soo muche as he sat still, in suche wise that yf the Marques wolde have done his besines to have assembled them in any manier qwarell, neithar for his love, whiche they bare hym non, ne for any commandement of higher auctoritie, they ne wolde in no cawse, ne qwarell, have assisted hym. Wherein it may right well appere, that the said Erle, in this behalfe, dyd the Kynge right gode and notable service, and, as it is deemed in the conceipts of many men, he cowthe nat hav done hym any beter service, ne not thowghe he had openly declared hym selfe extremly parte-takar with the Kynge in his rightwys qwarell, and, for that entent, have gatheryd and assemblyd all the people that he might have made; for, how be it he loved the Kynge trewly and parfectly, as the Kynge thereof had certayne knowledge, and wolde, as of himselfe and all his power, have served hym trwely, yet was it demyd, and lykly it was to be trewe, that many gentlemen, and othar, whiche would have be araysed by him, woulde not so fully and extremly have determyned them selfe in the Kyng's right and qwarell as th'erle wolde have done hymselfe, havynge in theyr freshe remembraunce, how that the Kynge, at the first entrie-winning of his right to the Royme and Crowne of England, had and won a great battaile in those same parties, where there Maistar, th'erlls fathar, was slayne, many of theyr fathars, theyr sonns, theyr britherne, and kynsemen, and othar many of theyr neighbowrs, wherefore, and nat without cawse, it was thowght that they cowthe nat have borne verrey good will, and done theyr best service, to the Kynge, at this tyme, and in this quarell. And so it may be resonably judged that this was a notable good service, and politiquely done, by th'erle." The " 'great battaile" here referred to was that fought at Towton; the mention of which, and the general subject of feudal dependence, leads us to notice a remark of Dr. Whitaker in his History of Craven, that "Lord Clifford must have been accompanied to Towton by the flower of Craven; yet, though one half of the Lancastrian army was cut off, I cannot discover a Craven name among the slain." Lord Clifford was slain the day before the battle by an arrow discharged from an ambush; and Dr. Whitaker also remarks, that the following night was an interval of busy and anxious preparation, and the event of the battle left the surviving followers of Clifford no leisure to celebrate his obsequies." But is not the circumstance that this observant historian has pointed out, that the name of no follower of the Cliffords occurs in the lists of the slain, a presumptive proof that the men of Westmerland, when they had lost their leader, no longer deemed it incumbent upon them to join the Lancastrian army, but rather felt it to be their duty to carry homewards the remains of their departed chief? On the tragic deaths of Edward Prince of Wales, at Tewkesbury, and of King Henry at London, which have given rise to such well-known "historic doubts," and so much consequent discussion, this Yorkist chronicler states, "Edward, called Prince, was taken fleing to the townewards and slayne in the fielde;" and of the latter event, "The certaintie of all whiche [the fatal events at Tewkesbury] came to the knowledge of the sayd Henry, late called Kyng, being in the Tower of London; not havynge, afore that, knowledge of the said matars, he took it to so great dispite, ire, and indignation, that, of pure displeasure and melencoly, he dyed the xxiij. day of the monithe of May." Mr. Bruce remarks upon these subjects : "The deaths of the Prince of Wales and Henry VI. are popularly considered to constitute deep blots upon the escutcheon of the House of York; and, although the acuteness of some modern writers has a little shaken the general faith in the justice of the share in those deaths attributed to the Duke of Gloucester, it has not at all affected the almost universal belief that those Princes were murdered-and murdered through the instrumentality of the heads of the House of York. * In the notes, I have brought together the statements of the various contemporary authorities relating to the deaths of the Prince and Henry VI.; and the juxta-position will not only be useful to those who are de sirous to approximate towards the truth, but, by displaying the contradictions between the existing authorities, will be found to prove the importance of obtaining further information." * With one further extract from the curious narrative before us, we must conclude. The belief in a miraculous interference of heaven in favour of a cause polluted by violence and treachery, if not by unblushing murder, is a singular example of the deep and gross superstition of the times :: "On the Satarday, the Kynge [Edward], with all his hooste, came to a towne called Daventre, where the Kynge, with greate devocion, hard all divine service upon the morne, Palme-Sonday, in the parishe churche, wher God, and Seint Anne, shewyd a fayre miracle; a goode pronostique of good aventure that aftar shuld befall unto the Kynge by the hand of God, and mediation of that holy matron Seynt Anne. For, so it was, that, afore that tyme, the Kynge, beinge out of his realme, in great trowble, thowght, and hevines, for the infortwne and adversitie that was fallen hym, full often, and specially upon the sea, he prayed to God, owr