ANCIENT CUSTOM OF HOLDING LANDS BY THE POSSESSION OF A HORN.

II.

In a former article several examples of inheritance were given in which the horn was employed as a Charter, or Instrument of Conveyance. One of the most celebrated instances of this curious custom is afforded by the Manor of Borstal, or Boarstall, in Buckinghamshire.

It is stated that King Edward the Confessor had a royal palace at Brill, or Breturl, in Buckinghamshire, to which he often retired in order to enjoy the pleasures of the chase in Bornwood. This forest was infested by a tremendous wild boar, the terror of the inhabitants; but one Nigel, a forester, having slain the furious beast, received, on presenting its head to the king, a grant of lands, namely, one hyde of arable land called the Dere Hyde, a wood called Hule Wood,-and the custody of the forest of Bornwood to himself and his heirs, by the service of the horn called the Charter of the Forest, paying ten shillings per annum for the land, and forty shillings for the custody of the forest, the king reserving the rights of herbage and hunting. On this land Nigel built a mansion called Borestalle, in memory of the slain

boar.

In the Chartulary of Boarstall (a large folio vellum book containing transcripts of charters and evidences relating to this estate, supposed to have been written in or before the reign of Henry the Sixth), is a view of Boarstall house and manor, having, in the foreground, the figure of a man kneeling, and presenting the head of a boar, on the point of a sword, to the king, who gives him a shield of arms, namely, argent, a fess gules, between two crescents and a horn. The following is a fac-simile of the group in question.

THE PRESENTATION OF THE BOAR'S HEAD.

The scene of the presentation of the boar's head was carved on a bedstead in the ancient house of Boarstall. The same armorial bearings were, in 1685, to be seen in the windows of the same house. The original horn and charter, under the name of Nigel's horn, continued to remain in the possession of the Lords of Boarstall. It is described as being "tipped at each end with silver, gilt, and with wreaths of leather to hang about the neck:" there was also an ancient brass ring, bearing a rude impression of a horn, with a plate, also of brass, having a horn engraven upon it, and smaller plates with "flowers de luce," which are supposed to have been the arms of Lisures, who was an intruder on this estate at, or soon after, the Conquest. He, and some of his successors, not only claimed possession of Boarstall, but also the custody of Born wood; and one of the Lisures caused it to be certified that, being forester in fee to the king, he was, by his office, obliged to attend his majesty in the army well fitted with horse and arms, his horn hanging about his neck.

In the year 1773, this horn and its appurtenances, as represented in the annexed cut, was in the possession of

The horn is supposed to have belonged to the bison, or buffalo: it is dark in colour, and variegated and veined like tortoise-shell. It is two feet four inches in length on the convex band, and twenty-three inches on the concave. The inside, at the large end, is three inches in diameter, being perforated there so as to leave the thickness of only half an inch for about three inches deep; but farther in it is thicker, being not so much or so neatly perforated.

We conclude this notice of the horn as an instrument of conveyance, by a curious extract from the will of Thomas, earl of Ormonde, dated 31st of July, 1515. That nobleman says: "When my lorde, my father, whose soul God assoile, left and delivered unto me a lytle whyte horne of ivory, garnished at both thendes with gold, and corse thereunto of whyte sylke, barred with barres of golde, and a tyret of golde thereupon, which was myn anncestours at fyrst time they were called to honour, and hath sythen contynually remained in the same blode, for wych cause my seid lord and father commanded me upon his blessing, that I should doo my devoirs to cause it to contynue still in my blode as far furth as that myght lye in me soo to be the honor of the same blode." He then gives special directions to his executors for the disposal of the horn.

Our chief authorities for most of the details of these two notices are several papers on the subject in one of the early volumes of the Archæologia, and Mr. Lipscombe's County History of Buckinghamshire.

