These were in the first instance no doubt borrowed from the Etruscans, as was also the ceremony of the triumph with which they were ultimately associated. At first they seem rather to have been used as festal entrances to the great public roads, whose construction was considered as one of the most important benefits a ruler could confer on his country. There was one erected at Rimini in honour of an important restoration of the Flaminian Way by Augustus; another at Susa in Piedmont, to commemorate a similar act of the same Emperor. Trajan built one on the pier at Ancona, when he restored that harbour, and another at Beneventum, when he repaired the Via Appia, represented in the woodcut here given. It is one of the best preserved as well as most graceful of its class in Italy. The arch of the Sergii at Pola in Istria seems also to have been erected for a like purpose. That of Hadrian at Athens, and another built by him at Antinoë in Egypt, were monuments merely commemorative of the benefits which he had conferred on those cities by the architectural works he had erected within their walls. By far the most important application of these gateways, in Rome at least, was to commemorate a triumph which may have passed along the road over which the arch was erected beforehand, for the triumphal procession to pass through, of which it would remain a memorial.
JUDGES' SALARIES.
In the reign of Henry III. the King's Justices enjoyed a salary of ten marks per annum, which, in the twenty-third year of that King, was augmented to twenty pounds, and soon after to more. Under Henry IV. the Chief Justices of the King's Bench and Common Pleas had forty pounds, and one of the judges of Common Pleas had fifty-five marks. In 1466, the salary of Thomas Littleton, judge of the King's Bench, amounted to £136 13s. 4d. modern money; besides about £17 7s. for his fur-gown, robes, &c.
EXTRAORDINARY OAK.
Gilpin, in his "Forest Scenery," says, "Close by the gate of the water-walk at Magdalen College, in Oxford, grew an oak, which perhaps stood there a sapling when Alfred the Great founded the university. This period only includes a space of nine hundred years, which is no great age for an oak. It is a difficult matter indeed to ascertain the age of a tree. The age of a castle or abbey is the object of history; even a common house is recorded by the families that built it. All these objects arrive at maturity in their youth, if I may so speak. But the tree, gradually completing its growth, is not worth recording in the early part of its existence. It is then only a common tree; and afterwards, when it becomes remarkable for its age, all memory of its youth is lost. This tree, however, can almost produce historical evidence for the age assigned to it. About five hundred years after the time of Alfred, William of Wainfleet, Dr. Stukely tells us, expressly ordered his college to be founded near the Great Oak; and an oak could not, I think, be less than five hundred years of age to merit that title, together with the honour of fixing the site of a college. When the magnificence of Cardinal Wolsey erected that handsome tower which is so ornamental to the whole building, this tree might probably be in the meridian of its glory, or rather, perhaps, it had attained a green old age. But it must have been manifestly in its decline at that memorable era when the tyranny of James gave the fellows of Magdalen so noble an opportunity of withstanding bigotry and superstition. It was afterwards much injured in Charles the Second's time, when the present walks were laid out. Its roots were disturbed, and from that period it declined fast, and became reduced by degrees to little more than a mere trunk. The oldest members of the university can scarcely recollect it in better plight. But the faithful records of history have handed down its ancient dimensions. Through a space of sixteen yards on every side from its trunk, it once flung its boughs, and under its magnificent pavilion could have sheltered with ease three thousand men, though in its decayed state it could for many years do little more than shelter some luckless individual whom the driving shower had overtaken in his evening walk. In the summer of 1788, this magnificent ruin fell to the ground, alarming the college with its rushing sound. It then appeared how precariously it had stood for many years. Its grand tap-root was decayed, and it had hold of the earth only by two or three roots, of which none was more than a couple of inches in diameter. From a part of its ruins a chair has been made for the President of the College, which will long continue its memory."
ECCENTRIC ADVERTISEMENT.
The following strange advertisement is copied from the Harleian MSS.: "In Nova fert Animus. These are to give notice, (for the benefit of the public,) that there is newly arrived from his travels, a gentleman, who, after above forty years' study, hath, by a wonderful blessing on his endeavours, discovered, as well the nature as the infallible cure of several strange diseases, which (though as yet not known to the world) he will plainly demonstrate to any ingenious artist, to be the greatest causes of the most common distempers incident to the body of man. The names of which take as follow:
The strong fives
The marthambles
The moon-pall
The hockogrocle.