Antiquarian News & Notes.

Mr. Bohnhas left a very complete batch of MSS. relating to the world of letters, which will shortly see the light.

Lord Hervey’s“Memoirs of George II.,” which have become very scarce, are about to be reprinted by Messrs. Bickers, who have purchased the copyright. The new edition will be in three volumes.

TheEarl of Ducie is collecting materials for a history of the Spanish Armada of 1588.

Thedaughters of the Dean of Westminster are engaged in writing a handbook to the Abbey.

Mr. Austin Dobson’snew work, “Thomas Bewick and his Pupils,” based upon his articles in theCentury Magazine, is announced.

Messrs. F. Hilton Priceand J. E. Price have just published the tenth edition of their Guide to the Roman Villa near Brading, in the Isle of Wight.

Thetwo-hundredth anniversary of Watteau’s birth will be celebrated at Valenciennes on October 10, when a monument by Hiolle and a statue by Carpeaux will be inaugurated.

A Fundis being raised to preserve the Saxon tower of Earl’s Barton Church, near Northampton, under the direction of Mr. T. L. Pearson, R.A.

Mr. E. A. Freemanintends to inaugurate his professorship at Oxford next term with a course of lectures on “The Method of Historical Study.” He will also lecture on “Gregory of Tours.”

Dr. Phenè, F.S.A., is engaged in investigating the museums and private collections of antiquities in Scandinavia, and also the Mounds of Norway, and the stone monuments of Denmark and Sweden, in continuation of his researches in Iceland and the North American continent.

TheAbbot Pietro Pressutti has completed the first volume of the “Regesta” (i.e., the letter-books) of Pope Honorius III., dating from 1216 to 1227, compiled by order of the Pope from the Codices in the Vatican archives.

The“History of the Church of Manchester,” compiled from ancient documents and authentic records, by the Rev. Ernest F. Letts, M.A., Precentor and Minor Canon, is announced for publication, by Mr. Henry Gray, of Cathedral-yard, Manchester.

Thesuggestion of the Mayor of Lichfield that Dr. Johnson’s centenary should be celebrated in December next, was anticipated by a letter from Mr. Walford, the editor of this magazine, which was published in theAthenæumseveral months ago.

Anorder has been made by Mr. Justice Chitty, authorising the Trustees of the Marlborough Estates and Heirlooms to sell to the Trustees of the National Gallery the Madonna Ansidei, by Raphael, for £70,000; and the equestrian picture of Charles I., by Van Dyck, for £17,500. The Trustees were also authorised to sell two pictures in the Blenheim Collection by Rubens, namely, one of that artist and his second wife and another of that lady and her page, for £50,000.

Theextensive collection of coins and medals, and also of antiquities, belonging to the family of the late Dr. Jacob Amiet, ex-Attorney-General of the Swiss Confederation at Solothurn, Switzerland, is announced for sale. The coins and medals include Greek, Roman, Swiss, French, English, and Italian; and among the antiquities are Egyptian idols and Babylonian cylinders; also weapons, tools, ornaments, &c., of the stone, bronze, and iron ages; potteries and implements of earthenware, stone, and glass, &c. Full particulars of the collection can be obtained from Mr. F. Schulthess, 16, Cantlowes-road, Camden-square, N.W.

Lord Granvilleis about to erect a monument at Ebb’s Fleet, near Pegwell Bay, in commemoration of the landing there of St. Augustine onhis mission to England in the sixth century. The memorial will consist of a reproduction of one of the famous Saxon crosses at Sandbach, near Crewe, and stands twelve feet in height. On the west front will be carved a representation of the landing of Augustine, the annunciation, crucifixion, the transfiguration, saints, early Christian martyrs, &c.

General Pitt-Rivers, as Inspector of Ancient Monuments in Great Britain, has printed, by permission of Her Majesty’s Commissioners of Works, his official report to them on excavations in the Pen pits, near Penselwood, Somerset, made for the purpose of ascertaining whether any portion of these ancient pits should be placed under the protection of the Ancient Monuments Act. The excavations took place in October, 1883.

Cataloguesof rare and curious books, all of which contain the names of works of antiquarian interest, have reached us from Mr. William Downing, 74, New-street, Birmingham; Mr. Frank Murray, 26, Strand, Derby (includes purchases from the Gosford Library); Mr. Andrew Iredale, 3, Cary-place, Torquay; Messrs. Jefferies & Sons, Redcliff-street, Bristol; Mr. William Withers, Loseby-lane, Leicester; Mr. A. B. Osborne, 11, Red Lion-passage, W.C.; Mr. W. P. Bennett, 3, Bull-street, Birmingham; Mr. James Aston, 49B, Lincoln’s Inn-fields; Messrs. Fawn & Son, 18, Queen’s-road, Bristol; Mr. J. Whiteley, 2, Princess-street, Halifax, Yorkshire.