Lady, and Seint George, and, amonges othar saynts, he specially prayed Seint Anne to helpe hym, where that he promysed, that, at the next tyme that it shuld hape hym to se any ymage of Seint Anne, he shuld therto make his prayers, and gyve his offeringe, in the honor and worshipe of that blessyd Saynte. So it fell, that, the same Palme Sonday, the Kynge went in procession, and all the people aftar, in goode devotion, as the service of that daye askethe, and, whan the processyon was comen into the churche, and, by ordar of the service, were comen to that place where the vale shulbe drawne up afore the Roode, that all the people shall honor the Roode, with the anthem, Ave, three tymes begon, in a pillar of the churche, directly aforne the place where the Kynge knelyd, and devowtly honoryd the Roode, was a lytle ymage of Seint Anne, made of alleblastar, standynge fixed to the piller, closed and clasped togethars with four bordes, small, payntyd, and gowynge rownd abowt the image, in manar of a compas, lyke as it is to see comonly, and all abowt, where as suche ymages be wont to be made for to be solde and set up in churches, chapells, crosses, and oratories, in many placis. And this ymage was thus shett, closed, and clasped, accordynge to the rulles that, in all the churchis of England, be observyd, all ymages to be hid from Ashe Wednesday to Estarday in the mornynge. And so the sayd ymage had bene from Ashwensday to that tyme. And even sodaynly, at that season of the service, the bords compassynge the ymage about gave a great crak, and a little openyd, whiche the Kynge well perceyved and all the people about hym. And anon, aftar, the bords drewe and closed togethars agayne, withowt any mans hand, or touchinge, and, as thowghe it had bene a thinge done with a violence, with a gretar might it openyd all abrod, and so the ymage stode, open and disco vert, in syght of all the people there beynge The Kynge, this seinge, thanked and honoryd God, and Seint Anne, takynge it for a good signe, and token of good and prosperous aventure that God wold send hym in that he had to do, and, remembringe his promyse, he honoryd God, and Seint Anne, in that same place, and gave his offrings. All thos, also, that were present and sawe this worshippyd and thanked God and Seint Anne, there, and many offeryd; takyng of this signe, shewed by the power of God, good hope of theyr good spede for to come." We shall only further give our opinion, and we cannot express it better than in the Editor's own words, that "The interest which attaches to the persons and situations of the chief actors in these events; the controversies to which the events themselves have given rise; the picture they present of the state of moral degradation to which the English people were reduced by the long civil war, to which alone Edward's rapid recovery of the throne and the success of the deceptions and crimes by which it was accompanied are to be attributed,are quite sufficient to justify the addition to our historical authorities of a writer whose means of information were more ample, and whose narrative is anterior in date to any that we possess." A Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Language, containing the Accentuation, the Grammatical Inflexions, the Irregular Words, &c. &c. with a Preface on the Origin and Connexion of the Germanic Tongues, a Map of Languages, and the Essentials of AngloSaxon Grammar. By the Rev. J. Bosworth, LL.D. Royal 8vo. Longman. 1838. pp. ccviii+722. WE are very glad to see that, at last, the great difficulty which lay in the way of a more general study of the Anglo-Saxon language is cleared up by the appearance of a portable and useful dictionary. The volume we have now before us is, we believe, the work of many years, during which Dr. Bosworth has been most industriously collecting together and incorporating not only all that has been done before, but he has also added much from his own collections, and from the private collections of his friends. All the old dictionaries, of which there are only one or two, are so incomplete as to be of very little use to scholars in the language, not to speak of their great rarity, with the exception of the expensive and cumbersome dictionary by Lye and Manning, which also is not without numerous defects. Dr. Bosworth's dictionary, at a very moderate price, and in a most convenient form, contains all that is requisite in the former dictionaries, not excepting Lye's; and we should judge, by the hasty examination which we have yet been able to bestow upon it, nearly twice as many words. To his Dictionary, Dr. Bosworth has prefixed a long introduction of upwards of two hundred closely-printed pages, on the different branches of the Germanic tribe of languages, in which there is very much curious and valuable matter brought together, which, from being spread over many expensive volumes in our own country, or contained in rare volumes in foreign literary productions and its different dialects. This part of the introduction closes with the chapter on the Scandinavian family, the Icelandic, the Old Danish, the Swedish, &c., and is followed by some chapters on general philology. A second introduction contains the essentials of Anglo-Saxon Grammar, with an outline of the systems of Rask and Grimm. At the end of the volume are some very valuable