The snorting charger pranced and neighed, Ho, ho! at once beneath the maid And howl on howl ran through the sky From out the pit a whining cry Now in the moonlight danced the train In giddy circles, in a chain; "Forbear! forbear! though hearts should break, REMARKABLE CHAIRS. BY REV. JOSEPH BELCHER, D. D. THIS is an universally interesting subject. Who does not value his chair, and spend in it his happiest hours? Almost every writer describes some chair or other, or what might be called such; and however original an author may be considered, in some way or other the matter comes up, and like Ik Marvell, he will tell us of his "very old arm-chair," and his "big arm-chair." Let us, then, write a few paragraphs on this fruitful subject. Chairs are of very high antiquity; indeed, their origin is buried in the very depths of obscurity. The Jewish Rabbins tell us of a most extraordinary giant in the days of Abraham, indeed, one of the servants of that patriarch, one of whose teeth fell out with trembling, because his master was angry with him. Some of those eminent scholars say that of this tooth Abraham made a bedstead, but, as says the distinguished Dr. Kitto, "other authorities equally credible, assure us that it was not a bedstead which Abraham made of Og's tooth, but a chair, on which he sat as long as he lived." Among the Assyrians, as we are informed by Layard, in his admirable work on "Nineveh and its Remains," their tables, thrones and couches were made both of metal and wood, and probably inlaid with ivory. Herodotus tells us that those in the temple of Belus, in Babylon, were of solid gold. The chair represented on the earliest monument is without a back, the legs are tastefully carved, and the seat is adorned with heads of rams. The cushion appears to be made of some rich stuff embroidered or painted. The legs were strengthened by a cross bar, and frequently ended in the feet of a lion, or the hoofs of a bull; either of gold, silver or bronze. On the monuments of Khorsabad, and in the rock-tablets of Malthaiah, we find representations of chairs supported by animals, and by human figures, sometimes prisoners, like the Carytide of the Greeks. In this they resembled the arm-chairs of Egypt, but appear to have been more massive than they. Chairs and couches, adorned with feet of silver and other metals, were looked upon as great objects of luxury in Persia; from whence they were probably introduced into Asia Minor and Greece. In the Lycian sculptures we have representations of stays or arms on either side of the seat, such as lions. This fashion, introduced into Asia Minor by the Persians, was originally borrowed from the Assyrians. Chairs, or thrones, which are really the same things, stand out very prominently in history, and have been the prizes for which vast armies have contended. The throne of England, se splendid, when covered with its silk velvet and gold, is, as our readers well know, only an oak chair, in itself coarse and rough. It has been used for this purpose of coronation for six centuries past, and may yet continue for six hun dred years longer. Here is an engraving of the may be acceptable to our readers. In Westminster Abbey, under the screen of the Confessor's chapel, are two chairs; one of them is used for the coronation of the queen consort, when a king is called to the throne; and was first occupied by Mary, when crowned with her husband, William III.; the other, similar in form, but of great antiquity, is the coronation chair, the existence of which is readily traced back to the days of Edward I., and in it all English sovereigns since that period have been crowned. The wood is very hard and solid; the back and sides were formerly painted in various colors; and the seat is composed of a rough looking sandstone, measuring twenty-six inches in length, sixteen inches and three quarters in breadth, and ten and a half in thickness. This stone, in fact, constitutes the grand peculiarity of the chair. Without implicitly believing the traditions which our forefathers were assuredly ready to credit, that this was the very stone on which Jacob laid his head on the memorable night of his dream, or without admitting that this is the fatal marble chair which Gathelus, son of Cecrops, King of Athens, carried from Egypt into Spain, and which then found its way into Ireland, during a Spanish invasion under Simon Brek, son of King Milo; or another, told by Irish historians, that it was brought into Ireland by a colony of Scythians, and had the property of issuing sounds resembling thunder, whenever any of the royal Scythian race seated themselves upon it for inauguration, and that he only was crowned king under whom the stone groaned and spoke we may acknowledge the possibility of its having been brought from Ireland to Scotland by Fergus, the first king of the latter country, and his coronation upon it some three hundred and thirty years before Christ, and the certainty that from a very early period it was used at the coronation of the Scottish kings at Dunstaffnage and Scone. It was carried to Scone by Kenneth II., when he united the territories of the Picts and the Scots in the ninth century; where it remained till the thirteenth, when Edward I. committed the worst possible outrage on the feelings and hopes of the country in the removal of the famous stone, which was strongly connected by superstitious ties with the idea of national independence. According to Fordun, the Scottish Chronicler, it then bore an inscription in Latin, to the following effect: "Except old saws do fail, Mighty efforts were made to regain this wonderful stone; special clauses were inserted in treaties; and a special conference was held on the subject between Edward III., of England, and David I., of Scotland, with a view to its restoration, but in England it still remains. If chairs have been used for thrones, so also have they been found in the grave. When the tomb of Charlemagne was opened by Otho, in 997, the body of the emperor was found seated on a throne, "which," says the historian, "resembled an arm-chair." Chairs were formerly sometimes kept in England, as instruments of punishment. In each of the Cinque ports, on the south-east of that country, was a chair carefully preserved by the authorities, "in which," according to their old charters, "brawling wives were placed when they were ducked;" and Southey mentions, in one of his letters, one Rebecca Penlake as punished in this way. The identical chair used on this occasion he saw, in the year 1836, at St. Michael's Mount, in Penzance Bay. In other countries, too, chairs have not always been seats of peace, whatever they may have been of dignity. The Rev. T. T. Thomason, of India, tells us that in his travels in that country, he saw the reigning prince, the poor representative of Timur's house, taking an airing. He was carried on a Tonjoh, or chair, borne on the shoulders of men, preceded by a train of attendants. The whole," however, he adds, "was so miserable as not to be seen without a sigh." Our subject expands as we proceed, and we find it impossible to grasp the whole of it. We should be glad, if we might, to say something about the old-fashioned sedan chairs in which our good old European grandmothers were accustomed to sit, snugly covered up, to be carried by poor men to parties and the theatre. Even in England these said chairs are seldom used now, except to remove the sick and dying poor to hospitals and poor-houses. "Now-a-days," says Chambers, speaking of Scotland, in his journal; "chair-carrying is a much reduced business, in consequence of the prevalence of hackney-chaises: only a few old ladies stick by them, much like Caxton's three customers in the Antiquary.'" If in Great Britain, chairs have been invested with interest, they have not been without attention paid to them in our own happy land, whose inhabitants carefully prize all good things. Our venerable friends, the Pilgrim Fathers, were evidently fond of their chairs; nor can this be a matter of surprise, for, probably, they seldom |