THE causes which contributed, at the first, to superstition, might conduct in after times to science. The Greeks, in their social infancy, sought agents for their awe in nature; so as they advanced to maturer intellect, it was in nature that they sought for the causes of effects that appeared at first supernatural. And, in either stage, their curiosity and interest are excited by the phenomena around them-the credulous inventions of ignorance gave way to the eager explanations of philosophy. Often in the superstitions of one age, lies the germ that ripens into the inquiry of the next.-Athens, its Rise and Fall.

WHAT grace, what noble propriety do we not feel in the conduct of those who exert that recollection and self-command which constitute the dignity of every passion, and which bring it down to what others can enter into! We are disgusted with the clamorous grief, which, without any delicacy, calls upon our compassion with sighs and tears, and importunate lamentations. But we reverence that reserved, that silent and majestic sorrow, which discovers itself only in the swelling of the eyes, in the quivering of the lips and cheeks, and in the distant, but affecting coldness of the whole behaviour. It imposes the like silence upon us; we regard it with respectful attention, and watch over our whole behaviour, lest, by any impropriety, we should disturb that concerted tranquillity, which it requires so great an effort to support.-Theory of Moral Sentiment.

OF BOOKS PRIOR TO THE INVENTION
OF PRINTING.
III.

OUR own country has had to sustain many rude shocks and grievous impediments to the progress of letters, some of which have afflicted her in common with the rest of Europe, and others have been more peculiarly her own. Whatever learning the Druids may have possessed among themselves, the mass of the Britons were in a state of utter ignorance at the period of the invasion of the Romans; but the civilizing effects of the example of their conquerors, and of the Christian religion introduced by them, seem to have soon become perceptible. Agricola declared the British youth surpassed those of Gaul in knowledge and intelligence; and so generally was the Latin tongue cultivated, that Gildas remarks that the island should rather have been termed Roman than British.

When their own necessities compelled the Romans to concentrate their strength, and abandon their colonies, many of the most learned of the Britons accompanied them. The priests left behind, according to Gildas and Bede, gave way to the most dissolute mode of life, neglected the schools, and were only active in the promotion of heresies. With so corrupt a state of things as this, to which the confusion and destruction of all monuments and institutions of letters by the incursion of the Picts and Scots were added, we are not surprised that no name of note in letters appeared during the sixth century, and that what little glimmering of learning yet remained was confined to Wales and Caledonia. The Saxons, being Pagans, destroyed, wherever their arms prevailed, all traces of Christianity, and it was not until their conversion in the seventh century that any tranquillity began to be established; but, after that period, the schools established at Canterbury and other places, and the intercourse with Rome, began to produce their effects; so that the seventh and eighth centuries were not even characterized by such utter darkness as prevailed over the rest of Europe. Alfred, referring to this period, describes it as one of enlightenment compared to his own. Much of this was due to the fact of the Venerable Bede, the great luminary of the Christian world, having flourished at this epoch; and Malmsbury justly considered his death (A. D. 735) as a fatal blow to the cause of learning in England. Many of the manuscripts of this period, still extant, are written in a beautiful hand, and Bede says he knew many of the students from the schools established by Theodosius, the successor of Austin, who could express themselves fluently in Greek and Latin.

During, and a little after, the period we are now considering, Ireland enjoyed a great reputation for the proficiency of her scholars, especially in ecclesiastical knowledge. It was resorted to from all countries, and contributed some eminent characters, as Alcuin, the preceptor of Charlemagne, and John Scott. The incursions of the Danes in the ninth century were again the means of plunging England into confusion, from which soon resulted general ignorance and neglect of letters.