indexes. On the whole, we recommend this Dictionary strongly, and we hope and trust that there will soon be a call for a second edition. We ought to mention that, in order to make it as accessible as possible, the Dictionary may be had without the first Introduction, at only one half the price of the whole. Old Oak Chair. ham. Svo. George, Wester Its languages, is otherwise inaccessible to Lympsfield and its Environs, and the the general reader, besides much that is entirely new. What is also of great utility, he gives the history of each language, with lists of the works written in it at different periods or in different dialects, and of the books which treat upon it. Thus, under the head of Anglo-Saxon, we have specimens of the chief English provincial dialects, with a copious list of books which have been published concerning them. The long treatise on the Friesic language, and its comparison with the Anglo-Saxon, by the author's friend Mr. Halbertsma, is exceedingly curious and valuable. There is strong reason for supposing that a portion of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, and particularly the men of Kent, came from Friesland, and on this account it is very desirable to know something of the Old Kentish dialect. Fortunately there is in the British Museum a MS. of the fourteenth century written in it, and we hope that before long it will be published. The account of the Friesic tongue is followed by that of the rest of the Low German languages; the Old-Saxon, in which was written, in the early part of the ninth century, the Heliand, and at a later period the famous poem of Reineke Vos (Reynard the Fox); and the Dutch, in all its varieties. Then comes the Gothic. Next we have the High German, with all its numerous THIS is a series of views of interesting objects in the vicinity of a Kentish village, accompanied with brief but tasteful descriptions. original was a MS. illustrated with drawings, contributed to a fancy fair held by the ladies of Lympsfield in 1832; this pleasing volume was purchased by the late Samuel Welch, esq. of Dunsdale; upon whose death, as it was likely to leave the neighbourhood, the bookseller of Westerham obtained permission to multiply and publish the copies, of which one is now before us. The drawings, now printed in lithography, are chiefly representa. tions of the residences of the neighbouring gentry; and the subjects are, Dunsdale, Lympsfield village, Titsey Place (once the seat of a branch of the Greshams, those Barings of an elder day), Squerries, Chart's Edge, Barrow Green House, Tanridge Priory, Rook's Nest, Tenchley's, and Lympsfield church. In his notice of Chart's Edge, the writer speaks with extraordinary freedom of the pursuits of "Mr. Antiquary Streatfeild," a liberty which nothing but the most intimate friendship could justify; and in the preface it seems to be intimated that the gentleman in question has lately been more occupied in the "erection of a Gothic wing at Chart's Edge, designed to contain the works of literature and art which its owner has accumulated beyond the means of accommodation in his present library," than in the labours of his History of Kent. We trust, however, that he will now have "ample space and verge enough" to arrange all his valuable materials, and pursue his great work without inconvenience. "The chief value," it is well remarked in the preface, "of this little volume will consist, not in any statistical or topographical information, which it might be expected to contain; but in the moral and social picture which it gives, of a district, rich alike in the beauties of nature, and in the cultivation, among its residents, of those qualities which enhance every other attraction, and the absence of which nothing could compensate." However, we shall quote one of the descriptions, as a specimen of the playful grace with which they, as well as the drawings, are sketched. "SQUERRIES.-The family which affixed its name to this estate, became extinct in the male line in the reign of Edward IV. when Margaret Squerrie conveyed its inheritance to the Crowmers of Tunstall, in Kent. The next family which made it their residence for any length of time was that of Beresford, from a younger branch of which sprang the Earls of Ty. rone, &c. In the convulsed times of the Rebellion and Revolution, it was in the transient possession of those of Strode, Lambarde, Leach, Crispe, and Villiers; and probably during the ownership of the latter, saw the present noble fabric replace the ancient mansion. We say 'probably,' for tradition assigns the building to Secretary Craggs, who does not appear to have been in possession; and the arms on Badeslade's engraved view of it, suggest still another family in the rapid succession. Of this trick of casting its riders, we are pleased to find it broken ;* a branch of the old baronial family of Warde, having now maintained their seat for upwards of a century. The park is dignified by forest trees of great age and beauty, and scenery unrivalled in any tract of equal magnitude. The interior of the house is graced by many works of the highest rank in their several classes of art. An attraction, however, paramount to every other, is the picture displayed by its owner of the Old English Country Gentleman, most celebrated, perhaps, as a sportsman, but by those who know him best, most valued for higher qualities." With respect to the ballad of "The Old Oak Chair," which has no other connexion with the other part of the volume but identity of authorship, we must take leave to transfer it at once to our pages, as when it is read, neither the composition nor its moral will stand in need of our commendation. We need only premise that it is illustrated by four designs by George Cruikshank, conceived in his truest and happiest manner : "The lands in Berkshire," says Fuller, "are very skittish, and often cast their owners; which I impute not so much to the unruliness of the beasts as to the unskilfulness of the riders." This reference is necessary to vindicate us from the imputation of plagiarism. 