COPY OF A LETTER TO MR. Honred Sir,-My wif an I have taken the Ian from Winsor. Jenny Cedar has lost her head, the rest of the scrubs are all well. The Oxen are com down to prase the Gods. From your humble servant, &c. What he meant to say was: Honoured Sir,-My wife and I have taken the influenza. The Virginia cedar has lost its head: the rest of the shrubs are all well. The auctioneer came down to appraise the goods. SPLENDOUR OF THOMAS With these revenues (the emoluments of his numerous offices) and the profits of the king's lands in his cus ships to attend him, though the king was usually contented with one for himself: and being sent on an embassy to Paris, to demand the Princess Margaret in marriage for Prince Henry, he appeared with such an equipage and grandeur, as amazed all the spectators. This must have cost him an immense sum; since in the first three days after his arrival, during which he was lodged in the Temple, and entertained at the King of France's expense, it was necessary to make provision for a thousand persons; and he affected to surpass all the foreign world in magnificence and in an ostentation of English wealth and luxury, and in making presents of all the plate, horses, furniture, vestments, and other ornaments of his public entry.--Carte's General History of England. tody, he made a prodigious figure, and THE MUSES' WILD WREATH, THE PARTITION OF THE When Jove encircled our planet with And had roll'd the proud Orb on its way, And had given the Moon to illume it by night, And the bright sun to rule it by day. The reign of its surface he formed to agree With the wisdom that governed its plan: He divided the Earth and apportion'd the Sea, kept an open table for all persons of fashion; earls and barons dining with him daily by invitation, and no cost being spared either to purchase the greatest rarities, or to dress them deliciously, so that one dish of eels was known to have cost him one hundred shillings. The apartments in his house were adorned with the richest furniture; gold and silver vessels glittered in all his rooms of state; his horses' bridles were of silver, and all his equipage exceeding sumptuous. An infinite number of knights came to do him homage, and were retained in his service; the nobility, as well of England as of the neighbouring kingdoms, sent their children to serve him; who having been well maintained and instructed in his family, were some of them kept about him, and the rest sent back to their fathers and relations, dignified with the honor of knighthood: the king entrusted to his care the education of Prince Henry, and came The fisherman launch'd his canoe on the frequently to see the pomp of his entertainments. He had fifty-two clerks in his service; most of them in his family, employed in taking care either of vacant prelacies, or of his own ecclesiastical preferments; and scarce a day passed but he made large presents of horses, vestments, plate, or money. When he was to cross the sea, he would not have less than six And he gave the dominion to Man. The hunter he sped to the forest and wood, And the husbandman seiz❜d on the plain; flood, And the merchant embark'd on the main. The mighty partition was finished at last, When a figure came listlessly on; But fearful and wild were the looks that he cast, When he found that the labour was done. The mien of disorder, the wreath which he wore, And the frenzy that flash'd from his eye, And the lyre of ivory and gold which he bore, Proclaim'd that the Poet was nigh; And he rush'd all in tears, at the fatal decree, To the foot of the Thunderer's throne, And complain'd that no spot of the earth or the sea, Had been giv'n the Bard as his own. And the Thunderer smiled at his prayer and his mien, Though his request was too late, And he ask'd in what regions the Poet had been, When his lot was decided by fate? Oh! pardon my error (he humbly replied) Which sprung from a vision too bright; My soul at the moment was close at The following is the solution of the thy side, Entranc'd in the regions of light. It hung on thy visage,-it bask'd on thy smile, And it rode on the glance of thy fire, And forgive, if, bewildered, and dazzled the while, It forgot every earthly desire. The earth (said the Godhead) is proportioned away, And I cannot reverse the decree; But the Heavens are mine, and the regions of day, And their portal is open to thee. P. P. LITTLE CHRISTMAS PRESENT, AND NEW YEARS GIFT, FOR 1824. above, by a young Lady. ENIGMA. Name the thing that will express And known blue-stockings all the rage; Covent Garden, Drury Lane, EPITAPH IN A CHURCH-YARD, NEAR FALMOUTH. Look 'ye, d'ye see-Look 'ye, d'ye see, Who lies here Look 'ye, d'ye see-Look 'ye, d'ye see, Who in his life time did not think it fit It's father, mother and I. "We ought not, like the spider, to spin a flimsy web wholly from our own magazine; but, like the bee, visit every store, and cull the most useful and the best."