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military, metropolitan police, and special constables of the two previous years, had cost them more than £600-a sum which might, with greater fitness, have been laid out on certain town improvements, then much wanted. So the townsmen forwarded a memorial to the mayor, to be laid before the Home Secretary, pledging themselves that, if no extraneous force of military or police were brought into the town, nor expense incurred by appointing special constables, they, the subscribers, would prevent bull-running from taking place in Stamford during that year. The townsmen were wisely taken at their word, and there never has been a bull-run in Stamford since that time.

The highly-exciting nature of the amusement gave bull-running a charm to vulgar minds, that can scarcely now be understood or appreciated. For weeks before and after the 13th of November, the bullard's song might be heard re-echoing through all parts of Stamford. As a curious and almost forgotten relic of an ancient sport, it cannot be entirely unworthy of a place in these columns.

THE BULLARD'S SONG.

'Come all you bonny boys,

Who love to bait the bonny bull, Who take delight in noise,

And you shall have your bellyful. On Stamford's town Bull-running Day, We'll shew you such right gallant play, You never saw the like, you'll say, As you shall see at Stamford.

Earl Warren was the man,

That first began this gallant sport; In the castle he did stand,

And saw the bonny bulls that fought. The butchers with their bull-dogs came, These sturdy stubborn bulls to tame, But more with madness did inflame, Enraged, they ran through Stamford.

Delighted with the sport,

The meadows there he freely gave, Where these bonny bulls had fought,

The butchers now do hold and have; By charter they are strictly bound, That every year a bull be found; Come, dight your face, you dirty clown, And stump away to Stamford!

Come, take him by the tail, boys-
Bridge, bridge him if you can;
Prog him with a stick, boys;

Never let him quiet stand;
Through every street and lane in town,
We'll Chevy-chase him up and down,
You sturdy bung-straws ten miles round,
Come, stump away to Stamford.'

The old bullards are now nearly all dead; but the song, with various additions and variations, may still be occasionally heard. Mr Burton, writing in 1846, says: 'Every incident that calls to the mind of the lower classes their ancient holiday, is seized with enthusiasm, and the old bull-tune is invariably demanded, when anything in the shape of music attracts the attention. At the theatre, whenever there is a full house, "Bull! bull!" is

* Threshers.

SHOOTING-STARS.

invariably pealed from some corner of the gallery. The magic word immediately fills the mouth of every occupant of that part of the building; it is echoed from the pit, and order and quiet is out of the question till the favourite tune has been played.'

SHOOTING-STARS.

During three successive years, from 1831 to 1833, the 13th of November was marked by a magnificent display of shooting or falling stars, those mysterious visitants to our globe respecting whose real nature and origin science is still so perplexed. The first of these brilliant exhibitions was witnessed off the coasts of Spain, and in the country bordering on the Ohio. The second is thus described by Captain Hammond of H.M.S. Restitution, who beheld it in the Red Sea, off Mocha. 'From one o'clock A. M. till after daylight, there was a very unusual phenomenon in the heavens. It appeared like meteors bursting in every direction. The sky at the time was clear, the stars and moon bright, with streaks of light, and thin white clouds interspersed in the sky. On landing in the morning, I inquired of the Arabs if they had noticed the above. They said they had been observing it most of the night. I asked them if ever the like had appeared before. The oldest of them replied that it had not.' The area over which this phenomenon was seen extended from the Red Sea westwards to the Atlantic, and from Switzerland to the Mauritius.

But the most imposing display of shooting-stars on record occurred on the third of these occasions -that is, on 13th November 1833. It extended chiefly over the limits comprised between longitude 61° in the Atlantic, and 100° in Central Mexico, and from the latitude of the great lakes of North America, to the West Indies. From the appearance presented, it might be regarded as a grand and portentous display of nature's fireworks. Seldom has a scene of greater or more awful sublimity been exhibited than at the Falls of Niagara on this memorable occasion, the two leading powers in nature, water and fire, engaging, as it were, in an emulative display of their grandeur. The awful roar of the cataract filled the mind of the spectator with an infinitely heightened sense of sublimity, when its waters were lightened up by the glare of the meteoric torrent in the sky. In many parts of the country, the people were terror-struck, imagining that the end of the world was come; whilst those whose education and vigour of mind prevented them from yielding to such terrors, were, nevertheless, vividly reminded of the grand description in the Apocalypse, 'The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.'

