The engraving which we here lay before our friends, represents a group of Egyptian standards, as they were used in the army in the time of Pharaoh.
Each regiment and company had its own peculiar banner or standard, which were therefore very numerous, and various in their devices. A beast, bird, or reptile, a sacred boat, a royal name in a cartouche, or a symbolic combination of emblems, were the most common forms. As they appear to have been objects of superstitious veneration that were selected for this purpose, they must have contributed greatly to the enthusiasm so highly valued in battle; and instances are common in all history of desponding courage revived, and prodigies of valour performed, on behalf of those objects which were so identified with national and personal honour.
Allusions to standards, banners, and ensigns are frequent in the Holy Scriptures. The four divisions in which the tribes of Israel marched through the wilderness had each its governing standard, and tradition has assigned to these ensigns the respective forms of the symbolic cherubim seen in the vision of Ezekiel and John—that of Judah being a lion, that of Reuben a man, that of Ephraim an ox, and that of Dan an eagle. The post of standard-bearer was at all times of the greatest importance, and none but officers of approved valour were ever chosen for such a service; hence Jehovah, describing the ruin and discomfiture which he was about to bring on the haughty King of Assyria, says, "And they shall be as when a standard-bearer fainteth."
THE SHREW ASH.
At that end of Richmond Park where a gate leads to Mortlake, and near a cottage in which resides one of the most estimable gentlemen of the age—Professor Owen—there still lives and flourishes a tree that has been famous for many ages: it is the Shrew Ash, and the above is a correct engraving of it. It stands on rising ground, only a few yards beyond the pond which almost skirts the Professor's lawn. White, in his Natural History of Selborne, describes a shrew-ash as an ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers from the running of a shrew-mouse over the part affected; for it is supposed that a shrew-mouse is of so baleful and deleterious a nature, that wherever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this evil, to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain its virtue for ever. A shrew-ash was made potent thus:—Into the body of a tree a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations, long since forgotten. The shrew-ash in Richmond Park is, therefore, amongst the few legacies of the kind bequeathed to their country by the wisdom of our ancestors.
Our readers will perceive that across the hollow of the tree near the top there is a little bar of wood. The legend runs that were this bar removed every night, it would be replaced in the same spot every morning. The superstition is, that if a child afflicted with what the people in the neighbourhood call "decline," or whooping-cough, or any infantine disease, is passed nine times up the hollow of that tree, and over the bar, while the sun is rising, it will recover. If the charm fails to produce the desired effect, the old women believe that the sun was too far up, or not up enough. If the child recovers, of course, the fame of the tree is whispered about. There is a sort of shrew-mother to every shrew-ash, who acts as guide and teacher to any young mother who has an afflicted child and believes in the charm. The ash in Richmond Park is still used, and still firmly believed in.