The noble exertions of Alfred for the recovery of his country, under circumstances apparently so desperate, have ever endeared him to all posterity as one of her greatest benefactors. His invitations to the learned of all countries, establishment of schools, honouring learning by preferments before unknown to it, his translations and dissemination of various works, his compulsory system of education for the children of the higher classes,―gave such an impulse to the cause of learning, that, whereas when he commenced his reign, he scarce could find a priest capable of reading the service in his native tongue, or translating the simplest piece of Latin, at his death the clergy had become a respectable and even learned body. The intestine discords, and the

renewed incursions of the Danes which succeeded, prevented the influence of this great man becoming permanent, (although some of his early successors offered some encouragement to learning,) and this country participated fully in the miseries of the dark or "iron" age, as the tenth century was emphatically termed. After the Danes had secured predominance, they relaxed in their persecutions of learning, and even established schools and restored Oxford, which, founded by Alfred, had been burned during ensuing commotions. Edward the Confessor also gave considerable encouragement to learning; and Ingulphus tells us that while at Westminster School, preparing for Oxford, he was examined by Edgitta, Edward's queen, as to his proficiency in classics. Still, if we are to credit William of Malmsbury, prior to the Conquest, learning had become almost extinct in Britain; the clergy could scarcely stammer through the service, and he who knew a little grammar was esteemed learned. Lanfranc found ignorance so prevalent in the English monasteries, that he ordained each monk should be compelled to study a book delivered to him within the year. William the Conqueror was a great encou rager of learning, conferring the highest posts and honours on men of great acquisitions. One hundred monasteries were established between 1066 and 1216; and a library was considered to be so essential an appendage, that "a convent without a library is like a castle without its armoury," became a proverb. The Abbey of Croyland*, only twenty-five years after the Conquest, contained nine hundred volumes. Some of the immediate successors of the Conqueror, as Henry Beauclerc, and the Plantagenets, were also patrons of letters; but the progress was anything but progressive. War in the form of a disputed succession, and the unprofitable contests with France, forbade that it should be so; and it had been so far from being the case, that the period between 1399 and 1485, though heralding in the revival of letters in the rest of Europe, was for us one of the darkest.

Mistaken religious zeal has led to a destruction of ancient manuscripts, nearly as fatal as that resulting from the confusion of war, and the irruption of barbarian nations. When the early Christians obtained possession of the Pagan temples, to which collections of books were frequently attached, they too often condemned these treasures to the same destruction that attended the idol inhabitants. Antonius mentions as highly honourable to the memory of Gregory the Great, that he had destroyed so many copies of Livy, and other profane writers, and that he had interdicted a bishop from teaching the classics, saying that the same lips should not utter the praises of Christ and of Jupiter. At the dissolution of monasteries by Henry the Eighth, says Ashmole, a red letter or a diagram was considered as sufficient to condemn a book as popish and diabolical, while the costly covers were frequently torn off, and carried away, and their more valuable contents thrown on one side as worthless. "To destroy without consideration," says Bale, "is and will be unto England for ever a most horrible infamy among the grave seniors of other nations. . . . . I know a merchant-man that bought the contents of two noble libraries for 40s.: a shame it is to be spoken. This stuff has he occupied instead of grey paper, and yet hath he store enough for many years to come." A portion of the magnificent library presented by Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, to the University of Oxford, was destroyed by visitors in the reign of Edward the Sixth, as the ornaments and illuminations of some of the splendid copies it contained were supposed to resemble popish missals and massbooks. The Puritans also subsequently destroyed all the ancient classics, and all manuscripts supposed to relate to the Catholic religion, that fell in their way.

The revival of literature from the state of abject * See Saturday Magazine Vol. III., p. 148.

degradation into which it had fallen, is a subject full of interest, not only from the completeness and rapidity with which the restoration took place, but also from the nature of some of the causes which led to its accomplishinent. After the transference of the seat of government from Rome to Constantinople, this latter city became the chief centre of attraction for all those imbued with the love of letters; and even when the darkest clouds of ignorance shrouded Western Europe, rays of light still emanated from the East. The learned Greeks who came hence from time to time, served to impart a love of letters to many of the leading inhabitants of the Italian cities, while at a still later epoch their dispersion over Europe by the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, encouraged the literary enthusiasm which the labours of Petrarch and his contemporaries had served to excite An ardent zeal for copying the ancient classics now manifested itself, and what had been before so slowly and sparingly performed by the monks, now took on all the activity consequent on its having become an important branch of trade.