The most probable theory as to the nature of shooting-stars is, that they form part of the solar system, revolving round the sun in the same manner as the planetoids, but both infinitely smaller in size, and subject to great and irregular perturbations. The latter cause brings them not unfrequently within the limits of the earth's atmosphere, on entering which they become luminous from the great heat produced by the sudden and violent compression which their transit occasions. Having thus approached the earth with great

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occasionally fall to the surface of the earth, may be such of those bodies as have been brought so far within the influence of terrestrial gravity as to be rendered subject to its effects.

NOVEMBER 14.

St Dubricius, bishop and confessor, 6th century. Laurence, confessor, archbishop of Dublin, 1180.

reason of its universal sympathies. To be remembered for ever by some work requires that the whole energy, at least for a time, be given to one work. 'Even great parts,' says Locke, writing of Leibnitz in 1697, will not master any subject without great thinking.'

Leibnitz was the son of a professor of jurisprudence in the university of Leipsic, in which city he was born in 1646. He was a precocious child, and from his boyhood displayed that love of St learning and speculation which distinguished him through life. He gives an amusing account of his efforts when a youth of fifteen, during long solitary walks in the wood of Rosenthal, near Leipsic, to adjust the claims of the Ancients and Moderns-of

Born.-Benjamin Hoadly, bishop of Bangor, eminent Whig prelate, 1676, Westerham, Kent; Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, Danish poet, 1779, Copenhagen; Sir Charles Lyell, geologist, 1797, Kinnordy, Forfarshire.

Died.-Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, mathematician and moral philosopher, 1716, Hanover; George William Frederick Hegel, German philosopher, 1831, Berlin; Dr John Abercrombie, physician and moral writer, 1844, Edinburgh.

LEIBNITZ.

Leibnitz is one of the great names of literature: 'A man so various that he seemed to be

Not one, but all mankind's epitome.' Nevertheless, though his title to fame is everywhere confessed, few at this day, with the exception of some arduous students, are practically conversant with its grounds. Leibnitz was one of the chief intellectual forces of his age, but as a force he was more remarkable for quantity than intensity. He busied himself in a multitude of pursuits and he excelled in all, but he produced no master-piece -nothing of which it could be said, It is the best of its kind. He was a universal genius; his intellect was as capacious as harmonious, and a storehouse for all knowledge; but his mind was lost by

Aristotle and Descartes, and the reluctance with which, when conciliation was impossible, he was compelled to make an election. His talents, as manifested at the university, and his publications, early brought him into notice, and found him patrons among the princes of Germany. He travelled over the continent, visited England, and everywhere made the acquaintance of men of science and letters. An amusing anecdote is told of him when at sea in a tempest off the Italian coast. The sage captain attributed the storm to the presence of the heretical German, and presuming him ignorant of the Italian language, began to deliberate with the crew on the propriety of throwing the Lutheran Jonah overboard. Leibnitz, with much presence of mind, got hold of a rosary and began to tell his beads with vehement devotion. The ruse saved him. At Nürnberg, he heard of a society of alchemists who were prosecuting a search for the philosopher's stone. He wished to join them, and compiled a letter from the writings of the most celebrated alchemists and sent it to them. The letter consisted of the most obscure terms he could find, and of which, he says, he did not understand

