‘Be patient—have courage:’ excellent phrases and oftentimes helpful; but was there ever any one who at a crisis in life has found the words alone satisfactory? They by no means relieved Madge of all uneasiness, although she accepted them as a token that her suspense would soon be at an end. In one respect she was keenly disappointed: there was not a hint that the proofs she had given Mr Shield of Mr Hadleigh’s innocence of any complicity in his misfortunes had been yet acknowledged to be complete. Had that been done, Philip would have forgotten half his worries. Mr Shield was aware of that—he must be aware of it, and yet he was silent. She could not help thinking that there was some truth in Mr Hadleigh’s view of the eccentricity of his character.
THE NEW MEDIÆVAL ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
One of the rooms at the British Museum, left vacant by the removal of the Natural History Collection to South Kensington, has lately been re-opened, under the title of the Mediæval Room, with a collection of curious objects, many of which possess strong personal as well as antiquarian interest. The articles shown range from the twelfth century downwards. Some of them have already been on exhibition in another part of the building; but the majority are now publicly shown for the first time. The various items have been carefully arranged and labelled by Messrs Franks and Read, the curators of the Ethnological Department, the fullness of the appended descriptions more than compensating for the temporary lack of a catalogue.
Among the curiosities of more modern date is a silver-mounted punch-bowl of Inveraray marble, formerly the property of the poet Burns, and presented by his widow to Alexander Cunningham. Not far distant rests the Lochbuy brooch, a massive ornament four inches in diameter, said to date from about the year 1500, and to have been fashioned out of silver found on the estate of Lochbuy, in Mull. Its centre is a large crystal, surrounded by upright collets bearing pearls of considerable size. It was long preserved as a sort of heirloom in the Lochbuy family, but passed out of it by the marriage of a female representative, and in course of time became part of the Bernal Collection, whence it was acquired by the British Museum. Hard by it is a handsomely carved casket, made of the wood of Shakspeare’s mulberry tree, and presented in 1769, with the freedom of the town of Stratford-on-Avon, to David Garrick. The majority of the exhibits, however, belong to very much earlier periods. There is a choice display of horn and tortoiseshell snuff and tobacco boxes, two of the latter—duplicates, save in some unimportant particulars—bearing the arms of Sir Francis Drake, and the representation of a ship in full sail. We are told that boxes of this same pattern are frequently offered to collectors as having been the personal property of the great admiral; but an inscription on one of the specimens here exhibited shows that they were actually made by one John Obrisset in 1712.
An ordinary-looking piece of rock-crystal in one of the cases claims to be the veritable ‘show-stone’ or divining crystal of Dr Dee, the celebrated astrologer and alchemist of Queen Elizabeth’s time. Dee’s own account of the origin of the show-stone was as follows. He declared that one day in November 1582, while he was engaged in prayer, the angel Uriel appeared to him and presented him with a magic crystal, which had the quality, when steadfastly gazed into, of presenting visions, and even of producing articulate sounds. These sights and sounds, however, were only perceptible to a person endowed with the proper mediumistic faculty. This the doctor himself unfortunately lacked; but such a person was soon found in one Edward Kelly, who was engaged as the doctor’s assistant, and produced ‘revelations’ with Joseph-Smith-like facility. Indeed, his revelations had more than one point in common with those of the Mormon apostle, for it is recorded that on one occasion he received a divine command that he and the doctor should exchange wives, which edifying little family arrangement was actually carried out, with much parade of prayer and religious ceremonial. It seems probable that Dee really believed in the manifestations, and was himself the dupe of his unscrupulous associate. Kelly was accustomed to describe what he saw and heard in the magic crystal, and Dr Dee took notes of the mystic revelations. These notes were, in 1659, collected and published in a folio volume by Dr Meric Casaubon, an eminent scholar of that day, who appears to have believed that the revelations were really the work of spirits, though of doubtful character. From these notes it would appear that Dee was possessed of two, if not more, divining crystals of various sizes. After his death, a stone, said to be one of these, came into the possession of the Earl of Peterborough, and thence into that of Lady Elizabeth Germaine. It subsequently fell into the hands of the then head of the House of Argyll, by whose son, Lord Frederick Campbell, it was presented to Horace Walpole. For many years it formed part of the Strawberry Hill Collection, and there was appended to the leather case in which it was contained a manuscript note, in Walpole’s own handwriting, describing it as ‘the black stone into which Dr Dee used to call his spirits,’ and recording the above facts respecting it. On the dispersion of the Strawberry Hill Collection in 1842, the stone in question is said to have been purchased, at the price of thirteen pounds, by Mr Smythe Pigott; and at the sale of that gentleman’s library in 1853, to have passed into the hands of Lord Londesborough. As to the later history of this particular stone, we have no information; but it is clearly not identical with the one in the British Museum. Horace Walpole’s is described as being a ‘black stone.’ Others add that it was in shape a flat disk, with a loop or handle, and it is generally believed to have been a highly polished piece of cannel coal. The one in the British Museum more nearly resembles the descriptions given of Lady Blessington’s crystal, employed for a similar purpose by Lieutenant Morrison, the Zadkiel of ‘almanac’ celebrity. It is a ball, about two inches in diameter, of rather dark rock-crystal, and, as Mr Read informs us, has been in the possession of the British Museum for nearly a century. Assuming, however, that, as stated in Casaubon’s notes, Dr Dee used two or more magic specula, this may of course have been one of them.
This mystic crystal is appropriately flanked by a collection of oriental talismans, some in metal, for suspension from the neck; others of agate or chalcedony, engraved with charms and cabalistic signs, for reproduction on wax or parchment. Here also are a couple of bezoar stones, formerly much esteemed as possessing occult medical virtues, particularly as an antidote to poison. The genuine bezoar stone is a calculus found in the stomach of the goat or antelope. The specimens here shown are artificial, being compounded from a recipe in the possession of Sir Hans Sloane. They claim, however, to have all the virtues of the genuine article, which we think extremely probable! They have a peculiar aromatic smell, which probably assisted the belief in their hygienic properties.
In another of the cases we find post-mortem casts of the faces of Charles II. and Oliver Cromwell. A third, anonymous when acquired by the Museum, has since been identified as that of Charles XII., king of Sweden. The musket-wound in the temple, by which he fell, is plainly observable. Not far distant are a leathern ‘black-jack’ and a couple of ‘chopines,’ the latter, however, not being, as French scholars might be inclined to suppose, the measure of that name, but a sort of stilt about sixteen inches in height, with a shoe at the upper end, and formerly worn by the Venetian ladies. Shakspeare alludes to this queer article where he makes Hamlet say, addressing one of the female players, ‘By’r Lady, your ladyship is nearer heaven than when I saw you last, by the altitude of a chopine.’ Here, too, are a couple of the mallets and a ball used in the old game of pall-mall. The present specimens were found in the house of Mr Vulliamy, situated in the street of the same name, which adjoins the ancient Mall. The ball is of wood, about two and a half inches in diameter; and the mallets, save that their heads are bound with iron, are almost precisely similar to those used in croquet at the present day.
There are sundry curious ivories, among them being a drinking-horn made out of a single tusk, elaborately carved, and mounted with copper-gilt. It bears the inscription:
Drinke you this, and thinke no scorne
Although the cup be much like a horne.