Thefollowing articles, more or less of an antiquarian character, appear among the contents of the magazines for September:Macmillan, “The Northumbrian Border,” and “A Genealogical Search;”English IllustratedMagazine, “Covent Garden;”Contemporary Review, “The Purgatorio of Dante;”Art Journal, “Preservation of the Monuments of Cairo,” “The Port of Leith,” and “Delft Ware;”Fortnightly Review, “Sport and Travel in Norway; “Magazine of Art, “A Cartoon by Leonardo,” “Strand and Mall,” “Head-gear in the Fifteenth Century,” “Menzel and Frederick the Great;” “The Inns of Chancery,” by Rev. W. J. Loftie, and “Old Church Plate,” by Rev. H. Whitehead;Century Magazine, “From Coventry to Chester;”St. Nicholas Magazine, “The Queen’s Museum.”

Mr. J. T. Wood, writing from Blenheim House, Brighton, draws attention to the marbles from the Temple of Diana at Ephesus which are now arranged in what is designated “The Ephesian Gallery” at the British Museum. He does so with the hope that the sight of these interesting relics of the temple will induce some of those who can well afford it to subscribe to the fund for the completion of the excavations on the site of the temple, which his committee wish to renew in the course of the month of October under his direction. By completing these excavations Mr. Wood hopes to secure for the British Museum treasures of Greek art equal in value and interest to those which are already in our possession.

Theworks in connection with Peterborough Cathedral are progressing rapidly. An oblong underground chamber—not a tomb—has recently been discovered. It has sides of stone and lime, a floor of stone flags, and a roof formed of the floor of the cathedral itself. This chamber measures 6 ft. 3 in. in length, by 4 ft. in width, and has a depth of 6 ft. A curved range of steps of about two yards in extent, and hitherto quite concealed, leads down to an entrance on the flank side of the cavity. The chamber was filled with lumber of all descriptions, including fragments of the famous choir screen which fell a prey to Cromwell’s zealots, scraps of leathern work, iron, steel, half charred wood, and a quantity of bones. Its original use is uncertain.

Sin scire labores,Quære, age: quærenti pagina nostra patet.

All communications must be accompanied by the name and address of the sender, not necessarily for publication.

THE JOHNSON CENTENARY.

Sir,—I desire to place before the public generally, and my fellow-citizens in particular, the question of the forthcoming Centenary of the death of Dr. Johnson. I feel that I am not called upon to enter into the details of the life of the great lexicographer, nor need I refer to the influence he exercised in so many and various ways over the literature of his country. The question with which I, as Mayor, have to deal is—Whether the Centenary of his death, which happens in December next, shall be observed; and, if so, what shall be the character of such demonstration? From time to time various schemes have been advocated, but it seems to me that, after the numerous appeals for funds lately made in every direction, it is not advisable to undertake any responsibility calculated to entail a large financial risk. At the same time, without in any way attempting to indicate the direction of such a celebration, and, indeed, without expressing a personal opinion in the matter, I deem it a duty to thus publicly invite expressions of opinion. We have somewhat over two months before us—sufficient time, I think, if desired, to arrange a moderate programme. I therefore invite all who feel interested to communicate by letter with me on the following points:—

1. Is it desirable to observe the Centenary of Dr. Johnson’s death?

2. If so, what form shall such observance take?

3. If arrangements are made for some observance of it, in what way are they likely or willing to aid it?

I must ask that all replies and offers of assistance shall be sent to me as early as possible, marked outside “Dr. Johnson’s Centenary.” If they are of such a nature as to indicate the prospect of a thoroughly successful observance, I will at once convene a meeting of those favourable to the project, and do what I can, privately and officially, to secure its success. If, on the other hand, the replies indicate a reasonable doubt as to the success or desirability of the undertaking, I shall (after consultation with others interested in the matter) feel myself at liberty to abandon the proposed movement. I therefore wish it to be understood that the celebration, if any, will be set on foot at the desire of those who by replying to this communication express themselves in favour of it. I think this is the better way to deal with the subject; at all events it will relieve me, as Mayor, of personal responsibility should the attempt to secure some notice of the death of our chief citizen fail for want of the requisite enthusiasm. I would press on everyone really interested to give me the assistance of their opinion and advice by the date indicated.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,Thomas H. Hunt, Mayor of Lichfield.

Lichfield Close, September 17.

PORTS AND CHESTERS.

