the highest commendations for purity and elegance, I met with an entire heroic verse: he is speaking of the followers of Cæsar, and says, who were generally speaking "a needy, profligate, audacious crew;" see vol. II. p. 254. This, how. ever, would have been scarcely worthy of a particular notice, but that I was somewhat surprised soon after, in finding that Hooke, in his Roman History, had borrowed these very words, and inserted them in his narrative, without any reference to Middleton at all, as if he approved the practice and admired the execution. See his Roman History, vol. X. p. 77, "a needy, profligate, audacious crew, prepared for every thing that was desperate." In the copious and eloquent prose of Isaac Barrow, I have occasionally met with metrical passages and lines, as vol. I. p. 305, ed. Oxon. Serm. xiv. "Define the figure of the fleeting air." and vol. II. p. 1, Serm. XXV. "And in the cheering freshness of the air." Yours, &c. J. M. MR. URBAN, B-h-ll, March 24. IN the review of Mr. Dyce's very elaborate and excellent edition of Skelton, in the Gent. Mag. Sept. 1844, I observed on a passage, vol. 1, p. 259," Hic ingreditur Foly, quatiendo crema et faciendo multum, feriendo tabulas et similia." Mr. Dyce in his note had said he was unacquainted with the word "crema," and thought it might be a misprint for cremea, or crembalum. I observed that" crema" was the Greek word xpipa, the fool's thing or bauble; on which Mr. Dyce, in his Appendix, added, “we greatly doubt it." But of my explanation I have myself no doubt at all; yet it would have been scarcely worth mentioning but that I can also set right another passage in the same sentence, which is at present in a corrupt state, viz. "faciendo multum ;" what is the force of that, doing much? the truth is, the words ought to be, faciendo vultus, or vultum, making faces," or making a face. The fool comes in, shaking his bauble, and making grimaces like a modern clown; and I can support my interpretation and correction by a passage, which includes all those different gestures of the fool. "Why, I would have the fool in every act, Be it Comedy or Tragedy. I have laughed Until I cryd again to see what faces The rogue will make. O it does me good To see him hold out his chin, hang down his hands, [part And twiste his bauble,-there is never a About him but breaks jests," &c. See Goffe's Careless Shepherdess. As regards "feriendo tabulas," which Mr. Dyce has passed over, tabulæ are flat pieces of wood, or clappers, which were struck or beaten, carried about by the lower class of people in certain cases, as the" tabulæ leprosorum, quas illi quatiunt, ne ab aliquo tangantur." Thus I trust that I have explained the three allusions in the sentence,-quatiendo crema-faciendo vultum-and feriendo tabulas-shaking his bauble, making faces, and striking his clapper, Yours, &c. MR. URBAN, J. M. April 2. IT is not my intention to enter into any controversy with your very able Correspondent, A. J. K., with respect to his remarks on my notions, contained in your No. for January, of the etymology of the names of the Devil's Dyke, Devil's Den, &c:-but with reference to the subject permit me to say a few words. I have for many years been convinced of the truth of what is said, as follows, by Henry in his History of Great Britain; "It is a further proof or rather demonstration, that the Celtic tongue was the language spoken by the first inhabitants of this island, that the names of very many rivers, brooks, hills, mountains, towns, and cities in all parts of it, are significant in that language, and descriptive of their situations, properties, and appearances. For the first inhabitants of every country are under a necessity of giving names immediately to those objects about which they have daily occasion to converse; and these primitive names are naturally no other than brief descriptions of the most striking appearances, and obvious properties of these objects in their native tongue. When another nation conquers the country, settles in it, and finding names already affixed to all the mingles with the primitive inhabitants. most conspicuous places and objects in it, they for the most part retain those names, with some slight alteration to adapt them to the genius of their own language. This was evidently done by the Romans in this island, as might be made appear by an induction of almost innumerable particulars." As one illustration of these very just conclusions, I will state, that in Surrey there is a town and parish pretty well known, called Letherhed, commonly written Leatherhead. One would be at no loss to account for the name of a place thus now composed of two such common words in our tongue, if those words could be made to apply to any locality on terra firma. The only attempt to account for the name that I have seen or heard of, is in a little MS. history of the place, by the late Rev. Mr. Dallaway, who was vicar there, and a man well known to the antiquarian world, who, after alluding to the difficulties of the subject, presumes that this place might have received its name from one Roger de Ledrede, who had obviously received his name from the place.* This silly conjecture, and manifest impossibility, remind one of the stories of the two cats eating each other up, and of the conjuror who advertised that he was * Richard de Ledred, who had previously been a Franciscan friar in London, was consecrated Bishop of Ossory in 1318. He is memorable for having instituted the proceedings against Dame Alice Kyteler for sorcery, the narrative of which has been published by the Camden Society.-EDIT. |