BRUNEL.

thus rendered to the navy he endeavoured to repeat for the army, in devising machinery for the manufacture of shoes, in which pins took the place of thread, so that the rubbish supplied by rascally contractors might be superseded. The peace of 1815 removed the pressing necessity for great numbers of soldiers' shoes, and it was reserved for American enterprise to develop into commercial practice shoe-making by machinery. The circularsaw, worked by the steam-engine, was brought to its present high degree of force and efficiency by Brunel, and the saw-mill in Chatham dock-yard was erected under his care. He devised a machine for twisting cotton and forming it into balls; another for hemming and stitching; another for knitting; another for copying letters; another for ruling paper; another for nail-making; another for making wooden boxes; a hydraulic packing-press; besides new methods and combinations for suspension-bridges, and a process for building wide and flat arches without centerings. He was employed in the construction of the first Ramsgate steamer, and was the first to suggest the use of steam-tugs to the Admiralty. At the playful request of Lady Spencer, he produced a machine for shuffling cards. The cards were placed in a box, a handle was turned, and in a few seconds the sides flew open, and presented the pack divided into four parts, thoroughly mixed. This enumeration may give some idea of the versatility of Brunel's inventive powers, but he lacked mercantile faculty whereby to turn them to pecuniary advantage. In 1821, he was actually imprisoned for debt, and was only released by a vote of £5000 from government.

In the construction of an engine with carbonic acid gas for the motive-power, Brunel, assisted by his son, spent nearly fifteen years and £15,000 in experiments. They overcame most of the mechanical difficulties-they obtained an intense power at a low temperature-and the hopes of the scientific and commercial worlds were alike strongly excited; but in the end they had to confess a failure, and admit, that the effect of any given amount of caloric on gaseous bodies was not greater than that produced by the expansion of water into steam;' and that, therefore, the practical application of condensed gases, including common air, was not so advantageous as that derived from the expansive force of steam.'

The great enterprise by which Brunel became popularly distinguished, was the Thames Tunnel. Two or three attempts had been made to connect the shores of Essex and Kent by a subaqueous passage, but all had failed. One day, when Brunel was passing through the dock-yard at Chatham, his eye was caught by a piece of ship-timber perforated by the destructive worm-the Teredo Navalis; and the study of its mode of operation suggested the construction of a cast-iron shield, which should bore like an auger by means of strong hydraulic screws, while as fast as the earth was cut away, bricklayers should be at hand to replace it with an arch. He patented the plan, and revived the project of a road under the Thames. In 1824, a Thames Tunnel Company was formed, and in 1825, the work commenced, and was pursued through many difficulties from explosions of gas and irruptions of water, until 1828. At the beginning of that year about 600 feet were completed, when, on the 12th of January, the river broke through, six men were

PRAISE-GOD BAREBONES' PARLIAMENT. drowned, and Brunel's son, also so distinguished in after-days as an engineer, only escaped by being washed up the shaft. The tunnel was emptied, but the funds of the company were exhausted. In an 'Ode to M. Brunel,' Hood wrote:

'Other great speculations have been nursed,

Till want of proceeds laid them on the shelf: But thy concern was at the worst

When it began to liquidate itself.'

For seven years, until 1835, work was suspended, when, at the solicitation of the Duke of Wellington, government advanced the company, on loan, £246,000. At last the entire 1200 feet, from Wapping to Rotherhithe, were completed, and on the 25th of March 1843 the tunnel was opened to the public. Brunel was knighted by the Queen, and his fame was borne to the ends of the earth. As an engineer, the work reflected great credit on him, but commercially it was a failure. It cost well-nigh £500,000, and the tolls produce annually something less than £5000, a sum barely sufficient to keep the tunnel in repair. If it were possible to complete the original design, and open it as a carriage-way, the revenue would be enormously increased; but in order to do so, it is estimated that £180,000 would be required to construct the necessary approaches.

Brunel died in 1849, in his eighty-first year, leaving behind him a son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who fully inherited his father's genius. Brunel was a little man, with a head so large, that an Irishman once said, 'Why that man's face is all head!' Many amusing anecdotes are told of his blunders during his moods of inventive abstraction; as, for instance, caressing a lady's hand, who sat next him at table, thinking it his wife's; forgetting his own name, and handing in other people's cards at houses he visited; and getting into wrong coaches, and travelling long distances ere he discovered his mistake. At other times he shewed rare presence of mind. Once when inspecting the Birmingham railway, trains, to the horror of the bystanders, were observed to approach from opposite directions. Brunel, seeing retreat to be impossible, buttoned his coat, brought the skirts close round him, and placing himself firmly between the two lines of rail, the trains swept past, and left him unscathed.