Sir,—Your readers may have observed, and with some amusement, that the simultaneous assault on my position by Dr. Pring and Mr. Hall,in your last issue, has ended in the somewhat untoward result of their discovering that they are themselves hopelessly at issue on the fundamental point of all! Dr. Pring persists that the “port” in “port-reeve” is derived from the Latinporta, a city gate (p. 114): Mr. Hall asserts with equal confidence that it comes “by transition from the Latinportus,” a haven (p. 149). Dr. Pring appeals to “the learned Professor Stubbs” (p. 114), but “seems” (to adopt his own expression) “to have found it convenient to ignore” that I have shown Dr. Stubbs’ rendering of the passage from the Laws of Athelstan to be simply destructive of his own. I repeat, that when Dr. Pring renders it “outside the portor gate” (p. 115), the words “or gate”are, and should be distinguished as, a mere gloss of his own, and must not, therefore, be appealed to by him as evidence. My own quotation: “Newport Gate,” in Lincoln (p. 115), is no gloss of my own at all, but averbatimcopy. Dr. Pring must indeed be hard up if he falls back on the Latinisation of East Gate asportam de East Gatâ(temp. Henry I.), since by the mediæval scribe, as by the modern schoolboy, a gate would be rightly styled in Latin aporta(“East gate” being suffixed as a proper name for the sake of distinction). What conceivable bearing has this on the use of the term “port” (for a market town) in Anglo-Saxon times? Yet such is the disingenuous argument of my critic, who proclaims that I “must surely have overlooked these and similar instances”! And if he had done me the honour to read my paper with common care, he would have seen that I carefully distinguish the “port” of proper names, such as “Newport Gate,” from the “port” in “port-reeve.” This destroys his criticism.

When Dr. Pring appealed to Dr. Stubbs, as laying down that “port” was derived from “porta,”because the gate was the place where the markets were held, I proved by demonstration that the markets werenotheld at the gate, but in the heart of the town, and that consequently the argument breaks down. What does Dr. Pring do? He ridicules this disproof of the very argument he had appealed to as “scarcely necessary” (p. 116), and as based on “a well-known fact”! Verily, we have here, to quote his own words, a “unique and somewhat anomalous specimen of argument.”

Dr. Pring’s arguments could similarly be rebutted at every point, but lest I weary the patience of your readers, it will probably be sufficient if I invite them to observe that on the one hand, Dr. Pring, deriving “port” fromporta, declares the process by which atowncame to be called agate, so “easy and obvious” (p. 114), that he need not (i.e., cannot) explain it; while, on the other, Mr. Hall, deriving port fromportus, is equally confident that an inland town would, in the natural course of things, be known as a sea-port (portus)! When Dr. Pring has converted Mr. Hall, or Mr. Hall has converted Dr. Pring, it will then, and not before, be time for them to think of uniting their forces in a combined attack on my own theory, which sees in the Anglo-Saxon “port,” as found in “port-reeve,” &c., a word with a denotation different from that either ofportusor ofporta. At present it remains, unimpugned, as the only rational and consistent theory. It will, doubtless, like all original theories, be viewed at first with suspicion and dislike, but I hope, in time, to have it cast at me,more Pringensi, by those who do so, that it is “scarcely necessary” to prove it, as it is to all “a well-known fact.”

J. H. Round.

Colchester.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

TheEditor declines to pledge himself for the safety or return of MSS. voluntarily tendered to him by strangers.

1. The Old Registers of St. John Baptist, Peterborough. By Rev. W. D. Sweeting, M.A. Peterborough: G. C. Caster. 1884.

2. The Hull Quarterly. Parts i.—iii. Hull: A. Brown & Sons. 1884.

3. A Guide to the Roman Villa near Brading. By J. E. Price, F.S.A., and F. G. Hilton Price, F.S.A. Tenth Edition. Ventnor: Briddon Brothers. 1884.

4. The Earldom of Mar. By P. H. McKerlie, F.S.A. Scot. Privately printed. 1884.

5. Annus Sanctus. Hymns of the Church for the Ecclesiastical Year. Selected and arranged by Orby Shipley, M.A. Burns & Oates. 1884.

6. Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare. By J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, F.R.S. Longmans & Co. 1884.

7. Our Parish Books, and What they Tell us. By J. M. Cowper, F.R.H.S. Canterbury: Cross & Jackman. 1884.

8. Buckfast Abbey. By the Rev. S. Hamilton, O.S.B. Ramsgate:Kent Coast TimesOffice. 1884.

9. Wilton Castle. By the Vicar of the Parish. London: E. Stamford. 1884.

10. Calendar of State Papers. Colonial Series: East Indies, China, and Persia (1625-1629). Edited by W. Noel Sainsbury. Longman & Co. 1884.

11. English Scholar’s Library. Capt. John Smith’s Works (1608-1631). By Edward Arber, 1, Montague-road, Birmingham. 1884.

12. Plant Lore and Garden Craft of Shakespeare. By the Rev. Henry N. Ellacombe, M.A. Second edition. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1884.

Works of Hogarth (set of original Engravings, elephant folio, without text), bound. Apply by letter to W. D., 56, Paragon-road, Hackney, N.E.

Original water-colour portrait of Jeremy Bentham, price 2 guineas. Apply to the Editor of this Magazine.

A large collection of Franks, Peers’ and Commoners’. Apply to E. Walford, 2, Hyde Park Mansions, N.W.

Antiquarian Magazine and Bibliographer, several copies of No. 2 (February, 1882) are wanted, in order to complete sets. Copies of the current number will be given in exchange at the office.