-GREGORY. CUSTOM AT DUNMOW. THE manners and customs of countries are at all times objects of great interest and inquiry: the above representation is the first of a series of engravings of the singular ceremonies of the people of England, which will, at intervals, embellish "Saturday Night." It represents a curious custom observed at Dunmow, in Essex, forty miles from London, which was established by Fitzwalter, in the time of Henry III. who was crowned in 1216, and died in 1272; that whatever married man did not repent of his marriage, nor quarrel with his wife within a year and a day, might go to the Priory of Dunmow, and have a gammon or flitch of bacon. The canons formerly settled here were obliged, by their constitution, to deliver the bacon to any person, VOL. I. from any part of England, who kneeling on two sharp stones would venture to repeat the following oath: much singing and many ceremonies were used to lengthen out the time of his painful situation: You shall swear by the custom of our confession, That you never made any nuptial transgression, Since you were married to your wife, Or otherwise, in bed or at board, P But continued true and in desire, As when you joined hands in holy quire. If to these conditions, without all fear, Of your own accord you will freely swear, A gammon of bacon you shall receive, And bear it hence with love and good leave; For this is our custom at Dunmow well known, Tho' the sport be our's, the bacon's your own. Then the man and his wife are taken on men's shoulders, and carried from the priory through the town, the bacon carried before them, ac companied with music and the parish officers. A MS. in the College of Arms records the following times that the bacon has been demanded and received; viz. in 1445, 1468, 1510, 1710, and in 1751. Some applications made since have been refused. The two last applications were determined by a court-baron, the priorships having ceased before that time. Bride-ale.--Immediately after the performance of the marriage ceremony, a ribbon is proposed as the prize of contention either for a foot or a horse race. Should, however, any of the doughty disputants omit to shake hands with the bride, he forfeits all claim to the prize, though he be first in the race for the laws of the Olympic games were never more strictly adhered to than the bridal race by the Craven peasants. Even the fair were not excluded in the horse race from this glorious contest. Whoever had the good fortune to arrive first at the bride's house, requested to be shown to the chamber of the new married pair. After he had turned down the bed clothes, he returns, carrying in his hand a tankard of warm ale, previously prepared, to meet the bride, to whom he triumphantly offers his humble beverage. He may go some distance before he meets her, as nothing is reckoned more unlucky than for the bride and bridegroom to gallop. The bride then presents to him the ribbon, as the honourable reward of his victory. Thus adorned, he accompanies the bridal party to their residence. Bride-cake.-The bridal party, after leaving the church, repair to a neighbouring inn, where a thin currant-cake, marked in squares, though not entirely cut through, is ready against the bride's arrival. Over her head is spread a clean linen napkin; the bridegroom standing behind the bride, breaks the cake over her head, which is thrown over her and scrambled for by the attendants. Pie-bridal. The bridal pie was so essential a dish on the dining table, after the celebration of the marriage, that there was no prospect of happiness without it. This was always made round, with a very strong crust, ornamented with various devices. In the middle of it the grand essential was a fat laying-hen, full of egss, probably intended as an emblem of fecundity. It was also garnished with minced and sweet meats. It would have been deemed an act of neglect or rudeness if any of the party omitted to partake of it; and on this occasion it was the etiquette for the bridegroom always to wait on the bride-whence it is supposed the term bridegroom took its origin. was a curious ceremony used in Craven, Stocking." Thrawin' the Stockin'” the first evening after marriage. When it was announced to the young guests invited to the wedding that the happy pair were retired, they instantly repaired to the bed-room,where the bride and bridegroom sat up in bed in full dress, exclusive of their shoes and stockings. One of the bride-maids repeated an epithalamium. Afterwards she took the bridegroom's stocking, and standing at the bottom of the bed, with her back towards it, threw the stocking with the left hand over the right shoulder, aiming at the face of the bridegroom. This was done first by all the females in rotation; and afterwards the young men took the bride's stocking, and in the same manner threw it at the