To the indefatigability of Petrarch the first impulse in forwarding this good work is entirely due. He ransacked the monasteries in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, for the neglected treasures of antiquity they contained, and he became as it were a uniting bond or link between the celebrated literary characters of all countries. His contemporaries, as he did himself, deemed that his labours in this field were those which best entitled him to the gratitude of posterity. Boccacio's enthusiasm was directed into the same channel; and not only did he labour for the recovery of the manuscripts, but, for the instruction of his countrymen in the Greek language, to which end he established a professorship at Florence, to which he brought one of the most learned of the Constantinople Greeks. Some years after, the learned Poggio entered into this field of investigation, and continued for nearly fifty years an industrious labourer therein; to him we owe the recovery of some of the most valuable of the classical works of antiquity. Cosmo de Medici contributed both his wealth and influence to the furthering of these researches. "The father of a line of princes," says Gibbon, "whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning; his credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London; and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often imported in the same vessel." However later researches may have improved upon them, it is unquestionably to the labours of Petrarch, Poggio, and their contemporaries, we owe the first intelligible texts of the ancient classics. What Petrarch began in the fourteenth century, was zealously continued by others during the fifteenth. The lives of many Italian scholars were devoted to the recovery of lost manuscripts. The discovery of a new manuscript, says Tiraboschi, was looked upon almost as the conquest of a kingdom would be; and, he adds, it was in Italy, or by Italians, that the classical authors were chiefly discovered, by them were they first amended and printed, and first collected in public libraries.

So ignorant or supine had been the monks, as to the literary treasures their monasteries contained, that the ascertaining these now became a work of incredible difficulty. Scattered over various countries, the works were only to be assembled together at an enormous outlay of money, and expenditure of time; and Petrarch, although constantly travelling, required several years to complete a collection of Cicero's works. Then came the labour of copying and revising, to correct the numerous errors of former transcribers, and expunge the interpolations, and the no less necessary work of supplying indexes and notes. However, industry and enthusiasm surmounted every obstacle; numerous corrected copies were supplied, public libraries opened, and a general

craving for letters excited, when the only means of supplying the approaching increasing demand, the printing press, was discovered.

So great, says an able writer in the Edinburgh Review, was the zeal of these early discoverers, they ransacked libraries with such unwearied industry, employed so many active assistants, offered such liberal rewards, and paid such large prices, many of them being men of weight and influence, that it is difficult to suppose any manuscripts of importance have escaped their researches. The subsequent examination, in even remote regions, has commonly caused disappointment, and led to the belief that the agents of these men had even extended their researches to places most likely to have escaped their scrutiny.

It is possible, however, that some works may have escaped detection, in consequence of their having been frequently copied into a volume containing others of a very opposite character; either because their respective lengths, or the scarcity of material, were supposed to render this desirable. But a still greater number of works of a very opposite character were often bound up together, just as in our own day volumes of pamphlets are sometimes made up. The binding of one work with another, perhaps of greater value, has already been alluded to.