PRAISE-GOD BAREBONES' PARLIAMENT.

When Charles I. had been put to death by the Revolutionists, on the 30th January 1649, the nation was governed, for four or five years, by the parliament, more or less under the control of the successful military leaders. Circumstances gave these military leaders more and more influence; for, owing to the contentions of Royalists, Presbyterians, Levellers, Covenanters, Fifth - Monarchy Men, Antinomians, and other parties, the civil power was very much distracted. Cromwell soon gained an ascendency over all the other active men of the day, on account both of his military successes, and of the force of his character generally. After the battle of Worcester (September 3, 1651), and the flight of Charles II., Cromwell made gradual strides towards supreme power. The parliament grew jealous of him and the army, and he jealous of their preference for the navy. At length, on April 20, 1653, he forcibly dissolved that celebrated

parliament, known in history as the Long Parliament: a most violent proceeding, which made him practically dictator over the whole kingdom. Cromwell, in his self-assumed capacity as 'captain-general and commander-in-chief of all the armies and forces raised and to be raised within this commonwealth,' summoned a sort of parliament, by an order dated June 6: the parliament or council to consist of persons nominated by him, and not elected by the people. A hundred and forty of these summonses were issued, and all but two of the persons summoned attended. Bulstrode expressed wonder, when recording these events, that so many persons of good-fortune and education accepted the summons from such a man as Oliver. Mr Carlyle comments on Bulstrode's perplexity, and on the constitution of the assembly generally, in one of his most characteristic passages: My disconsolate friend, it is a sign that Puritan England, in general, accepts this action of Cromwell and his officers, and thanks them for it, in such a case of extremity; saying, as audibly as the means permitted: Yea, we did wish it so! Rather imournful to the disconsolate official mind! Lord Clarendon, again, writing with much latitude, has characterised this convention as containing in it "divers gentlemen who had estates, and such a proportion of credit in the world as might give some colour to the business;" but consisting, on the whole, of a very miserable beggarly sort of persons, acquainted with nothing but the art of praying; "artificers of the meanest trades," if they even had any trade: all which the reader shall, if he please, add to the general guano-mountains, and pass on, not regarding. The undeniable fact is, these men were, as Whitelock intimates, a quité respectable assembly; got together by anxious "consultation of the godly clergy," and chief Puritan lights in their respective counties; not without much earnest revision, and solemn consideration in all kinds, on the part of men adequate enough for such a work, and desirous enough to do it well. The list of the assembly exists; not yet entirely gone dark for mankind. A fair proportion of them still recognisable to mankind. Actual peers one or two founders of peerage families, two or three, which still exist among us-Colonel Edward Montague, Colonel Charles Howard, Anthony Ashley Cooper. And better than kings' peers, certain peers of nature; whom, if not the king and his pasteboard Norroys have had the luck to make peers of, the living heart of England has since raised to the peerage, and means to keep there-Colonel Robert Blake, the Sea-King, for one. "Known persons,"

I do think," of approved integrity, men fearing God;" and perhaps not entirely destitute of sense any one of them! Truly it seems rather a distinguished parliament-even though Mr Praise-God Barebone, "the leather merchant in Fleet Street," be, as all mortals must admit, a member of it. The fault, I hope, is forgivable? Praise-God, though he deals in leather, and has a name which can be misspelt, one discerns to be the son of pious parents; to be himself a man of piety, of understanding, and weight-and even of considerable private capital, my witty flunky friends! We will leave Praise-God to do the best he can, I think.-And old Francis Rouse is there from Devonshire; once member for Truro; provost of Eton College; whom by-and-by they make speaker; whose psalms the northern

THE TRADESCANTS

kirks will sing. Richard, mayor of Hursley, is there, and even idle Dick Norton; Alexander Jaffray of Aberdeen, Laird Swinton of the College of Justice in Edinburgh; Alderman Ireton, brother of the late Lord Deputy, colleague of Praise-God in London. In fact, a real assembly of the notables in Puritan England; a parliament, parliamentum, a real speaking apparatus for the now dominant interest in England, as exact as could well be got

much more exact, I suppose, than any ballot-box, free hustings, or ale-barrel election usually yields. Such is the assembly called the Little Parliament, and wittily Barebones' Parliament. Their witty name survives; but their history is gone dark.'*