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a syllable. The illuminati, afraid to be thought ignorant, invited him to their meetings and made him their secretary. Though Leibnitz could thus quiz the alchemists, he believed, to the end of his life, in the reality of the object of their labours. In the leisure which various pensions secured him, he followed his versatile inclinations with incessant assiduity. Metaphysics, physics, mathematics, jurisprudence, theology, philology, history, antiquities, the classics, all shared his attention, and in all of these branches of knowledge the world heard his voice with respect. The ancient languages he knew well, and was tolerably acquainted with more than half-a-dozen of the modern. He had notions about calculating machines, about improved watches, about a universal alphabet, about hydraulic engines, about swift carriages, by which the journey of one hundred and fifty miles, between Amsterdam and Hanover, might be done in twenty-four hours; and about a hundred other things. He dabbled in medicine, in everything; there was nothing, in fact, in which he could not be interested. In his Protogena, he throws out thoughts, which, Dean Buckland observes, contain the germ of some of the most enlightened speculations in geology. His memory was quick and tenacious; he made notes as he read, but he had seldom to refer to them, for he seemed to forget nothing. George I. used to call him his living dictionary. At the age of seventy, he could recite hundreds of lines of Virgil without an error.

In mathematics, if anywhere, his genius shewed itself supreme, and between him and Sir Isaac Newton a bitter controversy broke out as to the credit of the invention of the differential calculus. The question has been thoroughly and tediously debated, but the following points are now considered as tolerably clear: 1st, That the system of fluxions invented by Newton is essentially the same as the differential calculus invented by Leibnitz, differing only in notation; 2d, That Newton possessed the secret of fluxions as early as 1665, nineteen years before Leibnitz published his method, and eleven years before he communicated it to Newton; 3d, That both Leibnitz and Newton discovered their methods independently of each other, but that Newton had priority; and 4th, That although the honour belongs to both, yet, as in every other great invention, they were but the individuals who combined the scattered rays of their predecessors, and gave a method, a notation, and a name to the doctrine of infinitesimal quantities.

As a theologian and metaphysician, Leibnitz was eclectic rather than original. His temper was truly catholic; he differed from others with reluctance; and it seemed to be one of his keenest delights to reconcile apparent contraries. Hence one of his schemes was the incorporation of the various sects of Protestantism, preparatory, if possible, to the inclusion of Rome, with concessions, in one grand Christian community. In philosophy, he had a doctrine called Pre-established Harmony, by which he professed to explain the relations between Deity, the Human Mind, and Nature. It met with wide discussion and some acceptance in the lifetime of Leibnitz, but Pre-established Harmony has long passed out of memory except in histories of philosophy.

One of the warmest admirers of Leibnitz was

578

THE SOURCES OF THE NILE.

;

Sophia Charlotte, wife of Frederick, the first king of Prussia, a great lover of show and ceremony, for which his consort had a quiet contempt. Leibnitz called her 'one of the most accomplished princesses of earth,' and by the world she was known as the republican and philosophic queen. To Leibnitz, 'le grand Leibnitz,' as she styled him, she resorted for counsel in all her theological and philosophical difficulties, and not seldom to his perplexity, wanting to know, he said: 'le pourquoi du pourquoi' (the why of the why). Wearied with the emptiness of courtiers, she wrote on one occasion: 'Leibnitz talked to me about the infinitely little mon Dieu, as if I did not know enough of that!' This bright soul died at thirty-six, to the great grief of Leibnitz. On her death-bed she said she was very happy; that the king would have a fine opportunity for display at her funeral; and, above all, that now she was going to satisfy her curiosity about a great many things of which Leibnitz could tell her nothing. With many other crowned heads Leibnitz held intercourse more or less intimate. Peter the Great consulted him as to the best means for the civilisation of Russia, and rewarded his suggestions with the title of Councillor of State, and a pension of a thousand roubles.

Leibnitz was only able to get through his multiform business by persistent assiduity. He carried on a most extensive correspondence, and wrote his letters with great care, sometimes three or four times over, and made them the repositories of his most valued ideas and conjectures. His life was sedentary almost beyond example. Sometimes for weeks together he would not go to bed, but sat at his desk till a late hour, then took two or three hours of sleep in his chair, and resumed work at early dawn. He was a bachelor, and had no fixed hours for his meals; but sent to a tavern for food, when hungry and at leisure. His head was large and bald, his hair fine and brown, his face pale, his sight short, his shoulders broad, and his legs crooked and ungainly. He was spare and of middle height, but in walking, he threw his head so far forward as to look from behind like a hunchback. His neglect of exercise told severely on him as he advanced in life. He became plagued with rheumatic gout, his legs ulcerated, and he aggra vated his ailment by compressing afflicted parts with wooden vices to stop the circulation of the blood, and dull the sense of pain. He died in Hanover in 1716, in his seventieth year, from the effects, it is said, of an untried medicine of his own concoction. He was buried on the esplanade of his native city of Leipsic, where a monument, in the form of a temple, with the simple inscription, 'Ossa Leibnitii,' marks the spot.