Dodd’s Church History, 8vo., vols. i. ii. and v.; Waagen’s Art and Artists in England, vol. i.; East Anglian, vol. i., Nos. 26 and 29. The Family Topographer, by Samuel Tymms, vols. iii. and iv.; Notes and Queries, the third Index. Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets” (Ingram and Cooke’s edition), vol. iii. A New Display of the Beauties of England, vol. i., 1774. Chambers’ Cyclopædia of English Literature, vol. i. Address, E. Walford, 2, Hyde Park Mansions, Edgeware-road, N.W.

TESSELLATED PAVEMENT DISCOVERED AT THE ROMAN VILLA NEAR BRADING (see p. 237, post). (From Messrs. Price’s Guide to the Roman Villa at Morton, near Brading.)TESSELLATED PAVEMENT DISCOVERED AT THE ROMAN VILLA NEAR BRADING (see p. 237, post).(From Messrs. Price’s Guide to the Roman Villa at Morton, near Brading.)

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ByC. A. Ward.

PART IV.

(Continued from p. 60.)

IN the preface, addressed to his son Cæsar, he shows himself perfectly alive to the poor reception his book is likely to meet with from many; he says: “Qu’elle fera retirer le front en arrière à plus d’un qui la lira, sans y rien comprendre.” He does not write for babes and the illiterate, and has no sympathy with the words in Mark x. 14: “Sinite parvulos venire ad me.” On the contrary, he cites from Matthew vii. 6 with approval the antithetical sentence uttered by the Saviour: “ ‘Nolite sanctum dare canibus, ne conculcent pedibus et conversi disrumpant vos:’ which hath been the cause that I have withdrawn my tongue from the vulgar, and my pen from paper.”

“But,” he runs on, “afterwards I was writing for the common good, to enlarge myself in dark and abstruse sentences, declaring the future events, chiefly the most urgent, and those which I foresaw (whatever human mutation happened)would not offend the hearers.”[52]

Here the words marked in italics give us the limitation he set to his own office and position. His function is purely that of aseer; he foresees, and sometimes for the “common good” he records hisexperiences,[53]but he does not take upon himself the mission of the Baptist to “prepare a way” for great events, nor like Jeremiah to raise a cry of national lamentation, nor like Isaiah will he denounce evil nor evil-doers.

His idea of prophecy is nothing but the passivity of foresight. He says:—

“The prophets, by means only of the immortal God and good angels, have received the spirit of vaticination, by which they foresee things and foretell future events; for nothing is perfect without Him, whose power and goodness is so great to His creatures, that though they are but men, nevertheless, by the likeness of our good genius to the angels,[54]this heat and the prophetical power draws near us, as it happens by the beams of the sun, which cast their influence both on elementary and not elementary bodies; as for us who are men, we cannot attain anything by our natural knowledge of the secrets of God our Creator. ‘Quia non est nostrum nosse tempora nec momenta,’ &c. (Acts i. 7.)”

It should be noticed by every candid critic that there is strong internal evidence in this passage of genuine truthfulness in the writer. First he defines his own position to be merely that of aseer. He then gives his idea of a prophet, and describes him as one who has received a spirit of vaticination by foresight. He then says that this prophetical heat is unattainable by any natural knowledge of man, but comes like that of the sun, direct from the Giver of all good gifts to man. This is very much as Samuel How, the inspired cobbler, Bunyan, or any old Puritan in the seventeenth century would have described it: “The sufficiency of the Spirit’s teaching without human learning.” But in addition to this perfect simplicity of spirit, he ventures to quote the Saviour’s words: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons,” which, with Matthew xxiv. 36, is the strongest passage in the New Testament against a gift of prophecy in man. Would a man who had any doubt at all about his possession of the faculty of prevision cite a passage which seemed to withhold the prophetic gift from all mankind under the new covenant of the Christian dispensation?

Grotius and Heinsius show that these words χρόνους ἧ καιροὺς should be understood of thetime, times, and an half, of Daniel (xii. 7), when Christ, of the stem of Jesse, should begin under Constantine to direct the executive government of kings on earth as King of kings, which took place 300 years later. If this were to be hidden from Apostles, how should a layman, and idiot (so to speak), look forinspiration? To me this consideration entirely and finally disposes of any doubt as to imposition intentional. Be Nostradamus prophet and seer, or not, it is next to impossible for anyone of fair and impartial mind hereafter to hold that he was an impostor. To suppose it even, isimpossibleto a rational judge, if we grant that we are, in a degree ever so little, capable by nature of estimating the motives of a fellow-creature.

In another part of the preface he says:—

“Not that I will attribute to myself the name of a prophet, but as a mortal man, being no farther from heaven by my sense than I am from earth by my feet,possum errare, falli, decipi, I am the greatest sinner of the world, subject to all humane afflictions, but being surprised sometimes in the week by a prophetical humour, and by a long calculation, pleasing myself in my study, I have made books of prophecies, &c.”

