Born: William Woollett,
eminent engraver, 1735, Maidstone.
Died: Annius Severinus
Boethius, philosopher and theologian, beheaded by
Theotoric, 526, Pavia; Pope Sixtus II, 1590; James
Thomson, poet, 1748, Riehmond; Dr. John Jortin,
critic, 1770; Countess Craven (n�e Louisa Brunton),
once a favourite actress, 1860.
Feast Day: St. Poemen
or Pastor, abbot, about 451. St. C�sarius, archbishop
of Arles, confessor, 542. St. Syagrius, bishop of
Autun, 600. St. Malrubius, hermit and martyr in
Scotland, about 1040. St. Hugh of Lincoln, martyr,
1255. St. Joseph Calasanetius, confessor, 1648.
POPE SIXTUS V
Many of the popes have been of
the humblest extraction. Pope Sixtus V was the son of
a poor pig-dealer at Montalto�born there in 1521. It
may fairly be said that no occupant of the Holy See
has ever left a stronger mark upon his age. Elizabeth
upon the throne of England, Henry IV upon that of
France, and Sixtus V upon that of Rome, was a
wonderful cluster of great sovereigns for one period.
Having, as a cardinal, long appeared imbecile, he was
elected by the concurrent voices of several who hoped
to reign in his name, and knew they could not
individually command a majority. It seemed, too, as if
so feeble and sickly a man could not long postpone
another election. When at length informed that he was
pope, Sixtus threw by his staff, smoothed away his
wrinkles, and joined the Te Deum with a voice
so powerful as to make his electors tremble. He at the
same time informed then that his ago was seven years
less than had been supposed. Immediately there
commenced an administration of extraordinary vigour.
The banditti perished and disappeared before the
sternness of his justice. He entered upon wonderful
measures for the decoration of Rome. He excommunicated
several Protestant princes; yet afterwards, it is
said, coming to know Henry of France, and Elizabeth of
England, conceived a respect for them both, and
actually won one over to the Romish Church. Of
Elizabeth, he characteristically remarked: 'She is a
big-head�that queen. Could I have espoused her, what a
breed of great princes we might have had!'
His severity to the vicious
had something eccentric in it. While making adultery a
capital crime, he extended the same punishment to a
husband who did not complain. It seemed, too, as if a
cruel disposition made him take a positive pleasure in
the infliction of death. 'I wish justice to be done
before dinner,' he said to the governor of Rome; 'so
make haste, for I am very hungry.' On one occasion,
when some friends of a Spanish gentleman-criminal
pleaded that, if he must die, it should be by
decapitation: 'No,' said Sixtus, 'he shall be hanged,
but I will ennoble his execution by attending it
myself.' He looked on attentively, and declared the
affair had given him a good appetite. It was to him a
recommendation for a judgeship, if the candidate had a
severe countenance. He was full of jokes about his own
severity. Some people pleading for mercy to a criminal
of sixteen�alleging that the execution of so young a
person was not according to law�the holy father only
replied: 'I will give him ten of my own years to make
him subject to the law;' and, of course, the lad
suffered.
On the whole, he was one of
the greatest of the popes, and no one can visit Rome
without becoming aware how much it owes to him.
LANDING OF
C�SAR IN BRITAIN
Sunday, the 27th of August, 55
B.C., may, upon good grounds, be set down as the day
on which C�sar invaded the island of Britain. His own
account of the event being vague and general, there
has been room for discussion both as to the place
where, and the day on which, the landing was effected.
In a late volume, however, by a very pinstaking and
ingenious inquirer, both points are tolerably well
determined, as it also is that the Roman commander
embarked on his expedition at the port since called
Boulogne, using the adjacent lesser harbour of
Ambleteuse for shipping his cavalry.
The day is thus ascertained.
C�sar himself tells that he proceeded on his
expedition when little of summer remained�when the
people of the south of Britain were engaged in their
harvest�and we learn that he returned three weeks
after, before the equinox. Thus, the day must have
been in August. He further tells us that the full moon
occurred on the fourth day after his landing. The full
moon of August in that year is ascertained from
astronomical tables to have been at 3 A.M. of the
31st. Hence C�sar landed on the 27th. He had set out
from Boulogne at midnight, with 8000 men in 80
transports, besides a few swift-moving war-galleys or
triremes, and arrived at a point near the British
coast about ten in the forenoon.