5. And another sat in his father's chair, And talk'd, o'er his liquor, of laws; Of the tyranny here and the knavery there, Till the old bit of oak And the drunkard broke; But the times were not the cause. Historical View of the Poor and Vagrant Laws, from the earliest period upon record to the present time. 1838.-A pamphlet full of the most ample and interesting information, accompanied with views upon the subject which in our mind are truly correct. We disapprove entirely the removing the poor from the local con trol of their own parishes, and the care of their own magistrates, clergy, and occupiers of the soil, and placing them at the tender mercy of a paid board of Attorneys and Commissioners. We deprecate the system which thus destroys all attachment to their native places, and weakens all respect to their masters and employers. We disapprove of the substitution of Union Houses for the Old Parochial Work-Houses; we deny the propriety of the rule which forbids out-of-door relief; we consider the offer which the New Law makes to parents to enter their children into these Unions as an insult on parental feeling and a mockery of the spirit of christian charity; in fact, we argue, that our legislators had no right to turn round, as they have done, on a people educated under one law, with the increased severity of another. Should we want commentators and interpreters of this declaration, we shall find them, in the great distress which we can answer has been brought on the most industrious and worthy part of our population by the cruel operation of this law. But we must take some other opportunity to enlarge on this subject, and lay our opinions before our readers. The Lowly Station dignified; a Sermon preached at St. James's on behalf of the Burlington Schools. By the Rev. R. C. Coxe, A.M.-Another very sensible and forcible discourse on the same subject as the last. Religious Education, a Sermon preached at Cardel Chapel. By Henry Melville. 1838.-A very interesting, well reasoned, and most eloquently-written discourse, to which we beg to direct the attention of all those who desire to see a truly Christian education spread over the country. The author justly observes, "that education can be nothing but detrimental, unless it be actually based upon the Bible; and that merely to expand the intellect of 6. But I have redeem'd the old rickety chair, And trod in my father's ways; Ilave turn'd the furrow with humble prayer To profit my neighbours, a people, to furnish them with various kinds of knowledge, but to leave them to make a theology for themselves, is a far worse thing than the consigning them to ignorance. I prefer the untutored savage to the well-informed infidel; he is not half so dangerous, and twice as noble. Educate on the principle that you educate for eternity, deal with children as with immortal beings, let the Bible be the first book in the list of instruction, permit not the great vital truths of Christianity to be weakened, diminished, or sacrificed from popular views or secular interests, and sooner or later the richest fruits of an improved and regenerated people will reward the labour." Il Traduttore Italiano. By A. Cassella, R.S.G.-This is an instructive and amusing collection of extracts from the classical prose authors of Italy, preceded by short literary sketches of the different writers. The selection appears good, and the difficult words and idioms are well translated into both the French and English languages, which renders it a desirable work for the young Italian scholar. By means of the table of contents the name of the author of each extract may be ascertained; but we should recommend M. Cassella in his next edition also to attach them to each extract, that the young student may be aware whose pages he is reading. sans, Mr. Geo. Lewis's Address to the Manufacturers on the subject of Education, &c. -A very sensible and well-written pamphlet on the importance of instruction to youth to fit them as designers and artiand for the establishment of schools throughout the kingdom, in which the principles of those useful and elegant arts may be taught which would add to the value of many branches of our manufacturing industry, by giving to them forms of more acknowledged beauty and excellence; thus raising them above the mere mechanical and imperfect rules by which they are now too often guided, and bestowing on the commonest arts of life a truth, a spirit, and a dignity, which they have lost ever since they have forsaken the shores of Greece, and which have been buried in the deserted quarries of Paros and Pentele. |