all

This was, indeed, a little parliament of only five months' duration. Hume casts unsparing ridicule on its proceedings; Carlyle praises it, saying that its mission was to introduce Christianity into private life. It failed. No wonder,' says Carlyle. Fearful impediments lay against that effort of theirs the sluggishness, the half-and-half-ness, the greediness, the cowardice, the general opacity of ten million men against it-alas, the whole world, and what we call the devil and all his angels, against it! Considerable angels, human and others." Cromwell found his Little Parliament often going beyond his wishes in reform; and, at length a bill to abolish tithes, because the clergy were lazy, and another to abolish the Court of Chancery, raised such a storm against them that Cromwell was glad to get rid of them. By a sort of party-manoeuvre, on December 12, the parliament voted its own death, in a resolution: That the sitting of this parliament any longer, as now constituted, will not be for the good of the commonwealth; and that therefore it is requisite to deliver up unto the Lord-general Cromwell the powers which we received from him. The minority insisted on maintaining a house,' and continued the sittings with a new speaker. But General Harrison entered with a few soldiers, and asked what they were doing. 'We are seeking the Lord,' said they. Then you may go elsewhere, said he 'for to my certain knowledge, He has not been here these many years.' Thus the 'Barebones' Parliament' died: four days afterwards, Oliver Cromwell became Protector.

THE TRADESCANTS.

The following lines are inscribed upon a tomb in Lambeth churchyard:

'Know, stranger, ere thou pass; beneath this stone,
Lye John Tradescant, grandsire, father, son;
The last dy'd in his spring; the other two
Lived till they had travelled Art and Nature through,
As by their choice collections may appear,
Of what is rare, in land, in sea, in air;
Whilst they (as Homer's Iliad in a nut)
A world of wonders in one closet shut.
These famous antiquarians that had been
Both Gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen,
Transplanted now themselves, sleep here; and when
Angels shall with their trumpets waken men,
And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise
And change this garden for a paradise.'

The grandsire of the above epitaph came of Flemish origin. After travelling through Europe

* Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations by Thomas Carlyle, vol. ii. p. 388

and in the East, he settled in England; and was at one time gardener to the Duke of Buckingham, and afterwards to Charles I. He formed a large 'physic garden' at South Lambeth, and was the means of introducing many plants into this country. So ardent was he in the acquisition of rarities, that he is said to have joined an expedition against the Algerine corsairs, in order to obtain a new sort of apricot from North Africa, which was known thence as the Algier apricot. He was also an enthusiastic collector of curiosities, with which he filled his house, and earned for it the popular name of 'Tradeskin's Ark.' He died at an advanced age, in 1652 or 1653. His son, another John Tradescant, followed in his father's footsteps. In 1656, he published a catalogue of his collection under the title of Museum Tradescantianum. From this we learn that it was indeed a multifarious assemblage of strange things-stuffed animals and birds, chemicals, dyeing materials, idols, weapons, clothes, coins, medals, musical instruments, and relics of all sorts. We here enumerate a few of the strangest articles Easter eggs of the patriarchs of Jerusalem; two feathers of the phoenix tayle; claw of the bird Roc, who, as authors report, is able to truss an elephant; a natural dragon above two inches long; the Dodad, from the isle of Mauritius, so big as not to be able to fly; the bustard, as big as a turkey, usually taken by greyhounds on Newmarket Heath; a cow's tail from Arabia; half a hazelnut, with seventy pieces of household stuff in it; a set of chessmen in a peppercorn; landskips, stories, trees, and figures, cut in paper by some of the emperors; a trunnion of Drake's ship; knife wherewith Hudson was killed in Hudson's Bay Anna Bullen's night-vail; Edward the Confessor's gloves.'

In Ashmole's diary, under date 12th December 1659, occurs this entry: Mr Tradescant and his wife told me they had long been considering upon whom to bestow their closet of curiosities when they died, and at last resolved to give it unto me.' Tradescant died in 1672, and bequeathed his house to Ashmole, who, after some litigation with his friend's widow, took possession of the ark in 1674. The collection was left by Ashmole to the university of Oxford, and was the nucleus of the museum bearing his name.

In May 1747, Sir W. Watson visited the longneglected garden of Tradescant, and found it entirely grown over with weeds, with which, however, a few of the old gardener's favourites yet struggled for life. Among them were 'two trees of the arbutus, the largest which I have seen, which from their being so long used to our winters, did not suffer by the severe colds of 1729 and 1740, when most of their kind were killed throughout England.'

DECEMBER 13.

St Lucy, virgin and martyr, 304. St Jodoc or Josse, confessor, 666. St Aubert, bishop of Cambray and Arras, 669. St Othilia, virgin and abbess, 772. St Kenelm, king and martyr, 820. Blessed John Marinoni, confessor, 1562.

ST LUCY.