bride's face. As the best marksman was to be named first, it is easy to conceive with what eagerness and anxiety this odd ceremony was performed by each party, as they doubtless supposed that the happiness of their future lives depended on the issue. It was not improbable but this custom may, in part, have been borrowed from the ancient Greeks, as the word epithalamium could not otherwise be appropriately applied. SCINTILLATIONS OF ARITH METIC. It is observed by Dr. Johnson, that "of an art universally practised the first teacher is forgotten;" and strictly applicable to this general position is the declaration of an eminent writer on the subject of this article, that "though next to the art of printing there is no invention of more extensive use than that of the numerical figures or cyphers, yet, when, where, and by whom they were invented, are questions never perhaps to be clearly answered." A passage in Chaucer's Dreme has been thought to countenance the idea that what are called the Arabic numerals first came into use in England near that author's time "Shortly it was so full of bestes, That though Argus the noble Countour Y state to rekin in his countour And rekin with his figures ten For by the figures newe all ken." Vossius says, "these figures have not been in use above 350 years, or at least 400 years at the utmost," or that they were not in use till the year 1300, or at farthest before 1250. Another writer (as he) says, "They appear in Bacon's Calendar, written about 1292: They were at first rarely used, except in mathematical, astronomical, and geometrical works. They were afterwards admitted in calendars and chronicles, and to date MSS. but not introduced in charters before the sixteenth century." This will be found to be the case in examining old MSS. of accounts, and has occasioned much doubt as to whether they were introduced so early as mentioned. In Madox's History of the Exchequer, we find no traces of reckoning and numbering with figures TEN, in any department of that office. It is also clear from the wardrobe accounts of our ancient monarchs, of a posterior date to the one named, that it was then the fashion to specify the sums in Roman characters. The registers of monasteries, where considerable sums were paid and received, and the accounts exactly kept, afford no examples of the use of Arabic figures before the conclusion of the sixteenth century. In the old church wardens' accounts of Lambeth, which begin in 1505, there is not, for several years after that time, a common figure inserted, all the characters being Roman; and the like is found to be the case as to other parishes; and in the churchwardens' accounts of Shorn, near Rochester, the use of Roman numerals are continued as late as 1621, though it is observable that the com mon figures are used to mark the date of the year 1556. The Northumber, of Sir John Fenn, both written in the land Household Book, and the Letters fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, afford similar evidence. Admitting, therefore, THE FIGURES NEWE to imply that they were not known long before Chaucer wrote, it appears odd, though certainly not un accountable, that such a mode of reckoning should not have sooner become more general. The perplexity and tediousness of working Roman capitals, to a person of an unretentive memory, will appear on an examination of the old accounts alluded to, in which are long strings of pounds, shillings, and pence, in the same column, that not many could cast up exactly without the assistance of pen and paper. This occasioned the ignorant, in intricate sums, to resort to the expedient of counters; and accordingly, a writer on arithmetic in the middle of the sixteenth century, says, that "the feat with the counters will not only serve them that cannot write and read, but also for them that can do both, but have not at some time their pen or tables ready with them." And we accordingly find the Clown in the Winter's Tale (Act iv. scene 3), confessing his inability to reckon without them: "Clown-Let me see: every eleven wether tods, every tod yieldspounds and odd shillings, fifteen hundred shorn. What comes the wool to?—I cannot do it without counters." No satisfactory reason has been assigned for the very slow progress in the practice with Arabian numerals, for upwards of a hundred years after they were certainly known in this country, and it can only be attributed, partly to the general state of knowledge and literature in the fifteenth century, and partly to a pertinacious adherence to old habits and forms, which is not uncommon even in more enlightened times. Frequently has it been observed, and with truth, that in the fifteenth century, there was a disgraceful neglect of the arts and sciences; and though we read lists of persons styled great mathematicians and philosophers, no discoveries of importance did they make, no books |