DISCOVERY OF THE SOURCES OF THE NILE.

It is curious to look back to the days when Bruce the traveller published his celebrated work on Africa, and claimed to have discovered the true sources of the mysterious river which flows so many hundreds of miles through that continent. Comparing that narrative with one which has appeared in 1863, we see that Bruce was in the wrong; that he may have discovered a source but not the source; and that a long series of intermediate investigations was needed to arrive at a true solution of the interesting problem. No blame to James Bruce

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for all this. He was really a sagacious and enterprising man; and although some doubt was thrown upon his truthfulness during his life, he is now believed to have been veracious to the extent of his knowledge. His error concerning the sources of the Nile may well be excused, considering the harassing difficulties of the problem.

Glancing at a map of Africa, we see that the Nile is formed by several branches, which meet in Nubia, and flow northward through Egypt into the Mediterranean. The puzzle has been to determine which of the branches ought to be considered as the true Nile, and which mere affluents or tributaries. The easternmost of the chief or important branches, the Atbara, rises in about 12° N. lat., 40° E. long; and joins the main river near 18° N. lat., 34° E. long. It was visited by Salt and by Pearce, and has been often noticed by travellers in Abyssinia. The middle, or second of the three branches, known as the Bahr-el-Azrek, or Blue Nile, is, par excellence, the river of Abyssinia, winding through and about that country in a very remarkable way. Bruce traced it upwards until it became a mere streamlet in 11° N. lat., 37° E. long., near the village of Geesh, whence it flows by Sennaar to its junction with the greater Nile at Khartoum. The westernmost, and largest branch, the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White Nile, is extremely circuitous in its route, winding through the countries of Darfur and Kordofan in a very intricate way.

Now it is the Bahr-el-Azrek, or Blue Nile, which Bruce considered to be the true or original river, and which, on the 14th of November 1770, he believed himself to have traced up to its source. In the preface to his Travels (written in 1790, and, as is supposed, not so accurately as if he had allowed less than twenty years to elapse) he said: 'I hope that what I have said will be thought sufficient to convince all impartial readers that these celebrated sources have, by a fatality, remained to our days as unknown as they were to antiquity; no good or genuine voucher having yet been produced capable of proving that they were before discovered, or seen by the curious eye of any traveller, from the earliest ages to this day. And it is with confidence I propose to my reader, that he will consider me as still standing at the fountain, and patiently hear from me the recital of the origin, course, nature, and circumstances of this the most famous river in the world, which he will in vain seek from books, or from any other human authority whatever, and which by the care and attention I have paid to the subject, will, I hope, be found satisfactory here.'

Bruce was all the more proud of his achievement, because the ancients had believed that the Bahr-elAbiad was the true Nile, an opinion which he claimed to have shewn fallacious. The ancients were right, however, and Bruce wrong. Step by step the White Nile has been traced to points nearer and nearer to the equator, and therefore nearer to its source. Linant, in 1827, ascended as far as Aleis, in 15° N. lat. In 1842, Werne, heading an expedition sent out by the pacha of Egypt, reached to 5° N. lat., and was told by the

natives that the source was still far distant. In 1845, M. D'Abbadie thought he had reached the source of the Nile; but Beke afterwards shewed that the stream traced by D'Abbadie was only an affluent of the Bahr-el-Abiad, and expressed an

SOURCES OF THE NILE.

opinion that the real source is even beyond the equator. M. Knoblecher, who had a missionary establishment at Khartoum, went up the White Nile as far as 4° N. lat., and saw that river still far away to the south-west.

