CLOCK-MAKING IN THE NINTH CENTURY.
The Caliph Haroun al Raschid is stated to have maintained an unbroken friendship with his contemporary Charlemagne, throughout their mutual reign. A variety of magnificent presents attested the esteem of the caliph for his Christian friend. Among them were several objects, which tend to show the advance which art had made, at this time in the East. The first of these was a clock of gilded bronze, round which the course of the twelve hours was displayed; while, at the end of each hour, the number of brazen balls which were requisite to mark the division of time, were thrown out from above, and falling consecutively on a cymbal below, struck the hour required. In like manner a number of horsemen issued forth from windows placed around the dial; while a number of other clock-work miracles attested the height which the mechanical arts had reached at the court of Haroun.
The carriage of such objects, as the above presents sent from Bagdad to France, was, of course, attended with no small inconvenience; and the neglected state of the science of navigation, rendered the journeys of the ambassadors long and dangerous. Between three and four years were generally consumed in a mission from one capital to another; and, indeed, it happened more than once, that even after arriving within the dominions of the Frankish monarchs, the envoys had still to seek him over a tract nearly as extensive as that which they had before crossed.
Parliamentary Debates.—Originally these debates were given in the Gentleman's Magazine, under the fiction of "Debates in the Senate of Liliput," and the speakers were disguised under feigned names. Guthrie, for a time, composed these speeches from such hints as he could bring away in his memory. Dr. Johnson first assisted in this department, and then entirely filled it, and the public was highly gratified with the eloquence displayed in these compositions. P.T.W.
Steam Carriages.—By the formation of rail-roads, a loss has occurred in the revenue from stage coaches, to the amount of 8,384l.
Electro-Magnetism.—The largest electro-magnet is that constructed by the American philosophers. It is of a horse-shoe form, and weighs about 60 lbs.; around it are 26 coils of wire, the united lengths of which are 800 feet. When excited by about five feet of galvanic surface, it is said to have supported nearly two tons. We here see that the exciting cause of magnetism is the action of the galvanic battery; and a variety of other interesting experiments in electro-magnetics, tend to the conclusion that the magnetic and electric fluids are nearly allied.—Imperial Magazine.
Salary of the Chancellor, 700 years since.—The salary of the Chancellor, as fixed by Henry I., amounted to five shillings per diem, and a livery of provisions.
Dibdin.—On the tombstone of Dibdin, the celebrated song composer, in St. Martin's, by Pancras New Church, is the first verse of his Tom Bowling:
"His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft,
Faithful on earth he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft."
Studious Printer.—Morel was an eminent French printer, who sacrificed every thing to study. On being informed that his wife was dying, he refused to quit his pen till he had finished what he was about, and by that time news was brought him that she was dead; to which he coolly replied, "I am sorry for it—she was a good woman." He died in 1638, at the age of 78. P.T.W.
A Painter's Retort, or Dangerous Re-touch.—Antonio More, the celebrated painter, was highly favoured by Philip of Spain, whose familiarity with him placed his life in danger; for More ventured to return a slap on the shoulder which the king in a playful moment gave him, by rubbing some carmine on his majesty's hand. This behaviour was accepted by the monarch as a jest, but it was hinted to More that the holy tribunal might regard it as sacrilege, and he fled, to save himself, into Flanders, where he was employed by the Duke of Alva. P.T.W.
Steam Power.—Mr. Alexander Gordon states, that in various departments of the revenue, the saving of expenditure by the substitution of inanimate for animate power, would, in the Post Office alone, amount to upwards of half a million; whilst, from the cheapness of food which the substitution would produce, the navy and army estimates would be most essentially reduced.
Steam may now be said to maintain the power which can engrave a seal, and crush a mass of obdurate metal like wax before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air; to embroider muslin, forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel itself against the opposition of the very tempest.
Charlemagne was buried on the day of his death in the great church which he had constructed at Aix-la-Chapelle. The Monk of Angouleme declares that he was inhumed in his imperial robes, and that the pilgrim's wallet which he wore on his journeys to Rome was also consigned with his body to the tomb.
Indian Hail Storms.—Captain Skinner says, during one in which a heavy shower of hail fell, the thermometer sunk nine degrees in fewer minutes—from 75 to 66; it rose again as rapidly. Although it was more than four o'clock in the afternoon when the hail fell, it was still on the ground the following morning; a proof of the coldness of the night air.
Waterloo Child.—A private of the 27th regiment, who was severely wounded at the battle of Waterloo, was carried off the field by his wife, then far advanced in pregnancy; she also was wounded by a shell, and with her husband, remained a considerable time in one of the hospitals at Antwerp, in a hopeless state. The man lost both his arms, his wife was extremely lame, and here gave birth to a daughter, to whom it is said the late Duke of York stood sponsor; her names being Frederica M'Mullen Waterloo. A.H.K.—T.
The Royal Academy.—The receipts for admission to the Exhibition of this year were £300. short of what they were last year. The sale of pictures at the Gallery of the Society of British Artists has been greater than in any preceding season.