But it is from the examination of palimpsest manuscripts that the chief discoveries in more modern times have been made. A palimpsest, derived from two Greek words signifying rubbed or cleaned again, means a parchment from which the original writing has been erased or washed off, and other writing placed upon its site. The practice, originating in the expensive nature of parchment as a material for writing on, was known to the ancients. Cicero, addressing a person who had employed it, says he is surprised that he has become so far reduced as to possess not even paper; and to another he expresses his hopes that he had not erased his letters to substitute his own. Such erasures abounded in the Middle Ages, and many a monkish legend has displaced an old classic. "The tirades of Cyril or of Jerome, or the tawdry eloquence of Chrysostom, are perhaps firmly established in quarters from whence the margites of Homer, or the comedies of Menander, were miserably dislodged*." By the aid of a solution of galls, and other means, the original writing in several of these palimpsests has been restored; and in this way Angelo Mai, librarian of the Vatican, recovered several valuable piecest. The influence of the Mohammedans upon the revival of learning is both an extraordinary and important phenomenon. Mahomet and his successors were ruthless persecutors of learning, and the destruction of the library at Alexandria has ever remained a stigma upon the name of the Arabs yet this very people, as early as the eighth. century, having, during some of their conquests in the Asiatic provinces, met with some Greek books, became enamoured of their contents, and henceforth the protectors and encouragers of literature, to a then unexampled extent. The caliph Haroun al Raschid, his historians tell us, never travelled without being accompanied by a crowd of learned men; but his son Mamoun must be considered as the true father of letters among the Arabians. He assembled men of learning from all countries, and desired his lieutenants and generals to exact tributes in books, rather than in treasure, from the conquered. Hundreds of camels entered Bagdad, laden with literary stores, and, whatever of these seemed conducive to the welfare of his people, he ordered to be copied and translated. Thus the knowledge of antiquity which had become well nigh lost to the Western world, was by the exertions of this extraordinary people preserved and restored. In the West, says Sismondi, life

• Edinburgh Review, Vol. XLVIII., p. 348. For a further account of palimpsests see a recent volume of this Magazine.

itself, menaced by famine, the sword, and feudal tyranny, could be scarce preserved; and yet at this very time, the Arabs, who, by their conquests and fanaticism, had so contributed to the destruction of science and letters, began in their turn, to encourage them. Only a century after the outrage at Alexandria, the Abbasides manifested their cultivated taste.

The zeal with which manuscripts were multiplied may be judged of by the collections at Tunis, Algiers, and Fez, as by those remaining in the Escurial. The court of Mamoun more resembled an academy than the central point of a warlike people. Schools and colleges sprang up on every side, and the same zeal was carried far beyond the frontiers of Asia. Benjamin of Toledo says, there were twenty schools of philosophy at Alexandria; and that Cairo, Fez, and other places, were as well provided for. But it was in Spain that the Arabic literature shone with the highest brilliancy, and made the greatest progress. While the rest of Europe was plunged in darkness, in that country seventy libraries were opened to the public, and the number of authors there produced was prodigious. This condition of literary splendour continuing among the Arabs from the ninth to the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, must have had its influence in assisting in the restoration of letters in the West. Many learned men from England, France, and Italy, visited Spain, and drew from thence wherewith to benefit their respective countries: among these, Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester the Second, was one of the most eminent. One of the benefits derived by posterity from the Crusades, in compensation for the evils attendant upon the adventurers engaged in them, was the increasing the facilities of intercommunication between the East and the West, and the dissipation of the ignorance of the latter by lights derived in part from the learning of the former.

The revival of learning seems to have proceeded with more tardy steps in England than elsewhere, and was scarcely apparent before the beginning of the sixteenth century. Prior to that period we had rather retrograded; for, while in the fourteenth century 30,000 students flocked to Oxford, in the fifteenth the number was diminished to 3000: and during that century no great names, such as had heretofore shed a light upon our darkest periods, are to be observed. Even somewhile after the invention of printing, the diffusion of both books and knowledge was very slow. The first considerable impulse to letters seems to have been given during the reign of Henry the Eighth, when Wolsey was their greatest patron. J. C.

"THE music of birds," as one hath well observed, "was the first song of thanksgiving which was offered on earth before man was formed. All their sounds are different, but all harmonious, and all together compose a choir that we cannot imitate." If these little choristers of the air, when refreshed by the streams near which they dwell, express their gratitude by chanting, in their way, the praises of their Maker and Preserver, how ought Christians to blush, who, besides the comforts and conveniences of this world, are indulged with copious draughts of the water of eternal life, if, for so many great blessings, they pay not their tribute of thanksgiving, and sing not unto the Lord the songs of Sion! "He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have often done, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of the nightingale's voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music upon earth!"-BISHOP HORNE.

and subjugation of other species. We do even now perceive, notwithstanding the advance of human reason and the progress of invention, that in a thousand instances we cannot dispense with his assistance.