The grand discovery of all, that the Nile really rises in south latitude, and crosses the equator, was made by Captains Grant and Speke, whose names have become thereby renowned throughout Europe. In 1858, Captain Speke reached a very beautiful lake, the Victoria Nyanza, while journeying westward from Zanzibar. The head of this lake is three degrees south of the equator. He found the lake to be a large sheet of fresh water, lying on a plateau or table-land, from 3000 to 4000 feet above the level of the sea. The lake, to use the language of Captain Speke, 'looked for all the world like the source of some great river; so much so, indeed, that I at once felt certain in my own mind it was the source of the Nile, and noted it accordingly.' It was the bold guess of a sagacious and experienced man. The Victoria Nyanza is really the head-water of the Nile, being fed immediately by a range of lofty mountains in the interior. Its most southern affluent is the Leewumbu or Shimeeyu. Stanley, who sailed round the lake in 1875, and who explored the head-waters of the Congo, confirmed Speke's discovery. It is thus settled that the Nile flows uninterruptedly from the lake to the Mediterranean, through no less than thirty-four degrees of latitude, and along a course exceeding 2000 miles in length, in a straight line, and perhaps 3000, allowing for windings. Captain Speke was prevented from putting his speculation to the test in 1859 or 1860; but in 1861 and 1862, accompanied by Captain Grant, he traced the course of the grand river down from the lake to the ocean-not actually keeping the stream in view the whole of the way, but touching it repeatedly here and there, in such a way as to leave no doubt that it is the Nile.

Thus the somewhat magniloquent terms in which Bruce announced his discoveries have not proved to be justified. The post of honour is to be given, not to the Blue Nile, but to the White Nile, and at a point nearly a thousand miles further south than was reached by Bruce.

NOVEMBER 15.

St Eugenius, martyr, 275. St Malo or Maclou, first bishop of Aleth in Brittany, 565. St Leopold, Marquis of Austria, confessor, 1136. St Gertrude, virgin and abbess, 1292.

Born.-Andrew Marvell, poet and politician, 1620, Kingston-upon-Hull; William Pitt, great Earl of Chatham, 1708, Boconnoc, Cornwall; William Cowper, poet, 1731, Great Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire; Sir William Herschel, astronomer, 1738, Hanover; John Caspar Lavater, physiognomist, 1741, Zurich; Rev. James Scholefield, scholar and classic editor, 1789, Henley on Thames.

Died.-Albertus Magnus, celebrated schoolman, 1280, Cologne; Mrs Anne Turner, executed as an accomplice in murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1615, London; John Kepler, great astronomer, 1630, Ratisbon; Henry Ireton, son-in-law of Cromwell, 1651, Limerick; James, Duke of Hamilton, killed in a duel in Hyde Park, 1712; Christopher Gluck, composer, 1787, Vienna; Bishop Tomline, author of Refutation of Calvinism, 1827; Count Rossi, minister of interior, Papal States, assassinated, 1848, Rome; Johanna Kinkel, German novelist and musician, 1858.

ANDREW MARVELL.

ANDREW MARVELL

THE BOOK OF DAYS.

It is pleasant to observe how the respect for 'honest Andrew Marvell' outlives all the political changes which succeed each other at fitful intervals in England; it is a homage to manliness and probity. During his life, from 1620 to 1678, he was mixed up with many of the exciting controversies of the times; but it was in the last eighteen years of his life, when Charles II. was king, that Marvell attained his highest reputation. He acted as member of parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull; he trusted the electors, and they trusted him; and there has never been known in the history of our parliament a connection more honourable than that between him and his constituents. He used to write constantly to them about the state of public affairs; and his letters have considerable historical value, insomuch as they supply contemporary evidence of the proceedings in high places. The court-party could not be very much pleased at the publication of such a letter, as the following, from Andrew Marvell to his constitutents at Hull: "The king having, upon pretence of the great preparations of his neighbours, demanded £300,000 for his navy (though, in conclusion, he hath not sent out any), that the parliament should pay his debts, which the ministers would never particularise to the House of Commons, our house gave several bills. You see how far things were stretched beyond reason, there being no satisfaction how those debts were contracted; and all men foreseeing that what was given would not be applied to discharge the debts, which I hear are, at this day, risen to four millions, but diverted as formerly. Nevertheless, such was the number of the constant courtiers, increased by the apostate patriots, who were bought off for that term, some at six, others at ten, one at fifteen thousand pounds in money; besides what offices, lands, and reversions to others, that it is a mercy they gave not away the whole land and liberty of England. The Duke of Buckingham is again £140,000 in debt; and by this prorogation, his creditors have time to tear all his lands to pieces. The House of Commons have run almost to the end of their line, and are grown extremely chargeable to the king and odious to the people. They have signed and sealed ten thousand a year more to the Duchess of Cleveland, who has likewise near ten thousand a year out of the new farm of the country excise of beer and ale; five thousand a year out of the post-office; and, they say, the reversion of all the king's leases, the reversion of all places in the custom-house, the green wax, and indeed, what not. All promotions, spiritual and temporal, pass under her cognizance.'

