[53] See also the remark of Galileo in a previous page of this volume, in the article headed "The Persecuted Learned."
[54] In Cochin-China, a traveller may always obtain his dinner by simply joining the family of the first house he may choose to enter, such hospitality being the general custom.
[55] Esprit des Usages, et des Coutumes.
[56] If the master be present, he devotes himself to cramming his guests to repletion.
[57] Many are of the nature of "peppercorn rents." Thus a manor was held from the king "by the service of one rose only, to be paid yearly, at the feast of St. John the Baptist, for all services; and they gave the king one penny for the price of the said one rose, as it was appraised by the barons of the Exchequer." Nicholas De Mora, in the reign of Henry III., "rendered at the Exchequer two knives, one good, and the other a very bad one, for certain land which he held in Shropshire." The citizens of London still pay to the Exchequer six horseshoes with nails, for their right to a piece of ground in the parish of St. Clement, originally granted to a farrier, as early as the reign of Henry III.
[58] This curious little volume deserves more attention than the slight mention above would occasion. It is diffuse in style, and hence looks a little like a "bookseller's job," of which the most was to be made; but the same fault has characterised many works whose authors possess a bad style. Many of the tales narrated of well-known London characters of the "merry days" of Charles the Second are very characteristic, and are not to be met with elsewhere.
[59] His name was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exaggerates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than the last century, and is printed in Ritson's English Songs.
[60] One of the most horrible of these books was the work of the Jesuit Pinamonti; it details with frightful minuteness the nature of hell-torments, accompanied by the most revolting pictures of the condemned under various refined torments. It was translated in an abbreviated form, and sold for a few pence as a popular religious book in Ireland, and may be so still. It is divided into a series of meditations for each day in the week, on hell and its torments.
[61] The finest collection at present is in Guy's Hospital, Southwark; they are the work of an artist especially retained there, who by long practice has become perfect, making a labour of love of a pursuit that would be disgustful to many.
[62] The description of these two famous statues is not correctly given in the text. The statue called Marforio is the figure of a recumbent river god of colossal proportions, found near the arch of Septimius Severus. When the museum of the capitol was completed, the Pope moved the figure into the court-yard; there it is still to be seen. He also wished to move that of Pasquin, but the Duke de Braschi refused to allow it; and it still stands on its pedestal, at the angle of the Braschi Palace, in the small square that takes the name of Piazza del Pasquino from that circumstance. It is much mutilated, but is the ruin of a very fine work; Bernini expressed great admiration for it. It is considered by Count Maffei to represent Ajax supporting Menelaus. The torso of the latter figure only is left, the arms of the former are broken away; but enough remains of both to conjecture what the original might have been in design. The pose of both figures is similar to the fine group known as Ajax and Telamon, in the Loggia of the Pitti Palace at Florence.