He speaks also of the mode of enlightenment, “by a long melancholy inspiration revealed,” and says it takes “its original from above, and such light and small flame is of all efficacy and sublimity, no less than the natural light makes the philosophers so secure.” All this justifies fully the distich, so far as motive goes:—

“Vera loquor, non falsa loquor sed munere cœli,Qui loquitur Deus est, non ego Nostradamus.”

He opens the first “Century” with an announcement (by some called an incantation) of the methods by which he prepared himself for the reception of the knowledge of future things:

“Estant assis, de nuit secrette estude,Seul, reposé sur la selle d’airain,Flambe exigue, sortant de solitude,Fait proferer qui n’est a croire vain.”

“Sitting by night, in secret study alone, resting on a brazen seat, a slight flame arising out of the solitude makes me utter things not vain to be believed.”

“La verge en main, mise au milieu des Branches,De l’onde je mouille et le Limb et le Pied,En peur j’escris fremissant par les manches;Splendeur Divine: le Divine prez s’assied.”

“With wand in hand placed amidst the branches, I wet with water the limb and foot, and write in fear, trembling in my sleeves; “Splendour divine! the Divinity sits at hand.’ ”

A tranquillised mind is requisite to prophecy. We find Elisha (2 Kings iii. 15) requiring a minstrel to play, that the hand of the Lord may come upon him. External objects disturb the senses, so that night is best for contemplation, as Malebranche is said to have shut himself up in a dark room to study and think out his “Recherche de la Vérité.” Solitude is essential to prophecy. A man cannot commune with heaven in the busy haunts of men. Nature isthe presence-chamber of the Deity. Every man of sensibility knows this; and the prophet most of all men feels the pith and central depth of Pope’s fine line, and that he must reach prophecy “Looking through Nature up to Nature’s God.” Society demands that you sacrifice your convictions constantly to good manners. Social convention contaminates noble originality and high principle. Truth never dwells in the court of kings, and the drawing-rooms of the well-to-do are no fitter for its shrine, for the men and women there are royalties divested of respect and state-trappings; they are over-pampered humanities for the most part: to be much in their company you must compromise the divinest part of you—your convictions—and it is by pursuing conviction that the soul flies heavenward. One might write an essay on the Brazen Stool with its proverbex tripode loqui, but anyhow these opening verses convey to the mind with wonderful brevity a vivid picture of a mediæval magician at his work.

Garencières allegorises here so widely as to show what havoc ingenuity can play withanalogy, which is a key to the occult things of the universe in good hands—those of the prophet, poet, or genius of any sort. The rod, he says, is thepen, placed in the middle of the branches means thefingersof the hand, the water he dips it in is theinkhe writes with, wetting limb and foot is thepapercovered from top to bottom. Was manuscript ever, since the world began, more mystically shadowed forth?

The interest of English readers will perhaps be most readily drawn to Nostradamus, by dealing first with some of the most remarkable prophecies concerning England; and with the invaluable aid of M. Anatole le Pelletier’s admirable work on Nostradamus, this can at any rate for a few of the quatrains be most readily accomplished. He gives six examples from the various “Centuries.” The first relates to the supremacy of England at sea: “L’Angleterre le Panpotent des mers.” The word Panpotent is a barbarous Græco-Latin word for πᾶν-potens, all-powerful. The periods M. le Pelletier would assign to these changes or revolutions in England extend from 1501, the birth of Lutheranism, to 1791, the commencement of the French Revolution.

He selects Century iii., quatrain 57:—

“Sept fois changer verrez gent Britanique,Teints en sang en deux cens nonante an;Franche non point, par appuy Germanique;Aries doubte son pole Bastarnan.”

“You shall see the British nation, inundated with blood, change seven times in 290 years. But France not so, thanks to the firmness of her Germanic kings. The sign of the Ram shall no longer recognise the north of Europe (son pole Bastarnan) it will so have changed.”[55]

Here we have to notice that 1501 plus 290 equals 1791, which may if you like be taken as the date of the commencement of the French Revolution, though commonly it is reckoned from 1789, the taking of the Bastille. The Germanic kings are the descendants of Hugh Capet. Bastarnia stands for Poland as its ancient name. The first dismemberment of Poland took place in 1772. Then Russia grew into power, Peter ascended the throne 1682, and Lutheranism triumphed in Germany. Such changes might well startle the Ram from all recognition of the northern world.

1501 is the date of the Renaissance, and from that to 1792 England is to undergo seven revolutions.

1. In England Henry VIII. breaks free from Rome, and the Church of England is set up in 1532.

2. 1553 Mary restores the Papal religion.

3. 1558 Elizabeth re-establishes Anglican independence.

4. In 1649 Charles I. is beheaded, and the Republic established under Cromwell’s Protectorate.

5. In 1660 Charles II. is restored.

6. In 1689 James II. abdicating, is displaced by William III., his son-in-law.

7. In 1714 George I., of the House of Hanover, is called to the throne.

The brevity with which all this is inferred is as remarkable as the curious precision with which it was fulfilled.