The particular incident which has stamped the name of Andrew Marvell with the impress of honesty, has been narrated under different forms; but the following is its substance, as given by one writer: The borough of Hull chose Andrew Marvell, a gentleman of little or no fortune, and maintained him in London for the service of the public. His understanding, integrity, and spirit were dreadful to the then infamous administration. Persuaded that he would be theirs for properly asking, the ministers sent his old school-fellow, the Lord Treasurer Danby, to renew acquaintance with him in his garret. At parting, the lord treasurer,

580

MRS TURNER.

out of pure affection, slipped into his hand an order upon the treasury for one thousand pounds, and then went into his chariot. Marvell, looking at the paper, calls after the treasurer: "My lord, I request another moment." They went up again to the garret, and Jack, the servant-boy, was called. "Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?" "Don't you remember, sir? You had the little shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring from a woman in the market." "Very right, child What have I for dinner to-day?" "Don't you know, sir, that you bade me lay by the blade-bone to broil?" ""Tis so; very right, child; go away. My lord, do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is provided. There's I want your piece of paper; it not. I know the sort of kindness intended. I live here to serve my constituents; the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one." The setting of this story is somewhat too dramatic, but there is reason to believe that the substance of it is quite true. It is further said, that, though he thus rejected the money, he was in straitened circumstances at the time, insomuch that he was obliged, as soon as Danby had departed, to send to a friend to borrow a guinea,

MRS TURNER.

you

The beauty of this woman, and her connection with the mysterious death of Sir Thomas Overbury, who was poisoned in the Tower through her agency, have invested her name with a species of romance in the annals of crime. Though she undoubtedly merited her fate, both she and her accomplices were merely the minor parties in this nefarious transaction, the principal criminals being the Earl and Countess of Somerset, who, though tried and condemned, received the king's pardon, and after undergoing an imprisonment of some years, were allowed to retire into the country and obscurity. The whole affair forms a singular episode in the reign of James I., and by no means reflects credit on that weak monarch.

When Robert Carr or Ker, a young Scottish adventurer of the border-family of Ferniherst, established himself so rapidly in the good graces of his sovereign, rising suddenly to the most influential posts in the kingdom, Sir Thomas Overbury acted as his bosom-friend and counsellor, and furnished him with most useful and judicious advice as to the mode of comporting himself in the new and unwonted sphere in which he was thus placed. Carr unfortunately, however, cast his eyes on the Countess of Essex, the beautiful and fascinating daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who had been married when a girl of thirteen to the Earl of Essex, son of the unfortunate favourite of Queen Elizabeth, and who himself afterwards became so noted in the reign of Charles I. as the commander of the parliamentary army. This object of illicit love was but too ready to respond to the addresses of Carr, now created Viscount Rochester, having, it is believed, owed much of the depravity of her disposition to the pernicious lessons of Mrs Turner, who lived as a dependent and companion to his daughter in the house of the Earl of Suffolk. This abandoned Mentor afterwards became the wife of a physician, at whose death, owing to the extravagant manner in which both she and her husband had lived, she was left in very straitened circumstances,

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