St Lucy was a native of Syracuse, and sought in marriage by a young nobleman of that city; but

THE EMBER-DAYS.

she had determined to devote herself to a religious life, and persistently refused the addresses of her suitor, whom she still further exasperated by distributing the whole of her large fortune among the poor. He thereupon accused her to the governor, Paschasius, of professing Christian doctrines, and the result was her martyrdom, under the persecution of the Emperor Dioclesian. A curious legend regarding St Lucy is, that on her lover complaining to her that her beautiful eyes haunted him day and night, she cut them out of her head, and sent them to him, begging him now to leave her to pursue, unmolested, her devotional aspirations. It is added that Heaven, to recompense this act of abnegation, restored her eyes, rendering them more beautiful than ever. In allusion to this circumstance, St Lucy is generally represented bearing a platter, on which two eyes are laid; and her intercession is frequently implored by persons labouring under ophthalmic affections.

The Ember-days.

The Ember-days are periodical fasts originally century, for the purpose of imploring the blessing instituted, it is said, by Pope Calixtus, in the third preparing the clergy for ordination, in imitation of Heaven on the produce of the earth; and also chapter of the Acts. It was not, however, till the of the apostolic practice recorded in the 13th Council of Placentia, 1095 A.D., that a uniformity as regards the season of observance was introduced. By a decree of this assembly, it was enacted that Friday, and Saturday following, respectively, the the Ember-days should be the first Wednesday, first Sunday in Lent, or Quadragesima Sunday, Whitsunday, Holyrood Day (14th September), and St Lucy's Day (13th December). The term is said to be derived from the Saxon emb-ren or imbryne, denoting a course or circuit, these days recurring regularly, at stated periods, in the four quarters or seasons of the year. Others, with some plausibility, derive the epithet from the practice of sprinkling dust or embers on the head, in token of humiliation; and also from the circumstance that at such seasons it was only customary to break the fast by partaking of cakes baked on the embers, or ember-bread. In accordance with a canon of the English Church, the ordination of clergymen by the bishop generally takes place on the respective The weeks in which these days fall, are termed the Sundays immediately following the ember-days. Ember-weeks, and in Latin the ember-days are denominated Jejunia quatuor temporum, or the

fasts of the four seasons.'

Born.-Pope Sixtus V., 1521, Montalto; Henri IV. of France, 1553, Pau; Maximilien de Bethune, Duke of Sully, minister of Henri IV., 1560, Rosny; William Drummond, poet, 1585, Hawthornden; Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, biographer of Dr Arnold, 1815.

Died.-Emperor Frederick II. of Germany, 1250; Emanuel the Great, king of Portugal, 1521; James V. of Scotland, 1542, Falkland; Conrad Gesner, eminent naturalist, 1565, Zurich; Anthony Collins, freethinking writer, 1729; Rev. John Strype, historical writer, 1737, Hackney; Christian Furchtegott Gellert, writer of fables, 1769, Leipsic; Peter Wargentin, Swedish astronomer, 1783, Stockholm; Dr Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, 1784, London; Charles III. of Spain, 1788.

ANTIQUARIAN HOAXES.

surpassed in its peculiar style. "This curious inscription is humbly dedicated,' says its author, 'to the penetrating geniuses of Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, and the learned Society of Antiquaries.' The first, fourth, sixth, and three concluding lines are particularly happy imitations of a Latin inscription. It is, however, a simple English epitaph; the key, published soon afterwards, tells us: "The inscription on the stone, without having regard to the stops, capital letters, or division of the words, easily reads as follows: "Beneath this stone

reposeth Claud Coster, tripe-seller of Impington, as doth his consort Jane."'

Such freaks of fancy may fairly be classed with Callot's Impostures Innocentes; not so when false inscriptions and forged antiques have been fabricated to mislead the scholar, or make him look ridiculous. One of the most malicious of these tricks was concocted by George Steevens, the Shakspearian commentator, to revenge himself on Gough, the director of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and author of the great work on our Sepulchral Monuments. The entire literary life of Steevens has been characterised as displaying an unparalleled series of arch deceptions, tinctured with much malicious ingenuity. He scrupled not, when it served his purpose, to invent quotations

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from old books that existed only in his imagination, and would deduce therefrom corroboration of his own views. Among other things, he invented the famous description of the poisonous upas-tree of Java, and the effluvia killing all things near it. This account, credited by Darwin, and introduced in his Botanic Garden, spread through general literature as a fact; until artists at last were induced to present pictures of the tree and the deadly scene around it. Steevens chose the magazines, or popular newspapers, for the promulgation of his inventions, and signed them with names calculated to disarm suspicion. It is impossible to calculate the full amount of mischief that may be produced by such means-literature may be disfigured, and falsehood take the place of fact.

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