The accession of James I. to the death of Charles I. (1603-1649) is set forth in

Century X. Quatrain 40.“Le jeune nay au regne Britannique,Qu’ aura ce père mourant recommandé,Iceluy mort,Lonole[56]donra topique,[57]Et à son fils le regne demandé.”[58]

“The young prince[59]of the kingdom of Britain (then first called Great Britain) is born, whose father (Henry Darnley, assassinated by Bothwell) in dying commended him to the protection of the principal Scottish nobility. When this prince (James I. of England, and VI. of Scotland) is dead,Lonoleby the employment of Puritanical eloquence (or canting rhetoric) will despoil his son (Charles I.) of his kingdom.”

Le Pelletier thinks it is quite clear thatLonoleΟλλὑων stands for Cromwell, but a further coincidence arises, namely, thatLonoleis an all but correct anagram ofOle NolorOld Noll, the Protector’s nickname. Garencières printsLondreforLonole, and so renders what at best is obscure entirely unintelligible, and fancies that he clearly discerns it to be a prophecy concerning Charles II., because he was commended to the care of his subjects by Charles I. on the scaffold.

Century III. Quatrain 80(in some Eds. 82).“Du regne Anglois le digne dechassé[60]Le conseiller par ire[61]mis à feu,Ses adherents iront si bas tracer,[62]Que le bastard sera demy receu.”

Century III. Quatrain 80(in some Eds. 82).

“Du regne Anglois le digne dechassé[60]Le conseiller par ire[61]mis à feu,Ses adherents iront si bas tracer,[62]Que le bastard sera demy receu.”

“He who had a right to the kingdom of England is displaced, ismis à feu, sacrificed to the heat of popular fury. His adherents descend to such a depth of baseness that the bastard (or usurper) will be half received by the kingdom.”

That is to say, Charles I. will be deprived of power after having yielded up Strafford to the popular fury, in the hope of escaping himself. The Scotch (old adherents) will be so base as to sell him for two millions to the Cromwellites, who put him to death, and Cromwell becoming Protector, and not quite king, therefore will obtain an almost royal bastard,i.e., a half reception (à demy receu).

Century IX. Quatrain 49.“Gand et Bruceles marcheront contre[63]Anvers,Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy:Le sel et vin luy seront à l’envers,Pour eux avoir le regne en desarroy.”

Century IX. Quatrain 49.

“Gand et Bruceles marcheront contre[63]Anvers,Senat de Londres mettront à mort leur Roy:Le sel et vin luy seront à l’envers,Pour eux avoir le regne en desarroy.”

“When Ghent and Brussels march over against Antwerp,[64]the Senate of London, or the Long Parliament, will put their king to death. Force and wisdom (vin et sel[65]) will be wanting to Charles’s councils (lui seront à l’envers), and they (the Independents) will in the general disorder become masters of the kingdom.”

Century VIII. Quatrain 76.“Plus Macelin[66]que Roi en Angleterre,Lieu obscur nay par force aura l’Empire,Lasche, sans foy, sans loy, saignera terre;Son tems s’approche si près qui je souspire.”

Century VIII. Quatrain 76.

“Plus Macelin[66]que Roi en Angleterre,Lieu obscur nay par force aura l’Empire,Lasche, sans foy, sans loy, saignera terre;Son tems s’approche si près qui je souspire.”

“More butcher than king in England, a man of obscure birth [néen lieu obscur] by force shall obtain the Empire. Unprincipled, restrained by neither faith nor law, he will drench the earth with blood. His time approaches so near as to make me heave a sigh.”

This is an announcement of such unparalleled and terrific import that Nostradamus exhibits more feeling over it than he does usually over his prognostications. The butcher-like face of Cromwell, with its fleshy conch and hideous warts, seems to have been visually present to him, and to have struck him with such a sense of terror and vividness that he imagines the time must be very near at hand. Though a full century had to elapse, he sighs with a present shudder, and the blood creeps. One of the remarkable features throughout the work of Nostradamus is the general absence of any sense of time apart from the mere enumeration of years as an algebraic or arithmetical sign; on this momentous occasion he departs from his usual practice, and stands horror-stricken as in a fearful vision.

Century X. Quatrain 100.“Le grand Empire sera par AngleterreLe Pempotan des ans plus de trois cens:Grandes copies passer par mer et terre,Les Lusitains n’en serons par contens.”

Century X. Quatrain 100.

“Le grand Empire sera par AngleterreLe Pempotan des ans plus de trois cens:Grandes copies passer par mer et terre,Les Lusitains n’en serons par contens.”

“The great empire of England shall be all-powerful ( πᾶν-potens) for more than 300 years.[67]Then great armies shall come by sea and land, and the Portuguese shall not be satisfied therewith.”

This seems to foreshadow that the naval power of England will be suppressed by sea-borne armies overwhelming her on her own shores, and the Lusitanians, or Portuguese, the oldest allies of England, will not be content, because, probably, Portugal at the same instant will be overwhelmed by Spain simultaneously.