He found himself in front of a
bold coast, covered by enemies who could throw their
javelins from the higher ground to the shore. The
description answers to the well-known high
chalk-cliffs between Sandgate and the South Foreland.
He necessarily made a lateral movement to find a more
favourable place of lauding, and wind and tide enabled
him to do so. The question is, was it eastward to
Deal, or westward towards Hythe. It has very generally
been assumed that he took the former course, and
landed at Deal. But Mr. Lewin spews that the tide
which enabled C�sar to make this movement did not go
in that direction. High water at Dover on the 27th of
August, 55 B. c., was at 7.31 A.M. Four hours later,
the tide would begin, as it now does, to move
westward, and would so continue for seven hours. C�sar,
therefore, in his shift of place that afternoon, went
westward�namely, towards Hythe. There we find in
Romney Marsh precisely such a plain as that on which
he describes himself as having landed. Mr. Lewin
conjectures that the name Romney may have been affixed
to the place in commemoration of its having been the
site of the first encampment made by the Romans on the
British shore.
It is well known that C�sar
met with greater difficulty in landing and making good
his first footing on the island than he expected. The
truth is, although we, as well as he, are apt to
forget or be ignorant of it, that the southern Britons
were a people well advanced in a native civilisation
at the time of C�sar's invasion. 'In the first place,'
says Mr. Lewin, 'there was a crowded population, which
is never found in a state of barbarism. Even in
literary attainments the Britons were in advance of
the Gauls, for the priests are universally the
depositaries of learning, and the Gauls were in the
habit of sending their youth to Britain, to perfect
themselves in the knowledge of Druidism. Then there
was great commercial intercourse carried on between
Britain and Gaul, not to mention that a partial trade
existed between Britain and more distant nations, as
the Phoenicians. It was only about a century after
this that London, by its present name, was a city
crowded with merchants and of world-wide celebrity.
The country also to the south had been cleared of its
forests, and was under the plough... But I do not know
a greater confirmation of British advancement than the
circumstance mentioned by C�sar, that when he made war
upon the Veneti, to the west of Gaul, the Britains
sent a fleet of ships to their assistance.'
BURNING OF MILTON'S BOOKS BY THE HANGMAN
Milton was all his life a
liberal, in the best sense of the word, resisting with
his powerful pen the encroachments of unwarrantable
power, whether political or ecclesiastical. When the
restoration of Charles II became imminent,
Milton's position was perilous. Amongst other books,
his Iconoclastes and his Defensio pro Populo
Anglican, contained sentiments which Charles and
his court could not be expected to tolerate.
In 1660, just before Charles's
return, Milton added another to his many works against
monarchy, in a letter addressed to General Monk, under
the title of The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a
Free Commonwealth; and he also combated the
reasonings of one Dr.
Matthew Griffith, in Brief Notes upon a Late
Sermon, titled The Fear of God and the King.
All would not do, however; the
people were wearied of the Commonwealth, and welcomed
Charles home again. Milton felt that he could not
safely appear in public at this crisis. He quitted his
home in Petty France, and sought an asylum with a
friend in Bartholomew Close. Many writers have said
that his friends got up a mock-funeral for him, to
keep him well out of sight; and that when this fact
came to the ears of Charles, the 'Merry Monarch'
laughed heartily, and 'applauded his policy in
escaping the punishment of death by a seasonable show
of dying.' Whether this were or were not the case, no
very diligent search appears to have been made for
him. 'There were among the royalists,' says Mr.
Keightley, 'men of humanity who could feel compassion
for him, who was deprived of nature's prime blessing
[Milton had then been quite blind about seven years],
and men of taste who were capable of admiration for
exalted genius? But, although Milton escaped, his
books did not.
On the 16th of June 1660, the
House of Commons passed a resolution, that his majesty
should be:
'humbly moved to call in
Milton's two books [the Iconoelastes and the
Defensio], and that of John
Goodwin [The Obstructors of Justice],
written in justification of the murder of the late
king, and order them to be burned by the common
hangman; and that the attorney-general do proceed
against them by indictment or otherwise.'
On the 27th of August
following, as many copies of the three offending books
as could be met with, were publicly burned, in
conformity with this resolution. During the
intervening ten weeks a proclamation appeared, in
which it was stated that 'the said John Milton and
John Goodwin are so fled, or so obscure themselves,
that no endeavours used for their apprehension can
take effect, whereby they may be brought to legal
tryal, and deservedly receive condign punishment for
their treasons and offences.' As has just been said,
however, there is reason to believe that the search