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Dugdale says, "Robert Fitz-Ranulph, Lord of Alfreton, Norton, and Marnham, was one of the four knights who martyred the blessed Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury; and afterwards founded the Monastery of Beauchief, by way of expiating his crime; in the reign of Henry the Second." Bishop Tanner writes, "Beauchief, an Abbey of Promonstatentian, or White Canons, founded A.D. 1183, by Robert Fitz-Ranulph, Lord of Alfreton, one of the executioners of Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom canonized, this monastery was dedicated." These authorities are quoted by Mr. Rhodes. Sir James Mackintosh names the four "knights of distinguished rank," (apparently upon the authority of Hoveden,) to have been "William de Tracy, Hugh de Moreville, Richard Britto, and Reginald Fitz-Urse." We do not attempt to reconcile the conflicting chroniclers; but we should add, from the subsequent page, by Sir James, "the conspirators, despairing of pardon, found a distant refuge in the Castle of Knaresborough, in the town of Hugh de Moreville, and were, after some time, enjoined by the Pope to do penance for their crime, by a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where they died, and were interred before the gate of the Temple." Sir James describes the murder of Becket with minuteness: "the assassins fell on him with many strokes; and though the second brought him to the ground, they did not cease till his brains were scattered over the pavement."—We know the Cathedral guide at Canterbury shows you the stone in the place of that on which Becket fell, and states the original stone to be preserved in St. Peter's, at Rome; but the story is to us rather apocryphal. At St. Alban's they show you the dust of the good Duke Humphrey: we once begged a pinch, which the guide granted freely; this induced us to ask him how often he re-supplied the dust: the man stared at our ungrateful incredulity.
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Dr. Mead, in his Narrative of the Great Plague in London, particularly mentions its introduction into Eyam, through the medium of a box of clothes, sent to a tailor who resided there.
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Table Book, 1827, p. 481.
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Vol. xi. p. 40.
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From King John, the Eyam estate descended to the Stafford family, on whom it was bestowed in consideration of certain military services, and on the express condition "that a lamp should be kept perpetually burning before the altar of St. Helen, in the parish-church of Eyam." The lamp has long since ceased to burn, and the estate has passed into other hands: it now constitutes a part of the immense property of his Grace the Duke of Devonshire.
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Lord Byron has remarked of the Italian women, (and he could speak avec connaissance de fait,) that they are the only women in the world capable of impressions at once very sudden and very durable; which, he adds, is to be found in no other nation. Mr. Moore observes afterwards, how completely an Italian woman, either from nature or her social position, is led to invert the usual course of frailty among ourselves, and weak in resisting the first impulses of passion, to reserve the whole strength of her character for a display of constancy and devotedness afterwards.—Both these traits of national character are exemplified in Juliet.—Moore's Life of Byron, vol. ii p. 303, 338, 4to edit.
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The "Giulietta" of Luigi da Porta was written about 1520. In a popular little book published in 1565, thirty years before Shakspeare wrote his tragedy, the name of Juliet occurs as an example of faithful love, and is thus explained by a note in the margin. "Juliet, a noble maiden of the citie of Verona, which loved Romeo, eldest son of the Lord Monteschi; and being privily married together, he at last poisoned himself for love of her: she, for sorrow of his death, slew herself with his dagger." This note, which furnishes in brief, the whole argument of Shakspeare's play, might possibly have made the first impression on his fancy.
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There is nothing so improbable in the story of Romeo and Juliet as to make us doubt the tradition that it is a real fact. "The Veronese," says Lord Byron, in one of his letters from Verona, "are tenacious to a degree of the truth of Juliet's story, insisting on the fact, giving the date 1303, and showing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden—once a cemetery, now ruined, to the very graves! The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love." He might have added, that when Verona itself, with its amphitheatre and its Palladian structures, lies level with the earth, the very spot on which it stood will still be consecrated by the memory of Juliet. When in Italy, I met a gentleman, who being then "dans le genre romantique," wore a fragment of Juliet's tomb set in a ring.
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In all probability, the crypt of the church of Aix-la-Chapelle, as it stands at present, is all that remains of the original edifice.
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The baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, constructed by the emperor for the enjoyment of this recreation, were of immense extent; and while their splendour and their size showed the progress of luxury, the manner in which they were used, evinces the curious simplicity and condescension of the monarch. "Not only his sons," says Eginhard, "but also the great men of his court, his friends, and the soldiers of his guard, were invited to partake of the enjoyment which the monarch had provided for himself; so that sometimes as many as a hundred persons were known to bathe there together."
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Stoves were furnished also to warm those who might take refuge in these general chambers; and the Monk of St. Gaul asserts, that the apartments of Charlemagne were so constructed, that he could see everything which took place in the building round about,—an impossible folly, imagined by the small cunning of a monk.
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I do not know whether it be worth while to attempt to refute the opinion which has been founded on an erroneous passage in Eginhard, that Charlemagne could not write. Eginhard understood, as Gibbon says, the court and the world, and the Latin language, it is true; but, nevertheless, we may much more rationally believe that the secretary made use of a vague expression, than suppose that he wished to imply, in one sentence, the manifest contradiction of Charlemagne being in the habit of going through all the abstruse calculations of astronomy, in an age when those calculations were most complicated, without being able to write. The whole of Charlemagne's life renders the supposition absurd. He studied under Alcuin, whose first rule was to teach the most correct orthography in writing. We know that he subscribed many deeds, though his signature was abbreviated, to render it as rapid as possible. Eginhard himself states, that the monarch wrote the history of the ancient kings in verse: and Lambecius, one of the highest antiquarian authorities, declares, that the imperial library still contains a manuscript, corrected by the hand of Charlemagne himself.
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Amongst other interpretations of "Under the Rose," why may we not conjecture that it may have something to do with bribes to silence? with hush-money? the Rose, in many countries, being not an unusual stamp on their coins.
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"The foregoing anecdote was told to the writer by the late James Burton, Esq., of Lockeridge House, a seat of the Marquess of Aylesbury's, near Marlborough. Mr. Burton married a daughter of the celebrated actress, Mrs. Cibber, by General Sloper, a man of the highest fashion of his day, from whom, I believe, Mr. Burton received the account; the particulars of which, as I have narrated, no doubt, many persons of Mr. Burton's acquaintance still remember."
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