If we still feel the importance of his services in our state of society, what must have been the admiration of man, when, in the earliest period of patriarchal life, he was so much nearer to a state of nature!-when the wild hunter first beheld the joyous eyes of his voluntary associate, and heard his native howl modulated into barking; when he first perceived it assuming tones of domestication fit to which we still witness cattle, sheep, and even ducks and express a master's purposes, and intonate the language hawks, learn to understand! What exultation must he have felt when, with the aid of his new friend, he was enabled to secure and domesticate the first kid, the first lamb of the mountain race!-when with greater combinations of force and skill between man and his dogs, the bull, the buffalo, the camel, the wild ass, and then the horse, were compelled to accept his yoke; and finally, when, with the same assistance, the wild boar was tamed, the lion repelled, and even attacked with success! Although the total development of canine education must have been the work of ages, yet that it was very early, however imperfect, of great acknowledged importance, is attested by the prominent station assigned to the dog in the earliest theologies of Paganism. We know that his name was given to one of the most beautiful stars among the oldest designated in the heavens, and that it served for the purpose of fixing an constellations, nearly as old, were likewise noted by the epoch in the solar year by its periodical appearance. Other name of dogs; and there are proofs, in typifying ideas by images representing physical objects, that the admiration of mankind degenerated into superstition, moral qualities of the highest order were figured with characteristics of the dog, till his name and his image became conspicuous in almost every Pagan system of theology.-COLONEL H. SMITH'S History of Dogs.

WHITE.

JOHN W. PARKER, PUBLISHER, WEST STRAND, LONDON.

ONE of the most striking features of our eastern coast is the Peninsula of Hartlepool, in the county of Durham, whose bold and abrupt cliffs are crowned with mouldering towers, and thus give indications of its ancient strength and importance. The peninsula is connected with the main shore by a narrow neck of land towards the north, and stretches to the south and southwest, so as to form within its curve a natural harbour secure from the east winds.

The town of Hartlepool occupies the south-western point of the peninsula, and rises gradually from the old harbour to the moor, or common pasture, which is a beautiful plot of pasturage, enlivened in summer with the blossoms of the burnet rose, and the purple blossoms of sea-thrift and cranesbill. The cliffs, which terminate this moor seawards, are lofty and precipitous, lashed by the sea into wild and cavernous recesses, which appear to have been still further excavated by the hand of man. About twelve feet above the shore there are cells called "Fairy Caves," having communication with each other, which bear marks of the chisel, and are large enough to admit a human figure. These were probably formed, or enlarged as places of concealment in times of peril.

Under the remains of an old battery is the entrance of a gloomy cavern called the Gun Cove, which has been the subject of much popular superstition. It has been explored to the depth of fifty yards, and it is asserted that it communicates with the church. It may VOL. XXIV.

have been originally employed for the concealment of treasure, or it may have had communication with some neighbouring abbey; but the uncertainty that surrounds its history, has caused it, in past times, to be regarded almost as enchanted ground. To add to the picturesque appearance of the coast, detached masses of rock stand perfectly isolated. One of these, which is a few yards from the East Battery, particularly attracts attention, and the yawning space which separates the rock from the mainland is called the Maiden's Bower. This name is commonly attributed to the history of a poor girl who was thrown over the cliff by her inhuman lover, in the year 1727, and whose sad end is commemorated in a ballad called The Hartlepool Tragedy; but Surtees, in his history of this place, refers the name to an earlier period, stating that it is employed in the register previous to 1727, and probably arose from some superstition relative to the green-haired daughters of the sea; "for the rock and the bay are exactly such as they loved to haunt."

The town and haven of Hartlepool were once defended on every side with walls, except where the abrupt eastern cliffs and rocky coast rendered all defence needless.

In the time of some of the earlier historians Hartlepool exhibited a perfect and interesting specimen of the fortifications of former times, having a long extended wall, strengthened by demi-bastions at intervals, some rounded, others square; gates and sally-ports,

753