This is as far as we can go in English history under the guidanceof Le Pelletier. But, nevertheless, I shall adduce several more quatrains, bringing the sequence down at least to the establishment of the House of Hanover on the English throne in the person of George I.

(To be continued.)

PART I.

HAD any one been able to sail down the River Calder, say a hundred years ago, long before the present little manufacturing towns had arisen on its banks, he would have passed through some of the most lovely scenery and through one of the loveliest mountain valleys in the county of York. Even to-day, when ugly mills and numberless prosaic tenements of trade disfigure, from an artistic point of view, the once grassy glades and the once gloriously wooded slopes, the prospect in many spots retains much of its virginal sweetness and romantic beauty. There are yet long tracts which commerce has not irremediably mutilated—pleasant meadowlands as fair with wilding flowers as of old; sylvan haunts of birch and elm whose dusky quietude is well-nigh as unbroken and solemn as of yore; bonnie tributary brooklets flashing and hurrying, like silver-footed naiads, through clough and dell and dene. As the eye takes a loftier and farther sweep the rugged contour and massive forms of forest-clad and moorland-capped mountains may be seen to wear much the same aspect they wore in the primal historic days of Roman and Celt. The conquests of commerce over both material and mental difficulties are apparent almost everywhere on the lowlands, for which all sensible and right-thinking minds are grateful, plain and anti-poetical as the outward signs may be in the jumble of viaduct and railway station, of factory and shop. But the old world of chivalry and romance is not altogether pushed aside: there are the ruins of stately and curiously carved gateways whence issued squire and yeoman to join the Pilgrimage of Grace, or later, gallant cavaliers, eager to mingle in the fray on the far-away field of Marston Moor; there are a few old Elizabethan halls with mullioned window and grey stone porch, in whose cool recesses the inmates waited anxiously and breathlessly for tidings about the great Armada; and here and there, built by pious hands that have been still for centuries, there are relics of quiet, quaint chapelle, where repose the ashes of Crusaderknight, and of knights who fought so fiercely in the bloody wars of the Red and White Rose; and now and then we come across a grand antique church, crowded by worshippers where the ritual and the language of the worship have undergone many changes, and around whose hallowed precincts have gathered historic traditions and saintly legends, hoarier and older than the lichens that crust the mouldering towers. The tall chimneys are rising in the busy centres of trade, but occasionally we shelter under an oak or a yew-tree whose youth was fanned by less smutty winds; railway whistles have scared the nightingale, but the lark still carols anear human dwellings; graylings no longer leap the river-weir, but the waters sing and gleam as they glide seaward down the hushed moonlit glens.

The Calder, one of the most picturesque of northern rivers, rises near Cliviger Dene, in Lancashire, and enters the county of York through a wild gorge at Todmorden. As to the origin of the word there have been many conjectures, some plausible, but none to my mind satisfactory. An able writer in a provincial publication gives the derivation from two Celtic words,coll, the hazel-tree, anddur, water. The fatal objection to this is that hazel-trees never grew in such abundance in this valley as to be a distinguishing feature. Place-names with the Celticcolland the Saxonhæselare very rarely found. Had copses or shaws of the hazel flourished to such an extent as to give a name to the river, their former existence would still be traceable in the abiding nomenclature of the country through which the Calder runs its course. The Rev. Thomas Wright, who published a work on the antiquities of the parish of Halifax, where he was curate for more than seventeen years, noticing the Calder states that the spring is calledCalorCol, and is joined by the RiverDar. This is a purely fanciful supposition, and, I believe, not borne out by facts. Dr. Whitaker urges a Danish derivation. The Danes unquestionably won and maintained a lasting hold on the hills overlooking the Calder. As soon as this mountain-born stream assumes the dignity and proportions of a river at Todmorden, it washes on the one hand Langfield, the Long Range of hills, and on the other Stansfield, the Stony Range, whilst a few miles lower down it flows at the foot of Norland, the North-land—all Danish, or more correctly Scandinavian, terms. Then, on the slopes rising from the south banks, we have Sowerby and Fixby, two ancient “by’s,” where families of predatory Danes took up their abode. Other nomenclature traces of the same nation, of the great Canute himself possibly, might be mentioned in favour of the argument on this side of thequestion; though (I write from memory) I believe Dr. Whitaker does not point out the surrounding Danish indications I have here advanced. Another historian surmised that the original Celtic name wasDur, and that the Saxons on settling in this neighbourhood added the adjectivecealdorcold. But this is very improbable, the river in question being no cooler than any other.

