The following extract from the life of the wife of the Conqueror, is exceedingly curious, as characteristic of the manners of a semi-civilized age and nation:—"After some years' delay, William appears to have become desperate; and, if we may trust to the evidence of the 'Chronicle of Ingerbe,' in the year 1047 way-laid Matilda in the streets of Bruges, as she was returning from mass, seized her, rolled her in the dirt, spoiled her rich array, and, not content with these outrages, struck her repeatedly, and rode off at full speed. This Teutonic method of courtship, according to our author, brought the affair to a crisis; for Matilda, either convinced of the strength of William's passion, by the violence of his behaviour, or afraid of encountering a second beating, consented to become his wife. How he ever presumed to enter her presence again, after such a series of enormities, the chronicler sayeth not, and we are at a loss to imagine."
BRAMA, THE HINDOO DEITY.
Brama, Birmah, or Brouma, is one of the three persons of the Indian Trinity, or rather the Supreme Being under the attribute of Creator. Brama, the progenitor of all rational beings, sprung from a golden egg, sparkling like a thousand suns, which was hatched by the motion imparted to the waters by the Supreme Being. Brama separated the heavens from the earth, and placed amid the subtle ether the eight points of the universe and the receptacle of the waters. He had five heads before Vairevert, one of Sheeva's sons, cut off one of them. He is delineated floating on a leaf of the lotus, a plant revered in India. The Bramins relate, that the fifteen worlds which compose the universe were each produced by a part of Brama's body. At the moment of our birth he imprints in our heads, in characters which cannot be effaced, all that we shall do, and all that is to happen to us in life. It is not in our power, nor in that of Brama himself, to prevent what is written from being fulfilled.
Brama, according to the vulgar mythology, takes but little notice of human affairs. Identified with the sun, he is adored by the Bramins in the gayatri, the most sacred passage of the vedas (or sacred books), which is itself ranked among the gods, and to which offerings are made. One of the most important attributes of Brama is that of father of legislators; for it was his ten sons who diffused laws and the sciences over the world. He is considered as the original author of the vedas, which are said to have issued from his four mouths; though it was not till a later period, that is, about fourteen hundred years before Christ, that they were collected and arranged by Vyasa, the philosopher and poet. The laws which bear the name of Menu, the son of Brama, and the works of the other richeys, or holy persons, were also re-copied, or perhaps collected from tradition, long after the period when they are said to have been published by the sons of Brama.
Brama, the father of the legislators of India, has a considerable resemblance to the Jupiter of the Greek poets, the father of Minos, whose celebrated laws were published in the very same century that Vyasa collected the vedas. Jupiter was worshipped as the sun, by the name of Anxur or Axur, and Brama is identified with that luminary. The most common form in which Brama is represented, is that of a man with four heads and four hands; and it is remarkable that the Lacedæmonians gave four heads to their Jupiter. Lastly, the title of Father of Gods and Men is equally applicable to Brama and to Jupiter.
Brama is delineated, as in the engraving, holding in one hand a ring, the emblem of immortality; in another, fire, to represent force; and with the other two writing on olles, or palm-leaves, the emblem of legislative power.
JAMES II. AND THE CHURCH OF DONORE.