THE MORAYSHIRE FLOODS.
In the month of August, 1829, the province of Moray and adjoining districts were visited by a tremendous flood. Its ravages were most destructive along the course of those rivers which have their source in the Cairngorm mountains. The waters of the Findhorn and the Spey, and their tributaries, rose to an unexampled height. In some parts of their course these streams rose fifty feet above their natural level. Many houses were laid desolate, much agricultural produce was destroyed, and several lives were lost. The woodcut in our text represents the situation of a boatman called Sandy Smith, and his family, in the plains of Forres. "They were huddled together," says the eloquent historian of the Floods, "on a spot of ground a few feet square, some forty or fifty yards below their inundated dwelling. Sandy was sometimes standing and sometimes sitting on a small cask, and, as the beholders fancied, watching with intense anxiety the progress of the flood, and trembling for every large tree that it brought sweeping past them. His wife, covered with a blanket, sat shivering on a bit of a log, one child in her lap, and a girl of about seventeen, and a boy of about twelve years of age, leaning against her side. A bottle and a glass on the ground, near the man, gave the spectators, as it had doubtless given him, some degree of comfort. About a score of sheep were standing around, or wading or swimming in the shallows. Three cows and a small horse, picking at a broken rick of straw that seemed to be half-afloat, were also grouped with the family." The account of the rescue of the sufferers is given with a powerful dramatic effect, but we cannot afford space for the quotation. The courageous adventurers who manned the boat for this dangerous enterprise, after being carried over a cataract, which overwhelmed their boat, caught hold of a floating hay-cock, to which they clung till it stuck among some young alder-trees. Each of them then grasping a bough, they supported themselves for two hours among the weak and brittle branches. They afterwards recovered the boat under circumstances almost miraculous, and finally succeeded in rescuing Sandy and his family from their perilous situation.
TREATMENT AND CONDITION OF WOMEN IN FORMER TIMES.
From the subversion of the Roman Empire, to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, women spent most of their time alone, almost entire strangers to the joys of social life; they seldom went abroad, but to be spectators of such public diversions and amusements as the fashions of the times countenanced. Francis I. was the first who introduced women on public days to Court; before his time nothing was to be seen at any of the Courts of Europe, but grey-bearded politicians, plotting the destruction of the rights and liberties of mankind, and warriors clad in complete armour, ready to put their plots in execution. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries elegance had scarcely any existence, and even cleanliness was hardly considered as laudable. The use of linen was not known; and the most delicate of the fair sex wore woollen shifts. In Paris they had meat only three times a week; and one hundred livres, (about five pounds sterling,) was a large portion for a young lady. The better sort of citizens used splinters of wood and rags dipped in oil, instead of candles, which, in those days, were a rarity hardly to be met with. Wine was only to be had at the shops of the Apothecaries, where it was sold as a cordial; and to ride in a two-wheeled cart, along the dirty rugged streets, was reckoned a grandeur of so enviable a nature, that Philip the Fair prohibited the wives of citizens from enjoying it. In the time of Henry VIII. of England, the peers of the realm carried their wives behind them on horseback, when they went to London; and in the same manner took them back to their country seats with hoods of waxed linen over their heads, and wrapped in mantles of cloth to secure them from the cold.
HOMER IN A NUTSHELL.
Huet, Bishop of Avranches, thus writes in his autobiography:—"When his Highness the Dauphin was one day confined to his bed by a slight illness, and we who stood round were endeavouring to entertain him by pleasant conversation, mention was by chance made of the person who boasted that he had written Homer's Iliad in characters so minute, that the whole could be enclosed in a walnut shell. This appearing incredible to many of the company, I contended not only that it might be done, but that I could do it. As they expressed their astonishment at this assertion, that I might not be suspected of idle boasting, I immediately put it to the proof. I therefore took the fourth part of a common leaf of paper, and on its narrower side wrote a single line in so small a character that it contained twenty verses of the Iliad: of such lines each page of the paper could easily admit 120, therefore the page would contain 2400 Homeric verses: and as the leaf so divided would give eight pages it would afford room for above 19,000 verses, whereas the whole number in the Iliad does not exceed 17,000. Thus by my single line I demonstrated my proposition."
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARING CROSS AND CHEAPSIDE CROSS.
The following interesting "Autobiographies" of the Old London Crosses, are extracted from Henry Peacham's Dialogue between the Crosse in Cheap and Charing Cross, confronting each other, as fearing their fall in these uncertaine times, four leaves, 4to. 1641.