I venture to urge a derivation different from any of the above, viz., from the Celticcaoill(wood) anddur(water). That Celts, the Brigantian clan, lived in this locality is an historic fact, the proofs of which need not be here adduced. The Calder beck as soon as it issues from the spring in Cliviger Dene flows by a long stretching sweep of woodland, and farther on among the hills of Yorkshire, a broader and a nobler stream, pursues its course for miles through dense primeval forests, among which may be mentioned the once famous forest of Hardwick. Its precipitous banks were clothed with no mere hazel coppice, but with vast masses of the more majestic oak and ash and birch, woodland in its wilder and more imposing form. Even to-day, though most of the primeval forest has been cut down, and manufacturing villages have sprung up on the ancient sylvan sites, the tourist starting above Todmorden would not, in a walk of thirty miles by the river side, be able to lose sight of the picturesque and far-stretching belts of woodland scenery. It is yet emphatically theCaoill-dur, the water winding through the woods. Of course, in this case the Saxons took up the word as they found it in use among the conquered Celts. Then, to strengthen this conjecture, the very first tributary brook on the north—of size and importance, at least, to give a name to the valley—joining the parent stream is the Colden or Caldene, which probably is theCaoill-dene, the woodland valley. The reader will judge how accurately the word describes this lonely mountain glen when he is told that at a distance the eye can scarcely catch a flash of the waters of this stream as they hurry down this wild sylvan region, so thickly is it overshadowed by a forest of ash and birch. A topographical word derived from two languages is rare in this part, and when we come across one it is generally a Saxon grafted on the more primitive Celtic name of mountain or river. Colden or Caldene is probably an instance to the point.

Thatcaoillwas contracted to, or commonly pronounced,calmay be pretty safely supposed, when we know that in the Latinised form or transformation it becamecal, as in Caledonii, that is,Caoill-daoin, the people inhabiting the woods. The reader will perceivethatcaoillis closely akin to the Greek κᾶλον, also signifying a wood.

The Calder, which is a very sinuous stream, runs a most irregular but charmingly diversified course as it winds under scout and scar, now gliding smoothly past belts of woodland or by long stretches of fair pastoral field, or again in narrower channel foaming more rapidly through wild ravine or over rocky weir, only again to slip into more tranquil waters, pleasantly gladdening as with quiet familiarity village and thorpe. Leaving Todmorden the tourist passes on the right the precipitous woods of Erringden, the dene or valley of the Irringas, where of yore probably dwelt a branch of the family of the Aruns; and on the other hand, towering far away on the heights to the north may be seen the bleak, solitary, altar-like mass of rock known as Llads-Law, conjectured by some to be a Druidical ruin. The Celt lived here beyond all doubt, though but few are the traces he has left behind in cromlech or cairn, in speech or blood. The Roman, we know, cut his way through the primeval forests, and on these very mountains laid down his military roads, the long lines of which we can map out, and oft-times does the plough turn up fragments of rusted sword and broken spear which tell how the pierced hand had to drop them for ever. On and near these roads, after the iron legions had ceased to tramp them, sprung up many a Saxon “ton” or town and Danish “by.” There, on the one hand, upon the heights still difficult to scale except to born mountaineers, is perched Saxon Heptonstall, with its grand old tower of Saint Thomas à Becket and antique homesteads clustering around; and yonder, on the far opposite slope to the south-east, is Danish Sowerby, taking us back in thought to the times when the Vikings settled down and fortified their “by” in the forest fastnesses of the hill. Here, too, to this Sowerby came later the Earl of Warren and built himself a castle, and took to his own possession vast tracts of mountain slope and wooded glen, which long retained the name of the Forest of Hardwick, and therein he hunted in right baronial style the boar and the wild deer. Sowerby with its Danish and Norman memories has a not uninteresting story in later ages, and is not a little proud in having given birth to John Tillotson, one of England’s most illustrious primates. Haugh-End, the quaint old house where he was born, is on the southern slope of the hill, and many the pilgrims who turn aside to have a look at the grey old roof sheltered behind the trees and the ivied high wall. Not a bow-shot from the riverside, and nearly opposite Sowerby, is EawoodHall, the birthplace of Bishop Ferrar, the martyr. Eawood, snugly and picturesquely nestled under the greenwood scars of Midgley, has a conspicuous place in the ecclesiastical history of the county. Here John Wesley preached on several occasions, on one of which he remarked, “I preached to near an hour after sunset. The calmness of the evening agreed well with the seriousness of the people; every one of whom seemed to drink in the Word of God as a thirsty land the refreshing showers.” William Grimshaw, curate of Todmorden and afterwards incumbent of Haworth, a not unworthy coadjutor of Whitefield and the Wesleys, married his first wife from this place, and often preached and stayed here on his home-missionary tours. Not more than a couple of miles away is the birthplace of John Foster, whose Essays at one time had a considerable reputation. Close to Eawood there is many a neighbouring hall of more than local interest, one especially, Brearley Hall, beautifully embosomed in the trees on a gentle eminence on the north side of the river, and formerly the seat of a younger branch of the Lacy family. About half an hour’s walk down the valley brings the pedestrian to Daisy Bank Wood, and Chaucer’s favourite flower still grows on the daisied bank, and there stands yet the old-fashioned house below the wood where was born, in the reign of Elizabeth, Henry Briggs, of logarithm renown, and the first Savilian professor of geometry at the University of Oxford.

(To be continued.)

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